Rice Pudding Culture
A paddy field leads to the overthrow of capitalism… Okay, well, perhaps not yet!
Imagine, if you will, a paddy field of rice ready for harvest. The nearby village has plenty of workers willing and able to bring in the harvest. If they press ahead with their work then everyone can eat.
Such a simple model of subsistence farming is often given to show that societies can function without money, or indeed, without capitalism.
But then comes a ‘but’! For those writers who are looking to celebrate the benefits of the capitalist system, a market economy, or some such, then the ‘but’ might take the form of: But what if there’s a drought or a hurricane or a flood? Hence, the subsistence farmer is vulnerable to disaster. Or it might be simply to say: But what if the farmers want to buy a truck, or go see a film, or gain access to the internet? Hence, there are things that a small group of people cannot do for themselves. So a more complex system of exchange – trade, money, debt – is a way that people gain access to a wider range of goods and services.
On the other hand, those with a grudge against capitalism will use the paddy field and its workers to show a different set of concerns. They may, for instance, say: But what if the workers wanted a higher wage for bringing in the harvest? They are saying therefore that ‘the system’ (that is, a system of waged labour) might fail even with an abundant harvest and a plentiful supply of labour because the pay does not match the aspiration of the workers. The point is that all we need is actually there for the taking, but there is an ‘economic failure’. Hence, and this is their point, we might be surrounded by abundance but our system of economics – capitalism, market economies, waged labour – fails us.
Well, who is right? As usual, with this kind of complex question, no-one is really right or wrong. Life is not so simple. But the example of the paddy field might help us make a bit of sense of the complex issues around capitalism, and indeed, the way we choose to organise societies generally.
Let’s unpack that a bit.
First of all, let’s be certain that we are surrounded by an abundance. For the most part we think of this as an abundance of material resources. But remember the example again. There is also an abundance of workers. And where did they come from? Well, of course they came from their mothers! So they ultimately came from Mother Nature – the same source as our material resources. And they also came from a good deal of care and support from family, friends, schools and the like. This is the more hidden aspect of our equation, which goes by a variety of names. Let’s just call it care here, for simplicity.
So those folk who argue that life would be possible without all the problems of capitalism are partly right – because there is indeed an abundance provided by nature and an abundance of care that allows for an abundance of people to do the work that can then sustain us. We could thrive just by seeing all this abundance as gifts – a gift economy. We could make sure that everything we made could be re-used or recycled – a circular economy. But yes (I know you’re already thinking) it’s a tough call! Because most of us want to do a whole lot more than grow fruit and vegetables!
Capitalism has already delivered a lot of those extras that our subsistence farmers might aspire to – the comfortable homes, the cars, the gadgets, international trade and travel. But of course it has its problems, which even the most enthusiastic advocates of consumer capitalism are forced to admit. Two problems are most apparent – capitalism is based on growth and capitalism is based on debt. The two problems are closely linked. Capitalism is based on borrowing the means by which production is increased and it’s the compound interest on that borrowing which is the main source of debt. To keep paying the debt there needs to be more and more production, so more and more natural resources must be used up in order to keep the system going.
Fans of capitalism don’t necessarily have a problem with this. We could simply say that there will always be new natural resources, either from the Earth, or eventually from the moon, or Mars or the asteroid belt. And this expansion could go on and on, to other star systems, other galaxies and even other universes!
Another way to look at it is to say that economic growth does not have to rely on natural resources. There is an argument that says it could be the cultural industries or the financial economy that allow for growth, without us plundering the natural world any more than we do already. Hence, we could be environmentally sustainable but economically growing.
It’s a neat idea, but I doubt that it’s true. Cultural industries still rely on nature and finance is still ultimately based on the idea that someone, somewhere will eventually pay debts, and this will be by way of work and hence based on the material economy.
An alternative would be to recognise we are reliant on the material economy and to work towards making this truly sustainable. As mentioned earlier, this could be by way of what’s called a ‘circular economy’. In other words, instead of expanding where we look for new materials we make sure that everything we do in our making and manufacturing is done such that we can repair things or recycle them by the most efficient means possible. Nature of course is the ultimate circular economy. We can look to her and imitate her ways. But, fair to say, whilst this would greatly help our world, it does not, by itself, stop the expansion of material resources needed to sustain economic growth.
Another way to look at it is to ask if we could have capitalism without either growth or debt. This seems at least a viable alternative. Part of the reason it’s viable is that when we talk of growth we normally mean economic growth and this in turn normally means goods and services plus finance. When we talked about the workers and their field of rice, we noted another kind of economy that I’ve called care, which sits below the horizon but nonetheless supports everything we do. Could we pay more attention to care and thereby see societies flourishing even whilst our material prosperity remains much the same from year to year?
Well, here’s a few thoughts on what that might mean. There are three.
Firstly we might ask what ‘the economy’ – all that making and doing, buying and selling, trading and bartering – is really for? We might be tempted to reply, for profit! But really, the answer should be, for service. We serve our needs by having a job and earning money. And we serve the needs of society through our trades and professions. We might see this ‘service’ as simply meeting our material needs. But we might expand this to include the wider goal of each of us achieving some kind of flourishing in our lives. To flourish is not just to have our material needs met, but also our needs of relationship, education, culture and more besides.
That takes us to our second thing. Seeing everything through the lens of economics has the tendency to reduce everything to a transaction of some sort – a cost-benefit analysis of what may best meet our needs. Everything then has been commodified, meaning that it has value only in so far as it can be exchanged. The alternative to this is to recognise that some things have worth rather than value. Or to put it another way, they are important to us just for what they are in themselves – they have intrinsic worth. No doubt we very much hope this is true of ourselves as persons! We are more than what we might earn from our work and more than just our physical selves. And likewise for much else in life – the natural world, good health, relationships, culture. So part of growth that is not economic growth (and part of the growth that is in fact part of human flourishing) is to appreciate all those things in life that have intrinsic worth rather than transactional value.
And thirdly, let’s think again about the idea of a gift economy we mentioned earlier. Sometimes gift economies are thought of as a return to bartering or some kind of ‘reciprocity’. But if we see them in this way we’re really stuck with the kind of cost-benefit transactional mind-set we looked at above. We said nature’s abundance is a gift and we said too that the care we give and receive from others is a gift. These things are in the realm of intrinsic worth, not transaction. When we are serving others through our work or giving ourselves to others through our care, this is gifting in its truest sense.
But we can go even a step further and remember that it is part of every healthy person’s life to seek ‘flourishing’ in whatever ways that makes sense for each individual. Putting this all together we could describe the gift economy as ‘enhancing the gifts of others’. In other words, we are not just giving our work and our care blindly. We are instead being very specific in understanding what will help particular people, particular communities, and particular places (both natural and human-made) to flourish.
So the workers in the field might bring in their rice harvest and have their simple meal of rice and be satisfied – because there is so much more going on in their lives. Or, on the other hand, a complex technological culture may learn to live within its natural limits and likewise thrive. Because human flourishing and helping each other to flourish could be our true aims.
Do I think this is possible? Yes! Do I think it’s going to happen? No! For a developed nation to step outside the usual pattern of economic growth is, in a sense, to bring the nation to its knees! The value of their currency would plummet, their borrowing costs would sky-rocket and their stock exchange would collapse! Any government trying to bring in such changes would therefore be very quickly out of office and there would then be a mad scramble to get the economy back on its capitalist growth track. It has to be said that such change may be forced onto us via a fuel crisis, war, a collapse in world trade or as a result of runaway climate change. Or a combination of all of these. Of course I wouldn’t welcome this enforced change, because the truth is most of us are just not ready for the scale of change that all of the above would entail. As such, it would not, as things stand, result in a peaceful life of subsistence farms, eco-villages and peaceful people seeking flourishing and enchantment! No, it would be carnage! Even if we chose a hi-tech future, the risks of the kind of global collapse I mention are equally problematic. We could end up with pockets of hi-tech privilege in amongst an outer world of chaos and violence.
So my conclusion is that we have to change as people in order to cope with the kinds of problems the world may throw at us in the coming decades. And I include myself in that need for change. It’s just not something big government can bring about. Big government (and indeed, local governance) could go some way towards shielding us from some of the problems coming down the track. The sort of problems we’re all aware of – like climate change and fuel shortages and the consequences these things are likely to have. But governments can’t change people – we need to be the change.
In the light of all this, I keep my hopes for the future modest! I hope that we survive as a species. I hope that in the very long-term people will start to see life differently. We could have a sustainable world. We could live in harmony with nature. We could be peace-loving, committed to care, serving others, multiplying the gifts of others. It seems, right now, like a faint hope, but I’m going to try keeping it alive.
