Economic Sociology Terms Chapter 5

Marx Society Classification was based on:

The Dominant Mode of Production

For Example: Capitalism, Feudalism, Slave Societies

Each mode of production includes (Marx View):

Each mode of production includes (Marx View):

1. Specific economic relationship/form of exploitation (wage labor, serfdom, slavery)

2. A specific class structure (there are always 2 opposing classes compared to the view of Collins)

Collins Society Classification was based on:

Dominant Market Type (slavery markets, agrarian-coercive markets, capitalist markets)

Each market type includes a specific kind of:

property (slaves, land, capital)

Market Types Characteristics:

1. Each market type is based on a particular type of property

2. Market types tend to expand over long periods of time and geographically

3. Over the longer term, market types enter a period of crisis, in which the old market type disappears and society is transformed into a structure based on a new market type.

What is Market Expansion?

Expansion happens regarding people, products, relationships, or land.

Superordinate markets meaning

Shape and influence the functioning of other (subordinate) markets

Subordinate markets meaning

(dependent on superordinates), economic transactions that support the superordinate markets

Definition of Max Weber’s Ideal Market Type

A simplified, theoretical, model that captures key features of a phenomenon. Not fully realistic, but helps compare and analyse different systems

Ideal Typical Market Types of Collins. Which are they?

Kinship Markets
Slave Markets

Agrarian-Coercive Markets

Capitalist Markets

Kinship Markets: definition and charactersitics

- Typical for stateless societies

- Dominant social class: men

Property Form: Familial

- Marriages with women across groups create military, political, economic alliances

- From that follow population growth, material production, geographic expansion.

Women are tools that are exchanged on the market for marriage

Groups become allies to get econ/ political advantages through marriage – very ancienttype of market

Crisis of Kinship Markets

Crisis of kinship markets:

Distinction between kinship systems based on extent of the alliances formed

- Conservative strategy (short cycle): a few groups constantly intermarry, creating local ties → static structure

- Expansive strategy (long cycle): long-distance alliances with more groups (Incl. pseudo-kin), creating bigger alliance networks → more resources, political and military power

Pseudo Kin

People who are treated like family but aren’t blood related

Kinship Capitalists

Societies with expansive strategies

Kinship proletariat

more conservative, resource-limited groups

Kinship Revolution

Kinship revolution: societies with expansive strategies (kinship capitalists) dominate the localised, resource-poor conservative societies (kinship proletariat)

Transition from kinship alliances to state structures (e.g. Heian Japan, Greece, Italy)

Slave Markets existed in:

US

Greece

Rome

Islamic Societies

Chattel Slave Market

A highly developed slave market form in Rome, where people could literally won other people

Expansionary Dynamic explained, what are the 2 types?

Soldiers capturing people and giving them up for slavery

Internally: Warfare increased the supply of slaves, boosting Rome’s internal resources and military power

Geographically: Expansion sustains this system

Rome’s subordinate markets vs superordinate markets

Subordinate: slaves dominated it, they did everyday tasks

Superordinate: depended really on the military investment to keep the system running, conquering more land and getting more slaves

Crisis of Slave Markets

Early Roman Soldiers owned land.

Because they were fighting all the time —> their lands got shitty so the Elite took it and they were left with nothing —> became Landless Proletariats, earning wages instead of owning land.

Slowly, Rome stopped conquering more land —> less slaves —> more expensive labor —> slaves became dependent peasants (early form of Feudalism, where the land owner protects the peasants if they take care of his land)

Alienation (Marx)

They lost control of their means of production and were displaced by the very slaves they had captured

Islamic Rulers and Slavery

Unlike Rome, they bought their slaves from international markets, choosing people from “distant groups” with no local alliances.

The slave trade supported the rise of the credit instruments (because of long distance purchases)

Islamic Societies: superordinate markets

Superordinate: Slaves, especially used in military and bureaucracy, but not agriculture or other subordinate markets

Agrarian-Coercive Markets: Characteristics

- Society based upon agricultural production and a militarized state

- Property form: land and its attached labor

- Coercive power of landowners extracts produce

- Takes over sector of subsistence farming (free peasants) and outside areas organized by kinship/ slavery

- Two main subtypes: rent coercion and tax coercion

Rent Coercion

Decentralized

▪ Landowning military elites take the peasants’ surplus using force, mostly for investment in military goods (armaments, soldiers) and status goods

▪ Market expansion due to high costs of military and status goods

▪ Superordinate market: religious organizations. They grow as elite-funded projects.

Tax Coercion

Cenralized

▪ In centralized states, surplus is directly extracted from farmers, undermining the aristocrats who would otherwise engage in rent coercion and market competition

▪ If powerful enough, the state may suppress local markets and private trade and focus on state-sponsored production

▪ If king is weak, he will fuel market competition further by participating himself on the market for military and status goods

▪ Rulers sometimes turned to monasteries instead of feudal lords to manage newly acquired territories (loyalty, administrative capability)

Tax coercion is much more centralized.

In the system where king is in control of taxes as a lord you don’t have much freedom to tax your workers so you don’t get much because the state is centralize

Ways in which rent coercion expands?

1. Feudalism

2. Religious Capitalism

How does rent coercion expand through feudalism?

1) Expansion through rising surplus extraction

Rural landlords increase rents

Peasants respond by increasing production

Effect: productive expansion by

a) Colonizing wastelands

b) Intensified cultivation (technological innovation)

c) Military expansion

Military competition among the lords requires more funds (rent), leading to more competition for land and more military confrontations

2) Status competition for political influence between lords by displaying lavish standards of living (elaborate houses, cuisine, clothing and jewelry, etc…)

Effect: the need for liquid cash to afford these goods led to the monetization of the

countryside

LORDS ARE IN CONSTANT COMPETITION to show off their wealth

They need cash to afford these nice things to show off

How does rent coercion expand through religious capitalism?

Corporate religious capitalism

Monasteries were centers for wealth accumulation, intensification of production (incl.tech innovation)

Similarities to rational capitalism:

- Supported by existing infrastructure of exchange and property rights

- Universalistic and disciplined ethic

- Monks were outside the system of family inheritance of property and status: +- freely

recruited and mobile labor force

- Reinvestment of profits in production

- Gave rise to strong superordinate markets, e.g. banking, universities, indulgences

Already in system where property rights are respected

In feudal you are defined by in which family you were born in – no class switching

But you could become a monk and become more free in a sense – where everyone more or less equal to each other

They did not spend their profits but reinvested or accumulated them

As they had so much money they started lending it – how banks were created

Crisis of Agrarian-Coercive Markets

Kyanq karda eli shat erkara

Capitalist Markets

Characteristics of capitalist markets

Before: large sectors of socio-economic life remain outside of market exchange (self- sufficient); most people produce what they need, most daily needs were met locally without requiring large-scale commercial trade

▪ Long and slow process; ‘tipping point’ when a proportion of the economy becomes market driven

▪ Potentially several tipping points:

✓ “Take-off”: early form in monastic traditions, 16th century Europe

✓ Next dimension: England, 18th-19th century

▪ Central characteristic: pyramiding of multiple systems in an integrated regime of sub- and superordinate markets

▪ Example:

✓ Financial markets

Socialist Autarki

Capitalist success is its geographical diffusion, penetrating other market types

▪ Socialist autarky:

▪ State produces all/most goods, without relying on trade with external (capitalist) markets or market competition

▪ Centralized economic planning: distribution, production, labour

▪ Control of key resources

▪ “The failure of socialist autarky”: inefficiency, scarcity of goods, lack of innovation