In a vernacular society economic activity is homeotelic to Gaia

"Organise your actions for your own benefit. God implanted self-interest in the human breast as a motive of progress. By following self-interest, we follow God's will. Going against self-interest only inhibits God's plan."
   Heinrich Gossens

"I owe the public nothing."
   John Pierpoint Morgan

"The outstanding discovery of recent historical and anthropological research is that man's economy, as a rule, is submerged in his social relationships. He does not act so as to safeguard his individual interest in the possession of material goods; he acts so as to safeguard his social standing, his social claims, his social assets. He values material goods only in so far as they serve this end."
   Karl Polanyi

"Economics is based on homo economicus as a self-interested individual who commends policies that inevitably disrupt existing social relationships. These social costs can be considered only as externalities and are actually little considered even under that heading. For the most part they are hardly noticed. We believe these social costs are of enormous importance, that the increase of gross global product at the expense of human well-being should cease. We believe human beings are fundamentally social and that economics should be refounded on the recognition of this reality. We call for rethinking economics on the basis of a new concept of homo economicus as person-in-community."
   Herman Daly and John Cobb

Modern economics is supposed to determine how scarce resources should be distributed within a society. Its basic assumption, which is never questioned, is that such resources should be distributed so as to maximise wealth. Wealth is measured in terms of per capita Gross National Product (GNP) which is the sum of all economic transactions within a nation state. This means that to maximise wealth means maximising transactions, or trade.

Neither of these two assumptions can be accepted. If economics concerns itself with the distribution of scarce resources, this is largely because it is only when resources are scarce that they can be sold at a profit, which is when corporations find it worth their while to produce and distribute them. This is so much the case that much of their work involves creating artificial scarcities, firstly by creating a market that did not previously exist for goods that they have developed or plan to develop, and secondly by building into these goods what is generally referred to as 'planned obsolescence'.

However, for thousands of years prior to the development of the formal economy, the food and artefacts that were required to satisfy human needs were not necessarily in short supply. Scarcity was not, in fact, a feature of the economy of vernacular man, as Lee and Devore, Laurens van der Post and Marshall Sahlins point out over and over again.

For this reason, it would be more appropriate to adopt George Dalton's view of economics as dealing with the provision of material goods to satisfy biological and social needs. This is what Karl Polanyi refers to as the "substantive" use of the term economics as opposed to the "formal" use. I propose a still more general use of the term economics to refer simply to the study of how resources are distributed within a natural system.

In this way we could expand our study to include the economics of biological organisms, ecosystems, vernacular societies and the ecosphere itself. Clearly all require resources of various sorts such as nutrients to ensure their sustenance and hence to preserve their critical order or stability. In addition, if we accept the thesis of General Systems Theory, we may also suppose that the same fundamental laws govern the distribution of resources in all natural systems regardless of their level of organisation.

The most fundamental of such laws - and this must be the basic Law of Economics - is that resources are distributed so as to maintain the integrity and stability of social and ecological systems within which they are distributed; which also means helping to maintain the integrity and stability of the Gaian hierarchy of which these systems are part.

That resources within a natural system are distributed for the purpose of maintaining its integrity and stability is clear at the level of a biological organism. Thus, oxygen is transported via the red corpuscles to all parts of the body in accordance with its requirements; so are the various nutrients that the body requires.

This principle is even clearer when scarcity occurs. In such conditions, a natural system is perfectly capable of setting up its own very effective rationing system and one that clearly reflects its priorities. Nutrients are provided to the parts in accordance with the importance of their contribution to the preservation and hence the stability of the living whole. As Gerard points out,

"one can get along without a digestive system quite well under starvation conditions; a great wasting of muscles can be tolerated; the reproductive system isn't important and so on; but if the heart stops pumping or the brain functioning, the whole system is gone." [1]

In the same way, in cold weather, a rationing system becomes operative in preserving the necessary temperature of the critical parts of the body. To begin with, there is a reduction in the blood flow to the surface of the skin, reducing radiation and conduction. This may proceed so far that the skin is frozen and dies, the subordinate unit sacrificed "for the protection of the larger unit.. [2] Such behaviour is an essential part of an organism's homeostatic mechanisms.

The same principle applies within a vernacular society. It is well known that in times of food scarcity, hunter-gatherer groups will make food available to the adults who are necessary for assuring the continuity of the society - the old, who are at least partly dispensable and the very young, who can be replaced, being occasionally sacrificed.

This has many implications. Thus because our planet's resources are finite (for the biosphere is a closed system from the point of view of materials though it is an open system from the point of view of energy) materials must be constantly recycled, the waste products of one process serving as the raw materials of other processes. Recycling materials is necessary too, in order to avoid their accumulation in any part of the system which would give rise to randomness or pollution.

Thus during photosynthesis, carbon is extracted from carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the oxygen is released. Oxygen is a waste product of this particular process but it is the essential raw material for another process, that of breathing by animals. Oxygen is thereby recycled from one living process to another, as are all the chemicals required to sustain the living systems that make up the ecosphere and to maintain its critical chemical composition.

Another essential cyclic process is the food chain, that should really be referred to as the 'food cycle': the primary producers (grass, algae and phytoplankton), which alone can harness the energy of the sun, are eaten by herbivores who, in turn, are preyed on by carnivores; their dead bodies together with other dead matter being eaten by scavengers; and what remains being broken down by micro-organisms into the nutrients required by the primary producers, so that the cycle can renew itself. All living things co-operate in assuring the success of this cycle, without which life would not be possible.

The need to recycle all materials was built into the cultural pattern of all traditional peoples. It was not seen as a scientific requirement but as a moral one. Interestingly enough, the principle is formulated in the sole surviving fragment of the writings of Anaximander:

"Things perish into those things out of which they have their birth, according to that which is ordained; for they give reparation to one another and pay the penalty of their injustice according to the disposition of time." [3]

Anaximander intimates here that the development of living things is an injustice - a violation of both fate (Moira) and righteousness (Dike) or morality. "Birth was seen as a crime", as Cornford puts it, and growth "an aggravated robbery". [4] It must follow that reparations had to be made to the natural world, and the living things that committed the offence must return to the dust from which they came. The same notion is also reflected in the following lines that are always recited by the disciples of that remarkable British social philosopher and guru, John Bennett, before settling down to a meal.

All life is One.
And everything that lives is Holy.
Plants, animals and men,
All must eat to live and nourish one another,
We bless the lives that have died to give us food:
Let us eat consciously,
Resolving by our Work
To pay the debt of our existence. [5]

Martin Von Hildebrand shows that a very similar notion is built into the cultural pattern of various Amazonian Indian tribes of Colombia. [6]

Modern man violates this fundamental law of natural economics in everything he does and in doing this, he is spelling his own doom. Human waste, instead of being carefully returned to the soil - the practice of endless generations of traditional farmers - is simply consigned to the nearest waterway; twenty billion tons of it every year, depriving the soil of its fertility, poisoning our waterways and correspondingly reducing their capacity to support fish life.

Furthermore agricultural produce, instead of being consumed locally by those who produce it, is exported as systematically as the timber from our woodlands - a one-way process stripping the land of its essential minerals and organic matter.

The American agronomist F. H. King noted in his classic Farmers of Forty Centuries (1904) how traditional farmers in Japan, Korea and China - countries which he visited at that time - meticulously returned all organic matter to the soil, as a result of which its fertility had been maintained for more than 4,000 years. In his words, he had travelled "from practices (in the USA) by which three generations had exhausted strong virgin fields... to others still fertile after thirty centuries of cropping". [7]

The economic activities of modern man are also interfering ever more dramatically with the most fundamental Gaian cycles - such as the water, carbon, sulphur and phosphorus cycles - thus disrupting the critical order of the ecosphere and reducing its capacity to support life. All this is unfortunately inevitable if economic development remains modern man's overriding goal. For economic development is a one-way process in which the biosphere is systematically transformed into the technosphere and technospheric waste - a process that cannot continue indefinitely.

If the economic system of vernacular society is subject to the same laws that govern the economics of other self-regulating, natural systems, then it cannot, at the same time, be governed by the laws that our modern economists have formulated on the basis of their experience of modern market economies, and that they assume to be of universal application.

As the economic historian Karl Polanyi showed so convincingly, in the vernacular world, homo economicus is conspicuous by his absence, and economic activities are largely conducted to satisfy social rather than commercial goals. [8] Polanyi also notes that, in behaving in this way, vernacular man was serving his own immediate interests, for vernacular society

"keeps all its members from starving unless it is itself borne down by catastrophe, in which case interests are again threatened collectively, not individually. The maintenance of social ties, on the other hand, is crucial. First, because by disregarding the accepted code of honour, or generosity, the individual cuts himself off from the community and becomes an outcast; second, because in the long run, all social obligations are reciprocal, and their fulfilment serves also the individual's give-and-take interests best." [9]

The embeddedness of the vernacular economy in social relationships is clear, if one considers that its units of economic activity are not corporations, but families and communities.

The family is a social, religious, ceremonial, but also an economic unit of behaviour. That is why, once institutions and corporations begin to usurp its economic functions, it tends to disintegrate. Economic functions fulfilled at the level of the family, the lineage group, the community, occur without any external inducement; a mother looks after her children; a father provides for his wife and also helps bring up the children. Both look after their aged parents and other relatives, as they must do if they are to assure the stability of the family and of the community, that, because it is but an association of families, cannot otherwise exist.

In such a society, a man does not act as a purely economic animal. As Sahlins writes, "He produces in his capacity as a social person, as husband and father, brother and lineage mate, member of a clan and village". He works as an integral member of these social groups, as a whole man. [10]

So alien is the modern concept of 'work' to those living within stable societies, that there is no word for it in their vocabularies. Jean Liedloff tells us that the Yequana Indians of Venezuela, with whom she lived for two and a half years, did have a word for work - tarabajo - which obviously came from the Spanish word trabajo, pointing to its relatively recent origin. [11] Mungo Park wrote, towards the end of the 18th century, that "paid service is unknown to the negro, indeed, the African language ignores the word". [12]

Primitive economic behaviour is, to quote Sahlins, "largely an aspect of kinship behaviour and is thereby organised by means completely different from capitalist production and market transactions" [13] and also, one might add, from socialist production and distribution via a state bureaucracy.

That in a vernacular society there is sufficient motivation to perform 'work' with enthusiasm and skill is attested by many anthropologists. Richard Thurnwald notes for instance, that among tribes "labour always tends beyond that which is strictly necessary" [14] and again that "work is never limited to the unavoidable minimum but exceeds the absolutely necessary amount, owing to a natural or acquired functional urge to activity". [15] Neither is vernacular man alienated from the product of his work, as Karl Marx saw the worker to be, in a capitalist economy. As Sahlins tells us,

"the tribesmen's relation to productive means and finished products often exceeds ownership as we understand it, moving beyond mundane possession to a mystic attachment. The land is a spiritual value, a beneficent source - the home of his ancestors, 'the plain of one's bones', Hawaiians say. And the things man makes and habitually uses are expressions of himself, perhaps so imbued with his genius, that their ultimate disposition can be only his own grave." [16]

It is hardly surprising that members of vernacular societies strongly resisted being transformed into mere units of wage-labour. Thus Agwu Akpala describes the difficulties encountered by the Enugu coal-mining industry in Nigeria in obtaining labour for its mines.

Labourers, it appears, could only be obtained by press-gangs. Every day 700 of them disappeared never to be seen again, unless they had the misfortune to be "grabbed" a second time. Eventually, the chiefs were employed to force their subjects into working for the mining company, and paid for each wage-labourer they provided. At first, those who refused to obey their chiefs were fined; eventually it became necessary to sentence them to varying periods of hard labour. [17]

This gives some idea of how difficult it is to persuade people leading a fulfilling vernacular life, to leave their families and communities for monotonous, soul-destroying work in some large enterprise. Ironically, such enterprises have often been justified on the grounds of relieving unemployment in tribal areas.

Homeotelic economic behaviour is well demonstrated by vernacular horticulture and agriculture, family and community activities to which people contribute largely in accordance with their status within the society - the produce being then distributed by individual farmers and gardeners according to their obligations to different members of the family and community.

The anthropologist Peter Huber, who has studied the agriculture of the Anggor people of New Guinea, goes so far as to argue that they do not just organise themselves in order to produce food; on the contrary, they "produce food in order to organise themselves". He sees "the problems of creating and maintaining sociality" as being "the central element" in their agricultural system. [18] Social organisation is mainly produced among the Anggor by the hunting and communal distribution of feral pigs, he writes:

"These pigs are not valued simply as meat, or even simply as pigs, but rather in terms of a complex system of association which links religion, land tenure, daily life and social classification. It is because of these associations that the Anggor can produce organization by killing and distributing feral pigs." [19]

This is not an isolated example: on the contrary, Huber tells us that the ethnographic record

"is replete with instances in which agricultural production is quite explicitly linked - directly and / or indirectly - with ritual events which organise communities on various levels."

Polanyi sees the distribution of food and other products in a vernacular society as governed by two basic principles: reciprocity and redistribution. When a hunter kills a game animal he will not sell it or even store it for a rainy day; instead, he will give a feast. In a sense this will provide him with all the advantages he could have derived from selling or storing it, because he knows that his hospitality will one day be reciprocated.

Giving a feast is like putting money in the bank or using one's friends as a deep freeze, but it enables one to get fresh food instead of frozen food in exchange and a party to boot. At the same time, the system creates a veritable network of mutual obligations which help knit together the members of his society, and increase its cohesion and viability.

Once people are provided with the equipment for storing perishable food, much of the apparent need for holding feasts is removed. In one of the Pacific islands administered by New Zealand, deep freezes have apparently been installed at the main population centres. As a result, reciprocity has ceased to be the favoured means of storing surplus food; there are far fewer feasts and so of course social cohesion has suffered.

Phyllis Kaberry describes what reciprocity involves among the Lunga of Australia:

"The husband must from time to time give kangaroo to his wife's parents and brothers; besides this, he always distributes a little among his blood relatives. Most of what the woman has obtained is consumed by herself, husband and children; if she has a little extra, she takes some to her mother, sister, mother's mother, father, in fact to any close relative. She on another occasion receives similar offerings from them, and also meat from her male relatives, which she shares with her husband and children. These gifts are not compulsory as are her husband's to her people. They are dictated by tribal sentiment and her own affection for these individuals; by a kinship system that finds concrete expression not only in attitudes and linguistic usage but also in exchange of the limited food resources and the material and ritual objects that are found in the community." [20]

Kaberry regards such behaviour as motivated by "enlightened self-interest". The donor may not get anything material in exchange, as elderly relatives do not go hunting and may not have enough strength to do much gathering but he benefits from their esteem and also from that of the community at large. He is thereby building up "social wealth" for which, in many cases, money in the bank may be but a poor substitute.

There is also a redistributive element in many apparently reciprocal transactions. In the Comores for instance, gifts of oxen and foodstuffs (djelileo) are made to a young man by members of his age grade on the occasion of his 'grand marriage' - the most important ceremony of his life - on the lavishness of which his subsequent status within the community will, in great measure, depend.

When a lender subsequently prepares his 'grand marriage' he will expect repayment of any loans he previously made. He will not, however, get goods of exactly the same value. Some previous borrowers may return less than they borrowed; most, however, will try desperately to return goods whose value will be as much as possible in excess of that of the goods that they themselves once borrowed.

The reason is obvious; their status will depend on their generosity. The more the value of the goods they return exceeds that of the goods they borrowed, the greater the prestige they thereby acquire and the more social wealth they build up.

This brings us to redistribution proper, as the term is normally used. In some societies, important men (big men, as they are referred to in Melanesia) give large feasts which other members of the society may never be in a position to reciprocate. It is social prestige that they obtain in exchange. The best known example of this sort of redistribution is the legendary potlatch of the Indians of the North West coast of North America, a practice that satisfies many social requirements. As Malinowski writes,

"the chief everywhere acts as a tribal banker, collecting food, storing it, protecting it and then using it for the benefit of the whole community." [21]

At the same time, it contributes, as does reciprocity, to the building up of social bonds. An economic system based on reciprocity and redistribution also prevents the accumulation of goods that might otherwise be translated into capital, leading to the development of large-scale economic enterprises that are no longer subject to effective social control, and also to the development of the market with the corresponding re-organisation of the biosphere to satisfy market requirements.

Economic behaviour in a stable society does not interfere with social and ecological priorities as it does in our modern industrial society; instead it serves to fulfil essential social and ecological functions. Malinowski came to this conclusion after his exhaustive study of the life of the Trobriand Islanders. He regarded their elaborate system of reciprocity and redistribution as

"one of the main instruments of social organisation, of the power of the chief, of the bonds of kinship and of relationships in law." [22]

That the vernacular economy was "embedded" - to use Polanyi's expression - in "social relationships" is critical. [23] What this means is that such an economy is under social control, hence designed to satisfy the society's basic requirements, and in particular the maintenance of its integrity and stability.

Once economic life ceases to be embedded in social relationships, and worse still, once social relationships actually become "embedded in the economic system" then the economy ceases to be under control, becoming random to the society and to the ecosphere, and disrupting their critical order.

References