Riqueza
Wealth is the means by which a society meets the needs of its members. Needs are socio-culturally unique to the history of the society in question, but can be summarized as needs for esteem, autonomy, and security.¹ This is so for non-capitalist economies as well as capitalist ones, though what qualifies as esteem (standing between one’s peers), autonomy (one’s ability to self-determine their personality), and security (from nature) is dependent on the culture in question. For instance, in hunter-gatherer societies, needs are limited by a nomadic lifestyle and a direct dependency on nature; as such, wealth is the goods and services which meet the needs of this lifestyle— the security of easily consumable foodstuffs, portable/collapsible housing, etc alongside the esteem associated with gift-giving or ritual.² Wealth in such a context is those goods which assure the esteem, autonomy, and security of the nomadic hunter/gatherer.
The history of economic thought, then, is a history of how societies define, accumulate, and distribute wealth or how societies define and meet needs. But it is only with capitalism that wealth takes on an additional definition; for in capitalism, wealth not only meets needs but expands them.³ Unlike non-capitalist societies, capitalism is unique in defining wealth as the means by which we satisfy what we need today and expand our horizons to the new needs of tomorrow.⁴ The reason why the wealth of capitalist societies “presents itself as an ‘immense accumulation of commodities’” for Marx is precisely because of this endless quality of need expansion which characterizes wealth under capitalism. In global capitalism,⁵ wealth gives us what we need and invents new goods and services for us to need, hence its boundless expansionism.
The expansionist character of wealth under capitalism means that capitalist economies are, by definition, economies under constant and ceaseless development.⁶ Development in this context refers to a society’s efforts to obtain more wealth and, by extension, to further meet and expand the needs of its members.⁷ Because such expansion is potentially without limit, capitalist development is totalizing in both an internal and external sense. Internal, in the sense that a capitalist society’s resources and political agenda increasingly commit themselves to wealth accumulation; external, in the sense that a capitalist society attempts to transform the economies of other societies in order to facilitate trade and production more conducive to creating wealth.⁸ That said, this totalizing of development has no satisfactory conclusion so long as new needs remain a possibility—there is always more to need and to innovate. Wealth should thus be understood, in the context of capitalist development, as having a tragic dimension in that it converts all of national and international society to prioritize its accumulation (at the expense of alternative social organizations) while offering no final satisfaction.⁹
¹ David Levine, Needs, Rights, and the Market (Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2023), https://doi.org/10.1515/9781685858742. This threefold understanding of needs is implicit elsewhere but most clearly presented here by Levine.
² Marshall Sahlins, Stone Age Economics, Routledge Classics (Routledge Classics, 2017), https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315184951. For Sahlins, “affluence” is the ease with which a society obtains the wealth with which to meet needs. On the meeting of needs via the wealth-sacrifice of gift-giving, see Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time, 2. Beacon paperback ed., [reprinted], with Joseph E. Stiglitz and Fred L. Block (Beacon Press, 2010).
³ Michael Schudson, Advertising, the Uneasy Persuasion: Its Dubious Impact on American Society, 12. print. (Basic Books, 1999). Schudson’s chapter “An Anthropology of Goods” describes this expansion of needs well. See also Sahlins’ “The Original Affluent Society” in the aforementioned Stone Age Economics. On a comparison on the expansion of needs in capitalism vs the meeting of needs in socialism, see the classic Katherine Verdery, What Was Socialism, and What Comes Next?, Princeton Studies in Culture/Power/History (Princeton University Press, 1996).
⁴ Adam Smith is perhaps the first to theorize contemporary economic life in terms of a ceaseless creation of new needs. See his famous discussion of the “ambition” of modern economic subjects in Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, 10. print, ed. David D. Raphael, The Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith / Adam Smith 1 (Liberty Fund, 2007).
⁵ Karl Marx, Capital: Volume I, with Tom Griffith and Mark G. Spencer, Classics of World Literature (Wordsworth Editions Ltd, 2013).
⁶ The World-Systems analysis approach defines capitalism precisely as a global system of “endless accumulation”. See Immanuel Wallerstein, World-Systems Analysis: An Introduction (Duke University Press, 2004), https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822399018.
⁷ Kapoor uses psychoanalysis to distinguish between capitalism’s expansion of our desires (needs) as consumers and capitalism’s drive for endless accumulation as a logical extension of expanding desire. Ilan Kapoor, Confronting Desire: Psychoanalysis and International Development (Cornell University Press, 2020).
⁸ Many terms have been used to explain both the internal and external totalizations of wealth generation. The subsumption of a society’s domestic political life to wealth creation has often been dubbed “neoliberalism”; the subsumption of alternative societies to a commitment to accumulation is what Lenin would call imperialism. Commitments to development of wealth need not be forceful, coercive, or made at the expense of public life—though under global capitalism this has been the case. On neoliberalism and its totalizing effects on a society’s sociopolitical life, see Lester K. Spence, Knocking the Hustle: Against the Neoliberal Turn in Black Politics, Revised edition (Project Muse, 2020). On imperialism as a means to capitalist accumulation see VI Lenin, Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism, trans. Alan Woods (1934; Martino Fine Books, 2011).
⁹ Inayatullah and Blaney refer to wealth as a “wound” in the sense that we feel we cannot live without the need satisfaction wealth provides, while at the same time feeling that society’s commitment to wealth has eliminated, and continues to eliminate, alternative lifestyles to capitalist modernity. David L. Blaney and Naeem Inayatullah, Savage Economics: Wealth, Poverty, and the Temporal Walls of Capitalism, RIPE Series in Global Political Economy (Routledge, 2010), https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203864951.
PT
A riqueza é o meio pelo qual uma sociedade atende às necessidades de seus membros. As necessidades são socioculturalmente específicas à história da sociedade em questão, mas podem ser resumidas como necessidades de estima, autonomia e segurança. Isso vale tanto para economias não capitalistas quanto para economias capitalistas, ainda que o que qualifica como estima (posição entre pares), autonomia (capacidade de autodeterminar a própria personalidade) e segurança (frente à natureza) dependa da cultura em questão. Nas sociedades de caçadores-coletores, por exemplo, as necessidades são limitadas por um estilo de vida nômade e por uma dependência direta da natureza; assim, a riqueza corresponde aos bens e serviços que atendem às necessidades desse modo de vida — a segurança de alimentos facilmente consumíveis, moradias portáteis/desmontáveis etc., além da estima associada à doação de presentes ou a rituais. A riqueza, nesse contexto, é constituída pelos bens que asseguram a estima, a autonomia e a segurança do caçador-coletor nômade.
A história do pensamento econômico é, portanto, uma história de como as sociedades definem, acumulam e distribuem riqueza, ou de como as sociedades definem e atendem às necessidades. Contudo, é apenas com o capitalismo que a riqueza adquire uma definição adicional; pois, no capitalismo, a riqueza não apenas atende às necessidades, mas as expande. Diferentemente das sociedades não capitalistas, o capitalismo é singular ao definir a riqueza como o meio pelo qual satisfazemos aquilo de que precisamos hoje e, ao mesmo tempo, ampliamos nossos horizontes rumo às novas necessidades de amanhã. A razão pela qual a riqueza das sociedades capitalistas “se apresenta como uma ‘imensa acumulação de mercadorias’”, para Marx, decorre precisamente dessa qualidade infindável de expansão das necessidades que caracteriza a riqueza sob o capitalismo. No capitalismo global, a riqueza nos dá aquilo de que precisamos e, ao mesmo tempo, inventa novos bens e serviços para que passemos a precisar deles, daí seu expansionismo sem limites.
O caráter expansionista da riqueza sob o capitalismo significa que as economias capitalistas são, por definição, economias em desenvolvimento constante e ininterrupto. O desenvolvimento, nesse contexto, refere-se aos esforços de uma sociedade para obter mais riqueza e, por extensão, para atender e expandir ainda mais as necessidades de seus membros. Como essa expansão é potencialmente ilimitada, o desenvolvimento capitalista é totalizante tanto em um sentido interno quanto externo. Interno, no sentido de que os recursos e a agenda política de uma sociedade capitalista se comprometem cada vez mais com a acumulação de riqueza; externo, no sentido de que uma sociedade capitalista tenta transformar as economias de outras sociedades a fim de facilitar o comércio e a produção mais propícios à criação de riqueza. Dito isso, essa totalização do desenvolvimento não encontra uma conclusão satisfatória enquanto novas necessidades permanecerem uma possibilidade — sempre há mais a se necessitar e a se inovar. A riqueza deve, assim, ser compreendida, no contexto do desenvolvimento capitalista, como portadora de uma dimensão trágica, na medida em que converte toda a sociedade nacional e internacional a priorizar sua acumulação (em detrimento de organizações sociais alternativas), sem, no entanto, oferecer qualquer satisfação final.
Referências:
Levine, David. Needs, Rights, and the Market. Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781685858742.
Marx, Karl. Capital: Volume I. With Tom Griffith and Mark G. Spencer. Classics of World Literature. Wordsworth Editions Ltd, 2013.
Polanyi, Karl. The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time. 2. Beacon paperback ed., [Reprinted]. With Joseph E. Stiglitz and Fred L. Block. Beacon Press, 2010.
Sahlins, Marshall. Stone Age Economics. Routledge Classics. Routledge Classics, 2017.
Schudson, Michael. Advertising, the Uneasy Persuasion: Its Dubious Impact on American Society. 12. print. Basic Books, 1999.
Smith, Adam. The Theory of Moral Sentiments. 10. print. Edited by David D. Raphael. The Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith / Adam Smith 1. Liberty Fund, 2007.
Spence, Lester K. Knocking the Hustle: Against the Neoliberal Turn in Black Politics. Revised edition. Project Muse, 2020.
Verdery, Katherine. What Was Socialism, and What Comes Next? Princeton Studies in Culture/Power/History. Princeton University Press, 1996.
Wallerstein, Immanuel. World-Systems Analysis: An Introduction. Duke University Press, 2004. https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822399018.
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