How Did We Get a Market Society? Essay

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Market Society Material and Ideological Conditions

A great transformation occurred at the end of the Medieval Age, when a resurgence of classical humanism and an age of Enlightenment led the way to an industrial revolution and a restructuring of European affairs. The Old World religion gave way to a Protestant ethos which shaped the philosophies of the centuries that followed and the rise of democratic societies and the "middle class" altered the way nations conducted business. This paper will discuss the material and ideological conditions that supported this "great transformation" (Polanyi), the characterizations of the market society, the significance of the transformation, and the connection between the "Protestant work ethic" and the "spirit of capitalism" as defined by Max Weber (Bendix).

The transition from medieval to market society came about by a shifting of societal values. Trade between East and West increased as technology and the means of travel increased. The authority granted to the Roman Pontiff began to be assumed by regional rulers, like Henry VIII who declared himself head of the Church in England. Taxations and tithes were affected as a result and the new emphasis on wealth and luxury items in Europe by the 16th century helped to create material and ideological conditions necessary for the shift to a market society. Prior to the emergence of the capitalist market society, traditional economies flourished in which "leisurely work habits" were commonly preferred to long hours and more pay (Bendix, p. 52).

The religious wars that raged in the 16th century, however, allowed for a more urban society to emerge, as regional rulers turned to the mercenary and began supplying the means of soldiering whereas before in earlier societies, as Weber notes, soldiers were expected to bring and maintain their own materials. A more centralized society in which "kinship" (Bendix, p. 52) was less reliable than bureaucratized methods (due to the fracturing of Europe and the creation of various factions of thought and belief) emerged to take the place of the medieval society which had a more defined "place" for each individual and each individual class was expected to look after itself.

What characterizes market society is the overall focus of all aspects of life on the exchange of goods, the establishment of wealth, material gain, and market economics. Financial industries emerge and centralization is key in bringing about central banks. The influence of central banking can be seen in every market society. Previous to the rise of the market society, monarchs had more control over a nation's money supply, but with wars and mounting debts, private financiers gained leverage over rulers to influence in both political and economic ways the direction of said nations. As the new focus of the New World was money-oriented as well as Protestant in ideology (which was more centralized and impersonal than the Old World ideology), the influence of private financiers and their ability to erect central banks in the major nations helped to bring the market society into being. This transformation is significant because it helps to explain how society changed so radically from the medieval age to the modern age. The division of labor that resulted from centralization, industrialization, and Protestant ideology (Weber's bureaucratic system based on Calvinist doctrine, for example, and the "Protestant aptitude for commerce" (Bendix, p. 55)), coupled with the movement of people into urban areas from rural areas, took the means of providing for oneself and one's family away from one and made him more dependent on others within the market society. No longer could one tend to one's own garden or farm or mill in a local village because many people had moved to cities. Buying provisions replaced growing or making them for oneself. The era of the skilled laborer gave place to the micro-skilled laborer.

Because of the inter-dependency of individuals within a market society, the "struggle for survival" is never fully felt (Heilbroner, p. 2) in a market society, but this may also be seen as a false sense of security, as total war among the nations can bring this struggle back in a flash, as people certainly experienced in Europe in WW1 and WW2.

Nonetheless, in the workplace the market society produced a different kind of struggle -- not a struggle for survival but a class struggle. As mass-production became pivotal to the market society, skilled labor gave place to "routinized, regimented, and subordinate modes of work activity" (Rinehart, p. 46). Kinship of the Old World variety did not dissolve entirely but was supplanted by unions, which employers sought to abolish as the solidarity of the unions made it difficult for the movers and shakers of the market society to reorganize the labor force (Rinehart, p. 46).

Thus, as Weber's bureaucracy began to flourish in the Industrial Age, union strikes for workers' rights were common, and so was strike breaking, which was often brutal and violent.

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But breaking strikes was not the only way to break unions: employers also imported cheaper skilled labor, flooded the market place, and "drove down the price of labor" (Rinehart, p. 47). This made workers more dependent on big employers, which helped cement the power of the big corporations. Because competition was so stiff, society had to reorganize just to survive (at least that is how it went for the common worker).

It was essentially, a reorganization of power. Power was consolidated by new vassals, new overlords -- big businessmen and bankers: the Rockefellers, the Rothschilds, the Carnegies, the DuPonts, and many others. All had the same connections and were part of the same movement: the Protestant ethos which guided them placed less emphasis on leisure and comfort and more emphasis on industry and the maximization of profits. The ethos was not only Protestant, it was also Jewish-Talmudic, as the rise of the Age of the Rothschilds helped to shift populaces into the new era of financial industry.

The worldview of people in market society is characterized by these two sects, the Protestants and the Jews: Catholics, as Weber noted, did not compensate for their oppression by engaging in economic activity -- but the various Protestant and Jewish sects did. The Quakers were known as much for their wealth as they were "for their piety" (Bendix, p. 56) and the economic industry of the Baptists, non-conformists, Jews, and Huguenots was something unseen among Catholics who faced discrimination, most likely because the Catholic worldview was an Old World religion one: it identified suffering as part of the Christian life and "compensating" for losses through economic gains was not part of their ideology. However, with the rise of Protestantism, financing, centralization, and industry, the worldview of market society became less Old World Christian and more New World Protestant. Favor and "election" were marked by economic success and determination. Poverty could be viewed as an effect of sin or disfavor with God.

The Protestant work ethic and the spirit of capitalism and thus viewed in the same light -- as stemming from the displacement of ideals from the Old World religion which viewed suffering and poverty in positive spiritual terms rather than in the negative spiritual terms that the New World ideology tended to hold. The spirit of capitalism put the Protestant and Jewish ideologies at the forefront of a market society system that fed off the need to assert oneself via industry or economic activity, in order to prove one's value or resourcefulness. It was also to satisfy a demand for wealth that had begun to be more popular at the end of the medieval age when trade had brought an influx of luxury items from the East to Europe.

The shift to market society is a fundamental transformation because it cannot have happened without the foundational replacement of beliefs and material conditions that occurred as a result of the religious wars at the end of the Medieval Age and the influx of luxury goods and items (and the resultant rise of the middle class and democratic ideals). These historical events were fundamental in the overall transformation of nations to a more centralized, bureaucratic, regimented, materialistic society where Old World virtues such as the acceptance of suffering in relation to salvation and grace were displaced by ideas of material accumulation as signs of favor with God and therefore salvation. The more one showed that one was capable of being industrious the more one showed that one stood right with the Lord. This idea set the stage, along with the urbanization of populaces and the displacement of families from the land (where they had previously toiled to provide for themselves that which, in a market society, that had to purchase), helped lay the foundation for the emergence of the market society. Thus, the fundamental transformation that occurred was one of ideological importance (the shift in focus from God-centered religion to man-centered religion via Protestantism and humanism) and material importance (the divorcement of laborers from effective kinships and relationships with the land as well as from the ability to exercise their crafts….....

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