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UCSC POLI 272 - Understanding Economics and Political Economy

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Chapter 2:Flies in the OintmentUnderstanding Economics and Political Economy--Power, Authority and Regulationin Production and Reproduction.IntroductionAlmost everyone has read Lord of the Flies. William Golding’s well-known 1953 fable of a group of English public schoolboys stranded on an island in the South Pacific during a global nuclear war is required reading for most American high school students, many ofwho do not seem very enamored with either the book or its “lessons.” The standard interpretation offered by English teachers has something to do with the absence of authority, the evil in men’s souls, and the descent into bloodshed and war when adults arenot present. Perhaps some instructors acknowledge the irony of the boys’ “rescue” by theRoyal Navy who, just recently, was engaged in a similar “warre of all against all,” only with atomic bombs instead of fire. For the most part, however, this is where the story ends.Except that it doesn’t. That Golding applied Thomas Hobbes’s notion of the “state of nature” to his South Pacific gedankenexperiment is hardly a surprise; that there is more to Lord of the Flies than Leviathan is. For, what Golding did, intentionally or not, is to interrogate the foundations of English society and, especially, its political economy. No one would call Golding a political theorist, yet there is a great deal of social theory to be found in the novel. No one would call Thomas Hobbes a political economist, yet Leviathan ought to be seen as a work of and about political economy. In both cases, we can glean a considerable amount of insight into the basics of both neoclassical economics and critical political economy from the two.2-1In this chapter, I establish a conversation of sorts between Lord of the Flies and Leviathan as a means of interrogating neoclassical economics and critical political economy. I use Golding’s story of the “origins of society” to illustrate how, on the one hand, fairly straightforward notions of supply and demand can be found even under relatively primitive conditions, those posited by Hobbes prior to society and state. At the same time, however, I also use the same stories to show how political economy, in the form of production and reproduction, are already present even before a notional society isestablished. Indeed, that both Hobbes and Golding were commenting on English society only reinforces this often-ignored point.To complicate matters, I also draw on a third work in this chapter, a non-fiction book published in 1954, only a year after Golding’s, that addresses some of the very sameissues and concerns. Kenneth N. Waltz’s Man, the State and War, a 20th century classic of international relations, is rarely examined as either a work of economics or political economy. Waltz’s primary concern is to explain why wars happen but, in doing so, he falls into some of the foundational fallacies that economists, in particular, hold about society. This foreshadowing of what later emerged full-blown as “neorealism,” in his Theory of International Politics (1979) deals with the formation, or lack thereof, of “international society” and, although Waltz tends to abjure Hobbes’s “state of nature,” he is impressed by the extreme individualism of the state under conditions of international “anarchy.” Synopsis2-2Lord of the Flies takes place on a small deserted island somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. In a recapitulation of the evacuation of British children from London during World War Two, a planeload of public schools boys—that is, private schools in the English rubric—is attacked and crashes. Some number of boys survive—we know that some do not, but never how many—and we first glimpse them when two encounter each other near the edge of the jungle. One of them—Ralph emerges onto the beach and immediately strips off his clothing—the only sign of “civilization”—and plunges into the water. The other—whose real name we never learn but who wants dearly not to be called“Piggy”—carefully takes off his shoes and wades in the water, warning that he can’t swim and that his auntie worries about his “asthmar.” This is truly Hobbes’s state of nature: the boys “spring like mushrooms” from the forest, shed the trappings of society, and are reborn from the ocean into a new world waiting to be built. Or is it? Hobbes admitted that a true “state of nature” never existed—it was purely a thought experiment—but he had to find some way to explain society’s existence. We can deduce from this opening scene that Golding had certainly absorbed the gross features of Hobbes’s reasoning, although we cannot tell what more he might have gained from it. As they are walking along the beach, Ralph and Piggy find a conch shell in the water. Here is the instrument through which society will be created. Piggy tells Ralph how to blow into the shell—certainly something asocial beings would not have known—and the summons brings other boys out of the forest onto the beach, where they wait expectantly for something to happen. In what follows, it is Piggy’s counsel that lays the foundation for the new society of boys (men): the conch shell is the skeptron, the symbol of authority. The right to speak in the public sphere rests on momentary possession of the2-3skeptron. Piggy takes a census to determine who will participate in the creation of the new social contract. And Ralph, it seems, as finder of the conch and an idealized young man, is to be the new sovereign, albeit the leader of a democratic society with little hierarchy (we can imagine that working-class Piggy plays a role in this).It is at that moment that the worm crawls out of the apple—or, perhaps, the snake shows up in Eden. Golding writes: Within the diamond has of the beach something dark was fumbling along. Ralph saw it first, and watched till the intentness of his gaze drew all eyes that way. Then the creature stepped from mirage onto clear sand, and they saw that the darkness was not all shadow but mostly clothing [p. 19]A column of boys in uniform march up the beach. Unlike the first group, they are alreadyorganized into a society; they do not emerge from the jungle individually. And, immediately upon their arrival, Jack Merridew, the “leader” of the group—a chorus from a single school—asks “Where’s the man with the trumpet?” This is, perhaps, too


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