Early industrial market capitalism depended on reciprocal bonds with workers and communities

Evidence

Although the market form and its bosses had many failings and produced many violent facts, its populations of newly modernizing individuals were valued as the necessary sources of customers and employees. It depended upon its communities in ways that would eventually lead to a range of institutionalized reciprocities. On the outside the drama of access to affordable goods and services was bound by democratic measures and methods of oversight that asserted and protected the rights and safety of workers and consumers. On the inside were durable employment systems, career ladders, and steady increases in wages and benefits. Indeed, considered from the vantage point of the last forty years, during which this market form was systematically deconstructed, its reciprocity with the social order, however vexed and imperfect, appears to have been one of its most-salient features. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 98

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Polanyi’s embeddedness and the broader theme of how markets are socially embedded, from the reader’s institutional economics reading. — connects to: Early MPS members feared capitalism eroded rural life and social bonds — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free…, 293; Division of labor arose to replace clan and kin bonds in mobile modern societies. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 579; Feudalism’s social composition determined capitalism’s form — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 198 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Feudalism’s social composition determined capitalism’s form #expands (0.80) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 198