Beyond the Money Motive

August 16th, 2008 Posted in Money

This for that. An exchange using the universal sign for desire as this. Money given and either a material thing (product) or service received. Theoretically any project can be pushed, the necessary workers and resources mobilized, by the tendering of money. Enough money offered and even the absolute monarch-dictator will get off his ass and start hustling.

Archimedes could move the world with a fulcrum and a lever, the rest of us use rectangles of printed paper and base coins and electronic markers instead. Want a trip to the moon on gossamer wings?–simply shovel out the cold cash.

A moment’s reflection by the sociologist using common sense and we find a few holes in the proposition. (Admittedly the straw man is ours, but our excuse is the need for traction to start.) Let’s face it, money aint everything. There are lots of projects in process outside the banker’s books.

Barter. The price of things accelerating beyond reason in hyper-inflation and money is replaced by the desired thing itself. This for that. Both sides of the exchange a subjectively or conventionally established equivalence of product or service.

The classic chase scene in the movies: the characters, hungry for the pile of printed paper (the boodle), knock down a fruit and vegetable stand in their eagerness to get there first. But in the extreme situation the underlying biological reality suggests the reverse scenario: ignore the moola, preserve the victuals.

Whole sectors of social action are outside the money circle. The interior of the nuclear family for example. Lawyers and courts might attempt a money measure but the rest of us know better. (This is an old sociological distinction–commerce versus community, the universal-abstract versus the particular-concrete.) Politicians always compare the family budget with the state budget and fail to note the free and open sharing inside the one that is entirely alien to the inside of the other. This sentimental space can extend outward to circles of kin, to collectives, to communes–all the social spaces were the giving is unmeasured and unremarked.

“My house is your house,” says the host to the visitor, extending symbolically this interior sharing to the guest. It is called hospitality. Ultimately, I think, there is the shared insight into and appreciation of our limited mortal life. This is the shared fragility of us all, including the currently strongest. The impossible trade, even though it is normal and accepted, is the exchange of life-time for wages. Money may be the convention but there is an underlying reality, another, perhaps even more convincing, explanation.

But there is a harsher non-money sector based on power (the relative ability of one to move and mobilize the other by the threat of force–sometimes called extortion, sometimes called the law.) The military draft is a prime example. The sovereign calls, no money is tendered, the relevant classes of people assemble for the necessary work–military action, road building, crew for a ship, a parade. Imprisonment is similar except more onerous and demeaning–locked up, hard labor. Schooling, especially where it is legislated and involves the universal mobilization of children, has the same induced quality, sometimes mitigated as a value received. How about jury duty? Theft? (I appreciate that the money way infiltrates these spaces, but the amounts of payments are trivial. We are talking walking around, pocket money.)

The way of altruism–the volunteer gives as a moral duty, an act based on an ideological or theological belief. Sometimes an act of pure joy as in a group jointly pushing a stalled car. Extending a hand, pitching in, picking up, standing together and so on. We are mobilized by a claim upon a sacred or secular belief that we hold valid and dear.

The way of esteem. Who we are, our valued self based on the qualities of our being, is publicly recognized and that is the hook. It can be the result of inheritance (our association with another who is or was a luminous personage) or by what we have achieved ourselves. We think of it as honor made apparent by accolade, applause. We are called out from the crowd. Named. We are mobilized by our desire for this moment of imitation of immortality that we can give each other. The sovereign promises and delivers this moment with medals, appointments, club memberships, honorific titles and similar symbolics.

There is also the dark side where we lose or fail to achieve the desired public qualities. We are marked with dishonor, degradation, demotion. We are identified as coward, slacker, shirker. We are in a state of shame and guilt. We suffer loss of face. Our peers disown us, expel us, refuse us sociability. Esteem and its opposite are governing motives in some way far sterner and impelling than cash.

The infantry squad moves forward on acceptance of authority, on a sense of duty, on loyalty to the group, and on a commitment to a sense of own honor. In the hot moment money hardly registers.

Culture in operation is a form of constant mobilization. We do the right thing because it is appropriate and proper. Established social organization and order also keep us on the straight and narrow as in our everyday behavior we act (are mobilized). This is the base line. Where ordinary ways are forgotten we find chaos, the world up-side-down.

A. Carr-Saunder and P.A. Wilson, eminent British scholars working early in the last century, wrote a book titled “The Professions” (1933) that seems tangentially apropos here. A profession, I paraphrase from dim memory, is an occupation involving a skill based on a body of knowledge. The giving of this service is governed by a moral sanction.

The authority of the professional turns on the presumption of adequate skill and a moral commitment to loyal service. The client faces an extreme mortal threat. He accepts the service on faith. His life is in the other’s hands.

The religious minister (in some societies called the magician) is the template professional. He mediates with the ineffable for the client on matters that involve life and death (both material and spiritual). The plea for extra-human intervention is a final request. There is no other appeal. The ritual is a dangerous (problematic) action for which the client has neither the skill nor the moral connection to enact directly for himself. Some idea of the drama involved is found in descriptions (some fictional) of the rituals used to expel evil possession. Two works I am familiar with and can recommend (you do not have to believe to appreciate the narratives): Malachi Martin “Hostage to the Devil” (1976) and Paddy Chayefsky “The Tenth Man” (1960), a stage play.

The two derivative and most admired professions historically that descend from the ritual leader: medicine and law. Other occupations try to become professions by claiming a moral purpose but with less success.

The minister intercedes with the ineffable for one’s soul. The medical doctor acts to save the biologically and psychologically vulnerable. The lawyer acts in defense of the life and liberty of a client who is accused and stands in immediate danger before the judgment of the sovereign and the people.

In these circumstances the buying of the service would hardly seem appropriate. The ineffable and the universal mystery are not for sale. The professional, if successful, preserves one’s life and spirit. The payment in a symbolic sense (that emotionally is often quite real) can only be possession of the thing saved. At sea the salvager claims the abandoned hulk he retrieves. It is similar to the contract with the devil where the client secures material and spiritual success now (the cure) in exchange for the later delivery of himself, body and soul. The good magician doesn’t demand this totality but settles for whatever the client can afford.

The point is that you really can’t pay the professional off with money. The religious professionals among certain Buddhist sects have their dinner bowls filled daily by communicants. We owe our professionals a living. This is different than commercial transactions which are limited and transitory and shallow in terms of meaning in the struggle for life and spirit. (I am not arguing for the existence of soul and spirit, only using the terms that explain the relationship of ritual leader/professional and communicant/client.)

The conflation of the professional with the commercial in the modern bourgeoisie-workers era leads to confusion over which standard of value applies. Do we have a moral compact or a commercial contract?

As I write this I have money in my pocket. My next meal and my continued sheltering depend on my having money. The medium I am using here is only available through payments of money. Can I attempt even this modest toe-in-the-water sociology of money with clear-eyed objectivity? Can you?