Analysis of Arnason's (2001) Capitalism in Context

The recognition that discourse on capitalism is tantamount to the discourse on modernity based on determinist and reductivist premises has to lead to elaboration of systemic relations between economy, culture, and action that in historical perspective has to incorporate the contribitions of Weber, Sombart, Castoriadis, Boltanski, Chiapello, and Braudel for recontruction of the structure of modernity (Arnason 2001: 99). Rapid development of industrial capitalism in the last two centuries has been comparably described by Weber as the most decisive influence on modernity as it took its distinctively disruptive and transformative form, by Marx as the dynamic force behind the development of modernity, and by Durkheim as the process of division of labor unprecedentedly having both positive and negative social effects (Arnason 2001: 99-100). Global deregulation (Lash and Urry 1987), capitalist development (Marx 1848), and world system (Wallerstein 1995) provide highly visible examples of conflation of capitalism with modernity ascribing to the economic system increasingly pervasive social influence with the contradictions of the capitalist logic dictating the course of events around the world increasing thereby the reach of modernization (Arnason 2001: 100).

When identified with modernity (Baechler 1995), capitalism leaves to democracy the political role of institutionalization of utilitarian individualism finding its adequate reflection in the capitalist economic system that by virtue of its inherent efficiency rules out a post-capitalist transition while its development from the late medieval Europe via the modern transformation of the Western Europe towards its global expansion by the end of the twentieth century remains driven by the economic dynamics (Arnason 2001: 100-101). As an economic system, capitalism does not overlap the social system but constitutes only one among other systems that provide prolitical, societal, and association criteria for action also determined by cultural, strategic, and personality systems (Munch 1982: 94) so that the institutionalization of modernity does not change the structure of the action system but provides a uniquely different macro environment for individual and collective action (Baechler 1995). The approaches to modernity as a primarily economic phenomenon cannot but have affinity with Marx's theory of capitalism that providing common conceptual premises drew faultlines for political divisions and struggles (Arnason 2001: 102).

The specification of capitalism in terms of the structure of modernity has to account for the historical dynamics of the disruptions that context-insensitive analyses of capitalist development do not do justice to while avoiding excessive emphasis on the functional integration, adaptive upgrading, and cybernetic control of the modernization theory of Parsons, on the rational integration of contradictions between modernity and capitalism of the critical theory of Habermas, and on the reduction of modernity and capitalism to each other of the theories of modernization (Arnason 2001: 102). The concept of capitalism in classical and post-classical theory does not allow definitional reduction of it as a historical process to basic mechanisms of markets and property rights (Albert 1993) since as a historical phenomenon the understanding of which is open to debate and interpretation it has to be put into the context of contrasting approaches to its evolving theorization (Baechler and Wallerstein 1997). In parallel to the thesis of systemic interpenetration (Munch 1982: 94), Baechler's perspective constructs capitalism as an interrelationship among the systems of property rights, markets, utilitarian actions, and cultures that are oriented at maximization of economic growth (Baechler and Wallerstein 1997: 14).

By contrast, Wallerstein only needs "the permanent accumulation of capital" (Arnason 2001: 103) for his definition of capitalism that upon gaining unprecedented autonomy as an economic system has imposed its normative culture on all other systems constitutive of society and action (Baechler and Wallerstein 1997: 15) that within the relations of interpenetration can nevertheless change strategies of collective action in accordance with their own systemic logic as did the political systems of the former communist states. Even though particular social and action systems play a key role in the constitution of capitalism they do not do that alone but in concert with other systems that interpenetrate with each other via dynamic structure of their relationships rather than deterministically so that capital accumulation, technological progress, and economic growth are subject to "unpredictable patterns of change" (Arnason 2001: 104) while being part of capitalism as subsumption of human activity in the form of abstract wealth according to Marx ([1864] 1969). For the sociological analysis of capitalism to go beyond the narrow focus on capital accumulation or economic growth a more historical attention to the relations between economy and culture is needed since neither institutionalization of democracy (Baechler 1995) nor power struggles among ruling classes (Wallerstein 1995) sufficiently explain the rapidity or stages of the capitalist development (Arnason 2001: 104-105).

Likewise, the dynamics of interrelationships among the systems constitutive of modernity demands for its adequate understanding not their reduction to institutions but their definition as constellations of forces allowing for variation and change so that capitalism cannot be stablized within a single institutional configuration but has to be seen as a recursive process involving in its reproduction the structure of modernity as a whole that is as contingent, variable, and self-reflexive as individual and collective actors themselves (Arnason 2001: 105). The justification of capitalism by its economic rationality, as Castoriadis (1999) contends, appears more properly to belong to the structure of modernity organizing the action system (Munch 1982: 94) since in the process of differentiation and interpenetration the economic system maintains a complex and dynamic relationship with systems where discourse on, institutionalization of, and action governed by rationality become related to capitalist accumulation as elaborations on the neoclassical economic theory attest to (Arnason 2001: 106; Williamson 1985). Only the reformulation of capitalist accumulation as a process belonging to the structure of modernity where the economic system is embedded (Arnason 2001: 106-107) allows to avoid the extreme positions stating that either there is only a capitalist optimum point of economic equilibrium possible between rationality and development (Baechler 1995, 1: 91; 1995, 2: 160-166) or there is no equilibrium to achive because capitalism stands for unequal relations of social power mediated by struggles, institutions, and culture (Wallerstein 1995: 84).

From its earliest formulations, the concept of the spirit of capitalism corresponds to the defining configuration of the interpenetration between economy and culture that sets modernity apart from other historical macro environments for individual and collective action so that "orientation, justification and motivation" (Arnason 2001: 107) reinforce the capitalist economic growth within the structure of contraditions of modernity (Boltanski and Chiapello 1999: 41) as strategies, goals, and conditions of action become increasingly mediated by systems external to, autonomous from, and integrated with their participants (Arnason 2001: 108). The necessity of interpenetration between economy and culture finds its earliest reflection in the absolute, objective, and subjective determinants of action defined by Hegel as spirits that within the sociological context (Hintze 1987: 328) respectively consist in religious, philosophical, secular, and scientific discourses, in economic, social, and cultural institutions, and in motivations, values, and orientations (Arnason 2001: 108). Weber's thesis on the spirit of capitalism restrictively represents the interpenetration between economy and culture as an underdefined interconnection between the protestant ethic and traditional values while excluding their institutional context that only receives its credit for the captialist development as modern bureaucracy (Arnason 2001: 108-109) even though his later analyses of capitalism concentrate on historical and institutional preconditions of economic systems' differentiation (Collins 1986; Swedberg 1998) remaining to be developed into economic sociology of capitalism (Simmel [1900] 1978).

Centering on the psychological analysis of the interpenetration between economy and culture, Sombart's (1987) decription of entrepreneurial individuals that subject to enterprise-oriented goals drive economic growth to historically unprecedented social centrality combines utilitarian calculation with limitlessness of economic development lacking in normative culture to steer its direction (Arnason 2001: 109-110). Boltanski and Chiapello (1999) attempt to develop Weber's thesis within more abstract framework of economic institutions and cultural logic that in conjunction justify and legitimize the economic accumulation exhibiting regional and historical variation hardly accounted for by the concept of spirit of capitalism that as system of culture historically undergoing bourgeois, managerial, and network development has ambiguous relation to capitalism (Arnason 2001: 110). Boltanski and Chiapello extrapolate and abstract the political justification of capitalism from shared orders of worth (Boltanski and Thevenot 1999) that as structural relations among economy, politics, and culture played in early modern Europe (Hirschman 1977) the role of argumentation in favor of capitalism that under contemporary conditions corresponds to a project-oriented principle of legitimization representing a rupture with civic, market, or industrial regimes of justification (Arnason 2001: 110).

Since the spirit of capitalism implies causal relations between economy and culture, the critique of capitalism has accompanied the dynamics of economic development of modernity as its active participant via entrepreneurial strategies of collective actors, institutionalized contestation of its organizational foundations, and structural integration into its self-reflexive reproduction. In the dynamics of the spirit of capitalism (Boltanski and Chiapello 1999: 82) aesthetic and social critique have differential relation to the development of capitalism since aethetic criticism stressing disenchantment, inauthenticity, and oppression is concerned with impact of capitalist society on individuals while social criticism opposing misery, inequality, opportunism, and egoism is decrying the collective effects of capitalism (Arnason 2001: 111). Exhibiting close affinity to the anthropological critique of capitalism as ideology (Dumont 1979, 1983, 1991), Boltanski and Chiapello (1999) have primarily contributed to the ethnographic study of how contemporary capitalism integrated aesthetic critique, post-Fordism, and organizational innovation into its structure rather than to the theoretical discussion on variability of capitalist development, systemic relations between economy and culture, or institutional framework of economic analysis (Arnason 2001: 111-112).

While the interpenetration between economy and culture does not cease to be debated as the spirit of capitalism (Boltanski and Chiapello 1999), as the capitalist modernity (Marx 1848), and as social and historical contingency of economic development (Weber 1922), the contradictions of the structure of modernity (Castoriadis 1993; Munch 1992) go beyond Marx's theory of capitalism that depends on the growing role of rationality of its institutions in the theorization of which Marx's and Weber's contributions have to be systemically integrated to account for the institutions-driven economic, social, and cultural development encompassing both autonomy and interdependence as its goals (Arnason 2001: 112-113; Munch 1981). Since in the structure of modernity the economic system does not occupy a central position (Munch 1992: 94), the location of conflict, struggle, and critique in the theoretical discussion of modernity (Castoriadis 1999) is likewise determined by systematic analysis of the historical process of interpenetration of the economic system with other social and action systems that put rationality, autonomy, and variability of capitalism into reciprocal relation to the transformations in the structure of modernity (Arnason 2001: 113).

The defining impact of rationality on the modern interpenetration of economy and culture results from the historical process long preceding the chronology of modernity so that its structure has had variant realizations in much earlier historical periods as collective and individual action oriented at mastery and conquest became translated within the structure of modernity into domination of nature, rationalization of society, and maximization of economic growth harnessing other social systems to the imperatives of economic accumulation (Arnason 2001: 113-114). The interpenetration of economy and culture involves positive feedback between the social and the action systems as the political, societal, and cultural systems develop within the interdependent structure of modernity that via technological innovation, scientific knowledge, and capital investment puts rationality into historical context of economic accumulation that depends on mobilizing myths (Castoriadis 1999; Deutschmann 1997, 2001) as much as on the expanding rationalization (Arnason 2001: 114). The emergence of modernity is coterminous with the institutionalization of territorial states whose competing fiscal, administrative, and military development has connected capitalism with myths of absolutism (Henshall 1992), virtual state (Rosencrance 1999), and nation (Castoriadis 1999) whereby economic accumulation is joined with cultural frames as demarcation, regulation, and rationalization of national, modern, and capitalist spaces brings about a restructuring of individual and collective action (Arnason 2001: 114).

The dual movement of capitalist development towards both autonomy and interdependence took place amid social conflict, radical critique, political divisions (Castoriadis 1993, 1999: 75) that rather than driving capitalism and democracy to mutual negation have seen functional differentiationa and structural integration of the respective systems of action into a dynamic structure of related contradictions of economic, political, social, and cultural development (Arnason 2001: 115). Though Castoriadis recognizes capitalism, autonomy, and modernity as interrelated phenomena he nevertheless does not establish theoretically systematic relations among the structures, logics, and variants of modernity (Wagner 1994) that in his theoretical perspective being closely related to capitalism would allow an institutional alternative had criteria for specifying the social and historical meaning of an alternative modernity existed (Arnason 2001: 115). The permanent processes of growth of autonomy, rationality, and economy relies on their mutual interpenetration (Castoriadis 1999) that realizing itself in a variety of historical configurations is part of a stable structure of modernity mediating economy and culture as systems of action (Boltanski and Chiapello 1999) so that democratic politics, consumer choice, and individual autonomy are system-specific institutionalizations of the stage of economic development that makes them possible (Simmel 1990; Arnason 2001: 115-116).

The reproduction of capitalism within the structure of modernity encompasses the totality of its constitutive systems and interrelationships to integrate autonomy, authority, and rationality into dymanics of economic accumulation (Castoriadis 1993: 180) that transforms productive forces, financial capital, and commercial markets into continually expanding means for exercise of power, regulation, and mobilization (Arnason 2001: 116; Braudel 1979; Deutschmann 2001). That autonomy and interpenetration are organizing principles of the structure of modernity accounts for the political, social, and cultural contestation of capitalism as a side-effect of its development (Baechler 1995, 2: 268; Bauman 1992) since the unfettered process of inter-institutional communication makes proliferation of entrepreneurial collective projects across the structure of modernity into both consequence of and precondition for its further structural-functional differentiation (Arnason 2001: 116-117). The continued relevance of the analysis of the spirit of capitalism (Boltanski and Chiapello 1999; Castoriadis 1999) opens opportunity for application of the systematically elaborated modeling of the structure of modernity (Munch 1982, 1984, 1986) vis-a-vis its historical typology, changing configurations, and dynamic interrelationships bearing upon developmental trajectories and inter-systemic exchange that serve as macro environments for engagement of individual and collective action (Arnason 2001: 117).

In this perspective it is possible to interpret the theoretical discussion on the varieties of capitalism as part of a broader analysis of the structure of modernity (Arnason 2001: 118). In classical sociology, Weber (1968) has adumbrated the typology of capitalism, seen as gain-seeking, rationalizing, organizing, and commercial activity, that consists of six types covering economic instrumentalization of politics, war, trade, investment, industry, and finance (Weber [1922] 1976) the institutional implications of which for individual and collective action (Swedberg 1999) remain to be complemented with structural analysis of industrial and financial capitalist economies as particular institutional realizations of the structure of modernity where rationality is a salient feature of interpenetration between culture and economy (Arnason 2001: 118). Varieties of capitalism are mainly theorized based on contemporary regional and economic variation (Orru 1997) conceived of in terms of economic regimes, economic structures, capitalist institutions, functional integration, power structures, and institutional formations that are in need of micro correction of their privileging of structures at the expense of individual and collective agency (Arnason 2001: 118-119; Hall and Soskice 2001).

To capture the complexity of institutional patterns, historical backgrounds, and path-dependent developments a theoretical reconstruction of variants of the economic system such as national economies, macro-economic models (Coates 2000), regional configurations, and civilizational contexts (Eisenstadt 1996; Hamilton 1994) has to be conceptualized within the structure of modernity as much dependent on its constituent systems as the latter on their autonomous and interactive dynamics (Arnason 2001: 119-120). Consequently, the influence of the structure of modernity on the economic system obtains wihin the more general configuration of relations (Elias 1994) that involves the institutional development of the systems acting as factors giving rise to change in the structural relations both internal and external to the organization of economic institutions, social contexts, and state structures with effects contingent on relative position in the structure of modernity, in the process of its development, and in the emergent effects of inter-systemic interaction (Arnason 2001: 120). Given the interpenetration between economy and culture, the plurality of economic systems has to be theorized in the context of the corresponding variability of the structure of modernity that elaborates on Weber's rather than Marx's framework for the analysis of capitalism in comparative and historical perspective (Arnason 2001: 120; Braudel 1979; Frank 1978a, 1978b, 1998; Wallerstein 1982, 1989, 1995, 2004).

While the economic system has existed long before the rapid changes that institutionalization of the structure of modernity has introduced (Swedberg 1999: 9), the internal and interactive systemic changes that have defined the modern period have to be seen in the broad comparative perspective (Arnason 2001: 120-121). The structure of modernity as a macro environment for each of its systems also follows a long-term period of development (Braudel 1979, 3: 532) proceeding via the structural-functional differentiation towards autonomous interpenetration of its systems changing the structure of their relations rather than replacing each other over the course of their mutual development formally separable from its constitutive relations that in their modern configuration make autonomous individual and collective action possible (Braudel 1979, 2: 353) as much as its interpenetration with its systemic environments (Arnason 2001: 121; Braudel 1979, 2: 355). The institutionalization of the interpenetration of the economic system with other systems leads not only to coordination between their systemic logics but also to their conflicts as economic circulation, accumulation, and regulation forges strong systemic linkages with association, political, and societal systems (Braudel 1977: 111; Munch 1982: 94) that put purely economic action into macro environments obtaining from the larger structure of systemic relations where monopolies, state patronage, and global trade participate in already constituted economic worlds (Arnason 2001: 121-122; Braudel 1977: 62).

The dynamics of economic accumulation brings different economic systems into contact with each other developing forms of systemic interpenetration extending to their respective development of the structures of modernity that through overlapping, learning, and intergation transmit ideas, devices, and organizations, as did Islamic and European civilizations and economies, (Braudel 1979, 2: 495-499) which in the process of the growing complexity both of inter-systemic relations and of intra-systemic organization produced integrated differentiation of the instutions of modernity (Arnason 2001: 122; Braudel 1979, 2: 515). The analysis of the structure of modernity (Munch 1982, 1986) can be applied to its contemporary varieties especially given the salience of social changes associated with transition to modernity (Braudel 1979, 3: 540; Munch 1984) as compared to the economic, technological, or industrial developments (Braudel 1979, 2: 216) so that the dominance of the economic accumulation is largely owed to "social structures, political forces and cultural frameworks" (Arnason 2001: 123) putting the diverse configurations of durable inter-systemic relations into the context of comparative conceptualization of systemic coordination, differentiated networks, social institutions, communication infrastructures, entreprenerial strategies, and power accumulation in the environment of which the individual and collective action unfolds (Braudel 1977: 63).

The interpenetration of culture and economy has to be analyzed from the perspective of the strucutre of modernity (Munch 1986) within which the dynamics of transformation, instutionalization, and integration have taken place in the economic, social, and cultural systems (Braudel 1979; Castoriadis 1999; Sombart 1987; Weber [1922] 1976) that allow for multiple varieties of inter-systemic interpenetration definitive both of their respective historical development and of the emergent structures of modernity connecting them into contingent, evolving, and comparable patterns (Arnason 2001: 123-124).