Norman O. Brown on Modern and Archaic Economics (and Karl Polanyi)

To understand modern economics and money is to understand its relation to archaic [pre-modern] economics and money. But such a historical, and because historical also philosophical, approach to money is precisely what is lacking in the entire range of modern economic theory. 

Classical modern economic theorists, assuming the basic rationality of economic activity, assumed likewise that archaic economic activity was a core of secular rationalism in an otherwise rude and superstitious milieu. They assumed that economic activity was always and everywhere essentially the same in the fundamental motivation; economic activities were governed by economic motives-- that is, by economizing calculation. Assuming the psychology of economizing calculation, they correctly postulated its sociological correlate, the institution of ownership (property). Again from the psychology of economizing calculation, they deduced the division of labor and its institutional correlate, exchange in a market. 

But it is a safe generalization to say that the postulates of classical economic theory have no relation whatsoever to the anthropological facts. Archaic economics is not governed by economizing calculation. We can safely follow Karl Polanyi, the only economist who faces the facts and the problems they pose, when he says, "It is on this one negative point that modern ethnographers agree [in archaic economies we find]: the absence of the motive of gain [profit seeking]; the absence of the principle of laboring for remuneration [wage labor]; the absence of the principle of least effort [efficiencies]; and especially the absence of any distinct institution based on economic motives [free markets]. 

Excerpted from Life Against Death, 1959, "Filthy Lucre," pages 242-244. 

Hannah Arendt on the Modern Science of Economics and the Spirit of Greek Democracy

"The assumption that men 'behave' and do not 'act' in respect to each other, that lies at the root of the modern science of economics, whose birth coincided with the rise of society and which, together with its chief technical tool, statistics, became the social science par excellence. Economics-- until the modern age a not too important part of ethics and politics and based on the assumption that men act with respect to their economic activities as they act in every other respect-- could achieve a scientific character only when men had become social beings and unanimously followed certain patterns of behavior, so that those who did not keep the rules could be considered asocial or abnormal."

"It was not Karl Marx but liberal economists themselves [Adam Smith et al] who had to introduce the "communistic fiction," that is, to assume that there is one interest of society as a whole which with "an invisible hand" guides the behavior of men and produces the harmony of their conflicting interests. The difference between Marx and his forerunners was that he took the reality of the conflict [capital vs labor], as it presented itself in the society of his time , as seriously as the hypothetical fiction of harmony." 

Who were these actors who ruled by their exemplary actions before the mass conformity of behavioral statistics? 

"Large numbers of people, crowded together, develop an almost irresistible inclination towards despotism, be this despotism of a person or of majority rule; and although statistics, that is, the mathematical treatment of reality, was unknown prior to the modern age; the social phenomena which make such treatment possible-- great numbers, accounting for conformism, behaviorism, and automatism in human affairs-- were precisely those traits, which Greek self-understanding, distinguished the Persian civilization from their own."

And to which despotism the Greeks countered with democratic action in a system of direct democracy in Athens, 508-322 bce. Although, notably, the democratic response to Persian despotism was more oligarchic (rule by the few) than democratic (rule by the many). Citizenship in Athens, even in its heyday, represented 20% of the population at most; all men, no women, or slaves (as much as 1/3 of the population), nor even any non-Greeks. 

Still, the democratic promise of concepts like citizenship and popular rule empowered Greeks and resonated with the Romans enough that they tried to extend these democratic principles in a Republic that lasted for four centuries. And democratic rights remain popular to this day, you can be sure, wherever dictators and corrupt oligarchs rule; generally, wherever basic human rights are absent, at the very least. Democratic ideas have inspired many reforms and revolutions since the 17th century, defining the modern age as much as science or technology. 

Quotes from The Human Condition (1959)