Sociology Now, Census Update

Economic Systems

All societies must deal with three fundamental economic questions: (1) production,
(2) distribution, and (3) consumption. An economic systemis a mechanism that deals
with the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services in a
particular society.

Capitalism

The economic system called capitalism—a profit-oriented economic system based on
the private or corporate ownership of the means of production and distribution—
arose in the Netherlands and Britain during the Protestant Reformation of the sev-
enteenth century, when private investors began to fund the wealth-accumulating
journeys of traders, explorers, and eventually colonists. Individual companies com-
peted with each other for customers and profits with no government interference.
When the Industrial Revolution began, economists gave these practices an ideo-
logical basis. In opposition to the prevailing mercantilism, which argued that a nation’s
wealth was best measured by the amount of gold it could accumulate, capitalists argued
that a nation’s wealth should be measured by the amount of goods and services that it
produced. The best way to produce a lot of goods and services was to create markets
through private trade (Heilbroner, 1986). Classical capitalism has three components:

1.Private ownership of the means of production (natural resources and production

machinery).

2.An open market, with no government interference. Kings and queens (and later

prime ministers and presidents) should “laissez-faire,” or keep their hands off.

3.Profit (receiving more than the goods cost to produce) as a valuable goal of human

enterprise.

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Jihad versus McWorld

Globalization is bringing the world together and

pulling it apart at one in the same moment—and that

may make the world unsafe for democracy. In Jihad

vs. McWorld(1995), Benjamin Barber argues there are

two possible futures arising out of globalization:

“jihad,” or holy wars, and “McWorld,” his coinage for

the complex sociopolitical outcomes of globalization.

Jihad involves a “retribalization” of many of the world’s peo-

ple by violence and bloodshed. These holy wars, waged in the

name of numerous narrowly defined faiths, splinter societies.

They pit tribe against tribe, people against people, culture

against culture, and reject the idea of civic cooperation or

interdependence.

The other tide is “McWorld”—the “onrush of economic and

ecological forces that demand integration and uniformity and

that mesmerize the world with fast music, fast computers, and

fast food—with MTV, Macintosh, and McDonalds” (Barber, 1992,

p. 1). McWorld forces nations into a single, homogeneous unit

that is bound together by technology and global commerce.

Jihad and McWorld work with equal force but in opposite

directions, according to Barber. Jihad is driven by sectarian

hatreds and McWorld by all-encompassing markets; the one rein-

states ethnic divisions from inside and the other neutralizes

national borders from outside. But Barber argues they have one

thing in common: Neither offers much hope that democracy is

on the march in the world today or will have many legs to stand

on in the globalized future.

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