TECHNOLOGY AND ECONOMY 



13 



But the Indians work for such luxuries. Rich 

 and poor, men, women, and children, bend over 

 the soil or imder their burdens from morning to 

 night; and when it is too dark to work they go to 

 sleep. There is ordinarily no fireside hour, no 

 roistering in the evening. If there is any fun in 

 workaday life, it must be in the work itself. Or 

 perhaps the Indians derive satisfactions from the 

 well of inner life that is a heritage of their cultm-e. 

 For while in their ways and means of getting along 

 with nature and with each other they are not so 

 different from ourselves, their view of the world 

 about them — the sun and the earth, the heart 

 and the soul, plants and animals, God and the 

 Devil, butchers and bakers, life and death — is 

 not only different from ours, and naive and 

 picturesque, but is a coherent whole that may well 

 be as satisfying as it is self-explanatory. 



If the Indians are on the whole a cheerful lot, 



however, it is neither because they are satisfied 

 nor because the com^e of life runs smooth. 

 Ambition, a desire for the security and prestige 

 that more land will allow, seems to be a generous 

 current flowing through Indian life. Worry, with 

 both health and fortune so tenuous, can never be 

 long absent. But beyond the recurring major 

 griefs and sorrows, perhaps the most persistent 

 obstacles to peace of mind are the continued 

 vexations of social life: fear, envy, fear of envy; 

 rumors, slander, gossip, fear of gossip; quarrels; 

 insults; faithlessness; ridicule; enemies. Passions 

 are close to the surface and continually running 

 over into words that feed them. Withm the 

 family, between lovers, among neighbors — any 

 day some little thing may send one scurrying to 

 the courthouse for redress and revenge. 



The community is rich enough to support that, 

 too. 



TECHNOLOGY AND ECONOMY 



THE KIND OF ECONOMY 



The Indians of Panajachel, and the people 

 among whom they live and with whom thej' do 

 almost all of their business, are part of what may 

 be characterized as a money economy organized in 

 single households as both consumption and produc- 

 tion units, mth a strongly developed market which 

 tends to be perfectly competitive. 



Although as consumers the Indians enter, in 

 minor ways, into the world economy of firms — for 

 many years, for example, they purchased matches 

 manufactm-ed by a monopoly granted the Krueger 

 interests — their production is accomplished quite 

 strictly on a "household" rather than a "firm" 

 basis.'" The producing unit is the simple family; 



'^ Following a suggestion of my colleague Bert F. Hoselitz (to whom I 

 am much indebted for advice on this section), I am using the terminology 

 of Oscar Lange (1945-46, pp. 19-32) who distinguishes as "units of economic 

 decision" households, whose decisions by definition have the objective of 

 satisfying consumpf ion wants of the unit, from ^rms. whose objects are money 

 profits, and says that "The economic organization that leaves production to 

 firms is called capitalism." By this definition the title of this book appears 

 to be a misnomer. However, Langc goes on to point out not only that firms 

 have "nonrational" ends but that households may be "rational" in maxi- 

 mizing the magnitude of utility, as I believe that those of Panajachel tend 

 to do, and he adds (p. 31) that there seems "to be some difference between 

 households operating in the capitalist economy and households of the domes- 

 tic economy of pre-capitalist societies. The dominance of business enter- 

 prises with a tangible and quantified magnitude (money profit) as their 

 objective has created a mental habit of considering all kinds of decisions as 

 a pursuit of a single objective, expressed as a magnitude. Some authors call 

 this mental habit the 'capitalist spirit.' It spreads beyond the specific 

 decisions of business enterprises and affects the mode of operation of other 

 units, including households. Under the influence of the mental habit 



there are no factories, no estates, no cooperatives. 

 But because of the regional specialization of labor, 

 it is also very strongly a market economy. In 

 many, if not most, communities, a large proportion 

 of what is consumed has to be purchased. The 

 chief products of Panajachel, for example, are 

 onions, garlic, and fruit produced almost entirely 

 for sale, while the staples of the diet — corn, beans, 

 peppers, salt, meat, bread — and the clothing or 

 the materials from which it is made, and almost 

 all tools and utensUs, must be purchased. 



^\1I business is done on a money basis; barter 

 almost does not exist. Moreover, almost all of 

 it is done on a cash basis. It is possible to borrow 

 money, at interest, in various ways; but although 

 lending may sometimes become a business (and 

 Ladinos may earn part of their hving from the 

 proceeds) credit institutions are undeveloped. A 

 person borrows money because he needs it for 

 some consumption rather than business purpose; 

 Indian merchants work almost exclusively on the 

 basis of funds actually accumulated and saved. 



mentioned, households are encouraged to order their preferences along a 

 scale: i. e., to maximize utility. In capitalist society, therefore, the decisions 

 of households are more likely to conform to the deductions derived from the 

 postulate of rationality than in societies which preceded the rise of modern 

 capitalism." I think it will appear in this description that the economy 

 of Panajachel (which is a market rather than a domestic economy of isolated 

 tmits of decision) has these characteristics of the capitalist society. Whether 

 Lange would prefer to call Panajachel households "firms" or to accept an 

 intermediate class of what I call "permy capitalism" 1 do not know. 



