Page 19 - Culture Society and Economy

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CULTURE, SOCIETY AND ECONOMY

in which this human agency is exercised – the production, distribution
and exchange of the material basis for human existence.
If one takes this point of view, then the hoary issue of economic deter-
minism or of ‘structure’ versus ‘agency’ or of ‘base’ versus ‘superstructure’
takes on a different character. For the issue now turns out to be one of
the primacy not of base or structure or of something called ‘the economy’
but of one sphere of human activity over another. The real question that
we have to consider is not whether ‘base’ determines ‘superstructure’ or
‘structure’ governs ‘agency’ but whether agency in the field of the econ-
omy takes precedence over agency in the sphere of politics or over intel-
lectual agency – how these different but connected spheres of agency
inter-relate.
Do the activities of workers, bankers, stockbrokers, financiers, manu-
facturers, wholesalers, retailers, marketers qua workers, bankers, stock-
brokers, financiers, manufacturers, wholesalers, retailers, marketers when
taken as a whole and operating within the logic of a capitalist mode of
production at a particular stage of its development, determine the course
of social, political and intellectual life? Or is it the mental and cultural
activities of intellectuals – artists, academics, novelists, scientists and
the like – which is determining? Is there a dominant form of agency and,
if so, which is it – economic, political or intellectual or some form as
yet unknown? My argument is that action in the sphere of the economy –
perhaps the most complex and many-sided form of action in the world
today – is the central force in our social, political and cultural life and
that any cultural and social theory which aspires to effectiveness must
therefore re-connect with the economic. But again and again it must be
affirmed that this action does not operate in a vacuum and as it wills: it
operates on the basis of the real existing capitalist mode of production
with its own systemic logic.
Some will, of course, observe that economic activity, like any other,
requires intellectual effort and also involves much politics. This, how-
ever, is hardly the momentous objection that some may think. For it
is quite clear that notwithstanding that fact, any person can clearly dis-
tinguish the economic from the other spheres of life and these distinc-
tions are in fact too commonplace to dwell on. This does not gainsay the
point that economic agency (which includes intellectual effort devoted
to the economic sphere) is a very complex and sophisticated form of
human activity in a particular sphere of social life. Agency in this arena
is as creative, if not more so, as it is in any other area of human life.
It is not in any sense a non-human sphere – a mechanical ‘base’ or a
‘technology’.

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