Interpretations of interest
Consider the following characterization of the capitalist ethic and thus the capitalist himself (from Max Weber’s Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism):
Man is dominated by the making of money, by acquisition as the ultimate purpose of his life.
Economic acquisition is no longer subordinated to man as the means for the satisfaction of his material needs.... ([1904—5] 1958:53)Does the capitalist depicted in this way know his interests? Does he pursue his real interests? Does he, in the successful pursuit of his interests, as he perceives them, exercise power? If he exercises power, does this make him powerful, or does this just make him the agent of power residing in the social (or spiritual) order within which he exists? Does the slave who, believing in the virtue of and inevitability of slavery, works to protect the social order of slavery know and act upon his interest? Can we deduce what is in his interests from his actions? Or is the slave, as Lukes puts it (1974:24), the victim of a power over him that shapes “perceptions, cognitions and preferences in such a way” that he accepts his role “in the existing order of things, either because [he] seeks[s] or imagine[s] no alternative” or because he sees “it as natural and unchangeable...divinely ordained and beneficial”? Would a slave be clearly and unambiguously better off outside of his life as a slave? These examples and questions indicate the complexity of the problem of interests in relation to power. The capitalist, particularly the successful capitalist, surely has power; and yet is Weber entirely incorrect in characterizing the capitalist as a mere “steward”? The slave can hardly find his real interest in the perpetuation of slavery. Yet, is he wrong in believing that he has no life (certainly no life as he knows life) outside of slavery?
The habit of mind of economists tends to cut through these problems.
Interests translate into preferences, preferences into choices given the available options. What we observe individuals freely choosing, we can deduce to be in their interests. We know individuals choose freely when we can find no one coercing them. We will term this the direct interpretation of interest or “direct interest.” It is sometimes termed “subjective” (Flathman, 1966, and Balbus, 1971) or “behavioral” (Lukes, 1974). If we satisfy ourselves with the notion of direct interest, then the slave who accepts slavery independently of the threat of coercion, who thus “chooses” slavery, acts in his interest. In this spirit, Robert Nozick argues that recognition of a right to voluntary enslavement enhances our freedom (1974:331). The capitalist who devotes his life to the accumulation of capital clearly pursues his well-defined selfinterest.The notion of direct interest works well with a simple notion of power. Successful achievement of what we deem to be in our interest indicates our power; the more powerful we are, the more of our interests we can successfully pursue. This also holds for power over others measured by the outcome of the conflict of our (direct) interest with theirs.
Whether we believe that the direct or subjective notion of interest is (1) exhaustive of meaningful interpretations of interest (as a behaviorist or a utilitarian might) or (2) unsatisfactory, we might still find the associated notion of power meaningful. When we speak of capitalists as powerful and slaves as powerless, we are speaking in an intuitively meaningful way. Doing so does not prevent us from also saying that capitalists have no power so long as we carefully distinguish two different uses of language.
The second notion of interest leaves the behaviorists and utilitarians shaking their heads. This is “real” (sometimes “objective”) interest. Connolly links real interest to “self-awareness” and “fully informed choice” ([1974] 1983:68). Isaac Balbus claims that this kind of interest can be distinguished by the fact that “evidence can be marshalled to demonstrate that an individual has an interest even if he is not aware of it or even that what an individual thinks is in his interest is in fact not in his interest” (1971:152).
Real interest in this sense is, in effect, imputed to the individual from his objective situation. We can, then, refer to it as imputed interest.Individuals may find themselves in situations that prevent them from perceiving the real interests that those situations define. Such individuals are powerless in a most profound sense. Such powerlessness does not directly imply that anyone has power over anyone else. It may be fruitful to consider the possibility that a social order empowers no one, as suggested by Hannah Arendt’s notion of “rule by nobody” (1969). If we believe that imputed interest (1) exists, (2) differs from direct (subjective) interest, and (3) cannot be satisfied by the social order that creates and defines it, we have a significant critique of that order based on the idea of power (or more specifically its absence).