Moral Economy

Definition

Moral economy is E. P. Thompson's concept for the logic by which preindustrial plebeian crowds acted not irrationally but "consistently … [following] the lights of their own rationality, honed by experience" (Lüdtke, p. 22). Thompson developed it "using the example of the logic or 'moral economy' of plebeian crowds in English towns during the eighteenth century" (Lüdtke, p. 22); the source cites his 1971 essay "The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century." In Wolfgang Kaschuba's chapter the moral economy is the "guiding system oriented in terms of experience and need" that "helped steer the reproductive behavior of preindustrial lower strata 'from the inside'" and whose principles persisted into the early factory generations' attitudes toward rules, time, wages and conflict (Kaschuba, p. 180). It is thus a historical bridge between popular culture and workers' culture.

Key Thinkers

• E. P. Thompson — the concept's originator; "history from below" and the "field-of-force."
• Wolfgang Kaschuba — uses moral economy to explain the continuity of plebeian values into workers' culture (no author page yet — see log).
• Alf Lüdtke — cites Thompson's moral economy as a decisive impetus for alltagsgeschichte.
• Barrington Moore — Injustice: The Social Bases of Obedience and Revolt, cited by Kaschuba as a sketch of the same "justice" line.

Related Concepts

• Popular Culture — the symbolic order in which moral economy circulates.
• Workers' Culture — its industrial successor.
• Everyday Life — the sphere of reproduction it governs.
• Historical Experience — the experiential basis of its norms.
• Protest — the collective action it legitimates (bread riots, boycotts, charivari).

Source Support

Sources in the wiki that discuss this concept:

• The History of Everyday Life (Lüdtke ed. 1995) — Lüdtke's Introduction on Thompson and the "moral economy" of plebeian crowds (p. 22); Kaschuba on the persistence of moral-economy principles in workers' culture and the "historical social contract" of the early labour movement (pp. 179–181).

Open Questions

• Is moral economy a premodern phenomenon that dissolves with industrial capitalism, or, as Kaschuba argues, a "longue durée" cultural structure still visible in present-day attitudes to work and wages?
• Does the concept extend beyond food riots to the everyday "justice" claims of the factory (fair wage, decent conditions)?