The Merchant of Venice, the Moral Economy, Dogmatism, and the Human Imagination

Attending a performance of the Merchant of Venice has driven me to reread the play. The play has me thinking about political economy. The Merchant of Venice is a complex play. One part of it is about economic systems, how they function, and how they can be manipulated.

Antonio and Shylock are two rich and powerful merchants who ply the global economy of the time. Fortunes are won or lost in a high stakes and high risk game of international trade.

Antonio borrows money from Shylock to assist his friend Bossanio in Bossanio’s suit for the fair Portia. Antonio has several ships at sea and soon expects them to return and make his fortune, so he feels he can easily pay the loan to Shylock on time. There is bad blood between the Christian Antonio and the Jew Shylock. Shylock demands a pound of Antonio’s flesh should he forfeit the loan.

Antonio’s trading fleet runs to ruin, and he must forfeit the bond. Shylock takes him to court to publicly extract the pound of flesh from Antonio’s breast. Portia supplies the funds to Bossanio to pay Antonio’s debt, but Shylock wants his pound of flesh. Shylock double clutches when it comes time to do the cutting.

Portia and her maid Nerissa dress as solicitors and arrive at court. Portia uses the strict letter of the law to outwit Shylock. Shylock is denied his pound of flesh, the repayment of the loan in money, and he forfeits his estate.

One can take sides in this dispute between Antonio and Shylock as one pleases. However, in the Christian society that controls the economic order of Venice we see the operation of not just a political economy, but also a moral economy.

Every economic system ever devised has been erected on a set of moral values. Those values ultimately determine who is rich and poor. One can take a dogmatic approach to political economy. The dogmatic approach will always fail because of ever changing natural events and the ever changing events caused by the seemingly limitless human imagination.

Dogmatic political economy is always based on a utopian myth. The great myth of capitalism is that its success does not depend on huge resources from the society in which it is embedded. The completely self made man does not exist.

The nature of the moral economy is that issues of fairness, equity, rights, and justice will always arise because of contingent events. The success of political economy is based upon the continued reevaluation of its moral foundations in light of ever changing conditions and events. That sucks, but when and where have things ever been easy?

The U. S. economy is increasingly based on crony capitalism. If you are not connected and a crony, your chances for success are extremely low. From a moral standpoint, it seems an easy system to attack on moral grounds. One of the problems in attacking it though is the widely held myth of the self made man.

One of the more interesting campaign slogans used for getting support for tax cuts to the rich says, “it’s your money.” Nobody can own a business or work in the current economy without the massive resources society provides to make it possible. It is more accurate to say, “it’s society’s money and society is letting you have it.”

The more I think about it, the more I feel that dogmatism in the economic sphere, as in any sphere of human endeavor, cannot work. The human imagination, the basis of our intelligence and evolutionary success, will not rest idle long enough for it to work.