Capitalism and Robinson Crusoe

In the simplest terms, capitalism can be defined as the condition of possessing capital -- the original funds or principal of an individual, company, or corporation, which provide the basis for financial and economic operations. The term capitalism also describes an ideology which favors the existence of capitalists (individuals who accumulate capital which then becomes available for investment in financial or industrial enterprises). Robinson Crusoe is a bourgeois Puritan, but on his island his preoccupations -- labor, raw materials, the processes of production, colonialism (and implicit Imperialism), shrewdness, self-discipline, and profit -- are (oddly enough, at first glance) those of the proto-capitalist. James Joyce would write that "The true symbol of the British conquest is Robinson Crusoe, who, cast away on a desert island, in his pocket a knife and a pipe, becomes an architect, a carpenter, a knife grinder, an astronomer, a baker, a shipwright, a potter, a saddler, a farmer, a tailor, an umbrella-maker, and a clergyman. He is the true prototype of the British colonist, as Friday (the trusty savage who arrives on an unlucky day) is the symbol of the subject races." Karl Marx, noting that "Robinson Crusoe's experiences are a favorite theme with political economists," took the opportunity, in his Capital, (q.v.) to critique Defoe's fantasy from his own very different perspective.