Masters and Servants in the U.S. and Pakistan: Insights and Missed Opportunities

Daniyal Khan is an undergraduate student at the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS). He is working on his thesis “Heilbroner and Weber: Economics as a Science, Economics as a Vocation.” This contribution was stimulated by his research on that project. -Jeff

In A Brief History of Economics: Artful Approaches to the Dismal Science, Ray Canterberry states that Robert Heilbroner:

…attributes his social conscience to his feelings of indignation when he realized that his mother could give orders to her chauffeur only because his beloved “Willy” needed the money and she had it. “Willy” was an intimate yet “William” was a servant, distinguished only by the formal driver’s uniform that he wore. (pg. 334)

He concludes the section on Heilbroner’s vision of capitalism by noting that “his [i.e, Heilbroner’s] vision is little removed from his early concern about his mother’s wealth being the source of domination of poor Willy Gerkin, his surrogate father.” (pg. 337) If it is indeed the case that this particular life-experience was central in shaping Heilbroner’s vision of capitalism, then it gives way to a few interesting and illuminating implications.

Firstly, it challenges Heilbroner’s own contention expressed in Behind the Veil of Economics: Essays in the Worldly Philosophy that visions can hardly be traced back to the experiences that determine them:

At this deepest level of social inquiry [i.e. at the level of vision] our analytic and expository powers diminish almost to the vanishing point. We can say very little as to the sources of these constellations that we project into the social universe. Few of us can trace to their social or personal roots the experiences that frame our own visions. (pg. 198)

Secondly, it shows how consciousness of the social expression of Marxian self-alienation – the self-alienation of the proletariat from the bourgeois capitalist class – in a member of the capitalist class can lead to a far reaching vision and imagination of the latent possibilities within capitalism as broadly defined by Heilbroner.

From these two implications, I wish to turn towards a specific social context all too familiar to me: the relationship of the wealthy in urban Pakistani society with their household servants. William Gerkin does not really serve as a satisfactory representative of servants in urban Pakistan. The degree of domination exercised over them and the lack of dignity accorded to them are far greater than in the case of servants in America. They have a contradictory and tense relationship of mutual dependence and mutual distrust with their employers (or masters, if I can be honest in a manner which was characteristic of Professor Heilbroner).

It is a relationship of mutual dependence because the wealthy depend on the servants for a large part of the upkeep and management of the household. The servants depend on their masters for their income as well as some financial assistance or charity for their health and marriage expenditures when they are extremely lucky.

It is also a relationship of mutual distrust. The masters rarely trust their servants, who, despite being members of the household, are not trusted with security of the household on their own. In fact, quite often servants are the first suspects and are arrested in the case of a robbery. This cannot happen without the approval, tacit or otherwise, of the masters and, thus, reveals the extent of distrust and domination. The distrust felt by the servants is not hard to imagine. With extravagant amounts of wealth being employed to dominate and exploit them, with little dignity accorded to them, with verbal and physical abuse being common and with ridiculously low wages, it is no surprise that they should feel a strong distrust of their masters. As to who gains disproportionately from such relationships, it is obvious.

Relationships in which a servant may become an intimate, in the manner of William Gerkin, are rare. I have been, however, witness to such a relationship between my grandmother and her middle-aged servant who has been attached to the extended family since before his teens. The relationship is indeed comparable to that of a “surrogate mother” and son. Yet, to my understanding, such relationships have failed to inculcate a consciousness of the pressing nature of the problem of power arising from wealth (exemplified by the case of William Gerkin) as was the case with Professor Heilbroner. These relationships appear to me to be lost opportunities for understanding and change which are becoming ever more rare by the day.

Even though it is the servants who are considered poor by their masters (and rightly so from a strictly material, financial perspective), it appears that from another perspective, it is actually the other way around. The masters of these servants despite possessing wealth are poor in their inability to overcome their prejudices, class interests and cowardice, and to gain from their servants an explicit firsthand account of the sufferings and troubles of the latter which, if genuinely gained, would leave a lasting impression which may change fundamental social attitudes and perceptions.

That is, however, not the case. The servants remain confined to their separate quarters in the household; out of sight, out of mind. The masters fail to gain an awareness of the social conditions of these members of the household whose presence turns the household into a microcosm of a dual economy. We (the masters, the bourgeois capitalists) are alienated from that part of our collective self without which we cannot live (our servants, the proletariat). Our relationships with our servants, which less and less offer us the chance to become conscious of this self-alienation as was the case with Robert Heilbroner, are our lost opportunities. And we shall remain poor till these opportunities are consciously grasped.