The Political Economy in Harry Potter

(or, A Canadian Lefty Displays His Nerdliness More Than Usual)

As I have noted before on this site, I grew up reading a great deal of speculative fiction, though I do not read so much at the moment. Perhaps the fact that I am politically open to the idea that "another world is possible" may have something to do with the fact that I spent a great deal of time in my formative years contemplating the possibility of other worlds.

I was not, however, an early enthusiast for J.K. Rowling's massive blockbusting bestseller-type franchise involving youthful English wizards and witches in training. I think the fourth book was out before I had read any, and even then I was (perhaps a bit snobbishly, I'll admit) inclined to be skeptical of all of these johnny-come-latelies to the joys of fantastic literature. It was only with the massive fifth book in the series that I truly became hooked.

One fun part about reading things that deal with fantastic worlds is trying to decide whether or not these worlds, as described, are actually socially plausible -- would they, in fact, work as advertised? If you assume that all that is different from the "real world" is what the author explicitly tells you is different, does the world actually make sense? If not, why not? Where have assumptions been imported from "real life" that you really could afford to change? How do the cultural practices relate to the kinds of making and doing that we commonly ghettoize as "the economy"?

It is with that goal in mind that I have occasionally wondered how exactly the political economy of wizarding Britain in the Harry Potter books functions. I know...I'm a nerd.

The books make clear quite early on that the wizarding world is a society with class divisions. If you approach that with the standard, muddy North American understanding of what class actually means, you are unlikely to see anything interesting -- that is, if you understand "class" as being primarily a function of how much money you have or make. This is because you see people in the wizarding world with lots of money, like the Malfoys, and those with very little, like the Weasleys, and might not be inclined to probe further.

But the Malfoys are definitely not capitalists. In fact, they would likely hex you into the middle of next week at the mere suggestion. Rather, they are aristorcrats. It is unclear exactly what the social basis of the wealth of this class is or was in the wizarding world, given that it has no peasants or overtly feudal relations in evidence, but we are used to the idea of such things having faded away in the distant past even while the vestiges of the class continues on, and the markers by which the Malfoys are defined in the books are very much aristocratic rather than bourgeois. Jason Isaacs' portrayal of "Lucius Malfoy" in the movies is a positively delightful caricature of that class. There is, in fact, no evidence of any capitalist class whatsoever in books or movies. The closest that you can find are small business owners, most of whom seem to be skilled artisans who create the things that they are selling and have few if any employees.

On the other end of the spectrum you find the Weasleys. In a broad understanding of "working class", such as that employed in autonomist Marxism, the Weasley family certainly belongs there, as do many others in the books. But Arthur is, in fact, a low ranking civil servant when the series begins. Being employed by the federal civil service even in a fairly junior position does not tend to be that bad a situation, these days, so the emphasis on the Weasleys' poverty seems a bit incongruous, though with seven children one can certainly understand it. As well, in terms of the ways Arthur's employment is marked symbolically in terms of his class status, it feels more like he is a Dickensian clerk in the mould of Bob Cratchit than a modern civil servant. (Molly, of course, works at home, again in a position that autonomists and feminist Marxists would see as working class, but that other Marxists often have not). If you look a bit farther afield, the only other character that is obviously coded as working class is Mundgungus Fletcher, a petty crook who serves to represent the supposedly disreputable segment of the working class in the series. What you don't find is anyone who would qualify as bona fide industrial proletarians in a traditional, mainstream Marxist sense.

It makes sense that one can find neither capitalists nor narrowly defined proletarians, because there do not appear to be any capitalist enterprises at all in the wizarding world, and in fact no fully developed capitalist social relations. There is one bank, which appears to be a community enterprise of some kind controlled by the Goblins. (Given the history of European Christianity of a certain era designating such tasks to Jews, plus the physical representation of the Goblins in the movies and how one might relate that to certain facets of the horrible caricatures of Jews that were common at one time, I have wondered about whether some deeply ingrained cultural anti-semitism might have slipped through, but I have not heard anyone else raise that issue.) There are service organizations like St. Mungo's Hospital and Hogwarts itself. There is the state, commonly referred to as the Ministry of Magic. There are, as mentioned above, a fair number of small-scale businesses that seem mostly to involve the owner working in the shop, and often creating the merchandise. In other words, the economy of the wizarding world does involve a market, but it is at best a pre-capitalist market, and may in fact be something else entirely.

One interesting and potentially disturbing aspect of the wizarding world's economy is that it does involve slavery. Of creatures known as "house elves", to be precise. This slavery does not seem to serve the economic function of the theft of labour and life in large-scale plantation economies like in the southern U.S. and the Caribbean historically, but seems mostly to involve the performance of domestic functions for aristocratic families (as well as at Hogwarts). In that sense, it actually kind of resembles how the slavery of African and indigenous people in Canada functioned historically. In progressive commentaries on the Harry Potter books I have heard this inclusion of widely tolerated even if not widely practiced slavery raised as a big political mark against the series, and rightly so. One of the main characters does speak out and act (in wholly ineffective ways) against this slavery in a couple of the books, but is mostly portrayed as peculiar (if good-hearted) for her efforts. However, just based on how Rowling has built up the issue and then in the most recent book let it fade somewhat, I would wager that she is setting it up for the release of the house elves to be an element in the final book of the series.

It really starts to get interesting once you probe beyond the question of who people are and where they work and think about the overall ways in which production in the wizarding world is organized. It is actually quite a different environment than the one twenty-first century Europeans and North Americans are used to, in that instead of market relations pervading absolutely everything, they are actually quite limited in scope and everybody in the wizarding world exists to a certain extent outside of them. In the "real world" when this has been true it has usually been because people have been heavily invested in subsistence agriculture, hunting and gathering, or perhaps feudal social relations, but none of this is true in the wizarding world. Instead, the distinguishing feature of production in the wizarding world is that the means by which it happens is highly individualized, requiring no significant infrastructure of either a social or physical nature -- in other words, people can do lots and lots of stuff on their own by magic, as channeled through their wand (an accessory that everyone over the age of eleven has).

I think some of the implications of this underlying feature of the wizarding world are explored but others are left rather unclear. For one thing, it still makes sense that there be some specialization of activity resulting in the need for some market relations. Though everyone has access to the means of production, access to raw materials and to the skill to turn them into useful products can vary significantly. That is why Olivander makes wands, for example, and the Weasley twins open their joke shop. In a reflection of "real world" liberal dreams of actual meritocracy, some degree of status in the wizarding world that is not merely symbolic but also material seems to be awarded by skill or power, though it is not necessarily easy to find examples for this beyond Dumbledore, given that most of the characters we know are still at school. But this underlying means of production does not explain the Malfoys' inherited aristocratic status or their wealth. Nor does it explain the material markers of poverty displayed by the Weasleys. After all, if magic is as able to do things as it seems to be, why should there be any material markers of poverty as all? Why can't you just conjure new dress robes, for examlpe, rather than wearing some that have been in your family for decades?

Another interesting aspect of the wizarding political economy is the nature of the wizarding state. Though the relations of production are not capitalist, the associated state much resembles the sort of conglomeration of administrative and regulatory functions that one would tend to associate with highly industrialized political economies. I find this to be plausible, though, because some social borrowing from the non-magical world is believable, and the overwhelming need for secrecy from non-magical people would make the formation of such a state likely even though in other respects members of the wizarding world could probably function quite happily in semi-autonomous communities governed by traditional practices. And I suppose the semi-regular appearance of evil wizards bent on domination and destruction would be an impetus towards an organized state as well. What is not clear is how the Minister for Magic is actually chosen. It does not appear to be in elections, but there is plenty of evidence through the series that the selection of Minister and choices about Ministry policy are responsive to popular pressure in some way.

Though this organization is plausible, it is still disappointing. Such a radically decentralized means of production as this society exhibits could be the basis for depicting/exploring a much more innovative form of social organization. Perhaps book seven will end with some sort of radical social transformation? No, you're right...probably not.

A final topic that I want to include in here is that of kinship structures. As far as we are shown, the tendencies of the well-to-do "pure blood" families for inbreeding nothwithstanding, the family functions in the wizarding world much as it does in twenty-first century Europe and North America, or at least we do not learn much that would make wizarding kinship structures unfamiliar to us. This is also politically disappointing and not entirely plausible. After all, the wizarding community is small and is not governed by the economic and political forces which have pushed the nuclear family to the centre of social organization in the inudstrialized states of the "real world." It would make sense for some sort of elaborate extended family system, whether like those exhibited by many non-European cultures or something else entirely, to exist. That this does not exist might be explained by the regular, steady influx of people whose culture of origin is the non-magical world. Perhaps they imported their family forms. But given the emphasis placed on the complete unfamiliarity with non-magical society displayed by most people born into the spaces carved out and desginated "wizarding", this doesn't feel quite right either. (I would also love for Rowling to explore how queer practices and identities might have formed differently in the wizarding world than in the non-magical society, but obviously "real world" homophobia and capitalist social relations still severely constrain such themes.)

And a final regret is that this book does not deal at all with the history of English colonialism and imperialism, beyond the inclusion of a few minor characters who would trace their ancestry to former colonies. Admittedly, the Harry Potter world is probably not the best place to do this. But the device of the secret and learned English organization or subculture with some sort of relationship to the supernatural existing alongside the "real world" as we know it is very common -- the wizarding world in this series, the Watcher's Council in the Buffy universe, the Talamasca in Anne Rice's books, and lots of others. I'd like to see just one such world deal with the legacy of how well-to-do supernaturally inclined Englishmen might have participated in (or not) the process of English global conquest and how that might play out today.