The Apocalyptic Vision Of The Road

What is the "means of production" and what significance does it have to society? How is it created, expanded, or merely sustained? What is the relationship between the prevailing moral order of a society and its accumulation of capital?

These are questions that economists and political philosophers have considered throughout the history of economic thought. If you have ever enquired into the differences between capitalism and socialism you will have heard of the means of production, and you will be aware that this is very important to the organization of society. You might have heard of this, but you might not have spent much thought on the relationship between capital and moral order. Indeed, why should ordinary people care about such things? Isn't the means of production just something that one reads about between bong hits in the dorm rooms at university? Or is it perhaps something that is the domain of accountants and corporate managers, concerned with the proper techniques of double-entry bookkeeping? What is its great significance?

For those who are not sure, or don't care, The Road by Cormac McCarthy gives us a chilling glimpse of a society without capital or moral order – a world without a "means of production." It is a terrifying vision, and a wake-up call to those who regard questions of capital accumulation as being merely the dry and technical subject matter of economists. The novel is set in a postapocalyptic world devastated by a catastrophe of some kind that has destroyed the natural environment. It tells the story of a man and his young son trying to survive the dangers of the new world and retain their sense of goodness in the face of its horrors.

More