In this article I will examine the folk tale "Jack and the Beanstalk" from a sociological perspective. First off we have a poor boy who finds himself with a sick mother and is consequently forced to engage in the market alone to improve their life chances. In an act of desperation Jack trades away the families only asset, a cow in exchange for 3 beans said to have a magical use value that will make him rich. By trading the cow for the beans Jack undertakes a speculative action, involving risk to gain a monetary reward and when his Mother finds out she becomes irate. If the beans don't work they are both as good as dead. The threat of death reoccurs throughout the tale re-affirming the power of money, capitalism and ruling ideology embedded within the story.
In the story to offset his mothers fears Jack gets to work immediately labouring to transform the beans into the 'magical beanstalk' a commodity, in a bid to off set their emmient fall into poverty. Once the bean sprouts with some luck Jack continues to labour in a different way. Whereas before he laboured to generate the commodity from the beans, now he seeks to monetise the commodity by climbing the beanstalk, in search of his due, the wages for all the effort he has undertaken in his act of creation.
Once he has climbed the stalk he comes face to face with a violent Giant, the 'objective deterministic' structure of capitalism 'the big other' whose aim is to deny Jack 'the fruit of his own labours'. The giants role is to destroy anyone who tries to wrought the system and get rich fast. Jack understands this and moves nimbly above the world and market on the beanstalk, because he will die above or below without money to sustain him. Because of this call to action in the face of adversity he begins to search for a way out, and glimpses the Golden Goose inside the castle. The bird could be thought of as a symbol a hidden entity the beating heart of capitalism. Within its body houses the means to unlimited capital - in such an excessive form that it shrugs off mind-boggling fortunes every time it lays a golden egg. The later of which has the power to transform Jack and his Mothers hard life 100 times over.
As a consequence we can read 'Jack in the bean stalk' as a capitalist story about the struggle to profit against the structured labour network, that enforces our exploitation and alienation, punishable by death. The cow signifies the modest security that must be sacrificed in order to possibly profit, however the buy in afforded by the sacrifices of assets into the market does not guarantee anything. Only after intensive struggle, time consuming work and finally resorting to theft does Jack come out on top of above societies financial structures of Capitalism. Perched high in the sky not dissimilar to Marx's superstructure the castle atop the beanstalk offers death and salvation.
What becomes abundantly clear is the mystification and confusion surrounding capitalism in Jack and the Beanstalk highlighted by the death of the golden goose. Once the goose is dead the unobtainable object of unadulterated wealth our deepest desire becomes hidden, surrounded by the human network of work relations, the void of primal capital lost sheds light on human labour relations that persist. Once there is no direct means to accessing capital in its liquid form the everyone becomes reduced back down to more humble social relations. Although the golden eggs remain, they are small objects of comprehendible human wealth, finite not infinite, that one could easily enjoy and have great affects but is limited, insignificant, lacking in reproductive quailties. To own the goose is to have it all, this possibility is really an impossibility as it undermines the way in wealth is structured throughout the human world. For what would property or intellectual rights matter if one entity had the means to own everything in the world, whether it not they actually did. The goose must die, so the myth surrounding it, the exploited human network, typified by Jack lives on. The tale of Jack and Beanstalk has its origins in the one true struggle the battle of human beings against their oppressors; labour versus capital.
Moss Bioletti
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