Capitalism in Six Westerns by John Ford

Abstract

The economic and institutional analysis of capitalism can be illustrated through John Ford's Westerns. This article focuses on six classics by Ford that show the move toward modern order, the creation of a new society, and the rule of law. Economic features are pervading, from property rights and contracts to markets, money, and trade. Ford has been depicted as a radical critic of capitalism, but his views prove to be more subtle, and they present the ingredients of capitalism in a prepolitical world, a world with private settlers aiming to build new communities in a hostile environment, frequently with no political institutions apart from the Army and where civil society—or pre–civil society—dominated.

Keywords:

• capitalism
• economic institutions
• property rights
• U.S. history

JEL Codes:

• A20
• O43
• P10

Acknowledgments

The author thanks the organizers and participants of the Liberty Fund meeting on the American West in Buenos Aires in December 2001, who inspired this article. He also was inspired by the comments of Isabel Gómez-Acebo, Luis Perdices de Blas, Manuel Santos Redondo, and Fernando Méndez Ibisate, and he is grateful to the editor and the anonymous referees for their helpful suggestions.

Notes

1. A list of characters and actors for each movie can be found, for example, in Gallagher 1986.

2. Sickels (2008, 142–43) links Stagecoach (1939) to F. J. Turner's frontier thesis, and it is perhaps easier to see wealth creation as a positive-sum game in such circumstances.

3. Grundmann (2008, 192, 195) notes that the initial refusal of Wyatt Earp to sell his cattle to the Clantons is due to the offer's being below market. Oddly enough, Grundmann says that the evil Clantons are “business men skilled in market economics,” a skill he does not recognize in the honest Earps.