Kenneth Galbraith - The Age of Uncertainty

The Age

of Uncertainty

Books By John Kenneth CMlhraith

American Capitalism: The Concept

A

of Countervailing

Tlieorv- of Price Control

Economics and the Art

The Great

of Controversy

Crash, 1929

The

Affluent Society

The

Liberal

Hour

Economic Development

The Scotch

The New

Industrial State

The Triumph Indian Painting {with Mohindcr Singh Randhawa)

Ambassador s Journal Economics, Pt'ace and Laughter

A C-hina

Passage

Economics and the Public Pur[)ose

Money: Whence

It

Came, Where

The Age of Uncertainty

It

Went

Power

The Age

of Uncertainty

John Kenneth

Galbraith

Houghton Boston

Mifflin

1977

Company

For Adrian Malone With admiration and gratitude

Copyright in 1977 by John Kenneth Galbraith All rights reserved.

No

part of this

work may be reproduced or transmitted

any form by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. in

Library of Congress Cataloging in PubUcation Data Galbraith,

The age

John Kenneth, 1908-

of uncertainty.

Based on a

BBC

television series scheduled for release

in 1977.

Includes index. 1.

Economics

I.

Title.

—History.

HB75. G27 330' .09 ISBN 0-395-24900-7

2.

Economic

history.

76-26965

Printed in the United States of America

W

10

987654321

A portion of this book has appeared in Horizon

Foreword On The Age

of Uncertainty

7

1.

The Prophets and Promise

2.

The Manners and Morals

3.

The Dissent

4.

The Colonial Idea

5.

Lenin and the Great Ungluing

6.

The Rise and

7.

The Mandarin Revolution

8.

The Fatal Competition

9.

The Big Corporation

of Classical Capitalism

of

Marx

of Karl

High Capitalism 77

109

Fall of

Money

133

161

197

227 257

10.

Land and People

11.

The Metropolis

12.

Democracy, Leadership, Commitment

280 303

A Major Word of Thanks Notes

345

List of Illustrations

Index

355

349

343

324

11

43

Foreword On The Age

One summer day

of Uncertainty

in 1973, as

thing otherwise occupying

of the

BBC

in

London.

the great Watergate uncover-up

ni}'

mind,

He w anted

received a

1

know

to

if I

call

v\'ouId

do a

on some unspecified aspect of the history of economic or

The

call

came

at

was the only

from Adrian Malone tele\'ision series

social ideas.

an exceptionally opportune moment

for

me. Harvard

professors are required by a custom thai must reach back to the Pilgrims to

how deeply most

tell

they are in love with their teaching. Even those whose boredom

visibly reciprocated b\' their

is

minuscule classes speak feelingK' at the

The

Faculty Club of the depth of their devotion to this duty.

perpetration

had been finding increasingh' difficult. Once or tw ice I had caught myself looking at the ranks of eager young faces with mild revulsion. A terrible thing. I was thinking of retiring. Why not do so and tr> the \ ast, impersonal of this fraud

I

audience of television? There was,

I

had been

told,

no chance that you could

What if a man dozed, a couple left? It had been a hard da\ love had its claims, and anyhow I wouldn't know After less than decent hesitation, I accepted. I sat down with the men Adrian Malone, Dick Gilling, Mick Jackson, David Kennard who w ere, for the next three years, hear the sets clicking

off.

,

.

—

—

to

be

my

We

constant and truly esteemed companions in the enterprise.

settled early on the title

sounded well:

it

did not confine

would contrast the great

"The Age of Lfncertainty for the series. It thought; and it suggested the basic theme: we "

certainties in

economic thought

in

the last centur\

with the great uncertaint\ with w hich problems are faced in our time. In the last

century capitalists were certain of the success of capitalism, socialists of ruling classes knew they were now survives. Given the dismaying problems mankind now faces, it would surely be odd if it did.

socialism, imperialists ot colonialism,

meant

complexity of the

As our far

and the

to rule. Little of this certainty

di.scussions continued, a further

theme emerged.

from novel thought that ideas are important not onl\

also for explaining or interpreting social behavior.

The

It

began with the

for

themselves but

ruling ideas of the time

are those by which people and governments are guided. Thus thc\ help to

shape history

itself.

What men

believe about the

pou er

of the market or the

dangers of the state has a bearing on the laws they enact or do not enact

what thev ask of the government

or entrust to

market

— on

forces. So our treatment

On The Age of Uncertainty of ideas would

fall

very roughly into two parts:

then their consequences.

impact of their systems history of

Adam

First,

the

First,

men and

the ideas,

Smith, Ricardo and Malthus, then the

and the

in Britain, Ireland

economic ideas, then the economic

New

World.

First, the

history.

This would be the division within the early programs as in the early chapters oi this

hook. But

certain time stitutions.

it

would

we would

The

last of

Keynes. That does not that those

who

also

shift

be the sequence from

men

in

the task as a whole. After a

consequences, from ideas to

to

the great figures in economics with which

I

mean

it is

that

he

is

the last to deserve mention;

followed were liorn too

should weep. Television

here to

is

late.

in-

deal

is

only

Neither they nor their friends

stay. Ideas

and the resulting

were the two building blocks from which the

series,

and

this

institutions

book, were

constructed, and both have their claim.

An

enterprise for television such as this lends itself to an obvious and easy

The substance would be mine; the presentation would belong m> colleagues of the BBC. Had this division been pressed, the results would

specialization. to

surely have been sad. Effective presentation

—

intelligent planning, the

search for the relevant scenes, the photography and direction possible

if

m\

— was only

colleagues immersed themselves deeply and professionally in

the ideas. This they did.

And

in

doing

so,

they greatly influenced

my thinking,

to my information. The benefits carry over into this book. In was generally less important, I suggested subjects and locations for pictures and occasionally how something might be given visual meaning. My association with the BBC did not end with producers and directors. The British Broadcasting Corporation, as everyone must know, is a very great organization. In the world of responsible television there are the BBC and some others. Its genius lies in the quality of the people it attracts and also in the feeling of everyone the talented cameramen, sound men, lighting men,

added greatly turn,

though

it

—

production assistants,

stall

persons

— that they have a deeply shared

re-

sponsiI)ility for the product.

who

Television, every author

encounters

it

realizes,

is

very different from

writing. The discipline of time is relentless. An hour on Karl Marx may seem to some viewers very long; in relation to his long, intense, varied and prodigiously active life it is onh a minute. The problem is not simplification; one can state a central point briefly and with accuracy and clarity, and one must expect to be held to accoimt if he does not. The discipline of time manifests itself in

the need to select

—

to

concentrate on the main points and to choose

even between these. And what the author no one should claim that what he chooses Karl Marx, Lenin or John

8

selects will

to say

Maynard Keynes

about

be intensely personal;

Adam

Smith, Ricardo,

or even the selection of these in

p*

On The Age of Uncertainty preference to others reflects an immutable and objective wisdom. In

one cannot be comprehensive. One can onl\ hope

The test one must propose with

considered.

— those who,

his critics

is

deep perception

—

reasonably

is

and

tact to

is

combine warm and whether he has added some-

accurate to knowledge.

In a television program, part of the story

the words.

his selection

available diplomacy

in the tradition ot their craft,

unfailing generosity with

thing that

all

telex ision

No one

\\

is

carried by the pictures, part b\

ould think of publishing a book containing the pictures

without the words, although such a proposition should be advanced cautiously.

These are days when publishers

will publish

no one should publish the w ords as written television script

is

almost anything. Similarly

for the screen.

A motion picture or

a mutilated thing, a form without a face.

It

must

also

be

written in the knowledge that the viewer has only one chance. Perhaps for

programs such as

this

there should, on

instant replay at the viewer in contrast,

s

assumes that the reader

back to see again what the author In preparing the series,

difficult points,

But there

discretion.

I first

is

will,

isn't.

be provision

The w riter

on occasion, allow

his

for

an

of a book,

eye

to tra\el

saying or trying to say.

wrote careful essays on each of the subjects

be covered. These were the basic material from w liich the television scripts were developed. From the original essays, amended by the scripts, I then wrote

to

the book.

On numerous occasions it goes be\ ond the ideas or e\ ents covered in

the television programs. Happily one does not ha\'c to limit a chapter to

can be read

in

an hour

trate the story.

— not

yet.

There are pictures here but the\ are

The words w ere w ritten

three years with the

BBC

witli

to stand alone.

an enhanced respect

wish to believe that the printed w ord

is

I

what

to illus-

emerged from m\

for tele\ ision.

obsolete or obsolescent.

But

I

do not

1.

The Prophets and Promise of

On one Keynes

Classical

of the last pages of his last

and most famous book John Maynard

— by wide agreement the most

observed that

".

.

.

Capitahsm

influential

economist of this centur\

the ideas of economists and political philosophers.

—

l:)oth

when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of

some defunct economist." This was written

in 1935.

'

Thinking then of the oratory of Adolf Hitler, Joseph Goebbels and Julius

was at the time in full tide, and of Alfred Rosenberg and Houston Stewart Chamberlain from whose writings they drev\' their racial doctrines, he added: "Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frcnz> from some academic scribbler of a few years back."Streicher which

Then came

his affirmation;

"... the power of vested interests

is

vastly

exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas. "^

Keynes provides the case capitalism

sequence. Presumably This

is

for looking at the ideas that interpret

— or modern socialism — and which guide our actions

so

we

should

know by what we

even though Keynes overstated

decisions are influenced not onl\ by ideas

They are of

discussion

the right or ol the

or of socialism.

the

same

For

in

and by vested economic

action on

all

— or on

who

all

ence between what conservatives,

The

is

affairs

interest.

severe. In

indi\idual

is

We do not see that, very often, circumstances close in and force are concerned to survive. If one must

ment

order to prove competence in economic management, there

Also

con-

or conser\'ativc, an exponent of free enterprise

stop air pollution in order to breathe or prevent unemplo\

do.

economic

we think it greatly important w hether an

lelt, lil)eral

in

are governed.

his point.

also subject to the tyranny of circumstance. This, too,

dail\- political

modern

liberals or social

or inflation in

isn't

democrats

much

will

differ-

be forced

to

choices are regrettably few.

we had

interest.

best not close our eyes too completely to the idea of vested

People have an enduring tendency

u hat they want

to have, .^nd their

serve such purpose. Ideas

may be

to protect

tendenc\

is

to

what they have, justifv

see as

rigiit

superior to vested interest.

the ideas that

They are

also

verv often the children of vested interest.

11

The Prophets and Promise

The Source The ideas that

of Classical Capitalism

interpret

modern economic hfe took form over a long span

time, as did the economic institutions that they seek to explain. But there

convenient and

in

is

a

generally agreed point at which one can begin. In the last half

of the eighteenth century, economic

elsewhere

of

life in

Western Europe and soon

also in

Britain,

and

in lesser

measure

New England, was transformed

bv a succession of mechanical inventions. These were the steam engine and a series of remarkable innovations in textile manufacturing; the flying shuttle (which came early) was followed by the spinning jenny, water frame, spinning

mule and power loom. Clothing was

(as

it

remains) a major service to osten-

by the rich, an indispensable utilit\ for the poor. The hand-spinning and weaving of cloth were infinitely tedious, costly processes; the purchase ot a coat bv an average citizen was an action comparable in modern times to the purchase of an automobile or even a house. The new machines took the manufacture of cloth out of the household and into the mills and

tation

made

the product cheap

— an item

oi

mass consumption.

With the textile revolution went a more general instinct h)r technical change and a vast confidence and pride in its results. It was something like the great burst of confidence in technology and its wonders that followed World War II. With the Industrial Revolution went yet another in economic thought. an These ideas had a sense of the world to come but they were also deeply influenced by the world that liad always been. That important point was overwhelmingly the world of agriculture. Nor could it have been otherwise. LIntil then economic life, a tiny minority of the privileged apart, had

—

—

—

food, meant supplying one's self and one's family with only three things clothing and shelter. And all of these came from the land. Food, of course, did. So did skins, wool and vegetable fibers. And houses, such as they were, came

from the nearby

and

in

many

forest,

quarry or brick

kiln. Until

countries for a long time thereafter,

the Industrial Revolution, all

economics was agricul-

tural economics.

The Landscape Economists have recurrently tried to depict the economic system for the layman as a machine. Raw materials arc fed into it; the workers turn it; the capitalist

owns

it;

the state, the landlords, the capitalists and workers share

product, usually in an egregiously unequal way.

One might have

its

a better

impression by thinking of the economic world as a landscape. Before the

was overwhelmingly rural. The workers w ere mostly employed in agriculture. Income and power, two things that ha\ e usualK gone together, were indicated by the size and magnificence ol the dwellings in which people lived; those of the farm laborers were many and mean. The Industrial Revolution,

12

it

The Founder

abundance of this labor and the

relative scarcity of land favored the landlord.

So did tradition, social position, law and education.

The house

of the landlord

reflected this privileged status.

Exercising a further and major claim on both landlord and worker state.

Power ran from the

was the

ruler to the landlord, from the landlord to the rural

worker. As power flowed down, income extracted thereby flowed up. rule

worth having

power but

in

in

It's

a

mind. Income almost always flows along the same axis as

the opposite direction.

Neither the power of the state nor that of the landowners was plenary. In England by the time of the Industrial Revolution, by the workings of law and custom, tenant farmers and even farm workers had acquired certain minimal defenses against the power of their landlords. There were rules governing

compensation and expulsion that had to be respected. And at Runnymede in 1215, a great convocation had combined an historic commitment to human liberty with an even more immediate concern for the rights properly their

appurtenant to real estate. In consequence, the position of the large landowners had been substantially protected against the incursions of the King.

who worked were far less well protected from their landlords; both landless and landed were far more vulnerable to the ever more insistent claims of the King. So it was in most of the rest of Europe, and increasingly it was so as one moved east and to Asia. In India in the distant domain of the Moghuls to whose England, however, was an advanced case. In France the peasants

the land

—

gorgeous courts

more

in

the seventeenth century artistically and architecturally

primitive Europeans had begun finding their

considered to be

Moghul

owned

in

the

manner

way

—

all

land was

of one great plantation by the Great

himself.

The Founder It

would be

reckless,

maybe

in these

an ethnic theory of economists.

days even a

All races

trifle dangerous, to propose have produced notable economists,

with the exception of the Irish who doubtless can protest their devotion to higher arts.'' But in relation to population no one can question the eminence of

may be called. (Only in the last century did whisky name.) The only truly distinguished competition is

the Scotch, as properly they

wholly pre-empt our

from the Jews.

The

greatest of

Scotchmen was the

first

economist,

Adam

Smith. Econ-

omists do not have a great reputation for agreeing with one another

one thing there Smith.

He was

is

wide agreement.

anyhow

If

— but on

economics has a founding father,

it is

town of Kirkcaldy on the north side of the Firth of Forth in 1723. The father of the man whose name would ever after be linked with freedom of trade was a customs official. born, or

baptized, in the small port

13

The Founder

:

Adam Smith as professor.

The Founder

is remembered vvarniK hut a trifle erraticalh in his native town. In went for se\eral golden da\ s to Scotland to help celebrate the 250th anniversary of Smith's birth. It was June; \\ lien it docs not rain, there is no countryside in all the world more tranquil and lovely than that around Edinburgh and across the Firth of Forth. But in the last century Kirkcaldy became

Smith

1973,

I

the linoleum capital of the world; the industry has since declined but enough

remains to project a particularh horrid smell. The

air was better in Smith's As visitors, we were housed on the golf courses of St. Andrews some twenty miles awa\ One da\ I rode to the celebrations with a Kirkcakh cab

time.

.

and James Callaghan, pre\iousl\ Chancellor of the Exchequer, as of this writing Prime Minister, and a friend. "I expect," Jim said to our dri\ er as we were on our wa> "that you're prett>' proud hereabouts of being from the same town as Adam Smith? You know a good deal about him, I suppose?" driver

,

"Yessir, yessir," said the dri\'er.

"The founder of the Labour

Part\

,

I

alw ays

heard.

Smith went to the good local school and on

to Balliol.

His impressions of

Oxford were adverse; he later held that the Oxford public professors, as those with a salary were called, did no work. They got their pa\ an\ wa\ so wh\

The and w omen

should the> bother.

Men

—

professors

— do

were a metaphor of

their best

when

his

economic system.

the\ reap both the rewards of

and the penalties of sloth. It was equally important that people be free to seek the work or conduct the business that would reward their efforts. What so served the individual, got him the most, then best served diligence or intelligence

the societ\'

b\'

getting

it

the most.

w ent back Edinburgh. Here also he began After Oxford, Smith

to Scotland to lecture his long friendship

notable compatriot, the philosopher Da\'id a professor at the Uni\ersity of Glasgow

.

Hume.

first

on English literature at

with his almost equalK

he was made then of moral philo-

In 1751,

of logic,

sophy. Scottish professors w ere paid parth in accordance with the students the\' attracted; Smith thought this a far better s>stem. thinking that Smith's view had application at Princeton

when

I

number of remember

I

taught there

War II. Professors who were lazy or incompetent or merelv and w ho w ere being deserted in clro\ es by their students attributed their small classes to the importance of their subject and the attendant rigor of

before World dull

their instruction.

They argued,

accordingly, that their courses should be

made

a requirement for the degree.

put,

seemed

it

to

me

with low er self-interest.

w hich he

their

argument w

as plausib]\

better that the\' be exposed to their empt\ classrooms.

Smith was also suspicious of those

subject on

Though

who

laid claim to high principle in conflict

He was greatly attracted

b\ the

American

ma\- have been instructed by his contemporar\

colonies, a ,

Benjamin

Franklin.' In one of the luminous pas.sages in Wcaltlt of Nations he observed

15

The Prophets and Promise

of Classical Capitalism

Quakers

that "the late resolution of the their

in

Pennsylvania to set at liberty

may satisfy

us that their number cannot be very great. In overcame high principle and captured Smith. He was tutor to the young Duke of Buccleuch a family which was

negro slaves,

1763, self-interest

offered a post as

then (as border.

—

possessed of a vast land acreage of indifferent quality on the

still)

The

all

"'^

post carried with

a good and secure salary and a pension at

it

the end. Smith resigned his professorship and took his young charge off to the

Continent on the Grand Tom-. In the manner of young aristocrats the young

man

evidently survived this education without any historic effect. For Smith

it

was a very grand tour indeed.

The Men of Reason The most notable

of those Smith visited lived outside Geneva, almost exactly

on the border between France and Switzerland. The archaeological ruins that once housed the financial enterprises of Mr. Bernard Cornfeld are only a few

hundred yards away. The border location was chosen in both cases for the same reason the need for international movement in advance of hostile authority. The occupant of the chateau was Fran(^ois-Marie Arouet, called

—

Voltaire.

One

pleasant aspect of this

visit

must have involved the matter of

language. Smith was having a wretched time with his French. Voltaire spoke excellent English. Voltaire always regarded

of political liberty

England as an island quite literally and freedom of thought, and he had lived there for more

than two years (1726-1729) after a brief stay

which stands on a

small, tree-covered

as appropriate to a

man

of the

Age

hill

in

the Bastille. His chateau,

on large grounds, has been described

of Reason

— perhaps,

in this respect,

something like Jefferson's Monticcllo. This may be partly imagination what is ;

certain

is

that

Voltaire

it is

the house of a

was a man

man

of affluence.

It's

a munificent dwelling.

— perhaps the man — of reason. The word

scholars often hesitate to define for fear of seeming simple.

simple, one should avoid

Where

is

one that

things are

making them complicated; there are other ways

to

display subtlety of mind. For both Smith and Voltaire reason required that one

reach conclusions not by recourse to religion, rule, prejudice or passion;

mind

and comprehensively on all the relevant and available information. Thus one made decisions. By this standard Adam Smith was also supremely a man of reason. He had a simply unlimited appetite for information. He gathered it, digested it and allow ed it to guide his thoughts. These led him into new paths, made him a pioneer. instead one brought the

to

bear

fully

The Agricultural System All of

France was

1765, he .saw, as

16

for

one

Smith a major source of information and instruction. In

still

does, the rich land, the intelligent, patient and good-

Man of Reason

:

Voltaire receives visitors

who seem

appropriately nervous.

The Prophets and Promise

of Classical Capitalism 4

hiiiiKired soil.

men

OnI\

in

wlio work

France

it

and

vvondertully varied products of the French

tlic

— vegetables, — of different regions, even different a

cjuaHty of the farm products

is tlic

cheese, wine needless to say

fruit,

villages,

major topic of interest and concern and also of scholarly dispute. At the time of

Smiths odyssey, the

agricultural faith of

France was

at

peak.

its

reflected in the ideas of a fascinating group of economic philosophers

It

was

known

in

the histor\ of economic thought as the Physiocrats. Tlie Physiocrats held that

the

gift of

all \\ ealtli

originated in agriculture. Only there, as

nature, did productix e effort

\

ield a surplus

over cost. Trade and

manufacture yielded no such gain. They were necessary but they were

The

surplus produced in agriculture

—

its

"produit net"

— sustained

sterile.

all

other

was tlie basic industry, the only basic industry. There is proof here of Keynes's assertion that no economic idea is ever truly dead. For a time in my youth I served as research director for the American Farm Bureau Federation, the I)ig, conservative tarm organization, farmproducers. Agricultiu-c

supply cooperative and

hum

December our members met voice of physiocrac\'

rang through the silent.

When

message

in

,

then at the height of

halls.

I

power. Each

is

the soiuce of

all

wrote some of the speeches. And the voice

campaign

ot physiocrac\ ma\' is

its

con\ention. In the cla\s that followed, the

— the claim that agriculture

i:)oliticians

industry; the farmer

lobb\

the

still

h)r the

feeds

is

them

my

friends,

is

—

not yet

tew tarm votes that remain,

be heard. '"Yours,

man who

wealth

tlie

the basic

all."

Smith met the Physiocrats at Paris and Versailles. The one who impressed him most and the most original of mind w as Francois Quesnay, the physician, no less, to Louis XV. Quesnay was the friend of Madame de Pompadour, and she was his patron at the court. Like UKJst people without adequate occupation, the denizens ot Versailles

were alwa\s open to ingenious no\elt\ The French countryside was later glorified by Marie Antoinette's model \illage, Le Hameau, which can still be seen. The French rural econom\ was celebrated with similar ingenuit\ by Quesnay's famous Tableau Economiqiic. The Tableau was an effort to show in quantitative terms the relationships of the principal parts of the economic to show how much product farmers, landlords, merchants received system from each other and how much income they passed back to each other in .

—

return.

For a long lime after Quesna\ scholars dismissed the Tableau as an arithmetical curiosilx'; seriously than

it

was another l^iench novelty, not

Marie Antoinette's

village.

Adam

to

be taken more

Smith had something

to

do

with the rejection. His authoril\ was great, and he thought economic scholarship

was good only

if

clearly usefid, a terrifying thought for

omists. For Quesnay's calculations he saw

18

no particular

use.

modern econ-

Physician, Physiocrat: This

is

Francois Quesnay, physician to Louis XV, pioneer in

quantitative economic relationships. His Tableau Economique, showing

how income flows

through the economic system. -^t:lI.\•

cr"'

'-^c^^V'-

-i

-i

........

•*^

tjli^u^ »>.«U. iO.'-*-

iJEJ^tf^S-'^iS^

,-2:

A cottage in Marie Antoinette's Le Hameau at Versailles. In France agriculture was always both an industry and an art form.

The Prophets and Promise of

But

in

Classical Capitalism

time Quesnay was redeemed. In 1973, Wassily Leontief, then of

Har\ard, received the Nobel Prize for called the input-output system.

table

,

what each industry

The

(really

his interindustry analysis, usually

interindustry analysis shows in one great

each industrial category)

from every other industry. Once compiled,

it

sells to

and buys

becomes possible then

to cal-

culate the effect of an increase in the output of automobiles (or weapons) on

the sale of

all

other industries.

It is

an idea

in distant

but direct descent from

Dr. Quesnay.

Another of tlie Physiocrats visited by Smith was Anne Robert Jacques Turgot. With liis colleagues Tiugot believed that public expenditure and therewith the burden of taxation on enterprise or, as the Physiocrats saw it, on agriculture should be kept to a minimum. This should be done by and the "produit net"

—

—

power and function of the state. became Comptroller-General of France, and his task w as to curb the extravagance of the French court and thus to reduce the burden on limiting the

In 1774, Turgot

the "produit net."

He

failed.

risk their

A

firm rule operated against him. People of privilege will always

complete destruction rather than surrender any material part

advantage. Intellectual myopia, often called stupidity,

But the privileged

seem

feel also that their privileges,

to others, are a solemn, basic,

to injustice

is

a trivial thing

Ancien Regime.

When

God-given

compared with

relorm irom

tJie

is

however egregious they may

right.

The sensitivity of the poor

that of the rich. So

top

ol their

no doubt a reason.

became

it

was

in the

impossible, revolution

from the bottom became inevitable.

The Wealth

of Nations

Long before Turgot was dismissed. Smith had taken the lessons of his travel back to Scotland. He was at work on his great book, and his friends had come to wonder if he would ever finish it. It was thought that he might be one of that great company of scholars, famous in the better universities to this day, which makes work on a forthcoming book (and conversation on its rigor and high .scholarK merit) a substitute for ever publishing

it.

was innm-diate. and the first printing of An Iiuiuinj into llie Nature and Causes oj the Wealth of Nations sold out in six montlis, a fact which would be more interesting it we knew the size of tiie printing. Distributed through, and sometimes all but lost in, the vast array of information which the book contained was the great thought that may well have originated with observing the Oxford professors. Eventually, in 1776,

lie

did publisli

it;

the acclaim

The wealth of a nation results from the diligent pursuit by each of its citizens ot his own interests when he reaps the resulting reward or suiters any resulting penalties. In serving his own interests, the individual serves the

—

22

Pins and the Division of Labor

public interest. In Smith's greatest phrase, he

is

guided to do so as though b\ an

unseen hand. Better the unseen hand than the

visible, inept

and predacious

hand These too are ideas that have li\ed in oratory. Let businessmen meet now anywhere in the nonsocialist world, and the praise of self-interest of the state.

usually modified to enlightened self-interest

—

—

also resounds.

Pins and the Division of Labor self-interest, the

Along with the pursuit of

enhanced by the

division of labor.

efficiency of specialization

of the gains in efficiency

To

this

wealth

was

a nation

ot

also

— broadly speaking, the superior

— Smith attributed the greatest importance. Some

were from

specialization

by

line of business

from occupational specialization; some were from the

and some

fact that countries

Some gains were from "The greatest improvement in the

specialized in particular products or lines of trade. specialization within the industrial process.

productive powers of labour, and the greater part of the skill, dexterity, and judgment with which it is anywhere directed, or applied, seem to have been the effects of the division of labour."

Here

how Smith

is

^

described the division of labor

in his

most notable case;

he must have encountered the manufacture of and obser\'ed the process with his usual care:

in his pursuit of information

pins

One man draws out the wire, another straights it, a third cuts it, a fourth points it, a fifth grinds it make the head requires two or three distinct operations; to

at the top for receiving the head; to

put

it

them

on,

is

a pecuhar business, to whiten the pins

paper

into the

Ten men

.

ma>be twenty.

One man

It is still

attendant increase

The

even a trade by

came

itselt to

put

make 48,000 pins a would make maybe one,

in

doing

all

the operations

widely belie\'ed that the assembly

labor producti\it\

,

was

line,

with

its

the invention earl\ in the present

Henry Ford.

— and the greater the opportunity

— pins or

for the division of labor.

From

Smith's case against tariffs and other restraints on trade and for the

greatest possible freedom, national

goods, the

\\

Freedom

and international,

in

the exchange of

idest possible market.

of trade, in

its

turn, enlarged the

pursuit of his self-interest. His scope

From

it is

larger the market, the longer could be the production runs

whatever this

another;

.

so dividing the labor. Smith calculated, could

day, 4800 apiece.

centur\ of

is

^ .

freedom of the individual

became not

the combination of freedom of trade and freedom of enterprise

yet larger production of

what was most wanted

in the

national but international.

— the most

fa\

came

a

orable social

result.

23

Many believe the assembly line was invented one that assembled

pins.

by Henry Ford. Diderot's Encyclopaedia shows

25

The Prophets and Promise of

Classical Capitalism

Combinations and Corporations

enemy

—

the interventionist, was the state mercantihst government which imposed tariffs, granted monopohes, burdened with taxes and, above all, sought to improve what, left to itself, was

The

ancient

best.

of these freedoms

But the state was not the only threat, as almost

all

who

Smith

cite

in

modern times imagine. Businessmen were a major menace to their own freedom; their invariant instinct was to impose restraints upon themselves, and from this came another of Adam Smith's very trenchant observations: "People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in

some contrivance

to raise prices."'

Smith made another great point, which business oratory. In fact,

opposed

to joint-stock

to prevail

come

companies, ".

holders of these he said: of the business of the

will

it

.

to

now

is

also uncelebrated in

many

modern

he was deeply

Of

called corporations.

the stock-

[They] seldom pretend to understand anything

.

company; and when the

among them,

as a shock:

happens not

spirit of faction

give themselves no trouble about

but receive

it,

contentedly such half-yearly or yearly dividend, as the directors think proper to

.

.

make .

to

them."'"

And

of directors he added:

being the manager.s rather

of

in a private

money than

other people's

e.xpected that they should watch o\ or

it

of their own,

cannot well be

it

with the same anxious vigilance with which the partners

copartnery frequently watch over their own. Like the stewards

of a rich

man, they

are apt to consider attention to small matters as not for their master's honour, and \er> easily give themselves a dispensation from having prevail,

more

or less, in the

exclusive privilege

.

.

.

management

[joint-stock

exclusive privilege they have both It

is

too bad that a

of

Negligence and profusion, therefore, must

it.

the affairs of such a

compan\

.

.

.

Without an

companies] have commonly mismanaged the trade. With an

mismanaged and confined

visit

by

Adam

'

it.

Smith cannot be arranged to some

Chamber

Commerce, the National Association of Manufactiuers, the first merged meeting of the two or a gathering of the Confederation ol British Industries. He would be astonished forthcoming meeting of the United States

to

hear heads of great corporations

of

— or greater conglomerates or combines —

proclaiming their economic virtue in his name. They, in their turn, would be appalled

when he

— of

all

prophets

— told them their enterprises sliould not

exist.

The Clearances

Adam

Smith died

Commissioner

ot

in

1790, his last years

(Xistoms

in

approved, involving customs duties

was 26

far too practical to refuse.

made

pleasant by his being the

Edinburgh. This was a sinecure of uhich he ol

which

lie

dis-

disappro\ed, but again he

He lies in a small burial ground just off the Royal

The Clearances

Mile in Edinbi.irou could actualK see.

People everywhere were being drawn from the country \illages to the

towns and

to jobs in the mills. In

Scotland they were also being abruptly

expelled from the countryside in consequence of the rising principal industrial material

The most

demand

for the

which was wool.

spectacular example of this expulsion was in Sutherland. This, the

northernmost of Scottish counties,

is

a

\'ast

expanse of

rolling uplands; hori-

makes up an appreciable part of the whole land area of Scotland. In summer it is green, lonesome and loveh', with the muted lighting of the far north. I was reminded, visiting there in the summer of 1975, of a comment of the late Richard Grossman: "No American realU' understands how much \acant space there is in Britain." At the beginning of the last century around t\\ o thirds of tliis particular space was owned by the Countess of Sutherland and her husband, the Marquis of Stafford. Between 1811 and 1820, by common estimate they cleared some 15,000 Highlanders from their estates to make room for sheep. The Naver is a narrow black stream that runs north through the county for some thirty or forty miles to come out near Pentland Firth, some fifty miles west of Scapa Flow Its thin and meager valley was then densely populated. Almost all the people were zontally

and

verticalh'

it

.

dispossessed.

May

assumed the definitive aspects of a final solution. In March the tenants had been given two months' notice to get out. But they were still around, tor they had no place else to go. So the agents of the laird moved in with fire and dogs. They were especially careful to burn the roof timbers of the houses, for that meant, At Strathnaver

(as

elsewhere) in

in this treeless land, that the

A few

1814, the operation

houses could not be rebuilt, the people could not

was later held, were burned without taking the precaution of evacuating the more aged and enfeebled inhabitants. The sheep that took the place of the people returned far more revenue to the landlords b\ a further estimate about three times as much. They had another ad\antage to the laird. The Che\'iots moving over the hills were return.

houses,

it

—

thought to do distinctly more for the landscape than the Highlanders.

have been

It

could

so.

27

"No American really understands how much vacant space there The Clearances helped create this void.

Sutherland.

is

in Britain."

A Model TextUe Town Though

cruel, the

development that

Clearances

brilliantly illustrated a

persists unsolved to the present time.

such a bad relationship between people and land usable land

— that development

is

impossible.

problem It is

economic

in

possible to have

— so many people, so

Even the best

result,

little

given the

number of people, is still bad. There is an equilibrium of poverty. So it is in much of India and in Bangladesh, Indonesia and other densely populated countries. No more land can be had. The Highland technique for reducing the population is no longer recommended. Birth control lends itself well to speeches but only slowly, when at all, to results. This is a problem to which I

will return.

A Model Textile Town By 1815

or 1820, there

were

factories, textile mills in particular,

principle, the dispossessed tenants could find jobs.

where,

did not take easily to the rhythm of the machine. Their stronger instinct to migrate,

new

most often

Scotland.

Women

material, though

it

to

Canada. Nova Scotia was

and children

was thought well

in

But the male Highlanders in fact, as in

were better and more

was

name, the

pliable industrial

to start the children young.

New Lanark, a half hour or so south and east of Glasgow in a deep valley by the Clyde

— the water of a lovely

most famous experiment

falls

turned the mills

in using children in industry.

— was the scene of the To

this

day the name.

New Lanark, is associated in many people's minds, perhaps a bit vaguely, with The

stern,

and the houses and dormisurvive unchanged.

The New Lanark experiment was

initiated in the closing years of the

enlightened humanitarian experiment. tories for the workers, erect

and

mills

eighteenth century by David Dale, a noted Scottish capitalist and philanthro-

Bank of Scotland. Dale's compassionate thought was to go to the orphanages of Glasgow and Edinburgh to rescue the miserable youngsters and give them both schooling and useful work. The cities, more than incidentally, would be relieved of the cost of their keep. New Lanark became the largest cotton mill in Scotland. pist

whose

face in recent years has graced the notes of the

David Dale. \

ROYAL BANK OF SCOTLAND

FIVE

"Mji:'

POUNDS

The Prophets and Promise

of Classical Capitalism

Once two thousand workers has

now

of

all

ages were employed.

the town

a population of eighty.

The atmosphere was given an hour and

work

ethic

Each

of the highest moral tone.

of the

a half of rigorous schooling each day.

recognized that the mills must also return a as the

What was

had

to

what

profit;

is

orphans was

However,

it

was

now commended

be protected and encouraged. So the schooling was

in

the evening after a good, honest, thirtcen-hom^ day in the mills.

No one should be too shocked. By the standards of the time New Lanark was a place of compassion and culture, the case after 1799,

when

if

not exactly of

rest.

Dale's son-in-law, Robert

This was even more

Owen,

took over.

Owen

was a philosopher, Utopian socialist, religious skeptic and spiritualist. Reformers now came from all over Europe to visit New Lanark, to see for themselves this proof that industry could have a humane face. Under Owen, the Institution for the Eormalion of Character was built. It offered lectures for adults, singing

and other recreation

for the orphans, a nursery school for the

very young. Public houses were closed and alcohol banned. In time, the work

and a half hours, and children under twelve were never employed. It's an indication of how things were elsewhere that this was considered lenient. Because of his compassion Owen was always in trouble with his partners. They would have much preferred a tough, down-

day

for the children

to-earth

was reduced

to ten

manager w ho would get a day's work out

ol

the

bastards.

little

The Indiana Footnote

New

Lanark didn't

wiiolly satisfy the Utopian vision of

Owen. So

there was a

was New Wabash. Here Owen sought to make a completely fresh beginning; the new communit\ would ha\ e no accjuisitive genesis, no continuing capitalist taint. Its principle would be not Smith's self-interest but the far greater ideal of

Harmony, Indiana, a cooperative elysium on the banks

sequel; this of the

service to others. Idealists did

more than

come

lo

New Harmony,

although the population was never

a lew hundred. So did an historic collation ol misfits, misanthropes

and free-loaders. Once there, they devoted themselves not

to service but,

more or less exclusively, to argmnent. While the discussions continued, so it was said, the pigs inxaded the gardens. Harmony being lost. New Harmon\ failed. Free enterprise, the pursuit of self-interest, was thus sa\ed in Indiana. It is my imhappy obser\ation that idealists, including liberal reformers in our

own

time, are frequcnlK less endangered by their enemies than by their

preference for argument. Their righteous feeling, very often, thing should be sacrificed to a good finish

30

over who,

if

anxone,

is

to

be

row over

in cliarge.

first

is

that e\ery-

principles or a fight to the

Building character at

New Lanark. Owen's Institution for the Formation of Character in

operation after ten and a half hours in the mills.

The

mills today. Spare, silent, beautiful.

The Prophets and Promise

*

of Classical Capitalism

Ricardo and Malthus If New Harmony was not in accordance with Smith's instruction, Britain was. A few months after Smith's death his position as a prophet was officially proclaimed. In a budget speech Pitt said of him that his "extensive knowledge and depth of philosophical research

of detail

will,

I

believe, furnish the best

commerce and with An economist could ask no more than that.

solution of every question connected with the history of

the system of political economy.

None

" "^

'

had such a courageous endorsement. Adam Smith offered more than counsel on public affairs. He offered what a view of how the economic would today be called an economic model since in the nonsocialist world has

—

system works. Competition caused prices to be set cost of production.

The

cost of production of

in

an item,

rough accord with the in turn,

reproducing, rearing and sustaining the labor that went into

was the

cost of

it.

Here were the germs of two ideas which were to grow and shape men's thought and which still do. One was the labor theory of value. The other was that mankind would tend always to fall victim to its own fecundity the

—

—

never-to-be-rcprcssed population explosion. In the twenty-five years following

taken up Ricardo

in is

Adam

Smith's death, both ideas were

London by two close friends, David Ricardo and Thomas Malthus. Smith's only serious contender for the

title

of founding father of

economics; with him the great ethnic rivals of the Scotch arrive. Ricardo was Jewish.

He was

a stockbroker, a

member

of Parliament, a

mind and terrible obscurity of clergyman, was English. Malthus, for

much

of his

life,

man

of superb

prose. Malthus, a nonpracticing

clarity of

taught at Haileybury

— the

staff college, as

we

would now call it, of the East India Company. In the last century the East India Company was the source of income for Britain's greatest economists besides Malthus, James Mill and liis prodigious and luminous son, John Stuart Mill. None of them, it is interesting to note, was ever on the subcontinent, and this was not thought to be a handicap. James Mill produced a highly regarded history of the British in India. It included a devastating critique of the Hindu epics, which he deeply disliked, which he could not read in the original and which had not then been translated into English. The Mills, needless to say, were Scotch. From Malthus came the Principle of Population. This held that, given "the passion between the sexes" (a most damaging thing that he sometimes thought might be subject to "moral restraint" and against which he suggested ministers might warn at marriage), population would always increase in geometric ratio 2, 4, 8, 16 and so on. Meanwhile, at best, the food supply would

—

—

increase only arithmetically result: In the likely

—

2, 3, 4, 5.

absence of moral

.

.

From

this

came

restraint, population

the inevitable

would be subject

^^^

The Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus.

The Ricardian View

only to the recurrent and ghastly checks imposed by famine or by natural catastrophe.

Adam

war

or

Smith, reflecting on the rewards from the freedom

and the

of trade, the resulting pursuit of self-interest

generally optimistic view of

Nor was was with Malthus and Ricardo that

prospects for man. Not Malthus.

tlie

David Ricardo ever thought an

had a

division of labor,

optimist.

It

economics became the dismal science.

The Ricardian View Equally with his friend, Da\'id Ricardo foresaw a continuing increase population, and Malthus

s

became Ricardo's workers. Among the work on the one hand and for the food would be reduced to bare subsistence. It was man's population

workers would be such competition supply on the other that

all

in

for

fate.

In an "improving society" this fate might be postponed, and, as a moment's

thought

will suggest, in the

qualification.

England of the nineteenth century

this

But Ricardo's qualifications never caught up with

was a major his majestic

would receive the minimum This was iron law of wages. It led, among never more. the

generalizations. In the Ricardian world workers

necessary for

life,

other things, to the conclusion that not onh' was compassion wasted on the

working run. But

man but it was damaging.

It

might raise hopes and income

in the short

accelerated the population increase by which both were brought

it

down. And any effort by government or trade unions to raise wages and rescue people from poverty would similarly be in conflict witli economic law, be similarly frustrated b\ the resulting increase in numbers. Different products of farms or factories required different amounts of Ricardo's minimally nourished labor. lished the relative value of things

The amount

— again the labor theory

turn, nurtured the distinctly pregnant thought things, the

whole product belonged

by Marx half a century on, Ricardo's world

was

still

of labor required estab-

tliat,

Voiced

to labor.

in slightly different

However,

in Ricardo's s\

strongly rural.

stem

rents. In

form

proposal would shake the world.

this

By the

early decades of the nine-

teenth century, the Industrial Revolution was in the

pressure of people on land

of value. This, in

since labor set the value of

tlic

main

figure

was

still

full

the landlord.

reduced wages had the

tliat

thrust of change.

The same

effect of shoving

up

consequence, the more numerous the people, the richer were the

landlords.

They

done about

it;

fattened, their people starved. to return

some

And

again nothing could be

of the rent to the farm workers would onl\

cause their numbers to increase. In Ricardo's world the state

the continuing lesson of

ment would

Adam

was receding Smith that

not, as noted, help the poor.

it

But

in

importance and power.

It

was

should. Intervention by governit

would

limit

economic freedom

35

The Prophets and Promise of Classical Capitalism

and thus make everything worse. David his own Hghts, a cruel man. In a naturally cruel world he merely urged against contending in a futile way with the inevitable and

and the pursuit of Ricardo was not, by

self-interest

for accepting the least bad.

He

did provide the rich with a very satisfactory

formula for suffering the misfortunes of the poor.

There was a difference of opinion of much future importance between the two friends over what would happen to the handsome revenue accruing to the landlords. Ricardo held that it would either be spent or it would be saved and used for investment in land improvement, building, industrial development,

which case

it

would

also

in

He accepted a proposition made earlier by French interpreter of Adam Smith. Say's Law

be spent.

Jean Baptiste Say, the great

held that production always provided the income to buy whatever was pro-

duced.

What was saved was also spent,

only in a different way, so there could

never be a shortage of purchasing power.

On

this point

Malthus demurred. Perhaps the revenue might go unspent;

perhaps there might,

in

consequence, be a shortage of purchasing power;

perhaps, as a further consequence, the

economy would, on occasion,

falter

and

break down. There would be depressions resulting from a shortage of purchasing

power

as part of the natural order of things.

This too was a pregnant thought but

it

did not take. Ricardo's view, as

Keynes was later to say, captured Britain as the Holy Inquisition captured Spain. For the next hundred years, until the decade of the Great Depression, Say and Ricardo ruled supreme.

Men who

said there could be a shortage of

know their economics; in fact, they were considered Maynard Keynes, Malthus's idea of a shortage of purchasing power became accepted doctrine. The most urgent task of government now was to compensate for the shortage, to offset the oversaving. purchasing power did not

crackpots. Then, with John

Economics

is

not an exact science.

England and Ireland

One measure of an idea, though economists have not always thought well of it, is

whether

it

works. In the very year that Wealth of Nations was published,

1776, imperial Britain

of

its

was losing a territory of greater promise than all the

lands combined. For Britain, Smith's idea

—

I

do not exaggerate

rest

— was

more than a substitute for the American colonies. Production and trade, now far less hampered than those of other countries, expanded wonderfully. These brought to the British nation

all

the wealth that

Adam

Smith had promised.

In the wars with Napoleon, Pitt used this wealth as a highly compassionate substitute for British

manpower.

Britain's continental allies

had an abundance

of men. Britain supplied the subsidies that supported and encouraged their valor. After Waterloo, trade

36

and industry surged again. Ricardo was

also

England and Ireland

As prosperity expanded in these years, wages fell, as the Ricardian system had promised. Economists in that age were men of much prestige and \\ ith reason. more perhaps than now Their ideas, especially those of Malthus and Ricardo, had another test

affirmed.

—

—

half of the last century. That was in Ireland, in those years fulK kingdom but still John Bull's other island. The Irish test too, in its o\\ n way, was a triumphant validation. No one could doubt the tendency of the Irish population; it was increasing geometrically. Within a mere sixty years, from 1780 to 1840, it first doubled and then \ery nearly doubled again. By 1840, there were 8 million on the

during the

first

a part of the

whole

island,

compared with

4.6 million

now.

In the preceding decades Ireland's food

suppK had

There

also increased.

had been a green revolution based on the rapid expansion of the production of the potato. Nothing,

when

yields

there was a lurking peril, to be noted in a

supply

much more

many people so moment, which made

were good, fed

so

nearh' arithmetic.

Ricardian landlords were also ampK' present in Ireland

well. this

But food

— or more often

much more congenial and frequently As the Irish population expanded, so did the competition for land and so did the return that was extracted by the absentee landlords. Grain \\ as grown to pay the rent; potatoes were grown to feed the people. Even when people starved, the grain was sold and the rent was paid. Starvation might conceivably be survived. Eviction for nonpayment of the rent meant there would be nothing to live on forever. The Malthusian climax is no gradual thing. As experience in India and Bangladesh in recent times has shown, it comes suddenly when something goes wrong in those countries, the rains. In Ireland in 1845-1847, Phytophthora infestans, nurtured by the warm, moist Irish climate, first damaged absent in England which was socially

also a safer place for a landlord to live.

—

the potato crop, then eliminated blight, as in India in

much

is

it.

Much

has always been attributed to the

always attributed

to

drought or

floods.

Much more

Ireland should have been attributed to the losing race in earlier years of

food suppK' with population and the losing contest of tenant workers with landlords.

Not only were the circumstances as Ricardo and .Malthus foretold; the response of Westminster to the Irish disaster was as Ricardo would have

recommended. As now would be said, it was from the book. The Corn Laws were repealed to allow the free import of grain. Though excellent in principle, this did not help those without money to buy grain, a category that included the entire starving population.

Indian corn

—

in

the American language, corn

purpose not of feeding the hungry but of keeping

— was imported down

prices.

lor the

Low

prices

37

The Prophets and Promise

of Classical Capitalism

were also not helpful to people who had no money at all. In 1845, a program of public works was inaugurated. This was in conflict with the principle that the poor should never be helped, and in the following year, when it was greatly needed, it was abandoned. There was, it was said, no way of distinguishing between those who wanted a job in consequence of the crop failure and those who, as always in Ireland at the time, needed a job as a normal thing. The custodian of the Ricardian tablets was Charles Edward Trevelyan, assistant secretary, meaning at the time permanent head, of the Treasury. Trade, he advised, would be "paralyzed" if the government, by giving away food, interfered with the legitimate profit of private enterprise. His Chancellor,

when

Charles Wood, assured the House of Commons at a time

was severe

that every elfort

would be made

the hunger

to leave trade in grain "as

much

liberty as possible."

On few

matters in

life is

the gap so great as between a dry, antiseptic

man

and what happens to people when it is put into practice. We've seen this often enough in our own time. In a Washington office during the Vietnam war it was a protective statement of a policy by a well-spoken

reaction. In Asia

in a quiet office

was sudden, thunderous death from planes

it

could not

tliat

even be seen. Trevelyan's principles were enunciated in the old Treasury offices in Whitehall.

There they were impeccable:

In the

manner

classical

of

men

in Ireland

in cjuiet offices

economics had clearly

they meant starvation and death.

Trevelyan was content. The laws of

justified themselves. In a reflective letter in

1846, he wrote that the problem of Ireland "being altogether beyond the powers of men, the cure has been applied by the direct stroke of an all-wise Providence in a manner as unexpected and as unthought of as it is likely to be effectual."'-'

Tlicrc action,

if

is

another tendency here. That

is

for the

consequences of principled

they are very unpleasant, to be given divine .sanction. Smith's unseen

—

hand had become the hand of God the hand of a rather couldn't have had much liking for the Irish.

God who

ruthless

The Escape There was an escape hatch from the Great Hunger, the same one as Irom the Highland Clearances: tiiat was the emigrant ship to America. It wasn't an escape from death; that too was a passenger on the ships. forty miles Isle,

down

the Saint

Lawrence

Ri\ er

If

you go

from Quebec, you come

thirty or

to

Grosse

a low, half-forested sliver of land with a scattering ol decayed

decaying buildings.

It is

and

now a minor center for research on contagious animal

Department of Agriculture. In the famine years it was where the typhus-ridden ships from Ireland were required to stop to

diseases of the Canadian

38

One escape from Mai thus and the famine. This is the fever St. Lawrence where 5294 died. Cholera Bay is nearby.

hospital

on Grosse

Isle in the

The Prophets and Promise

of Classical Capitalism

A

unload their dead and dying.

shaft

tall

remembers 5294 people who

died after they arrived on the island. Nor was typhus the only hazard; the

memorial looks down on an

inlet

and beach, now deserted, not very

beautiful,

and interesting mostly for its name. It is called Cholera Bay. But there was a brighter side. Perhaps in the New World the ultimate principles articulated by Adam Smith and David Ricardo were still valid. But their setting was very different. So, accordingly, was the result.

Here land was abundant and

free. This

being

so,

it

conferred no power and

no monopoly income on the landlord. No one could much squeeze a tenant or a farm worker if, the next day, he could thumb his nose gracefulK' at his landlord or employer and leave to take up a farm of his own. In America population might multiply as Malthus said, and it did. But the need for workers increased even more. So pay did not get worse,

it

In the treeless Highlands families

burned when they were

got better.

had seen the precious roof timbers

meant they could not rebuild. In the were hacking farms from the forests. New World a few months later they Trees were now the enemy. In America the settlers regularly sought the high land where the tree grow th was the least dense. Only later did they move down to tackle tlie licavier forests on the richer valley floor. Ricardo had seen told to go. This

the pressure of population forcing settlement onto ever poorer land. Henr\-

Charles Carey, an intelligent and exceptionally voluble American economist

saw this new sequence and had the temerity to challenge the master. With increasing population and the general progress of the arts, ever better land was brought into use. He had seen it with his own of the next generation,

He

eyes.

On food

regretted that Ricardo had not.

better land or worse,

in a

some of the immigrants were soon producing more

year than their parents had seen

in a lifetime.

And

Irish construction

crews, perhaps the best celebrated of the refugees from the Great Hunger,

were building the

railroads

tliat

woidd make

this

food axailalile to the world.

Malthusian pressiuc of poi^ulalion on lood supply migration.

And

the migrants tlien solved

tlie

set in

motion the great

world's food problem, at least lor

a century. STuith,

Ricardo and Malthus might need re\ ision

in the

New

World. They

were not. Smith especially, left l)ehind. Self-interest and freedom of enterprise were a secular faith in the Old World. In the New World they emerged as religion. Fifty years after the Great Hunger tliis faith had filled a w hole continent. In 1893, the children of those who had experienced the hunger and a lew who remembered it gathered in Chicago for the great fair a festixal of celebration. Of the pessimism inherent in the ideas of Ricardo and Malthus il would liave been hard to find nuicli trace. But of tlie \irtue of the ideas of free enterprise thai w roLight this miracle there was also not much doubt.

—

40

In the

New World economics was revised by trees. Ricardo held that cultivation spread out from New World it often began with the worst on the best land more trees had

the best land. In the to be cut

down before getting at it.

—

The Prophets and Promise

of Classical Capitalism

Smith Now In the present century the world of

Some

Adam

Smith has

in the state the best

Marx and

hope

the

heavy blows.

suggested — from

Keynes more gradual

of this has been from ideas, as

olutionary onslaught of

suflFered

attack by those

for ameliorating the injustices

the inadequacies of modern capitalism. But more of the

the rev-

who

and compensating

see for

damage has been done

— the force that Keynes did not Smith's world. So We've seen that the corporation was deeply inimical — was the union something that Smith mentions mostly as he muses

by circumstances

stress.

to

also

how much more wicked combinations of workingmen are deemed to be as compared with those of merchants. War and the modern armed and over

technologically competitive

state

have also changed Smith's world,

for

governments of such a state cannot be inexpensive and small.

The

tight control of births

another change of Ricardo

— one that

and the birthrate

and Malthus. And

eroding flood of births,

it

in

the industrial countries

strikes at the very heart of Smith's

will

if

improvement

in

is

system and that

income does not bring an is no longer self-

be permanent; compassion

defeating.

But while these changes are great,

it is

hard to believe that

Adam

Smith

would have been much troubled. For his genius was less in his ideas than in his method. As we've seen, as a man of reason he informed himself as to circumstances and formed his ideas accordingly. The need to adjust to new circumstances and new information would neither have surprised nor troubled him. He would never have expected his ideas to apply in circumstances for w hich thev were not intended.

42

2.

The Manners and Morals of High Capitahsm

The ideas of nineteenth-century capitalism did not encourage the notion oi an egahtarian commonwealth. The landlords got rich; those who toiled on the land got poor, remained poor. And in time it became evident that the inbeyond the dreams of landlords

dustrial capitalists could get rich

matter, of kings. In 1900, a good year for

Andrew

or, for that

Carnegie, his steel mills

brought him $25 million. That was before inflation and before the income

By

tax.

man, had accumulated approximately $900 million, his net worth that year.' His friend and adviser, Frederick T. Gates, warned him of the terrible danger he faced: 1913, John D. Rockefeller, a self-made

Your fortune grows!

If

is

rolling up, rolling

you do

not,

it

will

up

like

an avalanche! You mu.st distribute

However, Gates exaggerated. Rockefeller's uncrushed by their

it

son's sons

seem

still

to

be largely

men employed

in the steel mills

and

remained in that wholesome poverty that meant a hard life in

world but assured an easy one

thought.

faster than

assets.

Like the tenants on the land, the refineries mostly this

it

crush \ou, and \our children, and your children's children.

in

the next. This last was not an idle

Many were so sustained, and nothing better expressed the hope than

the exuberant verse

left

behind by an English charwoman

— the legend has

it,

on her headstone: Don't mourn for me, friends, don't

weep

for

me

For I'm going

and

The

rich,

by contrast,

can be no doubt,

I

There

is

more

do nothing forever

store b\ the pleasures of this world.

money causes people

of this world in comparison with the next.

that terrible needle through

threaded before thc\ can emerge rich or a camel,

to

ever.

think, that the possession of

more favorable view strategy.

set

never.

in paradise.

It is

I

would

like to look at the

to take

also

a

sound

which the affluent must be

AccordingK

,

if

\ou are either

you should, as a pureK' practical calculation, enjoy

In this chapter

There

enjoyments of the rich

life

in

now.

the last

century and the ideas by which these were sanctified. By what moral code did

43

The Manners and Morals

How

the rich live? ideas did

High Capitahsm

of

did

men defend

it

affect the acquisition

their affluence?

and use

Remembering

diers (and certainly also old politicians), never die,

we may be

sure that these

influence our thoughts, our lives and our moral tone.

still

The Natural Selection Of all classes so

By what

of wealth?

that ideas, like old sol-

of the Affluent

the rich are the most noticed and the least studied. So

it

was, and

largely remains. In the last century compassionate scholars looked

it

thoughtfully into the conditions of the poor.

Why were they poor? Was it sloth?

Lack of ambition? Exploitation by cruel employers? Uncontrolled reproduction?

The

natural order of things? All of these explanations, especially the

had their adherents. And the way of life of the poor was also studied. How were they housed? What did they eat? What were their amusements? With a

last,

delicacy appropriate to the age,

The

rich,

how

did they breed?

by contrast, were exempt from such attention. For the Victorians

they were a proper subject of novels but not of social investigation. Poverty

was something vears ago a

East

to study; wealth,

man

London

or

woman

though exceptional, was natural. Seventy

of conscience might call on families in the slums of

how many people slept in a room. No butler would an investigator who was looking into sleeping habits in

to find out

open the door

to

Mayfair.

A

strong and even dominant current of social thought in the last centur\' set

the rich apart and held that they were, indeed, a superior caste.

the rich themselves, not then a bookish

knew they were nomics, a

little

study by a

better but not why.

through a

stroll

made

it

museum

and

These ideas depended a

adapted

superior strength, this

of natural history.

snails or the dinosaius

to the present, are the to their

Of these ideas

were often only dimly aware. They

on theology and a great deal on biology.

contrast with the slugs

strongest, best

lot,

One

little

on eco-

should begin their

The higher

primates, in

and mammoths that never

products of natural selection. Being the

environment, they survived.

same capacity

for adaptation

And

this

same

explained the

Charles Darwin explained the ascent of man. Herbert Spencer, know n

world as the great Social Darwinist, explained the ascent of the

rich.

to the

pri\ ilcged

classes.

Spencer and Sumner

The

life

of Herbert Spencer, 1820-1903, an Englishman, philosopher

pioneer sociologist, coincided almost exactly with that of Victoria. Spencer, and not to Darwin as often imagined, that "survival

but

44

ol

ol

the fittest."

we owe

and

It is

to

the phrase,

He wasspeakingnot of survival in the animal kingdom

survival in the rather

more

testing world, as Spencer saw

it,

of economic

Spencer and Sumner

and .

however,

explicit in his

debt to Darwin:

.lamsimply carrying out the views of Mr. Darwin in their applications

.

all is

He was,

social life.

to the

human race

[membersofthe race] beingsubject to the"increasing difficulty ofgettingaliving

.

.

.

.

.

."there

an average advance under the pressure, since "only those who do advance under it eventually

survive"; and

.

.

.

"these must be the select of their generation."^

Spencer was a highly

prolific writer,

deeply intellectual and exceptionally

gloomy. His numerous books were influential in England but in the United

were very

States they

little less

than divine revelation. Across the United

States in the forty years following 1860

almost before bookstores

—a

this

was before paperbacks and

reported 368,755 of his volumes were sold.

Spencer was American gospel because capitalism,

—

and especially the new

his ideas fitted the

capitalists, like the

needs of American

celebrated glove, per-

haps better.

These ideas couldn't, in fact, have been more wonderful. Never before in any country had so many been so rich or enjoyed their wealth so much. And in consequence of Spencer no one needed to feel the slightest guilt over this good fortune. It was the inevitable result of natural strength, inherent capacity to adapt. The rich man was the innocent beneficiary of his own superiority. To the enjoyment of wealth was added the almost equal enjoyment which came with the knowledge that one had it because one was better. The ideas also protected wealth. No one, and especially no government, could touch it or the methods by which it was acquired or was being enlarged. To do so would interfere with the desperately essential process by which the race was being improved. It might seem a problem for the rich that so many were so poor. This could trouble the conscience at least of the unduly sensitive. But Herbert Spencer took care of this embarrassment as well. To help the poor, either by private or public aid, also interfered disastrously with the improvement of the race. Here again one should Partly by to the

let

Spencer speak for himself:

weeding out those of lowest development and

understand the conditions of existence and be able degree

to

suspend

this discipline

by stepping

in

who remain who shall both

partly by subjecting those

never ceasing discipline of experience, nature secures the growth of a race to act

up

to them.

It is

between ignorance and

impossible in any its

consequences,

without, to a corresponding degree, suspending the progress. If to be ignorant were as safe as to

be wise, no one would become

wise.''

Charity remained something of a problem for Spencer. Obviously it acted to arrest the

wholesome weeding-out

process. But to forbid

the liberty, however misguided, of those that charity

for

it

was

to infringe

on

gave. In the end, he concluded

was bad for those who received help, it those who gave. Thus it was justified, at least for

was permissible. While

was an ennobling thing

who

it

45

:

The Manners and Morals

those

who were

of

High Capitalism

so selfish as to seek their

own ennoblement

at the

expense of

the race.

Spencer,

it

will

be evident, was a stern Messiah. Equally

stern, as well as

The most distinguished of these, was William Graham Sumner. Sumner independent and rugged mind and perhaps the most

very numerous, were his American apostles. a generation younger than Spencer,

was

a

"^'ale

professor of

influential single voice

on economic matters

in

the United States in the second

was Sumner's great task to join the ideas of Herbert half of the last century. Spencer to those of Adam Smith and Da\ id Ricardo. Sumner was an ardent Social Darw inist; he was fully as devoted as Spencer to improving the race. But he also saw in this process a more immediate amelioration tliat might help even the poor, might save them from being weeded out. For the struggle for survival was the whip on the back ot the poor. It made them work hard against all their natural inclination. It was Adam It

Smith's self-interest in the peculiarly compelling form by which the poor could

be persuaded. And the riches accruing

to the rich

caused them also

to

work

in the common interest. From the combined efforts of poor and rich came production and wealth, and these, in turn, allowed more people than otherwise to survive. Sumner too should be heard in his own words. Here is

hard

his case for tlie ricli Tln' niillidiiiurcs arc a product of natural selection. \\

caltli

— both their ov\n and that entrusted

iiiav iairK

them

.

.

It is

because

live in luxurv,

but the bargain

is

tlie\

are thus selected that

— aggregates under

he regarded as the naturally selected agents of society

wages and It

to

their

lor certain

hands

.

.

.

Thc>

work. They get high

a good one tor society.'

was a sad da\' for the man of means when he could no longer send and know that he would be so instructed.

his

son

to Yale

The Coming As Jesus came eventually

to

Jerusalem, Herbert Spencer

came

e\'entuall\ to

was broadb the same. B\ the time ol and his journey in 1882, Spencer was no longer young he was sixt>'-two not in the best of lieallh. He was also averse to reporters and the press. His American tour, nonetheless, was the trimuph that any observer would have expected. Everywhere he was greeted with reverence b\ men who saw in their own selection for affluence the strongest of proof that the race was being improxed. Spencer was not, himself, wIioIIn reassured. It was an era ot exuberant pride in the American achievement. He was exposed to a bit too America. The reception

much

of

it.

Once

in

the two cases

46

Darw

inian

—

or twice he implied that, in the larger process ot social

had lagged, was still in a slightK primitive stage. terms, Americans were still, maybe, with the higher primates.

evolution, the United States In

—

am simply carrying out the views of Mi. Darwin in their apphcations to the human race."

Herbert Spencer: "I

William Graham Sumner

"The millionaires are a product of natural selection."

Carl Schurz: "If Spencer's Social Statics in the South, the Civil

had been better read

War would not have occurred."

The Manners and Morals

of

High Capitahsm

There were also sour notes at the

last

supper

— the great

Delmonico's Restaurant, then at the very height of

New

place of the

York

Leaders

rich.

even theology were present. The

in business,

its

final

fame

academic

celebration at

as the watering life, politics

and

late Richard Hofstadter, a notable authority

on the Social Darwinists and their time, has written of the evening with much joy.

Spencer

in his

and

rallied,

address said that Americans worked too hard. This was a

Suppose the workingmen heard. However,

chilling thought.

were the

so strenuous

audience

his

tributes that Spencer, although notably a

vain man, was perceptibly undone.

One

speaker, Carl Schurz. said that

if

War would not have occurred. Henry Ward Beecher, the most famous of American divines and a man who, despite some aberrant tendencies that I will mention in a moment, considered his own salvation secure, said he looked forward to renewing his acquaintance with Spencer "beyond the grave." Spencer's Social Statics had been better read in the South, the Civil

No one

at this

happy gathering seems

obvious point, which

is

how

to

have worried about a small but

the Social Darwinists would bridge the generation

gap. In those years John D. Rockefeller had himself formulated the doctrine

Sunday school class in an exceptionally engaging way: "The American Beauty rose," he had explained to the young, "can be produced in the splendor and fragrance which bring cheer to its beholder only by sacrificing the early buds which grow up aroimd it."'' The same sacrifices occurred in business and for a

accounted, pro tauto, for the splendor of a Rockefeller. "This

tendency

in business. It

of God. "

The question,

^

God would later of

is

was whether

of course,

Ill,

same

law of nature and of

John D.,

Nelson, Laurance, Winthrop and Da\

id.

Jr.,

or yet

Surely, on the

more than

a handout to the poor,

cool the struggle to survive, devastate the moral

and physical tone of the

contrary, a Rockefeller inheritance, even

would

this

also explain the purely inherited splendor ot

John D.

not an evil

is

merely the working-out of a law of nature and a law

legatees and justify a confiscatory inheritance tax that would save their efforts for society.

No one past.

A

nasty problem.

should imagine that Spencer and Sumner are

They

restrain the

still

hand

still

pureK

of the well-to-do indi\idual

approached by a beggar. Perhaps doctrines

relics

it

will

damage

oi

when he

lurk in the inner cells of the Rockefeller consciousness.

Or maybe

48

warned against the continuing dangers

ol llic pidhlciiis

iielp those in

proniisi'

12,

a convocation of committed conservatives. Vice President Nelson

Rockefeller

One

is

the man's morale. Their

only in those of their speech writers. Speaking in Dallas on September 1975, to

the

need.

more

ill

And

tlian tlie\

this coiiiilrs tliis.

u

iien

is llial

added

ean dehxei.**

uc lune

to

some

tliis

of compassion:

Judro-C christian

lioiitay;c

iil

wantiny; to

poMtical instiiuts, soinetiiiies causes people to

How the Fit Were Selected

How the Fit Were Selected We turn now to how the rich

were singled out

for their success. It brings us

inevitably to the railroads. Nothing in the last century,

and nothing

so far in

many people so suddenly as the The contractors who built it, those whose real who owned it, those who shipped by it and those rich, some of them in a week. The only people

this century, so altered the fortunes of so

American

was

estate

who

or

Canadian

railroad.

in its path, those

looted

could

it

all

get

who were spared the burdens of wealth were and ran the trains. Railroading in the last century was not a highly paid occupation, and it was also very dangerous. The casualty rates of those who ran the trains the incidence of mutilation and death approached that of a first-class war.

connected with the railroads those

who laid

the

rails

—

—

The

railroads got built.

construction

A

and operation;

attracted a legion of rascals.

may

great this

many honest men bent

their efforts to their

should not be forgotten. But the business also

The

latter

were by

far the best

known, and they

well have been the most successful in enriching themselves. Spencer's

natural selection operated excellently on behalf ot scoundrels. Sometimes tested

one

it

set against another.

A railroad allowed for an interesting choice between two kinds of larceny —

robbePt' of the customers lar struggle

and robbery of the stockholders. The most spectacu-

occurred in the late eighteen-sixties between

rival practitioners

arts. At issue was the Erie Railroad, running from the New Jersey side of the Hudson River to Buffalo, in those days a deplorable and often

of these

two basic

lethal streak of rust. Cornelius Vanderbilt,

who

controlled the

New

York

Central on the east margin of the river, wanted to ow n the Eric to ensure his

monopoly of service to Buffalo and potentially to Chicago. \ anderbilt s commitment was to robbing the public. The enduring contribution of his family to spoken literature was the expression, "The public be damned.

One

of his opponents

was Jim

Fisk,

who died

of gunshot

"

wounds

in

1872 at

the rather early age of thirty-eight, and to the general regret of the better class

who wished it had been earlier. Allied with him were Daniel Drew and Jay Gould, two other experienced larcenists, although Drew was by now a little past his best. Their commitment was to robbing the stockholders.

of Americans

Once an

was in control of a railroad, there was a myriad ot devices by which its cash and other assets could be siphoned ofi into his ow n pocket. Jay Gould was the acknowledged master of these techniques. Fisk, though not as highK qualified on detail, was far more colorful in the practice of individual

fraud.

Control was the key to both forms of farceny.

came

in 1867

and brought the kind of

occurred on the tracks of the Erie

The

struggle for the railroad

collision that in those

days more often

itself.

49

The Erie Railroad The :

cast.

Jim

Boss Tweed.

Fisk.

How the Fit Were Selected Vanderbilt's advantage

buy a contioUing

was montn he had ;

interest in the stock.

and with it he could hope to But Drew and Fisk liad an even greater this,

advantage. They were in control of the railroad; and they had a printing press in

the basement of the building that housed the railroad offices. In con-

h...

1

*.,

....

JU/-

.;

B'" P '"">

jr.i^

The shares. sequence, the\ could print n.ore stock than Vanderbilt could ever hope

and then enough more

to

ensiue that they had the votes

to

buy

to

keep themselves

power. This they proceeded to do. Tlie strength of their position,

it

was

in

said at

the time, rested firmly on the freedom of the press.

Vanderbilt turned to the courts. There initialK he had an advantage; he was in

personal possession of George Gardner Barnard of the

Supreme

C'oiut.

as the best that

Barnard, tliough not a great

money could

jiuist,

New

York State

was frequentK described

buy. Vanderbilt had bought him. In return,

Barnard enjoined the publishing

activities of

w liat w as called

tlie

Erie

Gang

and threatened them with jail. The\ responded b\ picking up the books oi the railroad, not forgetting its cash, and fleeing across the river to Jersey Git\ Jim Fisk, a sensitive man, also took his mistress, a less than \ irginal u oman named .

Josie Mansfield.

There was a thought

that Vanderbilt's

kidnap these refugees back across the Hudson

to

men might

try to

Judge Barnard's jurisdiction.

was recruited from the railway yards, a flag was hung out and the new headcjuarters in Taylor's Hotel was named Fort Taylor. The Erie war, as by now it w as being called, w as full on. From Fort Taylor, Gould. Drew and Fisk counterattacked. In a breathtaking move they bouglit the New York State Legislature or enough of it to Accordingly, a defense force

—

51

.

The shooting of Jim Fisk. He combined love with the love of money, and for love he died

.

And is

.

buried here.

The Public Reputation

have the stock they had printed made

away from

Vanderbilt.

legal.

Later they bought Judge Barnard

More than money was

involved; they also

named a

locomotive for him. And, a more important accjuisition, they bought William

Tweed, Boss Tweed, the head the Erie. Vanderbilt

of

Tammany

now retreated.

Hall,

Peace, of a

and made him a director of

sort,

broke out. Fisk was able

to

move the headquarters of the Erie back to New York and into the opera house, where he combined railroading with grand opera. His prospects seemed exceptional until he was shot by Edward Stokes. Stokes was a rival of Fisk for the love of Josie Mansfield, although, poor girl, it seems that she was more than willing to be nice to both. Fisk's body was brought back to Brattleboro, Vermont, whence he had launched his career, and the whole town turned out to give him a dead hero's welcome. He was buried there; four grieving maidens in stone still guard the burial plot. One of them seems to be pouring coins on his grave.

The Public Reputation while the war

for the Erie

was

at

its

height, the express from Buffalo

one night

was discovered, a little after the fact, to have lost four passenger cars on a They had gone over a small precipice, and there was a painful fire when they landed. Coaches were of wood and heated by big potbellied coal stoves. Both the coaches and the passengers were a bad fire risk. A year or so later an

curve.

named James Griffin pulled his freight westbound passenger express go by. He dozed off, dreamed that the express had passed, then pulled out on the track and met the passenger train head-on. There was fire again; the casualties were again engineer (engine driver to Englishmen) train into a siding to let the

heavy.

As an even more normal occurrence, Erie freight cars jumped the tracks or didn't

move because

the principal purpose of

there

was

was no serviceable locomotive to pull them. Since the management was the rape of the stockholders,

there

also, not surprisingly,

Many

continuing and articulate complaint from

this

were English, and none got a dividend. All men who worked on the road often went unpaid, gave Drew, Gould and Fisk a bad name. As noted, they are still

cjuarter.

ot these things,

of the stockholders

along with the fact that the

referred to in the history books as the Erie Gang. families,

though somewhat redeemed

In contrast, the

men who did in

The public reputation ot

in later times,

their

their

has never been high.

customers fared far better in the public

mind, and their families achieved high distinction. This was true of Vanderbilt.

was equally so in other fieldsof endeavor of Rockefeller, Carnegie, Morgan, Guggenheim, Mellon, all of whom made their money by producing cheap, It

suppres.sing competition

repute. All eventually

and

selling dear. All

became names

founded d>nasties of the highest

of the greatest respectability.

The

point

53

:

The Natural

:

Selection

o! the Rockefellers

John D. Rockefeller (left) held that men, like the American Beauty rose, were improved only by ruthless sacrifice

— "a

law of nature and a law of God." His law in operation

/W

£k

John

David.

D., Jr.

Nelson.

Natural Selection and the Church

is

an interesting and perhaps predictable one. To mulct investors

— a nasty permanently the public predation — the mulcting of the people large — though capitalists

taste

left

in

— other

mouth. Public

criticized at the

at

time, eventualK acquired an aspect of high respectability, great social distinction.

Even within

their lifetimes

many

of

its

outstanding practitioners gained

the reputation of being impeccably God-fearing men.

The involvement

God

of capitalist predation with

in the last

century re-

quires a special word.

Natural Selection and the Church God, as many have them.

It is

said, loves the poor,

and that

is

why He made

century and

also, to

some

extent,

is still.

But

many

so

one reason why poverty was regarded with equanimity

in

of

the last

the last century there was, as

in

was inevitable; it reflected the immutable working-out of economic law. And, as we've just seen, there was the further thought that, by natural selection, the poor were being weeded out. Given enough time, the undeserving poor, as George Bernard Shaw's well, the Ricardian thought that poverty

Alfred Doolittle rightly called himself, v\'ould be gone. This

last

doctrine

was

socially tranquilizing

and otherwise admirable. But

it

posed an alarming problem for the devout. The doctrine derived from Darwin,

and

for all

communicants of decently

scriptural truth.

a

Man was created in

mind

literal

monkey. Creation was not a thing of the ages;

the Bible said

so.

involved a

it

took exactly

flat

denial of

in

descent from

six

days because

Natural selection was a salutary remedy for the problem of

poverty but the ideas from which religious belief.

this

God's image: he was not

As

it

derived were

in drastic conflict

with

John T. Scopes in Tennessee for that Darwin's doctrines had truth would pit

late as 1925, the trial of

teaching his high school class

Clarence Darrow against William Jennings Bryan circuses of the age.

It

showed how

sensitive

in one of the great judicial was the nerve that mention of

evolution touched. Still,

the stakes

were high;

if

natural selection could be reconciled v\ith

Christian faith, the rich layman could indeed relax. Not surprisingK the effort

was made,

at the

Plymouth Church

the Brooklyn Bridge in wliat

is

in Brooklyn.

now an

The church

still

stands across

unspectacular but decent neigh-

was becoming one of the richest parishes in the whole country, and Henry Ward Beecher, the man, no less, who had made the appointment to meet Herbert Spencer in heaven, was the pastor. The rich, the ambitious and the mereh industrious were flocking to hear him in unbelievable numbers; Henry Adams guessed that no one had preached so influentialK to so man\ since Saint Paul. In IS66, Beecher wrote Spencer that "the peculiar condition of American society has made your borhood. Then,

in

the eightecn-sixties and seventies,

it

55

The Reverend Henry Ward Beecher: "God intended to be little."

the great to be great

and the little

Thorstein Veblen

w

ritings tar

no

man

more

fruitful

and quickening here than

in

Europe."' Beecher was

to resist a quickening.

His reconciliation involved a distinction between theology and religion.

Theologv, like the animal kingdom, was evolutionar> Such change did not contradict the Holy Writ. Religion was enduring. Its truths did not change. .

Darwin and Spencer belonged to theology; the Bible was religion. So there was no conflict between natural selection and the Holy Scripture. I do not understand this distinction, and it is fairly certain that neither Beecher nor liis congregation did either. But it sounded exceptionally good. Beecher had other good news for his affluent flock. God particularly loved sinners, for He greatly enjoyed redeeming them. So, by implication, one could go out of an occasional evening and sin. The ensuing repentance and redemption would then do wonders

ceeded to follow

his

own

for

God's morale. Beecher thereupon pro-

advice. Robert Shaplen. the author of the definitive

life and later one of the most authoriwar, has show n how faithful he Vietnam the Vietnam and reporters on

studv of Beecher's private and litigious tative

was

in this regard.

Besides comforting his rich parishioners on the legitimacy

of their wealth, Beecher comforted their wives

taking

them

to bed.

— some of them

at least

— by

EventualK one, Elizabeth Tilton, was assailed b\ the

thought that even though Beecher was being redeemed, her case was not so clear. So she confessed not to God as intended but to her husband, and he sued Beecher. The jury disagreed on Beecher's guilt. No one who has since looked at the

evidence has had any similar doubt.

Earlier on,

mentioned that Beecher had

I

would meet again in hea\ prefer not to meet either.

en.

There must

told

l)e

Spencer of his hope

man> and ,

I

am

tliat

one, w ho

they

would

Thorstein Veblen

There

is

a certain beguiling merriment in the ideas b\

\\

hich the

ricli

justified

way in which they spent their monev. It's a field of study that I haxe always much enjo\'ed. But it would be quite wrong to imagine that this amusement is pureh the product of hindsight the perspective that time allows. By far the most amused and

themselves

in

the last century.

The same

is

true of the

—

penetrating view of the American rich

in their

greatest days

was b\ a conpow er and

He wrote of them at was Thorstein Veblen. Veblen was the hero of my teachers at the University of California in the thirties. I was introduced to his books simultaneously with Alfred Marshall's Principles, the bible of economic

temporarv observer.

the very peak of

their

ostentation. This

orthodox) this.

in

the last years of the last centur>'

and the

Marshall has not been read for >ears: one can

still

first

decades of

turn to \'eblen witli

delight.

57

The Manners and Morals of High Capitalism

The Veblen legend is of a poor farm boy, the son of Norwegian immigrants. He was driven through hfe by a gnawing sense of envy, a burning sense of injustice.

(The etymology here

envy always gnaws;

interesting:

is

injustice

it might be more accurate the other way around.) Veblen's Norwegian compatriots were many, frugal, worthy and poor. A few in this new land were profligate, idle and rich. This contrast Veblen could not forgive or accept. Thus his merciless books and tongue. Thorstein Veblen was, indeed, the son of a poor Norwegian immigrant. When he was born in Wisconsin in 1857, life was still a struggle. But by the time he went oif to college, his father, Thomas Anderson Veblen, was in possession of 290 acres of land in southern Minnesota as rich as any outdoors. Not a hundred working farmers in all of Norway were as affluent. The family was educated at nearby Carleton College, and they paid their own way.

always burns;

Thorstein, after trying Johns Hopkins,

went on

year of Spencer's Coming, with the farm

to

study at Yale in 1882, the

paying

still

his

way. At Yale he

men, William Craham Sumner. Spencer and Sumner would not be wrong in a world populated by Veblen's parents. Their Hfe was hard but they were fit, and they survived handsomely, happily and honestly. encountered and made a major impression on, of

all

Thorstein Veblen wrote not out of envy but out of a sense of ignored superiority fortified by contempt.

summit of what would now be possessed of

depended,

much

at best,

He

did not regard the rich, those at the

called the

WASP

establishment, as being

charm. Their business success

intelligence, culture or

on a low cunning which was abetted by the very great

advantage for accumulating wealth of being alread\ ous, intellectually obtuse

and more than a

rich.

Being proud, pomp-

insecure, they

trifle

were vulner-

able to a particular kind of ridicule.

The

rich

have regularly invited the resentment of the

less rich or the poor.

Why should they have so much? What virtue justifies their higher income and station? This attack the rich can always stand.

It

proceeds from envy, and

this

affirms their superiority.

The Veblen weapon was

far

more

refined;

it

was

ridicule presented as the

most somber and careful science. All primitive tribes had their festivals, rituals and orgies, some of them exceptionally depraved. Likewise the rich. Their social

observances and

rituals

might be different

in

form and detail but their

purpose was the same — self-advertisement, exhibitionism. exhibitionist

mannerism

or

enjoyment of the

rich,

And

for

every

Veblen came up with some

The Vanderbilts bound up their women in were purely objects of enjoyment and display. The Papuan chief carved up the faces or breasts of his wives to the same end. The rich gathered for elegant dinners and entertainments. The counterpart ritual

deplorable barbarian counterpart. corsets, thus proving they

58

Thorstein Veblen, 1857-1929.

The Manners and Morals

of the aboriginal

of

High Capitahsm

community was the potlatch

wonders even with a walking The

walking-stick serves the purpose of an achertiscmcnl

otherwise than a

weapon and

in useful effort,

it

meets a

felt

and

ferocity.

it

therefore has

lliat

utility as

the bearer's hands are

an evidence

ot leisure.

is

very comforting to anyone

university presidents are a nervous breed;

They

I

who

gifted with

is

is

also

even a

its

American

life.

have never thought well

praise independence of thought on

ceremony, worry deeply about

above scale

it

'°

Veblen himself lived a bemused, eccentric and very insecure as a class.

emploNed

But

need of barbarian man on that ground. The handling of so tangible

and primitive a means of offense moderate share of

or orgy. Veblen could do

stick:

consequences

all

in private.

to suffer for the free expression of the less

ot tliem

occasions of public

They are paid

convenient members of

the faculty but rareh believe the\- should have to earn their pay. Howe\'er, in

some justification for their pervasive unease and selfwhose folk tendencies Veblen also examined, believed that the country should have centers of higher learning. It was onlv decent. Their offspring needed gloss. Also doctors and lawyers were the last century they had pity.

The

essential.

successful btisinessmen,

But

tJiey

never believed that these academies should tolerate ideas

inimical to property

and men of property. They wanted professors who

affirmed the conservative truths, treated wealth and enterprise with respect.

This Veblen did not do; in consequence,

man

for

some other

institution.

lie

During

was always regarded

his

academic

Cornell to Chicago, to Stanford, to Missouri, to the All

were glad

to see

him

go;

it is

now the pride

of

New

all

life

he moved from

School in

that he

as an ideal

was

New York.

there.

His moves were facilitated, on occasion, by the fact that, though far from beautiful,

he was inordinately attractive

lem, and once,

\\

to

women. He considered

it

a prob-

hen rebuked by President Da\id Starr Jordan, the president

of Stanford, for the offense he

was giving

to middle-class morality,

he asked

man could do when the\- just moxe in w itii you. There is a when imder consideration for a professorship at Harxard, he was warned by President Abbott Lawrence Lowell, who brought up the subject with embarrassment, for his was a world without sex or other sin, that some of resignedh w hat a

legend that,

Veblen's prospective colleagues were worried about their wives. elaborately lighthearted hint

tliat

Veblen should promise,

if

It

was an

appointed, to

behave. Veblen replied courteously that there was no need to worr\-, he had I once investigated this story, and it seems, unfortunately, be w holly untrue. Veblen, lonesome and sad at the end, died in 1929.

seen the wives.

to

Conspicuous Consumption first and greatest book. The 'rhconj of the Leisure Cla.s.s, was published just before the turn of the century. With Henry George's Progress

Veblen's

60

The Monument: Newport

and Poverty, the great case for the single tax on land, it is one of the two American works of social comment from the last century which are still read and studied. It contains the germ of Veblen's basic economic idea, which was de\cloped further in his later The Theory of Business Enterprise. This beidentified a conflict in economic life between industry and business tween those whose talent lay in the production of goods and those whose concern was not with making things but \\ itii making money. The moneymakers, by restricting production to enhance profits, sabotaged (Veblen's word) the capacity- of the producers to produce. It was an idea that won enthusiastic converts in the nineteen-thirties among a militant band of dis-

—

what they called Technocracy. Veblen's distinction between makers and moneymakers has not survived. in his His enduring achievement was not in economics but in sociology Theory behavior of the rich. The examination of the social aforementioned of ciples

committed

to

—

the Leisure Class that

is

is

centrally concerned with the

conferred on the rich by

deep sense of the superiority

their wealth. But, to

be enjoyed,

must be known; accordingly, a major preoccupation of the considered displa\ of wealth.

Two

things scr\e this

rich

this superiority is

the carefully

end — Conspicuous

Leisure and Conspicuous Consumption. Both phrases, especially the second,

were planted ineradicably

in the

language by Veblen. Conspicuous Leisure

the distinction gained by idleness in a world

where almost everyone has

work, where nothing else so preoccupies the body and the mind. The rich

is

to

man

might work himself. But he gained much distinction from the conspicuous

women. Conspicuous Consumption was consumption designed exclusively to impress with the cost that was involved. Taste did not enter. Never after the publication of The Theory of the Leisure Class could a rich man spend with ostentation, abandon and enjo\ ment w ithout someone rising

idleness of his

to ridicule

it

as Conspicuous

Consumption.

The Monument Newport :

How real was the culture of conspicuous wealth that X'eblen described? Anyone who has doubts can go and see for himself. The place is Newport, Rhode Island. Most Americans have never seen these vast houses, do not know what they are missing. I've lived nearly all of my life a couple of hours' drive away and would be with the majorit\ except for an accident of public hfe. In 1961, Prime Minister Nehru vi.sitcd the Ihiited States and met President Kennedy in Newport. They passed along the waterfront in the presidential yacht, the Honey Fitz, to view the mansions. "I brought you this way, how the average

Mr. Prime Minister," the President

said,

American li\'es. Nehru answ ered, mention of the affluent society.

to m\' special pleasure, that

"

"so that

\

ou can see

he had heard

61

'

The Manners and Morals

oJ

High Capitahsm

When tlie Newport houses were mans worth was, indeed, measured

built

around the turn

in simple,

the century, a

of

straightforward fashion by his

wealth. Artists, poets, politicians and scientists did not

dream

of disputing

the rich man's claim to pre-eminence, Hollywood had not been heard

of, and were not even a gleam. But, as Veblen held, wealth, if a man, had to l^e known. He couldn't walk around

television personalities it

was

to distinguish

brandishing thousand-dollar

some

tried.

bills

or a statement of his net worth

The Newport houses were

— although

not places of habitation, recreation,

was to proclaim the worth ot the inmates. The greatest of the houses was The Breakers, and it brings us back to the name that rectus in an> discussion of the manners and morals of the rich. Commodore Vanderliilt was not only a creative and sanguinar\- entrepreneur who robbed the public with candor. He also headed a famih that was notably conspicuous in its consumption. The Breakers cost the Vanderbilts, by one very early estimate, $.3 million. The Commodore also adopted what became Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. That, by comparison, cost him procreation. Their purpose

only $500,000, later raised to a million.

The Newport houses had

a secondary function; they also affirmed the class

A large army of serxants was required to run these They u ere trained in the disciplined obedience and obeisance

structure of the society.

establishments. fitting to a

It is

subordinate. As Veblen observed:

a serious grievance

if

a gentleman's butler or footman performs his duties about his master's

unformed

table or carriage in such

plowing or sheepherding.

style as to suggest that his habitual occupation

may be

'

Practiced and servile behavior was, in tiun, a constant reminder to those

served of their superiority, of their meml^ership

in a privileged elite. It

was

what brought this way of life to an end. It may be and general rule that no one spends his life affirming the superiority of other people if he has any alternative. So, at the earliest moment also,

laid

more than

down

incidentally,

as a broad

possible, the servants got other jobs.

The masters thought

the day one of their favorites farted loudK'

day was gone. The very

until

serving dinner and the

ne.xt

manifestation of the classless societ>-

first

appearance of the servant

w hile

w ere loved

the>

is

the dis-

class.

The Ceremonials Houses were not

I)\

barian tribes and

themselves

tiie

contemporary

concluded that neither a put his opulence

in

sufficient. In looking at the

tribal chief

evidence

"

rich,

which he saw as

customs of barsimilar,

Veblen

nor a business tycoon could "sufficiently

by relying on Conspicuous Consumption alone.

Personal rituals and manners were also important; both chief and tycoon

62

Home and home away from home The Breakers $3,000,000 to begin. :

The Casino

at

Monte

man dropped ten thousand or fifty thousand, he showed the man who could lose such sums."

Carlo. "If a

audience that he was a

Mrs. Stuyvesant Fish under

^^iJ^:\!^

Conspicuous Consumption Of and by dogs. :

full

canvas.

Publicity

needed to be "connoisseurs in creditable viands of xarious degrees of merit, manly beverages and trinkets, in seemly apparel and architecture, in weapons, games, dances, and the narcotics."'- Veblen concluded also that "drunkenness and other patJiological consequences of the free use of stimu-

in

lants"

were valuable

who

indications of "the superior status of those

are able

indulgence" and that "infirmities induced by over-indulgence

to afford the

among some peoples freely recognized as manly The ceremonies at which \\ ealth was displaxed

are

'^

attributes."

— "costly entertainments

such as the potlatch or the

ball"'"*

— were of particular importance

The person seeking

competition for esteem.

in the

and

distinction invited his friends

competitors to his feasts, orgies or other entertainments. These were the very

people he most needed

to impress, those

upon whose good opinion

his

own

standing depended. His guests were thus the unwitting instruments of his

over them. Naturally

effort to establish his superiority ball or potlatch,

own

they showed him

when

had a

his guests

how much they could spend and so got

their

back.

To be

certain of attendance,

was thought wise

it

to introduce

novelty, even of eccentricity, into the ceremonials.

was the inspiration of Mrs. Stuyvesant

the turn of the century,

an element of

One example, Fish.

soon after

She staged

a major party not ostensibly for her neighbors but for their dogs. Not without while exploring the anthropology of Newport, my colleagues of the BBC recreated this entertainment. No one watching the event could have any

difficulty,

doubt

that, as

in kind,

Veblen argued, the

from those

in

Borneo or

festivals

here differed only

form, not at

in

New Guinea or on Christmas

all

Island.

Publicity

Next only to consuming the rich too.

was

in

in a suitably

reading about themselves and in imagining that others did so

This occupation

is still

ingly of a shy millionaire;

Hughes

conspicuous way, the greatest pleasure of

much enjoyed by

it's

the affluent.

because they are so

rare.

We speak wonder-

The

late

of not being seen. Half of the pleasure in the dogs" dinner just in thinking

Mr. Howard

one of the greatest reputations of our time almost exclusively out

built

how amazed

mentioned was

the masses would be in reading about

it.

The

society

columns of the modern newspaper can be understood only as one appreciates

who are mentioned, the envy it is hoped that such those who are ignored.

the pleasure they give those

mention

will

arouse

in

For making sure that the denizens of Newport were publicized

enjoyment of

all,

the indispensable resident

to the

was James Gordon Bennett,

Jr.,

who owned the New York Herald. William Randolph Hearst is usually thought to

be the founder of the .\merican

Morison held,

it

was Bennetts

\ello\\

father.

press; in fact, as

The purpose

Samuel

Eliot

of a newspaper, he had

65

James Gordon Bennett, said, is

Jr.

:

Journalist and faithful son.

"not to educate but to startle."

The purpose

of a newspaper, his father

The Riviera

proclaimed,

had plent\ for

it

is

ot

"not to educate but to startle."

room

in its

had

and depra\itics of Newport,

"We

support no party,

shall

"

liis

also proclaimed, "... care nothing for an\ election or an\ can-

didate, from President dull,

His son agreed, and his Herald

lor tlie activities

did not go in heavih' for pulilic affairs.

father

being

columns

-^

'

down

to a Constable." '*

Bennett sent Stanley into Africa

When the rich showed signs of

to find

Livingstone and another

Newport was

expedition into the Arctic to find the North Pole. But

his base.

The Riviera

A

troublesome problem of affluence

in

the last century

was an inconvenient

and even perxersc feature of the class structure. Wealth a man could get. But wealth was greatly improved by being old, and this age was not so easily acquired. In their earliest manifestation the Vanderbilts, Astors, Whitneys, not to mention the Rockefellers and Fords,

\\

ere

all

rather crude and

regarded. Only in the subsequent generations did these families civilized,

ere so

become

first

then distinguished. There was the companion circumstance that

industrial wealth, until

exceptionalh' well-aged,

it is

even mercantile affluence. In the

last

century a

titled

is

inferior to

landed or

Englishman of modest

means, even an impecunious and venereal Polish count, was often the a Whitney or a Rockefeller.

were much

A

\\

further

Among Americans,

ecjual of

Lowells, Cabots and Coolidges

wealth had aged. and much neglected feature of wealth

better. Their

is

the problem posed by

more sensuous use and enjoyment. The poor and people have always believed that the principal delights of the sensuous consumption

—

of modest

its

income

rich arc in such

and expensive, varied and reliably mone\ the poor man's instinct is for a good meal, a bender or an imaginatively obliging woman. So it must be for all. These were not, in fact, negligible pleasures for the rich in the last century. The Victorians were prodigious eaters and devout, two-handed drinkers, and man\ went off each Near to a continental spa most often Carlsbad in food, alcohol

a\ailable fornication. Given

— with two Sex

extra

wear o\ er and another to \\ ear home pounds. Nothing was so discussed as the state of one's one

set to

an organ uniqueh important

may

,

—

sets of clothing,

after losing a few do/.en liver,

some

for the large-scale consimiption of alcohol.

well have ranked ahead of horsemanship as a source of masculine

pleasure and a measure of accomplishment.

But there are physical ingested,

and there are

limits to the

amount of food and drink that can be more variable, limits to the time that

similar, although

in bed. And w ith the passage of time, the consequences and drinking vast bulk, chronic dnmkenness, a grossly debased appearance ceased to be admired and became subject to rebuke.

can be spent activcK

—

of excessive eating

—

Similarly, sexual promiscuity

.

once considered the greatest of the delights of

67

The Manners and Morals

of

High Capitahsm

became a mass recreation and even a branch of physical The sensuous enjoyments of the rich ceased to be a source of

wealth, eventualK' therapy.

admiration and distinction, and they ceased to be the exclusive pleasure of the

Mucli of the enjoyment had always consisted

rich.

in

having that of which

others were deprived.

The

Riviera, in the last centin>

climate and

much less traffic and

,

had many advantages of scenery and

pollution than now.

"A sunny shore," the late

Adlai Stevenson once wrote to a friend while paying a

visit there,

"where

shady characters from underdeveloped countries consort with overdeveloped

women." But

its

much

greater advantage

was

in the

way

it

soKed

of the

all

problems of the affluent just mentioned. Not surprisingly, James Gordon Jr., the indispensable citizen of Newport, also had a villa at Cap With him he took his gift for publicizing the playtime of the rich. The Paris Herald, which he founded, recorded the movement of the American rich into European society, and an item in the social column of the ver\' first issue brought the news that "Mr. William K. Vanderbilt will return from London on Wednesday." As ever a Vanderbilt. liut the Riviera was pre-eminently the resort of the European aristocracy, and from this came its major service. Daughters of the American rich could here be traded for the esteem that went v\'ith older landed \\ ealth or title, or sometimes merely the title. By this single simple step the new wealth achie\ ed

Bennett, Ferrat.

.

.

.

And

the respectability of age.

the anciently respectable got money, something

they could always use. So inevitable was this bargain that the\ were negotiated by the scores, social

and brokers

rank — appeared

to

make

— often impoverisiied women of imagined

the deals.

have been a recognizable item

in

The

resulting flow of dollars

would

the American balance of pa\inents, had

payments balance then been calculated. B\' 1909, by one estimate, 500 American heiresses had been exported for the improvement of the famlK name, along with $220 million. a

'

''

The greatest,

or nearly the greatest, of the English families in this age

the Churchills; their palace, Blenheim, houses; the

title,

Marlborough,

is

is

w ere

one of the grandest of English

the most honored in British history.

It

was

Duke of Marlborough should marr\ (^onsuelo \ anpayment of $2,500,000. More was later in\esled in

natural, therefore, that a derbilt for

an

initial

repairing Blenheim, which was run down, and in a great new l^ondon house. all, the Marlborough connection cost around $10 million. The results, however, were excellent. The robber-baron connotation was almost com-

In

pletely excised from the Vanderbilt family tradition. All descendants

even, ex paste,

all

antecedents, including the

and

Commodore, became people

of the highest repute.

Less was invested

68

in

making respectable the

far

more awkward name of

Consuelo Vanderbilt and parent: She brought distinction to Vanderbilt, solvency to

Marlborough.

Anna Gould and Count Boni de

Castellane

The Goulds paid less and got less. Compare the

The Manners and Morals

of

High Capitahsm

was accomplished. Onh about marry Anna, daughter of Jay Gould, to the Count

much

Gould, and, as might be expected, $5,500,000 was paid to

less

Boni de Castellane, a figure far inferior in grandeur to a Duke of Marlborough. Partly in consequence of trying to do

on the cheap, the Goulds achieved only

it

a very modest grandeur.

—

that of Lord Winston Churchill was the son of a somewhat similar union Randolph Churchill with the American, Jennie Jerome. This, however, seems to

have been the limiting case where love was an operative

factor.

Gambling The

came from

Riviera's other service to the rich

This derived from

shown, the

rich

its

incomparable efficiency

most sought and needed

the casino at

Monte

Carlo.

doing what, as Veblen had

for

— advertisement of the existence and

extent of their wealth.

The

sociology of gambling

and

women gamble

also

gamble

is little

men But many

understood. Most people think that

make money. And, without

some do. was very important. Men and women of the highest fashion those whose judgments determined, above all, an individual's social rank and repute assembled of a night at the Societe des Bains de Mer. Richly accoutered, they moved around the tables, through the adjacent salons. Never before or since v/as there such an audience for the man who wanted to prove that he had money to burn. If he was rich, he could not lose. If he dropped ten or fifty thousand, he showed to this audience that he was a man who could lose such sums. If he won, it did him no damage.

To

to

money. In the

to lose

century

last

—

—

modicum

build a big house required a

doubt,

this

of taste. For suitably expensive

needed some entree to society and also, as a starter, a few friends. A yacht, before radio, meant isolation from the world and one's affairs. Also it had another drawback: it was only for the supremely rich. The entertaining, one

great

He

J.

P.

Morgan

is

remembered

for

two aphorisms, neither quite deathless.

asserted before a congressional committee that influence on Wall Street

depended on character, not money complete acceptance.

what a yacht would

And he

And

this

all

that has never gained

an acquaintance who wanted

cost to operate that

But the casino solved afford.

told

— a proposition if

he had

to ask,

to

know

he couldn't afford

problems. You could lose whatever

>'ou

it.

could

required no taste, no entree, no social grace, no friends,

i

nothing but the money.

The Manners and Morals

What

of the

modern

changed. Nowhere

in

of the

rich? Tlic

problem of finding distinction has greatly

the United States (to \\'hich m\'

been confined) docs wealth and

70

Modern Rich

its

own

studies have mostly

conspicuous display any longer serve by

The Manners and Morals of the Modern Rich

The modern

itself.

now

politician

person of distinction.

No Washington

New

or

decently high and honest political figure

sums

to

artists

by public

be ambassadors

is

of wealth as a

York hostess would consider

mere

the slightest source of dignity to get a

distinction conferred

man

ranks well above the

millionaire for dinner.

Such

infinitely superior.

it

Any

is

the

men of great wealth gladly pay large

office that

to small countries. Television performers, journalists,

with minimal standards of personal deportment and h\giene,

tellectuals of conservative or harmlessly radical beliefs far outrank the

millionaire in esteem. In consequence, the

man

of wealth

in-

modern

must either seek

association with such people or try for achievement himself in these or related

Otherwise he

fields.

will

be almost

totally overlooked.

There are some regional differences

New

in practice in this regard. In

England generally, affluent males

large but rather shabby dwellings.

Women dress similarly, feature a utilitarian

or athletic appearance according to personality or taste.

by association, however innocent, with music,

art,

Esteem

nothing for a family except as

money for New York is much

gant attire

is still

it

makes them an

is

philanthropy

then sought or, in appli-

Mere wealth does

cable cases, intellectual effort or harmless public service.

collecting

Boston and

affect plain, often repellent attire,

object of attention for those

charitable or political causes. the same. But there, by

thought a useful

way

many women

of means, extrava-

of attracting attention. Eccentrically

furnished apartments of considerable discomfort are also thought useful. In the

New

York suburbs large houses, boats and entertainment that avoids

excessive reliance on a servant class

still

confer

some

distinction within the

particular subculture. But, although these residual obeisances survive, they

A

are far from being sufficient. the arts or public issues

is

reputation for knowledgeable association with

essential for

anyone of the

slightest ambition. In

damage has been done by rich New Yorkers, many of them lawyers, who have sought esteem through association with the field of foreign policy. Not unnaturally they have shown an unfortunate attachment to foreign leaders and potentates who share their o\\'n commitment to personal enrichment. However, the support of liberal politicians and radical causes of recent decades no slight

an adequately innocuous In Texas,

sort

where wealth

relatively

is

quotient, a family's position

possessions

can also be a significant source of distinction.

is still

new and hence

has a high novelty

influenced by the extent and cost of

its

— by the assessed value of the house, the acreage of the ranch, the

size, speed and furnishings of the airplane and the visible cost of the grooming and caparisoning of the horses and women. Much store is set by barbecues and

similar fiestas at logical

which these possessions are displayed and admired.

consequence of these

for costly

consumer

artifacts

folk habits that the world's is

in Dallas.

It is

the

most notable market

Texas. With age this too

w

ill

change.

71

'

^i.>

>' wi.'

m

4 ^ S

^

^ 1

6A, THE TIME

by

digirol

o burton.

Consumption can still

be conspicuous

in Texas.

COMPUTOR.

A colculotor or o worch - or rhe touch of

Pulsor.

Sroinless steel

cose

and bond. Operores on o quorrz crystol. ond occurote to within 60 seconds o yeor. 550 00(3 60). Fronn Precious Jewelry

THE GENTLEM ANS TRJCK The best of rwo worlds combines in rhe dynomic design of the Codilloc Mirage A unique vehicle incorpororing borh luxury ond uriliry. with oil rhe expected croftsmonship of rhe Codilloc trodition The Miroge is o town ond country coupe: sleek enough to ferry possengers ro rhe Opero Doll rugged enough ro corry feed ond supplies ro rhe most remore corner of rhe ronch or form, comforroble enough for rhe mosr exrended rours. ond professionol enough for rhe serious sportsmen Our limired edition Miroge feorures cusrom enomel in rhe Neimon-Morcus signorure color os shovwi.

pockoge sporrs sryle wire wheel covers, ond corpeting of mouton 'hroughour The Codilloc Miroge shown is ovoiloble only rhrough Neimon-Morcus Allow eight weeks for delivery 17A 24.500(X). For furrher informorion. coll AC 214/741-6911. ext 1225.

speciol inferior

mm

The Manners and Morals

of

High Capitahsm

A narrow and largely imaginary line divides what is admired as elegance from what

condemned

is

as ostentatious display

— conspicuous consumption.

Such change has alrea^iy overtaken Southern California, suburban Los Angeles in particular, where Moorish revival houses, swimming pools, exquisitely clipped lawns and slightly eccentric automobiles were once a source of major esteem but which, though

still

necessary, are no longer sufficient.

An

adequately publicized association with figures of substantial notoriety in telein the late sixties and early vision, motion pictures, politics or crime

—

seventies high figures in the Nixon Administration is

now

were

especially valuable

essential.

Have

the manners and morals of the

tion, alas, that

everyone

As

will ask.

moneymakers improved? to the

— a ques-

is

no doubt;

one of the Texas

fiestas just

manners, there

Vanderbilt, Jim Fisk, Jay Gould showing up at

—

mentioned would be thought very coarse. Even a modern oil man would shudder to hear a Vanderbilt tell the public to be damned. In our da\ the most as a public benefactor, speak ad-

must present himself

ruthless predator

miringly of his primary concern for serving the people of a free society.

makes money but It is

that

He

a passive consequence of the free enterprise system.

is

not his primary concern. Regular bathing

is

obligatory.

No one

can chew

Thus have the manners of modern capitalism improved. As to the advance in morality as opposed to manners, one can be less sure. I.O.S., Vesco, Poulson, Sindona, Hoffman, C. Arnholt Smith and the Real tobacco.

Estate

Fund

of America, though possibly

more

sophisticated in accelerating

the separation of widows, orphans and fools from their money, are not, most will think, a

quantum

step up to righteousness from Erie.

Vanderbilt and the Erie

Gang bought

corporations have bought politicians at

judges. In recent times the great U.S.

home and abroad

or, in an\- case,

paid

for tliem. In the last century Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov traveled over Russia

buying dead serfs

— Gogol's Dead

used their ownership as security

Souls.

for

He bought them from

landlords and

loans from a bank. In the nineteen-sixties

Los Angeles one Stanley Goldblum created souls that were equally ethereal, insured their lives and sold their policies (and the premiums these

in

more substantial insurance companies at a handhe was greath- esteemed. The stock of Equit\ some profit. Funding Corporation boomed; men of repute joined its board. The moral improvement even on early Russian enterprise is not clear. My own thought is that if men are sufficiently concerned to acquire money,

theoretically

would earn)

While

it

to

lasted,

their behavior will reflect that preoccupation

the time or place. being, as

Out

of moral sense, caution or conscience

Mencken once

ma\ be looking"

—

and be much the same, whatever

said,

most,

— conscience

"the inner voice which warns us that someone it

may be

expected, will remain within the

74

I

The Manners and Morals

of the

Modern Rich

law. But a largely stable minority will be impelled to step over the line into forthright rascality.

The

rascalit\ will not

vary

Popular opinion and popular

much

as to form from

fiction to

one period

the contrary, this

is

to the next.

not a line of work-

that attracts the highly innovative mind. ingenuit>- of his larceny

fraud.

The

is

basic forms are

The manners

The man who is admired for the almost always rediscovering some earlier form of

all

known, have

of capitalism improve.

all

been practiced.

The morals ma\-

not. But, equally,

they do not get worse.

75

Karl Marx at 49.

3.

The Dissent of Karl Marx

Adam

Smith. David Ricardo and their lollowers affirmed as the natural order

an economic society

raw materials

in

which men owned the things

as well as land

means

—

factories,

machinery,

— by which goods were produced. Men owned

and Sumner gave this the highest social and moral sanction. Thorstein Veblen mused over and was amused hv the result. But even Veblen did not dissent. Though a merciless critic of the high capitalist order, Veblen was not a socialist or even a reformer. the capital or

of production. Spencer

The massive dissent originated with used the ideas

of

Ricardo to assail the economic system which Ricardo

terpreted and described. ii

we agree

rivals

I'x

that the Bible

Marx

Karl Marx. In considerable measure he

is

e used the a

work

word massi\ e

to

in-

describe his onslaught,

of collective authorship, only

Mohammed

number of professed and devoted followers recruited by a And the competition is not really very close. The ft)ll()wers of

in the

single author.

Marx now far outnumber the sons of the Prophet. Marx lies in Highgate Cemetery in London where he was buried on March 17, 1883. As with Smith's grave it is a place of onK minor pilgrimage the pilgrims are mostly delegations from the Communist countries on official business in London. Until about twenty years ago Marx's grave was in an

—

obscure corner, almost unmarked.

Herbert Spencer.

It

pleasure in the

company

The Universal

Man

The world

Now

would be hard

it

lies at

to tliink of

no great distance from that of two men w ho are taking less

of each other.

Marx

and

for a centin\

most of

the world's revolutions, serious or otherwise, have invoked his name.

He was

celebrates Karl

also a social scientist,

as a revolutionar\

many would

,

say the most original and imaginative

economist, one of the most erudite political philosophers ol his age.

The

late

Joseph Schumpeter, the famous Austrian (and Harvard) economist, iconoclast

and devout conservative, introduced

his

account of Marx's ideas with the

statement that he was a genius, a prophet and. as an economic theorist, of

all

"first

a very learned man."'

Marx was

also a brilliant jomnalisl,

ing Mr. Gerald

and

all

.Vmerican Republicans, includ-

Ford and Mr. Ronald Reagan.

l)oth highly

prominent as

I

77

The Dissent

write,

of Karl

may

in his life,

editor as

note

\\

Marx

ith suitable

pride that, during an exceptionally

he was sustained by the

meager time

New York Tribune and was described by its

most esteemed as well as best-paid correspondent. The Tribune,

its

with the Herald another parent of the Herald Tribune, was, for generations, the organ of the highest Republican establishment.

Marx had another involve-

ment with Republicans. After the election in 1864, he joined in congratulating Lincoln warmly on the Republican victory and on the progress of the war; said, "felt instinctiveK' that the star"The working men of Europe," he

—

spangled banner carried the destin\'

Marx was

also an historian, a

man

oi their class.

for

"-

whom history was less a subject to be

studied than a reality to be lived and shared. Paul

M. Sweezy, the most

distinguished of prescnt-da\ American Marxists, has said that history that gives Marxist

selves

and

economic thought

Other economists have heard of

distinction.

it is

sense of

this

special claim to intellectual

its

history; Marxists

make them-

their ideas a part of history.

Marx was

Finally,

someone hadn't

a major historical event. Often

it

can be imagined that

it

would have done his work. The innovatwas not the individual but the circumever suggest that the \\ orld would be tlie same had Marx

lived,

someone

else

ing force, to recur to a familiar point, stance.

No one

\\ ill

not lived.

Marx, as an historian, would expect one

to begin with his historv.

Trier It

begins in Trier, or Treves, at the head of the Moselle Valley.

was born there loveliest in

in

181 marched back and

airstrip

near Oxford.

fortJi in

a light mist, one

w

ith

a fow ling piece.

Occasionally, being professors, the\^ stopped to conxerse.

Toward dawn,

British militar\ histor\-.

with a

rifle

of

Crimean \intage more

or less, the other

during one of these pauses, Goodhart's fellow soldier

lit

his pipe

and

said, "I

do > on suppose those wretched fellows aren't coming? I did so want a shot at them. I've always detested Hegel." Marx's lifetime associate and alK was Friedrich Engels. The best short say, Arthur,

summar\

of

what Hegel meant

to Ijotli of

them comes

merit of Hegel's philosoph> was that for the natural, historical

and

first

spiritual aspects of the

Ironi liim:

"The

time the totality

great

ot

tlie

world were concei\ed and

represented as a process of constant transformation and de\elopment and an

was made

"='

show the organic character ol this process. An organic process of transformation and development would become tlie central feature of Marx's thought. The mo\ing force in this transformation would be the conflict between the social classes. This would keep societ\ in a effort

to

condition of constant change.

Once

it

had developed a structure that was

seemingK' secure, the structure would nurture the antagonistic forces

w ould challenge and then destroy

it.

A

the process of conflict and destruction would begin anew.

Thus,

in

tliat

new structure w ould then emerge, and

the real world at the time, the capitalists

—

tlie

bourgeoisie

— were

challenging and destroying the old and seemingK immutable structure

ot

feudalism, the traditional ruling classes of the old aristocratic system. In

gaining power, the bourgeoisie would nurture the de\ elopment of a classconscious proletariat from the exploited, propert\less and denationalized

workers. In time, the proletariat would capitalists, including the

state

bourgeois state,

would be the next new

move

against the capitalists.

would be

o\

The

erthrown. The workers'

structure.

Hegelian law, the process should continue. Perhaps the workers' state, by the nature of its productive tasks, w ould be highU' organized. Inneaucratic, disciplined. It would need .scientists, other intellectuals. .\nd il would

By

all

would now have a large demand. These artists would then begin to assert themseKes. Their opposition to the bureaucracy would become acute. Thus the next conflict, one that is far from in\ isible in the countries of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. How ever, Marx did not allow Hegel to take him so far. Nor nurture

artists, poets, novelists for

do modern Marxists as they look Rigoroush applied to

w hose work

the literate masses

at their dissident .scientists, no\ elists, poets.

modern Communist

society,

Hegel could

l)e

quite a

problem. Hegel's ideas did not

come

easily to

Marx. Their acceptance, or more

likely

The Dissent

of

Karl Marx

the experience of serious study

involved liim

itself,

in

emotional

crises,

weak-

ened his health and, it appears, brought him to the edge of a ph\ sical breakdown. For a time he left the city and went to the small village of Stralau outside Berlin to recover. Each day he walked several miles to attend his lectures

—

and wrote

how good it was for his health. It was a lesson he would

in sinprise at

much

soon forget. For

of his

he would be

life

poor health, the result of

in

unwholesome living. Much of the world's work, it has been done by men who do not teel quite well. Marx is a case in point. singularly

It is

said,

is

modern Berlin the draiuaticalK visible manifestation was Marx's great preoccupation. The place to Wall. On one side is West Berlin: this is the embattled outpost of

tempting

to see in

of the transformation which

view

the

it is

On

the capitalist world.

masses. For years

preciseh

this,

the other side

is

the next stage; there the triumphant

excessively articulate visitors to Berlin have been seeing

all

although those viewing the Wall from the West have

spoken of democracy, not capitalism, and few have conceded the ine\ of the transformation unless

it

be out of weakness.

Marx has had an enormous

accepted;

iisLiallx

itability

the contrast

Still,

is

success in the rhetoric of the Wall.

I've long believed, alas, that in highly organized industrial societies, capitalist or socialist,

the stronger tendenc\'

automobiles are wanted and must be

stamp

impriiit

its

Indiana.

If so,

on

tlie

the Wall

is

societ\

is

to

made on

whether

,

not a place

convergence

become

tlie

vast

and

conlrontation; rather, as those

is

It is

hard, visiting

not already happening.

production of goods and the practical

more, not

mass production

West and Fast

The preoccupation

]:)r()ducti\e

it

will

Berlin,

witli the

arrangements are becoming

less, alike.

Marx

In 1841,

left Berlin.

Henceforth he would be part of the Hegelian

process — one of the prime instruments of

would

to the

intricate organization that this requires,

progressively less important.

to believe that this

steel or

be Magnitogorsk or Gary,

on each side become aware of their higlier commitment of goods and to

if

a large scale, the process will

tliat

ol historic

— that

also

now

its

transfonuation.

begin to influence his mo\ ements.

1

litherlo the)

A new

iactor

w ere relaxed

and voluntary. Henceforth, for years, they would be sudden and compelled. Germany, France and Belgium would all unite in the belief that Marx w as an excellent resident lor

some other

country. For a

man pursued

another insufficiently recognized point, there are two sources protection: one

connnitting

it.

is

to

be innocent of the crime. The other

Marx was

al\\a\s to

ha\e

this

is

to

b\ the police, ol solact'

and

be righteous

in

second and greater support.

Cologne and Journalism

Marx went Trier,

84

it

to

was

Gologne. Like Trier, Cologne

also tlu-n rect'iitK

is

also in the Hhineland, and. like

redeemed irom

b'

ranee and somewhat more

Cologne and Journalism

liberal for the experience. In

France

it

was

said that w

liat

wasn't prohibited

what wasn't permitted was Marx became a journalist. The paper was the brandnew Rlieinisclie Zeitiiiig; it was well-financed and by. of all people, the burgeoning industrialists and merchants of the Rhineland and the Ruhr. Marx was an immediate success: he was first a highl> \alucd correspondent and ver\ soon the editor. None of this v\as siuprising. He was intelligent, resourceful and extremeK diligent and in some wa\s a force for moderation. He also enforced high standards. Revolution was much discussed. The word "communism, though still indistinct as to meaning, was now coming into use. Marx said that numerous of the resulting contributions were: v\as permitted. Prussia followed a sterner rule:

prohibited. In Cologne

"

.

scrawls pregnant with world revolutions and enipt\ ot thought, written

.

.

stvle

slo\cnK

in a

and flavoured with some atheism and communism (which these gentlemen ha\e never

studied) ...

I

declared that

was

casual theatre reviews

Marx would

I

considered the sinuggling of communist and

unsuitable, indeed immoral

be a force

still

vated writers of the

left

for editorial

.

.

good

socialist ideas into

.*

in

dealing w ith higliK moti-

today.

Under Marx's editorship the Rhcinische Zeituuggrew rapidly in circulation, and its influence extended to the other German states. It became also of

who review ed the proots each night before it adverseK to Marx on many things; the most

increasing interest to the censors

They reacted important collision was o\er dead wood. went

to press.

numerous matters Marx, and

to

I

must acknowledge m\ debt on

Da\id McLcllan's recent and \er\

lucid biograpln

of

the\ include the stor\ of this conflict.^

ancient times, residents of the Rhineland had been accustomed to go

From

into the forests to collect fallen

wood

most w ater.

for fuel. Like air or

it

w as a

increasing population and prosperit> the wood had and the collectors a nuisance. So the privilege was withdrawn; wood now became serious private propert\ The cases seeking to

Now, with

free good.

become

,

\'aluable

.

protect

it

clogged the Prussian courts.

Some

eightv to ninetx percent of

all

prosecutions were, it is said, forlheft of dead wood or what was so described. the keepers of forests would be The law was now^ to be \ et further tigiitened given summary power to assess damages for theft. In commenting on this power, Marx asked:

—

.

.

.

if

everv violation of propertv. without distinction or more precise determination,

would not person of

all priv

this

In these

Through mv

ate propertv he theft?

propertv ?

Do

I

not thus

same months

\

priv ate propertv

.

do not

I

is

theft,

deprive another

iolate his right to propertv ?*

of 1842,

neighbors, the winegrowers of

tlie

Marx

also

came

.Moselle \'alley.

to the

support

oi

old

The\ were suffering

85

The Dissent

of Karl

Marx

common market that had recently adopted. His solution was not radical more discussion their problems and he came with free of to this also rather severely from competition under the ZoUverein, the

the

German

—

states

—

labored caution: To

resolve the difficultv, the administration and the administered both need a third element,

which

is

without being

political

official

and bureaucratic, an element which

at the

same time

represents the citizen without being directly involved in private interests. This resolving

element, composed of a

Marx

political

also criticized the

mind and a

civic heart,

is

a free Press.'

Czar and urged a more secular approach

to divorce.

was Prussia: here was a man supporting wood collection and free and criticizing the Czar. A line had to be drawn. In March 1843, the Rheinische Zeitung was suppressed. Marx went to Paris. First, however, on June 19, he went to Kreuznach, a resort town some fifty miles from Trier. There, in a Protestant and ci\'il ceremony, he married Jenny \'on Westphalen. Prussia

discussion

It

can be said without exaggeration that for no

marriage portend so much.

woman

since

A few months earlier Jenny had \\ ritten

husband urging him, come what may,

to

keep clear of

Mary

did

her future

politics.

Birth of a Socialist

For Marx, Paris was the beginning of a

new life. The streets of Paris were Many of the revolutionaries at this

then, as so often, the nursery of revolution.

time were German, refugees from Prussian censorship and repression. Many, of course,

were

socialists.

Their influence on Marx during his stay

very great.

The Marx family lived at various addresses on rue Vaneau time at number 38,

now

a small hotel-boardinghouse.

A

—

in Paris

was

for the longest

sign in the entrance

hallway tells of the most famous tenant, as does, most willingly, the proprietor.

Andre Gide lived in recent times at one end of the street. Stavros Niarchos now has an apartment just a few doors away. One imagines that the neighborhood has come up a bit since Marx's day. Once settled in Paris, Marx went ahead with his next journalistic enterprise, the editing of the Deutsch-Franzosi.sche Jahrbiicher, the German-French Yearbooks. This was really a magazine but by calling it a book, lie hoped to avoid censorship. The reference to France in the title was also a gesture. Though he was in Paris, Marx's thoughts were on Germany, and it was for Germany thai the Yearbooks were \\ritteii. Rue Vaneau was a convenient location for Marx's editorial activities, for his co-editor, Arnold Ruge, was a near neighbor.

A

review

in

the very

the censors. Again

it

first

issue of the

Yearbooks led

to

another collision u

ith

sounds rather innocuous — also complicated, labored,

with distinct elements of wishful thinking:

Jenny Marx "For no :

woman since Mary did marriage portend so much."

Friedrich Engels.

Birth of a Socialist

The emancipation is

philosoph>

,

its

ot

Germany

heart

is

the emancipation ot man.

The head

the proletariat. Philosophy cannot realize

is

itself

of this emancipation

w

ithout transcending

the proletariat, the proletariat cannot transcend itself withont realizing philosophy.

'"

But again the Pru.ssian police showed thcmselve.s to be very sensitive men. This was dangerous

stuff.

The

confiscated at the border. There could

there never

were

double-issue of the Yearbooks was

first

now be no German

readers,

and since was

any French contributors or readers, the publication

obviously in trouble. Marx, by this time, was also quarreling with his fellow

German-French Yearbooks was the last. In the next weeks, however, something far more important happened. Friedrich Engels was passing through Paris; the two men had met briefly once before; now at the Cafe de la Regence, once frequented by Benjamin Franklin, Denis Diderot, Sainte-Beuve and Louis Napoleon, they met and talked, editor,

Ruge. So the

first

issue of the

met again and formed what was

to

be one of the world's most famous

—

would be Marx's editor, collaborator, admirer, friend and financial angel. His name would forever, and all but exclusively, appear in association with that of Marx. "Our complete agreement in all theoretical fields became obvious," he later wrote, "and our joint work dates from that time."" Engels always considered himself a junior partner, and so, without doubt, he was. But that does not lessen his role. Had he not been the junior partner, much for which his senior partner is known would not have been partnerships. Engels

done.

Like Marx, Engels was a German.

upper middle

class. All of

And

come from

member

Marx, he was a

the early revolutionary leaders

any exceptions at all) were middle-class did they

like

intellectuals.

(it is

hard

of the

to think of

Only in hope and oratory

the masses.

However, the Engels family early way, a multinational

—

textile

manufacturers

in the

Ruhr and,

in

an

enterprise — was much wealthier than that of

Marx. Engels would spend most of

his life in

England, in Manchester, where

he comliined revolutionary thought with the supervision of the

local

branch of

the family firm.

Relieved of his editorial duties,

Marx

settled

down

reading and study, perhaps the most intense of his

life.

for a period of serious

Numerous

of the ideas

which were to dominate his later years are thought to have taken form in this period. No one should imagine, although some do, that socialism began with

was under the most intense discussion. Saint-Simon and Charles Fourier had preceded Marx. So had Robert Owen whom we've already encountered. Louis Auguste Blanqui (who spent most of his life in prison), Louis Blanc. P. J. Proudhon, all Frenchmen, and the Germans, Ferdinand Lassalle and Ludwig Feuerbach, were contemporaries. All, and Marx. By

this

especially the

time

it

Germans, were sources of Marx's thought. 89

The Dissent

Karl Marx

of

Marx, during these years, was not only gathering ideas but considering the For John Maynard Keynes ideas were the motivating

role of ideas themselves.

force in historical change. Marx, while not denying the importance of ideas,

carried the proposition a step further back.

The accepted

ideas of any period

are singularly those that serve the dominant economic interest: .

changes

intellectual production

.

.

its

character

in

proportion as material production

changed. The ruling ideas of each age ha\e ever been the ideas of the ruling I

have never thought Marx wrong on economic truth

terizes great social truth,

agreeable to the significant

whether

teach,

the institutions

many

Taking form,

is

'-

Nothing more reliably charac-

this.

than

in particular,

interest.

What

the United States or in the So\

in

Union,

iet

its

tendency

to

be

economists believe and is

rareK hostile to

— the private business enterprise, the Communist Part\ — dominant economic power. Not

that reflect the

although

economic

class.

to notice this takes effort,

succeed. also, in

these years were Marx's views on the process b\

\\

hicii

capitalism itself would be changed. Sir Eric Roll, a remarkably eclectic English

student of

Marx

— he

has been a professor, a senior

who

complished international negotiator

Marshall Plan and the EEC, a banker, a

many ence

.

servant, an ac-

member

of the Court of the

Bank

England and a respected writer on the history of economic tliought

of

had

It

civil

led the negotiations for both the

.

.

years ago gave the most succinct

in capitalist

in

opposed

made

necessary by the

to this) the individual

inevitable antagonism

The

motivating influ-

.

.

.

is

new powers

the increasingly social, cooperative nature of of production which

ownership of the means of production

between the two

classes

whose

result,

he was forming

mankind possesses and .

.

.

[From

this

]

''

was leading Marx

his ideas

(as

comes the

interests are incompatible.

notion of contradiction and inevitable conflict

consequences. As a

movement and change

the system which produced conflict,

This basic contradiction of capitalism

production

ot the

change:

be some contradiction

to

summary

—

to

its

on communism and

beginning to identify himself with the ultimate vision of the classless society.

With all many, and

he continued writing. His preoccupation was still with Gernew outlet was Vorwdrfs (Forward), the organ of the German

else,

his

refugee community

in Paris.

one must read what he .

.

.

Germans has

But the censors were

still

on guard. Once again

said:

a vocation to social rexokilioii thai

is all

the

more

classic in thai

German bourgeoisie is German proletariat ... is the

of political resolution. For as the impotence ol the

tence

German)', so the situation

ol

ot

the

Germany. The disproportion between philosophical and no abnorniaIil\

.

It is

a neccssarx disproportion.

can find a corresponding

freedom

90

^

. '

It is

onK

political de\

il

is

incapable

the political imposocial situation ot

elopmcnt

in

Germany

in socialism thai a philosphical

activity, thus only in the proletariat that

it

tinds the active

is

people

element of its

The Communist Manifesto

One

>

earns for policemen w ho could be aroused toda\ b> such prose. But.

reliabK, the Prussian police

were aroused. The\' complained to the French; to act. They asked for a friendly,

harbor such a writer was not a neighborly

French Minister of the Interior, was obliging in such matters and issued an order for Marx's expulsion. That was on January 25, 1845. On twenty-four hours' notice the Marx family there \\ as now a baby girl departed for Brussels. Vorudrts \\ as also closed down. fraternal gesture of repression. Guizot, the

—

—

The Communist Manifesto The Communist Manifesto was composed by Marx with the help of Engels in the next rather peaceful and happy years in Belgium. The Manifesto was an organizing document, a brochure for the League of the Just (soon to become the Communist League) which Marx v\as now actixeh' promoting. It is, incomparabh'. the most successful propaganda tract of all time. There was also, in comparison with Marx's early writing, a quantum advance in the impact of the prose. What before had been word\' and labored was nowsuccinct and arresting a series of hammer blows:

—

The

history of

all

hitherto existing society

and plebeian,

patrician

lord

and

serf,

is

the histor\' of class struggles.

Freeman and

slave,

guild-master and journe\man, in a word, oppressor and

oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, nowhidden, now- open

fight,

a fight that each time ended cither in a re\olutionar\' reconstitution of

society at large, or in the

.

.

.

The executive of the modern

the whole bourgeoisie

The

.

.

sation.

ruin of the contending classes.

State

hut a committee for managing the

is

impro\ement of all instruments of production.

means of communication, draws

.

it

batters

ci\'ili-

dow n

all

.

[the bourgeoisie] has created

compared w ith the

rural,

idiocy of rural life

.

.

.

enormous

cities,

during

its

rule of .scarce

has greatly increased the urban population as

a considerable part of the population from the

and has thus rescued

one hundred years,

and more

colossal productive forces than

[InitialK

the proletarians do not fight their enemies

1

immenscK

b\ the

e\en the most barbarian nations, into

all.

The cheap prices of its commodities are the hea\ y artiller\ w ith w hich

Chinese walls

common affairs of

.

bourgeoisie. b\ the rapid

facilitated

It

common

have

all

it

has created more massi\e

preceding generations together.

|

.

.

.

the great lw)urgcnisic or capitalists], but

the enemies of their enemies, the remnants of absolute

monarch)

,

the landow ners, the non-

industrial bourgeoisie, the petty bourgeoisie.

The Communists

disdain to conceal their

\

iew

s

and aims. Thc\ openK declare that

can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of classes tremble at a

chains.

all

communistic re\olution. The proletarians have nothing

They ha\ e a w orld

to

win. Working men of all

their

ends

existing .social conditions. Let the ruling

countries, unite!

'

to lose but their

^

91

:

The Dissent

Karl Marx

of

The Communist Manifesto Its

crescendo tones

still

somid when modern

of

laiiifcsto

pohticians are

moved

proclaim their

faith.

to

Comiminist ^artji.

tljc

KARL MARX and FREDERICK ENGEL3.

A

SPECTRE

is

hauHtiiig

Europe— the

spectre of Commiinisin.

All tlio

Powers of old Europe liave ciitereil iulo a liuly alliance tu exorcise tli-s Pope and Czar, Mclteruicli and Gutzot, Frcuch Radicals and

spectre

i

German poHce-spiea. Where is the party

in opposition that has not been decried as comby its opponents in power ? Where the Opposition that has not reproach of Communism, against the more back the branding hurled adviinced oppusition partie.^. as well as a.^ainst its re-actiouar y advci varies ? Two things result from this fact. I. Communism is already acknowledged by ail European Powers to be itself a Power. II. It 13 bi^^li time that Communists slvniid openly, in the face of the whole world, piblisU tlieir views, theii- aims, tiien- tendcuciea, am! ii;cet this nursery tale of the Spectre of Communism with a Manitesto of the p.irty

mtintstic

itself.

To

this end,

of various nationalities have assembled in the manifesto, to be published Flemish and Danish lauguaiics.

Comamuists

London, and sketclied the EoijUsh, French,

German,

m

followiiif,'

Italian,

I.

DOURGEOIS AND PiiOLETARlANS. «

The history of truggles. Freeman

and

all

hitherto existing society {b)

slave,

is

(a)

the history of class

and plebeian, lord and

patrician

SL-rf,

guild-

meanl the cl.iss of modern Capilali'^li, nwucfs of the By bourgeoiiic raeaus of social produchon and employers of wage-laiwiir By pixjIcUuat. the class of moJero wage l3hour';rs wlio. having no ine,i:i3 of production of their (a]

i'-

own, arc reduced

lo bcllinR

[Ii«;ir

lalio(u-[Xiwer in ordijr lo live.

{b) Tliat is, all urt:Uii liialuiy. In n'^j, the pre history uf society, the social organization existing previous to rc'cordr:il history, was all but unknowu Sincn then, llaxthnusen discovered common ov\ncrship of l.iiid in Russia. Maurc provcil it to be the so^iial foundation from which .ill Teutonic races started in history, and by and bye village communities were fouud to be, or to have been, the priniilive form of society everywhere from India to Ireland. The ioaet

Even more durable than the has been

mood tor

its

effect

on

political

impact of The Commii}}ist Manifesto

political style. Its assertive,

has become part of the consciousness of

whom

the

name

of

Marx

Hart, Schaftner and men's

is

anathema and those

suits. In

tell

\\

including those

lio identifx

is,

Frenchmen

of the right or

The Manijesio its

in

extinction.

is

not without

and

his

contradictions.

These are different stages

claim that

inevitable. I^nt there

92

its

Marx's praise of capitalism and

pedants have suggested, olution

left

The prose

so

invariably, a terrible thing.

might suppose, lor

onl\ with

the people of their purposes, the crescendo tones of the Maui-

Jcsto sound in their ears and presently in those of the public.

contrived

it

consequence, when American Democrats

or Republicans, British socialists or Tories,

decide to

uncompromising, thrusting

all politicians,

is

in

its

There

is

none, as some

accomplishments,

his call

the historical process. Nor, as

there any real conflict between his call for rev-

it is

ine\ itable.

was a great and

One can

al\\a\s

tr\

to

intetisek practical conflict

advance the

between

his

Revolution

— Of a Sort

immediate program and is.

by

all

his hope of rc\ ohition. 'Hie program in the Manifesto modern standards, mostly a collation of reformist measures. The

demands are

lor:

Ending of private ownership

A

oi'

land.

progressive income tax.

Abolition of inheritance.

A

national

bank with

a

monopoK

of banking operations.

Public ownership of railroads and communications.

Extension of public ownership

in industr>

;

cultivation

of idle lands.

Better

soil

Work by

management.

all.

Combination of agriculture with industry; decentralization of population.

Free education. Abolition of child labor.

Education along with work.

In

one way or another

these things

in

'*

the advanced capitalist countries quite a few of

— ending of the private ownership of land, decentralization of — have

population and a public monopoly of banking arc the major exceptions

been done. And these reforms have helped take the raw edge

Thus they have had the

effect of postponing that "forcible

off capitalism.

overthrow of

all

which Marx called. In such fashion did Marx work against Marx. The internal revolution came in those countries Russia, China. Cuba where the reforms Marx urged were never known. existing social conditions" for

—

—

Revolution

A

— Of a Sort

revolution did

France,

come on

Germany and

the lieels of the Manifesto. In the Italian states,

Austria,

governments now tottered and crowned heads

few weeks. This was in 1848, the year of re\olutions, a year that is still connected in the minds of many people with Marx and the Manifesto, neither of which, in fact, had an appreciable influence on events. When the revolution came, the words of the Manifesto were still all but unknown. It was, however, the first revolution that could be identified. Ii()we\ er indistinctly, with the aims and aspirations of the w orkers with the fell,

some

to rise again in a

—

proletariat as a class. So

developed

in Paris. .'Vnd

it

it

was watched

Iiad a

profound

closely effect

by Marx, especially as

it

view of the nature

of

on

his

revolution. For that reason the e\ ents in Paris require a closer look. E\er\' great event has

geographical epicenter

— that of the .\merican

around Carpenters' and Independence Philadelphia; that of the great French Revolution was the Place de la

RcN'olution

Halls in

its

was the few

city blocks

93

1848 was the year of revolutions: Paris.

Vienna.

Berlin.

,iii

t>«

I ,

; IT-

"i

^

'.'

" ::

:

;

^

i,|,

it.

'NsMMdinf

,hiii'

jj' , si.

..k- w ."„ «-,•]'"

A

.J«l

Prague.

.1

" r

~ H

B, a.

i S S jM'f S /j|,-;

Revolution

Bastille; that of the

Revolution of 1848 was the Luxembourg Gardens.

had something

setting

were much

— Of a Sort

to

The

do with causes and participants, neither of which

Marx's

taste. In the years before 1848 in France there had been and much unemployment. Businessmen suffered as well as the workers. The crops had also been bad and bread prices very high. Then, in 1847, crops were very good and prices fell. So now the peasants took a beating. Almost everyone was being punished; the market, which is much loved by conservati\es, was playing a ver> revolutionary role.

to

a severe depression

In particular, the circumstances greatly encouraged a dangerous line of

thought now coming into circulation.

was that private production of goods might not be the only possible form of economic organization. This was the It

influence of Saint-Simon, Charles Fourier, Louis Blanc

and others mentioned abo\e. In circulation, also, was the compelling notion that every man had the right to a job; the reference was to the right to work. In the United States, the phrase, the right to work, to unions, for

a job.

It is

heard by conser\ati\'es with approval, or

and never by a devout

of nostalgia,

with right-to-work law

s,

e\

liberal

The

stands for opposition

work was a

at least

with a pleasant sense

without a distinct shudder.

en though they are unenforced,

matters, a very retarded place indeed. right to

now

the principle that no person should have to join a union to hold

Time changes

is,

in

A

state

trade-union

everything. In 1848, the

truly radical thought.

uprising in February 1848 united highly disparate groups, something

that did not

encourage Marx. There were the w orkers w ho w anted work and

income. They were joined b> businessmen, mostly smaller entrepreneurs,

w ho wanted freedom of enterprise and a chance in

to

recoup the losses suffered

the preceding years of depression. And, initially, there

peasants w ho w anted better prices.

The

was support from the

leadership w as mostly by

men u ho

w anted freedom of expression — freedom from censorship and the attentions

By most standards, the leaders were conscr\'ative. As the symbol the red flag w as rejected in faxor of the tricolor. The tricolor was thought less damaging to business confidence and tlie public credit. The revolt was quickK successful. The Tuileries Palace was occupied. Louis Philippe found it con\ enient to depart. The Luxemboiug Palace was brought into use as the seat of a commission to study means for rescuing the workers from their poverty. This device was not yet a transparent stall. The concern with the workers brought the focus on the Gardens. The

ol

the police.

ot re\()lution,

assemblage there was, or has been called, history.

It

was

also,

tlie first

more than incidentalK.

a

congress of workers in

means

for segregating

keeping under control the most troublesome and dangerous participants re\()lt. It

was one thing

to

be

liberal, republican, romantic.

It

in

and the

was another

95

The Dissent

of

Karl Marx

thing to question private property, be for workers' rights, higher pay, a twelvehoin- day.

Let there be a revolution but

The word

revolution

being threatened.

If

comes

let

it

not be irresponsible.

easily to the tongue; revolutions are

we knew how

hard

it is

to

always

have one, we might use the

word less, and conservatives might fret less about the danger. They are far, far know. Three conditions are absolutely

safer than they

ers,

men who know exactly what

essential.

they want and

everything to gain and everything to attract

men who have an eye

There must be determined lead-

for the

lose.

who also know that they have men are rare. Revolutions

Such

main chance.

The leaders must have disciplined followers, people who will accept orders, carry them out without too much debate. This too is unlikely; revolutionaries have a disconcerting tendency defend their

own

beliefs.

to believe

There

is

These cannot be allowed. Such men And, above

all,

they should think for themselves,

opportunity and attraction for windbags. will

be crushed while they debate.

the other side must be weak. All successful revolutions are

the lacking in of a rotten door.

The

violence of revolutions

who charge into a vacuum. So it was

in

is

the violence of

the French Revolution. So

it

was

men

in

the

in 1917. So it was in the Chinese Revolution after World was not in 1848. In the Luxembourg Palace the leadership was weak and the talk was long. It was of government workshops in which men would produce cooperatively for the common good; it didn't matter much what or at what cost. Or it was of public works, a great underground canal across Paris, in which imagination took the place of engineering. Wages were, indeed, raised. But this and associated relief measures had the effect of raising taxes and giving the peasants the impression that they were paying for the revolution. Meanwhile no real thought was given to seizing the instruments of power guardsmen, police, soldiers. These are extremely important people in the moment of

Russian Revolution

War

II.

So

it

—

revolutionary truth.

This

moment of revolutionary truth came in

On June

23, the

the early

summer days of 1848.

workers decided to leave their revolutionary ghetto and

Pantheon a few hundred yards away. From there they marched to the Place de la Bastille to enforce the much-discussed demands on the provisional government. The government was not without resources, and assemble

at the

had been viewing the workers with increasing alarm. The workers succeeded in getting to the Place de la Bastille and in building a formidable barricade. The first attack by the National Guard was repelled, it

and some

thirty

olutionaries

now

guardsmen were

killed.

asserted themselves.

The romantic tendencies

Two handsome

prostitutes

the top of the barricade, raised their skirts and asked

of rev-

climbed

to

what Frenchman,

I

To London

however reactionary, would

on the naked belly of a woman. Frenchmen

fire

rose to the challenge with a lethal xoUey.

were stormed and the workers overcome. Prisoners were taken, and initialK' they were shot. Then, it is said, out of consideration for the neighbors who objected to the noise, tlicy were put to the Presently the barricades

ba\ onet instead. ful

The massacre extended

to the

gesture, again according to legend, these

until the

Gardens. In another thought-

were kept closed

for several

days

blood was washed or cleaned away. Already by 1848, people were

becoming conscious of the environment. Marx was not greatly surprised by this outcome. The bourgeois leadership of the revolution did not inspire his confidence.

And as

concerned, the timing and sequence were wrong:

first,

bourgeois revolution, tlien the socialist triumph. Later that the revolution, symbolically at least, flag.

"The

now

tricolour republic

made

to the

in

in

had succeeded

workers were

there had to be the the year in the

Marx noted

matter of the

bears only one colour, the colour of the

'^

defeated, the colour of blood."

Elsewhere

far as the

Europe even the monarchies sur\i\ed. Concessions were

bourgeois power but not to the workers. Before 1848, to speak

generally, the old feudal classes

and the new

capitalist class

Thereafter they were united, with the capitalists gaining

were

in real, if not visible,

power. This union would be secure tor another sixty-five years great ungluing of

World War

in conflict.

—

until the

I.

To London The \ear 184S did bring great personal changes for Marx. The Belgians were more liberal than their neighbors but just as nervous; they decided that even they could not harbor so dangerous a man. By now Marx was at the head of the police

lists,

a celebrated

name

in all the dossiers.

moment the revolutionary mood had its eff^ect. On almost the day he Brussels, he was invited back to France. And he w as able to go from there to Cologne to revive the Rheinische Zeitung, now become the Neue Rheinische Zeitung. His first loyalty was still to the German workers. For the

was expelled from

However, the revived paper was, ation.

And

it

financialK' speaking, a shoestring oper-

existed only because of the uncertainty of the conservative

and

counterrevolutionarx forces as to whether the\ had the power to suppress

Once they saw the feebleness of the revolutionar\ threat, they mo\'ed in again. Marx was still, in some ways, a voice for moderation. He had warned it.

strongly against reckless, adventurist action In the workers that could only

lead to disaster.

Nevertheless he had once more to mo\'e. available,

England and the United

States.

Onh two

countries

Marx gave thought

to

were

still

going to the

97

,

of Karl Marx

The Dissent

United States, and This was his

is

it

done

Rt'pnhlic liad he

inteiestinti to spfcnlatc

so.

But

move; he

last

Marx crossed

lie dichi

lixed in

on his Inture and that of the

ha\ e the nione\\ So

I

London

Though

behind him, he was, incredibK

lilclinies

London.

to

tor the rest ol his Hie.

the Cliannel on August 24. 1849.

perience ot several

w ent

lie

Before him lay three further tasks: the Hrst was to put

the ex-

lie liad

only thirl\-one.

.

in final

lorm the ideas

was to create the was to find the means 1)\ wliich he and his t;nnil\ could eal, be housed and survive. Each of these tasks interfered sadK with the others but. in the vnd, all were that \vf)uld guide the masses to their saKation; the second

organization that would bring

and lead the

rex'olution; the third

accomplished.

The

came Irom

and from other Iriends. 4liere was an occasional inheritance windfall from Trier, and there was the Neir York Trihtiiw. (In 1S.57, when limes were lean, the 'rrihiinc fired all ol its loreign correspondents but two. Marx was one of the two w ho w ere kept.) But Nhirx \\

financial help

as alw'a\

a terrible

s

fjigels

hand w ith mone\'. Where before his mo\cments were at now ihey were at the behest ol landlords and

the bi'hest of the |iolice,

Thus the migrations

cix'ditors.

— Irom rooms Dean

the King's Road in Chelsea, to 64 the street. Children came,

crowded rooms uncerlainlx

portion. She accepted

The

and three of them died

six in all,

.

nuMi, Milin lives in

el

London.

I

le oeeiipies

at the liaek.

I'A ei

\

thill',; is

disorder

an

t'\

oilelotli.

the

lai^s

\\

and

tal tei'ed

el

I'lie

and

llie

one

torn,

the imdille

there

it

spile el

liis

all

tatti'is ol his

on the sanu'

lie

iil

ol

W

s

lu'ii

\on entei \lar\ \

\

\\ er\

tliin'4 IS dirt\

hnsiness.

98

^ '

police spy

hope as

forth

on

is

lookm'j, onl

ol

w

ilh a

li.ill

meh

the salon there

llie

to

sireel

llu'

one ek-an and

not

is

is

ol ,i

wiles sew in^ haskit.

iienllesl

is tlie

ihe eheapesl.

It

to

salon,

and

(|liarti'rs ol

and the hedroom

solid pK'ec' ol

lurnitnre.

dust o\ er e\ er\ thm'4 and the urealesl

hn ne old-lashioned tahle

mamrseripls. hooks and new spapers. as

talile. .\ st'ller ol

reinarkahle colleetion

moment on seem ion. on can make

mariiage

Marx menage.

wild and restless eliarailer,

-

in a

\\

w old,

st'conddiaiid 'j,oods w onld he

ell ,is tlu'

t'o\

ert'd

ihildriai

hroken rims,

se\ era! eiips with

lamps, an inkpot, tiimhiers, Dutch ela\ pipes, tohaeeo ash

and

s

1(S52, a

and holds

files

wiirsl. lliereliire (ine

whole apartnunt there

lieie. In

and on

in

one

o rooms,

l\\

In the

hroken.

er\

the squalid,

the (4.\ ma\ oiler:

lather and lui.shand. \lar\.

mildest

in

an illegitimate son.) The

sent back a lucid account ol the

a \aluable contribution to histor\ Irom the

.\s

.

oH

flat

further up

mo\es and the sc|ualor were Jenin .Marx one gathers, w ith inlinite good nature.

Marxs rooms and

what, one da\

is

it.

number 2n'

J'rrside7it' of Cr.-nfrnZ Ccnoictt. -

( 't>ri '•'pai^^iiiu. •"^"'^

Mmiorary Trea^novr. ^i

ciruei. SiMrh oi

the ieadmg

Thewc_-

:

__

._:.

^

with

r.e

r

wfai:.

were spared execution

.\ew Caledonia.

-.tr

tiie a^idit^"

as

-5

.

was

w ere repeated with much of now enjoyed. Again Paris

ers are

---

events were foflowed ckeeK by Mars, and by ih>w such wias his fame that

^re was P-r^ T" :

-ear

'

w as

dooaries.

_

i:trast

-

it

was

attributed to

with his doubts of a

leadership and aims.

:

whvhe

rship of the

middle-class

olution that

accurateh the root word of communism. .

great heart of the working class.

ctbove

:..^:. ..^,

some wishful

thinking.

was to use. seriously. howe\er inIt was the onlv one Marx was to see.

Deafli and Life .After

the Paris revolt

Marx

li\.

work: he also remained the

106

eri

on for another \\\ elve years.

higf».

He continued his

though not the undisputed, judge of %vhat

Pans

Oe

after tfae

modem standards.

Coninic

fr u:e

uommuiie-

The Dissent

of

Karl Marx

and \\ hat was error in socialist thought. One of tliese judgments brought the most enduring of his phrases. In the years following the FrancoPrussian War, the working class in Germany grew rapidly in political strength. Again the aftermath of war. Not one but two working-class parties emerged,

was

riglit

met at Gotha in central Germany to merge and agree on a common program. The result was extremely displeasing to Marx: the program offended deeply against Marxist principles, and once again reform replaced revolution. His Critique of the Gotha Pru{i,ramme held, with much else, that after the workers had taken power, the scar tissue remaining from capitalist habits and thought would have first to disappear. Onl\ then would come the great day when society would "inscribe on its banners: from each according and

in 1(S75, they

to his abihty, to

each according

to his

needs!"-"

It is

possible that these last

twelve words enlisted for Marx more followers than

thousands His

in

the hundreds of

the three volumes of Capital combined.

\ears were not a happ\' time for Marx. His health w as bad and not

last

improved

all

I)\

the abuse to

food, sleep, tobacco

and

trecjuent occasions he

hich he had long subjected himself in matters of

\\

alcohol.

was

for the cure. Several times

(He was a prodigious consumer of beer.) On

forced, in the fashion ol the time, to retire to a spa

he went

to

Carlsbad

in

w hat w as then Austria and

is

now Czechoslovakia where the police watched over him along with his doctors and reported principally on the very satisfactory way that he kept to his prescribed regimen. In ISSI his wife Jenny was found to ha\ e cancer and that ,

December she Jenn>. the

first

died.

A

lonely,

Marx

Engels

at his bedside,

been so

108

little

few months later she was followed by their daughter

and most belo\ed

of

Marx's children. Distraught and \ery

too ceased in an\ real sense to live.

On March

13,

1883, with

he died. Not since the Prophet has a man's influence

diminished by

his death.

4.

The Colonial Idea

The

ideas ot w liich

we have been

cenluiN only to a small corner

Europe and

India, China, the

Middle East,

was without

.

They had

were important

.\lar\ spoke.

still

Much

the last

Western

for

meaning or relevance for Latin America or Eastern Eurojie. This

.\frica.

capitalists,

without proletarians, without or landlords;

much

much was

awaiting the progressive onslaught of capitalism

ol

a

which

of this world was, directh or indirectly, a colonial de-

pendency of one or another

of the industrial countries.

China was more nominal than

The independence

of

Latin America, although released from

real.

was under both the economic influence and (through the Monroe

Doctrine) the protection

independence was an ci\ ilized

of

the United States. In the rest of the poor lands

rescue b\ what no one hesitated to

in\ itation to

call

the

coimtries.

Colonialism being so general a phenonu-non. one would great economists to have considered of its

in

little

0\eru helmingly the people were farmers

feudal socict\

Spain,

the world. The\

of

for the L'nited States.

part of the world industi\

speaking so far had appheation

it

at length,

purposes and a detailed consideration

lia\

e expected the

produced a major justification

of its

methods. The\ did nothing of

the sort.

Adam Smith w as interested in the subject as in e\ erything else, l^ut he w as mostK concerned to warn against eflorts 1)\ tlu' mother countrs to monopolize trade w ith its possessions. It should make no attempt to do this either for trade in

general or for specific

as tobacco, molasses,

content to

condemn

— the\ w ere called enumerated — commodities such

w hale

fins

and, for a time, sugar. For the rest he w as

the East India

Company and

companies, therefore, are nuisances inconvenient to the countries

in

in

all its

woiks. "Such exclusi\e

every respect; al\\a\s more or

less

w hich the\ are established, and destrncli\ e

those which ha\c' the misfortime to

fall

under their go\ernment.

'

lie

to

had

"I nder the present system of management, therefore. Great Britain derives nothing but loss from the dominion which she assiuues

earlier

()\

concluded

er her colonies.

that;

-

In a

modern

British or .\merican inii\ crsity such stalwart

conclusions might be thought a sign of inferior scholarship.

Anyone would expect East India Coiupan\

.

that Mallhus.

would diaw.

who

taught the future servants

for his pessimistic e\ idence.

on the

of

the

iuige,

109

-

The Colonial Idea

poor and

prolific

erence

Hindustan

to

population

great

in his

however, only passing

is,

selfish ad\

antage

lor the

of Populalion.

ref-

Most

ol

population growth conies from his

ol

Europe and America. Ricardo,

in

Adam

himself to some mild corrections of

some

There

on The Principle

Es.saij

tendenc\

his case tor the relentless

observations

India.

ol

in

his Piincii)le.s, confines

Smith. There might, he argued, be

mother countr\

e trading pri\ ileges

in i'.\clusi\

James Mill, like .Malthus, was supported b\ the East India and he de\ oted much of his lile to his great History of British India. Company, a book to \\ hich all historians ol economic thought ad\ ert and \\ hich lew ha\ e with

its

colonies.

compan\ s tiading nionopoK otherwise his case and administratix e, not economic. He looked lor-

read, lie too abhorred the for colonialism

;

political

is

vvard to the da\ w hen "India will be the

first

countr\' on earth to boast a

s\

stem

of law and judicature' as near perlection as the circumstances of the people

would admit."' John Stuait Mill, who, like supported b\ the compan\ did not get ai'ound ,

and Malthus, was

his lather

to colonial c|ueslions Luitil the

There he contented himself with mging goxernment-assisted emigration w here population was excessive and empty last

pages of

Principles.

his

lands needed people.

imnecessar\

in

The

the case

recent famine, he noted, had

The great scholars

Ireland.

ol

made

this inter\

ention

of classical capitalism

took colonialism lor granted and concernt-d ihemseK es with the conditions lor

progress as

it

in

The

the ad\ anced countries.

colonial world

earned attention only

afiected that progress.

Marx and Imperialism Marx,

He

in contrast,

saw the rush

production. Thus ol

did

it

make

the colonial world an organic part of his system.

for colonies as a

postponed for a

wa\ of gaining markets

little

the

capitalism, l^ul. like earliei" economists,

advanced

capitalist state itself.

colonial world, in contrast,

the climactic slruggli'

was

transform [iioduction

in

down In

Marx

primarx inteiesl was the

v\as the focus of all Marx's passion.

had no bourgeoisie, no

lar in the distance.

in

It

proletariat. So tor

was capitalism

— a progressixo

the colonial world capitalism

that

it

would

force.

If,

was something

to

as in India, colonialism helped to break

was iirogiessive. now the Third \\ orld. no

the leudal structure and nurture capitalism, that \\

hat w as once called the colonial woild

one has greater standing as a prophet than colonialism; capitalism has also a

\

t'r\

ment and some discomlort were Marx (ieneral .\ssembl\

110

s

and collapse

these countries and dt-wlop a disciplined re\

olutionary proletaiial. So

be urged

lor capitalist

ine\ itable crisis

w as here that the climactic struggle betw ecu

was coming. This

bourgeoisie and proletariat

The

It

still

ol

the

I

and

is

,\tarx.

Nothing

is

so rexiled as

poor press. There would be astonishto acce|it

nited Nations.

an

in\ itation to

address the

The Colonial Mission

The Colonial Mission The nature ol our discussion been

was

said. It

ol

the colonial ideas follows From what has just

not, lor the ijreat figines in

economics, the subject

of

a

developed doctrine. The ideas sioxerning colonialism were merged into the experience

and they changed somew hat as the experience changed. To we must go not to llie books but to the practice and the

itself,

appreciate these ideas,

was explained and justified. what has just been said that this part of oiu' discussion, and accordingK this chapter, ha\ e some of tlie character of a digression. The\- take us out of the main cmrent of ideas and exents in the dexelopment of capitalism and socialism to look at a special phenomenon, one lliat was not satisfactoril\ integrated into the main course of economic histor\ But digression is also an unsatislactor\ word, for it suggests something less important. We must not \\a\ this

follows from

It

.

forget that the colonial world far exceeded in population industrialized world that coloni/ed

The did.

There

is

this.

On man\

earh stages, were

its

ha\e ne\er been can-

justified colonialism

nothing remarkable about

matters

men

sense that

the underlying reasons for action are best concealed. C'onscience

serxed by a myth.

one

s self.

cerned.

To

And

must ha\ e a

die to protect or

most

The case

fairly ele\

is

—

where

unused lands

of

seKes as the pur\e\ors

The

social worth.

war was con-

pri\ilege of

oi-

better

killed.

someone

reason for conflict o\ er the centuries, lacks beaut\

of colonialism

in\()l\ed people

is

to [lersuade

ated moti\ e for getting themselves

enhance the wealth, power

common

the same.

woidd be altogether too uncouth, settlement

first of all.

.Myth has alwa\s been espeeialK important where

Men

else, the

persuade others one needs,

to

tlie

it.

ideas that interpreted capitalism, at least in

reasonabK candid. The ideas that

and extent

of

realit\

it

The

selfish or

has not meant

— the

w ere the\

real moti\ es,

stated,

obscene. So where colonization has

mcreK

the appropriation and

colonialists ha\ e almost

some transcendental moial,

always

secMi

them-

spiritual, political or

has as regularK included a consideiable component

ol pecuniarx interest, real or anticipated, for

important participants. Those

who have

questioned the m\ th ha\e been lucky to be considered mereK

wrong:

more

far

often the\ ha\e been thought unpatriotic or ti'aitoious.

Colonial rule, the go\ ernment of one people by another and geographicalK or ethnically distant power, has

alwa\s comes

to

an end.

I

had another great constant. Sooner or

sualK the end

those remaining behind. .\l\\a\s

power of the All modern most

likely

colonial peo|:)le than

empire's

Dutch and

—

bloocK

ihi-

departure

tin'

diminishing

Spanish,

Belgiari

is

l^ritish.

is

,

it

intei'i'st ol

l-'rench,

worthwhile

it

less the result of (he rising

to

those w ho lea\e.

.\merican, Portuguese,

— could ha\e bc^cn kept

metropolitan coimtr\ had thought

later

both for those lea\ing and

do

if

so.

the people

of

the

But none was as

111

The Colonial Idea

willing to

expend blood and treasure

to

keep the colonies as

it

had been

to

win

them. Also, an important point, the people of these coimtries were no longer willing to

suspend disbehef as

longer accept the

myth

to their

purpose

in

of righteous purpose as opposed to the lower facts of

pride, prestige or the pecuniary interest of those

and

selves

One

money

their

final

being there. They would no

who had committed them-

to the colonies.

feature of colonialism must be stressed.

To

this

day

in

the United

onetime colonies of Britain, Latin America, Africa and Asia, happens and more that does not happen can be explained by the

States, the other

much

that

colonial experience

— by the way the land was held, the way the economy was

developed or not developed, the justice or injustice of the colonial

No

rule.

memory

is so deep and enduring as that of colonial humiliation and injustice. must also be added, nothing serves so well as an alibi. In the newly independent countries the colonial experience remains the prime excuse whenever something goes wrong. In these countries much does go wrong. So,

But,

it

respect too, colonialism remains a lively source of m\'th.

in this \\

as

made

b\ those

\\

Iio

Now

colonized.

b\ those

\\

ho

\\

Once

the

m>

th

ere colonized.

To the East Mention colonialism, and the first image is of a great thrust westward by Europeans into the New World. In fact, the first great colonial enterprise of Western Eiuopeans was to the eastern Mediterranean. It began nearh nine hundred years ago with the First Crusade; it continued lor an incredibly long

Had

time.

would

still

Pentagon,

the Crusades begun

in

the year of

be very actively under way. Were the\ imder the auspices it

would

still

be heard

that, in the

the end of the tunnel. However, in

emerging doubl as

The

the

light at

would be

C'rusades are important for the singular and enduring importance of

myth. The m\th was of

to

more

Holy Land, there was

skeptical quarters there

of

to the ultimate success of the enterprise.

sense of connnitmenl.

and

American independence, they

men

of the highest religious purpose, the most selfless

The purpose was

save the f^astern Christians

crusader

to this

da\

is

a

man

\\

ho

is

to

in

redeem Jerusalem Irom the

(Constantinople Irom the

inlidel

Turks.

A

ruled by basic moral or spiritual force; in

politics no one is viewed with more imease than "a crusader l\pe. The less avowed motive ol the Crusades was the acquisition of land and other property. Preaching the First Crusade in Clermont in 1095, Pope Urban II was candid enough tosax that good real estate was available for the ('hrislian taking in the HoK Land. This was a deepK' insj^iiing thought to the younger and landless

sons

ol

the I'rankish nobility. Later scholars have suggested that the

Father had also

in

mind

to (ind

I'Auope,"^ Better to ha\t' them

112

in

"a job

Asia than at

HoK

unemploved brigandage home.

lor tin-

ol

nn .'.

^

^

I

]^'^

cc c)tiatraiuT; urn

ipiC©

li

flcT

(incamonon

4 mmpamgntximcivi ."ljaie.£ri9r'4 grew ornem m

roixxpi cxx

tc>i^'i

11

umnr qxic t^'an-

Hiuene'i:

Mmpomgxxc cr>r wtc p'ifb U am% cc [i Qucne Ico'ebc Rme ct& c{W tnix cr cc fiux [cntxtc >te autn*. Or

rmejnnocsmr.l

farPifjqiic arqiiciie critowi c!Ci

tiop ScngvctCTt cr mi en fjtmct cnii or nom

ic^ce ^om . crriAuoir yMQ pCe^

fxnw fTcwc |x)fc)itce'Sc

wx .iMX?.llc

,

amlE- cTirhiutlie fi cfVcntrcET 5m To- mamc c pane, cr ifcrcpp

"W crtmoir Ca patToicfic^fiiiur .c

tr

cjjmr hotioii

crxxfxrvgmxxain

cp

q crncuon leVxn

(c tic>-->c

ffuncc

'fccn^ctcrrcSifautx-cpdrr.

'

'

crrrtrrc9.'mtiT6tcJTC0cntn.

n nfc fin® fi|V mamtce TnaTru:&

[ocx'snoiicir

'

nienca a -pmcr^^lcii parftim "

c|xtcnet

paepiue^.wVij.am.CiJVlu

,^ f\

.-Et arfbfmice'Snt le nortn «

fi

°

"iCfcc&.i

.amtre^rmlcrcnr

I'.TixurrraC-RjnJxi^frare.

_

'OvTxxoTie>cmonfbtt-qucnaii?i

.

'^nioTmniil.a'»u(rfx*granrlar f 1

lenuow im

par uii

;c

pm€Jm ojfcvte

c n loft

tuioicnr fSn "^ir if|^

rutcirconfe-TCMoeqaTpai^nft iffi gi-nm . fx fm cfmutxnr imB acucre^gTme.ctTniiC-fcn cm 'laxnrvo a ^ parSccrrp gxxin^.

Ri

el

aiinr .txx apice

T.oxicc.

-DiirG CD

'*"

oTpiaiSSrt

tcVKu

b:'inxc.]c/i'n>i>clpcnml«

' qxti

orfbicfHvin© li ui mxt-lio forflefxTtre.ffaimcrB^ffdin

*

gIXOU^.