In Rousseau’s time, the feeding was purely metaphorical. He lived before the Industrial Revolution, and people were still as poor as they had ever been. The literal feeding only began in the 19th century, and what you see is that the more people enjoy the fruits of a capitalist society, the more opportunities they have to engage in criticism. So, capitalism and industrial modernity become a victim of their own success because they breed this class of people who have their material needs met and can spend their lives biting the hand that feeds them. Karl Marx is a great example. He was living off of the handouts that he received from Friedrich Engels which were made possible by Engels’ father’s cotton factory. Capitalism was affording him the freedom and the material prosperity to write screeds against capitalism.
There was a recent study about how the hotspots of degrowth—the philosophy that calls for an end to economic growth and a controlled shrinking of material production—are all in wealthy countries. You don’t hear a lot of degrowth-ism from people in developing countries because they have a more immediate understanding of the benefits of capitalism and industry. But if you’ve been prosperous and well-fed and affluent for a long time, you tend to take those things for granted. If you read the degrowth literature, they seem to have no clue at all about what it means to farm, for example, and be self-sufficient. They romanticize it, and they can afford to romanticize it because nobody is there to tell them what it was like. Even their grandparents never experienced it.
– Maarten Boudry, philosopher and author, quoted on the Human Progress website. Worth a read.
The thesis – that the West gets a lot of stick because people have the freedom to be critical of it – chimes with another, related point: the elite “overproduction” idea. In other words, if you create a lot of people who have the time, money and energy to do things other than earn a living and so on, you are going to get a lot of this sort of reflection and in certain cases, destructive criticism.
This all reminds me of a couple of books that I read many years ago that are still worth a read, and in the case of the Johnson one, marvellous for its colour and detail: Roger Scruton and Fools, Frauds And Firebrands: Thinkers of the New Left, and Intellectuals, by Paul Johnson. Sadly, both men are no longer with us. I haven’t yet read Intellectuals and Society, by Thomas Sowell, but I will get round to it.
Plato was a Collectivist long before industrialization.
And, as the article itself points out, Rousseau was a Collectivist (his “Lawgiver” telling everyone what the “General Will” “really” was – and telling them what they said they wanted was just the despised “will of all”).
And Edmund Burke, and many other pro liberty thinkers, could never get his finances straight and had to rely on patrons – in his case such men as the Marquis of Rockingham and then Earl Fitzwilliam – and yet Mr Burke never had any problem disagreeing with the people who were funding him, arguing AGAINST their opinions. He did not see as biting the hand that fed him – as they knew in advance that he would not trim his opinions to suit them.
But the post does make a valid (very valid) point – under Collectivism most of these socialist writers would starve to death, or would kill each other in faction fights.
Only the private economy that they despise grants them the food and the liberty to go on as they are.
I believe it is what the Soviets used to call “the decadence of the west”, which they believed would destroy us. And they may well have been right.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot for various reasons, and I see all these students out there protesting. These are people who have never even held down a job as shift supervisor at a McDonalds and yet somehow they think they know how to run the world economy better. They have a right to their opinion, but generally their opinion is stupid and grossly ill informed. They say wisdom comes with age, which is certainly not always true, but I’ve met very few wise young people.
Paul, as ever, quotes the great and ancienct. I’m going to ref something else – something “Good”. The ’70s sitcom, “The Good Life”. A recurring motif in the show is that the “self-sufficienct” Goods frequently need bailing out by the capitalist stooges Jerry and Margot.
Fraser. I’m not sure it is the young. I have noticed far more leftie gittery in Boomers than da kidz of today.
@NickM
The ’70s sitcom, “The Good Life”. A recurring motif in the show is that the “self-sufficienct” Goods frequently need bailing out by the capitalist stooges Jerry and Margot.
I remember that show, primarily because Felicity Kendal was one of my first ever crushes. Hair all messy, dirty dungarees; very sexy in a “she don’t know she’s beautiful” kind of a way.
Anyway, if I can tear myself away from that image, I don’t think self sufficiency is necessarily anti capitalist, or at least not anti free market. For sure economists recognize three distinct economies: the trade economy, which is what “capitalism” mainly concerns itself with — the labor economy where you do stuff for yourself — which is what the Goods did, and the gift economy where people give you stuff out of generosity — which to some degree is what the Leadbetters did.
So, growing your own food is perfectly in accord with the ideas of the free market. My only hesitancy is to perhaps here draw a distinction between capitalism and free markets. I never much liked the term “capitalism” because it does conjure up images of Mr. Monopoly or Scrooge McDuck. And I think it is a bit wrong headed. Capitalism — the idea that deferred consumption creates surplus capital which can be leveraged to greater returns by investment in productivity enhancers is certainly a powerful idea, but in a sense I am more concerned with freedom, and specifically free markets where any two or more people can arrange whatever type of trade they want to between them.
Capitalism is certainly possible where there is a lot of big government control, in fact crony capitalism is a particular sub species of capitalism. Free markets generally are impacted more. Tom and Barbara Good were not imposing their views on anyone, not forcing people to trade with them against their will, not harming anyone at all, and so I think what they did is perfectly admirable. For sure the Leadbetters might bail them out occasionally (which would be an instance of the gift economy perhaps), though my memory is that the Goods often helped the Leadbetters out of a few pickles too, so, more of a trade of good will than anything.
But I found your comment interesting. I have never really liked the term “capitalism” both for the optics and because I think the focus is wrong — on capital not on freedom. In fact I think “capitalism” and “free markets” are really quite different things, even if they are comfortable bed fellows. Your comment made me think a bit harder about that distinction. So thanks.
NickM – I must admit to, as a young man, having sympathy for “Jerry”, he was never a real threat to Mrs Good, his attraction to her was more wistful than anything else.
Fraser Orr – there are also the other sort of Collectivist, the highly successful business person who think they can “run the economy” as that ran their business – that statism would work, if only the “correct people” were in charge.
In Britain this type was typified by “Radical Joe” Chamberlain – friend of the Webbs and the whole “national efficiency” movement.
In the United States the Progressive movement were also fanatical about “National Efficiency” and this attracted many “manly” Republicans such as Theodore (“Teddy”) Roosevelt.
It was not till the 1930s that this was abandoned – and the mantra became spend as much money as possible and it does not matter if it goes on corruption.
That was the line of Franklin Roosevelt and his “New Dealers” – utterly loathsome people who were very popular (60% of the vote in 1936) and are treated as heroes by the history books.
It is interesting that some areas of the United States that were attracted by Teddy Roosevelt’s version of Progressivism in 1912, were disgusted by Franklin Roosevelt’s version of Progressivism in 1936.
Indeed some of the counties that were most pro Alfred Landon in 1936 were pro Theodore Roosevelt and his “Bull Moose” party in 1912.
But then there is also the personality factor, “Teddy” Roosevelt had bad ideas, but was personally an attractive figure – brave and honourable, but the real Franklin Roosevelt (as opposed to the compassionate person presented in the history books) was repulsive – a thief (as he showed in 1933 – stealing all monetary gold to save his banker friends, but only the bankers who were his friends, not those who opposed him), indifferent to the Holocaust (see Paul Johnson’s “A History of the Jews”) and pro Stalin – in spite of knowing, in the 1930s, of the deaths of millions in the Soviet Union.
Some (some) people could see through Franklin Roosevelt – see the actual man behind the media image, and understood he was no good.
Just writing way more on this than I should, I remember one scene in the show “The Good Life” that NickM referred to, which I thought was actually quite educational in the context. The Goods and the Leadebetters are walking around town for some reason, and Barbara realizes she has to pee, or as the Brits say “spend a penny” because public bathrooms you literally had to insert a penny to access them, back in the day anyway. And of course she didn’t have a penny to spend, so Margot helped here out.
I think it is an interesting commentary on free markets in general, which is to say in a free market system you have to think about the fairness of the production of public goods, such as a public bathroom, or perhaps more usefully public roads, or courts, police and law. And so to some degree we do need some minimalistic government. However, I think the key to a free society is a federal system where the power is pushed down as low in the hierarchy as possible. This means that government has to operated in a competitive space too, you have to find the right balance between public services to attract citizens and taxes which repel citizens. Why? Because they have a choice.
This means that if Barbara does not want to pay the rates or community charge she is going to have to recognize that she doesn’t get the commensurate goods and services, and may well have to go pee behind a bush. And of course she can do that by trading some of the goods she produces in the labor market for money in the trade economy, which is where taxes operate.
However, if, as is the case for the most part in the UK, and is more and more true in the USA, all the power is sucked up to the federal government, then you have (practically) no choice.
Reminds me of the wealthy character in Crichton’s State Of Fear, who, flying over a very poor island, commented about how we should all aspire to return to nature for a better life just like the natives below, blissfully ignoring the fact that the natives had short brutal lives BECAUSE of nature.
One man’s exotic life of wonder is another man’s dead kid. Romanticizing Hobbesian deprivation – a mark of the Davos set.