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'Bourgeois Dignity' by Deirdre McCloskey

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Dante

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I just finished reading selected chapters from the book Bourgeois Dignity by Deirdre McCloskey, and frankly I loved it.  More importantly, I think the book might be of particular interest to other people on this site.  McCloskey is an economic historian, but more specifically one that is willing to affirm the central importance of philosophy in explaining positive economic developments (a rarity in economic history).  Here, I'd like to outline the basic thesis and goal of the book, because its thesis is quite similar to Rand's thought in many ways.

The book is an attempt to pinpoint the cause of the Industrial Revolution. The central thesis of the book is that the best explanation for the Industrial Revolution is what the author calls the "Bourgeois Revaluation."  What she means by this is a change in the way that people viewed business and market activity.  Business and market activities, which had always been viewed as lowly, lacking in virtue, highly suspect at the least, began to be regarded with respect. Those that engaged in business began to be accorded a certain amount of dignity and a positive moral appraisal.  Although McCloskey doesn't use this phrase, Rand might call it a 'moral revaluation' of businessmen and entrepreneurs.  I'll quote extensively from the book as McCloskey lays out her central thesis:

 

"In particular, three centuries ago in places like Holland and England the talk and thought about the middle class began to alter. Ordinary conversation about innovation and markets became more approving. The high theorists were emboldened to rethink their prejudice against the bourgeoisie, a prejudice by then millennia old... The North Sea talk at length radically altered the local economy and politics and rhetoric. In northwestern Europe around 1700 the general opinion shifted in favor of the bourgeoisie, and especially in favor of its marketing and innovating.  The shift was sudden as such things go. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries a great shift occurred in what Alexis de Tocqueville called "habits of the mind"-- or more exactly, habits of the lip. People stopped sneering at market innovativeness and other bourgeois virtues exercised far from the traditional places of honor in the Basilica of St. Peter or the Palace of Versailles or the gory ground of the First Battle of Breitenfeld." - p 7

"I am claiming that the economy around the North Sea grew far, far beyond expectations in the eighteenth and especially in the nineteenth and most especially in the twentieth century not because of mechanically economic factors such as the scale of foreign trade or the level of saving or the amassing of human capital. Such developments were nice, but derivative. The North Sea economy, and then the Atlantic economy, and then the world economy grew because of changing forms of speech about markets and enterprise and invention." - p 8

 

In short, her explanation stresses the power of philosophy, of ideas; specifically, the power of society's moral appraisal of businessmen and of profit-seeking.  When businessmen begin to be accorded a significant measure of respect and dignity, society prospers.  The parallels to Rand are obvious.

 

In making her case, McCloskey takes on a number of other proposed explanations of the Industrial Revolution.  She argues against the theses that what caused the Industrual Revolution was capital accumulation, or the Protestant work ethic, or pure scientific advancement, or foreign trade, or imperialism, or purely institutional factors.  The root cause (athough she doesn't phrase it this way) was moral in nature.  It was a positive moral appraisal of business and profit-seeking.  Unfortunately, she does not extend this (as Rand would) to the pursuit of rational self-interest more generally. Even so, it is quite refreshing to see an economic historian affirm the central importance of philosophy in explaining one of the most important events in economic history.

Edited by Dante
Fixing quote tags, added url
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Yes, I haven't read that particular book so I can't attest to its quality.  However, I will say that McCloskey is no doubt on firmer ground in 'Bourgeois Dignity,' where her focus is on economic history and she can draw heavily on her own professional work and expertise, than she would be in a treatise on philosophy and virtue ethics.  At root, she is an economic historian, and I think that is where she can make the strongest case.

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