The Birth and Flourishing of the Bourgeoisie
Here you go: An introduction to Deirdre McClosky's thought, rather than her gender:
I am claiming that the economy exploded because the forms of speech about enterprise and invention suddenly changed, for various good and interesting reasons. Speech, not material changes in foreign trade or domestic investment, caused the non-linearities. We know this in part because trade or investment were ancient routines, but the new dignity and liberty for ordinary people were unique to the age. ...
The change was of greater importance for explaining the modern world than the clerical Reformation in Germany after 1517, or even the aristocratic Renaissance during and after the Tuscan Trecento, though both of these influenced it, as did a third great R-shift of late medieval and early modern times, the political Revolts and Revolutions which shook Holland and Britain and America and finally France. But the point here is that in a fourth great and uniquely European R-shift—the “Bourgeois Revaluation” in Holland and Britain—an old class began to acquire a new and higher standing in the way people talked about it, in their rhetoric.
There are a lot of fascinating ideas in that paper. What do you make of her thesis?
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May '10
Re: The Birth and Flourishing of the Bourgeoisie
It's a chicken and egg thing, right? Did the merchant classes become powerful through having more respect, or did they gain more respect by being more powerful? There had to be a trigger for that waxing of power, of course, which here isn't quite explained.
It's a recurring story, though. Harking back to the Roman Republic, the senatorial class eschewed trade as demeaning and ignoble. They were soon surpassed in influence by the knight class (equites). That clash eventually doomed the Republic and ushered in Empire.
Sep '10
Re: The Birth and Flourishing of the Bourgeoisie
She's missed a few things. One, she glossed over (perhaps she discusses it elsewhere in her lengthier works) the scholastic thinkers who gave birth to economic thinking inside Catholicism (a fascinating story all by itself, dark age flat earthers notwithstanding) and the causes of the speech she's looking at are the fallout of The Reformation, followed by the cleaving of the Humanities from the Sciences in the 17th century, the emergence of full force nation states and the differing British, French, and German Enlightenments. In short, I think she's looking at effect rather than ultimate cause, but I haven't read enough of her work to come to a firm conclusion.
Jul '10
Re: The Birth and Flourishing of the Bourgeoisie
This is the sort of thinking I call novelty for the sake of novelty. Scholars must publish or perish, so they strive to come up with a new twist on history, which makes everything subject to revisionism. That's how you achieve tenure and an endowed seat.
Pretty cloudy prose, by the way. And what's up with capitalizing "Revolts and Revolutions"?
Re: The Birth and Flourishing of the Bourgeoisie
My first thought was of Perkins' Rise of Professional Society ... an excellent history to which I suspect she owes a lot. I'd be curious to read her whole book. (Were it published by Encounter, I'd have but to think those words and it would show up on my doorstep tomorrow.)
Sep '10
Re: The Birth and Flourishing of the Bourgeoisie
I'm also coming back to that Post Modernist tag she gives herself. I think she's riffing a little too much Derrida and getting a little too hung up on rhetoric itself as a sort of post modernist answer to the big bad enlightenment, hence her need to deconstruct the enlightenment through speech.
Anyways....
Sep '10
Re: The Birth and Flourishing of the Bourgeoisie
Just found a draft version of her book.
Nov '10
Re: The Birth and Flourishing of the Bourgeoisie
I must stand with Kenneth. International commerce in Europe collapsed along with the Roman Empire. It was re-established (and greatly expanded) during the Age of Exploration. Suddenly common merchants became fabulously wealthy by dealing in foreign luxuries. With wealth comes "buying power," which increases the demand for domestic goods, thereby enriching local tradesmen and producers. Thus, the middle class is born and grows. Once the thing gets jump-started, it pretty much runs by itself. Who needs rhetoric?
Also, McCloskey may be overstating the case for England. In Blood, Tears, and Folly, Len Deighton makes it clear that, even after the Industrial Revolution, a deep prejudice against the "trades" remained in Britain:
"As the nineteenth century ended it was investment rather than manufacturing that was the basis of Britain's wealth. The families who had grown rich...did not want their sons to wield tools and have oil on their hands."
Edited on Dec 15, 2010 at 12:20pmJul '10
Re: The Birth and Flourishing of the Bourgeoisie
Lady Kurobara
I must stand with Kenneth. International commerce in Europe more or less collapsed along with the Roman Empire. It was re-established (and greatly expanded) during the Age of Exploration. Suddenly common merchants became fabulously wealthy by dealing in foreign luxuries. With wealth comes "buying power," which increases the demand for domestic goods. Once the thing gets jump-started, it pretty much runs by itself. Who needs rhetoric?
The Borgias did not wield power by virtue of rhetoric. They wielded it by virtue of wealth derived from trade.
May '10
Re: The Birth and Flourishing of the Bourgeoisie
Now we're getting somewhere. The Age of Exploration, Rome's far-flung provinces, it all leads to grubby little shopkeepers taking over the place.
This is a strong argument for isolationism.
Aug '10
Re: The Birth and Flourishing of the Bourgeoisie
Pseudodionysius: I'm also coming back to that Post Modernist tag she gives herself. I think she's riffing a little too much Derrida and getting a little too hung up on rhetoric itself as a sort of post modernist answer to the big bad enlightenment, hence her need to deconstruct the enlightenment through speech.
Anyways.... · Dec 15 at 11:32am
Professor McClosky is much more Max Weber or Barrington Moore than Jacques Derrida.
Aug '10
Re: The Birth and Flourishing of the Bourgeoisie
I'm not so sure about that. My reading of the Roman Revolution is that the populares drew their power base much more from the capite censi than from the equites (Marcus Agrippa notwithstanding). It's true that the equites had more power under the principate than the late republic, but this largely had to do with the constitutional settlement of Augustus, in which he delegated power to equites in order to keep it out of the hands of other senators who might forment insurrection. For instance, the entire system of imperial provinces was less about giving armies to equites serving as legates than keeping them out of the hands of senators serving as proconsuls.
Edited on Dec 15, 2010 at 12:53pmAug '10
Re: The Birth and Flourishing of the Bourgeoisie
I'm actually surprised by Kenneth, Kennedy, and Kurobara. Who would have thought that Ricochet readers would prove to be a bunch of dialectical materialists tut-tutting at the premise that idea that what a society holds in esteem has consequences for it's development?
Here's a quiz, which of the following quotes does not come from a thinker generally associated with the right?
May '10
Re: The Birth and Flourishing of the Bourgeoisie
Since my field (if I can call it that) is personalist philosophy, I find the thesis illuminating. It confirms my growing conviction that the emergence of the sense of personal selfhood is the central theme, the central achievement, and the central challenge of the modern period.
Take this quote from her interview with NRO:
“Responsibility,” for example, is entirely modern (and thus measurable: It’s zero before 1800, commonplace afterward). The equivalent word before 1800, as one can see from theOxford Thesaurus (based on the Oxford English Dictionary), is “duty.” In a hierarchical society, one has one’s duty to one’s master, period. In a modern and bourgeois society, the duty is turned inward and becomes a character trait essential for a modern enterprise: responsibility. It’s a fairy tale of scientism that only prices and quantities can be measured.
Edited on Dec 15, 2010 at 1:27pmAug '10
Re: The Birth and Flourishing of the Bourgeoisie
Kenneth
The Borgias did not wield power by virtue of rhetoric. They wielded it by virtue of wealth derived from trade. · Dec 15 at 12:23pm
And political patronage... and the occasional offing of the politically inconvenient, no?
Jul '10
Re: The Birth and Flourishing of the Bourgeoisie
Midget Faded Rattlesnake
Kenneth
The Borgias did not wield power by virtue of rhetoric. They wielded it by virtue of wealth derived from trade. · Dec 15 at 12:23pm
And political patronage... and the occasional offing of the politically inconvenient, no? · Dec 15 at 1:45pm
Political patronage is the fruits of wealth. And offing the politically inconvenient is just...fun.
May '10
Re: The Birth and Flourishing of the Bourgeoisie
Did you just call me a dialectic materialist? I believe you did. Somehow, I can't feel insulted.
The Head Count (capite censi) masses were used by one faction or another, but never central actors, unless you wanted a flash mob whipped up by one senator or another. Publius Clodius and Titus Annius Milo each had a standing street gang army, but both were essentially for hire. The granting of political power to the knights by Augustus after the collapse of the Republic seems more like a recognition of their power rather than a promotion of it. As well as being a safeguard against civil wars started by increasingly random senators (Marcus Junius Brutus? Really?)
But mainly the senate became a vestigial institution because it had no power base, and tore the empire apart defending its non-base.
May '10
Re: The Birth and Flourishing of the Bourgeoisie
It'd be like Supreme Court justices forming personal armies and attacking the Capitol.
Aug '10
Re: The Birth and Flourishing of the Bourgeoisie
Kenneth
Midget Faded Rattlesnake
Kenneth
The Borgias did not wield power by virtue of rhetoric. They wielded it by virtue of wealth derived from trade. · Dec 15 at 12:23pm
And political patronage... and the occasional offing of the politically inconvenient, no? · Dec 15 at 1:45pm
Political patronage is the fruits of wealth. And offing the politically inconvenient is just...fun. · Dec 15 at 1:48pm
OK, Kenneth, you win.
Aug '10
Re: The Birth and Flourishing of the Bourgeoisie
I half agree. Certainly you're right that the capite censi didn't have organic leaders. (The aforementioned Clodius was a slumming patrician). However the fact that the capite censi existed as an unprincipled pool of manpower available to be mobilized by factions of the upper classes qualitatively changed the nature of elite conflict. Prior to the Gracchi brothers, no nobleman thought to mobilize mobs to assault rivals. Prior to the Marian reforms, the legions were a yeoman militia that would never choose personal loyalty to their commander over loyalty to the state and constitution. In other words, you can treat the capite censi in late Republican Roman politics much like Marxists conceive of intellectuals -- a class that lacks political autonomy but can be used as a tool by those classes that do demonstrate political agency.
May '10
Re: The Birth and Flourishing of the Bourgeoisie
Neatly phrased. You belong in Ravenclaw.