Category: Moral Economy

The Moral Economy of Benjamin Disraeli

Ishaan Jajodia
PPainting of Disraeli
Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield by Sir John Everett Millais, 1st Bt | National Portrait Gallery, London.

Much has been written about Benjamin Disraeli, but more so about his life and his actual conduct in the political arena than his work. Those who tend to study his work congregate in departments of literature, not of political philosophy, and thus the social and political thought of Benjamin Disraeli, distinct from his actions, is left to be condemned to appropriation and recasting by politicians of all veins, whether it be Ed Miliband or David Cameron. Disraeli the thinker had much in common semantically with Edmund Burke the pamphleteer, but they share important differences, despite the former’s attempt to fashion himself in the style of the latter in his Vindication of the English Constitution, a work that takes aim at the utilitarian creed of Bentham and other rationalists of his time. Although both thinkers, one more prominent in the conservative tradition than the other, were products of the romantic imagination, they came to be its bookends in the manner in which they represented its political thought: if Burke represented the commercial interest and tolerance and a respect for hierarchy, Disraeli turned that around to subvert the expectations of the commercial by tearing it away from the desire to profit without duty.[1]

Continue reading “The Moral Economy of Benjamin Disraeli” →

A Commodity Fetish: Marx and the Moral Economy

Ishaan Jajodia

J.G.A. Pocock writes in Virtue, Commerce, and History:

“It was hard to condemn the destruction of rural society without engaging in some degree of nostalgia, and a wholesale condemnation of modernity necessarily entailed some degree of neomedievalism. there was a neomedievalism among romantic gentry who liked to imagine the days when they had been Tory protectors of the poor, Whig defenders of their ancient liberties, and Burkean-Coleridgean upholders of a code of chivalric manners. … Even today, it might not be impossible to classify English Marxist thinkers as either progressive radical Whigs for whom socialism is the rebellious but natural son of liberalism, or alienated Tory radicals who denounce liberal capitalism, instead of praising it for its revolutionary role, as the destroyer of popular community and moral economy.”[1]

Pocock was writing in the middle of the 1980s, and in any case my general unfamiliarity with the discourse of the times renders his judgement the one I admit as prima facie true. But behind this sentiment is the coming together of two disparate lines of thought that are pervasive in most analyses of economic thought, especially when concerned with questions of a moral character. Why is it that questions of the moral economy are wholly dominated by the Germanic ghost of Karl Marx? For someone who eschewed the market en masse, surely, he would find himself surprised to be the progenitor and monopolistic owner of ostensibly an entire field of academic inquiry, which has been abandoned to his dialectical and historical materialism and to the supposition that surely, moral relations in economic forms cannot exist in any scheme of action apart from his. It is this that is my complaint with William James Booth’s otherwise first-rate analysis of the role of households in the moral economy: it is too deferential to Marx; it refuses to see beyond the Marxist paradigm even though it readily and openly admits to the practical and theoretical failures of the doctrine.[2] That the question of moral economy was breached with sufficient detail by Aristotle and Xenophon, Locke and Rousseau, is important — but is the discussion of Marx always the feather in the cap?

Continue reading “A Commodity Fetish: Marx and the Moral Economy” →

Lockenomics

Ishaan Jajodia

John Locke’s career as a political economist, and more commonly as a philosopher of politics, seems to have been distilled down to the now famous Second Treatise on Government, but in light of recent criticism over his involvement with the slave trade, it seems that there is more illiberality to this man of ostensibly liberal disposition even if one does not engage the ad hominems and concentrates solely on the substance of Mr. Locke’s published works. The items in question are a small tract entitled ‘Venditio’ and a series of recommendations for the revival of Elizabethan Poor Laws.[1] The matter is substantially put into motion by Geraint Parry, who notes that: “Locke’s draconian proposals for the treatment of the poor and the unemployed are of a piece with his position on individuality and paternalism. Charity was inappropriate to adult men with the capacity to be industrious.”[2] We are faced with an inconsistent philosopher — though that is the domain of most human philosophers — one whose claims for the treatment of the poor are irreconcilable with the claims he makes, in my opinion, in his famed Second Treatise. I do not intend to be unfair to Locke, which is why I will omit discussion of the infamous constitution he drew up for South Carolina, for it is my understanding that the aforementioned document was merely written and executed by Locke as part of his responsibilities as a public servant. It is the crux of my contention that Locke’s philosophy, wholly excluding his more practical pursuits, is decidedly illiberal in tone and scope, for it does not commit to all men as having some sort of dignity by virtue of existence, but rather only in accordance with the dignity accorded to men by virtue of the possession of some degree of physical property that is distinct from the labour and enterprise that each possesses. In the introduction to his recommendations on the problem of poor relief, Locke writes:

Continue reading “Lockenomics” →

The Roots of Acquisitive Societies

Ishaan Jajodia

It is my earnest belief that all young men and women ought to read R.H. Tawney’s The Acquisitive Society, a book that is sincere, thoughtful, and probing, but without the hawkishness of Burke, for example.[1] It is not a revolutionary tract — it is exploratory. And that is what separates it in essence from that of Karl Polanyi’s work, for example. Tawney understands perfectly well the desire to make the world anew, and then, in his subtlety, lets that desire go to be more prudent and moderate. One must not necessarily subscribe to the conclusions that Tawney advocates — I do not — but that does not mean that the arguments expanded upon are worth examining, and that the questions posed demand answers, even if those answers are not Tawney’s, or may require some modification to accommodate the rise of our technological society.

Continue reading “The Roots of Acquisitive Societies” →

The Acquisitive Life and the Good Life

Ishaan Jajodia

R.F. Stalley remarks in his introduction to Aristotle’s Politics:

“Disturbingly, however, he [Aristotle] does not disguise the fact that only a limited section of the population will be able to achieve such a life. Many people lack the appropriate capacities, but, in any case, the existence of a city requires that a substantial number of its inhabitants engage in occupations which are inconsistent with a good life. Manual labour and trade not only take up time, but they also render people unfit for the activities which Aristotle sees as worthwhile.”[1]

Continue reading “The Acquisitive Life and the Good Life” →

The Centralisation of Power

Ishaan Jajodia

In his analysis of farmers and the subsistence ethic, James C. Scott writes:

“In bad years the collection of taxes fell off substantially and, reluctantly, remissions were granted for whole districts hit by floods, pests, or drought. This lenience may in part have been due to a symbolic alignment of the traditional court with the welfare of its subjects but it was also surely a reflection of the traditional state’s inability to reliably control much of its hinterland.”1.

Continue reading “The Centralisation of Power” →

  1. James C. Scott, The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia: Rebellion and Subsistence in South East Asia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977), 53 ↩