Timothy Belk Trinity Academy Boston, MA. Justifying Wealth and the Modern Age NEH Seminar 2009: The Dutch Republic and Britain

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1 Timothy Belk Trinity Academy Boston, MA Justifying Wealth and the Modern Age NEH Seminar 2009: The Dutch Republic and Britain Synopsis: The period between the sixteenth and eighteenth century was one of extraordinary upheaval in Europe during which time, it has been argued, a new Modern Age came into existence. Fundamental to the accomplishments of this age were changes in the social and economic foundations of European culture. A crisis in the authority of religion at the same time prompted the search for alternative sources for making sense of these new developments. The resulting attempt to justify the new way of life generated a moral discourse that sought to face up to the ambiguities at the heart of the modern age. According to Aristotle the pursuit of wealth for its own sake could lead only to the enslavement of the individual. Christian teaching concurred You cannot serve two masters God and money. The development in early modern Europe (particularly in the Dutch Republic and Britain) of new patterns of work within the household, together with new opportunities for trade, heralded a new era of greatly expanding prosperity. This challenged traditional attitudes towards wealth. Luxury consumption was the subject of heated debate beginning in the 17 th century and culminating in the 18 th century. As the accumulation of unnecessary goods proceeded, thinkers sought ways of making sense of these changes. That the pursuit of wealth was grounded in selfish desires was difficult to deny. Indeed Bernard Mandeville reveled in pointing out the unsavory truth that private vices could benefit the common good. In doing so he exposed the reality that Aristotelian and Thomist ideals of virtue were incompatible with the new conditions. The relationship between the individual and the common good needed to be given new foundations. The concept of taste became significant as a way to connect wealth and civilization. The accumulation of wealth could be the foundation of an ideal life rather than being merely the (barbaric) fulfillment of desire. Moreover, it was argued, both sympathy and selfinterest actually provided the foundations of a moral order, which could effectively regulate the relations between the individual s desires and the common good. Thus it became possible to develop a new definition of the human good in which material accumulation was no longer a form of enslavement but actually a freedom fundamental to the accomplishment of individual and communal well being and happiness. This paper will highlight the nature of the social and

2 2 economic changes that affected European society in the early modern period. Later papers will examine the responses of observers; and suggest that it may be a mistake to view the Modern Age in terms of emancipation from religion. The moral resources of modern thinkers have not proved sufficient by themselves for addressing the ambiguities of the Modern Age. Jan de Vries and Keith Wrightson have both argued that the most important and significant location for analyzing the changes in this period is the household in terms of its relationship with the broader economy. They also both argue that these changes have their roots in the societies of northwestern Europe, particularly the Netherlands and Britain. Wrightson emphasizes changes in the structure and organization of work, and de Vries identifies a new industriousness that emerged in the context of high levels of urbanization and in the tight knit trading relations of northwestern Europe. Both authors understand these developments to be responses to population pressures and new market dynamics. So for example, in England between 1500 and 1570 prices on average tripled. At approximately the same time (between 1520 and 1591) the population of England increased by more than 50% from ca. 2.4 million to ca. 3.9 million. For some in England, this meant increased profits. For others, with real wages falling, it meant increased poverty, vagrancy, and a larger proportion of the population dependent on the vicissitudes of wage-labour. (Wrightson 149). More people moved to the towns and cities (Canterbury, for example, grew from 4,000 to 7,000 between 1570 and 1640). Labour was abundant and cheap. (164) Wrightson and de Vries both connect these profound changes to the organization of the household as an economic unit. What had been a selfsustaining economic entity ceased to be and came to be more open to the market. This was true both within the towns and in the countryside. According to de Vries a Europe-wide commercialization of agriculture also took place in the century after 1650 as peasant farmers responded to increased pressures by lords for rents and dues. The peasant household had to become more open to market forces; to become more of a market producer, the household also had to become more of a market consumer. (46) de Vries however identifies a regional divergence in economies that took place after the crises of the 1620s. Both authors found similar trends of economic development occurring in the Netherlands and England. In both places where the level of urbanization, urban revival and growth was more pronounced, larger (yeoman) farmers could flourish if ambitious. They could do this by responding to market demand by changing old ways of farming through intensification, specialization, and innovation. Wrightson also argues (regarding England) that increasing rents stimulated a re-articulation of household economies towards an enhanced commercial involvement. (139) This occurred for smaller farmers to a significant degree through the putting

3 3 out system, in which specialized merchants organized farm workers to participate in a process that utilized the important principle of the division of labour to increase profits. The commercialization that de Vries and Wrightson point to in agriculture became a feature of society as a whole, especially in the Dutch Republic and England, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Towns grew because people migrated to them and also because their economies flourished, recovering their basic raison d être in both marketing and industry. (Pythian-Adams in Wrightson 165) Local industries (manufacturing or extractive) revived and new industries developed in particular regions often due to the arrival of knowledgeable refugees (Huguenots or Walloons). For example the New Draperies became important sources of wealth in towns such as Haarlem and Colchester. Internal traffic increased creating networks of trade and a growing commercial integration of regional economies. (Wrightson 176) In the cities especially, new standards of comfort and style developed. de Vries has argued that the purchasing power of wage earners grew in the century after There was a huge growth in consumption of tropical groceries tobacco, coffee, sugar, tea, and cocoa. (de Vries 187) Other products from around the globe became increasingly sought after. Particularly important from the early seventeenth century were ceramics a China-mania gripped Europe in the seventeenth century. By the 1640s the Dutch were importing thousands of pieces a year and were also dominant in the spice trade. Moreover, as Berg has argued, one of the chief effects of foreign trade was to stimulate local manufacturers to develop new industries based on import substitution. In England John Dwight ( ) developed new types of ceramics to compete with foreign imports. In Holland the famous Delftware was a similar industry. In both societies enormous fortunes were made, not only in global trade but also in local and European trade. Both a consequence of and contributor to these developments was the emergence in Dutch and English society of a growing middling sort of people. They became major producers and consumers of a new luxury trade and industry. The growing commercialization of society was becoming self-perpetuating. Accepting these developments as a good thing was by no means a simple process. On the pragmatic level, expediency and the prospect of personal and familial betterment, (Wrightson 150) may have made gain an attractive proposition. Most inhabitants of rural communities, with deep roots in a feudal and Christian past, had however, according to Keith Thomas, a nonaccumulative ethic, in which neighborly responsibility, obligations to family members, and contributions to parochial causes ranked higher than the unremitting pursuit of self-interest. To accumulate was to take what belonged to someone else. Acquisitiveness had yet to find its ideological justification. (111) This perception that individual gain was problematic, even wicked, was not merely the product of ideology but was evident in the consequences of the enclosure movement, population

4 4 growth, and new market pressures, each of which, separately or combined, made it increasingly difficult for many to make ends meet. In the mid 16 th century many in England viewed commercialization as a threat to the established order. It was argued that men were stewards of God for their possessions, and thus should not use them for themselves. Christian teaching on the subject of wealth was emphatic: You cannot serve two masters. It was either God or Mammon. Keith Thomas explains: the only valid justification for great wealth was that it enabled its holders to do good works, by benefiting religion, the poor, and the common weal. To be rich was to have a duty to be generous. Furthermore, Economic inequality was to be justified by the argument, derived from Aristotle, that it enabled the rich to practice the virtue of liberality, just as it called on the poor to display the virtue of patience. (Thomas 112) New pressures and opportunities for wealth challenged not just Christian belief but aristocratic notions. It was considered degrading to pursue wealth as an end in itself because, as Aristotle maintained, this would result in the enslavement of the individual. The transition to a commercial society while being celebrated by such writers as Defoe, de la Court, and Josiah Childs, nevertheless required a solid justification for the pursuit of wealth, one which could deal effectively with the concerns about selfishness. In light of the crisis of religion in the 16th and 17th centuries, thinkers sought new foundations for such justification. While the luxury debate of the 18th century was partly framed by Christian concerns, it was won by those who built on the achievements of Hobbes and Locke, who had helped provide ideological justification for a society based on property. Hume developed the argument that luxury enabled civilization. The ages of refinement are both the happiest and most virtuous. Thus the refinement of industry and arts were part of a bigger package. Industry, knowledge, and humanity are linked together by an indissoluble chain, and are found, from experience as well as reason, to be peculiar to the more polished, and, what are more commonly denominated, the more luxurious ages. Adam Smith finally provided a way to square the circle in his discovery of a regularity in human affairs not humanly planned, nor humanly intended: the operations of the market. (Milbank 27) Human selfishness operated, despite any expectations to the contrary, for the common good. Fuller analysis of how these writers and thinkers sought to come to terms with the changes has been developed, but for the sake of space will not be included in this paper. Conclusion and goals for more work: Significant ambiguities lie at the heart of the Modern Age. The reliance upon slavery is one of the most notorious. The systematic exploitation of non-europeans played an essential role in fulfilling the desires of the new European civilization. Furthermore even within Europe the changing relationship between the household and the market, which lay at the heart of the

5 5 industrious revolution identified by de Vries and others, resulted in forms of exploitation. These included, according to de Vries, self exploitation in the form of longer work hours, qualitatively poorer and quantitatively shorter leisure time, less investment in human capital, an erosion of the moral norms needed to sustain the family, as well as class exploitation (after all Sparta was the favorite model for the new society in the Scottish Enlightenment. Stewart draws out the implications most clearly). Furthermore they have culminated, with a second industrious revolution beginning in the 1960s, in the undoing of the household structures. Apart from anything else these structures are essential for the development of the values, habits, and disciplines, which are necessary to sustain a market system. Yet it is precisely the nature of the Modern Age, which has contributed to its own crisis. Based as it is upon the rational critique of existing institutions and traditions, as well as the logic of the market, which seeks to maximize the exploitation of human desires, the Modern Age had reached a critical turning point. Peter Gay concludes his excellent book on the Enlightenment with the following stirring words, David Hume was both courageous and modern; he understood the implications of his philosophy and did not shrink from them. He was willing to live with uncertainty, with no supernatural justifications, no complete explanations, no promise of permanent stability, with guides of merely probable validity; and what is more, he lived in his world without complaining, a cheerful Stoic. [He] makes plain that since God is silent, man is his own master: he must live in a disenchanted world, submit everything to criticism, and make his own way. ( ) From the vantage point of the 21st century, we can see the effects of two and a half centuries of relentless pressure from the market system, which Hume helped rationalize. As de Vries points out, the household as currently organized has become almost completely porous, leaving the individual without any protection from the exploitation of the market, which has become ever more adept at subverting the critical faculty of the individual. The values, which Hume took for, granted under the label natural were nurtured within the household, and were the product of more than economic concerns. They are in danger of withering away altogether in the face of this exploitation. Contemporary man is indeed in danger of enslavement to the relentless demands of the market. (de Vries ) A final paper will argue that the Modern Age should be understood not as the result of a dichotomy between secular and religious thought, but in terms of a dialectical relationship between the two. If the Beckerian Z goods that de Vries hopes for are to be discovered, so that demand patterns that once again foster the human potential of the household s members, can exist, it will only be as humans find a vision of life greater than that provided by the market. The strength of both sides of the Modern Age will enable the continuing flourishing of the societies developed in the period. Works Cited

6 6 Berg, Maxine, In Pursuit of Luxury: Global History and British Consumer Goods in the Eighteenth Century, Past and Present, No. 182 (February 2004) Clark, Henry C., ed. Commerce, Culture, and Liberty (Liberty Fund 2003) de Vries, Jan, The Economy of Europe in an Age of Crisis, (Cambridge 1976) de Vries, Jan, The Industrial Revolution and the Industrious Revolution, The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 54, No. 2 (June 1994) Gay, Peter, The Enlightenment: An Interpretation (New York 1966) Milbank, John, Theology and Social Theory (Oxford 1990) Thomas, Keith, The Ends of Life (Oxford 2008) Wrightson, Keith, Earthly Necessities (Yale 2000)