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4. Economics and Anti-Economics1 4. Economics and Anti-Economics1 Ian Castles Synopsis The paper traces the development of mainstream British economics during the century following the publication of The Wealth of Nations in 1776. The emphasis is not on the economists' formal statements of principles and doctrines, but on the policy prescriptions and social attitudes which they inferred from them. It is suggested that the economists saw a clear connection between their economic principles and their attitudes to other controversial questions, including issues related to civil liberties, public education and the role of women; and that the economists' opponents – the anti-economists – also saw the connection. The paper shows that the attitudes of the leading economists on these issues were well in advance of their time. This is true even of those who have subsequently been regarded as arch conservatives. The economists' views on many social and national issues were, indeed, so radical as to lead to a continuing conflict in their minds as to how far they should express or publicise them – thereby prejudicing their capacity to influence the course of policy on economic issues which were themselves the subject of bitter controversy. All of the economists whose views are discussed here were subjected to strong criticism, and most of them to venomous verbal attacks. Ironically, they are commonly represented in the late-twentieth-century conventional wisdom as having themselves held the false opinions against which they were arguing. It is shown that television series such as Kenneth Clark's Civilisation and John Kenneth Galbraith's The Age of Uncertainty have grossly misrepresented the economists' position and understated their contribution. Such popularisations have amounted, in effect, to Newspeak versions of the classical economic texts; and in fact accord with Orwell's definition of Newspeak versions in that they have ‘not merely changed into something different, but actually changed into something contradictory to what they used to be’. 1 Paper presented by Ian Castles, President, ANZAAS Economics Section on 18 May 1984 at the 54th ANZAAS Congress. Except where otherwise indicated, all figures and tables in this chapter are Castles’ own. 39 Measuring and Promoting Wellbeing: How Important is Economic Growth? The economists The anti-economists Adam Smith, 1723-90 Napolean Bonaparte, 1769-1821 Dugald Stewart, 1753-1828 Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1772-1834 Thomas Robert Malthus 1766-1834 Robert Southey, 1774-1843 David Ricardo, 1772-1823 Michael Thomas Sadler, 1780-1835 James Mill, 1773-1836 John Wilson, 1785-1854 John Ramsay McCulloch 1789-1864 Frederick Engels, 1820-1895 Nassau William Senior, 1790-1864 Thomas Carlyle, 1795-1881 John Stuart Mill, 1806-1873 John Ruskin, 1819-1900 The ingratitude of mankind towards their benefactors has been notorious. It is not indeed universal ... But in general it will be found that those whose merits have been promptly and adequately recognised have been men who have participated in the opinions and the passions of those around them. They have been statesmen or soldiers or demagogues, whose objects have been the same as those of their contemporaries and who have differed from them only by perceiving more clearly or employing more unscrupulously the readiest means of attaining them. Men of a higher moral and intellectual character – men who are unaffected by the prejudice of their age and country – who refuse to aid in gratifying irrational desires or in maintaining irrational opinions, must not expect power or even popularity ... This is peculiarly the case where the services rendered have been those rather of a teacher than of a legislator, where they have consisted in exposing fallacies, softening prejudices, stigmatising selfishness, and preparing in one generation the way for measures which are to be adopted by another. – Nassau W Senior, in Biographical Sketches (London 1863) I In George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, Syme, the philologist, explains to Winston Smith that By 2050 – earlier probably – all real knowledge of Oldspeak will have disappeared ... Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Byron – they'll exist only in Newspeak versions, not merely changed into something different, but actually changed into something contradictory to what they used to be. The creation of Newspeak versions was not to be confined to works of the imagination: Considerations of prestige made it desirable to preserve the memory of certain historical figures. Various writers, such as Shakespeare, Milton 40 4 . Economics and Anti-Economics (and) Swift...were therefore in process of translation...There were also large quantities of merely utilitarian literature...that had to be treated in the same way. Orwell's book was written in 1948. It soon became apparent that the classics of utilitarian literature were already being changed ‘into something contradictory to what they used to be’. The early chapters of John Kenneth Galbraith's The Affluent Society, which was published in 1958, provided summary translations of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, Malthus' Essay on Population and Ricardo's Principles of Political Economy and Taxation. These were Newspeak versions: their purpose was to support the arguments in later chapters of Galbraith's book, not to reproduce the sense of the Oldspeak originals. Indeed, Professor Galbraith provided a remarkably frank justification for his approach: Within a considerable range, (the individual) is permitted to believe what he pleases. He may hold whatever view of the world he finds most agreeable or acceptable to his taste...Audiences of all kinds applaud what they like best. And in social comment the test of audience approval, far more than the test of truth, comes to influence comment... Individuals, most notably the great television and radio commentators, make a profession of knowing and saying with elegance and unction what their audience will find most acceptable. The Affluent Society passed the test of audience approval with honours. Within five years one of Galbraith's professional colleagues had expressed ‘shock’ that it had been read by many more Americans than The Wealth of Nations. And in 1973 Professor Galbraith was chosen by the BBC to ‘do a television series on some aspect of the history of economic or social ideas’. Teledep within Orwell's Ministry of Truth could not have chosen better. The series attracted millions of viewers all over the world. It was entitled The Age of Uncertainty because, Professor Galbraith explained, It sounded well; it did not confine thought; and it suggested the basic theme: we would contrast the great certainties in economic thought in the last century with the great uncertainty with which problems are faced in our time. The great certainties were proclaimed 'with elegance and unction’ and the audiences found it most acceptable. 41 Measuring and Promoting Wellbeing: How Important is Economic Growth? II In the same year as The Affluent Society was published, CP Snow suggested an alternative formula for writing the history of modern times: What is needed is that in the general history books the development of science should take its place along with political and economic developments. It is only just that this should be done even from the historian's point of view, for the world we live in is as much the produce of science as of politics and economics. The steam engine helped shape the modern world at least as much as Napoleon and Adam Smith, but only rarely do the historians admit the fact...this is one way in which history must be written if the worlds of science and the humanities are not to drift still farther apart. The underlying assumption, developed at length in Snow's famous lecture in the following year, was that it was sensible to conceive of the modern world as having been shaped by two non-communicating cultures – science, which included the steam engine; and the humanities, which included Napoleon and Adam Smith. It is difficult to think of two figures from the same era of whom it could more certainly be said that they represented different cultures than Napoleon and Adam Smith. As was pointed out within five years of Napoleon's death, by Oxford's first professor of political economy: Napoleon...had an utter horror of political economy; the principles of which...he said, if an empire were built of granite, would grind it to powder. On such subjects he trusted to commonsense. And his commonsense was an undistinguishing acceptance of the whole theory of the mercantile system. It appears, from his conversations at St Helena, that he fully believed that the continent must be a loser by its commerce with England, and that it must be so on account of the excellence and cheapness of English commodities. These abominable qualities must, he thought, enable us...to undersell the continent in its own market, and ultimately produce its ruin...He thought that he could put an end to this trade by his continental system. Without doubt the principal object of that system was to ruin England; but he appears to have implicitly believed that it was also a blessing to the continent. The murmurs of his subjects and allies he treated like the complaints of spoiled children, who do not know what is for their own good and who, when experience has made them wiser, will embrace from choice what they have submitted to from necessity. There can be no doubt, I think, that these opinions and the obstinancy into which they led him, were the ultimate causes 42 of his downfall. 4 . Economics and Anti-Economics Thus Adam Smith's culture was the antithesis of Napoleon’s. It was in fact, the scientific culture. Nothing could have been more foreign to his habits of thought than the dichotomy perceived by Snow. Adam Smith wrote A History of Astronomical Systems and planned a ‘connected history of liberal sciences and elegant arts’; he was an enthusiastic botanist; and the two greatest Scottish natural scientists of his day – the chemist Joseph Black and the geologist James Hulton – were his lifelong friends and his literary executors.
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