Bourgeois Equality

Deirdre N. McCloskey

Deirdre N. McCloskey

Bourgeois Equality

How Ideas, Not Capital or Institutions, Enriched the World

University of Chicago Press | 2016

DOI: https://doi.org/10.7208/9780226334042

Overview
Contents

About this book

There’s little doubt that most humans today are better off than their forebears. Stunningly so, the economist and historian Deirdre McCloskey argues in the concluding volume of her trilogy celebrating the oft-derided virtues of the bourgeoisie. The poorest of humanity, McCloskey shows, will soon be joining the comparative riches of Japan and Sweden and Botswana.

Why? Most economists—from Adam Smith and Karl Marx to Thomas Piketty—say the Great Enrichment since 1800 came from accumulated capital. McCloskey disagrees, fiercely. “Our riches,” she argues, “were made not by piling brick on brick, bank balance on bank balance, but by piling idea on idea.” Capital was necessary, but so was the presence of oxygen. It was ideas, not matter, that drove “trade-tested betterment.” Nor were institutions the drivers. The World Bank orthodoxy of “add institutions and stir” doesn’t work, and didn’t. McCloskey builds a powerful case for the initiating role of ideas—ideas for electric motors and free elections, of course, but more deeply the bizarre and liberal ideas of equal liberty and dignity for ordinary folk. Liberalism arose from theological and political revolutions in northwest Europe, yielding a unique respect for betterment and its practitioners, and upending ancient hierarchies. Commoners were encouraged to have a go, and the bourgeoisie took up the Bourgeois Deal, and we were all enriched.

Few economists or historians write like McCloskey—her ability to invest the facts of economic history with the urgency of a novel, or of a leading case at law, is unmatched. She summarizes modern economics and modern economic history with verve and lucidity, yet sees through to the really big scientific conclusion. Not matter, but ideas. Big books don’t come any more ambitious, or captivating, than Bourgeois Equality.

Author information

Deirdre Nansen McCloskey is an emerita distinguished professor of economics and of history, and professor of English and of communications at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She is the author of sixteen other books, including If You’re So Smart, The Secret Sins of Economics, The Bourgeois Virtues, Bourgeois Dignity, and Crossing: A Memoir, all published by the University of Chicago Press.

Reviews

"It has always seemed to me that history is overdetermined, so any attempt to pick out a single cause will be doomed, and yet McCloskey's insistence on the essential role of what she variously calls ideas, ideology, ethics or rhetoric—the social acceptability of bourgeois folk engaging honourably in business—is persuasive. . . . Bourgeois Equality is richly detailed and erudite, and it will join its companion volumes as essential reading on the industrial revolution, as well as a model of the intellectual depth and breadth achievable through the study of economics."

— Diane Coyle, Financial Times

"It took me two months to read this 650-page, small-type book, the third volume in a trilogy. In that time I read several other books, absorbing Bourgeois Equalityin small doses on trains, ships, Tubes, sofas and beds. If that sounds like faint praise, it's not. I wanted to savour every sentence of this remarkable feast of prose. It is a giant of a book about a giant of a topic: the ‘great enrichment’ of humanity over the past 300 years. It is so rich in vocabulary, allusion and fact as to be a contender for the great book of the great book of our age. Dump your copy of Thomas Piketty and put Deirdre McCloskey on the bookshelf instead."

— Matt Ridley, The Times, Book of the Week

"A sparkling book. . . . McCloskey makes a convincing case."

— Martin Wolf, Financial Times, Best Books of Early 2016

“McCloskey has spent a long and distinguished career asserting the efficacy of free markets in goods and labour. . . . Unusually versed in philosophy and literature, she has acted as something of a domestic chaplain for the Chicago school of economists, ministering to the spiritual state of Homo economicus. . . . McCloskey is at her best in arguing that economics and ethics are mutually important but largely autonomous spheres of human endeavour.”

— Jeffrey Collins, Times Literary Supplement

Frontmatter Free access PDF PDF	i
Contents Free access PDF PDF	v
Exordium: The Three Volumes Show That We Are Rich Because of an Ethical and Rhetorical Change Free access PDF PDF	xi
Acknowledgments Free access PDF PDF	xxxvii
First Question. What Is to Be Explained?
Part I A Great Enrichment Happened, and Will Happen
1 The World Is Pretty Rich, but Once Was Poor Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	5
2 For Malthusian and Other Reasons, Very Poor Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	14
3 Then Many of Us Shot Up the Blade of a Hockey Stick Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	21
4 As Your Own Life Shows Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	30
5 The Poor Were Made Much Better Off Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	37
6 Inequality Is Not the Problem Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	45
7 Despite Doubts from the Left Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	53
8 Or from the Right and Middle Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	61
9 The Great International Divergence Can Be Overcome Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	73
Second Question Why Not the Conventional Explanations?
Part II Explanations from Left and Right Have Proven Fa lse
10 The Divergence Was Not Caused by Imperialism Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	85
11 Poverty Cannot Be Overcome from the Left by Overthrowing “Capitalism” Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	93
12 “Accumulate, Accumulate” Is Not What Happened in History Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	101
13 But Neither Can Poverty Be Overcome from the Right by Implanting “Institution Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	111
14 Because Ethics Matters, and Changes, More Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	117
15 And the Oomph of Institutional Change Is Far Too Small Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	129
16 Most Governmental Institutions Make Us Poorer Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	139
Third Question What, Then, Explains the Enrichment?
Part III Bourgeois Life Had Been Rhetorically Revalued in Britain at the Onset of the Industrial Revolution
17 It Is a Truth Universally Acknowledged That Even Dr. Johnson and Jane Austen Exhibit the Revaluation Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	151
18 No Woman but a Blockhead Wrote for Anything but Money Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	161
19 Adam Smith Exhibits Bourgeois Theory at Its Ethical Best Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	172
20 Smith Was Not a Mr. Max U, but Rather the Last of the Former Virtue Ethicists Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	184
21 That Is, He Was No Reductionist, Economistic or Otherwise Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	193
22 And He Formulated the Bourgeois Deal Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	199
23 Ben Franklin Was Bourgeois, and He Embodied Betterment Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	210
24 By 1848 a Bourgeois Ideology Had Wholly Triumphed Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	223
Part IV A Pro-Bourgeois Rhetoric Was Forming in England around 1700
25 The Word “Honest” Shows the Changing Attitude toward the Aristocracy and the Bourgeoisie Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	235
26 And So Does the Word “Eerlijk” Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	247
27 Defoe, Addison, and Steele Show It, Too Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	255
28 The Bourgeois Revaluation Becomes a Commonplace, as in The London Merchant Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	263
29 Bourgeois Europe, for Example, Loved Measurement Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	271
30 The Change Was in Social Habits of the Lip, Not in Psychology Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	277
31 And the Change Was Specifically British Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	285
Part V Yet England Had Recently Lagged in Bourgeois Ideology, Compared with the Netherlands
32 Bourgeois Shakespeare Disdained Trade and the Bourgeoisie Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	295
33 As Did Elizabethan England Generally Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	305
34 Aristocratic England, for Example, Scorned Measurement Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	316
35 The Dutch Preached Bourgeois Virtue Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	326
36 And the Dutch Bourgeoisie Was Virtuous Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	336
37 For Instance, Bourgeois Holland Was Tolerant, and Not for Prudence Only Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	345
Part VI Reformation, Revolt, Revolution, and Reading Increased the Liberty and Dignity of Ordinary Europeans
38 The Causes Were Local, Temporary, and Unpredictable Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	359
39 “Democratic” Church Governance Emboldened People Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	367
40 The Theology of Happiness Changed circa 1700 Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	377
41 Printing and Reading and Fragmentation Sustained the Dignity of Commoners Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	388
42 Political Ideas Mattered for Equal Liberty and Dignity Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	401
43 Ideas Made for a Bourgeois Revaluation Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	410
44 The Rhetorical Change Was Necessary, and Maybe Sufficient Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	417
Part VII Nowhere Before on a Large Scale Had Bourgeois or Other Commoners Been Honored
45 Talk Had Been Hostile to Betterment Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	427
46 The Hostility Was Ancient Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	440
47 Yet Some Christians Anticipated a Respected Bourgeoisie Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	450
48 And Betterment, Though Long Disdained, Developed Its Own Vested Interests Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	459
49 And Then Turned Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	468
50 On the Whole, However, the Bourgeoisies and Their Bettering Projects Have Been Precarious Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	476
Part VIII Words and Ideas Ca used the Modern World
51 Sweet Talk Rules the Economy Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	489
52 And Its Rhetoric Can Change Quickly Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	499
53 It Was Not a Deep Cultural Change Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	505
54 Yes, It Was Ideas, Not Interests or Institutions, That Changed, Suddenly, in Northwestern Europe Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	511
55 Elsewhere Ideas about the Bourgeoisie Did Not Change Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	520
Fourth Question: What Are the Dangers?
Part IX The History and Economics Have Been Misunderstood
56 The Change in Ideas Contradicts Many Ideas from the Political Middle, 1890–1980 Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	531
57 And Many Polanyish Ideas from the Left Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	543
58 Yet Polanyi Was Right about Embeddedness Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	553
59 Trade-Tested Betterment Is Democratic in Consumption Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	560
60 And Liberating in Production Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	569
61 And Therefore Bourgeois Rhetoric Was Better for the Poor Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	574
Part X That Is, Rhetoric Made Us, but Can Readily Unmake Us
62 After 1848 the Clerisy Converted to Antibetterment Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	589
63 The Clerisy Betrayed the Bourgeois Deal, and Approved the Bolshevik and Bismarckian Deals Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	597
64 Anticonsumerism and Pro-Bohemianism Were Fruits of the Antibetterment Reaction Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	608
65 Despite the Clerisy’s Doubts Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	618
66 What Matters Ethically Is Not Equality of Outcome, but the Condition of the Working Class Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	631
67 A Change in Rhetoric Made Modernity, and Can Spread It Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	640
Notes Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	651
Works Cited Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	703
Index Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	751

Bourgeois Equality

How Ideas, Not Capital or Institutions, Enriched the World

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