Bourgeois equality
Subtitle: how ideas, not capital or institutions, enriched the world
By: Deirdre Nansen McCloskey
Publisher: The University of Chicago Press; University of Chicago Press
Published: 2016
Language: eng
Number of pages: 787
ISBN-13: 9780226333991; 9780226527932
Subjects: Moral and ethical aspects; Income distribution; Economic history; Liberty; Idea (Philosophy); Cost and standard of living; Middle class; Technological innovations; Economic aspects; History
Description: "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."--Publisher's description.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages 651-750) and index.
Table of contents: title: Part I. A great enrichment happened, and will happen. 1. The world is pretty rich, but once was poor ; 2. For Malthusian and other reasons, very poor ; 3. Then many of us shot up the blade of a hockey stick ; 4. As your own life shows ; 5. The poor were made much better off ; 6. Inequality is not the problem ; 7. Despite doubts from the Left ; 8. Or from the Right and Middle ; 9. The great international divergence can be overcome; title: Part II. Explanations from left and right have proven false. 10. The divergence was not caused by imperialism ; 11. Poverty cannot be overcome from the left by overthrowing "capitalism" ; 12. "Accumulate, accumulate" is not what happened in history ; 13. But neither can poverty be overcome from the right by implanting "institutions" ; 14. Because ethics matters, and changes, more ; 15. And the oomph of institutional change is far too small ; 16. Most governmental institutions make us poorer; title: 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 ; 18. No woman but a blockhead wrote for anything but money ; 19. Adam Smith exhibits bourgeois theory at its ethical best ; 20. Smith was not a Mr. Max U, but rather the last of the former virtue ethicists ; 21. That is, he was no reductionist, economistic or otherwise ; 22. And he formulated the bourgeois deal ; 23. Ben Franklin was bourgeois, and he embodied betterment ; 24. By 1848 a bourgeois ideology had wholly triumphed; title: 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 ; 26. And so does the word "eerlijk" ; 27. Defoe, Addison, and Steele show it, too ; 28. The bourgeois revaluation becomes a commonplace, as in The London merchant ; 29. Bourgeois Europe, for example, loved measurement ; 30. The change was in social habits of the lip, not in psychology ; 31. And the change was specifically British; title: Part V. Yet England had recently lagged in bourgeois ideology, compared with the Netherlands. 32. Bourgeois Shakespeare disdained trade and the bourgeoisie ; 33. As did Elizabethan England generally ; 34. Aristocratic England, for example, scorned measurement ; 35. The Dutch preached bourgeois virtue ; 36. And the Dutch bourgeoisie was virtuous ; 37. For instance, bourgeois Holland was tolerant, and not for prudence only; title: part VI. Reformation, revolt, revolution, and reading increased the liberty and dignity of ordinary Europeans. 38. The causes were local, temporary, and unpredictable ; 39. "Democratic" church governance emboldened people ; 40. The theology of happiness changed circa 1700 ; 41. Printing and reading and fragmentation sustained the dignity of commoners ; 42. Political ideas mattered for equal liberty and dignity ; 43. Ideas made for a bourgeois revaluation ; 44. The rhetorical change was necessary, and maybe sufficient; title: Part VII. Nowhere before on a large scale had bourgeois or other commoners been honored: 45. Talk had been hostile to betterment ; 46. The hostility was ancient ; 47. Yet some Christians anticipated a respected bourgeoisie ; 48. And betterment, though long disdained, developed its own vested interests ; 49. And then turned ; 50. On the whole, however, the bourgeoisies and their bettering projects have been precarious; title: Part VIII. Words and ideas caused the modern world. 51. Sweet talk rules the economy ; 52. And its rhetoric can change quickly ; 53. It was not a deep cultural change ; 54. Yes, it was ideas, not interests or institutions, that changed, suddenly, in Northwestern Europe ; 55. Elsewhere ideas about the bourgeoisie did not change; title: Part IX. The history and economics have been misunderstood. 56. The change in ideas contradicts many ideas from the political middle, 1890-1980 ; 57. And many Polanyish ideas from the Left ; 58. Yet Polanyi was right about embeddedness ; 59. Trade-tested betterment is democratic in consumption ; 60. And liberating in production ; 61. And therefore bourgeois rhetoric was better for the poor; title: Part X. That is, rhetoric made us, but can readily unmake us. 62. After 1848 the clerisy converted to antibetterment ; 63. The clerisy betrayed the bourgeois deal, and approved the Bolshevik and Bismarckian deals ; 64. Anticonsumerism and pro-bohemianism were fruits of the antibetterment reaction ; 65. Despite the clerisy's doubts ; 66. What matters ethically is not equality of outcome, but the condition of the working class ; 67. A change in rhetoric made modernity, and can spread it.