- How the Dismal Science Got Its Name, David M. Levy, Professor of Economics, George Mason University, 2001
Many people believe that the "dismal science" referred to Thomas Malthus's prediction that population growth would outstrip agricultural growth, leading to widespread famine. Rather, Thomas Carlyle opposed the view of the (now called "classical") economists, such as John Stuart Mill, who strongly argued for the end of slavery on the basis that under the skin, all people are equal and share the same human nature:
"Truly, my philanthropic friends, Exeter Hall Philanthropy is wonderful; and the Social Science—not a 'gay science,' but a rueful—which finds the secret of this universe in 'supply-and-demand,' and reduces the duty of human governors to that of letting men alone, is also wonderful. Not a 'gay science,' I should say, like some we have heard of; no, a dreary, desolate, and indeed quite abject and distressing one; what we might call, by way of eminence, the dismal science. These two, Exeter Hall Philanthropy and the Dismal Science, led by any sacred cause of Black Emancipation, or the like, to fall in love and make a wedding of it,—will give birth to progenies and prodigies; dark extensive moon-calves, unnameable abortions, wide-coiled monstrosities, such as the world has not seen hitherto!"
- An Occasional discourse on the Negro Question, Thomas Carlyle, 1849
What's Exeter Hall Philanthropy? British evangelicalism. Christian evangelicals also opposed slavery because they believed that all men and women were brothers and sisters under God.
It's interesting that market egalitarianism is now viewed as "right wing" or "conservative," given its radical history. As Levy points out in his book, this fact speaks to the huge success of those who pushed for emancipation. We now see the spectrum as those who do not believe in property in things (far left) to those who do believe in property of things (right), with the previous far right end point of those who believe in property in people having fallen completely off the scale.
For more information, see this interesting and informative web site. It includes some pretty crazy political cartoons, like this one, showing one of Carlyle's compatriots killing a black man/classical economist hybrid figure (who to me looks like a grotesquely racial Nosferatu in the clothing of a business man) as though he is St. George slaying the dragon.
The slain man is holding a bag of money with the words "The Wealth of Nations" (the title of Adam Smith's seminal text on the superiority of the free market economy) written on it. It also says "L.S.D." - apparently an abbreviation for "pounds, shillings, and pence," among other things.
3 comments:
A measure of how far we have come (or gone) is that Carlyle's argument there doesn't even make any sense. It is a hopeless ramble which appears to attempt to tie liberalism to a bunch of nefarious and nebulous evils, without any attempt to make a logical connection. (OK, modern conservatism can get that somewhat down that road, but is there any conservative, no matter how extreme, who would invoke "wide-coiled monstrosities" as the outcome of some leftist proposal? Well, other than Alan Keyes?)
It also is a measure of how far we've come (or how far gone the evangelicals are) that Evangelicalism represents the farthest wingnut left of political discourse in Carlyle's time, and the time's "libertarians" sat out there with them.
Carlyle's argument, as I understand it from what little I have read of Levy's book, is based on a total commitment to societal hierarchical structure, which he felt (rightly!) was threatened by market egalitarianism. He seemed to have believed that the upheaval resulting from the combination of letting people go loose of their proper place and their taking on industrial piecework, etc., in their jobs amounted to a terrible "enslavement" of the average Englishman. And he seems to have been one of those "freedom in slavery" types when it comes to black people.
Of course, this is all crazy-talk to modern audiences, especially Americans. I am surprised by how frequently even modern British TV shows, books, etc., feature an old-fashioned sort of person who still believes in hierarchy and makes observations about some other person being "no better than they should be" or acting "above their station" or whatnot.
Trivial comment: I am often reminded of the dramatic social upheaval of the past century or two when I notice that in, e.g., Jane Austen novels, "condescending" is a complimentary description.
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