Bourgeois equality : how ideas, not capital or institutions, enriched the world / Deirdre Nansen McCloskey.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

McCloskey, Deirdre N., author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Economic history--Moral and ethical aspects.

Economic history.

Middle class--Economic aspects.

Middle class.

Liberty--Economic aspects.

Liberty.

Idea (Philosophy)--Economic aspects.

Idea (Philosophy).

Technological innovations--Economic aspects.

Technological innovations.

Income distribution--History.

Income distribution.

Cost and standard of living--History.

Cost and standard of living.

History.

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

xlii, 787 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Chicago ; London : University of Chicago Press, 2016.

Summary:

How standards of living have skyrocketed since 1800, and the political philosophy that made it possible: "Persuasive...richly detailed and erudite."-- Financial Times There's little doubt that most humans today are better off than their forebears. Stunningly so, the economist and historian Deirdre McCloskey argues in this 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 in the same way that oxygen is necessary for a fire. Nor were institutions the drivers: the World Bank orthodoxy of "add institutions and stir" hasn't worked. 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 .

Contents:

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 5

2 For Malthusian and Other Reasons, Very Poor 14

3 Then Many of Us Shot Up the Blade of a Hockey Stick 21

4 As Your Own Life Shows 30

5 The Poor Were Made Much Better Off 37

6 Inequality Is Not the Problem 45

7 Despite Doubts from the Left 53

8 Or from the Right and Middle 61

9 The Great International Divergence Can Be Overcome 73

Second Question: Why not the Conventional Explanations?

Part II Explanations from Left and Right Have Proven False

10 The Divergence Was Not Caused by Imperialism 85

11 Poverty Cannot Be Overcome from the Left by Overthrowing "Capitalism" 93

12 "Accumulate, Accumulate" Is Not What Happened in History 101

13 But Neither Can Poverty Be Overcome from the Right by Implanting "Institutions" 111

14 Because Ethics Matters, and Changes, More 117

15 And the Oomph of Institutional Change Is Far Too Small 129

16 Most Governmental Institutions Make Us Poorer 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 151

18 No Woman but a Blockhead Wrote for Anything but Money 161

19 Adam Smith Exhibits Bourgeois Theory at Its Ethical Best 172

20 Smith Was Not a Mr. Max U, but Rather the Last of the Former Virtue Ethicists 184

21 That Is, He Was No Reductionist, Economistic or Otherwise 193

22 And He Formulated the Bourgeois Deal 199

23 Ben Franklin Was Bourgeois, and He Embodied Betterment 210

24 By 1848 a Bourgeois Ideology Had Wholly Triumphed 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 235

26 And So Does the Word "Eerlijk" 247

27 Defoe, Addison, and Steele Show It, Too 255

28 The Bourgeois Revaluation Becomes a Commonplace, as in the London Merchant 263

29 Bourgeois Europe, for Example, Loved Measurement 271

30 The Change Was in Social Habits of the Lip, Not in Psychology 277

31 And the Change Was Specifically British 285

Part V Yet England Had Recently Lagged in Bourgeois Ideology, Compared with the Netherlands

32 Bourgeois Shakespeare Disdained Trade and the Bourgeoisie 295

33 As Did Elizabethan England Generally 305

34 Aristocratic England, for Example, Scorned Measurement 316

35 The Dutch Preached Bourgeois Virtue 326

36 And the Dutch Bourgeoisie Was Virtuous 336

37 For Instance, Bourgeois Holland Was Tolerant, and Not for Prudence Only 345

Part VI Reformation, Revolt, Revolution, and Reading Increased the Liberty and Dignity of Ordinary Europeans

38 The Causes Were Local, Temporary, and Unpredictable 359

39 "Democratic" Church Governance Emboldened People 367

40 The Theology of Happiness Changed circa 1700 377

41 Printing and Reading and Fragmentation Sustained the Dignity of Commoners 388

42 Political Ideas Mattered for Equal Liberty and Dignity 401

43 Ideas Made for a Bourgeois Revaluation 410

44 The Rhetorical Change Was Necessary, and Maybe Sufficient 417

Part VII Nowhere Before on a Large Scale Had Bourgeois or Other Commoners Been Honored

45 Talk Had Been Hostile to Betterment 427

46 The Hostility Was Ancient 440

47 Yet Some Christians Anticipated a Respected Bourgeoisie 450

48 And Betterment, Though Long Disdained, Developed Its Own Vested Interests 459

49 And Then Turned 468

50 On the Whole, However, the Bourgeoisies and Their Bettering Projects Have Been Precarious 476

Part VIII Words and Ideas Caused the Modern World

51 Sweet Talk Rules the Economy 489

52 And Its Rhetoric Can Change Quickly 499

53 It Was Not a Deep Cultural Change 505

54 Yes, It Was Ideas, Not Interests or Institutions, That Changed, Suddenly, in Northwestern Europe 511

55 Elsewhere Ideas about the Bourgeoisie Did Not Change 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 531

57 And Many Polanyish Ideas from the Left 543

58 Yet Polanyi Was Right about Embeddedness 553

59 Trade-Tested Betterment Is Democratic in Consumption 560

60 And Liberating in Production 569

61 And Therefore Bourgeois Rhetoric Was Better for the Poor 574

Part X That Is, Rhetoric Made Us, but Can Readily Unmake Us

62 After 1848 the Clerisy Converted to Antibetterment 589

63 The Clerisy Betrayed the Bourgeois Deal, and Approved the Bolshevik and Bismarckian Deals 597

64 Anticonsumerism and Pro-Bohemianism Were Fruits of the Antibetterraent Reaction 608

65 Despite the Clerisy's Doubts 618

66 What Matters Ethically Is Not Equality of Outcome, but the Condition of the Working Class 631

67 A Change in Rhetoric Made Modernity, and Can Spread It 640.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780226333991

022633399X

OCLC:

920017440