Take the dispute over gay marriage as a representative of the "traditional" values commonly espoused by the right wing, which today believes both in traditional values and—I think unaccountably—in industrial capitalism. Here is the most common line of argument against homosexual marriage:
- Assumptions:
- Marriage—the monogamous, conjugal, legal bond—is not merely a private relation but is also an institution.
- All institutions by definition have social effects. Let's call these effects the externalities.
- Man causes institutions to exist in order to secure certain goods. Call the good an institution seeks to secure the object of the institution.
- Now, if the object of an institution is unseemly, we expect its externalities to be unseemly. This is due to the similitude of cause and effect. Essentially, bad causes lead to bad effects.
- The special object of gay marriage is sodomy. Sodomy is unseemly, therefore the institution of sodomy has unseemly externalities.
Let's not dwell on the soundness of the argument, but instead just examine its validity taking the premises for granted. Whatever one might think of its truth, one might grant that it is a valid argument given its assumptions. I think what is interesting is its isomorphism with a common argument against capitalism:
- Assumptions:
- Industrial capitalism—the private ownership of large, mechanized enterprises—is not merely a private relation but is also an institution.
- etc. etc. as before
- The special object of industrial capitalism is pure material gain. This is unseemly, therefore industrial capitalism has unseemly externalities.
I find this isomorphism striking. If the argument is valid that gay marriage is bad because it is institutionalized sodomy, then so too the argument is valid that industrial capitalism is unseemly because it is institutionalized
pleonexia. Yet few who make the first argument also make the second, probably because of the long political alliance between social conservatives and industrial capitalists. The alliance has long since passed from the level of mere political convenience; it has now permeated the minds of Republicans, who (in my experience) believe there is ultimately no ideological tension between industrial capitalism and traditional values. The classical intuition of a similitude between cause and effect, the vivid major premise in the above example arguments, is so quickly forgotten when conservatives evaluate the industrial capitalist economic relation. Nevertheless, if an unseemly cause leads to unseemly effects, we must be consistent. If it is dangerous to found institutions on sodomy, even if one cannot trace the precise avenue of bad effect from bad cause, so too it must be dangerous to found institutions on unbounded selfish gain.
Opponents of gay marriage, and Republicans in general, have come to believe in an economic exception to the rule of similitude. What is true for gay marriage, and true in general, is not true for industrial capitalism. A quotation from Adam Smith about the invisible hand usually follows. Where did this idea come from, and how has it infiltrated even the supposed party of conservation? Scandalously, the idea comes from the supposed contrary to the conservative party: liberalism.
Liberal economics—which some of the uneducated think is the only economics—made its intriguing debut by teaching an extraordinary harmony of the general good and unbounded selfishness. Keynes gives a history of the idea:
...[one] would have been hard put to achieve this harmony of opposites if it had not been for the economists, who sprang into prominence just at the right moment. The idea of a divine harmony between private advantage and the public good is already apparent in Paley. But it was the economists who gave the notion a good scientific basis. Suppose that by the working of natural laws individuals pursuing their own interests with enlightenment in condition of freedom always tend to promote the general interest at the same time! Our philosophical difficulties are resolved—at least for the practical man, who can then concentrate his efforts on securing the necessary conditions of freedom. To the philosophical doctrine that the government has no right to interfere, and the divine that it has no need to interfere, there is added a scientific proof that its interference is inexpedient. This is the third current of thought, just discoverable in Adam Smith, who was ready in the main to allow the public good to rest on 'the natural effort of every individual to better his own condition', but not fully and self-consciously developed until the nineteenth century begins. The principle of laissez-faire had arrived to harmonise individualism and socialism, and to make at one Hume's egoism with the greatest good of the greatest number. The political philosopher could retire in favour of the business man—for the latter could attain the philosopher's summum bonum by just pursuing his own private profit. —The End of Laissez-Faire, John Maynard Keynes
So Keynes, when he soon argued for a misalignment between the social good and the private, was playing a much more conservative tune that many realize, and Keynes at least was conscious of it. For other reasons he cannot be considered a friend of traditional values. In short, although he rejects the theory of private and social harmony, he nevertheless accepts the value premise of boundless consumption. But the right never claimed Keynes. On the other hand it does claim Friedrich Hayek, the usual foil for Keynes and the acclaimed friend of the conservative movement, and who accepts both! Hayek was an avowed "Whig" who wrote an essay
Why I am not a Conservative. Yet the right claims Hayek as its own, relying on the most exceptional "liberal" ideas of the age.
What is the traditional alternative to industrial capitalism? Note the example argument does not say artisanal capitalism or small-goods capitalism are unseemly. It addresses industrial production, not artisanal production. Making a good for trade in order to win a livelihood is not industrial capitalism but is a universal part of human life and a healthy one. To earn a livelihood is of course not an evil but a good, and to employ one's labor artistically to earn that living is very good. We all carry the moral intuition that small-scale private production for private gain is necessary—"he who does not work should not eat"—and the common morality is not envious but is willing to reward certain artisanal producers with great wealth (athletes, for example).
What is special about industrial production, and what removes the artisan, is the machine. The artisan does not use machines that
replace the artistic portion of his labor. There is a difference in quality between private property, one the one hand, and industrial capitalism. What is new is the ownership of mechanized capital used to produce a surplus far beyond one's livelihood and in a way that competes away the artist's product. We all enjoy the products of industrial production, but few of us would agree to participate in their making if we could help it. That's for someone
else to do. So many mothers goad her son to be a doctor or lawyer, the two major remnants of the age of the guild, but few of these mothers wish their sons to be mass goods manufacturers. Artisanal capitalism as an institution is therefore seemly.
How could we return to something like it, iPads and all? There is of course no going back. But perhaps the proposal of the distributists might be a starting point. Belloc proposed, with Gandhi and Schumacher, to limit somehow the value of mechanized capital that a limited liability corporation may own (which would also make antitrust unnecessary). If the size of the thing is a problem, it is time we limit size. For the same reason that we limit our individual appetites through moral effort, we should also limit our economic appetite through legal effort. This would raise the prices of most goods and we would not afford as much stuff. But if we are overconsuming anyway, this is a benefit not a cost.
