Emerson: The Iconoclastic Spontaneist and Proto-Georgist
Economist
Cay Hehner, Ph.D.
Director, Henry George School, New York, NY
[A paper delivered at the Henry George
School/Birthplace Museum,
Philadelphia, PA, 25 September, 2010]
Voices against Emerson
The most common perception of Ralph Waldo Emerson is that he comes
out of some kind of theological lala land with no grip whatsoever on
reality, that he was a failed Unitarian minister who had to make a
living giving talks along the New England Coast on "everything
and nothing", who married a tubercular patient who promptly died
on him, and who later engaged in some kind of intellectual tourism
prying into the life and works of eminent Europeans, a kind of Larry
King or Charlie Rose of the Romantic Age, who had the bad luck on top
of everything else that TV had not been invented yet. A kind of
seducer of youth, most notably the young, unbalanced Thoreau and
Whitman who got further unhinged through the exposure to the master's
presence and writing. A pre-hippy-age hippy with a better barber who
would anticipate and model all the mistakes that were made in the 60s
and 70s, foolish nature-worship, country commune life of questionable
morality, incitation to civil disobedience and insurrection, condoning
of all manner of misfits and precursors of the gay liberation
movement. Generations of popular, literary and philosophic recipients
have followed Hawthorne and Melville's verdict that the
Transcendentalist Club founded by Emerson was an unfounded and
dangerous aberration of the human spirit: Mad Captain Ahab's obsession
with the white whale Moby Dick and the Captain's consequent demise,
the phoney spooks and ghouls in the House of the Seven Gables and
their inevitable exposure as frauds and inheritance thieves, this is
what the Transcendentalists' quest for the Absolute amounted to and
their unquestionable downfall, in Melville's and Hawthorne's mind,
would be equally calamitous and well deserved. So much may be said by
way of introduction for the later 19th and 20th century reception of
Emerson and his renegade Unitarian School. It is also just possible -
but only just so - that Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman, Margaret Fuller,
Bronson Alcott, Orestes Brownson and their like-minded peers were up
to something that our friends, the afore-mentioned
realists-pragmatists-materialists in the Melville-Hawthorne mode had
in themselves as well, but that they obstinately refused to recognize!
This presentation will explore a side of Emerson that is rarely
brought to the fore and that appears decidedly untranscendental in its
major aspects, namely those elements of his spiritual experience and
thought that deal with the nuts and bolts of existence: house
husbandry, agriculture, botany, microeconomics and macroeconomics,
ecology, the science of government, Emerson's hands-on, Machiavellian
side if you wish and the rare image of Emerson seen as a
proto-Georgist Classical Economist.
Emerson's Criticism of Classical Economics
It seems odd of such an ethereal character and
luftmensch -- as Emerson was purported to have been -- to
expect any valid criticism for such meat-and-potato issues as
Classical Economics, and here moreover English Classical Economics to
be exact; yet surprisingly enough he takes them on in droves: Smith,
Say, Ricardo, Malthus, the Younger Mill, even Carlyle, the elitist
misanthropist, par excellence, explicitly named or unnamed, he
takes them all on:
"There is no country in which so absolute a homage
is paid to wealth. In America there is a touch of shame when a man
exhibits the evidences of large property, as if after all it needed
apology. But the Englishman has pure pride in his wealth, and
esteems it a final certificate. A coarse logic rules throughout all
English souls - if you have merit, can you not show it by your good
clothes and coach and horses? … There is a mixture of religion
in it. They are under the Jewish law, and read with sonorous that
their days shall be long in the land, [that] they shall have sons
and daughters, flocks and herds, wine and oil. In exact proportion
is the reproach of poverty. They do not wish to be represented
except by opulent men. An Englishman who has lost his fortune is
said to have died of a broken heart. The last term of insult is, 'a
beggar'. Nelson said, "The want of fortune is a crime which I
can never get over." Sydney Smith said, "Poverty is
infamous in England." And one of their recent writers speaks,
in reference to a private and scholastic life, of "the grave
moral deterioration which follows an empty exchequer."[1]
Much water has flown down the Hudson, since Emerson has written these
lines a century and a half ago and methinks "the touch of shame"
about wealth in our 21st century United States will have to be sought
after with an extremely large magnifying glass, probably one the size
of Mt. Rushmore. The worst insult that can be thrown at a man or woman
in contemporary America is not "beggar" anymore, but "loser",
the term is different but the impact of the insult and the economic
implications are the same. The thrust of the quote, however, is clear:
Poverty is a shame, a crime. We can find that exact attitude, for
instance, throughout in the plays and writings of Bernard Shaw from
the end of Emerson's life well into the middle of the 20th century.
The further implication Emerson makes here, that for the Anglo-Saxon
mind frame the poverty must needs be self-inflicted. Underlying this "shame"
is the Puritan-Calvinist mind set that equals wealth with virtue and
as the corresponding counterdeduction will recognize no virtue unless
it is clearly and ostentatiously displayed in material riches!
What follows is a strong and distinct indictment of the British
national character from our not-so-impartial overseas observer, after
all the imperialist power from which the young nation had just a
generation or so ago won its independence against a hefty blood toll:
"I found the two disgraces," writes Emerson, "…are
first disloyalty to Church and State, and second, to be born poor,
or to come to poverty. A natural fruit of England is the brutal
political economy. Malthus finds no cover laid at nature's table for
the laborer's son [emphasis added]. … The respect for truth
of facts in England is equaled only by the respect for wealth."[2]
If we brush aside the gilded halo that has been glued onto Malthus
anemic countenance as being after all the first classical economist
after Adam Smith, and the first altogether to get tenured position in
that nascent field, then it will have to be bluntly stated that
Malthus was a hired hand of the lords and princes who were afraid that
the marvelous and very hygienic proto-modern invention of the French
Dr. Guillotine would cross the Channel and do its equalizing work at
its level best, just as it had done in France in 1789. Malthus mission
as a minister was to inculcate the lower classes with the obvious lies
that riches were based on merit, not fraud and inheritance and that
poverty was based on natural law. We can see that Emerson, no trained
economist himself, is not deceived by any accepted expert opinion or
any truist conventional wisdoms.
As the gist of the summary of the next pages Emerson, in essence,
states that every British subject is a born political economist in
that vein! In other words the main thrust of society goes toward
trade and commerce. Many a learned and reputable writer down to the
historian Arnold Toynbee or the various illustrious lecturers at the
London School of Economics would attest to the same assessment later.
Hitler regularly would work himself into a frenzy disdainfully calling
the British "a nation of shopkeepers", however, fortunate
for the rest of the world he did not completely succeed in turning the
German and Prussian nation into a nation of killers, torturers and
brown-shirted henchmen. By contrast a democratic "nation of
shopkeepers" would be amply preferable. The U.S. in a similar
manner has been called a continent of salesmen. Nothing to be said
against either, however, what about the archetypical professional
calling of such nations unplagued by the plight of monopolies, trusts,
speculators against the people. Emerson's perspective of political
economy, I think, can fairly be described as one of free-market with a
level playing field. At the time Emerson was writing in the United
States free access to land was a given, one of the natural rights of
man not explicitly stated in the constitution, but clearly implicit
therein.
Let's hear Emerson's take on the industrial revolution that had
started at the end of the 18th century and was in full roar by the
middle of the 19th:
"The ambition to create [economic] value evokes
every kind of ability, government [itself] becomes a
manufacturing corporation, and every house a mill [emphasis
added]. The headlong bias of utility will let no talent lie on a
napkin -- if possible it will teach spiders to weave silk stockings.
An Englishman, while he eats and drinks no more or not much more
than another man, labors three times as many hours in the course of
a year as another European; or his life as a workman is three lives.
He works fast. Everything in England is at a quick pace. They have
reinforced their own productivity by the creation of that marvelous
machinery which differentiates this age from any other age."[3]
The point about the inter-exchangeability of governments and large
corporations is made a good six generations on by the prize-winning
Canadian filmmaker Mark Achbar in his documentary The Corporation,
Achbar attests both an unholy power and an uncanny insanity to legal
constructs that are, after all, supposed to be fictitious. Emerson in
the above-quoted passage makes reference to the Benthamian concept of
utility. Emerson had met John Stuart Mill and was in continual
correspondence with him; hence he was well familiar with the precepts
and principles of utilitarianism. If an item, matter or activity had
no practical or economic utility than it was of no importance
whatsoever. Out of the window go the ride on the rainbow, Beethoven's
Ninth, Salinger's Catcher in the Rye, Blake's mystic poetry,
e. e. cummings, Thor Heyerdahl's Kontiki, Bellini's Casta
Diva, Henry George's Law of Human Progress, Joseph
Campbell's injunction "to follow your bliss" and pretty much
everything else that really matters, not excluding Emerson's Essays
or the Henry George Birthplace Museum. This just shows that nothing is
to be gained when we hand over the rule of society to the
bean-counters, or to coin a new term: beancounterocracy! (Speaking of
which, I don't need to add here, that the laptop spellchecker on which
this paper was written sternly admonishes the writer to refrain from
using such unrecognizable terms!)
What follows is a brief recap of the developments and inventions that
led to the industrial revolution and than led it on to confirm Great
Britain as the world's dominant empire even after the loss of the
former colonies to the U.S. Independence: "The great strides were
all taken within the last hundred years. The Life of Sir Robert
Peele, in his day the model Englishman, very properly has, for a
frontispiece, a drawing of the spinning-jenny, which wove the web of
his fortunes. Hargreaves invented the spinning-jenny, and died in a
workhouse. Arkwright improved the invention, and the machine dispensed
with the work of ninety-nine men; that is, one spinner could do as
much work as one hundred had done before. The loom was improved
further. But the men would sometimes strike for wages and combine
against the masters, and about 1829-30, much fear was felt lest the
trade would be drawn away by these interruptions and the emigration of
the spinners to Belgium and the United States. Iron and steel are very
obedient. Whether it were not possible to make a spinner that would
not rebel, nor mutter, nor scowl, nor strike for wages, nor emigrate?
At the solicitation of the masters, after a mob and riot at Staley
Bridge, Mr. Roberts of Manchester undertook to create this peaceful
fellow, instead of the quarrelsome fellow God had made."[4] So
the whole allure of the march of invention, the mechanization, this
kind of early Taylorism did lie in the idea for the industrialists of
getting a mechanical obedient machine-slave instead of a
self-assertive human worker. While Emerson's sympathies are clearly
with the drive of the entrepreneur he is not blind, deaf, or
insensitive to the plight of the laborer.
This historical synopsis which sings the paean of the marvelous
increase in productivity, customary for 19th century writers,
culminates in: "But when, added to this labor and trade and these
native resources was added this goblin of steam, with his myriad arms,
never tired, working night and day everlastingly, the amassing of
property has run out of all figures. Forty thousand ships are entered
in Lloyd's lists. The yield of wheat has gone on from 2,000,000
quarters in the time of the Stuarts to 13,000,000 in 1854. A thousand
million pounds sterling are said to compose the floating money of
commerce. In 1848 Lord John Russell [the British prime minister and
grandfather of the philosopher Bertrand Russell] stated that the
people of [Britain] had laid out 300,000,000 pound sterling of capital
in railways, in the last four years [1844 - 1848]. But a better
measure than these sounding figures is the estimate that there is
wealth enough in England to support the entire population in idleness
for one year."[5]
When I was about five years old my father explained to me that the
British through their world empire had let the rest of the world work
for them, and so they consequently had lost the habit and ability to
work for themselves. That's why in the view of my father they were now
on the verge of national bankruptcy [in 1961]. Kennedy had just been
giving his Inaugural Address. You can image that I was much impressed.
In case you have any doubts of this analysis you can see that the
British still are on the verge of national bankruptcy half a century
later and the U.S. and most other countries are trying their dandiest
best to emulate them in this respect. Emerson's daring image of "enough
wealth [accrued] to support the entire population in idleness for one
year", of course countermands the principles of classical
economics. Henry George repeatedly teaches that economic wealth has to
be perpetually renewed, as society lives off on-going production and
not the quantity of products made by preceding years or generations.
The point here is, however, not one of the duration of time in
idleness of the leisure class or rather an imperialistic "nation
of leisure", but the impressive quantity of the surplus thus
accumulated. According to Niall Ferguson the U.S. is trying its best
to outfox Great Britain from the early 20th century in letting it's
entire national product be done and financed in China. We seem to have
here not a case of "hedge fund envy", Joseph Stiglitz's
appraisal of what happened to smaller neighborhood banks during the
financial crisis 2007 - 2009, but a rather severe case of "empire
envy". According to the consensus of most cultural and
civilizational historians even Great Empires go the way of all flesh …
but let's continue with Emerson's critique of English classical
economics. In the passage following he reflects on the power and
importance of the growing financial system for productivity:
"But another machine more potent in England than
steam is the Bank. It votes an issue of bills, population is
stimulated and cities rise; it refuses loans, and emigration empties
the country; trade sinks; revolutions break out; kings are
dethroned. By these new agents our social system is moulded. By dint
of steam and money, war and commerce are changed. Nations have lost
their old omnipotence; the patriotic tie does not hold. Nations are
getting obsolete."[6]
For having been written in the middle of the 19th century this
passage is mind-bogglingly prescient of the erosion of the nation
state by international finance and multinationals. In all of Marx one
will look for such passages in vain; and Emerson was not even an
economist. But come to think of it, neither was Marx. Emerson
correctly deduces that the industrialist and the financier will "prove
an overmatch for the landowner"[7] And on the power of financial
capital: "The creation of wealth in England in the last ninety
years is a main fact in modern history. The wealth of London
determines prices all over the globe. All things precious, or useful,
or amusing, or intoxicating, are sucked into this commerce and floated
to London. … A hundred thousand palaces adorn the island."[8]
Today over a century and a half later all of this would be true to new
financial centers like Manhattan, Hong Kong or Singapore, or for
resources-rich countries like Saudi Arabia. The reason why the British
don't have a revolution like the French Emerson explains with their
conception of property:
"With this power of creation [read: production] and
this passion for independence, property has reached an ideal
perfection. It is felt and treated as the national life-blood. The
laws are framed to give property the securest possible basis, and
the provisions to lock and transit it have exercised the cunningest
heads in the profession which never admits a fool. The rights of
property nothing but felony and treason can override. The house
is a castle which the king cannot enter. The Bank is a strong box to
which the king has no key. … Vested rights are awful things,
and absolute possession gives the smallest freeholder identity of
interest with the duke. High stone fences and padlocked garden-gates
announce the absolute will of the owner to be alone. Every whim of
exaggerated egotism is put into stone and iron, into silver and
gold, with costly deliberation and detail. [emphasis added]"[9]
Emerson does not share with Adam Smith whom he had studied the
latter's belief in the self-regulating power of self-interest. Neither
as becomes apparent from a later passage is Emerson keen on the
division of labor, with George he feels that this specialization
process indispensible for the industrial revolution directly and
ultimately impoverishes the soul and consciousness of man: "But
man must keep an eye on his servants [read: machines], if he would not
have them rule him. Man is a shrewd inventor and is ever taking the
hint of a new machine from his own structure, adapting some secret of
his own anatomy in iron, wood and leather to some required function in
the work of the world. But it is found that the machine unmans the
user. What he gains in making cloth, he loses in general power… A
man should not be a silk-worm, nor a nation a tent of caterpillars
[emphasis added]."[10]
This passages culminates in the rather scathing indictment: "In
true England all is false or forged."[11] Industry and finance
become the magic that destroys the sorcerer's apprentice, means become
ends that threaten to destroy societies and nations. And Emerson ends
this essay on wealth with the perennial question: "We estimate
the wisdom of nations by seeing what they did with their surplus
capital."
Emerson's Enlightened Economics
In Emerson's second foray into the subject of Political Economy he is
more positive and guarded. Now he has in mind the democratic economy
of the United States. There is a passage which describes a kind of
psychology of the acquisition and dispensation of money which can be
called nothing less than Gnostic:
"Money is representative, and follows the nature and
fortunes of the owner. The coin is a delicate meter of civil, social
and moral changes. The farmer is covetous of his dollar, and with
reason. It is no waif to him. He knows now many strokes of labor it
represents. His bones ache with the days' work that earned it. He
knows how much land it represents -- how much rain, frost and
sunshine. He knows that, in the dollar, he gives you so much
discretion and patience, so much hoeing and threshing. Try to
lift his dollar; you must lift all that weight. In the city, where
money follows the skit of a pen or a lucky rise in exchange, it
comes to be looked on as light. I wish the farmer held it dearer,
and would spend it only for real bread; force for force. The
farmer's dollar is heavy and the clerk's is light and nimble; leaps
out of his pocket; jumps on to card and faro-tables; but still more
curious is its susceptibility to metaphysical changes. It is the
finest barometer of social storms, and announces revolution
[emphasis added]."[13]
The conclusion that Emerson draws from these economic reflections is
equally astounding: "The crime which bankrupts men and states is
job-work - declining form your main design, to serve a turn here and
there. Nothing is beneath you, if it is in the direction of your life;
nothing is great or desirable if it is off from that … society
can never prosper but must always go bankrupt, until every man does
that which he was created to do."[14]
If we wanted to find a kind of lowest common denominator or a
theoretical framework into which to fit Emerson's reflections on
economics and wealth we would have to state:
Emerson is well aware of the source of all wealth as his two essays
on the subject of nature prove. He parallels the historic philosopher
G.B. Vico in that he believes man cannot truly know except what he
himself created. Consequently Emerson is against the mere passing on
of property,[15] resources and land are not especially excepted as is
the case with Henry George, but this can likely be inferred. He is
very much an advocate of free-trade and free-market like George after
him, in the sense that Emerson believes property irradiates naturally
through the genuine being of the individual soul and spirit and to the
extent to which one stays true to that spiritual identity. He is more
democratic in the most basic grass-roots sense than most political,
economic or social thinkers in that he believes that all men have the
capacity to live up to their innermost spiritual identity and thus to
their highest economic potential, if they only find their true path
and place.
Bibliography:
Brooks Atkinson (ed.),
The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson; intro. by Mary
Oliver; the Modern Library New York, 2000
br> Lawrence Buell, Emerson, Harvard Univ. Press, 2003
W. Larkin, The Esoteric Emerson, NYC 1996
John McAleer, Emerson: Days of Encounter, Boston, Little,
Brown, 1984
Encyclopedia Britannica, London, 1978 edition
Wikipedia
FOOTNOTES
- Brooks Atkinson, Mary Oliver
[ed.], The Essential Writings of R.W. Emerson; The Modern
Library New York, 2000, English Traits (1856), Chapter X "Wealth",
p. 541. To distinguish it from the other later and longer essay on
"Wealth" in Conduct of Life (1860), it will in from
hereon be referred to as Wealth I, the 1860 essay will be referred
to as Wealth II
- "Wealth I", op.
cit., p. 542
- "Wealth I", op.
cit., p. 543
- "Wealth I", op.
cit., p. 544
- "Wealth I", op.
cit., p. 544 - 545
- "Wealth I", op. cit.
p. 545
- op. cit., same page
- op. cit., p. 546
- op. cit., p. 546-47
- op. cit., p. 548
- ibid.
- Wealth II, op. cit., p. 621
ff.
- op. cit. p. 629, 630
- Wealth II, op. cit., p. 635
- cf. the passage in the essay
Politics, op. cit., p. 380
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