There is no ideal single book to learn about Victorian ‘sage’ John Ruskin’s economics, but there are lots of scattered ideas in various books. Some say that at the time he had more influence on British Labour politics than Marx…. Ruskin is not always admirable perhaps, but he braved a lot of criticism and ostracism to make these points
Ruskin argues economics should be about both the conditions of survival and the generation of wealth rather than riches. ‘Riches’, he defines as appropriation from another, ‘wealth’ the general benefit: wealth is tied in with the cultivation of souls and the provision of beauty: “There is no wealth but life.” Riches can brought about through death and injustice. As such, wealth involves the higher pleasures natural to humans. Not surprisingly, for Ruskin, economics should encourage manufacture and appreciation of art and beauty, but also of care for others.
True economics also grows out of social affections and associations and a recognition of those affections and ties.
“Independence you had better cease to talk of, for you are dependent not only on every act of people whom you never heard of, who are living all around you, but on every past act of what has been dust for a thousand years. So also does the course of a thousand years to come depend upon the little perishing strength that is in you.”
Economic theory is about relationship and structures relationship. Ruskin argues that, recognizing this, the rich have obligations to the poor and their workers. He is paternalistic, although often his model involves a woman tending her household. He considers the relationship between an employer and a worker to be ideally, and perhaps necessarily, one of voluntary kinship. To him contemporary capitalists simply avoided their responsibilities to others (praising their own ‘individuality’) to the detriment of the nation. They were helped in this avoidance by a liberal economics which strips all that is valuable about human life, relationship and art away. Liberal economics reduces life to covetous calculation and demand. Laissez faire, which avoids or breaks any human ties with others is simply the principle of death and the destruction of common-wealth. It is also the death of real economics.
Breaking human ties also means that the higher pleasures cannot survive in capitalism. Capitalists have no thought for beauty, unless they monopolise it for themselves as a tool of status and as a demonstration of their ability to exclude others from its benefits. If profit is brought by destruction and ugliness (physical and mental) then that is what relationship denying capitalists will produce. Their riches depends on ‘illth’ – the very opposite of wealth, and this can be seen in despoiled landscape and the ruined bodies and souls of the labouring classes. Any difference between the labouring and the rich classes comes about by this illth and their conditions of living for labourers. It is a matter of violence, not virtue.
True economics is concerned with the circumstances of everyone not just the rich, and this concern also grows out of cultivation of nobility of soul. Labour is necessary, but only so far as it enables life outside of labour and manages holidays. Labour in a good economy should be joyful and creative, rather than confined to dank and ugly slums. It should also be about craft and responsibility, tasks which refine the soul, rather than the monotony of machinc production or rote tasks. The cultivation of craft and purity of produce is ultimately what delivers the wealth of real ‘goods’ that can be consumed well.
However, good consumption requires instruction, and higher values; another moral question for a real economy is whether people can use what is produced nobly or not. The point being that wealth does not consist in producing or owning massive numbers of possessions, but in the possessions that increase life and its value. This also implies that economics has to be in harmony with ecologies and its effects on the future.
“God has lent us the earth for our life. It is a great entail. It belongs as much to those who are to come after us…as to us. And we have no right, by anything we might do or neglect, to involve them in unnecessary penalties or deprive them of benefits which it was in our power to bequeath… Every human action gains in honor, in grace, in all true magnificence, by its regard of things that are to come… Therefore, when we build, let us think that we build forever. Let it not be for present delight, nor for present use alone. Let it be such work as our descendants will thank us for”
An economics which puts relationships, beauty, cultivation of souls, ecology, well made lasting goods, and the long-term future in front of us, certainly seems unusual.
Tags: 'nature', depth psychology, economics, ruskin
Climate, technology and chaos Blog 
Leave a comment