The 1998 Lord Acton Essay Competition

The Moral Foundation of Political Economy

Joshua P. Hochschild

Beginning in the eighteenth and continuing through the nineteenth century, a great number of volumes were published in Europe and America on the subject of “political economy,” which, according to a typical definition, treats “the laws which regulate the production, distribution, and consumption of the material products which have exchangeable value, and which are either necessary, useful, or agreeable to man.”¹ But while it is generally thought that political economy is a relatively recent concern, owing both its method and its subject matter to various revolutions in science, politics, and industry, there is an account of political economy far older than the age of Enlightenment. It belongs to the most ancient philosophies and religions, and was applicable even before the rise of manufacture and the development of the modern nation-state. It is captured in the traditional prayer by which Christians recognize that not only spiritual health but even worldly necessities — “our daily bread” — are gifts from God; and while it would thus seem to be more a matter of “faith” than of “science,” it is based on its own version of empirical observation and inference:

Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin; and yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, 0 ye of little faith? (Matthew 6:28–30)

Human beings are creatures of God, according to this account, and must depend upon God for the provision of their material goods. In this religious conviction, we have not just a theology, but an ethic, and the ethic is one which concerns specifically the satisfaction of human wants and needs. It is for this reason that we can say that it is a version of political economy, an account which bears on our understanding of the nature and causes of the wealth of nations.

But if the original “invisible hand” — the first-hypothesized hidden cause of the increase and order of human goods — was the providential hand of God, of course the “invisible hand” which is more often remembered is the one associated with Adam Smith's Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations: the blind hand of the unregulated market. Against popular mercantilist theories about the management of general economic welfare, Smith discerned in practice, and explained in principle, the unplanned benefits of free trade and exchange, the natural fruitfulness of economic competition. “By pursuing his own interest,” Smith famously argued, a man “frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it.” While such a man “intends only his own gain,” he is nonetheless “led by an invisible hand to promote an end” — the general welfare of the public — “which was no part of his intention.”²

While the old religions and the old philosophies emphasized the divine mechanism in the ordering of human goods, Smith and the new political economists who followed him turned their attention to human mechanisms. Without denying the reality of these human mechanisms, some religious men, perceiving a tension between human sciences and faith, have accordingly criticized the new science of political economy as another secular threat to spiritual piety. The learned religious and political thinker, Orestes Brownson, for instance, was quick to condemn the theories of Adam Smith, along with socialism, as secular forces competing with Christianity for the attention of men's souls; in the middle of the nineteenth century, Brownson wrote:

For the last three hundred years, we have lost or been losing our faith in God, in heaven, in love, injustice, in eternity, and been acquiring faith only in human philosophies, in mere theories concerning sup ply and demand, wealth of nations, self-supporting, labor-saving governments; needing no virtue, wisdom, love, sacrifice, or heroism on the part of their managers; working out for us a new Eden, converting all the earth into an Eldorado land, and enabling us all to live in Eden Regained.³

Brownson's judgment is severe, and yet it is easy to see how he could regard Smith's “philosophy” as a threat to faith. By claiming that the health and wealth of nations is the natural result of competing individual interests, Smith's theory could be construed as justifying both a radical anthropology, according to which struggle is the most basic human condition, and a dangerous ethic, according to which selfishness becomes the most basic human motive. Smith's defense of market competition could thus be associated with the cruelest social Darwinism, advocating vulgar and brutal greed as the principal virtue. This is why Brownson saw in the new political economy a heretical ethic of material appetite which threatened the true and healthy ethic of humility and sacrifice.

However, even if it is true that Adam Smith's theory has been for many an occasion for the temptation to love money instead of God, this alone does not indicate a necessary conflict between the new emphasis on the human mechanisms at work in the ordering of worldly goods and the old emphasis on the divine. Lord Acton, like Brownson, was a Catholic and anti-socialist, and recognized that man cannot serve both God and Mammon. But unlike Brownson, Acton perceived that one could condemn the worship of Mammon and yet still recognize the validity of Smith's social and economic observations.

Moreover, Lord Acton perceived in Smith's economic observations not the assumption of selfishness and vice, but an affirmation of the central importance of discipline and virtue. Thus, Acton actually found substantial agreement between the new and old political economies, and asserted that, “the doctrine of self-reliance and self-denial, which is the foundation of political economy, [is] written as legibly in the New Testament as in the Wealth of Nations.”⁴

To understand how Lord Acton could see an ethical “doctrine” as the foundation of modern political economy, it is helpful to remember that the central theme of his lecture on the “History of Freedom in Antiquity” is the relationship of liberty and duty. Acton made it clear that the “doctrine of self-reliance and self-denial” follows on the ethical apprehension of duty — it is the obligation to something other than the self that provides a non-selfish, and noncoercive, motive for action.

A sense of duty can follow from status, rank, or class, but it can also follow from the apprehension of higher principles, and, according to Acton, this apprehension is emancipating. It is ultimately only by appeal to the authority of higher principles that men can secure claims to individual liberty against various worldly forces that threaten it. Acton credited the Stoic philosophers for recognizing this first:

It is the Stoics who emancipated mankind from its subjugation to despotic rule, and whose enlightened and elevated views bridged the chasm that separates the ancient from the Christian state, and led the way to Freedom.... They made it known that there is a will superior to the collective will of man, and a law that overrules those of Solon and Lycurgus. Their test of good government is its conformity to principles that can be traced to a higher legislator. That which we must obey, that to which we are bound to reduce all civil authorities, and to sacrifice every earthly interest, is that immutable law which is perfect and eternal as God Himself, which proceeds from His nature, and reigns over heaven and earth and over all the nations. ⁵

Appeal to higher principles, to a higher legislator, both “emancipates” and moves us to “sacrifice earthly interests.” According to Acton, “the greater the strength of duty, the greater the strength of liberty.” The source of duty, what “creates and strengthens the notion of duty,” is religion.

Here it is important to point out how radically Acton differs from those philosophers, like John Stuart Mill, who perceived a fundamental “struggle between Liberty and Authority.”⁶ Acton viewed liberty and authority not only as compatible but as mutually dependent. While Mill attributes a utilitarian value to religion and authority, realizing that they can be instruments for maintaining order, he ultimately sees them as threats to liberty. Liberty, according to Mill, was the ability to act without impediment, valued because of the sovereignty of the human will, a will thus permitted to exercise itself for any object so long as it does not cause “harm to others.”⁷

For Acton, however, “liberty is not the power of doing what we like, but the right of being able to do what we ought.” Mill could not agree with Acton that the value of liberty is inseparable from standards of moral duty, in part because Mill founded his own ethical theory on the “Greatest Happiness principle,” by which human actions are understood as aimed not at what is good, but at what is pleasurable. Mill thus committed the fundamental error of confusing the psychological and metaphysical orders; rather than asserting that something should be desired because it is good, Mill maintained that something is justifiably regarded as good because it is desired. This leaves Mill without any standard of evaluation besides the subjective, and capricious, human appetite.

Acton, on the other hand, knew that moral convictions cannot be reduced to feeling or appetite. When he spoke of “duty,” he did not, like Mill, believe that duty was simply “a feeling in our own mind, a pain, more or less intense.”⁸ For Acton, duty was not moral feeling, but moral obligation; it involved genuine ethical commitment, and was measured by a real standard of evaluation independent of human taste and appetite. Thus, in an even clearer association of the New Testament and the Wealth of Nations, Acton wrote:

The moral foundation of political economy is not the satisfaction of appetite but the fulfillment of duties. Labour, patience, justice, peace, and self-denial are the mainsprings of economical production, and the metaphysical basis of the science is not in a philosophy which reduces religion and science to mere satisfaction of an appetite, like eating or drinking, but in the verification of the promise, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His justice and all these things” — the necessaries of life — “shall be added unto you.”

As Lord Acton understands, the new principles of political economy amounted to a practical confirmation of the religious conviction that prosperity was the reward of virtues — such as humility, patience, and self-denial — which are fostered by dedication to permanent, transcendent ideals. The principles of laissez-faire economics do not promote a selfish social Darwinism, but affirm the values of discipline and sacrifice; these are the virtues of “self-reliance and self-denial” proper to free and responsible individuals, virtues which follow from religious commitment to an end beyond this world — “the kingdom of God” — and which make possible the ordered, peaceful, and prosperous maintenance of a free society.

Joshua P. Hochschild received his B.A. in 1994 from Yale University, where he majored in philosophy. He is currently pursuing doctoral research in medieval logic and metaphysics at the University of Notre Dame. Upon graduation, he hopes to teach.

Notes

1. John McVickar, Outlines of Political Economy (New York: Wilder and Campbell, 1825), 7.
2. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (London: Oxford University Press, 1976), vol. 1, 456 (bk. IV, ch. 2, ¶ 9).
3. Orestes Brownson, “The Present State of Society,” Democratic Review 13, no. 61 July, 1843), 25 – reprinted in Orestes Brownson: Selected Political Essays, ed. Russell Kirk (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1990), 35-36.
4. “The History of Freedom in Antiquity,” in Selected Writings of Lord Acton, J. Rufus Fears, ed., vol. 1, Essays in the History of Liberty (Indianapolis: Liberty Classics, 1985), 27.
5. Ibid., 23-24.
6. John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, in On Liberty, Representative Government, The Subjection of Women: Three Essays by John Stuart Mill (London: Oxford University Press, 1912), 5.
7. Ibid., 14-15: “The object of this essay is to assert one very simple principle, as entitled to govern absolutely the dealings of society with the individual in the way of compulsion and control, whether the means used by physical force in the form of legal penalties, or the moral coercion of public opinion. That principle is, that the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is selfprotection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinions of others, to do so would be wise, or even right.... Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.”
8. John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism, in Mill's Ethical Writings, J. B. Schneewind, ed. (New York: Collier Books, 1965), 302.