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Unto Last

THERE IS NO WEALTH BUT LIFE.

Some Other Ruskin

• From “Modern Manufacture and Design”
  • The modern workman has bee “starved out of all creativity by modern manufacturing techniques” (Rosner 25: those are Rosner’s words)
  • “you must give him the materials, and put him in the circumstances for it,” including not only education, but also observation, experience, peace, pleasure in work.
  • You must “surround your men with happy influences and beautiful things” to make them design well. (Ruskin’s words, Rosner 25)
  • Thus, we need to reorganize resources and time to lead to good design
• As the teacher of William Morris, who advocates simpler designs that embody a certain social and moral value: artisanal culture and the beauty of rural life
• Ruskin General
  • “drew attention to values the industrial age was about to sweep away” 36
  • Ecology: not only an early champion of environment, but also his philosophical style is ecological says Wilmer b/c he sees everything “in context of their environment” 36 (not fan of abstraction)
  • The Ruskin we know and love is the 1850s and 60s public lecturer and letters to the press Ruskin (Sesame and Lilies, Crown of Wild Olive); eclectic talking about foreign policy in one sentence, geology the next, and feminism the next!
    • Upset but hopeful mood: we’re diseased but there is a cure, but over time he gets more cynical (partly b/c of private tragedy, partly b/c enormity of his project)
  • Scottish descent, born in London 1819, only child
  • Dad: wine-merchant and Romantic (loved Byron, Scott); Mom: evangelical (but Ruskin lost his sectarian faith 1858)
    • One year before Origin of Species published, loses faith b/c of own knowledge of geology
    • Before loss of faith, in first volumes of MP, he sees landscape as reflecting loving God; but then he sees the darker side of nature and begins to reflect upon human-made structures and their injustices
    • Childhood: denied ordinary sensual life; encouraged in intellectual pursuits
  • Oxford; yearly trips abroad; writing tons of books at once, from guide-books to textbooks to letters; letters, drawings, etc
    • Rose’s refusal of him and her growing insanity come at a time when he has been appointed first Slade Professor of Fine Arts at Oxford (which demanded tons of work, potentially diverting him from social causes)
    • Uses serial Fors Clavigera to keep on public stage: monthly periodical in and of itself, series of letters for “Workmen and Labourers of Great Britain”
      • 96 letters, informal, some autobio, urgent, undulating emotions (“anger, compassion, self-pity, satire, irony, tenderness, etc pp 33)
    • Idea for Fors C. came from his correspondence with cork-cutter, self-taught Thomas Dixon, which lead to series of letters, 1867’s Time and Tide on the “Laws of Work”
  • Bad conscience about poverty and ill-usage
  • Guild of St George
    • 1871 start: Sets aside tithe for “National Store” of funds, asking readers to do so as well
    • “Quixotic,” “impractical,” “idiosyncratic”
    • Tries to combine his fantasy of Gothic labor with politics of his beloved 14th c Venice with guild with charity pressure-group
    • “a living form of social criticism” showing different possibilities for labor
    • Some projects: cleaning a small spring outside London; creating “strong country road” near Oxford, which Wilmer says are “doomed to failure” yet some “have been absorbed into English life” 33
  • Instability
    • After Rose dies, his work “colored” and “penetrated” by this tragedy
    • Hallucinations begin after her death
    • Makes attacks on Whistler to attack Aesthetic Movement for removing social element of lit…but Whistler sues him for libel and wins. Resigns chair in Oxford b/c sees it as attack on his intell freedom
    • Series of mental breakdowns culminating in the 1889 one that ended his career
    • 10 years: lives in silent, unmoving; with some “lucid intervals” 34 (among another things, a study of death as central theme in Victorian lit; the pessimistic lectures The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century 1884; and his autobio Praeterita which Proust memorized!)
  • Books
    • First began Modern Painters volumes (1843-60)
      • Publication of vol 1 instant success; most important art critic; defended Turner against everyone
      • Becomes influential lecturer as well (taught for free at Working Man’s College)
      • Good taste is good morality; “Truth to Nature” makes a good painting; the true is the good; bad painting is false
      • Good art “concurs with” the beauty and perfection of God’s creation (this is Romantic: the “divinity of nature” theme; cf all those Wordsworth epigraphs in “Modern Painters”)
      • Clive Wilmer: this is based on Natural Theology of 18th c: nature could be read like the Bible can, for God’s word; so artists need to do this, read nature for God) (painting must be like sermon, then)
      • Good paintings will represent nature with fidelity; hence the “purple prose” word-paintings in Modern Painters like the Turner painting Slavers throwing overboard the dead and the dying 1840 which is powerful tho’ over-written (you can judge the painting by the landscape, which Ruskin will describe for you) (of course, it’s not the photographic accuracy, but the accuracy of the “impression,” the emotional reaction present when one understands the context of the landscape w/in all world order)
      • What is he up against? Renaissance inspired art, which is based on artistic conventions, not on truth of subject; doing so is just about how great my skillz are; and for Ruskin, any non-truthfulness is deforming natural beauty, being false
      • Doesn’t want, say, Dutch materialism: the truth you represent is an idealist one (“essence” and “meaning” of landscape, not its literal appearance)
      • Ruskin calls this his “Naturalism” (his favored works he calls Naturalist)
    • Then, Seven Lamps of Architecture and Stones of Venice (Gothic architecture phase) before MP ends
      • Architecture: an extension of the landscape stuff of young adulthood
      • Connex w/18th c Picturesque movement: wild or poverty-ridden scenes; ruins (“human focus” to landscape); assoc with Romantic nostalgia for everything medieval (b/c love of Gothic architecture and ruins); sentimental, decorative; antiquarian (Sir Walter Scott vogue)
      • Ruskin was at first architectural draughtsman, and his work was quite Picturesque
      • Enemy of Gothic revival: restorations ruined good buildings
      • Clive Wilmer: as he studied diff between Gothic architecture and modern architecture and failed emulations of the Gothic, began to think there’s something wrong w/today (buildings are social documents that reflect overall culture, esp morality of the culture) (Wilmer: don’t see Ruskin only as “conservative cultural perssimist” but instead as having “radical implications” 17 for example sees “work and art as virtually synonymous” when sees ornament as reflecting conditions of labor: Renaissance ornament servile b/c absolutely subservient to overall design and represses worker’s creativity and freedom; Gothic ornament revolutionary b/c reflects Christian belief in value of every soul by letting each worker put creative stamp on work)
      • (this is traced in Stones of Venice, whose heroes are Venetian builders during Middle Ages, using eclectic combination of Byzantine and Gothic, and some Arabian, styles; whose villains are the Palladian and Renaissance styles, which saw Gothic as barbarian, unrefined)
      • Before, they respect their building materials and the “laws of the physical world” as well as natural forms 15; buildings harmonize w/environment; preferring organic beauty to “perfection”
      • But unfortunately the medieval Gothic yields to the Renaissance, which with its Classical revival of “pagan Rome” ideals and styles, centers on man too much: it’s “sensual” and materialist (decadent Catholicism). Too much symmetry = love of human intellect, mathematical form (it’s anti-Christian b/c too focused on man, not on God)
    • Then loses faith and becomes interested in political economy: Unto this Last (poor reception of it is “first setback of his career”); Munera Pulveris
      • Clive Wilmer: Ruskin critics now know: though they were seen as an aberration, they should be understood as central to his overall program all along even though they seemed like a diversion
      • Simpler prose style develops: pay attention to content, he realizes, not my crazy style
    • Then eclecticism: Fors Clavigera (open letters)
    • Focuses on actual practical projects, w/his “Utopian pressure group, the Guild of St. George”
    • Rose La Touche dies, unstable, writes autobio, breakdown, 11 years w/out writing till death in 1900
• Interests: painting, medieval architecture, industrial design, education, geology, literary criticism
• Defends Pre-Raphaelites

Clive Wilmer on Unto This Last Background

• Until U this L, Ruskin’s social message always connex with art
  • For example, 1857 Manchester lectures, The Political Economy of Art (now called A Joy For Ever) (this is when Ruskin emerges first as an economic thinker)
    • Advocates paternal government like Tory, though accused of socialism
    • Government intervention in economy
    • Gov supports art as fulfillment for individual and the social
    • Calls for “practical application” of “The Nature of the Gothic”
  • These lectures mark moment of change for Ruskin: used to be art critic who sometimes talked about society; now talks about society with help from examples from art
  • Because great art only comes from a great social order, we need good social order to create good art
    • We need to change society!
    • Does not think that what’s best for each individual will be best for society at large
• Ruskin turns to critique political economy: Unto this Last
• History of Political Economy
  • Basic
    • “Grew out of the empiricist tradition of English thought” 19
    • A RESPONSE to industrial growth
    • Assoc with rise of democracy b/c had to deal with new source of wealth, one not in land-based aristocracy
  • Founder Adam Smith
    • 1776 The Wealth of Nations: first “systematic study” of modern economics
    • Men are born free, and should stay free b/c prosperity most likely when society doesn’t control you. Individual freedom thus best for “the wealth of nations”
    • Individual freedom causes wealth of nations
    • Against state intervention: thus precursor of 19th c laissez faire
    • Yeah, division of labor, b/c greater productivity
    • Not concerned w/bad parts of economics b/c trying to create a science; wants to know laws, not people
  • Next, David Ricardo
    • The Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (1817)
    • Polishes Smith’s stuff
    • Labor Theory of Value: value of products determined by amount of labor used to produce them
    • Oftne accused to “inhumanity”
    • Influenced by Malthus
      • Malthus: An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798)
      • Worry that b/c population growth outstrips growth of subsistence levels, starvation will correct imbalance
      • Ricardo uses this to create his “Iron Law of Wages” where he takes up the hints from Smith and says the natural price of labor is just enough to where worker survives but only reproduces enough to replace present population
  • Utilitarianism
    • Founded by Jeremy Bentham under influences of Smith, Ricardo and Malthus
      • “greatest happiness for the greatest number”
    • Human behavior based on pain/pleasure, on self interest
      • Balance is greatest pleasure for all, least pain for all
    • Laws will make sure the balance is made instead of one person getting happy at expense of everyone else
    • James Mill and John Stuart Mill bring together Smith, Ricardo, Malthus with Bentham
      • Mill doesn’t believe in the mechanistic world of the others, but Ruskin still focuses on him in Unto this Last
  • John Stuart Mill
    • Principles of Political Economy 1848
    • Puts together all of the above ideas
    • Economic laws are as inviolable and uncontrollable as natural laws
      • For example, some poverty is always necessary; if government interferes, will ruin the greater good, so it shouldn’t help the poor
    • Government should therefore support free working of “enlightened self-interest” and economic laws (supply and demand)
      • The poor should just stop producing children if they’re unhappy.
• Unto This Last
  • “a cry of anger against injustice and inhumanity” 21
    • Could charge Ruskin w/sentimentality, but Ruskin isn’t just having a feeling here, but instead arguing against “specialization” that modern economists adopt in their study
      • To me it sounds a hell of a lot like reification
    • “deformed reality by isolating the object of study and detaching moral from material considerations”
      • just ask Ruskin hates how liberal democracy detaches the individual from the social context 22
• Ruskin’s Own Influences
  • 1) “scriptural tradition of Protestantism” from his mother and her inculcation of the Bible on little John
    • Even though he is by then off the boat of his mother Evangelical religion, he is still influenced by the economic parables in the Bible
    • For example, in Political Economy of Art, tells people to take Parable of the Talents in Matthew literally, not as metaphor (he says that the usual “tenors” of the metaphor are out of our reach, political power, influence, wisdom, but we do actually have a little bit of money)
      • Two servants earn interest on the talents their master gives them, but the last one buried it for safekeeping and is criticized by master for laziness and lack of responsibility
  • 2) “high Tory paternalism” of his dad
    • His dad is the “model” tradesman
    • He learns from Dad about economy, much more than from economists
    • Toryism: “belief in hierarchy, established order and obedience” rather than liberty, equality
      • To Ruskin, liberty and equality has only ended in injustice (only if you have a sense of power over people, can you understand your duty toward them): he’s clearly the third term in arguments between capitalists and socialists
      • What else was Ruskin going to do? Exponents of expansion of capitalism were seen as the progressives b/c of their “expansion of personal liberty” 24 (for example, John Stuart Mill is a defender of liberties but his Utilitarianism led to the workhouses; while Wilberforce and Shaftesbury were high Tories even while they worked against slavery and worked for Factory Acts
      • You see, in Victorian era, state intervention to help people came from the right not the left
    • Of course, his Toryism isn’t straight conservatism: he seems to hate most political movements, and despite Toryism still inspired William Morris and the Labour Party founders (at one point he said he was a Tory and a Communist, Fors Clavigera)
      • I SAY you can see the contradictions that later come out in modernism as people who have progressive agenda but want to make sure it comes out through fascist policies: these people want change but only see it as happening through FORCE because for so long equality and freedom have been associated with what these people are against (ie political economics) (it’s how you can get from Ruskin to Morris to Le Corbusier without much of a problem)
      • We need to remember there’s a diff between your agenda and then the way you want to implement your agenda
  • 3) Romanticism: Carlyle
    • Carlyle in addition to Ruskin’s “Wordsworthian adoration of nature” 25
    • His only contemporary influence: Carlyle, “the only important English Romantic to survive into the Victorian era” 24
    • Carlyle called political economy “the dismal science”
      • 1830s-40s: “stood almost alone as the new philosophy’s systematic opponent” critiquing political economists has introducing ideology under the cover of science
    • Carlyle Redux: in young adulthood, introducing British to German lit; had lost his faith but still kind of relies on “predestination and divine justice”
    • Laissez faire is just people in authority denying their duty to lead and care about people: democracy is weak (remember Carlyle’s love of the hero)
      • Carlyle’s “might is right” kinda like fascism, Wilber claims 25 whereas Ruskin isn’t b/c Ruskin cared about wisdom in gov, not just pure power
    • Happiness for Carlyle: outside of your material progress (that is you won’t find Carlyle a friend of Utilitarians), you should seek spiritual progress by living in a way that expresses your personal nature
      • How to do so? “The right to work” which modern industry denies you (Wilmer calls Carlyle “probably the first thinker to insist that human beings have a right to work”)
    • The Right to Work: “man’s moral nature…was expressed through work” so denying people the right to work is “a crime against nature” 25
      • Ruskin is more cautious and particular about the KIND of work we should have, however
      • Meets up w/why Marx cares about labor
• Ruskin takes up Carlyle’s basic fears and worries and adds concrete philosophical argument and analysis to back up the moral indignation both men felt
• Style: Unto this Last more intimate, less grand, more functional than Modern Painters (26)

Basics, Background

• Ruskin’s Influences
  • Classical: unchangeable human nature despite new modern economy
  • Bible (title refers to Jesus’ parable of vineyard owner, who pays all workers the same wages even though the amount of work they did varied: “unto this last” means that the last person who began to work will receive as much money as the person who began work at dawn: according to need, not to productivity0
  • Book Five of Plato’s Laws
  • Xenophon’s dialogue, Oeconomicus (one of earliest works on economics; source of knowledge about classical Athens; on household management and agriculture)
  • Cicero, De Officiis
  • Horace’s Satires, book 2
  • Shakespeare
• Hates Mill
  • His 1848 Principles of Political Economy
  • Politics, social relations, and mental development of a people are related to economics, he admits, but then he proceeds to treat them all as if they were completely separable.
  • Ruskin doesn’t like over-specialization of any type: liked to see things all together
• Ruskin says in Preface that everyone reading Cornhill Magazine where it was published disliked it
  • But that these four essays were “the best, that is to say, the truest….things I have ever written….probably the best I shall ever write.”
• Purpose: **To create logical definition of wealth, needed he says for basis of any political economy
  • Second, to prove that moral conditions are necessary for a society to have true wealth: the belief in the existence of honesty, “a consistent and commanding force” that wards off chaos
    • Though people have “lost our faith in honesty” (cf Trollope The Way We Are Now); his example is Adam Smith’s assertion that a shop-owner or entrepreneur only stays honest b/c cheating customers will eventually kill their business
    • Honesty will make organization of labor fair, he trusts
  • I’m not a Socalist, he cries!
    • Instead, wants free schools (for health, morality, and learning a trade)
    • Wants government to set up factories and workshops that will set standards of quality of goods and fairness of organization, to give public one option for knowing that you’re buying “bread that was bread, ale that was ale, and work that was work.” Not to drive out private enterprise, but to give it a good example.
    • To give care to the unable to work and find labor for the ones in need of labor and give training when necessary
      • Creepy Caveat: if people aren’t wiling to work, he wants to set them at the worst kinds of jobs and keeps wages from them until they have “come to a sounder mind respecting the laws of employment”
      • Labor is compulsory: you must submit to them, and only then will Ruskin help you
    • Elderly and destitute will be given room and board that isn’t seen as disgraceful, but as an honor

Basic Theses

• Style: like all of his works, refuses to stay in particular discipline but has astonishing range (anti-specialization in form)
• Purpose
  • NOT to create new economic theory but to critique existing ones, says Wilmer
    • Critiques John Stuart Mill’s economic man, who strives to gather the most practical necessities as well as luxuries with as little physical labor and as little denial as possible
      • Ruskin says you can’t use this abstract idea for the model for rule human behavior (Mill admitted this person doesn’t live, but makes this person basis of his science anyway)
      • Because Ruskin says you can’t separate your material and moral selves, Mill therefore seems to say (and recommend) that society benefits from selfish materialism. Even if Mill didn’t mean to imply it, it’s there, and people took Mill to mean it.
    • People also capable of positive virtues: love, unselfishness, sympathy. And yet you seem to discourage these virtues! You justify selfishness.
  • Define Wealth
    • Real wealth is vitality (radiating LIFE; radiant wealth), not the wealth that is a mere token of vitality (reflected vitality) used for exchange
  • Find Out Preconditions for Reaching Wealth
    • Moral conditions
• Summary 27
  • “The Roots of Honor”
    • Merchants and industrialists should, just like doctors lawyers and statesmen, consider the good of others their number 1 task and personal gain the secondary goal, not other way round
  • “The Veins of Wealth”
    • Fables
    • Honor will actually lead to the best for everyone, for “true prosperity”
    • Don’t separate good of individuals from that of society: as in family, truth is interdependence
  • “Qui Judicatis Terram”
    • Just wages
    • Unjust wage is theft
  • “Ad Valorem”
    • Defines value: if it supports life
    • Says that separating use value and exchange value is meaningless
    • Note that he already judges art this way: just as art is valuable in that it reflects not man’s glory but god’s, economics tries to look at man’s creation (gold, money) instead of the real thing (life itself). Man is distracted, I would say

Critique of Political Economy

• “Soi-disant science,” “science of darkness,” “bastard science”
• Believes that it can surgically remove one part of humans and accurately understand the behavior of humans economically
  • You can’t take out the soul: like a chemical reaction, the parts react together, very differently than if they were apart
  • They say that avarice is fundamental to the human makeup, but not generosity, justice, morality, kindness; making man a “covetous machine”
  • The soul “falsifies” all of P E’s calculations
• Man’s motive power: the Soul; its fuel: affection
  • “In order to grow scientifically, we must grow justly.” 193
  • He’s not critique Science as such—he likes science—but just wants to make it more scientific by acknowledging all parts of the human.
• They know one game pretty well, but don’t see that a number of games could be played on the same deck of cards (and they don’t get who the Ultimate Banker is)
• Believes that inequality is necessarily advantageous for the good of the whole, whereas Ruskin separates just inequality (arising from differences in natural ability) from the unjust, saying that those will kill the polis
  • Compares circulation of wealth in nation to blood in body: more in one place takes some from another place, if it’s unjust and doesn’t truly reflect the creation of something new
• They believe that the laws of P E are natural and inviolable, but just like natural bodies of water, you can divert these flows with human power: we can guide it instead of just watch the “natural flows” lead to devastation
• Can’t believe Mill would dare to say that P E has nothing to do with morality
  • Ruskin asks if there’s a difference between commanding labor to build an orchard versus to build grape-shot or bombs. He says you will see that there will be when I respond to your tragedy by either sharing my fruit or shelling your home.
  • Ruskin says that even Mill can’t help but introduce ideology and morality into his work (ie his example about hardware entrepreneur doing BETTER if investing in his own business than if he bought luxury like velvet: showing that he thinks one type of work is more valuable than another, for the luxury item still gives someone a job)
    • In this example, the real question about which is better should refer to the conditions of labor: is the worker out in a field getting strong and healthy, or is the worker cramped in a textile mill getting sick and weak?
• Says that P E doesn’t have straight answer about the nature of value: because Mill doesn’t have definition of use, and Ricard uses absurdly abstract examples that don’t hold water
• Utilitarian conversations about population control are the most “melancholy” of all, he says b/c treats men like animals.
  • Ruskin denies that there’s truly a problem of overpopulation (he’s right historically)
  • His recommendations: colonization, taming wild or waste land, discouraging marriage
• Mad at Ricardo’s natural rate of wages: where labor will be maintained. “Yes – but how?” Ruskin asks

True Political Economy

• Oikos for home: Home-Economy
• Political economy should be the economy of the polis, whereas P E right now is merely “mercantile economy” (of acquiring wealth)
  • “Production, preservation, and distribution, at the fittest time and place, or useful or pleasurable things.”
  • “Mercantile economy” is accumulating power over others’ labor, necessarily implying debt on one side (commercial wealth truly means power over labor, as property only matters as purchaser of labor; which requires people to be poor in the first place!)
  • P E: Housewife, singer, builder, and farmer all do this!
• Debt analysis: money as debt b/c society owes you a certain quantum of abstract labor on demand

Recommendations

• Because every situation is unique (against the abstractions, ie how can Ricardo say that a day of fishing is same as day of hunting deer when you might end up with a fish on one end and a deer on other) you must judge only on balance of JUSTICE not in order to maximize profit
• Relationship between operative and owner, just like father and son, is one of affection (family metaphor)
  • Says this isn’t mere sentiment: you will get more work out of people if they like you and you truly like them.
• Rate of wages should stay the same regardless of demand; and the number of workers should also stay constant regardless of demand
  • Steady work-week with low wages better than three days of hard work well-paid and four of idleness
• Justice should rule exchange
  • There should not be any profit in exchange: because exchange doesn’t produce anything new, it shouldn’t do anything more than make a living for the merchant; because otherwise it’s stealing the true profit from where true profit was made: the laborer who created the object
• Merchant and capitalist should work for honor: for sake of Providing, then personal gain should be secondary; just like with soldier, doctor, clergyman, etc
• NOT a Socialist: says that a heap of stuff in and of itself is neither good nor bad; what matters is if it was ill-gotten or well-gotten (ill-gain is one that will end up in net decrease in the “life” of a community, which often is demonstrable in terms of money but not always)
  • Says that b/c some people are wiser they deserve to lead and in certain moments to compel people to do the just thing
  • He doesn’t want to banish property, but to spread it, making it impossible for the rich to steal the property of the poor
• Almsgiving and preaching about patience and hope won’t matter because what we truly need is justice!
  • Here’s my ammo against Mary Barton
• Exchange
  • Should be openly and fairly conducted: everyone knows who’s spending what and who’s receiving what
  • This is not a time to make a profit: exchange doesn’t create anything new; and making a profit at this stage depends on someone being ignorant or incapacitated: that’s not science, he says, to promote ignorance and incapacity
• Wise production, wise distribution, and wise consumption (wisdom meaning it will favor life not death)

Vocabulary

• Wealth (Good)
  • “Possessions that constitute well-being”
• Riches (Bad)
  • Possessions that constitute power over others
• Profit (Good)
  • Increase in possessions o the world
• Gain (Bad)
  • One person accepting goods at expense of someone who does not get it)
• Use
  • “Depends on its relatively human disposition,” if people desire it and how much they do (it’s not inherent in the object but judged in terms of humans)
• Labor Theory of Value
  • Ruskin alters the Labor Theory of Value, saying that instead of the amount of labor in the object determining price, rather it is the amount of labor the purchaser is willing to part with to obtain the object
  • Shows a shift to demand and consumption
• Value
  • To what extent something “leads to life with its whole strength…independent of opinion, and of quantity”
  • Value is absolute in the object
• Political Economy
  • “teaches nations to desire and labor for the things that lead to life”
  • will develop the character in people to be able to deal with wealth fruitfully
  • “difficult science”
• Wealth
  • “the possession of useful articles, which we can use” (possession is not absolute but depends on the person using it, the person’s ability)
  • “the possession of the valuable by the valiant” (for sometimes people possessing objects are actually an impediment to nation’s overall wealth)
• Useful
  • Depends on the nature of the person with it; anything can be used or abused
• Price
  • exchange value expressed in currency
• Demand
  • “Three-fourths of the demands existing in the world are romantic; founded on visions, idealisms, hopes, and affections; and the regulation of the purse is, in essence, regulation of the imagination and heart.” Thus, “price is a very high metaphysical and psychical problem” 215
• Labor
  • “Contest of the life of man with its opposite”
  • Can be of varying quality, depending on the elements of life involved
  • Involves physical power, intellect, and soul
  • Positive labor promotes life; negative labor produces death
    • Prosperity of nation depends on the ratio of positive to negative labor
• Rich Man
  • Maximizes life for himself and then promotes that of others

New Role for Consumption

• He blasts regular P E for not understanding the role of consumption
  • Part of value of production depends on how article will be consumed (sure the abstract employment of one person in arms manufactory will give same wages as say a flour mill, but then again, in consumption: a difference is seen.
• Produce…in order to consume…for Life!
• THERE IS NO WEALTH BUT LIFE = consumption the ultimate determinant for political economy.
• Wise Consumption
  • More difficult than wise production
  • Fine and pure objects, not about quantity
  • Saves or gains life
  • Good taste and good use
• Innocent luxury will be possible in future, but that the moment, it is bought at the suffering of other people, and you need to “face the light” and face the truth
• Consumption of Capital Significant
  • You can’t just hoard capital: that’s like stocking a granary and never letting the grain out: eventually it will mildew
  • Root material is only good when you see what’s been derived from it
  • Capital into more capital is just multiplying bulbs, never producing tulips, which will not furnish substance for life
  • Image: ploughshares multiplying and looking pretty in the sun but never being part of farming process
  • All production is for the Mouth, not for the Ground
• Consumption: “the crown of production”
  • A nation’s wealth should be judged by what it consumes
  • Consumption TESTS production, whether it was good or not, and that’s a moral judgment. I dare you to tell me it isn’t.

“The world cannot be a factory or a mine.”

• Humans need more than this!
• Good life is vivacious, patient, peaceful, pleasurable, generous, not wasteful
• Joyful human labor doesn’t not live by bread alone
  • We need wine, sun, felicity, the wildflowers as well as the tended corn
• Hooks up with his conservationism (early environmentalist)

Method

• Literary and Biblical allusions
• Etymology: language as truth via history

Reception

• Written summer 1860, published autumn 1860, book form 1862
• “windy hysterics,” “absolute nonsense,” “intolerable twaddle,” “socialistic heresy”
• Sold terribly (for ten years, the first run didn’t sell out; but second run sold quite a bit, from 1877 onward)
• By 1877: other people convinced that classical P E not inviolable; accepting his early claim that consumption was an important cog in the machine
  • Who does he infl? Socialists: William Morris (Ruskin’s works were “a revelation,” Henry George; Gandhi (who translated it into Gujarati and said it changed his life); the first Labour MPs (29 of them in 1906) agreed that it was their most important read, esp Clement Atlee; Tolstoy said that “he is one of the rare men who think with their hearts” making him think and see “what everyone will think and say in the future” (qtd 36)
• Yet he thought it was the most valuable of all his works
• Position
  • Ruskin want to but never achieved an “exhaustive treatise on Political Economy.” So what did happen?
  • Four essays of Unto this Last (meant to be more, but negative reception made Cornhill Mag publisher restrict him); which critique present political economy
  • Next four essays of Munera Pulveris in Fraser’s Magazine, which were also cut and restricted; which are meant to create positive system: active proposals
    • But they’re dull reading!
  • Rest of arguments were scattered in Time and Tide (1867) and Fors Clavigera (1871-84)
    • Wilmer: “the work of a man on the verge of mental collapse”

Notes

• 163: crime as one of the “most costly articles of luxury” in Europe
• Economics as word comes from Greek, “house law” (Oikonomia)
• Carlyle’s Past and Present is where “captains” comes from, ie captains of industry, as term for capitalists
• Ruskin wrote a sequel to U this L (1862 published in book form), Munera Pulveris 1863 which is more specific about plans than this one
  • Apparently wrote a Political Economy of Art too
• Political economy: “in a science dealing with so subtle elements as those of human nature, it is only possible to answer for the final truth of principles, not for the direct success of plans”
  • While the immediate results might be “questionable,” the final ones are “inconceivable”
  • Sounds kinda like Sorel too…
• Quote: from MP III “To see clearly is poetry, prophecy, and religion – all in one”
• Quote Clive Wilmer on The Stones of Venice’s “The Nature of Gothic:” ”’Work’ and ‘art’ are thus virtually synonymous and remain so in Ruskin’s vocabulary for the rest of his life.” 17
  • B/c conditions of work are what determines if you work can be art!
  • Another point by Wilmer: “Still more loathsome to him was the much-popularized science of Political Economy, which explained these inequities in terms of natural laws.”
• Quote: Ruskin didn’t want to be “respectable architectural man-milliner” all his life, which early MP work and early archi. paintings might have led him to be
• Notes that there are many sciences and arts of getting rich, not just the one (Qui Judcatus Terram): his examples are from history or cultural studies type stuff: pickpockets, credit, poisoning in Middle Ages. Economy is MULTIPLE. Very cool.