What Are Words Worth? The Influence of Romantic Literature on the History of Economic Thought
Introduction
How often do we feel the truths we learn in economics? To many, economics is far too quantitative and technical to concern itself with the imagination and creativity seen in literature. Using books, articles, and primary sources, this paper will reconcile research on the influence of the romantic literary movement from the late 18th century to the early 20th century, analyzing three points that will ultimately demonstrate what economists can learn from Romanticism. In the book The Romantic Economist, Richard Bronk states that Romanticism examines “the role of imagination, creativity, and emotion while being generally skeptical of the ability of scientific reason to provide a coherent set of universally applicable answers to human problems” (Bronk, 2009). Firstly, this paper will attempt to understand the roots of romantic anti-economics through research by Robert Mayhew, Philip Connell, and Richard Bronk who look at William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s critique of Thomas Malthus’ Essay On The Principle of Population. Secondly, John Stuart Mill’s juxtaposition of Coleridge and Jeremy Bentham’s opposing approaches in his Westminster Reviews essays with insights by Bronk and Schabas will be explored in order to find a ‘third way’ to follow. Finally, Alfred Marshall's ideas will be examined, who Bronk, Coase, and Niman argue revived Wordsworth’s main ideas through his biological analogies and simple language, demonstrating the value of romantic principles in creating more accessible economics.
Hostile Origins: The Lake Poets versus Malthus
The year 1798 enjoys “a certain prominence in the canons of both English literature and economic thought” because of two major publications: Malthus’ Essay and the Lake Poets’ Lyrical Ballads (Connell, 2001). For context, the Lake Poets refer to William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Robert Southey, who spearheaded the romantic literary movement and lived in the Lake District of England. This paper relies on research by Connell, who investigates the influence of language on developing economic framework, Mayhew, who investigates the role of nature in economics through a romantic lens, and Bronk, who valuably summarizes the strength and effectiveness of romantic criticism. In 1798, romantics like Wordsworth and Coleridge were, for the first time, directly critiquing Malthusian population theory on the basis of a “completely different understanding of what nature is” (Mayhew, 2014). Because of the tendency for population growth to outpace food production, Malthus argued as an “obvious truth” that population levels should be kept “down to the level of subsistence” (Malthus, 1798), and claimed that the best way to control population is through overcoming “misery and vice” (Malthus, 1798). This is at the direct expense of the poor, whom Malthus claimed were “hand to mouth” and argued that their lack of savings lead to drinking at the “ale-house” (Malthus, 1798). This paper summarizes research on Wordsworth and Coleridge’s critique of these ideas as twofold: (a) responses to ‘misery and vice,’ and (b) Malthus’ ill characterization of the poor.
Wordsworth and Coleridge hold similar yet slightly divided opinions on misery and vice. Wordsworth does not directly critique misery and vice and instead critiques it as a response to poverty. On the other hand, Coleridge finds misery and vice in itself illogical, regardless of whether poverty is natural or man-made. To Wordsworth, poverty does not originate from “vulgar nature” (Mayhew, 2014) as Malthus claims, and thus cannot be solved by misery and vice. Instead, Wordsworth claims that poverty arises because “society has parted man from man” (Mayhew, 2014). Therefore, he sees the origins of poverty as man-made and not attributable to nature. To Wordsworth, physical nature is a source of sustenance and growth, not the means and ends to suffering. Community is seen as a pillar of romantic thought and an important part of existence in nature. Therefore, when this sense of community is broken by parting from one another, poverty becomes more likely. Malthus’ form of argumentation encourages self-centeredness by “justifying this parting of man from man,” thereby encouraging poverty (Mayhew, 2014). Similarly, Coleridge sees “passion between the sexes as an equally tyrannical necessity as physical sustenance” as a logical truth, and that anything in opposition was “contrary to reason” (Mayhew, 2014). While he could not empirically support it, it was clear to Coleridge that misery and vice, as a response, were not representative of reality. Mayhew argues in Chiasmus that “for Coleridge, Malthus made of virtues vice and of vice virtue” (Mayhew, 2014). In sum, the origins of poverty stem from man, not nature, and unchecked population growth is the error of man only. In this way, misery and vice are not effective responses to poverty so long as passion between the sexes, which Coleridge deems just as important as physical sustenance, exists. The main goal of Mayhew’s work, Malthus as the Malign Muse of Romanticism, is to investigate the relationship between nature and economics––the ability of material individuals to live in nature––which has been helpful in this paper as he positions the poets in opposition to Malthus, who becomes their ‘malign muse.'
Addressing Malthus’ negative characterization of the poor in his Essay provides insight into the weight of diction in economic perspective and economic analysis. In the poem Old Cumberland Beggar, published in 1800, Wordsworth and Coleridge raise questions surrounding “private morality and public policy towards the poor,” just as Malthus does in his Essay. They argue that the ‘old beggar’ should exist in “the eye of Nature” (Connell, 2001), allowing him to remain in the charity of the rural area he resides in instead of being forced to work to death in some workhouse for subsistence. In other words, they show that gruelling labour in a factory is unnatural. As Connell’s analysis argues, the romantic conception of community is a consistent theme in this poem which is framed as a “moral interdependence of human society,” sustained by the “charitable benevolence” of one another (Connell, 2009). This contrasts with the Malthusian view that the poor are unworthy of welfare––especially in the form of British poor laws––because it “diminishes the shares that would otherwise belong to more industrious” people in society (Malthus, 1798). Wordsworth and Coleridge used this poem to humanize the poor, which is seldom seen in Malthus’ essay, showing that the poor are deserving of a good quality of life.
Early romantic critique may not have been the most effective in tackling economic theory. Bronk, for one, argues that they were unable to “engage constructively with economics” (12). However, the goal of the romantics was not to improve economic theory, but rather to emphasize capitalism and industrialization’s “dehumanizing and deadening effect on man of becoming a mere cog in the machinery of industry” (Bronk, 2009). Between Mayhew’s work on role of nature in economics, Connell’s investigation into semantic analyses of characterizations of the poor, and Bronk’s argument that economists have much to learn from the romantics about breathing life and morals into the discipline, the importance of diverging opinions between Malthus, Wordsworth and Coleridge is clear. Their differences had profound impacts, which will come to influence the intersection of economics and romantic literature for the coming century.
A Third Way: Mill on Bentham and Coleridge
Mill’s intellectual development was spearheaded by his father, James Mill, who had educated him on strict Benthamite principles. In his 1873 Autobiography, Mill “described a crisis which we would now call a ‘nervous breakdown’” (Bronk, 2009). As he read more poetry, he began to change his views on the Benthamite method of analysis. Bentham had removed emotion from his “analytical habit,” and could not provide a “full enough account of either happiness itself and how to attain it” (Bronk, 2009) in his version of utilitarianism. Mill’s own philosophy, then, incorporated ideas from the romantics’ poetry and aspects of Benthamite rational analysis to provide him with a “culture of feelings” (Bronk, 2009).
In 1838, Mill wrote two essays for the Westminster Reviews: one on Bentham, the other on Coleridge, reconciling the two by calling them “the two great seminal minds of England in their age” (Mill, 1867). In reviewing Bentham’s philosophy, Mill argued that his conception of human nature falls short as it fails to address anything beyond the ideas of love for oneself or others. For example, Bentham fails to acknowledge the pursuit of the “love of beauty, the passion of the artist,” and “the thirst for movement and activity” (Mill, 1867), which Mill categorizes as an experience integral to human nature. Bentham takes the complex man and reduces him down to what is observable and simple, a project contrary to the romantic view. Furthermore, Bentham’s views on poetry place him quite neatly on the other side of Coleridge. To Bentham, words “were perverted from their proper role when they were used in uttering anything but the precise logical truth” (Mill, 1867). Mill agrees that poetry can exaggerate certain truths, but argues that this is not entirely a bad thing. As is later demonstrated in the case of Coleridge, it is important to not only have people “see” truths but “feel” them also. Mill finds that the romantics' exaggeration of ordinary events is necessary because aiming “ at too much” is necessary “to be sure of doing enough” (Mill, 1867). Furthermore, Marshall’s ideas show that picking apart ordinary events into incredible detail can uncover new information and create shifts in one’s perspective.
Coleridge was a prominent critic of economic policy, which included the gold standard and the Corn Laws (Schabas, 2017). Judging from Mill’s essays, it is clear that it was Coleridge's methods and approach that stood out rather than the content of his arguments. Margaret Schabas’ work demonstrates that Coleridge did in fact leave a distinct ‘imprint’ on Mill’s work, from individual freedoms to romantic appeals of Mill’s stationary state (Schabas, 2017). Coleridge dived deeper into the human experience and recognized that man was more complex, seeing an “organic vision of society ignored by Bentham’s reductionist methodology” (Bronk, 2009). He understood that many accepted doctrines stem from a “natural want or requirement of human nature” (Mill, 1867). By analyzing the impact of romanticism in Mill’s work, it is clear that Coleridge’s link between free will and nature is explicit in Mill’s rational choice theory, with free will enshrined in the notion that people make rational choices that align with their personal goals. Consistent with the basic tenets of romantic theory, Coleridge would appreciate the capacity for the individual to make independent choices and rank their preferences, which is echoed in Mill’s Principles of Political Economy (Schabas, 2017). The concept of rationality itself is an important truth “intertwined with social conditioning and creativity” (Bronk, 2009, p. 36), the result of piecing economic models and partial truths from literature together. In Mill’s stationary state, he embraced the possibility that “some wilderness would still be preserved such that true solitude was possible,” claiming that it was the only guide to true individual development (Schabas, 2017, p. 161). Schabas concludes that in valuing such “a reflective and examined life,” Mill owes “a considerable debt to Coleridge” and his literary contributions (Schabas, 2017).
Nature in Economics: Marshall’s Biological Analogies as Romantic
As interpreted in the opening words of Wordsworth's Preface in Lyrical Ballads, romanticism sees the importance of using one's imagination to present ideas in a different light (Bronk, 2009). For economists, this means using “imaginative shifts of perspective and metaphor” to “gain new surprising insights” while remaining mindful of the fact that these imaginative shifts influence perceived reality (Bronk, 2009). Around a century after the Lake Poets’ critique of Malthus, Marshall revived this line of thinking in Principles of Economics. In this book, he strongly advocates for a biological basis in understanding economics, stating that “the Mecca of the Economist lies in Economic Biology” (Niman, 1991). Marshall was heavily influenced by Darwinian evolution and saw it as more fitting to later-stage economics than physics, as the classics had believed. While it is interesting, the biological analysis is beyond the scope of this paper. What is relevant to this paper is that his biological analysis and respect for nature allowed him to see that the classical economists “regarded man as… a constant quantity, and gave themselves little trouble to study his variations” (Niman, 1991). Concerning himself with these variations, Marshall revived the role of nature in economics, which was one of the main goals of the romantic movement. In reframing his perspective to accommodate and appreciate the natural world, Neil Niman concludes that “the adoption of biological foundations enabled Marshall to create a broader view of economic phenomena.” This directly aligns with Wordworth’s Prelude, in which he states that “ordinary things should be presented to the mind in an unusual way” (Bronk, 2009). Wordsworth refers to the idea that emphasizing nature through prose can help us be more appreciative of its role in bettering man, while Marshall points to the idea that emphasizing nature using biology can better economic framework.
When discussing Marshall’s scope, it is imperative to discuss his famous relegation of mathematics to the appendix of his textbook Principles of Economics. Marshall was afraid of “mathematical diversions,” that is, using mathematics as a means to “divert our attention from the real world” (Coase, 1975). According to Ronald Coase, we should therefore “be interested in techniques of analysis only to the extent that this [helps] us to achieve the main goal” (Coase, 1975). This parallels Wordworth’s conception that “Poets do not write for Poets alone, but for other men” (Bronk, 2009). In other words, poets should write as simply as possible, to allow laymen to be able to relate to and understand the material. This leads to Bronk’s key argument about the similarity between the works of Wordsworth and Marshall. Bronk contends that “the choice of language should always be driven by the nature of the problem being analyzed” (Bronk, 2009). It is reasonable to believe that if economists clouded their theory in jargon and inaccessible mathematics, the very people they set out to help will not understand their theory, limiting its real-life use. Marshall’s frequent walks through city streets narrowed his interest in economics as “eliminating poverty” and “enhancing the quality of man” (Coase, 1975). Without this level of understanding, one would not be able to engage in two-way discourse to help alleviate the common man’s economic problems. In this regard, the relegation of mathematics is to economics what simple language is to poetry.
In reconciling the discussion on using imaginative shifts while retaining simple language, Bronk advises that by “expressing themselves in prose as well as mathematics,” economists can conduct research and analysis with the powerful tools in mathematics today while ensuring that these results are open to a wider audience for critique (Bronk, 2009). In other words, the problem should dictate the analysis rather than the other way around. This is in line with Marshall’s scope and method. As Coase summarizes, all methods, including mathematics, were welcome if they “assisted in constructive work” (Coase, 1975). In Niman’s analysis, she even expresses that Marshall “relied on both mechanical and biological analogies to express economic principles” (Niman, 1991). Marshall’s biological analogies and relegation of mathematics demonstrate that the argument was never that reading romantic poetry makes a better economist, but rather, embracing the basic ideas of romantic thought can change the way we approach economic thought.
Conclusion and Implications
Gaining a good grasp of such an unusual topic requires an understanding of its evolution through time. Research from a single decade would not be able to prove that there is merit in looking at the influence of romantic thought in economics. This paper has marked three transitory points for the intersection of economics and romantic-era literature: (1) economics and romantic-era literature stood in dire opposites in the Lake Poets’ criticisms of Malthus’ Essay (late 18th to early 19th century), (2) they existed in parallel in Mill’s essays (mid-19th century), and (3) remained in economic methods well past romanticism’s peak through Marshall’s biological analogies in Principles (late 19th to early 20th century).
The implications of this paper give way to the “Romantic Economist,” as Bronk frames it, who aims to find a “third way” between the two disciplines by blending “imagination and reason” (Bronk, 2009). It is vital to continually reimagine economic frameworks in order to keep up with the rapidly changing nature of economic problems. Large amounts of data have been effective in testing hypotheses, while the use of mathematics and computer science has done wonders in refining economic models. Nonetheless, it is important to remember these are nothing more than simplifying assumptions: economics at its core must account for and navigate problems far more complex.
By Meghan Pereira for ECON460: History of Thought I
Edited by Myriam Tounekti, Mary-Michelle Brown, & Ava Liang
References
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