Bourgeois Blues

Donald N. McCloskey from the May 1993 issue

(Page 2 of 3)

Consider the virtues of the three classes, matched to their character, aristocrat, peasant, or bourgeois (the "character" of a class will sometimes be its character in the eyes of others, sometimes in its own, sometimes in fact). Thus:

The point is to notice the third, bourgeois column, the third estate of virtue, not to elevate it above the other two. Courage is in some personal experiences and social institutions a virtue. So is humility. But when the class left out is half the population, the old dichotomy of masters and men is not doing its ethical job.

A potent source of virtue and a check on vice is the premium that a bourgeois society puts on discourse. The aristocrat gives a speech, the peasant tells a tale. But the bourgeois must in the bulk of his transactions talk to an equal. "I will buy with you, sell with you, talk with you, walk with you, and so following....What news on the Rialto?" It is wrong to imagine, as modern economics does, that the market is a field of silence.

Talk defines business reputation. A market economy looks forward and depends therefore on trust. The persuasive talk that establishes trust is of course necessary for doing business. This is why co-religionists or co-ethnics deal so profitably with each other, as Quakers or overseas Chinese. The economic historian Avner Greif has explored the business dealings of Mediterranean Jews in the Middle Ages, accumulating evidence for a reputational conversation: In 1055 one Abun teen Zedaka of Jerusalem, for example, "was accused (though not charged in court) of embezzling the money of a Maghribi traders, [and] merchants as far away as Sicily canceled their agency relations with him." A letter from Palermo to an Alexandrian merchant who had disappointed the writer said, "Had I listened to what people say, I never would have entered into a partnership with you." Reputational gossip, Greif notes, was cheap, "a by-product of the commercial activity [itself] and passed along with other commercial correspondence." Cheating was profitless within the community. The market does not erode communities; it makes them, and then flourishes within what it has made.

The aristocrat, by contrast, does not deign to bargain. Hector tries to, but Achilles replies: "argue me no agreements. I cannot forgive you. / As there are no trustworthy oaths between men and lions, / Nor wolves and lambs have spirit that can be brought into agreement." The Duke of Ferrara speaks of his last duchess there upon the wall looking as if she were alive, "Even had you skill / In speech–(which I have not)–make your will /Quite clear to such an one.... /–E'en

then would be some stooping; and I choose /Never to stoop." The aristocrat never stoops; the peasant or proletarian stoops to harvest or to tend the machine. The bourgeois stoops daily to make his will quite clear, and to know the will and reasons of the other. The aristocrat's speech is declamation (imitated by the professoriate). The aristocrat's proofs are like commands, which is perhaps why Plato the aristocrat loved them so. They convince (vincere, to conquer). The bourgeois, by contrast, must persuade, sweetly (suadeo, from the same root as "sweet").

The bourgeoisie talks with a will. About a quarter of national income is earned from merely bourgeois and feminine persuasion: not orders or information but persuasion. One thinks immediately of advertising, but in fact advertising is a tiny part of the total. Take the detailed categories of employment and make a guess as to the percentage of the time in each category spent on persuasion. Out of the 115 million civilian employees, it seems reasonable to assign 100 percent of the time of 760,000 lawyers and judges to persuasion, and likewise all the time of public-relations specialists and actors and directors. Perhaps 75 percent of the time of 14.2 million executive, administrative, and managerial employees is spent on persuasion, and a similar share of the time of the 4.5 million teachers and the 11.2 million salespeople (excluding cashiers). Half of the effort of police, writers, and health workers, one might guess, is spent on persuasion. And so forth. The result is that 28.2 million person-years, a quarter of the labor force, persuades for a living.

The result can be checked with other measures. John Wallis and Douglass North measure 50 percent of national income as transaction costs, the costs of persuasion being part of these. Not all the half of American workers who are white collar talk for a living, but in an extended sense many do, as for that matter do many blue-collar workers, persuading each other to handle the cargo just so, and especially pink-collar workers, dealing all day with talking people.

And of the talkers a good percentage are persuaders. The secretary shepherding a document through the company bureaucracy is called on to exercise sweet talk and veiled threats. The bureaucrats and professionals who constitute most of the white-collar work force are not themselves merchants, but they do a merchant's business inside and outside their companies. Note the persuasion exercised the next time you buy a suit. Specialty clothing stores charge more than discount stores not staffed with rhetoricians. The differential pays for the persuasion: "It's you, my dear" or "The fish tie makes a statement."

The high share of persuasion provides a scene for bourgeois virtues. One must establish a relationship of trust with someone in order to persuade him. Ethos, the character that a speaker claims, is the master argument. So the world of the bourgeoisie is jammed with institutions for making relationships and declaring character, unlike that of the aristocracy or peasantry or proletariat, who get their relationships and characters ready-made by status, and who in any case need not persuade.

Hollywood producers spend hours a day "buffing," which is to say chatting with their business peers, establishing relations. On the foreign-exchange markets the opening business of the day is to trade jokes useful for making human contact with clients. Ethos is all, as much as with any sneering aristocrat–or maybe more, since claimed less confidently. In Thomas Mann's first novel, the story of his German merchant family, the head of the firm scolds his unbusinesslike brother, a harbinger of bohemianism in the family: "In a company consisting of business as well as professional men, you make the remark, for everyone to hear, that, when one really considers it, every businessman is a swindler–you, a businessman yourself, belonging to a firm that strains every nerve and muscle to preserve its perfect integrity and spotless reputation."

Bourgeois charity, again, if not the "charity," meaning spiritual love, of the King James translation of the Bible, runs contrary to the caricature of greed. More than the peasant or aristocrat, the bourgeois gives to the poor–as in the ghettos of Eastern Europe or in the small towns of America. Acts of charity follow the bourgeois norm of reciprocity. The American Gospel of Wealth–founding hospitals, colleges, and libraries wherever little fortunes were made–is a bourgeois notion, paying back what was taken in profit. Middle-class people in the 19th century habitually gave a biblical tenth of their incomes to charity. The intrusion of the state into charity killed the impulse, remaking charity into a taille imposed on grumbling peasants: I gave at the office.

One could go on. The bourgeois virtues are in for a long run and need exploration and praise. We already have Japanese bourgeois and now Korean and Taiwanese; later Pakistani in volume, and Mexican. The world is about to become one Rialto.

And yet the intelligentsia detests this splendid bourgeoisie. The detestation is not new. Anciently the poet Horace prefers his Sabine valley to troublesome riches or recommends stretching one's income by contracting one's desires, even while accepting large gifts in cash or land from Maecenas and Augustus. The disdain for money grubbing becomes a literary theme and merges smoothly with the Christian virtues.