Snow Leopard in my Mac: Latest version of Mac OS

Primary version of this post, with visual content, at Barry Stocker's Weblog.

Yesterday saw the public release of the latest version of the Mac OS, that is the Operating System for Macintosh computers. This is OS X.6 (the sixth iteration of OS 10, the X is the Roman numeral for 10 and should be pronounced as ten), mostly know as Snow Leopard, following on the big cats used to identify different iterations of OS X since its first release in 2002: Cheetah (a very short lived debut version), Panther, Jaguar, Tiger, Leopard. The release of OS X, and every new iteration, have marked a constant revival of Apple which lost its way after the breakthrough of the first Macintosh computer in 1984.

Snow Leopard is being sold as an upgrade for Mac computer users, who already have Leopard, as well as coming ready installed in new mac computers, The DVD which upgrades Leopard also upgrades Tiger, though Apple does not advertise this. Snow Leopard will only work on Macs with Intel chips, and not the older Macs using PC World chips. The upgrade DVD is 25 US dollars in America, and somewhat more in other countries, but in case is still very cheap for a new OS in all countries.

Anyone using a pre-Tiger version of OS X needs to get a much more expensive set of installation DVDs for Snow Leopard and the latest versions of iLife and iWork. ILife is the set of lifestyle applications which comes preinstalled on all Macintosh computers, and includes iTunes, iWeb (which I’m using to create this post), iPhoto, Garageband and iMovie. iWork is the Apple equivalent to Microsoft Office (Pages is the Word equivalent, Keynote is the Powerpoint equivalent, Numbers is the Excel equivalent), but with the same kind of advantages over Office that the Mac OS has over Windows, that is great user friendliness, intuitiveness, and aesthetic qualities. iWork is not preinstalled in Mac computers, but is cheaper than Office. iWork opens all Office files and all iWork files can be exported as Office files.

I installed Snow Leopard yesterday. The default setting for the DVD is upgrade rather than clean install, which means changing the OS while leaving all applications, files and settings in the hard drive so that they work as before once the install is completed. Clean install means deleting everything from the hard drive, so that everything needs to be backed up before the install. The backup can be done very easily in Leopard, using the Time Machine application and an external hard drive.

Some techies on Apple oriented sites claim they get a better result from clean install than upgrade. I suspect that this is because these are people who have far more in the way of third party software, applications and hacks into the OS, than average users. I have some third party apps, but very little which hacks into the OS, maybe only iStat Menu which displays a wide variety of information about what the computer is doing on the menu bar. The upgrade went very smoothly, and took no more than an hour and a half between inserting the install disc and the computer finishing its house keeping after it reboots the computer onto Snow Leopard.

The only loss I have is that iStat Menu is not working at at present, though iStat Pro (free to download despite the Pro designation) is working on the Console with all the same functions. A Snow Leopard compatible version of iStat Menu is promised soon from iSlayer.com.

Looking at the Mac orientated web sphere, and reports from independent PC websites and magazines, most people have had a very quick and trouble free experience, but as with anything else involving computers there is no 100% guarantee of a problem free experience. Looking at the evidence, I would say that you have to be extremely unlucky to have a bad experience. The sources also agree that the Snow Leopard runs nearly everything more quickly, though this may not always be noticeable as a 10-30% saving of time on an operation which takes less than a minute may not be subjectively noticeable, All the same those savings to add up to meaningful saving of time for the user. I haven’t checked times, but the computer has been feeling snappy since the upgrade.

Anyone upgrading from Windows Vista (or XP) to the Windows 7, which will be released in a few weeks, is going to have to go for a clean install and therefore back up everything before starting the upgrade.

What are the gains? Most of the changes between Leopard and Snow Leopard are concerned with increasing performance and stability, both of which were already very good. Snow Leopard is fully adapted to 64 bit computers, and has a new system for running programs with maximum efficiency, Grand Central Dispatch.

On the User Interface, there are the following useful changes.

Exposé (which brings up a grid of all windows in use) has a better display.

Playing Mp3s in Safari has a difference visual interface, including indication of time left and time used.

Several gigabytes of space on the hard drive are saved as Snow Leopard is more economical in its demands on system space.

System preferences has a few new options.

Minimising windows can now be done into the App icons on the Dock, which I really like. I prefer a clean Dock with large easily visible icons, so I don’t use stacks and I prefer minimised windows to not take up space on the dock which shrinks the icon sizes. Control and click while the cursor is over the App icon gives a clear indication of which windows have been minimised.

Time settings can now automatically adjust to the the region the computer is in, which I have chosen, and is part of the increasing integration of online Wifi enabled capacities into the OS.

If you have a Macintosh computer then Snow Leopard is very much worth the price. If you still use Windows, or belong to the small crew of Linux users, Snow Leopard increases the reason to go over to the Apple side.

Link: Ellen Clarke, Darwin and Left Anarchism

Primary version of this post, with visual content, at Barry Stocker's Weblog.

‘Anarchy, Socialism and a Darwinian Left’, Ellen Clarke. An article Clarke originally published in 2006, now freely available.

Hat tip. PhilPapers (New papers)

I’ve linked to this largely because of the surprisingly large number of people who are not aware that Anarchism refers to a tradition in political theory, not a descent in chaos. The point of Anarchist theory is to show who rule governed societies can emerge without coercion on a purely voluntary basis. I’m not advocating this point of view, but I am startled by sometimes encountering people who work in political theory and appear to be unaware of this position. Clarke refers to Left Anarchism, but there are many varieties of Anarchism: capitalist and socialist; conservative and progressive, revolutionary and evolutionary; and many other gradations.

The real merit of Clarke’s paper is to discuss the possibility of Left Anarchism, through game theory, in reaction to Peter Singer who uses ideas of game theory and co-operation to arrive at a more statist kind of leftism. Clarke’s comment on Anarchist ideology and its history are less detailed. Her main examples of Anarchist thought are Bakunin and Kropotkin, but she does not notes the differences between them. Kropotkin seems the most relevant to her case, since he was a biologist concerned with evolution. His vision was of anarcho-communism, while Bakunin advocated a society where economic property is taken over by workers’ collectives, but is not completely communistic in its attitude to private property. Kropotkin seems the most relevant to what Clarke argues, since he did write on Darwinism and the role of co-operation in evolution in his political theory.

Clarke’s argument focuses on the use of the ‘prisoners’ dilemma’ in theories of social choice and politics. For a full and expert explanation of the ‘Prisoner’s Dilemma’ in philosophy, go to Steven Kuhn’s entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Briefly, this refers to two prisoners in isolation from each other. Various formulations exist, but they have the pattern that the best outcome for each prisoner is to co-operate with the police if the other does not, since the co-operator goes free and the non-co-operator gets a long sentence. If both act the same way, the best outcome is if both refuse to co-operate which is a better outcome for both than if they both co-operate. The dilemma for the prisoners’ is whether they can trust the other prisoner not to co-operate with the police and so have a reason to not co-operate with the police as well. The prisoners have an incentive to co-operate with each other, but if one behaves co-operatively to the other and the other does not, the latter prisoner benefits. This expresses a social and political dilemma that as individuals we do best if we exploit other people’s trust, but the average benefit of all individuals in society benefits if there is trust. The kind of game theory that looks at the dilemma, suggests that over time rational actors will build up reciprocity and trust, and will co-operate after a sufficient number of repeated experiences which show that trust and co-operation beat distrust and betrayal.

Clarke is concerned with this as an evolutionary survival strategy of humans, arguing that rationality and times lead us to co-operate without a coercive agent to make us obey co-operative rules, such as the state. However, there are more people who take the position that Clarke refers to ‘Axelrodian co-operation’ in which a coercive agent is necessary for co-operation to trust to get established. I’m inclined to agree with the latter position, though in a lore mitigated fashion than the left-statism that Clarke is arguing against. The reason, I would limit the role of the state more than most social democrats and conservative is that I would argue the achievement structural order for society as a whole, is to allow voluntary co-operation to flourish through the market, and all other forms of voluntary association.

The important thing here is that anarchy is not just a name for collapse. In political theory, it refers to a rich and varied tradition according to which there can be an evolving order without the state.

Stoic disintegration in Philosophy and Literature.

Primary version of this post, with visual content, at Barry Stocker's Weblog.

‘Stoic’ ethics and reason (the position that reason is sovereign, is sovereign over the self, and is tested in living) is both reaffirmed and taken apart in the 16th and 17th Centuries. This can be seen in Montaigne and Descartes; Shakespeare’s plays and Cervantes’ Don Quixote. Descartes seems to parallel Cervantes in Discourse on Method, Part I when he refers to the fantastic stories that people may believe in enclosed in the world of books

But I believed I had already given enough time to languages and even to reading ancient books as well, and to their histories and stories. For talking with those from other ages is the same as travelling. It is good to know something about the customs of various people, so that we can judge our own more sensibly and do not think everything different from our own ways ridiculous and irrational, as those who have seen nothing are accustomed to do. But when one spends too much time travelling, one finally becomes a stranger in one's own country, and when one is too curious about things which went on in past ages, one usually lives in considerable ignorance about what goes on in this one. In addition, fables make us imagine several totally impossible events as possible, and the most faithful histories, even if they neither change nor increase the importance of things to make them more worth reading, at the very least almost always omit the most menial and less admirable circumstances, with the result that what's left in does not depict the truth. Hence, those who regulate their habits by the examples which they derive from these histories are prone to fall into the extravagances of the knights of our romances and to dream up projects which surpass their powers.

Descartes refers to the knights of romances and their influence on those who give too much importance to old fables and histories. Paying too much attention to such old books is like travelling away from our own country too much (this from Descartes who spent his life in the Netherlands, Bohemian and Sweden, rather than France). It is useful to travel so that we can compare customs, but if we travel too much we forget our on country and don’t belong anywhere. The reading of old books may take us away from the home of our own time. The interest in the value of comparing customs may come from Montaigne, though for Montaigne such knowledge comes from reading and writing at home, and sometimes from meeting people in France. The emphasis on journey into the past, and its dangers, marks a deep sense of the difference between past and present. A difference great enough that to be in a past time for too long is too become alienated from the present, and from our own mind.

Accidentally, or not, Descartes seem to describe the premiss of Don Quixote, the crazy poverty stricken minor aristocrat who reads so many books of chivalry, he thinks he is living in such a story full of magicians and giants. In this we see the breakdown of the ‘Stoic’ ideal of the sovereignty of reason, a sense that unreason is something pressing in on us, which is something Descartes deals with in the idea of the deceiving demon. With that thought, Descartes tries to push back into some deep core of the sovereign reason of the self, going well beyond the Stoic sense of self-regulation through reason. The defence of Stoic reason is just as much a recognition of its breakdown as a defence. Once reason is pushed back into this inner sphere of absolute rationality, it is losing its contact with the philosophy tested by how we live life. Descartes appeals to reason as an ethic of life, but that disappears in the purely internal struggle of mind to exclude deception.

Montaigne had already started this disintegration of ‘Stoic’ ethics and reason exploring itself. For Montaigne, reason does not just reflection on reason, or lead the will and the passions to a proper place under reason. Reason reflects on itself as something subjective and embedded in passions and will. The point becomes to understand the self as subjective self, and to understand others in their subjective selves better.

Link:Debating European Union.Hulsman & Kupchan

Primary version of this post, with visual content, at Barry Stocker's Weblog.

Worldwise Transatlantic Pragmatism. John Hulsman and Charles Kupchan at bloggingheads.tv.

A moderate Euro-sceptic and a moderate Euro-integrationist engage in an admirably constructive dialogue on the problems and achievements of the European Union, from an American perspective. Topics include: varieties of right-wing Euro-scepticism in the UK and the USA; the EU and USA economic models; relation between public opinion and élites in the EU; the rise of new powers in the Third World (China, India, Brazil, South Africa, Egypt); the less integrated role of NATO after the Cold War; the death of American led interventionism, whether peaceful liberal internationalism or armed neo-conservatism; the death of a global order defined by the USA or the EU; the political problems of the integrationist project in the EU, and the reasons.

The Decline of Theology; the Growth of Aesthetics

Primary version of this post, with visual content, at Barry Stocker's Weblog.

I’m sure there are plenty of discussions about this, all I can remember right now is Carl Schmitt in Political Theology and Political Romanticism, which address different but relevant points.

As I suggested in yesterday’s post, Hume marks some kind of transition from a ‘Stoic’ belief in the sovereignty of reason overs the passions to a belief in the sovereignty of passion, to use a crude formulation I hope has a useful function in elucidation. The interest in ‘taste’ is tied up with this loss of sovereign reason, not that I’m suggesting that Hume is an irrationalist, but that some kinds of Reason are undermined by him.

One form of Reason that Hume undermines, famously, is metaphysical theology and its centrality to philosophy. While I don’t think there is a such a thing as an outright victory or defeat in arguments about religious and naturalist views of the universe, or the existence of God, Hume and then Kant’s arguments on this topic are nevertheless about as successful as any set of philosophical arguments have ever been in shifting the central pre-occupations of philosophy. This is not necessarily anything to do with abandoning God and religion: Hume avoids such an argument and has been taken up by Faith based thrological thinkers; Kant intended to strengthen a way of thinking about ethics which gives us a reason to believe in God. However, their arguments certainly make it easier to abandon God and religion, and shift philosophy away from putting God at its centre in metaphysics.

Very broadly, the arguments of Hume and Kant depend on making a separation between the evidence of our perceptions, and our knowledge of ultimate reality. There is no way tracing our perceptions back to a unified divine cause. There is also no basis for the argument that there is a kind of being that must exist, because it is perfect being, which means a whole shift away from any assumption that some kinds of beings are dependent on higher kinds of being, and so on until we reach Perfect Being as the source of all beings. That is, we move away from the idea of a hierarchy of being.

In Hume and Kant, aesthetics and taste enter into areas where God would have entered, in earlier philosophy. Ethics in Hume is linked with aesthetic taste, in the explanation of how it is formed and how it develops in human history. Kant harmonises ethics and knowledge with reference to an account of the power of judgement, the first half of which is taken up with aesthetic judgement. Understanding and sensibility are harmonised through beauty, coming into the role Descartes, Occasionalists and Leibniz attributed to God, of harmonising different substances. When Kant talks about harmonising understanding and sensibility he is approaching the issue of harmonising mental substance and physical substance in earlier philosophers. Beauty symbolises moral ideas for Kant, and that symbolism is the model for grasping God. The sublime is a way of grasping God, as what is greater than any force of nature. Agreement on taste is the basis for communicability between humans.

Reason is no longer sovereign over the passions, God is no longer sovereign over events. Taste emerges as a way of explaining how the passions organise and unify different people; the beautiful and the sublime emerge as ways of unifying the faculties of the mind, and grounding social communication. We are not necessarily talking about a total aestheticisation of philosophy here, but we are taking about its ineliminability from a less theological philosophy.

Link. Apple’s White MacBook may Stay and Grow

Primary version of this post, with visual content, at Barry Stocker's Weblog

Apple to retain, redesign plastic MacBook family. AppleInsider. 25th August 2009.

This refers back to my post of 27th July on Apple Tablet/MacTouch/iPad. In that post I noted the very consistent and frequent rumours of a forthcoming 10 inch device from Apple with a touch screen. I suggested then that the White MacBook was in its last days as a legacy product, and would be killed off when the new portable device was released. I was then referring to AppleInsider, and many other sources, for the predictions of the new portable. This time I;m only relying on AppleInsider, but I think the item makes a very strong case for saying that Apple has had a change of mind. AppleInsider is generally respected for its reliability and this item has been picked up by other Apple oriented sites.

The linked item refers to a change of mind of Apple as the White MacBook continues to outsell other Macintosh computers, despite the lack of advertising and the difficulty of finding it on Apple’s online store. Perhaps this is not surprising, for two sets of reasons.

Intrinsic qualities.

The White MacBook handles normal computing needs extremely well, it has been upgraded and the price has been cut. There’s little reason for getting a MacBook Pro unless a high level computer is really necessary, and Apple reinforced when the aluminium 13 inch MacBook was relabelled as the entry level MacBook Pro.

Extrinsic circumstances.

The recession increases the incentives to choose the plastic MacBook over the aluminium MacBook Pros, including the 13 inch version which initially seemed destined to replace the plastic White MacBook.

Apple has survived the recession remarkably unscathed despite claims from some quarters that the Mac computers are overpriced niche, boutique items, which would lose market share heavily in a recession. In addition Microsoft was heavily advertising claims that Macintosh computers are overpriced compared with PCs designed for Windows. A somewhat dubious claim if computers are compared at list price feature by feature, particularly taking into account the lack of viruses for Mac Operating System, the much greater most people take in using it compared with Windows, and the greater number of features ready bundled with the OS X. Apple responded by cutting prices and upgrading, so that though its products are certainly not cheap they are certainly much better value, for what many including myself would argues was already very good value for the quality of the products.

It now looks as if Apple may revive the White MacBook line, in a niche between the new 10 inch portable and the MacBook Pros. I had earlier predicted that the new devices might become the standard Mac computer, like the White MacBook has been. That is less clear now. It might increase the number of people with two Mac computers.

The Death of Stoicism and the Birth of Aesthetics

Primary version of this post, with visual content, at Barry Stocker's Weblog.

Returning to a topic I addressed on 3rd July, ‘Racine, Hume and the Death of Tragedy’, I’ve been considering the birth of philosophical aesthetics in the 18th Century in relation to ethical changes of the time. I refer to the birth of philosophical aesthetics in the 18th Century, partly because that is when ‘aesthetic’ began to be used as a term for philosophy of beauty and art. There was such a philosophy in Plato and Aristotle, but in the 18th Century we get questions not asked before: what is taste and why does it change? What can we learn about history through poetry? How can aesthetics harmonise nature and human history?

These aesthetic questions arise from uncertainty about the movements of humans consciousness, the feeling that the passions moves beyond the control of reason and not in a sense that can be resolved by focusing on rationality. It is Hume who says that reason can only be, and only should be, the slave of the passions. What Hume meant by the passions is more expansive than our sense of inner intensity. In Hume it refers to a much more general sense of ideas in the mind and the way they combine and bring about actions and thoughts. The important point here is that the mind can never be completely rational, and should not be completely rational, though rationality is a state we should pursue.

The idea of an ethics of reason controlling the passions, would have been something Hume associated with Stoicism. He also associated it with Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, but in his time Stoicism was much more at the forefront of what people thought had been bequeathed by the Ancient world. Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, were seen through a Stoic understanding. Hume sometimes refers Cicero, who had a dominant position in republican political thought and as an ethical thinker, which has disappeared since the 19th Century, though has been recently revived. Cicero was maybe not a pure Stoic, but is understood to have been sympathetic to Stoic ethics.

Very briefly and crudely, I am defining Stoicism as rationality over the emotions in a balanced self, which fully understands itself. We can see the force of this ‘Stoicism’ in Montaigne and Descartes, but also the strain placed on it by a philosophical interest in self-reflection. That strain is made clear by Pascal. Jumping back to Hume, whatever relationship he did or did not have with Montaigne or Descartes (who he certainly took very seriously) or Pascal, he belongs to a moment in which ‘Stoicism’ is collapsing though Hume hangs on to a mitigated interest in it. But because Hume, himself, undermines the ‘Stoic’ self through his scepticism about causality, personal identity, and free will, he starts to think of taste for beauty as something variable and subjective, in a way which would have seemed highly peculiar to Plato and Aristotle. Hume needs to think of ways in which human sociability allows common standards of taste to emerge.

The ‘aesthetic’ in Hume emerges from the disintegration of the ‘Stoic’ and this is the background to the ‘aesthetic’ (taste, poetics, the sublime and the beautiful) in Hutcheson, Burke, Vico and Kant.

Link: Joss Whedon gets Cultural Humanism Award

Primary version of this post, with visual content, at Barry Stocker's Weblog.

Joss Whedon Cultural Humanist. Whedon receives 2009 Outstanding Lifetime Achievement Award in Cultural Humanism from the Humanist Chaplaincy at Harvard University and the Harvard Secular Society. 90 minutes streaming video, or audio only mp3 file. Joss Whedon is the creator of the TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly, Dollhouse, and the film Serenity.

Whedon is introduced and then gives a speech followed by a lengthy question and answer session. The reason he was given the award is that all his work reflects a view largely critical of religion, and supportive of a humanist vision of struggling to achieve good within this world. Though as Whedon points out at the event, he gives a place to religious views, as part of his interest in multiplicity of voices in his work, including the difference points of view within one character.

In his speech Whedon refers to violence and cruelty in the name of religion, but also says that the enemy is not religion but dark tendencies within everyone. In that sense Humanism is more of an act of faith than religion, because it is the faith in overcoming evil without an other worldly entity, sometimes referred to by Whedon as the ‘sky bully.’

In his speech and answers to questions, Whedon refers to his own fear of death which he says has been overcome since becoming a father. The vampire in Buffy are identified as disturbing because they want to deny the possibility of death, and therefore the possibility of something more important than themselves. In the last part of the question and answer session he rounds off with his anxieties about power, the fear of not having power and the fear of the consequences of having power. This is an underlying issue in all of his work,

Whedon discusses the connections and conflicts between emotional realism and mythological symbolism in his work. He talks about what ethics there is without God, and says that a conversation with his wife led him to the idea of evolutionary ethics, before he knew about is a widespread theory. Whedon is referring to the idea that ethics evolves as part of the need of the human species to survive through co-operation. He identifies the basic point of ethics as to avoid pain in other people, because we don’t want it happening to us, or people to whom we are close. When discussing different ethical decisions made by Buffy at different times, Whedon refers to way that a moral system may simply be a convenient way of justifying what we choose at some moment. This leads to situationist ethics (ethical choices as contextual rather than universal) and to Whedon’s only early interest in existentialism and absurdism in Camus and Sartre. That interest was apparently spurred by a transformational viewing of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which led Whedon to question the reality of a normal point of view. Near the end, Whedon also refers to the need for redemption, the way that we all do things we regret, and use power in ways which are wrong. A very recognisable theme in his work. At another point, Whedon refers to the need to to keep shocking people and causing pain in the view for dramatic reasons. This seems a bit contradictory with the idea of avoiding pain, and part of Whedon’s feeling that having power in making TV and cinema leads to badness might refers to this, though he does not say so. Given this concern with not causing pain, it’s not surprising that Whedon expresses some interest in Buddhism, though recoiling from its theology. Whedon’s attitude combines a feeling that existence leads to evil, with a utopian hope for a society in which there is no power and no pain.

On more specific points in his own work, the influence of John Ford comes up twice in relation to Firefly. He refers to the preacher Shepherd Book in the series as like the preacher played by Ward Bond in The Searchers. Whedon partly explains the rapid introduction of a large number of characters in Firefly with reference to Stagecoach, where a bizarre range of people are forced together in the stagecoach. He refers to the difference between Angel and Buffy as characters who begin as heroic; and Spike and Faith who come to humanity and heroism from an evil beginning. Whedon refers to the difficult in Angel as being to define the character of Angel and his reason for fighting evil, every series offers a new solution. Buffy and Angel reach the same point of getting beyond the idea of unique heroism and destiny, and seeing good in individual actions. Whedon defines Dollhouse as being about all the ways we inevitably objectify everyone else, and project onto them. He had a few things to say about the development of Dollhouse being slowed down by concerns with audience figures and keeping the production company happy.

Mill on Equality and Distribution: Political Economy

Primary version of this post, with visual content, at Barry Stocker's Weblog.

On 7th August I posted ‘Rawls in Relation to Mill, Nietzsche and Sophists'. There, amongst other things I suggested that Rawls engaged in a rather tortuous attempt to turn Mill into an an egalitarian liberal (in the Rawlsian sense which implies restraints on the permissible level of inequality in a society). I am certainly not withdrawing that view, but I have a qualification. Rawls went down the wrong road in thinking that it’s Mill’s ethical theory in Utilitarianism which supports egalitarian liberalism. Rawls jumps from there being a utilitarian concern with the welfare of society as a whole to the idea that this requires egalitarian liberalism.

Rawls would have been better off invoking Principles of Political Economy, and maybe it was in the back of his mind. The Principles suggests that a socialist, or even communist, economical and social system might be possible at some time in the future. Mill argues that distribution of income is a distinct issue from the existence of markets. Income distribution is decided by public institutions rather than the market. This itself rests on separating the discussion of wages from the discussion of costs and prices, and placing the discussion of wages before the discussion of prices. Wages are treated as if they are not a normal cost, and can be changed at will on a political basis. Mill ads detail, suggesting that communism might undermine economic incentives, but that markets as currently organised also deprive the low paid worker of incentives. Mill seems to be arguing for the future possibility of socialism, and in a very hypothetical way, but it certainly undermines any view of Mill as a completely seamless limited state free marketeer, even if most of what he says does lean in that direction. Since Mill thinks that production and prices to the consumers are determined by markets, he is certainly not a seamless socialist or communist. This aspect of Mill does open the way to market socialism, welfare or egalitarian liberalism, social democracy and any other system which might try to combine markets with major state led reallocation of resources.

This seems at odds with what Mill generally says about the role of markets in economics in that book, and is certainly at odds with On Liberty which is not separated from it by a major chronological gap. Principles is not as widely read than On Liberty or Utilitarianism, but the ‘socialist’ aspect of it seems to have influenced a lot of people’s understanding of the two more famous texts, and certainly what Mill says in Principles does justify a search for egalitarianism in the other texts, i just don’t think such a search can succeed. The reason for the influence of the more egalitarian reading may be that the Principles was a major economics text book for some decades. So during that time it must have been at least as widely read as On Liberty and Utilitarianism, and probably influenced the interpretative tradition as it was being formed. Some guess work here, but it looks very likely to me that something like that happened.

Link: Birth of the British Liberal Party. Podcast: Cavour and Italy’s role in British Liberalism

Primary version of this post, with visual content, at Barry Stocker's Weblog.

Podcast on the foundation of the (British) Liberal Party at Willis Rooms in 159, talk given by Anthony Howe. Sound quality as poor, but a very good talk, in delivery and anecdote as well as historical analysis.

Anthony Howe, of the University of East Anglia gave a talk at at meeting at Willis Rooms (also known as Willis’s Rooms) in King Street, St James’. London., organised by the Liberal Democrat History Group and the National Liberal Club. The Liberal Democrats are the continuation of the Liberal Party.

How refers the way that a distinct Liberal group emerged in Parliament. The self-description of ‘liberal’ amongst non-Tories in Parliament became widespread in the 1830s. The Tory Party was the first version of what is now the Conservative Party. It emerged in the late 17th Century, in rivalry with the Whig Party. The Whig Party was more pro-parliamentary, less monarchist, and less tied to the Church of England. In the early 19th Century Whigs were joined by Radicals as opponents of the Tories. The Radicals (also known as Manchester Liberals) were pro-free trade, for widening voting rights and opposed to aristocratic influence in politics. The Whigs and Tories were both based in the aristocracy, and their politics were embedded aristocratic social networks and personalities.

Whigs and Radicals were joined by followers of the Tory Prime Minister Robert Peel, after his party split over the abolition of the Corn Laws (restrictions on the import and export of grains to and from the UK). Peel was a free trader and his followers departed from the organised Tories, though at this time party ties and organisation was very loose so these splits are coalitions are less clear than in today’s politics.

As Howe notes, it’s difficult to date the formation of the Liberal Party, since it could be taken as far back as the emergence of the Whigs in the 1680s and as far forward as the first government of William Ewart Gladstone in 1868, which is the best date for the emergence of Liberal Party as a structured organised party in the current sense. So any date is arbitrary. As How mentions Liberal became an informal label for non-Tories in the 1830s. He gestures more vaguely at the governments of (Lord) John Russell (1846-1852) and Henry John Temple (Lord Palmerston) (1855-8), which were Whig but could retrospectively be regarded as Liberal since they were the leading figures in the emergent Liberal Party of 1859. Howe emphasises that the 1859 meeting was preceded by jostling between Palmerston and Russell for the the leadership of the emergent Liberal Party. This took place through Whig aristocratic salons, where Palmerston’s wife made a particularly good impression, overcoming Palmerston’s handicap of having started his political career as a Tory. What Howe doesn’t mention is that Palmerston’s transition from Whig to Tory was associated with the salons his wife held while married to Whig peer. it appears that she and Palmerston initiated an intimate relationship before the death of her husband. Palmeston’s personal life is full of this kind of entertaining details, he had been ‘named’ in a divorce case, i.e. his apparent affair with a married woman was the cause given by her husband for seeking a divorce. The political point here is that politics was tied up with the personal relations between aristocrats in the most intimate way, in every sense.

The 1859 Willis Rooms meetings brought together Whigs, Radicals, Peelites and a few who already primarily described themselves as Liberal in opposition to the Tory Prime Minister of the day, Edward Smith-Stanley (Lord Derby).

One notable aspect of this meeting are that the greatest figure in the history of the Liberal Party, William Ewart Gladstone (a Peelite who began his career an extreme advocate of a state based on the Church of England) was absent and voted for Derby’s government. This did not stop him from rapidly becoming the leading personality in the Liberal Party, and enormous efforts had been made to persuade him to attend that meeting.

Another notable aspect is that the Radical leader John Bright only attended because his mentor, the great Free Trade polemicist and politician Richard Cobden was in the United States. The fierceness of Bright’s anti-aristocratic invective excluded him from the cabinet led by Palmerston which emerged from this meeting, and Bright had real contempt for Palmerston so it was a great achievement that he was there at all. Other leading Radicals were offered places in government though.

Another notable aspect of this process was that Palmerstonians and Radicals were unitd around sympathy for Camillo Cavour, the Prime Minister of Piedmont , who was fighting for Italian unity against the Austrian Empire which then included Venetia and Lombardy. Palmerston might have explained this support in terms of national interests, Bright more in terms of the ideal of self-determination, but the result was the same: leaving Cavour and his ally France, a free hand against the Austrians. As Howe says, there is a case for saying that Cavour was the unconscious founder of the British Liberal Party. This remark is itself about the claim of Robert Blake, biographer of the Conservative Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, that Disraeli was the unconscious founder of the Liberal Party because all factions despised him.

Adam Smith: Bourgeois Republican Patriotism

Primary version of this post, with visual content, at Barry Stocker's Weblog.

The final post on my recent re-reading of An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. The end of the book is taken up with discussion of taxes. The most ideal situation for Smith here seems to be found in the modern merchant republics of Hamburg and the Netherlands. In both cases, he suggests that occasionally taxes are raised through a wealth tax, tax on the total worth of individuals which is paid voluntarily, Everyone makes a payment based on unchallenged self-assessment, and Smith claims that great honesty is shown in both states. Smith does not suggest that taxes could be regularly raised in this way, even if citizens could be expected to be frequently so honest, frequent taxes on the total worth of individuals would destroy the capacity to pay taxes up by using up all individual wealth.

The worst examples Smith gives of taxation are in France, at that time an absolutist monarchy administered at local and national level by the aristocracy in patchwork of different tax regimes. The irregularity of tax is one problem, another major problem is that heavy taxes are placed on the necessities of life. Smith strongly believes that taxes should fall most heavily on luxuries mostly consumed by the rich. Smith is not a redistributionist though, he does not suggest progressive rates of tax, and restricts taxation to taxes on consumption rather than on income (leaving aside occasional wealth taxes). His reasons for opposing taxes on the necessities of life are explained just as much in terms of keeping the cost of labour down, as in terms of assisting the labouring classes, but the two things are difficult to keep completely distinct.

Britain occupies a middle place between the Dutch Republic and France. Smith welcomes the lack of taxes on internal trade within Great Britain, but is concerned about taxes on the necessities of life. He is very condemnatory of customs on imported goods, suggesting that these promote smuggling and are not respected by citizens who frequently buy from smugglers; he suggests that customs taxes should be replaced by excises taxes (both used to be levied by a distinct unit of British government) on the manufacture of goods.

The discussion of British taxes runs into a more general discussion of the political system in Britain. He suggests that Scotland benefited from the union of the Scottish Parliament with the English Parliament, that is the abolition of the Scottish Parliament and the inclusion of Scottish representatives in the English Parliament. The reason he offers is the escape of the Scottish people from aristocratic domination. Smith objects to the principle of aristocracy rather than the Scottish aristocracy as such. He describes the Scottish aristos as honourable, as deserving of their station and so on. There is an implicit rejection of the very ideas of honour, station, and so on, there. He calls for a similar Act of Unio between Ireland and Britain to rescue the Irish from domination by a worse aristocracy, a Protestant English aristocracy who despised Catholic Irish tenant farmers. An Act of Union did take place in 1800 (creating the United Kingdom, the Irish component now only consists of Northern Ireland), and political discrimination against Catholics was ended in 1829. Unfortunately this did not bring about an end to mutual hostility, including violence.

Smith hints at hostility to aristocracy, and even monarchy, in contrast to his friends Edmund Burke and David Hume. It’s important to distinguish Smith as the least conservative, and most liberal, of that trio. There may be some tension with his idealisation of the merchant republics of the Netherlands and Hamburg. As Smith himself explains, the taxes paid by the Dutch merchants are dependent on their dominant place in Dutch politics. He gives a shining account of the republican patriotism of the Dutch merchants: their profits from trade and from lending money are greatly lowered by the taxes they pay. On the other hand, he believes that they will not be willing to pay those taxes if their political influence wanes. Smith did not really entertain the idea of democracy as votes for all, or certainly not in the text of The Wealth of Nations. He advocated representative government, but implicitly for the merchant class.

It may be that Smith assumed that the merchant class would be the most natural politicians, even in conditions of universal suffrage. His views are based on the assumption that labourers and merchants have common interests under a set of clear laws which maintain ‘free trade’ (by which Smith understood all that we would understand as free market, or open market). It seems to me that this is broadly correct, but Smith clearly underestimated the degree to which merchants and labourers would use the state, its laws and regulations, its expenditure and employment opportunities, as ways of promoting monopolies, and restrictions on market exchange; and clearly underestimated the degree to which these would become the sources of political conflict and the ways in which political parties would try to appeal to electoral alliances of various interests of these kinds. He did also gave us the intellectual tools to understand and criticise that process.

Link:Tim Harford on Private Schools for Global Poor

Primary version of this post, with visual content, at Barry Stocker's Weblog.

‘Why millions of the world’s poor still choose to go private’ by Tim Harford, Financial Times, 22nd August, 2009

This article refers to something I first heard about a few years ago, but which would probably surprise a few people. There is a growth in private schools amongst low income people in Africa and Asia, not the rising middle class or the rising bourgeoisie but people on very low incomes, 2 dollars or less a day. As Harford points out, publicly provided education is so bad that it’s worth even very poor people paying for private schools. The private schools concerned are not exactly little Etons, low grade buildings and teachers less qualified than publicly employed teachers. The difference is that the private teachers have to turn up to class and do a reasonable job; publicly employed teachers don’t turn up, go to other jobs, or fall asleep in class.

What lessons can be drawn from this? Most generally, education improves with competition between providers, incentives for teachers who perform well and sanctions for teachers who do not pay well. That applies generally to education in general in all countries, and was discussed by Adam Smith in The Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, as I mentioned in my last post. This does not mean we should want the Third World Poor to pay fees for education, it does mean we should hope the governments concerned will use economic incentives for public education, and parents should have a choice of schools bringing a slice of public funding to the school they choose, maybe through government issued education vouchers.

Other lessons can be drawn from this about Third World development. Bad education and the restraints that places on individual, and social, economic chances are not just the result of existing poverty; Third World governments are not passive victims of ‘globalism’ supposedly sucking resources out of the Third World. There is injustice in the way, the wealthier countries behave to Third World countries: support for unjust and economically inefficient governments, blocking imports, trying to plan even well-meaning economic reform from outside. The solution is not to block trade and investment as ‘unfair’ to poor countries, or to pump development aid to governments which are wasteful and best and often kleptomaniac, or to scapegoat financial institutions which are trying to recover loans from governments which have wasted the money.

The ‘anti-globalists’ are right to say that reforms should come from within countries; they might be surprised by how much free marketeers make the same point, and are critical of the way development aid and externally suggested reforms largely benefit politically powerful groups. I don’t suggest that the solution is to cut all aid, but the focus should shift from development aid to humanitarian aid directly delivered to people who need it. Development can only come from governments making the right decisions and making decisions with develop the society as a whole, not influential client groups. Economic restructuring should be largely left to the responsibility of governments, though trade negotiations should lead rich and poor countries to agree on eliminating trade barriers on both sides.

Trade barriers in Third World countries do not benefit the population, they benefit producers with privileged political contacts. Trade barriers push up prices, they push up the price of food for people hovering on the edge of starvation. Open trade means some companies close and economic sectors lose jobs, but also creates incentives for investment in new companies and sectors. An economy cannot succeed as a static entity, it can only create growing wealth for everyone, including the poorest, through change. Growth means change, and means responding to market demands, not state interventions on behalf of politically powerful companies and sectors.

Adam Smith: Republicanism and Military Virtue

Primary version of this post, with visual content, at Barry Stocker's Weblog

Yesterday I looked at how Smith links the progress of commercial society, with all its virtues of education, culture, politeness etc., to the rise of guns used by professional armies. Reading on to An Inquiry into The Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations V.i.e, antique republican military virtues make a return in Adam Smith’s account of modern education. Smith thinks everyone should be educated to some degree, and this should be legally required, but with a multiplicity of providers. He’s very critical of the provision of education by schools and universities, which he argues is arranged to suit teachers not students. He prefers a more personal relationship between students and teachers, based on the availability of different instructors who have passed a public examination but are not employees of the state.

Smith’s model for this is education in Ancient Greece and Rome, particularly with regard to gymnastic and military instruction, both required for all citizens in the ancient republics, and linked with each other because as Smith has already pointed out, ancient warfare rests more on physical strength than war with guns.

At this point Smith is full of admiration for the military courage and capacities of the citizens of ancient republics. He compares this unfavourably with the spirit of modern militias (that is locally raised units of non-professional soldiers who are part-time outside a state of war). Smith has just explained approvingly how military spirit diminishes, and becomes more specialised, as societies move to commerce, prosperity and liberty.

There was an ambiguity in that I didn’t mention which is that Smith suggests the army chief and head of state should be the same, and that the army generals should be those associated with the head if states. This seems to justify early modern monarchical absolutism, which does rest on the idea that the king is the military chief in a very strong sense, and that his aristocracy provides the generals. It might just mean a return to ancient republicanism where military chiefs might be the main elected state official (e.g. Pericles in Athens), and holding a military post was a political honour.

The passage I’m currently considering pushes in the direction of ancient republicanism. Smith belongs with Montesquieu in The Spirit of the Laws (which he often invokes), Wilhelm von Humboldt (in Limits of State Action) and Benjamin Constant in an ambiguity about ancient and modern virtues and liberties. In their different ways, all these ‘Classical Liberals’ are admiring of the freedom and virtue of ancient republics, driven by the struggle for life against nature, the struggle for the city in war, absolute respect for law, and the institutions and traditions of the city. Smith, for example, is very admiring of the importance the Romans gave to the keeping of oaths (Nietzsche suggests in Genealogy of Morals that human history is about breeding an animal that can keep promises). Smith, Montesquiue, Humboldt and Constant also regard the modern world as better than the ancient world in its individual freedoms and the growth of commerce, which reduces military spirit, respect for ancient customs, and love of the state. There are many deep ambiguities in all of them on these issues.

The one way we should definitely not approach this question, is to think the Classical Liberals can be defined as people who were only concerned with ‘negative’ or ‘modern’ liberties, that is of freedom from external constraints rather than freedom which comes from participation in a community, its politics, and civic values, including courage in war and willingness to die for the common good.

Adam Smith: Republicanism and Military Virtue

Yesterday I looked at how Smith links the progress of commercial society, with all its virtues of education, culture, politeness etc., to the rise of guns used by professional armies. Reading on to An Inquiry into The Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations V.i.e, antique republican military virtues make a return in Adam Smith’s account of modern education. Smith thinks everyone should be educated to some degree, and this should be legally required, but with a multiplicity of providers. He’s very critical of the provision of education by schools and universities, which he argues is arranged to suit teachers not students. He prefers a more personal relationship between students and teachers, based on the availability of different instructors who have passed a public examination but are not employees of the state.

Smith’s model for this is education in Ancient Greece and Rome, particularly with regard to gymnastic and military instruction, both required for all citizens in the ancient republics, and linked with each other because as Smith has already pointed out, ancient warfare rests more on physical strength than war with guns.

At this point Smith is full of admiration for the military courage and capacities of the citizens of ancient republics. He compares this unfavourably with the spirit of modern militias (that is locally raised units of non-professional soldiers who are part-time outside a state of war). Smith has just explained approvingly how military spirit diminishes, and becomes more specialised, as societies move to commerce, prosperity and liberty.

There was an ambiguity in that I didn’t mention which is that Smith suggests the army chief and head of state should be the same, and that the army generals should be those associated with the head if states. This seems to justify early modern monarchical absolutism, which does rest on the idea that the king is the military chief in a very strong sense, and that his aristocracy provides the generals. It might just mean a return to ancient republicanism where military chiefs might be the main elected state official (e.g. Pericles in Athens), and holding a military post was a political honour.

The passage I’m currently considering pushes in the direction of ancient republicanism. Smith belongs with Montesquieu in The Spirit of the Laws (which he often invokes), Wilhelm von Humboldt (in Limits of State Action) and Benjamin Constant in an ambiguity about ancient and modern virtues and liberties. In their different ways, all these ‘Classical Liberals’ are admiring of the freedom and virtue of ancient republics, driven by the struggle for life against nature, the struggle for the city in war, absolute respect for law, and the institutions and traditions of the city. Smith, for example, is very admiring of the importance the Romans gave to the keeping of oaths (Nietzsche suggests in Genealogy of Morals that human history is about breeding an animal that can keep promises). Smith, Montesquiue, Humboldt and Constant also regard the modern world as better than the ancient world in its individual freedoms and the growth of commerce, which reduces military spirit, respect for ancient customs, and love of the state. There are many deep ambiguities in all of them on these issues.

The one way we should definitely not approach this question, is to think the Classical Liberals can be defined as people who were only concerned with ‘negative’ or ‘modern’ liberties, that is of freedom from external constraints rather than freedom which comes from participation in a community, its politics, and civic values, including courage in war and willingness to die for the common good.

Link of the Day: Open Government and Browsers

Primary version of this post, with visual content, at Barry Stocker's Weblog

‘Transparency Chic’ by Katherine Mangu-Ward. Wall Street Jounral. 21st August 2009.

Link to Recap extension for Firefox, designed for accessing subscription firewalled US court archives, which has to be paid for, but then stores pages in an open access archive.

If you don’t know what Firefox is, it is a browser which can be downloaded for free and can be use on any computer running Windows, Mac or Linux (usually has Firefox preloaded anyway) operating systems. It is open source, which means anyone can design modifications for it compatible with the source code. I don’t use it much myself (I prefer Safari, the native browser on Mac), but it’s very universal in its applicability, very stable, and is ideal for anyone who likes modifications through a download that takes a few seconds. Go here for more information and download.

Mangu-Ward makes two major points in the article.

Barack Obama has yet to implement promises about open government, which includemaking information about government spending available on line in real time. Mangu-Ward mentions to links to private websites which made this information available more quickly than the government which holds the information. OpenRegs which makes information about government regulations freely available. RecoveryOrg which makes information about economic recovery measures freely available.

Barack Obama, and his predecessors, have only made information about court cases available through the online service PACER, but PACER is only ‘freely’ accessed by subscription packages which are ‘freely’ available to many academics and legal professionals through institutional subscriptions. ‘Freely’ because the cost of institutional subscriptions creates downward pressure on salaries paid by those institutions. Anyone else encounters a cost of 8 cents a page, which mounts up into serious money for anyone doing serious research on the law. As Mangu-Ward points out, Obama’s hero Abe Lincoln, made this kind of information available for free within the technology of that time. As with the issues of regulatory and financial transparency private voluntary issues have made information available for free.

RECAP. The name comes from reversing PACER. The RECAP extension enables users to access PACER, the first time a RECAP user accesses a certain page that user has to pay. However, RECAP automatically creates a a free open access archive, This is completely legal, though very unpopular with the subscription providers.

Adam Smith on Guns and the Development of Wealth

Primary version if this post, with visual content, at Barry Stocker's Weblog.

In An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith suggests that the invention of the gun had a major effect on economic development. At the end of Book V, Chapter i, part a, Smith argues that guns makes it easier for rich nations to defend their wealth against barbarous nations. Smith is thinking of the many occasions in history where an invading, or raiding army, takes economic wealth by force. Fire arms narrow the difference between a population where everyone is a soldier and has military capacity; a modern prosperous population where only a minority are soldiers and have military skill and even that minority may not be as strong and experienced as the members of a ‘barbarian’ army. Smith is thinking of events like the barbarian invasions of the western Roman Empire, or Genghis Khan’s victories with a nomad army over urban societies, or Vikings raiding early Medieval Europe. The gun reduces the level of skill and military aptitude necessary to succeed in war. It leads to the building of expensive forts designed to withstand explosions.

The greater ease with which prosperous nations can defend themselves against a violent loss of wealth, and maybe the loss of the infrastructure of wealth creation, increases the incentives to create wealth. This speeds up the development of wealth and the majority of the population emerging from poverty. That advantage of gun powder is a major reason for growing wealth as rich nations are sure of benefiting from industry and commerce.

Smith might have added that fire arms leads to things he is not happy with, such as colonialism. As he points out fire arms give rich nations the easy means to defeat poor nations, what he does not point is that this leads to colonialism with aspects Smith finds undesirable: the expense of administration, the subordination of free trade to monopolies granted to business with close relations to power.

It takes fire arms to make the state more secure, and therefore more able to establish law and order, and the provision of basic institutions in education, basic transport infrastructure and so on. Smith does not say so much above the possibility that the state will be more able to become despotic and corrupt. He might be thinking that this would undermine prosperity, which itself would undermine the raising of money. Wars between the Netherlands, or Britain on one side, France on the other side, in the 17th and 18 Century generally resulted in victory for Britain and Holland, at a time when Britain was much smaller in population that France, as Holland always has been. This was connected with the greater wealth of Britain and Holland. They were less militaristic-aristocratic societies in spirit, and more commercial. The commerce generated wealth to finance war, as did the financing of public debt through selling government bonds and paying interest on those bonds.

Prosperity and military strength feed off each other, though a commercial society gives less importance to the military than less developed nations. Ancient writers regarded wealth as subversive of military strength as it led to a greater interest in pursuing wealth than in fighting on behalf of the nation. Smith provides a counter-argument to the ancients, and deepens his defence of civil and commercial society.

Link of the Day: Flanagan on Virtues and Narratives

Primary version of this post, with visual content, at Barry Stocker's Weblog.

‘Moral Science? Still Metaphysical after all These Years’ by Owen Flanagan.

Hat tip PhilPapers. This paper on Flanagan’s wesbite at Duke University is a version of chapter he published very recently in Personality, Identity and Character, edited by Darcia Narvaez and Daniel K. Lapsley (Cambridge University Press, 2009).

The idea of virtue theory in moral philosophy, is that morality comes from habits of character rather than from pure principles. Flanagan defends the idea that moral virtues are real, in the way that Aristotle understood, from John Doris and Gilbert Harman who have questioned the idea of stable character traits. Flanagan compares virtues with dispositions in physical nature, to establish their ontological status. He reviews the revival of virtue theory since the mid-20th Century, and comments on the way that non-virtue theorists like Kant and Mill appeal to virtues except in their most theoretically pure moments.

Flanagan then moves onto the role of narrative in morality. He comments both on the distorting framing effects of narrative, and its value in providing simple memorable accounts of the virtues. Some of this is taken up with the competing narratives we have about free will and determinism.

A lot of his discussion of distortions from framing refers to what Flanagan believes is an excessive American tendency to believe that hard work leads to wealth and that property is absolute. I agree with Flanagan, that these are unsatisfactory frames in their most radical form: hard work does not always lead to improved economic fortunes; our property ownership does depend on the existence if a stable community with strong basic institutions which have to be paid for with taxes. However, Flanagan’s argument goes further than this in finding arguments for strong redistributionist tax policies and high rates of taxation, implying that we have very little right to think that our property is largely ours and not common property. The extreme property righys and American Dream narratives are not quite as influential as Flanagan suggest: the USA now has high rates of of corporation taxes and top bracket income tax compared with Europe.

What would be really interesting is if Flanagan extended his exploration of competing narratives from free will to property rights and American Dream narratives, so that he also critically explored the framing narratives of social democracy, welfarism, left-liberalism, communitarianism, and so on. That would be an interesting way of approaching issues of political choice and ideology.

Adam Smith against Colonialism, for Representation

Primary version of this post, with visual content, at Barry Stocker's Weblog.

Nothing new for anyone who already knows their Adam Smith, but a lot of people are still surprised to hear that Smith criticised colonialism. Karl Marx, by contrast, endorsed British rule in India, though with considerable qualifications. The essential claim is that Asian societies are so backward that rule by Britain must be more progressive than self-government or rule by another Asian power.

The assumption behind the surprise at Smith’s position is largely that colonialism is something to do with ‘capitalist exploitation’, combined with the assumption that being pro-capitalist is inexorably connected with right-wing, or conservative views, on everything, particularly with regard to the power of the state in dominating territory.

There is nothing pro-capitalist about the state raising taxes to send administrators and military forces to other parts of the world. The belief that colonialism brings economic benefits to the colonisers, rests on the idea that state protected monopoly and coercion of coerced people to give up goods benefits the colonisers. Monopoly benefits monopolists, it certainly does not benefit consumers in the colonising country, which means it also does not benefit any branch of the economy affected by high prices in that monopolised good. State enforced monopoly directs stock (productive economic factors) towards an area of economic activity were it would not flow otherwise, this is intrinsically less efficient than allowing economic actors follow their own tests of market conditions, and profitable activities.

Forcible extraction of natural resources brings short term benefits to governments, and those with access to government favours. It only creates the illusion of benefit for the nation as a whole. Spanish and Portuguese imports of gold, from their American colonies, created inflation of gold so that people in Spain and Portugal could not purchase more than they could purchase before. The gold held by governments reinforced the power of despotic governments. Smith argues that the economically rational thing to do is to cut colonies loose, or confederate them with the colonising nation, on equal terms with regard to political rights and the burdens of financing the state. Unfortunately governments are too blinded by concerns with prestige to follow such policies. Where Smith refers to prestige, we might think about the economic interests of those employed by the state, and state hangers on, in diversion of resources to state expenditure of a wasteful kind.

Wealth is created by trade, administering the country with which are trading; and forcing it to trade on terms convenient for those with state power in the colonising country, harms both sides.

In his account of confederation, Smith refers to some ancient history. He suggests that the Romans could not confederate properly with conquered nations. If they did not give political rights to those people, they faced the costs of holding them down by force. Giving rights to other tribes in Italy, meant they had the right to attend popular assemblies in Rome. Under the Republic, Rome had a strong element of direct democracy in meetings of the tribes held to make up Rome. Once anyone could come to those meetings from anywhere in Italy, the meetings lost any proper political character. Not all Italians could be present, but those present could out weigh the votes of the real existing political community of Rome. This could not be solved because democracy then was always understood to be direct democracy. If Britain confederated with the American colonies, already in rebellion, as Smith suggests, then the Parliament would contain those elected from the colonies as well as Britain proper, on the same basis and with no disturbance of the democratic element of the constitution. Smith argues that direct democracy killed off the Roman Republic, which became an Empire under one deified chief.

Smith presents his arguments against colonialism in self-interested terms, but this really gives more weight to the ethical argument against colonialism. He is criticising coercion and lack of representative government, and gives this the soundest possible foundation in self-love. Self-love and benevolence both work best when seen as mutually supportive.

Link of the Day: Graeber on Debt, Slavery, Money

Primary version of this post, with visual content, at Barry Stocker's Weblog

‘Debt: The First Five Thousand Years’ by David Graeber in Eurozine.

Graeber is an academic anthropologist and left-anarchist activist. I’m not in favour of anarchism of left or right, or any other variation, but I sometimes find that anarchist thinkers are very good at getting at the violence in the evolution of social institutions. That applies to anarcho-capitalists like Murray Rothbard as much as socialist anarchists like Graeber, though the tendency to see institutions as purely the instrument and outcome of unjust violence has its disadvantages as well. I believe Michel Foucault, particularly in his later years, adopted a good approach on these issues, but I will be discussing that great thinker and activist on other occasions.

Graeber goes back to the earliest societies in which money was used, going back to pre-urban societies where some objects have a privileged exchange role, but really gets going on the emergence of metallic currency under the earliest city based monarchies. Graeber suggests that this is entwined with issues of debt and slavery. These societies have slavery for two main reasons: unpaid debts and capture in war. This kind of organised war emerges from, and reinforces, monarch centred states. The people under a monarch are all considered to be in a state of infinite debt to him, justifying the payment of taxes. Graeber sees slavery as the origin of paid labour and the demand for currency. The point Graeber wants to get out of that is to equate capitalist wage labour with slavery, which is not something I would go along with. In recent posts on Adam Smith, I’ve discussed what the difference is and the advantages wage labour give to labourers in a competitive market economy. There is a slightly different point on which I think Graeber, in my inexpert view, is probably right. The more slavery there is, the more the slave owner may find money useful as a way of giving incentives to slaves beyond physical coercion. Smith explains why an employer should find wage labour more economically advantageous than slavery, that may not have been such a pressing issue in stages of history where economic growth and changes in the organisation of labour, are very slow compared with modern economic development. Smith’s argument does explain why at any time slavery might become a contractual relation most effectively realised with currency.

On the state level, Kings may have considered their subjects to be in infinite debt to them because of their role in providing law and state defence, that is protection form internal and external coercive violence. Currency is a way in which people can pay towards that debt. Kings can just extract goods, but Graeber argues that kings early on realised that an economy with money generates more wealth, so there has always been some element of capitalism. Silver and god for money was mined by slaves, and people who could not pay money debts became slaves, so at that time the money based economy was very compatible with the unfree labour economy.

Graeber ends up trying to establish continuity from the ancient world to the world now, with the suggestion that the extreme poverty of much of the Third World, can be equated with ancient slavery. I find this highly misguided. Slavery does not mean poverty, slaves could be privileged people in ancient societies. In the Ottoman system, the government chiefs were slaves of the Sultan. In pre-Civil War American, African-American slaves had a a higher standard of living than Irish immigrants of the time. Ancient slave economies may have had a mutually reinforcing relation with early elements of capitalism, and that continued up to the slavery of the 18th Century. It is the development if capitalism, as a direct economic force, and less directly through the emergence of organised public opinion in bourgeois civil society, which led to the end of slavery. The extreme poverty of the ‘bottom billion’ in the Third World comes from failed attempts at alternatives to capitalism, stories about IMF/World Bank conditions to financial rescue packages give some people the impression that capitalism has been forced on undeveloped countries, and this creates a slavery to debt and financial institutions. The reality is that the poor countries do not have free market economies, and those who have made most progress towards such economies have done the most to lift their people out of poverty.

Despite these reservations, I appreciate the way that Graeber looks at a genealogy of money in capitalism in highly unfree social relations. The point of genealogy in Nietzsche and Foucault is that it recognises that the origin(s) and the contemporary outcomes are not the same thing.

Slavery and Absolute Property in Adam Smith

Primary version of this post, with visual content, at Barry Stocker's Weblog.

In An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Smith is concerned with slavery in a number of ways, all of which condemn slavery. For reasons I cannot currently fathom, clear universal condemnation of slavery only begins in the 18th Century. That certainly confirms that the Enlightenment really was a great movement, as in the condemnation of slavery in Montesquieu. Rousseau, Hume, Smith and less well known figures like Gershom Carmichael. Carmichael was the first Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Glasgow, a post later filled by three great thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment: Francis Hutcheson, Adam Smith, Thomas Reid. I hope to return to Carmichael.

Returning to Carmichael’s second successor in that chair, Adam Smith, Smith suggest that in his time slavery is more humane when administered by the absolutist monarchy of France, rather than by the constitutional parliamentary government of Britain. Slavery is relatively humane, when administered under an absolute government, according to Smith, because such a government will interfere with the rights of property owners while a constitutional government will not.

Smith is thinking of the relative administration of slave plantations in the British and French Caribbean. He is also thinking of classical references familiar to all Enlightened educated readers of that time. He also refers to the way in which slavery became more moderate under the Roman Empire, than under the Republic (that great exemplar of the slef-government of citizens). He is most certainly thinking of Tacitus, the historian of the early Empire nostalgic for the Republic. It is Tacitus who refers to a Senator during the early Empire, who complains of the increasing regard shown for the legal rights of slaves.

Looking at the European Enlightenment, it is Giambattista Vico, who refers to the Empire as more democratic than the Republic in Roman History, in The New Science. I doubt that Smith was aware of this book. Like Alexis de Tocqueville later, Vico thinks of democracy as about equal rights rather than political participation Tocqueville clearly thinks democracy is significantly about elections and participation, but his starting point is that democracy means equality of conditions.

What we are referring to here is the republicanism based on oligarchy. Still at some points, democracy has been linked with slavery. e.g. the leaders of the Confederate States of America (the break away slave owning southern states who precipitated the Civil War).

The point I am concerned with here is the United States was founded by slave owners, so one of the great moment in modern constitutional government, the formation of the USA, was embedded in the desire of property owners to defend their property including slaves.

I’ve been looking at the US Constitution, which is a short document. Despite what some people claim there is nothing about property rights, there is a lot about constitutional federal government. Despite what the libertarian-conservatives say, the Constitution is not a document devoted to absolute property rights, as some US libertarians less tied to conservatism, have noticed.

From a progressivist libertarian point of view, I suggest that the absolutism of property rights in US history begins with the belief of slave owners that their property has foundations beyond any particular law.

The belief that the US constitution is concerned with absolute property rights rather than the benefits of republican self-government, is false and false by a big margin.

No right is absolute in the sense that it overrides all other rights. Absoluteness of property rights comes from the time of slavery. Smith opposed such a notion, property rights cannot override the right of the slave to seek liberty. This property absolutism, right or wrong is not supported by Smith. Property rights must be judged by their general social consequences,