Chesterton and Schumacher on Ethics and Economics

I have been on a Chesterton kick lately after I found Eugenics and other Evils in my podcast app as a free audiobook. And then I finally got from the library Schumacher's Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered. I am only no chapter two, but lets start there.

He quotes the famous Lord Keynes. Schumacher tells us that in 1930, during a time of world-wide economic depression he felt moved to speculate on the "economic possibilities for our grandchildren" and "concluded that the day may not be far off when everybody would be rich."

I see us free, therefore, to return to some of the most sure and certain principles of religion and traditional virtue – that avarice is a vice, that the exaction of usury is a misdemeanour, and the love of money is detestable, that those walk most truly in the paths of virtue and sane wisdom who take least thought for the morrow. We shall once more value ends above means and prefer the good to the useful. 

But he continues on:

But beware! The time for all this is not yet. For at least another hundred years we must pretend to ourselves and to every one that fair is foul and foul is fair; for foul is useful and fair is not. Avarice and usury and precaution must be our gods for a little longer still. For only they can lead us out of the tunnel of economic necessity into daylight.

(OK for a little reminder, almost everyone knows that capitalism is good because it takes greed (avarice) and makes a good out of it. Most attribute it to Adam Smith, but it was really Lord Keynes who really made it popular "Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone." He is a huge figure in economics. You know that because his name becomes a form of economics Keynesian).

Schumacher (this book is from 1973) argues with Keynes given the 40 years of track record after his speech. And I think we can see it, especially in moments of trial (like 2008 or this election cycle).

If human vices such as greed and envy are systematically cultivated, the inevitable result is nothing less than a collapse of intelligence. A man driven by greed and envy loses the power of seeing things as they really are, of seeing things in their roundness and wholeness ... If whole societies become infected by these vices, they may indeed achieve astonishing things but they become increasingly incapable of solving the most elementary problems of everyday existence. The Gross National Product may rise rapidly: as measured by statisticians but not as experienced by actual people, who find themselves oppressed by increasing frustration, alienation, insecurity, and so forth. After a while, even the Gross National Product refuses to rise any further, not because of scientific or technological failure, but because of a creeping paralysis of non-cooperation, as expressed in various types of escapism on the part, not only of the oppressed and exploited, but even of the highly privileged groups. (32)

Creeping paralysis of non-cooperation ... how can we not immediately think of the financial meltdown of 2008? How can we not think about the fractured parties who are violently opposed to each other, even while they are splitting themselves?

Ok, so Chesterton writes about the way we pretend the laws of industry and economics are iron-clad, even if it means active sterilization of "feeble-minded". In case you were unaware, Eugenics was actually super popular until WWII when "Hitler ruined it for everyone." For a short list of enthusiasts:  Teddy Roosevelt, HG Wells, Helen Keller, Winston Churchhill, Alexander Grahm Bell, and, of course, John Maynard Keynes (director of Eugenics Society from 1937-1944).

Chesterton's entire books is amazing and reminds me of what a profound thinker and writer he was. He spends the first half of the book talking about science and ethics, but ends by saying they are just tools. Part two is called "The Real Aim." This is taken from the chapter "The Meanness of Motive":

... people miss the main thing and concentrate on the mean thing ... I could fill this book with examples of the universal, unconscious assumption that life and sex must live by the laws of "business" or industrialism, and not vice versa; examples from all the magazines, novels, and newspapers. In order to make it brief and typical, I take one case of a more or less Eugenist sort from a paper that lies open in front of me—a paper that still bears on its forehead the boast of being peculiarly an organ of democracy in revolt. To this a man writes to say that the spread of destitution will never be stopped until we have educated the lower classes in the methods by which the upper classes prevent procreation. The man had the horrible playfulness to sign his letter "Hopeful." ... The curious point is that the hopeful one concludes by saying, "When people have large families and small wages, not only is there a high infantile death-rate, but often those who do live to grow up are stunted and weakened by having had to share the family income for a time with those who died early. There would be less unhappiness if there were no unwanted children." You will observe that he tacitly takes it for granted that the small wages and the income, desperately shared, are the fixed points, like day and night, the conditions of human life. Compared with them marriage and maternity are luxuries, things to be modified to suit the wage-market. There are unwanted children; but unwanted by whom? This man does not really mean that the parents do not want to have them. He means that the employers do not want to pay them properly.

I immediately think of the incredible complexity here. I comfort myself with that fact that this is "the way of the world" and not that of heaven. Nonetheless, it is moral questions that come to mind and I appreciate that these two authors are willing to let more than one "e" word into their books ...