In this book Deirdre McCloskey answers my questions about why the Great Enrichment occurred, why it occurred originally in Northwestern Europe, and why it didn’t occur as dramatically in many other parts of the world, even today. Her explanation is well-supported and gets to the first principles or root causes of the Great Enrichment. McCloskey’s thesis is that the Great Enrichment was caused by a broad transformation in the values of those societies to regard the pursuit of “trade-tested betterment” as an honorable and proper activity for mankind. This became known as the bourgeois culture.
McCloskey bridges the causal progression between the Great Awakening of the Enlightenment and the Great Enrichment often associated with the Industrial Revolution. Also termed the Great Divergence (from the low standard of living that had previously existed for millennia), this explosive progress did not flow naturally or automatically from the Renaissance’s scientific advances and better paintings. Legions of people had to be freed to engage in trade-tested betterments to make such radical progress in material wealth production across the entire society. This is why China never advanced despite all their early advantages in technology and, arguably, institutions. And this is why the United States, which started off with no opposing clerisy (the entrenched, self-identified intellectual elites), became the epitome of the bourgeois culture of the Great Enrichment. Both the Enlightenment and the Great Divergence were at their heart caused by a revolution in the prevailing philosophy of the national culture.
Scientists tend to focus on what is easy to measure, and historians more so. So historians tend to focus on analyzing documented institutions as causal factors rather than analyzing culture. Culture is very hard to measure, but McCloskey spends most of the book examining various indicators to get at it. Measuring and differentiating cultures today is also not politically correct. Her implicit argument is that all cultures are not equal in achieving a good life for their citizens, which is blasphemy in our post-modern world.
In this book McCloskey also explains why the earlier attempts to explain the Great Enrichment are off the mark. She explains that imperialism, slavery, capitalism, socialism, technological progress or the presence of good “institutions” per se all did not have sufficient impact alone, occurred at a different place in history, or were not sufficiently unique to Northwestern Europe to be valid causes on their own. At best some of these factors were caused by the Great Enrichment, and in some cases they actually worked to retard its progress.
McCloskey identifies that the Great Divergence was ultimately caused by a transformation in the prevailing ethics and rhetoric in those societies that led their enrichment. She states that “words and ideas caused the modern world.” My only criticism is that McCloskey does not explicitly tie those values, morality and rhetoric of the culture to its underlying philosophy. The underlying philosophy of the Enlightenment was a radical change, especially in Great Britain, and that is what changed the attitudes, values, morality and rhetoric of the culture. McCloskey mentions the philosophers who led this transformation – Locke, Hume, Smith, and their Enlightenment brethren – but more as representatives of the cultural transformation. She does not give them their due as the prime movers behind the Great Enrichment. It was in fact a transformation in the prevailing philosophy that really caused the Enlightenment and then the Great Enrichment.
McCloskey is overly optimistic that other countries and cultures will be able to improve their standard of living as much as the leading countries that have embraced the bourgeois virtues. Many countries have indeed improved the conditions of their citizens, but only by copying the technologies and institutions of the countries that led the bourgeois revolution. The ability to produce the Great Convergence (in which other countries approach the standard of living of Western Europe and the US) envisioned by McCloskey will be limited until and unless they adopt the bourgeois virtues, as most of Europe eventually did. Only through a wholesale cultural transformation can these societies enlist all of their citizens in the necessary broad-based quest for trade-tested betterment. Unfortunately for many of them, this is not happening because the bourgeois virtues are usually anathema to their own indigenous cultures.
McCloskey points out that the admiration for the bourgeois virtues continues to be under assault by the clerisy. The rise of the bourgeoisie delegitimized and diminished the political, economic and cultural power of the clerisy. The clerisy have been fighting back ever since. McCloskey warns that our prevailing culture, which still fundamentally admires the bourgeois virtues, can be undone by the rhetoric of the clerisy, and this appears to be happening today. This book is McCloskey’s eloquent explanation for what is at stake in this philosophical conflict, and why.
McCloskey’s exposition is broad in scope, well-researched, thorough and argued well. On the other hand, her writing style is difficult to read because she uses long sentences, frequent and occasionally long parentheticals, and obscure allusions (intended as a “wink-wink” to the well-read).
I did not read and review the two previous books in the trilogy (Bourgeois Virtues, Bourgeois Dignity), but this book appears to be the summation and conclusion of the argument that McCloskey makes for bourgeois virtues and their importance in the Great Enrichment of the globe’s population. I strongly recommend this book for anyone who wants to understand the fundamental reasons why Western Civilization eclipsed the rest of the world by growing the prosperity of its citizens.
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Top reviews from the United States
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- Reviewed in the United States on June 10, 2021
- Reviewed in the United States on June 16, 2020
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Pepi Arenas perezReviewed in Spain on May 10, 2020
Que cuando se haga una compla por error que te des la opción de hacer la devulucion
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Client AmazonReviewed in France on February 3, 2018
Ce sont les valeurs, et pas les institutions qui expliquent le décollage économique
- Nargis AjazReviewed in the United Kingdom on May 20, 2016
Backbone for entrepreneurs, does keep you involved with examples ...
