Irving Kristol, who died last month at age 89, inspired some highly mixed feelings in me. On the positive side, this renowned public intellectual was possessed of political realism, a firm anti-utopian grasp of the possible. Like Thomas Sowell and P.J. O’Rourke, though more understated, he had a superb gift for deflating the morally-charged conceits and histrionics of Left egalitarianism. On the negative side, he exhibited a shockingly narrow and vitriolic view of contemporary culture. That hatred, unfortunately, did much to sour his view of capitalism. And his widespread influence on this count has become painfully apparent.
Arguably more than anyone else in the 20th century, Irving Kristol and Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973) defined, in different ways, the American Right’s view of capitalism. Each thought little of latter-day liberalism and the capitalists who accommodated it, but Kristol believed that businessmen who behaved contrarily to civilized (or “bourgeois”) norms were at least as bad as socialists. Established political authorities thus have an obligation to ban certain buyer-seller transactions – a great many of them, actually. Modern societies, like ancient ones, must affirm objective truths.
Mises, by contrast, saw projecting motive onto capitalists and their customers as a futile and potentially tyrannical exercise. In his book, The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality, the preeminent Austrian economist observed that animosity toward capitalism is manifest in a dislike of capitalists. Opponents of business, he argued, view businessmen as profit-obsessed reprobates undermining societal well-being:
As they see it, this ghastly mode of society’s economic organization has brought about nothing but mischief and misery…For these scoundrels nothing counts but their moneyed interests. They do not produce good and really useful things, but only what will yield the highest profits. They poison bodies with alcoholic beverages and tobacco, and souls and minds with tabloids, lascivious books and silly moving pictures. The ‘ideological superstructure’ of capitalism is a literature of decay and degradation, the burlesque show and the art of strip-tease, the Hollywood pictures and the detective stories.
These words, though written more than 50 years ago, have an oddly contemporary ring. More to the point, they refer to moralists on the Right as much as those on the Left. That’s all the more troubling since many among the former – like Irving Kristol – have been professed friends of free enterprise. The truth is that the Right carries a cartload of petty anti-capitalist resentments of its own.
This goes against the grain of accepted wisdom, which sees anti-market attitudes as an almost exclusively Leftist vocation. Such a view is understandable. The Left’s reigning idea is that the market, left to its own devices, is incapable of providing moral justice. While capitalism may be efficient, its enormous social costs require rectification through outside control. Inevitably, that means a massive expansion of the State, so long as the “right” people (e.g., Barack Obama, Hugo Chavez) run it. Yet traditionalists of the Right have their own pedigree of fear and loathing of capitalism long predating the rise of the Left. Their arguments raise the age-old philosophical distinction between “wants” and “needs.”
For many centuries, almost all societies were de facto “conservative.” That is, the main tenets of classical conservatism, steeped in reverence for hierarchy, were so ingrained that they required no political movement to promote them. People simply “knew their place.” Those of low hereditary status risked severe sanctions if they pulled rank on their social betters.
Luxury, a manifestation of early capitalism, thus was something to be feared. Its widespread availability, authorities believed, would lead to sloth, lechery or worse. In later centuries, those justifying such a moral code frequently pointed to fallen ancient civilizations whose masses of people had grown spoiled, soft and weak from luxury. Only landed nobility had the right to fulfill wants. Everyone else had to be content with rigidly-circumscribed needs. In his book, Luxury: The Concept in Western Thought, Eden to Smollett, John Sekora notes:
(T)he pursuit of luxury, however considered, was viewed as a fundamental and generic vice from which other subordinate vices would ensue. In the Old Testament, where it is equated with disobedience to God, it is the cardinal sin of the Israelites. In Plato and Aristotle, the Cynics and the Stoics, it is the first and most important violation of nature and reason. For the Roman historians, it is the primary factor in the dissolution of the Republic. For the Christian theologians, it is prima facie evidence of both disobedience to God and love of a degraded world.
The prohibition against luxury also assumed a common legal dimension: sumptuary laws. Such enactments reinforced existing hierarchies. By making food, clothing and other consumption items associated with aristocrats off-limits to commoners, those in power could be insulated from challenge. During the ancient Roman Republic, authorities published a book containing the names of everyone found guilty of luxurious living. England during the Middle Ages prescribed the color, material and type of clothing for people of various ranks and trades. Such laws were not necessarily rigorously enforced, but their mere existence inhibited the development of business culture. For if shame and approbation were attached to living “too well,” what intrepid entrepreneur would service such illicit desires?
Sumptuary laws pretty much had become extinct by the close of the 18th century, as modern ideas of sovereignty, rights and contract took hold, but the instinct to mistrust and punish those of low status has remained powerful. Military life, where rank is paramount, is probably the clearest example of tight restrictions on dress, speech and other outward behavior. Countless unwritten laws of etiquette still prevail. An employee does not, for example, drive a flashier car than the boss without inviting suspicion. Highly liturgical religions also have maintained a strict code of appearances, as do various sectarian cults. Margaret Atwood’s dystopian 1985 novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, isn’t that far-fetched.
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