Timothy Taylor — Charles Dickens on Management vs. Labor UPDATED

"A Christmas Carol" by Charles Dickens is now an entertainment staple at Christmas time. This and many of the other stories that Dickens recounted so skillfully while avoiding rank sentimentality raise the question of his personal political views. The world he describes fictionally is now famous as "the Dickensian world." HIs work was instrumental in the reform of the classical economic liberalism in Britain of the time and the introduction of at least a degree of social liberalism.

Fortunately, Dickens addressed this question.

But more broadly, the article is of interest because Dickens, telling the story in the first person, takes the position that in thinking about a strike taking place in the town of Preston, one need not take the side either of management or labor. Instead, Dickens writes, one may "be a friend to both," and feel that the strike is "to be deplored on all accounts." Of course, the problem with a middle-of-the-road position is that you can end up being hit by ideological traffic going in both directions. But the ability of Dickens to sympathize with people in a wide range of positions is surely part what gives his novels and his world-view such lasting power. The article goes into a fair amount of detail, and can be read on-line, so I will content myself here with a substantial excerpt.

Here's a portion of the 1854 essay by Dickens:

"ON STRIKE"

Conversable Economist
Charles Dickens on Management vs. Labor
Timothy Taylor | Managing editor of the Journal of Economic Perspectives, based at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota

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One of Dickens' contemporary admirers was Karl Marx, who praised him in an article for the New York Tribune on August 1, 1854:

The present splendid brotherhood of fiction-writers in England, whose graphic and eloquent pages have issued to the world more political and social truths than have been uttered by all the professional politicians, publicists and moralists put together, have described every section of the middle class, from the "highly genteel" annuitant and fundholder who looks upon all sorts of business as vulgar, to the little shopkeeper and lawyer's clerk.

And how have Dickens and Thackeray, Miss Brontë and Mrs. Gaskell painted them? As full of presumption, affectation, petty tyranny and ignorance; and the civilized world have confirmed their verdict with the damning epigram that it has fixed to this class, that "they are servile to those above, and tyrannical to those beneath them."

Read Dickens. If you're not up for 800-900 pages, start with the much shorter Hard Times or Great Expectations. Dickens isn't a revolutionary, but his representations of 19th-century capitalist society speak powerfully to the need and desire for revolution. His novels are among the most amazing things in the English language--and in world literature.

I recall Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin being required in my high school course in American history, which was a required course for all student at that time. It made a profound impression on me. I also loved reading Victorian novels while I was in high school. I devoured Dickens, Thackeray, etc. But I didn't connect this plots to the present. At the time, I though that that was just times gone by.

Socialist Worker
A WRITER FOR NEW HARD TIMES
Bill Keach

UPDATE

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels documented conditions in industrial England in those times as part of the empirical research for writing Das Kapital. See F. Engels, Condition of the Working Class in England (1845).

Conversable Economist
Charles Dickens on Seeing the Poor
Timothy Taylor | Managing editor of the Journal of Economic Perspectives, based at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota

Bill Mitchell — There is hope – neo-liberalism is an historical aberration

Another lesson from history coming up. People of my generation studied the great books by Charles Dickens, which apart from their literary form, left an indelible impression of life in England during the period covered by the 1834 Poor Law. We also read George Orwell’s account of working class life in Northern England in the pre-World War 2 period. 

These impressions meant that we heralded in the creation of comprehensive welfare states in the Post World War 2 period as evolutionary innovations made possible by increasing national prosperity. We formed a common belief that this prosperity allowed us to escape the sort of conditions that Dickens was describing in early industrial England. And if prosperity fell, we would have to rein in some of the generosity that the welfare state systems provide. 

How many times have you read or heard some politician or corporate lobbyist claim that advanced nations, with fiat currencies, can no longer ‘afford’ to fund comprehensive welfare states that protect the poorest citizens in their societies. Many of these speeches are made at glittering functions where business types enjoy sumptuous lunches with plenty of wine and fine food and listen to politicians talk about running out of money and the need to pull our belts in.

The arguments are used to attack the comprehensive welfare systems that emerged in the post World War 2 period as governments took responsibility for improving the plight of the poor. But, an understanding of history allows us to appreciate that the modern welfare state was nothing particularly new. 

There had been a comprehensive welfare support system in place in Britain for 300 years before the 1834 Poor Laws ended that system. This should give us hope – 1601 Poor Law (comprehensive welfare system) -> 1834 Poor Law Amendment (demolished it and blamed the poor for their plight) -> Modern Post World War 2 welfare states (comprehensive welfare system recognising systemic failure rather than individual blame) -> neo-liberalism (back to the 1834 mentality) -> ???? – hopefully another progressive reaction to the greed driving the current system.... [paragraphing added for online readability]

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
There is hope – neo-liberalism is an historical aberration
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

Timothy Taylor — Charles Dickens on Seeing the Poor

Economists might also wince just a bit at the reaction of some economists to poverty, who Dickens calls "the unreasonable disciples of a reasonable school." Dickens writes: "I know that the unreasonable disciples of a reasonable school, demented disciples who push arithmetic and political economy beyond all bounds of sense (not to speak of such a weakness as humanity), and hold them to be all-sufficient for every case, can easily prove that such things ought to be, and that no man has any business to mind them. Without disparaging those indispensable sciences in their sanity, I utterly renounce and abominate them in their insanity ..."

Group insanity or Scrooges?

Conversable Economist
Charles Dickens on Seeing the Poor
Timothy Taylor | Managing editor of the Journal of Economic Perspectives, based at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota