solely expenditure and consumption devoted to securing pleasure’.131 According to
Say, luxury was a form of ostentation designed primarily to dazzle and impress
others. Most importantly, it was a form of ‘unproductive consumption’, and as
such directed resources away from ‘reproductive expenditure’. There was no merit
in consuming everything one could, Say concluded, only in consuming what was
reasonable.
This was no minor matter, as it related to one of the central conclusions reached
by Say. What later became known as Say’s Law stipulated that total demand in an
economy could not exceed or fall below total supply in that economy. As he himself
expressed it, ‘products are paid for by products’, and not by consumption. Into
what kind of error, he asked therefore, ‘have fallen those who, seeing generally that
production always equals consumption (because it is necessary that what is con-
sumed should have been produced), have mistaken the effect for the cause, have
conjectured that unproductive consumption alone brings about reproduction, that
saving is directly contrary to public prosperity and that the most useful citizen is the
one who spends the most.’132 If this truth was demonstrated by economic theory, it
was likewise proven by history. Poverty, Say wrote, ‘always follows in the wake of
luxury’. Do not be fooled, he counselled: a country in decline gives for a time ‘the
image of opulence’, but it can never last and inevitably comes to an end. ‘Those
people’, Say concluded, ‘who, through their great power or talents, seek to spread
the taste for luxury, therefore, conspire against the happiness of nations.’133 For
Say, the challenge was to find a means of reconciling the virtues of frugality and
industry with commerce.
That Say’s concerns about luxury were no isolated preoccupation can be easily
shown by reference to the work of the most important of the political theorists
130 Traité d’Economie Politique, in Collection des Principaux Economistes (Osnabrück, 1966), ix. 22–3.
131 Ibid. 454.
132 Ibid. 459.
133 Ibid. 462.
Sovereignty, Social Contract, and Luxury
143
associated with the French Idéologues, Antoine-Louis-Claude Destutt de Tracy.
Destutt de Tracy discussed luxury at length in two of his most important texts: his
Commentaire sur l’Esprit des lois de Montesquieu and the Traité d’économie politique.134
There were many intriguing elements to his argument. First, Destutt de Tracy
provided an account of the origin of private property that was the very antithesis of
that provided by Rousseau. The concepts yours and mine were never invented because
they derived from the faculty of our will. Second, the will was defined in terms of
the desire to maximize pleasure and to minimize pain, thus placing us under a duty to
satisfy our needs ‘without any extraneous consideration’. Nevertheless Destutt de
Tracy stood back from concluding that all consumption was inherently good, and
he did so because the force of his argument was to be repeatedly directed against
those he disparaged as les oisifs. ‘Consumption’, he wrote, ‘varies greatly according to
the type of consumer as well as according to the nature of the things consumed’.135
Accordingly, Destutt de Tracy’s fulminations against luxury bore a marked
resemblance to the criticisms pronounced by Say. Luxury consisted essentially in
‘non-productive expenditures’. It was wrong to believe that the increase of luxury
would enrich a nation. It did not favour commerce and encourage industry by
quickening the circulation of money. Rather it changed the nature of that circulation
and ‘made it less useful’. It created only ‘a fleeting pleasure’. Only if the alternative
was to bury one’s money in the ground did it make sense to spend it in this way.
‘I believe myself entitled to conclude’, Destutt de Tracy wrote, ‘that, in economic
terms, luxury is always an evil, a continuous cause of misery and weakness. Its true
consequence is continuously to destroy, through the excessive consumption of some,
the product of the work and industry of others.’136
If Say’s argument stopped at this point, Destutt de Tracy pressed on, further
contending that luxury was ‘an even greater evil’ from a moral point of view. It
thrived on vanity and encouraged frivolity. In women it led to depravity and in men
to avarice, and in both ‘to a lack of delicacy and probity’. And it produced ‘these sad
effects, not only amongst those who enjoyed it, but also upon all those who admired
it and who served to provide it’. Moreover, Destutt de Tracy found himself agreeing
with Montesquieu’s original contention that luxury was appropriate to monarchies,
adding that representative governments had no need to pander to ‘the natural
tendency of man to give himself up to superfluous expenditure’. Did this mean,
therefore, that governments, in whose interest it was to combat the advance of luxury,
should resort to sumptuary laws? Not only, Destutt de Tracy replied, were they an
abuse of authority and an attack on property, but they served no purpose
when the spirit of vanity is not incessantly excited by all institutions; when the misery
and ignorance of the lowest class are not so great as to encourage a stupid admiration
for ostentation; when the opportunities to make fast and excessive fortunes are rare;
when wealth is dispersed promptly through the equal division of inheritance; when
134 Commentaire sur l’Esprit des lois de Montesquieu (1819) and Traité d’économie politique (1823),
232–65.
135 Ibid. 243.
136 Destutt de Tracy, Commentaire, 96–7.
144
Sovereignty, Social Contract, and Luxury
finally everything leads us in another direction and towards real pleasures; in a word,
when society is well-ordered.
There, he concluded, were ‘the true means to combat luxury’.137
It has been suggested that the concept of luxury ceased to be a central concept
of economic analysis in the nineteenth century. In his otherwise admirable book,
Philippe Perrot repeats the earlier claim of Serge Latouche that the concept did
not figure in any of the four major dictionaries of political economy published in
France during the nineteenth century.138 This is simply incorrect. There is an
entry on luxury in Charles Ganilh’s Dictionnaire analytique d’économie politique of
1826139 and in Sandelin’s Répertoire général d’économie politique ancienne et
moderne of 1847.140 The same entry by Courcelle-Seneuil figured in both the
Coquelin and Guillaumin dictionary of 1852 and the dictionary edited by Léon
Say and Joseph Chailley of 1892. Moreover, only the entry penned by Ganilh
disclosed an indifference to the social and psychological consequences of luxury.
Sandelin concluded that luxury went hand in hand with the ‘depravity’ of morals,
whilst Courcelle-Seneuil wrote that, ‘[w]ith regard to luxury, the teachings of
political economy fully confirm those of morality’.141 It would be wrong there-
fore to conclude that, as the French economy took its first significant steps
towards industrialization, the moral critique of luxury dis
appeared altogether
from view.
Unsurprisingly, it was evident in much of the literature of Utopian socialism,
where there was frequently displayed the hope that the workers would avoid a taste
for opulence and ostentation and would limit their consumption to the satisfaction
of ‘real’ needs. This was certainly the view of no less a figure than Pierre-Joseph
Proudhon (who contended that the errors of socialism, be it ‘epicurean or ascetic’,
derived from ‘a false conception of value’) as it was also that of Étienne Cabet. It
was similarly to be found in the work of the most prominent legitimist political
economist of the day, Alban de Villeneuve-Bargemont, most notably in his Econ-
omie politique chrétienne, ou Recherches sur la Nature et les Causes du Paupérisme en
France et en Europe et sur les Moyens de le soulager et de le prévenir.142 Other examples
could be cited with relative ease.
Of greater significance was the fact that the moral critique of luxury continued
to be articulated by nineteenth-century republicans. We can see this quite clearly
by returning our attention to Renouvier’s Manuel Républicain de l’Homme et du
137 Destutt de Tracy, Commentaire, 112.
138 See Perrot, Le Luxe, 38, and Serge Latouche, ‘Luxe et économie’, Revue de MAUSS, 16 (1985),
71–2.
139 (1826), 270–80.
140 (The Hague, 1847), iv. 400–3.
141 Charles Coquelin and Gilbert-Urbain Guillaumin, Dictionnaire de l’Économie Politique (Paris,
1852), ii. 109–12, and Léon Say and Joseph Chailley, Nouveaux Dictionnaire de l’Économie Politique
(Paris, 1892), ii. 191–4. Courcelle-Seneuil was a leading member of the so-called laissez-faire ultras or
Paris group. The above-cited dictionaries also had entries on sumptuary law and discussions of luxury
in relation to taxation.
142 (1834). See also Villeneuve-Bargemont’s Histoire de l’Économie Politique ou Études Historiques,
Philosophiques et Religieuse sur l’Économie Politique (1841), 2 vols.
Sovereignty, Social Contract, and Luxury
145
Citoyen.143 As we have seen, Renouvier sought to define the rights and liberties
to be enjoyed by the citizen of the Republic. Towards the end of his text, and
after having discussed the importance of the sentiment of fraternity, he turned
his thoughts to the desirability or otherwise of luxury.144 You speak, Renouvier
had his student interlocutor remark, of the ‘levelling of conditions’ but in such
circumstances, he inquires, what would become of luxury and those who lived
off its production? Was it not the case, he goes on to ask, that great wealth ‘spent
ostentatiously serves at least to maintain workers’? Renouvier’s reply was to accept
that at present the luxury of the rich provided a livelihood for the poor, but he then
added that the poor would only die of hunger if the abolition of luxury was not
accompanied by an acknowledgement of the right to work. Accompanied by such a
reform, the worker would pass from the production of luxury goods to the
production of something of use and of practical value. In addition, the ‘idler’
who had previously paid for luxury would now turn his reduced resources to the
production of something useful. Was luxury to be abolished altogether? There was,
Renouvier contended (thereby echoing the very arguments deployed in its favour
at the height of the 1789 Revolution),145 a place for ‘collective luxury’ in the shape
of libraries, theatres, museums, and so on, all of which could be regarded as
expressions of fraternity. There was even a place for luxury in the hands of private
individuals; but such luxury was scandalous when so many people were denied the
necessities of life. ‘In a Republic’, Renouvier wrote, ‘where the solidarity between
men is recognized, I find it repugnant that luxury should spread before ease of
circumstance has been attained and that the caprices of men should be satisfied
whilst the needs of others cry out before Providence.’146 To this was then added two
familiar refrains. He trembled, Renouvier declared, when he thought of those
nations––in particular of England––whose wealth and prosperity consisted in the
perfect comfort of a few thousand families whose actions condemned millions to live
on bare necessities. Second, the greater majority of rich people were ‘enervated’ by
luxury, ‘debased’ by dissolute living, and ‘consumed’ by boredom. However, this was
‘just punishment’ for those who had sought ‘the refinement’ of their lives through
‘the exploitation of their brothers’. It was only in ‘an age of corruption’, Renouvier
declared, that such behaviour was not condemned. ‘Nothing is beautiful, nothing is
noble’, he remarked, ‘that is not also useful.’
Arguments against luxury, forcibly articulated in the eighteenth century,
clearly retained much of their vitality and vigour amongst republican opinion.
Not only this but, as Renouvier’s text testifies, they occupied an important
position in the ferment of ideas that followed the fall of the July Monarchy and
the establishment of the Second Republic. To extend this argument further we
would need to look more closely at the study of political economy as it developed
in the latter half of the nineteenth century. As fascinating and as tempting as this
143 (1904).
144 Ibid. 265–80.
145 See Perrot, Le Luxe, 80.
146 Renouvier, Manuel Républicain, 269.
146
Sovereignty, Social Contract, and Luxury
would be, it is unfortunately not possible here. What can be established, however,
is that the early decades of the Third Republic saw something akin to the
democratization of consumption––exemplified above all by the opening of the
first of Paris’s great department stores––and that, in this context, there were some
who were prepared to reconceptualize luxury as the search for comfort and
convenience rather than a taste for selfish indulgence and ostentation. In this
less aristocratic and less harmful form, luxury could be defended as a stimulus to
manufacturing and the arts and, as the economist Paul Leroy-Beaulieu argued in
1894, as ‘one of the principal agents of human progress’.147 Nevertheless, it was
not only conservative traditionalists who continued to worry about the dangers of
material prosperity.148 Republicans too remained deeply troubled at the thought
of a market where the rules of social justice did not apply and where conspicuous
and unregulated consumption was considered to be the norm. The analysis of the
condition of anomie provided by Émile Durkheim would be a case in point. If
this anxiety did not necessarily entail an attempted revival and recall of the virtues
of austerity and self-denial, it did encourage the search for a new moral principle
capable of placing restraints upon the workings of a market society. The doctrine
of solidarité, discussed at the end of the previous chapter, performed this function
admirably.149 By way of conclusion, therefore, we might care to reflect upon the
enduring quality of Rousseauian arguments against luxury (and by extension,
of republican hostility to the commercial model embodied by England). That this
>
was so tells us much about the difficulties faced by those who sought to see France
embrace the values and practices of a commercial society.
147 ‘Le Luxe: La fonction de la richesse’, Revue des Deux Mondes, 126 (1894), 72–100, 547–73. In
its attempt to summarize all the arguments for and against luxury, the article by Leroy-Beaulieu recalls
the earlier essay of Saint-Lambert.
148 See Victoria E. Thompson, The Virtuous Marketplace: Women and Men, Money and Politics in
Paris, 1830–1870 (Baltimore, Md., 2000).
149 See Rosalind H. Williams, Dream Worlds: Mass Consumption in Late Nineteenth-Century France
(Berkeley and Los Angeles, Calif., 1982).
4
Commerce, Usurpation, and Democracy
I
‘Voltaire discovered England; Voltaire discovered commerce’: thus writes
Daniel Roche at the beginning of his analysis of what he terms ‘the kingdom
of exchange’.1 What this discovery meant for Voltaire was enthusiastically
expressed in his Lettres philosophiques, published in 1734.2 ‘Commerce’,
Voltaire wrote, ‘which has enriched the citizens of England, has contributed
to making them free, and this liberty has extended commerce in its turn’.3
Not only this but ‘an Englishman, being a free man, goes to heaven by the
route that he chooses’.4 This was evidenced by the London Stock Exchange.
‘There’, he wrote, ‘the Jew, the Mohammedan and the Christian deal with
each other as if they were of the same religion, and give the name of infidel only
to those who go bankrupt; the Presbyterian trusts the Anabaptist, and the
Anglican accepts the promise of the Quaker. Upon departing from these
peaceful and free exchanges, some go to the synagogue whilst others go for
a drink.’5 Trade and religious toleration went hand in hand, each mutually
strengthening the other.
It was this combination, Voltaire concluded, which had allowed the English to
become ‘masters of the seas’, but he also wanted us to understand that it was the
commercial spirit which more broadly explained the character of English society
and government. If in ancient Rome, Voltaire argued, the consequence of civil war
had been slavery, in England it was liberty, and this was so because
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