Scan barcode
A review by ben_smitty
Leave Me Alone and I'll Make You Rich: How the Bourgeois Deal Enriched the World by Deirdre Nansen McCloskey, Art Carden
3.0
Full disclosure: I started McCloskey's bourgeois trilogy but could not even finish the first 600-page book. I was bewildered when I found out she had written a book called Economical Writing, a book on how to write brief and concise academic papers lol. I found Marxism/Socialism convincing enough thanks to Graeber, Eagleton, Pinketty, McCaraher (though I was too lazy to read Marx himself), and honestly, I was about to give up on capitalism before Alan Jacobs told me in a dream (his blog) that he found McCloskey 's bourgeois trilogy to be the most sensible defense of capitalism.
It would be intellectually dishonest of me to give up on capitalism without reading McCloskey, but who the hell can commit to reading 1,800+ pages on economics these days when they have two kids?
You can imagine my delight when I found out about this 200-page summary of the entire trilogy; finally, someone who actually practices economical writing(!)
McCloskey's defense of virtuous capitalism is noteworthy here, and I tend to agree with her that the problem lies not necessarily in the "system" of capitalism itself (if we can call it that) but in the decline of shared morality. Her defense of Smith and her insistence that Smith actually published a book on capitalist ethics which is often overlooked by everyone are helpful correctives of the caricature of capitalism as an amoral system. While slavery and exploitation existed virtually everywhere, this did not mean that countries with the most slaves became the richest and vice versa. Rather, it was through human ingenuity that capitalism enriched the world.
McCloskey is also really good at guilt-tripping you for enjoying the fruits of capitalism: Do you like having toilets? Refrigerators? Electricity? Then why are you whining about capitalism? etc. Though empirical evidence of capitalism's greatness abounds in this short book, I'm more likely to agree with Eagleton when he says yes, we can all agree that capitalism has been good, but with externalities now reaching apocalyptic proportions, can we build off of capitalism (instead of dismantling and starting from scratch) and create a more equitable society? Can we leave all this scarcity nonsense behind? Let's credit capitalism for its greatness, yes, but let's shift our attention from the market to the people that populate it.
But McCloskey seems convinced that things aren't actually that bad. She's a firm believer in human ingenuity, that through humanity's creative potential, the climate apocalypse will sort itself out if we enrich the world with capitalism: the poor can begin to worry about preventing climate change only once they can stop worrying about their next meal.
If this sounds overly optimistic to you, I would agree. There's almost an underlying metaphysic of determinism underneath McCloskey's optimism, one which affirms beyond a shadow of doubt that we are moving inevitably towards an eschatology of progress and innovation, akin to something like (blind) faith. Will she be right? I hope so, but I suppose we'll just have to wait and see.
It would be intellectually dishonest of me to give up on capitalism without reading McCloskey, but who the hell can commit to reading 1,800+ pages on economics these days when they have two kids?
You can imagine my delight when I found out about this 200-page summary of the entire trilogy; finally, someone who actually practices economical writing(!)
McCloskey's defense of virtuous capitalism is noteworthy here, and I tend to agree with her that the problem lies not necessarily in the "system" of capitalism itself (if we can call it that) but in the decline of shared morality. Her defense of Smith and her insistence that Smith actually published a book on capitalist ethics which is often overlooked by everyone are helpful correctives of the caricature of capitalism as an amoral system. While slavery and exploitation existed virtually everywhere, this did not mean that countries with the most slaves became the richest and vice versa. Rather, it was through human ingenuity that capitalism enriched the world.
McCloskey is also really good at guilt-tripping you for enjoying the fruits of capitalism: Do you like having toilets? Refrigerators? Electricity? Then why are you whining about capitalism? etc. Though empirical evidence of capitalism's greatness abounds in this short book, I'm more likely to agree with Eagleton when he says yes, we can all agree that capitalism has been good, but with externalities now reaching apocalyptic proportions, can we build off of capitalism (instead of dismantling and starting from scratch) and create a more equitable society? Can we leave all this scarcity nonsense behind? Let's credit capitalism for its greatness, yes, but let's shift our attention from the market to the people that populate it.
But McCloskey seems convinced that things aren't actually that bad. She's a firm believer in human ingenuity, that through humanity's creative potential, the climate apocalypse will sort itself out if we enrich the world with capitalism: the poor can begin to worry about preventing climate change only once they can stop worrying about their next meal.
If this sounds overly optimistic to you, I would agree. There's almost an underlying metaphysic of determinism underneath McCloskey's optimism, one which affirms beyond a shadow of doubt that we are moving inevitably towards an eschatology of progress and innovation, akin to something like (blind) faith. Will she be right? I hope so, but I suppose we'll just have to wait and see.