Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter i
2. Contents v
3. Exordium: The Three Volumes Show That We Are Rich Because of an Ethical and Rhetorical Change xi
4. Acknowledgments xxxvii
5. First Question. What Is to Be Explained?
6. Part I A Great Enrichment Happened, and Will Happen
7. 1 The World Is Pretty Rich, but Once Was Poor 5
8. 2 For Malthusian and Other Reasons, Very Poor 14
9. 3 Then Many of Us Shot Up the Blade of a Hockey Stick 21
10. 4 As Your Own Life Shows 30
11. 5 The Poor Were Made Much Better Off 37
12. 6 Inequality Is Not the Problem 45
13. 7 Despite Doubts from the Left 53
14. 8 Or from the Right and Middle 61
15. 9 The Great International Divergence Can Be Overcome 73
16. Second Question Why Not the Conventional Explanations?
17. Part II Explanations from Left and Right Have Proven Fa lse
18. 10 The Divergence Was Not Caused by Imperialism 85
19. 11 Poverty Cannot Be Overcome from the Left by Overthrowing “Capitalism” 93
20. 12 “Accumulate, Accumulate” Is Not What Happened in History 101
21. 13 But Neither Can Poverty Be Overcome from the Right by Implanting “Institution 111
22. 14 Because Ethics Matters, and Changes, More 117
23. 15 And the Oomph of Institutional Change Is Far Too Small 129
24. 16 Most Governmental Institutions Make Us Poorer 139
25. Third Question What, Then, Explains the Enrichment?
26. Part III Bourgeois Life Had Been Rhetorically Revalued in Britain at the Onset of the Industrial Revolution
27. 17 It Is a Truth Universally Acknowledged That Even Dr. Johnson and Jane Austen Exhibit the Revaluation 151
28. 18 No Woman but a Blockhead Wrote for Anything but Money 161
29. 19 Adam Smith Exhibits Bourgeois Theory at Its Ethical Best 172
30. 20 Smith Was Not a Mr. Max U, but Rather the Last of the Former Virtue Ethicists 184
31. 21 That Is, He Was No Reductionist, Economistic or Otherwise 193
32. 22 And He Formulated the Bourgeois Deal 199
33. 23 Ben Franklin Was Bourgeois, and He Embodied Betterment 210
34. 24 By 1848 a Bourgeois Ideology Had Wholly Triumphed 223
35. Part IV A Pro-Bourgeois Rhetoric Was Forming in England around 1700
36. 25 The Word “Honest” Shows the Changing Attitude toward the Aristocracy and the Bourgeoisie 235
37. 26 And So Does the Word “Eerlijk” 247
38. 27 Defoe, Addison, and Steele Show It, Too 255
39. 28 The Bourgeois Revaluation Becomes a Commonplace, as in The London Merchant 263
40. 29 Bourgeois Europe, for Example, Loved Measurement 271
41. 30 The Change Was in Social Habits of the Lip, Not in Psychology 277
42. 31 And the Change Was Specifically British 285
43. Part V Yet England Had Recently Lagged in Bourgeois Ideology, Compared with the Netherlands
44. 32 Bourgeois Shakespeare Disdained Trade and the Bourgeoisie 295
45. 33 As Did Elizabethan England Generally 305
46. 34 Aristocratic England, for Example, Scorned Measurement 316
47. 35 The Dutch Preached Bourgeois Virtue 326
48. 36 And the Dutch Bourgeoisie Was Virtuous 336
49. 37 For Instance, Bourgeois Holland Was Tolerant, and Not for Prudence Only 345
50. Part VI Reformation, Revolt, Revolution, and Reading Increased the Liberty and Dignity of Ordinary Europeans
51. 38 The Causes Were Local, Temporary, and Unpredictable 359
52. 39 “Democratic” Church Governance Emboldened People 367
53. 40 The Theology of Happiness Changed circa 1700 377
54. 41 Printing and Reading and Fragmentation Sustained the Dignity of Commoners 388
55. 42 Political Ideas Mattered for Equal Liberty and Dignity 401
56. 43 Ideas Made for a Bourgeois Revaluation 410
57. 44 The Rhetorical Change Was Necessary, and Maybe Sufficient 417
58. Part VII Nowhere Before on a Large Scale Had Bourgeois or Other Commoners Been Honored
59. 45 Talk Had Been Hostile to Betterment 427
60. 46 The Hostility Was Ancient 440
61. 47 Yet Some Christians Anticipated a Respected Bourgeoisie 450
62. 48 And Betterment, Though Long Disdained, Developed Its Own Vested Interests 459
63. 49 And Then Turned 468
64. 50 On the Whole, However, the Bourgeoisies and Their Bettering Projects Have Been Precarious 476
65. Part VIII Words and Ideas Ca used the Modern World
66. 51 Sweet Talk Rules the Economy 489
67. 52 And Its Rhetoric Can Change Quickly 499
68. 53 It Was Not a Deep Cultural Change 505
69. 54 Yes, It Was Ideas, Not Interests or Institutions, That Changed, Suddenly, in Northwestern Europe 511
70. 55 Elsewhere Ideas about the Bourgeoisie Did Not Change 520
71. Fourth Question: What Are the Dangers?
72. Part IX The History and Economics Have Been Misunderstood
73. 56 The Change in Ideas Contradicts Many Ideas from the Political Middle, 1890–1980 531
74. 57 And Many Polanyish Ideas from the Left 543
75. 58 Yet Polanyi Was Right about Embeddedness 553
76. 59 Trade-Tested Betterment Is Democratic in Consumption 560
77. 60 And Liberating in Production 569
78. 61 And Therefore Bourgeois Rhetoric Was Better for the Poor 574
79. Part X That Is, Rhetoric Made Us, but Can Readily Unmake Us
80. 62 After 1848 the Clerisy Converted to Antibetterment 589
81. 63 The Clerisy Betrayed the Bourgeois Deal, and Approved the Bolshevik and Bismarckian Deals 597
82. 64 Anticonsumerism and Pro-Bohemianism Were Fruits of the Antibetterment Reaction 608
83. 65 Despite the Clerisy’s Doubts 618
84. 66 What Matters Ethically Is Not Equality of Outcome, but the Condition of the Working Class 631
85. 67 A Change in Rhetoric Made Modernity, and Can Spread It 640
86. Notes 651
87. Works Cited 703
88. Index 751