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Foundations of Environmental Economics Wolfgang Buchholz
Mapping Mainstream Economics: Genealogical Foundations of Alternativity seeks to establish a definition of the mainstream economics, and by extension the alternatives to it, by adopting a genealogical approach: tracing the methodological development of the economic mainstream through its ancestry, which allows for a definition of the mainstream that is separate from politically charged categories or gridlocked academic arguments between received schools of thought.
The book follows the evolution of the economic mainstream through four major transformations of the discipline: from political to analytical economics, debates around a logical empiricist economics, the consolidation of neoclassical economics, and the recent expansion of the mainstream. For each of these steps, the key point of departure is explored, illustrated through the work of leading authors at the time. Thus, the book draws on recent research from the history of economic thought and debates the crucial role of historic concepts of economics for alternativity in the field. To put the approach into practice, it examines the relation between today’s mainstream economics and two of its alternatives: ecological economics and degrowth. Finally, the book reflects on recent exciting developments in the discourse on alternativity and sheds light on some distant relatives of today’s mainstream. This book marks a significant contribution to the literature on the debates around the state and nature of mainstream, alternative, and heterodox economics.
Georg N. Schäfer is a doctoral candidate of sociology at Friedrich Schiller University Jena and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science. His PhD project, which will inquire into the role of modern economic activity in the genesis of the Anthropocene, links his research interest in the history of ideas and knowledge, the history of economic thought, environmental history, and the human geological epoch. He is also an associated researcher with the Institut für Wirtschaftsgestaltung, Berlin.
Sören E. Schuster is a doctoral candidate of philosophy at Albert-LudwigsUniversität Freiburg. His research pursuits at the Institut für Wirtschaftsgestaltung in Berlin include philosophy of economics, history of economic thought, philosophy of management, and Friedrich Nietzsche.
Economics and Humanities
Series Editor: Sebastian Berger, University of the West of England (UWE Bristol), UK.
The Economics and Humanities series presents the economic wisdom of the humanities and arts. Its volumes gather the economic senses sheltered and revealed by some of the most excellent sources within philosophy, poetry, art, and story-telling. By re-rooting economics in its original domain these contributions allow economic phenomena and their meanings to come into the open more fully; indeed, they allow us to ask anew the question “What is economics?”. Economic truth is thus shown to arise from the Human rather than the Market.
Readers will gain a foundational understanding of a humanities-based economics and find their economic sensibility enriched. They should turn to this series if they are interested in questions such as: What are the economic consequences of rooting economic Truth in the Human? What is the purpose of a humanities-based economics? What is the proper meaning of the “oikos”, and how does it arise? What are the true meanings of wealth and poverty, gain and loss, capital and productivity? In what sense is economic reasoning with words more fundamental than reasoning with numbers? What is the dimension and measure of human dwelling in the material world?
These volumes address themselves to all those who are interested in sources and foundations for economic wisdom. Students and academics who are fundamentally dissatisfied with the state of economics and worried that its crisis undermines society will find this series of interest.
Foundations for a Humanitarian Economy
Re-thinking Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy
William D. Bishop
Mapping Mainstream Economics
Genealogical Foundations of Alternativity
Georg N. Schäfer and Sören E. Schuster
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Mapping Mainstream Economics
Genealogical Foundations of Alternativity
Georg N. Schäfer and Sören E. Schuster
First published 2022 by Routledge
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Names: Schäfer, Georg N., author. | Schuster, Sören E., author.
Title: Mapping mainstream economics : genealogical foundations of alternativity / Georg N. Schäfer and Sören E. Schuster
Description: 1 Edition. | New York, NY : Routledge, 2022. | Series: Economics and humanities | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2022008456 | ISBN 9781032262192 (hardback) | ISBN 9781032262208 (paperback) | ISBN 9781003287148 (ebook)
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022008456
ISBN: 978-1-032-26219-2 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-26220-8 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-28714-8 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003287148
1 Introduction: a genealogical approach to alternativity 1
2 Today’s mainstream in four genealogical steps 11
From political to analytical economics 11
Economics before neoclassical dominance 11
The welfare definition of economics 12
The practical definition of economics 12
Robbins’ scarcity-based definition of economics 14
Robbins’ impulse: the theoretical core of neoclassical economics 15
On the boundaries of Robbins’ economic analysis 16
How the nature of economics produced its neoclassical science 18
Toward a logical empiricist economics? 19
Searching for a philosophical-scientific foundation of economics 19
Blaug’s impulse: falsification in economics 19
Historical and rational reconstructions 21
The claim of scientific progress: economics according to absolutism 22
How falsification challenged neoclassical economics as a science 23
Consolidation of neoclassical economics 23
The painful discrepancy between methodological standards and economics 23
Hausman’s impulse: approximate laws instead of falsification and predictions 24
From an external philosophy of science to a supply source of tools 27
The expansion of the mainstream in economics as an external shock 28
The decline of neoclassical economics 28
The expansion of mainstream economics 29
The limits of pluralism in economics 30
How to consolidate the mainstream, again? 31
How diversity saves objectivity 33
A new practical definition of economics 34
A brief recap: four genealogical steps 34
Today’s mainstream as practical economics: a meta-methodological perspective 35
3 Genealogical outlook: after today’s mainstream 48
Initial position: the consolidated mainstream 48 From Blaug to Lapidus 49
Lapidus’ impulse: meta-description to grasp innovation 50
Toward a self-abolition of the new mainstream? 51
4 Application contexts 55
Application context 1: ecological economics 55 What is ecological economics? 55
How is ecological economics related to today’s mainstream? 56
Application context 2: degrowth 60 What is degrowth? 60
How is degrowth related to today’s mainstream? 62
Foreword
Our project, a genealogical approach to alternativity in economics, began with the ambitious attempt to map the diversity of alternative approaches within and to economics, a task which has become rather complex in recent years. The emergence of new approaches from disciplines as heterodox as anthropology, literature studies, sociology or philosophy has especially reinvigorated the field in a way that a new kind of alternativity to economics seemed to be on the move. By working out an overview of this vibrant and uncertain field, we hoped to systematically assess, map, and thus make accessible this potential new alternativity. Quite soon it became clear that the project of mapping involves not only an almost infinite scale but also fundamental methodological problems. The main challenge, for which our genealogical approach offers a suitable way of interaction, was to develop a standpoint to make mapping possible.
No meaningful standpoint for such an endeavor can be gleaned from the economic mainstream itself, because, on the one hand, we were interested in conceptions of economic alternativity beyond economics. On the other hand, as this monograph will lay out in detail, economics as classically understood does not offer the reflexive competencies to interrogate its own assumptions. But to be able to discuss alternatives in and to economics fruitfully, a reflexive understanding of economics is necessary—otherwise the question of alternativity is reduced to measuring the degree of affiliation to a given as well as unreflected definition of economics. It thus remains unclear what it means to have an understanding of economics in the first place.
An explanatory mapping, however, might amount to more than listing schools or ordering them according to comparatively arbitrary external criteria. Therefore, we turned to the reflexive branches of economics, namely the philosophy of economics and the history of economic thought, and analyzed how questions of alternativity have been received and understood there. Thus, the project became truly interdisciplinary, and we built
reflections on the economic discourse leading to today’s mainstream. In seeking answers by reconstructing the completely different approaches and reflections, we were constantly thrown back to the very basic question of what economics is, or can be, in the first place. After running repeatedly into these throwbacks, we began to draw the methodological consequences of having prioritized the question of what economics is over possible answers in our work. Thus, instead of oversimplifying the task by merely explicating an understanding of the economy that could produce a mapping through its reflexive competencies, we decided to make our inquisitive approach productive by developing a systematizing and historicizing approach to alternativity in economics. This approach would not lead us to a clear-cut answer, but its methodological openness was promising to explore the subject matter in its own right.
The concept of genealogy offered us the possibility to liquefy the standpoint of possible mappings and thus to continuously make visible developmental steps and transformations that would otherwise fall victim to the nascence of a hasty answer. Moreover, we changed the focus of the research from alternatives to the mainstream as a necessary reference point for any understanding of alternativity. In this methodological setting, we traced the evolution of the mainstream from modern political economy to the present.
However, we do not see our contribution mainly in terms of tracing this branch of the genealogical tree of economics, which certainly bears its controversies. Rather, we believe we have provided a possible framework for a discourse on economics that can access the meaning of mainstream, alternatives, and alternativity. The project thus proposes a path for economics to discover and re-access its philosophical quality.
We would like to express our special gratitude to the research group Hospitable Economics. In a truly hospitable way, Ivo De Gennaro, Ralf Lüfter, Sergiusz Kazmierski, and Robert Simon accompanied our research process, inspiring and challenging our work, which is also an outcome of the joint Establishing Ethics and Human Rights as Sources for Economic Knowledge (EHREK) project at the Free University of Bolzano. Our warmest thanks go to Wolf Dieter Enkelmann and Birger P. Priddat, who were galvanizing interlocutors in the development of our approach. Furthermore, we would like to acknowledge the valuable suggestions and helpful criticism of Sebastian Berger, Oliver Schlaudt, and Peter Seele; their reviews of an earlier version of the text helped us to further improve the book. With Alec Carver, we are grateful to have found an editor who was undeterred by our sometimes idiosyncratic ideas and supported us to make them more comprehensible. This is also true for Grace D. Chin,
whose patience with us has resulted in two great illustrations. Any remaining errors or misunderstandings are all ours. We would also like to express our gratitude to Irene Colombi and Alina Hemm for their help and extend our special thanks to the unfailing support of our friends and family.
1 Introduction A genealogical approach to alternativity
The developments of the past 30 years have demonstrated impressively how contested and diverse the field of economics is. Scholars and students connect globally to establish a pluralist economics; heterodox economists carry out critiques of established approaches, and even mainstream economics incorporates methodologies beyond neoclassical economics by bringing a variety of young subdisciplines like behavioral economics or experimental economics into play. At the same time, the degrowth movement attracts numerous academics and practitioners on the fringes of economics, while once-regional concepts like buen vivir gain international traction. Today’s economics as a science has become highly influenced by interdisciplinary research that draws on psychology, philosophy, mathematics, and much more. Against this changing background, the neoclassical school has lost its exclusive hold over ‘mainstream’ economics. In the wake of the past 30 years’ development, it has become increasingly difficult to determine what the economic mainstream is or even which categories should define it. Thus, the difficulty in defining alternatives is compounded by the lack of a stable reference point in the mainstream, even though it seems like alternatives have never been in greater demand.
A traditional way to categorize approaches and settle the field draws on externally given political categories such as the communist-capitalist spectrum. Political realities in the 21st century now challenge these received categories and hinder the possibility of a politically defined constitution of economics. Alternatives from the political left often use neoclassical economics as a point of reference synonymous with the Western model of a democratic, capitalist economy against which they could distinguish their approach. Today, the distinction between the political left and right seems not to be eligible to seize the global political landscape anymore (e.g., Reckwitz 2020). The liquidation of firm political categories that map economic approaches is being mirrored in modern economics, with textbooks from Shanghai to New York containing neoclassical economics
as one core approach of the subject. The outlook of a political categorization of economics, therefore, is rather poor today.1 Where, then, should we turn to gain access to the field and a concept of alternativity?
The less politically charged and more technical approach to generating a concept of alternativity would be to study methodologies in economics. By identifying differences in assumptions or scientific practices, scholars were able to designate different schools of economic thought and thus grasp alternatives to the mainstream during the heyday of neoclassical economics. Research in that direction was usually then carried out in terms of a methodological differential analysis. Many heterodox economists persistently view mainstream economics as synonymous with neoclassical economics (see, e.g., Morgan 2016; or Tae-Hee/Todorova 2018). Authors like Colander (2000), Colander et al. (2004), and Tony Lawson (2013) have criticized alternative approaches’ usage of a misconceived point of reference, arguing that neoclassical economics was already ‘dead’ and thus neither constraining modern economic theorybuilding nor dominating the mainstream anymore (Colander 2000: 136). Still, for many alternative approaches within or to economics, neoclassical economic methods are perceived as dominating the field, building an unavoidable hegemony of mainstream thought that leaves hardly any room for alternative approaches (e.g., Ruiz-Villaverde 2019). The reproach does not only aim at the difficulty of formulating alternative approaches to neoclassical economics but also criticizes the sameness and therefore missing alternativity within neoclassical economics (Arnsperger/ Varoufakis 2006). Therefore, continuing to stage neoclassical economics as a point of reference for alternative economic theorybuilding despite its disempowerment is more like building up a cardboard dummy than participation in actual alternative theorybuilding. Now that the clear point of reference for alternativity—the concept of economics as neoclassical economics—is dissolved into a diverse network of theories, the proper and current determination of a present mainstream economics seems crucial. Today, economic research widely draws on a diverse mixture of methods that makes it difficult to map the field and the systematic relations of its approaches among each other.2 This does not mean that there are no more attempts to systematically sort the field. On the contrary, there are multiple suggestions, instancing political or ideological sorts, mappings according to economic schools or thematic niches. However, as Birger P. Priddat (2020) points out, these attempts do not offer systematic insights into the constitution of the field, its mainstream (if there is one), or the potential future development of the discipline. Not least because of the introduced lack of systematic accesses, researchers increasingly tend to give up on systematic claims and simply juxtapose approaches to provide an overview of the field. Yet this leaves the field of economics nearly as disarrayed and unsettled
as before. The systematic weakness of today’s discourse becomes visually apparent, considering attempts to map the field of economics via schools of economics thought that often aim at completeness at the expense of systematization (e.g., Berumen 2015, 2018).
While neither the differential analysis of methodological foundations of an approach, nor its politically externalized categorization, nor a mere juxtaposition of approaches seem eligible to unfold the field of economics, a new way of mapping the field has yet to assert itself in the economic discourse. The present volume undertakes a venture into this unclear territory. In our genealogical approach, we generate an idea of the economic mainstream by tracing the methodological development of the discipline. We thereby decide not to draw on the sociological term “mainstream,” as popularized by David Colander et al. (2004). In this view, contemporary mainstream economics is framed as the “beliefs that are seen by the top schools and institutions in the profession as intellectually sound and worth working on” (Colander et al. 2004: 490). Starting from its sociological understanding of mainstream, this approach would result in searching for common features among mainstream approaches (e.g., Dequech 2007), while the methodological constitution would be subordinated as a further feature. We, however, seize our genealogy not from an outside perspective—as a detached discussion of certain features or sets of ideas— but rather claim a methodological continuity from the instatement of neoclassical economics to today’s mainstream. The methodological level is thereby promoted from a feature or set of ideas to the broader constitution of the science; consequently, we widen the scope of economics through the history of economic thought, the philosophy of economics, and the philosophy of science.
As a new way to grasp the mainstream in economics and deliberate relations to alternative approaches, we put up for debate our genealogical approach. By unfolding the mainstream of economics as a genealogy, we follow four major transformations of the discipline and aim to seize the current mainstream out of its own momentum. Instead of applying given, already politically charged categories or gridlocked academic fronts between received schools of economics, we develop an idea of today’s mainstream in its own right.
The concept of genealogy, as it is known today, traces back to Friedrich Nietzsche’s 1887 On the Genealogy of Morality that was taken up, among others, by Gilles Deleuze and Michel Foucault in the last century’s second half.3 Nietzsche questioned the then prevailing moral ideas of his times and culture by contextualizing them with a challenging genealogy. Although we are not primarily concerned with the phenomenon of morality, we draw on the concept of genealogy insofar as we contextualize and historicize
current concepts of what economics is or should be as well as views on how economists work or ought to work. Thereby, we widen the scope of the discipline creating a productive distance to today’s economics. As opposed to thetical ways of historicizing economics—for example, the concept of rational reconstruction discussed in the next chapter—the genealogical approach arises from a questioning attitude that traces back transformations to predecessors beyond today’s map of economics. Before laying out the course of this volume, we briefly want to go into the methodological implications and thereby demarcate our position.
For readers unfamiliar with economics, it may come as a surprise that historicizing the discipline of economics is considered a controversial procedure. But as we will explore in our chapter “Toward a logical empiricist economics?,” economics is and was strongly influenced by an ahistorical conception of science. In contesting the logical-empiricist term of progress, we claim that economic theories of the past must not be perceived as errors or simply false theories. On the contrary, we unlock the transformations that led today’s mainstream to its form and claim the importance of past theories not only in understanding today’s economics but also in shaping its future.
We will not, however, deliver or identify one singular generative principle that determines the entire course of the history of economic thought.4 Claiming such a principle presumes the existence of a general and complete concept of economics that, as a consequence, would not allow us to explore the genealogical stages in their own right. Looking at genealogical continuity in mainstream economics aims at unfolding an ancestry that enables us to grasp its present-day expression, rather than reducing the discipline to assumed core features. Our genealogical approach lays out the difficulties of assuming such a singular generative principle of economics— an assumption we will encounter, for example, in neoclassical economics. For us, economics as a discipline thereby bears the task of continuously asking “what actually is economics?”.
Constantly calling the fundamentals of economics into question bears new difficulties. We cannot deliver a system of generative sources of economic theorybuilding that would estimate the role of other disciplines or the entanglement of theorybuilding and culture.5 Instead, we focus on the genealogical steps themselves, their respective understanding of economics, and their methodological implications. By indicating the social, political, and cultural conditionality of economic research at this point, we simply want to raise awareness of the discipline’s performativity. Even economic theorybuilding does not take place in a theoretical vacuum.
In historicizing economics, we must widen the scope of economics. The problem of defining the scope of economics could, for example, be
illustrated through its etymological origin in ancient Greece, a line of inquiry that has regained currency as a source for alternativity to modern economic thought, not only within economic research.6 By framing the current constitution of economics as historically generated, the scope of research encompasses the concepts of economics underlying its predecessors. As we will see in our genealogical outlook, historical concepts of economics are far from irrelevant and might even experience a future renaissance. Here it is important to note that we, in order to seize our guiding question, are bound to a certain theoretical corpus—in the main course of our four genealogical steps, we will solely draw on literature within the economic discourse that emerged since the instatement of neoclassical economics. This volume does not aim at providing a complete overview of economic concepts or at the determination of a supposedly general or complete scope of economics. Thus, it is clear that in this framework we will encounter questions that we cannot answer. Due to the historically blurry borders of economics, we will cross into other areas of research, like philosophy, sociology, and history. In the case of these excursions, we have tried to nevertheless provide the reader with an orientation through specific supplements from other disciplines.
What does a genealogical approach to alternativity in economics mean in concrete terms? After having set out the methodological boundaries of our approach, we will unfold the genealogy of mainstream economics in four consecutive steps, inquiring in each step what economics is or might be according to the present case and how that is expressed in the methodological setting. Each step begins with an introduction to the respective point of departure and is followed by the main impulse of the corresponding step that we pointedly illustrate through key authors in the field. Subsequently, we reflect the findings within the continuity of the mainstream. Our work focuses on the transformations of economics that would move the discipline to its next stages. This is why we emphasize the systematic challenges occurring at one step of the genealogy and attempt to unfold the development of the discipline to the next step. Since our focus is primarily methodological, we sometimes sidestep chronological development in order to achieve greater comprehensibility.
Our approach delivers a concept of mainstream economics that allows us to visualize the mainstream as one branch of a genealogical tree (Figure 1.1). This branch is developed out of its own momentum. This way, the approach opens up the possibility to put today’s mainstream in perspective and thus to unfold potential kinship or unfamiliarity to other branches. Starting, for example, with the ancient Greek concept of oikonomia, it would also allow us to understand today’s mainstream in an even wider perspective and open various systematic relations (Figure 1.2).
Figure 1.1 The mainstream of economics, in black, as a single genealogical branch. The Figure shows the development of today’s mainstream as a genealogical branch, the genealogical stages lead from left to right, resulting in the current mainstream of economics at the very end of the branch.
Source: Grace D. Chin, illustration commissioned by the authors
Yet the primary goal of the present volume is not so much to explore all these single branches of Figure 1.2 in detail but to create the prerequisites of such an approach in the first place. This way, the concept of mainstream economics presented in this volume, however, provides a new point of reference for the discourse and initiates a new way to refer to alternativity in economics.
We will begin the genealogy at the time of the last recognized mainstream, neoclassical economics, generating a continuity from Lionel Robbins’ supposed nature of economics to today’s mainstream.7 Robbins introduces the postulate of scarcity as a methodology and thereby overcomes the political as well as the practical definition of economics. His analytical definition of economics shapes neoclassical economics until today, even though his postulate is not rooted in a classical philosophy of science. As a second step, we therefore examine an attempt to equip economics with a proper foundation in the philosophy of science. Mark Blaug’s failed attempt to transform economics into a logical empiricist science through giving it a second
Figure 1.2 A genealogical tree of economics. The Figure shows the various genealogical branches of economics connected in a genealogical tree of economics. The branches chronologically grow from its ancient Greek origins on the left to the present on the right. The highlighted branch represents today’s mainstream and its preceding genealogical stages this volume will work out.
Source: Grace D. Chin, illustration commissioned by the authors
analytical definition turns out to be a crucial challenge for the notion of science defended in the neoclassical mainstream as well as the self-conception of economics. But neoclassical economics is consolidated through a third step in our genealogy, which examines the shift from a general philosophy of science toward a rather descriptive concept of methodology. Daniel Hausman thereby responds to the discrepancy between scientific standards and neoclassical practice, offering a narrow practical definition of economics. In the fourth step, we analyze how the constitution of the mainstream is
jumbled together as a consequence of neoclassical economics having been sealed off as orthodoxy. New subdisciplines outperform the explanatory capacities of neoclassical economics, question the predominance of the prevailing mainstream, and leave the field unsettled. We bring a recent attempt to consolidate the field’s unsettled pluralism into play via a new philosophy of economics that provides a general-practical definition through an innovative concept of objectivity. Harold Kincaid and Don Ross argue for the case- and background-sensitivity of economic research and thereby deliver a possible methodological foundation for a new mainstream. In a short recap, we put our findings that characterize today’s mainstream in a nutshell. Our genealogy closes with a genealogical outlook, where we bring into play recent research from the history of economic thought and debate the crucial role of historic concepts of economics for alternativity in the field.
To put our genealogical approach into practice, we then examine the relation between today’s mainstream as we conceived it and two of its relatives: ecological economics and degrowth. With respect to these relatives, we ask to what extent and quality it is possible to consider them as actual alternatives against the background of the mainstream’s enduring continuity. In a brief conclusion, we will reflect on our results, indicate exciting developments in the discourse on alternativity, and shed light on some distant relatives of today’s mainstream.
But before pursuing the first step of our genealogical approach, it might be worthwhile to take a quick glance at the broader horizon and background foil of this monograph’s subject matter. The aforementioned discourse about alternative approaches in economics is highly manifold and connected to pressing real-world phenomena like economic stagnation or recession, climate change, and global health. Thus, the actual scope of alternativity ranges from economic concepts of sustainability to visions of progress designed in Silicon Valley or attempts to rethink economics for the Anthropocene. In the light of new hopes and fears, economic theorybuilding is charged with promises of salvation, threatening scenarios, and political agendas. Despite the widespread image of economics as a neutral science, the constitution of economics always had far-reaching political and ethical implications. It is all the more important to widen the scope of economics and reactivate a debate on what economics is or could be. With this monograph, we want to contribute to better systematic access to the overall constitution of economics that is—between mainstream and alternative approaches—far from being settled.
Notes
1 Against Fukuyama’s prognosis, the pairing of free markets and democracy appears to lose its former appeal of a historic necessity. With regard to the rising power of autocratic states in the global economy or their abilities to react
to socio-environmental challenges more effectively—as we recently see in the COVID-19 pandemic—established institutions of the Western model such as the World Economic Forum cast envious glances at the Chinese way. See Schwab/ Malleret 2020. Beyond this, Western and non-Western authors who call the foundation of the Western political-economic system into question are gaining traction. See, for example, the widely discussed contributions of Latour (2018) or Zhao (2019).
2 Even subfields of economic theorybuilding have become hard to map. See, for example, Mearman et al. (2019) for the difficulties of mapping heterodox economics.
3 See Sommer 2019: 34ff for a concise history of reception, including the adaptation of Nietzsche’s genealogy in French philosophy.
4 Our approach does not declare any principle the systematic foundation of genealogy understood as a “coherent, balanced and well-proportioned building” (Sommer 2015: 26; translation by the authors). We rather aim at liquefying given conceptions of economics as such to grasp the development of economic thought in its movement.
5 For a discussion of the historic relationship between culture and economics, see Mokyr 2016. In economic history, culture has gained a much more crucial role in theorybuilding in contrast to other economic disciplines. Besides Mokyr’s A Culture of Growth, also Germano Maifreda’s From Oikonomia to Political Economy (2016) is a good example for an examination of culturalization in theorybuilding, an aspect that is contained within his study of the origins of economics in the early modern era. At this point, approaches like Timothy Mitchell’s Carbon Democracy that unfold the political-historical and material conditions informing economic theorybuilding should also be mentioned. Another example for the culturalization of theorybuilding, which cannot be incorporated into our genealogical approach but should be made fruitful for economics, is Jürgen Renn’s (2020) notion of the evolution of knowledge, which, drawing on a new framework for the history and philosophy of science, could put economic theorybuilding into a broader context and open up paths for future theorybuilding.
6 See the conclusion of this volume for an overview of current research projects dedicated to the reactivation of historical concepts of economics with a focus on philosophically inspired foundations.
7 It would be indeed desirable to further follow the continuity of mainstream economics to the genealogical roots of today’s subject. As mentioned earlier, our conclusion will provide an overview of philosophical attempts that introduce the debate to a broader understanding of economics than the mainstream’s since Robbins.
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Tae-Hee, Jo and Zdravka Todorova (2018): Social provisioning process: A heterodox view of the economy. In Tae-Hee Jo, Lynne Chester and Carlo D’Ippoliti (eds.): Routledge Handbook of Heterodox Economics. New York and Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 29–40.
Zhao, Tingyang (2019): Redefining A Philosophy for World Governance. Singapore: Palgrave Pivot.
2 Today’s mainstream in four genealogical steps
From political to analytical economics
Economics before neoclassical dominance
In the transformation phase from political economy to economics, Lionel Robbins brought a new analytical notion of science into mainstream economics. Robbins’ impulse, which will mark our first genealogical step, took place before the dominance of neoclassical economics. In this section, we refer to the neoclassical school not in terms of the marginal revolution but in terms of the methodology further developed by Robbins. Indeed, the concept of marginal utility, which dates back to the 19th century, created the initial position for the neoclassical school in contrast to the classical school. Still, it was Robbins who crystallized the notion of this school of thought, paving the way for the scientific and cultural success of today’s mainstream.1 We will approach and distinguish the breeding ground of Robbins’ impulse by contrasting three basic definitions of economics. Starting with the welfare definition developed during the heyday of political economy, we will introduce the practical definition, a further common understanding of economics. We then trace back Robbins’ scarcity-based definition of economics that depoliticizes research and shifts the discipline toward scientific objectivity. Finally, we place our first genealogical hook into today’s mainstream by unearthing the rootage of today’s neoclassical economics.
Robbins’ 1932 An Essay on the Nature and Significance of Economic Science is one of the few attempts in modern economics to basically determine what the science of the economy might be, which is still discussed today. His contribution to the canon of economics can be introduced with the following observation that captures the field’s nebulous nature: “We [economists] all talk about the same things, but we have not yet agreed what it is we are talking about” (Robbins 1932: 1). Since the birth of modern economics in the 18th century, there have been attempts to develop a general
definition of the discipline. None have succeeded in the long term.2 We identify the three aforementioned ideas in economic literature that focus on the problem of what “economics” might be:3 first, a definition of economics based on welfare; second, a deliberately undefined practical understanding of economics; and, finally, Robbins’ understanding based on scarcity.
The welfare definition of economics
The first definition goes back to the very foundations of modern economics. Even though there is no consensus among physiocrats and classical economists like Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, or David Ricardo on the origins and causes of welfare, we can still observe a broad agreement on economics’ purpose as the study of what contributes to economic welfare.4 This welfare understanding—economics as the study of the origins of wealth—has clearly determined subject matter and aims. The subject area can be derived from this subject matter—that is, everything that contributes to economic welfare. This implies the system of trade and industry but can theoretically be anything that contributes to the afore-defined purpose. In this welfare definition, political economy is presented as being set with a qualitative political end of welfare and therefore bears crucial methodological underpinnings as normative science. The scope of our genealogical approach is thereby laid out by a concept of economics that genuinely integrates political and philosophical elements.
The practical definition of economics
Our second definition does not necessarily stand in complete opposition to the welfare understanding of economics. But this idea of economics deliberately leaves the question of defining the science open, insisting instead on highlighting economic practice while arguing that a definition of the discipline might needlessly limit the science of the economy. For example, John Neville Keynes, before stating that “Political Economy is said to have strangled itself with definitions” (Keynes 1999: 73), weighs the necessity and usefulness of defining the subject of economics for the science of the economy. For this practical group, what economics is or can be must remain undetermined to a certain extent, as it is not within the research interest of an economist to determine the supposed object of economics. Arthur Cecil Pigou makes this point clear in the following:
Our impulse is not the philosopher’s impulse, knowledge for the sake of knowledge but rather the physiologist’s knowledge for the healing that knowledge may help to bring.
(Pigou 1920: 5)
From the perspective of this practical understanding, the science and its subject matter can either be left open or only be determined by economists’ work, illustrative lists of economic questions, or of problems economists are occupied with.5 Jacob Vilner’s dictum “economics is what economists do”6 could hardly be more apt for this highly pragmatic notion of the discipline. Therefore, this indeterminacy of economics within economics does not pose a problem, as Roger E. Backhouse and Steven G. Medema consistently conclude:
There is no universally agreed upon definition of the subject [economics]. The reason this does not present a problem is that economists can proceed with their work irrespective of how their subject is defined. Definitions of fields generally come only after the field is established; as fields change, so definitions change.
(Backhouse/Medema 2008: 4)
Backhouse and Medema point out the limited benefit and the desirability of a definition of the field of economics. Following this argument, defining the field of economics would only be possible when its development, and thus the fulfillment of economics, is concluded. Therefore, it is only marginally important for contemporary economists and can only be conducted retrospectively. But from this practical perspective, systematic aspects are not decisive anyway. For them, the primary task of a science of the economy is to elaborate not on knowledge of the science and its subject matter but rather on its explanation and utilization—for example, the fact of doing the work of an economist. As shown earlier, the subject area could be described by a list of economic problems, but no substantive or generalized statement of the field can be drawn from the different subject matters that could, in turn, show how the single economic incidents or questions relate to each other. Indeed, it is no coincidence that a practical understanding of economics has often been defended from logical empiricist standpoints like Richard G. Lipsey’s, who argues that economics cannot be deduced from one basic postulate (Backhouse/ Medema 2009a: 812). We will, however, further differentiate our concept of a practical definition—also from the logical empiricist standpoint as a second analytical definition—in the course of our genealogy. Nonetheless, this point provides a first insight into the fundamental methodological debate underlying this volume. In contrast to the normative welfare definition of economics, this practical understanding of economics perceives the discipline as value-free. However, from a perspective of political economy, advocates of the practical definition of economics cannot fully deny the science’s normative character. The stated economic problems, which serve to replace the definition of economics, are in many
ways related to the problem of defining welfare or the belief in scientific progress.
Robbins’ scarcity-based definition of economics
The third definition of economics brings into play the self-understanding of neoclassical economics, Lionel Robbins’ scarcity-based understanding of economics. Just like the two aforementioned understandings of economics, the third definition bears fundamental methodological insights. Robbins’ understanding of economics was explicitly motivated by the aim to distill the one basic postulate of economics, whose existence the practical definition of economics denied (Robbins 1935: 75–76). For this reason, the third definition stands in sharp contrast to the practical definition. Not only that, but Robbins also puts the qualitative constitution of the welfare understanding of economics in its place. Robbins paid special attention to the latter’s limitations. In his critique, he acknowledges that the study of welfare would indeed describe an aspect of economics. However, Robbins criticizes the welfare definition as a classificatory understanding. From his perspective, it only describes incidents and aspects of economics. The welfare approach would, step by step, cover the field of economics by accumulating explanations of Erscheinungen der Ökonomie, which translates to occurrences of the economy. 7 However, it does not advance the so-called nature of economics beyond these economic incidents Robbins was hoping to find— a critique that also applies to the practical understanding of economics (Robbins 1932: 1 and 21):
That it [economics] can function in this way is not disputed. But that it throws the maximum light on the ultimate nature of our subject-matter is surely open to question.8
Therefore, Robbins concludes: “Whatever Economics is concerned with, it is not concerned with the causes of material welfare as such.”9 For this reason, Robbins aims at providing an analytical definition of economics to identify “exactly the ultimate subject-matter of the main generalizations of the science.”10 Could there be something “behind” all these single occurrences of the economy (Robbins 1932: 19)? Indeed, according to Robbins, the underlying nature of economics is that of a “science which studies human behavior as a relationship between ends and scarce means which have alternative uses” (Robbins 1932: 15). Even though Robbins downplays the novelty of his definition by referring to similar concepts already existing in the continental and especially the Austrian tradition, his understanding of economics is so radically new that it took several decades to become the
widely accepted definition of the discipline it is today (Backhouse/Medema 2009a: 805). But what is so appealing about this understanding of economics? And what does Robbins’ understanding imply for today’s mainstream?
Robbins’ impulse: the theoretical core of neoclassical economics
Following Robbins’ definition, the subject matter of economics is not the study of the human behavior leading to welfare but rather the study of a certain aspect of human behavior that, so far Robbins’ metaphysical claim, underlies any human action. In other words, the subject matter of economics is not just some human behavior, for example, the one that contributes to economic welfare, but any human behavior. The focus of economic analysis is thus no longer an objective of economic behavior like welfare but its form (Giocoli 2003: 85). In Robbins’ definition, the subject matter of economics and therefore economic behavior can be any human behavior since all actions are subject to the influence of assumed scarcity: “Scarcity of means to satisfy given ends is an almost ubiquitous condition of human behavior” (Robbins 1932: 15). Therefore, Robbins presumes a certain form of the subject matter of economics: scarce means, or, in other words, resources. Although the introduction of the concept of permanent scarcity in the early modern period has been one of the cornerstones of modern economics, and therefore also underlies the welfare understanding of economics (e.g., van Dieren 1995; or Achterhuis 1994), Robbins’ definition of scarcity is different: before Robbins, scarcity was perceived as a result of unlimited human wants and limited means, therefore as an obstacle standing in humanity’s way to a status of welfare. Following this traditional line of argument, the problem of scarcity could still be tackled by economists and, as the final purpose of the science of economics, ultimately solved by future economists, producing welfare and abundance.11
In contrast to this former understanding of scarcity, Robbins’ notion understands scarcity not as temporary but as a permanent and systematic economic problem. Robbins’ idea of scarcity is thus not an external circumstance that only affects a particular part of human life related to welfare, nor is there a prospect to ultimately overcome the problem of scarcity. Instead, scarcity is, according to Robbins’ metaphysical postulate, the human condition underlying every single action, given that time and means will ever be limited and can always find alternative applications.12 Therefore, “every act which involves time and scarce means for the achievement of one end involves the relinquishment of their use for the achievement of other. It has an economic aspect” (Robbins 1932: 13–14). For Robbins, scarcity cannot be overcome, but optimal decisions within this scarcity framework can be
studied by economists. Economics is therefore conceptualized as the science of rational choice under the given scarce nature of time and means. This way, Robbins not only defines economics as an analytical form of rationality; by stressing the metaphysical ubiquity of scarcity, he also makes an epistemic statement about the condition of the world that detaches economics from its cultural condition.13 Within Robbins’ economic thinking, all qualities have been absorbed through one qualitative statement. The former qualitative end of economics—generating welfare for a state and evoking the question “what is welfare?”—has been eradicated and substituted with a calculus of efficiency that only allows a quantitative analysis. From this perspective, every object of economic investigation must be considered a resource and managed by a single framework of analytical rationality. As we will see later, these resources are defined within the calculus of efficiency by their quantitative value regarding extra-economically set preferences.
On the boundaries of Robbins’ economic analysis
The constituting role of scarcity within Robbins’ definition of economics not only sheds light on the philosophical quality of the question of the constitution of economics but also indicates the far-reaching consequences the Robbins definition released. On the one hand, Robbins narrows down economics to a claim of rational choice. On the other hand, this also allows an expansion of the science’s research area at the same time:
We do not say that the production of potatoes is economic activity and the production of philosophy is not. We say rather that, in so far as either kind of activity involves the relinquishment of other desired alternatives, it has its economic aspect. There are no limitations on the subject-matter of Economic Science save this.
(Robbins 1932: 16)
According to Robbins, economics does not have any boundaries to its subject matter because every action has an economic aspect.14 This so-called (and widely criticized) economism, which is already apparent in Robbins, raises the question about the goals of the economic analysis. What kind, if at all, of economic agenda is expanding? For Robbins, economics is not concerned with externally assumed ends at all. On the contrary, Robbins stages it as completely neutral toward them. The economist simply analyzes, supposedly objectively, how the attainment of certain ends involves limitation: “They [ends] may be ‘material’ or ‘immaterial’—if ends can be so described. But if the attainment of one set of ends involves the sacrifice of others, then it has an economic aspect” (Robbins 1932: 24–25). Subsequently, the
Today’s mainstream in four genealogical steps 17
economic method does not aim at particular ends but rather, according to its underlying instrumental rationality, examines how certain means relate to ends and how ends relate to each other under the influence of scarcity, as the following illustration of the calculus of efficiency illustrates:
Suppose, for instance, a community of sybarites, their pleasures gross and sensual, their intellectual activities preoccupied with the “purely material”. It is clear enough that economic analysis can provide categories for describing the relationships between these ends and the means which are available for achieving them. . . . Let us suppose this reprehensible community to be visited by a Savonarola. Their former ends become revolting to them. . . . The sybarites become ascetics. Surely economic analysis is still applicable. There is no need to change the categories of explanation. All that has happened is that the demand schedules have changed. Some things have become relatively less scarce, others more so.
(Robbins 1932: 25)
According to Robbins’ understanding of economics, it is a science which takes given ends or sets of preferences—for example, from individuals, a group of people, or society—and functions for its client as an examiner of the respective rational choice considering these externally given circumstances: “That goods are scarce and have alternative uses is a fact. Economic analysis consists in elucidating the manifold implications thereof” (Robbins 1932: 76). This suggests, in turn, that economics has no internally given qualitative ends as in the wealth definition of the discipline, since these are now given externally. Still, this does not mean wealth is relegated to the external factors brought to economic analysis. Efficiency is still the measure for good analysis that guides the economist in a world of scarcity and various ends. Thus, in Robbins’ definition, wealth finds its place in the underlying maximization axiom of efficiency that transforms any matter into a quantitative subject matter of economics. Following his example, both groups with fundamentally opposing philosophical orientations, the purely material sybarites and ascetic followers of Savonarola, are each supposed to maximize their respective ends by achieving them with maximum efficiency. Therefore, not only is the world constituted by scarcity but also each action. Both demand their maximization. Wealth is thereby not a selfsufficient qualitative end as in the wealth definition of economics but has been transformed and functionalized by Robbins as a method that translates anything into a quantitative economic problem. Framing economic analysis this way raises doubts about the supposed neutrality toward ends in economics. If economic problems are formulated in the shape of quanta which
18 Today’s mainstream in four genealogical steps
must be maximized, the outcome of the economic analysis is consequently narrowed to a predetermined space of possibilities. However, this supposed neutrality toward ends and the functional character of economic analysis allows Robbins to stage a natural scientific constitution of neoclassical economics.15 Even though the wealth definition and the practical understanding of economics already imply a certain instrumentality of the science, Robbins pushes the functional character of economics one step further. One consequence of this increased instrumentality is a methodical consequence. As we have observed a shift from a normative understanding of economic analysis in the wealth definition to a more functional understanding in the practical definition, Robbins stresses this functional self-understanding of economics even further than the practical definition. By stating that economics is fully neutral to ends—no longer geared toward any specific object, only examining the apparent natural law–like influence of scarcity on human behavior— Robbins believes to be able to demarcate the borders of economics, stressing a natural scientific and thus neutral understanding of economics. “In pure Mechanics we explore the implication of the existence of certain given properties of bodies. In pure Economics we examine the implication of the existence of scarce means with alternative uses” (Robbins 1932: 83).
How the nature of economics produced its neoclassical science
In this opening of our genealogy, it became clear how Robbins shaped neoclassical economics through a notion of science that provides a basis for the objectification and disciplinary independence of economics. As we have seen, the transformation of political economy into the supposedly neutral and exact science of economics is based on the qualitative claim of a metaphysical postulate that evokes a progression of economics parallel to the imagined progress of the natural sciences. A so-constituted science is Robbins’ supposed prerequisite to distill the discipline’s natural law–like economic calculus, whose subject matter can be applied to virtually anything. Robbins developed this constitution of the subject through his analytical definition in opposition to the welfare and practical definitions’ allegedly classificatory understanding of economics, both of which only describe incidents and aspects of economics.
Once narrowed down to this metaphysical postulate, economics has indeed become an apparently objective analytical framework. The hypothetical objectification of economics is completed by externalizing the goals of economics from science, claiming the achievement of a pure economics that can be instrumentalized to objectively improve the economy. If the
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“Then let her come to it, for me, unabashed. Make her mine ceremonially, and I swear on my honour to postpone the consummation for a year.”
“Ah! And if you fail?”
“I ask no pledge until my success is assured.”
The Chevalier gnawed his lip, looking on the suitor. He saw an old, fat, unlovely man, scarred by the claws of depravity (one of his eyes was bulging askew, as if actually half torn out by them). But the indelible stamp of rank and wealth redeemed the worst that could be in him. He told himself that it would be a high mission for his Yolande to make of herself the instrument for this monster’s salvation. It had come to be her only chance—and his. Besides, she was a de France, and surely eager for the restoration of her family’s rights.
He stopped there, by a strong effort of will, and pronounced—on his word of honour from which there could be no receding—his inexorable fiat.
“Accomplish what you promise, signore, and she is yours on the condition you propose.”
Nevertheless, he felt something as nearly approaching meanness as it was possible for his pride to feel when the Count returned triumphant with the glad tidings of his success.
“Bid mademoiselle attend me here,” he said coldly to the servant who waited on his summons.
Di Rocco rubbed his dry palms together, tingling through every nerve of his dishonoured old body.
And in the doorway, like Dorothea the martyr, stood the white lily of Savoy, wondering with wide eyes on her judges.
CHAPTER II
T Château di Rocco stood well back, among pine woods, from the little village of Les Chables on the Argentière Road. Above it sloped the stony steeps of the Flegère; below were huddled neglected terraces, like dams to check the further descent of the house into the valley. It might, in its relation to the huge quarry which contained it, have been part of the mountain itself, a vast boulder torn away from its parent rock, and retaining in relief the form of the socket from which it had parted. Towers, pinnacles and walls, heaped up like an enormous ice-mould, seemed to have shaped themselves to the uproar of avalanches, and falling torrents, and the thunder of the wind which uproots whole hill-sides. Yet it was so old itself as to have withstood a legion of assaults and survived unshaken. It had been the stronghold of the di Roccos from the days when the passes of the Alps were a very active trust in the keeping of the border lords, and was still a formidable veteran of its stones.
Within, a world of sombre and tarnished magnificence witnessed to the hands of great mechanics of the past generations. Only the spirit which could minister to such traditions was debased beyond recall. What strain was responsible for its existing lord’s, who could say? The miser, like the comet, is a recurrent phenomenon, eccentric in his orbit.
The Château, all in all, was a savage, stone-locked, cold-harbour of a place, the teeth of whose very ghosts chattered as they walked its vaulted corridors. It was haunted throughout by sounds and whispers of cold—the boom of subterranean waters; the high rustle of snow; the growl of ice splitting in the great glaciers opposite. The wind whistled in its halls, lifting the skirts of the tapestry in a sort of stately dance, as if the phantom figures thereon were at a minuet to warm themselves. There was not a closet in all its recesses which might have been called cosy, nor a rat behind its wainscoting which had grown sleek on plenty.
Dr Bonito, private physician to the Count, was himself as waxy a spectre as any which inhabited there. His face was like a topographical map, with all its features in low relief—wrinkles for rivers, dull eyes for lakes, a nose like a rudimentary volcano. There was no expression whatever on it but what seemed to derive from drought and starvation, and no colour but a bilious glaze, which pimpled here and there into red. A death-mask of him might very well have stood for a chart of the dead moon.
The doctor was said to be a Rosicrucian, a member of that queer sect (then somewhat out of date) which mixed up alchemy with ethics, and thought to coin a millennium out of the alloy. Or it had thought to once. Rosicrucianism was not founded, professedly, to interfere with the polity or religions of States, but simply to pursue the True Philosophy—to “follow the Gleam.” Yet no secret society, I suppose, has ever failed, when success has brought it selfconscious of its power, to abuse its mission; and certainly Dr Bonito, as a latter-day Frater Roseæ-Crucis, distilled other and less perfumed waters than utilitarianism from his alembics. He was an empiric, in fact, and lived on the gross superstition of his employer— barely, it is true, but resignedly, since Di Rocco had promised him a legacy proportionate with his services in keeping him alive, and a very bonanza should he conduct him well over the Biblical span. For which reason Bonito scarcely resented his present treatment, because he counted every penny now withheld from him as a penny invested against his future.
Plumpness, under the circumstances, was hardly to be expected of him; but the doctor was so very thin that, when he hugged himself, his elbows seemed to meet in his waist. Mr Trix (as he liked to be called), sitting opposite at a little table, with a solitary candle burning between, laughed to see him so caress himself.
“You have no bowels,” he said, “consequently no hunger. What is the matter with you then, old Bonito?”
The physician, who, in order that he might cherish his numb fingers, had put down on the table an instrument which he had been engaged in correcting—an astrolabe so antique in construction that it might have dated from Hipparchus—answered, with a peevish wince of his breath,—
“Hunger, child? What dost thou know of the hunger of the soul?”
“Something,” said Trix.
“Something!” echoed the other. “Ay, the baffled appetites of one whose sensorium is but a mirror to reflect back into his brain the visible lusts of the flesh.”
Mr Trix laughed again, pulling at his long pipe. He had a reckless young dark face, jet-eyebrowed, winsome out of wickedness, and handsome enough to be a perpetual passport to his desires. His form, properly slim and elastic for the “blade” that he was, was “sheathed,” quite elegantly for di Rocco, in cloth of a fine black, and with a ruff of Valenciennes lace at its breast. A glass and a bottle of old wine stood at his elbow.
“True,” he said, “I deplore the loss of our late good company. And so do you, my Bonito, if for a different reason. I miss its pennywisdom, and you its penny-fees. But however our respective souls may feel the present pinch, they would do well, it seems to me, to prepare for, even to provide against, a worse. I think Di Rocco looks very bloated and shaky of late, don’t you?”
“Ah! you wish him to die first!”
Bonito rose to his feet and went pacing vehemently up and down. Trix, watching him, said quietly,—
“You are very wrong. I wish the padrone no harm whatever—least of all the harm of this ludicrous misalliance.”
The physician stopped suddenly.
“It is quite true,” he said. “I know the conditions. We should both be disinherited—taken by the scruff and kicked out. The notary has already been advised.”
“What then? The stars are always common land.”
“Do you think so, my friend? There are no pastures so exclusive, nor so costly in the grazing. Why else have I served parsimony these long years, as Galeotti served Louis Gripes, if not for promise of the late means to their attainment. Let us be frank; why have you?”
“For fun,” said the young man, “or my duty to an older scapegrace. I don’t see the possibility of either in a regimen of Mademoiselle de France.”
Bonito, sitting down again and leaning his elbows on the table, searched hungrily the brown eyes which canvassed his
imperturbably Suddenly he dealt out a question,—
“M. Louis-Marie Saint-Péray?”
“Well?”
“Have you come across such a gentleman here?”
Trix nodded.
“Eh! you have?” said the other. “Well, what do you know of him?”
“That he is a young gentleman of France, of slender means, which he expends largely on impracticable enthusiasms.”
“Anything more?”
“That he is in Le Prieuré for the second time, to attempt the assault of Mont Blanc.”
“Ay, and what else?”
“Incidentally, that he will never conquer anything.”
“Why not?”
“Because he is a creature of fervid aspirations and lame conclusions.”
“Has he taken you into his confidence?”
“More; into his arms.”
“How was that?”
“He would cross the Glacier of the Winds without a guide; he fell into a crevasse which, luckily for him, his alpenstock bridged. But he could not get out until I pulled him. There’s the thing in the corner. Do you see it? I gave him my hunting-knife for it, the one with the jade handle and little rat’s head in-gold. Nothing would satisfy him but that we exchanged blood tokens.”
“I don’t doubt it. A fair exchange, and M. Cartouche all over.”
“Why, thou unconscionable hunks! didn’t he give me, for his part, what he had reason to value most in the world? ‘Use it for my sake,’ says he, ‘so that I may dream always of my two best friends going hand in hand.’ There were tears in his eyes. Do you think he will ever ascend Mont Blanc?”
“Maybe not. But his aspirations mount higher.”
“You mean to the de France Ha, ha, old fox! you have not had me, you see.”
“He has confessed to you?”
“No, I swear. But the sacristan of Le Marais is an exuberant tosspot, and apt to overflow in his cups. My information is from him.”
“What information?”
“Why, that miss and my friend have very much the air of being lovers secretly pledged to one another.”
“It is a fact. But how does he know it?”
“His chapel is their pious rendezvous, sweet souls. There they met first, and there they meet still.”
“It is well they take their loves to church—a good sign. He will want to make an honest woman of her.”
Cartouche grew suddenly and fastidiously articulate.
“I will beg you to bear in mind, Dr Bonito,” he said, “that M. SaintPéray has made his honour my own.”
“That is admirable indeed,” answered the physician. “But has he introduced you to the lady?”
“No,” said Cartouche, irresistibly tickled for the moment. “There are limits even to his friendship.”
“You do not know her?”
“Not even by sight.”
“She is very pretty, Mr Trix.”
Cartouche, staring at the speaker a moment, took his pipe from his lips, which as always, when his mood grew ugly, seemed to thin down against his teeth.
“What are you hinting at?” he demanded low. “A pox on your innuendo! Out with it!”
The physician grinned unconcerned.
“Only,” said he, “that I hope, when you do see her, it will not make you wish to take your blood-brother’s place in the spoiling of di Rocco’s romance.”
Cartouche leaped to his feet.
“Beast!” he hissed. “If thou hadst as much nose as a barber could lay hold on, I would take thee by it and shave thy cursed throat!”
The other did not move.
“As to my nose,” he said, “it serves its purpose.”
“I don’t doubt it,” cried Cartouche. “The smallest vent is enough for slander. When have you ever known me wrong a friend in his love?”
“Never, indeed—where the wrong’s been expected of you. Perversity’s your crowning devil. You’ve suffered some losses for the
pleasure of confuting your oracles, I know Well, you’ve only to confute them here, to earn my gratitude, at least.”
“A dog to suggest such a villainy!”
“What! to you? Ho, ho! Have you ever heard of carrying owls to Athens? But let it pass. It’s all one if we are in accord as to the impossibility of this alliance between Mademoiselle and our patron, and the timeliness of our young mountaineer’s intrusion. You choose to believe that you will serve monsignore best by helping M. SaintPéray to the lady. Well, believe it, and save us our reversions by an act of virtue.”
Cartouche, yielding to humour with a sudden laugh, yawned and stretched himself.
“After all,” he said indolently, “there’s no such sporting science as casuistry. Di Rocco is certainly an old bottle for this heady young wine; a villainous scarecrow to be asking for a patch of this bright new cloth. The pattern is out of suits with his raggedness, and calls for a seemly pair of breeches. We’ll save him his character in spite of himself.”
“It would be a veritable act of grace,” said Bonito.
“If we could only do him that good by stealth,” said Cartouche, relighting his pipe.
“La-la-la!” cried the physician, softly. “Why need we appear in the matter at all?”
“What do you mean?”
“It is only a question of terms with Le Marais—of sufficiently gilding the countenance it will give to a stolen union. They have no particular tenderness there for di Rocco, whose ugly countenance, for his part, is the only thing he has ever given them. The rest lies between you and your blood-brother.”
“I can bring a horse to the water—”
“Bah! he will drink. It is a Pierian spring. You will know when you see.”
“Shall I? And how about the lady?”
Bonito chuckled.
“For choice she has di Rocco!”
A voice at the door, little, and gloating, and jubilant, took up the word,—
“Di Rocco, di Rocco, di Rocco! What about him, you rogues? What about the knave of hearts, the gallant, the irresistible, the latter-day saint of love, who is going to be so blessed that he will need no physician, nor no runagate scamp to remind him of his days of unregeneracy?”
Bonito, risen, shot one significant glance at Cartouche, and then lowered his eyes as his patron entered.
“Monsignore’s suit has sped?” he murmured.
“Drawn by doves,” crowed the Marquess; “flown straight as a bee into the bosom of love, where it stops to hive.”
He crossed to the table, took up the bottle, cried, “Ha, you inordinate dog!” to Cartouche; slapped him on the back with, “A thief of a cellarer, go hang!” and blew out the candle.
“Who can’t drink by moonlight,” he cried, “is no chaste Diana’s servant. I’ll have to immure thee, dangerous rogue, among thy bottles.”
The moonlight, as he spoke, striking from a white window-sill, threw up all his features grossly. He looked like some infernal sort of negro, flat-nosed, monstrous-lipped.
“It was my candle, padrone,” said Cartouche, placidly sucking at his pipe. “I think I will light it again, and this time at both ends.”
But di Rocco, paying no attention to him, was flicking at the astrolabe on the table.
“This folly, Bonito,” he said. “I am at an end of it all. What did it ever foretell me but lies?”
The physician rescued his instrument gravely.
“Nay, monsignore,” he said. “It cannot lie, so its parts remain true. Yet I confess it strained my credulity to the extent this night that I was fain to bring it in and examine it.”
“And what had been its message?” sneered the Marquess, uneasy while he scowled.
“That monsignore’s death must follow close upon his marriage,” said the Rosicrucian, calmly
Di Rocco tore the instrument from his hand and dashed it upon the floor.
“Liar!” he screamed. “I know thy tricks and motives. Did it foretell this end to them? Begone, thou ass inside a lion’s skin, lest I spit and
trample on thee! Begone, nor look upon my face again!”
Without a word Bonito stooped and gathered up the wreck of brass, then, clutching it, walked softly from the room. Cartouche pulled calmly on at his pipe.
CHAPTER III
M. L -M S -P lodged in the house of a M. Paccard, Le Prieuré’s respectable doctor, and an enthusiast in matters of geology. Everyone loved Louis-Marie, even, in a sweet, impartial way, the doctor’s only daughter, Martha, who, however, had other geese to pluck in the matrimonial market. The young man was so good and so good-looking, so pious, so enthusiastic and so sensible. Anticipating the boy-angel of “Excelsior,” he came storming the frozen heights, which, nevertheless, he was not to attain. But his failures made the true romance of his endeavours—in the eyes of women, at least, who do not admire the cocksureness which comes of success. As to the men, the rugged mountaineers, who were experienced in the natural limitations to their craft, they mingled, perhaps, a little contempt with their liking. It would be all very well to put their knowledge to school by showing it the way up Mont Blanc; but, in the meanwhile, aspirations were not deeds. They all, for the matter of that, aspired to conquer the great white peak, but their women did not applaud them for the wish. True, they had not, not one of them, M. Saint-Péray’s serene white face, and kindling blue eyes, and hair of curling sunbeams. Yet Le Prieuré was not deficient in manly beauty, however little it might derive from an exclusive ancestry of angels.
Le Prieuré, in Louis-Marie’s time, was a rude enough valley, and almost forbidden ground to the ease-loving traveller. That was one reason, perhaps, why the women so favoured this gentle stranger, who came to them on his own initiative out of the despised world of luxury. If he brought with him the traditions of tender breeding, he brought also its fearless spirit. It was something god-like in him to defy, in his frail person, that unconquerable keep of the mountains. That was good in itself; but a closer appeal was to reach them on the occasion of his second visit. For it was then that he and Yolande met for the first time, and provided in their meeting the basis for a more poignant romance than any which had yet glorified him. Within
a week, every wife in Le Prieuré thrilled in the knowledge of a secret fathomed only by herself.
One wet July morning Louis-Marie left the doctor’s door and turned his face for Le Marais, which was a little dedicatory chapel standing under pine woods on the lower slopes of the Montverd. It was there he had first come upon Yolande, the saintly loveliness, craving some boon of the sacred heart; and what better rendezvous could the two afterwards appoint than the little holy shrine which had brought them mutually acquainted with the sweetest of all boons?
As Louis-Marie walked up the village street his heart sang like a bird with joy. It was full of thankfulness to the God of orthodoxy, who was nevertheless the God of nature and of love. How easy and how profitable it was to earn approval in those great eyes! One had only to keep the faith of a little child, to ask no questions, to court no vexing heresies, and be happy. And so to be rewarded for one’s happiness, as witness himself twice blessed. He had done nothing but be good according to his orthodox lights, and for that virtue, which was instinct, here was he glorified in the affection of the loveliest lily of womanhood which had ever blossomed in a by-way of the world. He turned and breathed a laugh in the direction of the unsurmountable peak, hidden now within league-deep folds of mist. What was there to gain which seemed other than trivial in the light of his higher achievement? The mountain was shrunk to a mole-hill under that star, that altitude.
There was no wind; the wet dropped softly, caressingly; the fields were full of flowers. Louis-Marie could interpret the talk between them and the earnest rain. The patches of standing rye were stippled with poppies. He recognised why the supreme artist had touched them in here and there and nowhere else. Sacred love was the understanding love after all; he felt that he had been given the gift of tongues.
He took no sense of depression from the drowning mist. The gloom made the lamp of his heart shine the more friendly, smiling on all things in its consciousness of the ecstatic wings which were waiting up there to flutter to it in a little. He had no doubt of himself, or of his right to hold that lure to them. Perhaps he had no reason to have. He came, for all worldly considerations, of an old and stately
family, and he had his orphan’s patrimony—nothing great, but enough to bring him within the bounds of eligibility in the eyes of a poor Chevalier. If he had consented hitherto to make a secret of his suit, it was because he could not find it in his heart to materialise the first virgin rapture of that idyll—to submit it to flesh-and-blood conditions. There was no other reason; or, if one was to be suspected in M. de France’s pride and aloofness, as gossip painted them, he would not admit to himself that he had been influenced by it. But, in any case, propriety, always to him the little thing more than love, without which love itself must lack perfection, demanded its vindication the moment he realised that it was in question; and he was now actually on his way, in fact, to entreat his love’s consent to an appeal to the paternal sanctions.
Half-way down the village street he encountered a young fellow, a friend of his, and one intimately associated with some past ambitions. This was Jacques Balmat, already the most experienced of mountaineers at twenty-two. His dark eager face and bold eyes showed in significant contrast with the girlish pink and blue of the other’s. He held out a handful of pebbles.
Louis-Marie was in no hurry. “For Dr Paccard, Jacques?” he asked, with a smile. The young man nodded his head.
“Some of them are rare enough, monsieur. I risk my life in getting them. But who would win the daughter must court the father.”
There was significance as well as sympathy in his tone. To him, also, there was a peak higher than Mont Blanc’s to attain.
“Very true, Jacques,” said Saint-Péray. “I hope we may both find favour.”
The young mountaineer nodded again.
“And in the meanwhile, monsieur, there is no favour imperilled by showing what resolute fellows we are. I was even now on my way to monsieur. This mist presages a sunny morrow. Monsieur, the mountain still waits to be scaled.”
“It must wait, Jacques, for me. There are rarer heights to gain. For the moment I hold my life like the frailest vessel, which it is my duty to protect from so much as a breath of danger.”
“Well, monsieur, that sounds funny to me. But then, manliness is my only recommendation. To win a great name out of venture—there
is my chance, and now more than ever.”
“Why now, Jacques?”
“Monsieur has not heard? Dr Paccard has been appointed physician to the Château. Dr Paccard will be a big man presently— too big to countenance a son-in-law chosen from the people.”
“Since when has he been appointed, Jacques?”
“Since last night, monsieur, by the talk. It tells of how the monsignore’s erst familiar, the seer Bonito, came down into the village raging over his dismissal. And there are other whispers—of a libertine reformed; of changes projected at the Château. I know little of their import, I—only this, that Jacques Balmat will lose nothing by conquering the mountain. Shall we not join hands, monsieur, in essaying once more a triumph which would make all men our debtors—monsieur, to win or perish?”
But Saint-Péray shook his head.
“Another time, Jacques,” he said. “My claim to conquest must rest on lower deserts. Bonne chance, camarade!” And he went on his way, to meet the fate of the irresolute; while young Balmat went on his, to climb to his Martha by-and-by.
Louis-Marie was grown thoughtful as he walked on. Nature somehow seemed a little further from his knowledge than before; the talk between the flowers and the rain was like a whispered conspiracy; the dank air chilled him. As he turned out of the village into the wet meadows, which sloped gently upwards towards Le Marais, he started to see a figure standing by a little freshet as if awaiting him.
“Gaston!” he cried, with an irresistible thrill of guiltiness in his note. Mr Trix wore, making a grace of necessity, a thick dove-grey redingote. His buckish little “tops,” which came but half-way up his calves, appeared scarcely soiled by the rain and mud. The smallest of black cocked hats was placed jauntily on his black curls, of which one, and one only, was privileged to accent the whiteness of his fine forehead. Over his head he carried a small Spanish silk umbrella, an innovation of such effeminacy that his daring it at all in the teeth of fashion testified to something in his character which was at least as noteworthy as his foppishness. Like the dandy wasp, with his waist and elegance and sting, there was that suggestion in Mr Trix of an
ever-ready retort upon the rashness of his critics. Some men there are who carry swords in their eyes, and no one laughed at Cartouche the macaroni unless behind his back.
He came up to Louis-Marie, and took his arm with an assured frankness. His smile showed an enviable regularity of teeth.
“Yes, I purposed to meet you,” he said. “Are you in a hurry?”
His self-sufficiency somehow mended Louis-Marie’s.
“My business can wait,” he answered, “for a friend.”
Nevertheless he paused meaningly, as if that business were exclusive.
Cartouche laughed.
“Louis-Marie,” said he, “you have never yet asked me for my credentials.”
“You saved my life,” said Saint-Péray, simply.
“That is true,” said Cartouche. “But supposing it was for my own ends? I am the very hawk of opportunism.”
“You must have quick eyes indeed, dear Gaston,” said SaintPéray, with a smile, “if you saw your way to turn me to account during those few moments of my peril.”
“Eyes of the hawk, Louis-Marie. Well, I saved your life, you say. It is certainly the only thing I ever saved, and therefore perhaps, like a spendthrift, I put a particular value on it.”
“And I too, Gaston, I assure you. There was never a time when I held my life so dear as now.”
“That is as I supposed, and the very reason why I am here to warn you.”
“What! is my life in danger?”
“That is as it may hit. If someone came to me and said, ‘Gaston, there is one who has it in his power to administer to you the potion of virtue, so that you shall wish to marry and live respectable,’ I should say that my life was in peril. But one man’s food is another man’s poison, and it is possible that you might welcome such a physicking.”
“Indeed I think I should.”
“Very well. Then there is a priest at Le Marais, I believe—a professional dealer in such potions. There is also, if I am not in error, the necessary other party to such a transaction awaiting you there. I
would seize the opportunity, if I were you, to be made respectable for ever.”
“What do you mean?”
Saint-Péray’s face was grown suddenly a little white and stern.
“We are blood-brothers,” answered Cartouche, quietly; “comrades of a very recent sentiment. I honour the tie, despite—I say despite an older and, to me, more natural one. I mean no reflection upon anything but the blindness of two simplicities, living, privately as they suppose, in a little-high paradise of their own. Will you not be satisfied with a hint? Will you not believe in its sincerity, though I tell you that I should profit personally by its acceptance by you? You have chosen to take me on trust. I choose to vindicate that confidence by assuring you that my patron di Rocco has spoiled more idylls in his time than I can tell. He is in the way to ruin yet another, this time by the Church’s sanction; and his arguments, from the worldly point of view, are overwhelming.”
Saint-Péray was like a ghost now.
“Speak plain, brother,” he whispered; “or rather, answer only. Is the Marquess a suitor for the hand of Mademoiselle de France? Is that what you mean?”
Cartouche stepped back and nodded.
“He is an accepted suitor, Louis-Marie.”
The young man dropped his head with a shudder, as if he had been stabbed. But in a moment he looked up again, pale and trembling.
“So vile!” he said hoarsely. “She’s soiled in his mere thought! Gaston! My God! it must not be; it—”
He checked himself suddenly, gazed a troubled moment into the other’s face, then turned and went quickly up the hill. As soon as the mist had hidden him, Cartouche followed easily in his steps.
“I must see this folly out,” he thought. “Perhaps they will want a witness.”
The chapel of Le Marais hung in the clouds. Its stone walls streamed with rain. The sop and suck of it were the only sounds which broke the silence of the hillside. Cartouche stepped softly to the door and looked in.
It was just a dovecot, of a size for these two pious pigeons. They knelt side by side before the little gimcrack altar. The girl had been waiting there for the other to join her. A picture of the sacred heart transfixed hung on the wall above her head. It was thence she had sought to gather strength for the cruel thing she had to say.
Cartouche, standing without, looked through the crack of the door. He could not see Yolande’s face, for it was hidden in her hands. But presently, with a quivering sigh, she raised it, and, seeing her lover still bowed down in prayer, turned towards the entrance as if seeking light. So the young virgin of Nazareth might have turned, in great doubt and loveliness, following with her eyes the dimming messenger of heaven. And then she herself went to prayer again.
We have likened Yolande once before to Dorothea the Martyr, she who, when condemned to death for loving Christ, promised that she would send to Theophilus, the young advocate who had bantered her, a posy from the garden of her desires. Now, like that Theophilus, when a child-angel stood before him offering to his hand a spray of unearthly roses, Cartouche felt his heart suddenly constrict and, rallying, choke his veins with fire. Stepping softly back, he tiptoed round the end of the chapel, and gained the tiny presbytery which stood in a clearing above. The little house was deserted, it seemed, both of father and sacristan. No one answered to his low tapping. As he stood undecided, the voices of the lovers approaching from the chapel reached him. The door of the presbytery was on the latch. He opened it, entered, and stood hidden just within. He had no wish to eavesdrop; his heart was in a strange panic, that was all. He felt as Actaeon must have felt as he backed into the thickets.
The two came close up to his hiding-place; and then they stopped, and uttered for his shameful ears the tragedy of their lives. In the first of their meeting, amazed as yet, and unrealising the abyss which was fast gaping between them, they spoke in the soft romance, the old love-language of Savoy; but soon a woefuller cry wrung itself from the torture of their hearts.
“Garden of my soul! as the rose clings to the wall, so art thou mine.”
“I have clung to thee, Louis.”
“The sun hath welded us into one. Thy perfume is in me, as my strength upholds thy beauty. We cannot be torn apart but we perish.”
“I have climbed heavenwards resting on thy heart. My cheek hath glowed to thee by day, and at night, when thou sleptst, I have put my lips to the moon kisses on thy face.”
“Who is this thief that comes into my garden to steal my rose? A beast whom they liken to Gilles de Rais; a thing so foul that I would rather my rose were scentless than that he should boast to have shared in the tiniest largesse of her perfume.”
“Hush! he is the husband whom my father has chosen for me.”
At that Louis-Marie threw poetry to the winds, and seized Yolande’s hands, and looked with madness into her eyes.
“He may choose, but let me gather no submission from your tone. Yolande, we will go down together, and claim our older pledge and win his heart by tears. I had meant this very morning to urge you to that course. Why didn’t I before! O, why didn’t I before! I curse my own delay! I—”
“Louis!”
“Yes, I was wrong. ’Tis love’s, it seems, to damn. Come down, Yolande, before it is too late.”
“Listen, dear love; it is too late. It was a conditional promise, and the condition has been observed. What should my father know of you? His word is his bond, and he will hold to it.”
“He cannot know the reputation of this man. His breath’s a blight upon the earth. Why, even now—”
He broke off with a cry, and clasped his arms convulsively about her.
She was like a ghost, holding up her white hands to him piteously. Cartouche saw what perfect things they were, frail and slender, yet of a beauty to cradle all love. Her face, in its milky pallour, grey-eyed and scarlet-lipped, was like the face of some spirit tragedy flowering from the mists.
“Ask me nothing,” she whispered. “Tell me what to do.”
“I tell you?” he said, releasing and stepping back from her. He forced his trembling lips to resolution. “What does your heart say, Yolande? your stainless womanhood? your duty to yourself?”
“My duty to my father, Louis.”
“Now, God help me! Is that a note of wavering in your voice? This man’s rich and powerful, and I’m neither.”
“Louis, I’ll not upbraid you.”
“For duty’s sake to tie yourself to a leper! What abuse of authority will not women plead to justify their treacheries!”
“Will you break my heart? If I married him from duty, I should kill myself from love.”
“Hush, dearest! hush, my lily! I was a brute and coward. Forgive me. Yolande, Yolande! have I offended you beyond recall?”
“I forgive you, indeed. But, Louis, were it not better just now to think than kiss?”
“Yes, to think, Yolande. I would carry you by force if driven to it.”
“Would you? O, I am helpless!”
“But not unless all else failed. To prevent one outrage by another! God would not love us any longer, Yolande. We must try all juster means first.”
Cartouche, wincing, ground his heel softly into the boards where he stood. The girl was weeping very hopelessly.
“You wring my heart,” said Saint-Péray, sobbing himself. “What am I to do? What think? I would pray for light before I act—pray for fortitude and reason. Precipitancy makes self-martyrs, Yolande. Our cause is better won by moderation.”
She turned from him. “Yolande!” he cried in agony. “You love me best?”
Cartouche uttered a very wicked oath under his breath. But the white lily was in her lover’s arms.
“Yes, yes,” she said. “You are always right, dear Louis. Only tell me what I am to do.”
“Supposing you went now to your father, Yolande, and confessed the whole truth to him?”
“Alone, Louis?”
“Only for a little, dearest. I will follow when I have prayed for guidance. Would he know my name even?”
“I have done very wrong.”
“Hush! the blame is mine. But we will mend it—start afresh. He must be broken to my idea—learn my deserts before he sees me. I’ll
trust to you to speak them, sweetheart, better than myself. We must not descend upon him with flags flying, daring his enmity.”
“You’ll not be long?”
“Yolande! do you doubt me?”
“I only doubt myself, Louis. If he appeals to me by all I owe to him!”
“You owe God your soul, Yolande.”
“Yes, yes. Pray to Him for me, Louis. I am so weak alone. Goodbye, Louis.”
“Au revoir, Yolande.”
She did not mend her term, however, and they parted. Cartouche turned his face away. When he looked again they were both gone— Yolande down the hill, Louis-Marie to the chapel.
“I have seen an angel,” thought the watcher. “Henceforth I am in love with chastity.”
He lingered long in his eyrie, waiting for Saint-Péray to go. At length, restless beyond endurance, he decided to take the lead in the descent. As he went down the hillside, the mist was already retreating before the onset of the sun. It was the dawn of mid-day. Cartouche looked over his shoulder towards Le Marais.
“Will that bring him out?” he thought, “or will he always put off making his hay until to-morrow?”
Coming out into the road below, he ran suddenly upon Bonito. The physician sprang back and stood breathing at him, grinning horribly.
“Ha!” he cried. “Well met, fellow-disinherited!”
He champed like a rabid dog. He was woefully unclean and disordered. Cartouche fell severely calm.
“What is the matter?” he asked.
“The matter!” cried Bonito. “Enough and to spare for us. Go and hear it in the village. Thou hast sped, if thou hast sped, to great purpose indeed. Le Marais was already bespoke, it seems. They are man and wife this hour.”
Cartouche did not move.
“Who are man and wife?” he said.
The other raved.
“Who but the dog that hath disowned us, and the—woman that hath replaced!”
“The woman! she of the white hands? Why, she was up yonder not twice as long ago!”
“I cannot help that. You should have kept her there. If you let her go, you were the fool.”
“I had nothing to do with it. She went down to plead for her lover.”
“A pretty pleading! I don’t doubt she’s like them all—caught by a title. Anyhow springed she was and is, and held at this moment as fast as Church can bind her.”
Cartouche laughed recklessly.
“Well,” said he, “man proposes, but woman disposes. Our bestlaid plans are nothing without the collusion of the party planned against. We must carry our wits to a fresh market.”
Bonito, with a fearful blasphemy, hit out into the air.
“I know my market!” he screamed, “I know my market!” and ran raging up the road. Cartouche turned his face to the hill once more.
A little way up he met Saint-Péray, pale and exalted, descending at last. He stood in his path.
“Louis-Marie,” said he, “you have delayed too long. It does not do to give the devil tether while you pray. Mademoiselle de France is at this moment the Marchesa di Rocco.”
He owed the young man no mercy, he thought. His own heart, for all his cynic exterior, was burning between contempt and anger. But he was hardly prepared for the blighting effect of his own words. Louis-Marie fell at his feet as if a thunderbolt had struck him.
