Bourgeois Equality: How Ideas, Not Capital or Institutions, Enriched the World

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		Bourgeois Equality: How Ideas, Not Capital or Institutions, Enriched the World
		Bourgeois Equality: How Ideas, Not Capital or Institutions, Enriched the World

There's little doubt that most humans today are better off than their forebears. Stunningly so, the economist and historian Deirdre McCloskey argues in the concluding volume of her trilogy celebrating the oft-derided virtues of the bourgeoisie. The poorest of humanity, McCloskey shows, will soon be joining the comparative riches of Japan and Sweden and Botswana. Why? Most economists--from Adam Smith and Karl Marx to Thomas Piketty--say the Great Enrichment since 1800 came from accumulated capital. McCloskey disagrees, fiercely. "Our riches," she argues, "were made not by piling brick on brick, bank balance on bank balance, but by piling idea on idea." Capital was necessary, but so was the presence of oxygen. It was ideas, not matter, that drove "trade-tested betterment." Nor were institutions the drivers. The World Bank orthodoxy of "add institutions and stir" doesn't work, and didn't. McCloskey builds a powerful case for the initiating role of ideas--ideas for electric motors and free elections, of course, but more deeply the bizarre and liberal ideas of equal liberty and dignity for ordinary folk. Liberalism arose from theological and political revolutions in northwest Europe, yielding a unique respect for betterment and its practitioners, and upending ancient hierarchies. Commoners were encouraged to have a go, and the bourgeoisie took up the Bourgeois Deal, and we were all enriched. Few economists or historians write like McCloskey--her ability to invest the facts of economic history with the urgency of a novel, or of a leading case at law, is unmatched. She summarizes modern economics and modern economic history with verve and lucidity, yet sees through to the really big scientific conclusion. Not matter, but ideas. Big books don't come any more ambitious, or captivating, than Bourgeois Equality.

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"McCloskey has spent a long and distinguished career asserting the efficacy of free markets in goods and labour. . . . Unusually versed in philosophy and literature, she has acted as something of a domestic chaplain for the Chicago school of economists, ministering to the spiritual state of Homo economicus. . . . McCloskey is at her best in arguing that economics and ethics are mutually important but largely autonomous spheres of human endeavour."--Jeffrey Collins "Times Literary Supplement "

作者简介

Deirdre Nansen McCloskey is an emerita distinguished professor of economics and of history, and professor of English and of communications at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She is the author of sixteen other books, including If You're So Smart, The Secret Sins of Economics, The Bourgeois Virtues, Bourgeois Dignity, and Crossing: A Memoir, all published by the University of Chicago Press.

网友对Bourgeois Equality: How Ideas, Not Capital or Institutions, Enriched the World的评论

This book describes and claims to explain the vast improvement in well-being of most of the world's population since about 1800. The author debunks the importance of several factors which various experts have claimed to be crucial to this improvement. She proposes that far more important to this improvement were two changes in public opinion, namely, increased regard for the liberty and dignity of ordinary people, and decreased disdain for trade-tested innovations and the profits therefrom. I found the explanations persuasive, and I am grateful to the author for enhancing my understanding of economic history.
Yet I note a glaring omission from this book's otherwise comprehensive treatment of its subject. It seems to me that enormous increases in the efficiency and scope of mass production are also crucial to improved well-being since 1800. Astonishingly, the author ignores mass production, neither acknowledging nor refuting its importance. I checked whether she acknowledged its importance in her earlier book, Bourgeois Dignity. Chapter 11 of that book describes revolutionary increases in the productivity of several British industries from 1780 to 1860, but without discussing mass production's contribution to that productivity. Even productivity seems not to be addressed in Bourgeois Equality.
I, like many other reviewers, found Bourgeois Equality important, but overly repetitive and discursive. Fortunately, its long table of contents lays out clearly the essence of its claims and could be very useful to any potential reader.

As others have touched on, this is not an easy read, even for those well versed in economics and history. It is very dense, packed with obscure and winding references, often drifting off on tangents who relevance is not immediately apparent, and probably could use a good editing. All in all though it is an incredible accomplishment in the field and a must read for anyone interested in how the world got to the place it is. This is the book Thomas Piketty only wished he could write, a dazzling achievement in depth and scope that will leave you thinking.

The first book, in my 59 years as a reader, that I've found intellectually beautiful. McCloskey is lucid, clear, focused, and funny, ranging from history going back tens of thousands of years to, if you wait for it, a slur at the Cubs outfield in the book's closing pages. She persuades not only that ideas and ethics have given the world 200 years of widespread prosperity, but also that relative income (income inequality) counts for far less than how much better-off today's poor are than the poor of 60, or even 40 years ago.

My many thanks to Ms McCloskey for this book. It reinforces my Libertarian mindset, and my distrust of left leaning intellectuals. As an unapologetic member of the Bourgeoisie, and a proud participant in the creation of things that make life better for everyone. I can't understand why anyone would want to have time stand still. What time would they choose? The Great Enrichment, based on trade tested betterment is an astonishing feat of our species. Why would anyone sneer at it? It is a shame that so many people, educated at the most prestigious institutions don't seem to get it, and that we are still faced with a predisposition, on the part of some, to repeat the mistakes of the past, such as the impoverishment of Socialism, or Fascism.

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