In the discourse of 18th-century British intellectuals the term 'luxury' held a well-recognized and much disputed place. Dispute arose chiefly around the problem of disentangling the economic, moral-theological and political strands of the term. The object of the present paper is to trace forward the history of debate over the concept along one develop ing line of specialization - that of 19th-century political economy. It will be seen how the term luxury (and related terms: necessity, decency, productive, unproductive, etc.) adjusted (...) meaning(s) as the economic, social and intellectual contexts in which it was embedded themselves mutated. In particular, it is argued, the changing significance attached to the term illustrates the extent to which a key 19th-century intellec tual elite managed to accommodate the implications of a transition from a society based on assumptions of scarcity and hierarchy to one that was beginning to contemplate the possibility of mass market abun dance. While the profession's leaders did develop a sharpened interest in aspiration to luxury consumption as a legitimate motor of economic growth, all registered their disapproval of certain forms of the aspira tion, revealing in the process a variety of class, gender and 'race' pre occupations - including (from J. S. Mill onwards) a particular distaste for positional or status-related consumption. (shrink)

Is realism in political theory compatible with utopianism? This article shows that it is, by reconstructing a highly restrictive realist approach to political theory for guiding legislation and public policy, drawn from the work of Adam Smith, and showing how it can accommodate Piketty’s utopian proposal for a global tax on capital. This shows not only that realism and utopianism are compatible; but how realist and utopian political theory can be carried out in concrete cases. This moves debates to more (...) interesting questions of which forms of utopianism are permissible within which forms of realism; contributes to moving the contemporary realism debates from a Methodenstreit to questions of how it can and ought to be done; and contributes to an important contemporary debate about the permissibility of utopian proposals for political and economic reform in general and Piketty’s proposed global tax on capital in particular. (shrink)

There is long-standing disagreement about how radical Adam Smith should be taken to be. Recently, Jonathan Israel’s work on the enlightenment situates Smith as a moderate enlightenment thinker. This article challenges that assessment. Smith sees aristocrats as largely devoid of competence, wisdom, and virtue and thinks they do not wield significant political power in commercial societies. He is also highly critical of their economic power; and uses a neo-Roman concept of liberty to provide a powerful critique of slavery and feudalism. (...) In so doing, he extends discussions of liberty and focuses them on economic relations in ways that prefigure labour republicanism. Finally, I show how these more radical commitments can be reconciled with his moderate proposals for political reform through his epistemology and realist anti-utopianism. These are aspects of Smith’s thought that are essential for understanding it correctly and have much to teach us today. (shrink)

In the 18th century Adam Smith argued that in a commercial society based on the division of labour, a rising standard of living for all was possible and desirable. At the same time Smith regretted that a preoccupation with material goods and social status had displaced a more expansive notion of human nature. This tension is a recurrent theme in European social thought. It underlies the social vision of the architects of postwar reconstruction and the welfare state in Australia after (...) the Second World War as it is presented in the writings of Herbert Cole Coombs. Coombs worked to achieve a rising standard of living for ordinary Australians but believed that both living standards and human development could best be achieved through publicly funded services rather than private consumption. Unlike Smith, whose moral philosophy sees human nature as a reflection of God’s nature, Coombs’s social vision was thoroughly secular. This study explores how, in the absence of a religious justification, Coombs formulated the conviction that a life bounded by the aspirations to own a house, a car and the consumer durables that were beginning to be available to ordinary people - in other words to be a ‘good provider’ - lacks an essential element of what it means to be fully human. (shrink)

Privileging deductive first principles over inductive contingencies, I argue, contributed to the economic meltdown of late and will continue to limit the range of reasonable solutions available to solve entrenched economic problems. I cite Toulmin’s critique of scientific certainty and the rancor over the demise of the ninth planet Pluto to posit a role for rhetoric in making valid claims across all fields of study, calling for more productive uncertainty subject to vigorous argumentation.