He’s got my number.

A book is for life, not just for Christmas

Given the name of my consultancy business, I might have to start with Anthony Pagden’s [amazon_link id=”019966093X” target=”_blank” ]The Enlightenment and Why it Still Matters[/amazon_link]. I’m very keen to read both [amazon_link id=”1408842068″ target=”_blank” ]Writing on the Wall[/amazon_link] and [amazon_link id=”0091944554″ target=”_blank” ]An Officer and A Spy[/amazon_link]. [amazon_link id=”059307047X” target=”_blank” ]The Everything Store[/amazon_link] has the imprimatur of the FT Business Book of the Year prize. [amazon_link id=”0300188226″ target=”_blank” ]The Theory that Would Not Die[/amazon_link] about Bayes’ Theorem was recommended by a reader of this blog. And what’s a holiday without a detective novel – the blurb on the back tells me [amazon_link id=”0349000115″ target=”_blank” ]The Black Rose of Florence[/amazon_link] is a global best seller, although I’m not sure whether that’s a good or bad thing.

T.J. Clark’s essay ‘Lowry’s Other England’ in [amazon_link id=”1849761221″ target=”_blank” ]Lowry and the Painting of Modern Life[/amazon_link] is fascinating. He asks why modernism in art turned so decisively away from representing modern life. “There must have been something in the 20th century shape of things that meant that looking for modernity’s location, or its typical subjects, was in itself to misrecognise the way we live now.  … Why was there no ‘painting of modern life’ – or none that Degas and Baudelaire would have recognised? Because modernity no longer presented itself as a distinctive territory, a recognisable new form of space.” He goes on to argue that people who painted or created art came to lead a life physically entirely separate from the masses, Lowry being an exception because of his day job as a rent collector. The classes separated – “The ‘modern’ became a system of separateness – accompanied of course by a more and more coercive machinery of being together-in-what-you-buy.” And then increasingly modern life went indoors, has become personalised, focused on the TV and digital gadgets, and is now increasingly intangible too. Documenting modern life passed entirely from painting to photography.

[amazon_image id=”1849761221″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Lowry and the Painting of Modern Life[/amazon_image]

As a distinguished art professor, Clark doesn’t say that a taste for ‘modern’ art is very much acquired as part of a class-stratified upbringing and education, and the working classes (I generalise hugely) tend to like painters looked down on by the art establishment eg Jack Vettriano. And that part of the reason painters like Lowry have been controversial among the experts is not because they’re not good but because they’re popular.

Liking the unlikeable, on the other hand, is a badge of social status. The social elements make the art market absolutely fascinating, yet the most thoughtful economic analyses have come from Marxists (and a long time ago at that) such as Walter Benjamin in [amazon_link id=”0141036192″ target=”_blank” ]The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction [/amazon_link]and Theodore Adorno in [amazon_link id=”0415253802″ target=”_blank” ]The Culture Industry[/amazon_link]. Conventional modern economics seems mainly interested in whether or not buying paintings is a ‘rational’ investment.

[amazon_image id=”0141036192″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (Penguin Great Ideas)[/amazon_image]

And of course, as per recent posts, paintings are supremely positional goods.

In late February I’m taking part in a workshop featuring the Edward and Robert Skidelsky book, [amazon_link id=”0241953898″ target=”_blank” ]How Much is Enough?[/amazon_link] – no doubt because my last book was called [amazon_link id=”0691156298″ target=”_blank” ]The Economics of Enough [/amazon_link]and is about sustainability, broadly defined. The new edition of their book has just arrived, so I don’t yet know how it has changed.

[amazon_image id=”0241953898″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]How Much is Enough?: Money and the Good Life[/amazon_image]

Meanwhile, this morning I was looking back through one of the best books on this theme, Fred Hirsch’s 1976 classic [amazon_link id=”0415119588″ target=”_blank” ]Social Limits to Growth[/amazon_link].

It covers the same territory, albeit in the language of the 1970s  – ‘commodity fetishism’, the adverse effects of excessive commercialization, including moral effects, and distributional questions. The book is of course best known for its definition and explanation of ‘positional goods’. Hirsch saw most material goods as having the potential for productivity improvements, but scarce goods and many services as subject to congestion in demand. The relative price of positional goods would rise over time, he argued.

[amazon_image id=”0415119588″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Social Limits to Growth[/amazon_image]

Hirsch’s conclusion was that, “The social rationale of individual maximization weakens.” [amazon_link id=”1490944052″ target=”_blank” ]Adam Smith[/amazon_link] could have been right about the benign effect of self-interest in the material economy (the only part of the economy Smith thought mattered), but in the modern economy with positional scarcity, “A shift of the invisible hand from the private into the public or communal sector is needed. Rather than pursuit of self-interest contributing to the social good, pursuit of the social good contributes to the satisfaction of self-interest.” Hirsch has no issue with past capitalism; indeed, he agrees it has been a great leveler. But the distributional tensions due to past growth and increasing scarcity of positional goods now justify – he argues – “drastic limits” on consumption choices. “Society is in turmoil because the only legitimacy it has is social justice,” he concludes.

The book is clearly right about the role of positional goods, from diamonds to houses located in beautiful countryside. So far, so [amazon_link id=”0141023988″ target=”_blank” ]Veblen[/amazon_link]. Hirsch has some sharp insights into hierarchies, too. He spots the arms race that has occurred in educational qualifications – where finishing high school used to be enough, a degree is needed; and instead of a Bachelor’s degree, a Master’s. But – as the note I scribbled on an earlier reading reminds me – he over-aggregates. People in diverse modern societies have at least to some extent taken their search for position in a range of directions. Still, it’s going to be worth re-reading properly before engaging in discussion with the Skidelskys.

Besides, all of this is the perfect accompaniment to the last few days of Christmas shopping. I like the giving and receiving of presents – as do so many economists in their own way – but actually how much better if that’s books and chocolates, or home made jam, or a cosy scarf, rather than positional status symbols of any kind.