Chapter 7: Sir James Steuart's Secret History of Primitive Accumulation
A river may as easily ascend to its source, as a people voluntarily adopt a more operose agriculture than that already established.
— Sir James Steuart, An Inquiry into the Principles of Political Economy
The Destruction of Feudal Society in Scotland
This chapter concerns Sir James Steuart's contribution to the theory of primitive accumulation. Steuart, forgotten today, was one of the most important of the classical political economists. Steuart's analysis benefited from his upbringing in Scotland. His Scotland was a mysterious world, even for the English visitor in the age of classical political economy. In the early eighteenth century, Defoe (1724-26, 3:663) remarked, "Our geographers seem to be almost as much at a loss in their description of this north part of Scotland as the Romans were to conquer it." Toward the end of the century, Samuel Johnson recalled his tour of the Highlands: "I got an acquisition of more ideas by it than anything that I remember. I saw quite a different system of life" (cited in Boswell 1799, 199).
Tribal values remained strong in the Scottish Highlands. All commentators agreed that the household economy maintained an exceptional degree of self-sufficiency in the countryside (see Marx 1977, 472, 6i6n; see also Smith 1976, I.iii.2, 31; Anderson 1777, 12-15). Defoe, an enthusiastic prophet of early capitalism, noted that despite the unfavorable environment, the people of the rugged Scottish Highlands could provision themselves with remarkable ease. In his words, "Their employment is chiefly hunting. . . . however mountainous and wild the country appeared, the people were extremely well furnished with provisions" (Defoe 1724-26, 664-67 ). He specifically mentioned the availability of venison and salmon.
Before the union with England in 1707, clan chiefs ruled the Highlands. The lairds received goods in kind, as well as military service from their people. Custom fixed rents at a nominal sum or a lamb or sheep (Smith 1976, III.iv.6, 414). Here is James Anderson's (1777, 12) portrayal of this society:
Accustomed to an almost independent sovereignty, the chieftains, till of late, lived each in the midst of his own people, and shared with them the produce that his demesnes afforded. Ignorant of the luxuries that commerce had introduced into the other parts of the island, they lived contented with their own homely fare. . . . This naturally produced a kind of warmth of attachment between the vassal and his chief, that is almost entirely unknown in every other stage in the progress of civil society.
Adam Smith (1976, III.iv.11, 419; see also 1978, 202, 248) suggested a more material basis for this pattern of social relations: "In a country where there is no foreign commerce, nor any of the finer manufactures, a man of ten thousand a year cannot well employ his revenue in any other way than in maintaining, perhaps, a thousand families, who are all necessarily at his command."
After the union with Britain, the lairds appreciated that access to the lucrative English market allowed a dramatic rise in the value of cattle, their chief produce (Smith 1976, I.xi.b.8, 165; I.x.1.2, 237-8; Ommer 1986). According to Adam Smith (1976, 1.xi.1.3, 239-40), "Of all the commercial advantages, however, which Scotland has derived from the Union with England, this rise in the price of cattle is, perhaps, the greatest. It has not only raised the value of all highland estates, but it has perhaps been the principle cause of the improvement of the low country."
As new opportunities for profit emerged, some lairds started to shift their reference point from the self-sufficient clan economy to the world of the Lowlands and English aristocracy (Ommer 1986). A hunger for money set in (see Smith 1978, 262; see also S. Johnson 1774, 85, 94). Thomas Selkirk (1805, 12) aptly commented on this relationship:
By allowing his tenants to posses their farms at low rents, he secured their services whenever required, and, by the power of removing any one who was refractory, maintained over them the authority of a monarch. The sacrifice of pecuniary interest was of inferior importance The Highland gentlemen appear to have been so anxious on this subject that they never ventured to raise their rents.
The final defeat of Scottish hopes for independence from Britain at the Battle of Culloden (1745) put an end to the remains of traditional economic structure. James Anderson (1777, 13) explained:
As the government, for wise reasons, found it necessary to deprive the chieftains of that power and authority, . . . many of these, who still remained in the country, finding their authority curtailed, and becoming gradually acquainted with the pleasures of a civilized life, grew less and less fond of that kind of life they had formerly been accustomed to.
Once the union became an accepted fact, the chiefs had little need for the military services of the clan members. This situation offered a pretext for the conversion of the traditional feudal system of land tenure. The lairds ceased to be the head of a traditional feudal society. Instead, they became landlords who saw their land as a source of monetary rent (ibid., 12-14). ln the words of Samuel Johnson (1774, 89), "Their chiefs being now deprived of their jurisdiction . . . gradually degenerate from patriarchal rulers to rapacious landlords." As a result, during the third quarter of the nineteenth century, Highland rents quadrupled (see Johnson 1775, 38).
Similarly, Benjamin Franklin (1959, 20:523) noted in 1773, "It seems that some of the Scottish Chiefs, who delight no longer to live upon their Estates . . . chuse rather a Life of Luxury . . . , have lately raised their Rents most grievously to support the Expense."
Despite their increased income, the lairds still fell deeply into debt. J. H. Grey Graham (1937, 29) observed, "It was a tradition that in the days of the Scots Parliament . . . , when the sessions closed, the Cannongate jail was crowded with peers, whom their creditors could seize the moment their period of immunity ceased." Adam Smith's (1976, III.iv.10, 419; see also Carter 1980, 384) contemptuous reference to an effete nobility purchasing a diamond buckle for an amount that could maintain a thousand men was symptomatic of the changes that were occurring.
In some ways, we could compare the Scotland of Steuart's day to ancient Athens while it was transforming itself from a tribal to a civil society. Like Athens, Scotland became a center of intellectual ferment, enjoying what was perhaps the most advanced university system in the world. Likewise, it was to fall victim to the superior military might of a neighbor. Nonetheless, Steuart, as we shall see, identified with Sparta rather than Athens.
Primitive Accumulation in Scotland
To satisfy their newfound lust for luxuries, the lairds cast aside their traditional obligations to the community. Even though originally they only held their land as leader of a clan, they laid claim to clan land as their personal property. Based on questionable property rights, they threw large numbers of people off the land in the name of agricultural improvements. Indeed, the first lairds who turned to raising sheep on this land profited handsomely (Selkirk 1805, 32).
This confiscation of clan property was one of the most dramatic examples of primitive accumulation. Benjamin Franklin (1959-, 20:523; see also S. Johnson 1775, 38) cited an issue of the Edinburgh Courant in 1773, which claimed that 1,500 people had emigrated from Sutherlandshire in the space of two years. Many years later, between 18 14 and 1820, a descendant of Steuart's wife's cousin, the duchess of Sutherland, took vigorous measures to evict another 15,000 inhabitants. According to Marx's (1977, 891-92; see also Smout 1969, 353-54; Ross 1973, 182-93) description of the event:
All their villages were destroyed and burnt, all their fields turned to pasturage. British soldiers enforced this mass of evictions, and came to blows with the inhabitants. One old woman was burnt to death in the flames of her hut she refused to leave. It was in this manner that this fine lady appropriated 794,000 acres of land which belonged to the clan since time immemorial. ... By 1825, the 15,000 Gaels had been replaced by 131,000 sheep.
Although this particular method of eviction might seem overly harsh, we should note that landlords recently applied it to their tenants in India (see Perelman 1977, 149).
Lest our sympathies for the disposed divert our attention too far afield, we should take note that Jean Charles Leonard de Sismondi (1827, 52; see also Ross 1973, 242) reported a few years later that the unfortunate proprietor of the estate had been extremely anxious about the precarious state of her fortunes at the time. Incidentally, Marx (1853a, 491) incorrectly enlisted Steuart in condemning these clearings in his New York Tribune article by means of a rare misquotation, where he cited Steuart to the effect that "a plot of land in the highlands of Scotland feeds ten times more people than a farm of the same extent in the richest provinces." Steuart (1767, 1:137) had actually written "value" where Marx cited the word "extent."
Enclosures and clearings, such as the Sutherland affair, might appear to be conducive to progress in the long run, but their immediate effect was devastating to the people who were uprooted in the process of primitive accumulation. Even the purported long-term benefits are somewhat dubious. Recall that the increase in pasturage was followed by an expansion in deer parks (see chapter 3).
The lairds also had political motives for removing people. After all, the peasants were fierce warriors, who expected the lairds to respect traditional rights. In his travel report on Scotland, Samuel Johnson (1774, 97) cynically remarked that "to hinder insurrection, by driving away the people, and to govern peaceably, by having no subjects, is an expedient that argues no profundity of politicks."
Others took a more charitable view of the massive primitive accumulation that was occurring in Scotland. For example, Thomas Pennant (1772, 145; 1774, 145) rhapsodized: "Let a veil be flung over a few excesses consequential to a day of so much benefit to united kingdoms. . . . The Halcyon days are near at hand: oppression will beget depopulation, and depopulation will give us dear-bought tranquility." Years later, the kindly Nassau W. Senior (1868, 282; also cited in Marx 1977, 892) wrote of the work of the duchess of Sutherland as "one of the most beneficent clearings since the memory of man." No wonder the classical political economists could lay claim to the virtue of humanitarianism.
These forced migrations following the first Jacobite rebellion, as well as the Battle of Culloden, resulted in concentrations of propertyless people available for employment. The lairds were anxious to turn this situation to their own advantage. The most important employment for these displaced people was the labor-intensive business of gathering kelp (Gray 1951; Carter 1980, 372; Smith 1976, I.xi.a.2, i6o ; Matsukawa 1965), an industry employing as many as 50,000 people (see Ross 1973, 230).
The kelp industry was strategically placed during the early years of the industrial revolution (see B. Thomas 1980, 7). This primitive industry provided the alkali needed for the dynamic textile industry. Without kelp, scarce timber would have been burned for potash (Smith 1776, 1.xi.a.3, 161).
All of the elements of a capitalist development seemed to be in place. Unfortunately, manufacturing did not take a firm hold in Scotland. English competition swamped the fine Scottish woolen industry, as well as most other manufactures (Campbell 1953, 12). Scottish prosperity did not extend much beyond Glasgow, which benefited from the extension of the Navigation Acts to Scotland rather than from an indigenous economic development (ibid., 12; Devine 1976).
In short, depopulation of the Scottish countryside led to a future of poverty for the kelp gatherers alongside the prosperity of the emerging capitalist potentates. As Thomas Pennant (1771, 180; see also Boswell 1799, 5:221) commented, "The great men begin at the wrong end, with squeezing the bag, before they have helped the poor tenant to fill it, by the introduction of manufactures."
Steuart's Scotland
Sir James Steuart was well suited to serve as the leading theoretician of Scottish development. His family was highly placed. One grandfather was Lord Provost of Edinburgh. His father led an erratic career, compromised by involvements in Scottish conspiratorial politics; nonetheless, he eventually won appointment as Solicitor-General of Scotland.
He personally embodied the conflict between the traditional economy of the household and capitalist development. Moreover, he displayed a rare "sense of the historical differences in modes of production," a gift perhaps belonging to no other classical political economist except Richard Jones (Marx 1963-71, pt. 3, 399). Elsewhere, Marx (ibid., 43) expanded on this aspect of Steuart's importance:
His service to the theory of capital is that he shows how the process of separation takes place between the conditions of production, as the property of a definite class, and labour-power. He gives a great deal of attention to this genesis of capital— without as yet seeing it directly as the genesis of capital, although he sees it as a condition for largescale industry. He examines the process particularly in agriculture: and he rightly considers that manufacturing industry proper only came into being through this process of separation in agriculture. In Adam Smith's writings this process of separation is assumed to be already completed.
Keith Tribe (1978, 88, 94) wrongly ascribed a precommercial understanding of economics to Steuart. True, he stood with one foot firmly planted in the old way of life (see Marx 1974, 83-84). Steuart's native Lanarkshire, although not far from Edinburgh or Glasgow, was surrounded by "the wildest country" that Defoe (1724-1726, 617) saw during his tour of Scotland.
Steuart, however, had his other foot tentatively pawing at the new modes of existence. We have already discussed the evictions that took place in this very region. In fact, Steuart displayed a keen sense of the nature of a market economy. He was not only connected with traditional Scottish society; he also had the opportunity to witness the unfolding of capitalist development from the vantage point of the Scottish Highlands. He also had personal ties with recent capitalistic developments. For example, his own mother, supposedly "for the sake of finding employment to her mind, had taken coal work" (Kippis 1842, 282).
Steuart also had the advantage of extensive travels. In his youth, he had compromised himself by his involvement in Jacobite conspiracies leading up to the battle of Culloden. As a result, he was forced to spend fourteen years in exile on the Continent. Such experience can be invaluable to perceptive economists. Petty's work certainly benefited from his years in Holland and Ireland. Similarly, Cantillon profited from his firsthand knowledge of the difference between Ireland and France.
Steuart himself appreciated that the practical information that he garnered during his years away from Scotland gave him an advantage in comprehending his native economy. In the dedication to his handwritten manuscript of his Principles in 1759, he wrote, "The best method I have found to maintain a just balance . . . has been, in discussing general points, to keep my eye off the country I inhabit at the time, and to compare the absent with the absent" (cited in Chamley 1965, 137). By availing himself of this method, even before his return to the British Isles, he was able to anticipate the exceptional nature of what was occurring in his native Scotland.
Intellectual Roots
Andrew Skinner (1966, xxxvii) believes that Steuart drew heavily from Mirabeau's Friend of the People (1756), whereas Paul Chamley (1965, 768 1 ) suggests the flow of ideas may well have gone in the other direction. A third possibility does present itself. The books of both Steuart and Mirabeau bear striking similarity to the work of Richard Cantillon. Steuart's connection with Cantillon was indirect. True, he twice cited the English version of a work published under the name Philip Cantillon (Steuart 1767, 2:22, 67), but in the first book of his, Principles, already completed by 1 75 9, the same year that Philip Cantillon's work appeared, the parallels with Cantillon were more pronounced. Yet there, Richard Cantillon was not cited.
Steuart may have had privileged access to Cantillon's work prior to its publication, although I can only speculate. We do know that he dedicated the 1759 handwritten version of his Principles to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1732), whom Steuart had met in Venice the previous year (Chalmers 1805, 372). This brilliant English woman of letters was often immersed in scandals that were not always literary in nature (see Halsband 1956, 268-79).
This very same Lady Mary Wortley Montagu had become, a quarter century earlier, the close friend of Mary Anne Mahoney, the wife of Richard Cantillon (see Montague 1966-67, 2:25, 29). She wrote to her sister that Cantillon's wife "eclipses most of our London beauties" (ibid., 25). In 1 74 1, she seems to have been referring to Cantillon as "one of the prettiest men I ever saw in any country" in writing of an affair between Cantillon and the wife of the British consul in Naples, where she was staying (ibid., 213). Almost two decades later, while taking a deep interest in the work of Steuart, she may have called Cantillon's book to the attention of her protege in case that he himself had not already been familiar with the theories of that most important earlier, peripatetic economist.
Although Steuart depended less on the printed word than did Adam Smith, he did seem to make some use of his predecessors. Steuart wrote extensive notes on Hume's History, and sent the Principles to Hume for comments before publishing it (Skinner 1966, xlv). Another possible influence on Steuart was Robert Wallace's A Dissertation on the Numbers of Mankind, published in 1753, the year after Hume, in his Political Discourses, challenged Wallace to publish it (see Hume 1752b, 379; Hume to Montesquieu, June 1753; cited in Rotwein 1955, 184).
Steuart's work also bore some resemblance to that of James Harrington (on Harrington, see Hill 1964; Macpherson 1962). Like Steuart, Harrington opposed smallholders, called for high rents to stimulate labor, and attempted to calculate an appropriate balance among classes in which the nobility was to oversee agriculture and bear arms (see Macpherson 1962, 187, 178-79).
Steuart's Call for an Agrarian Transformation
Steuart clearly recognized the advantages for the gentry in moving with the times, accepting that the future lay in capitalism. He assumed that the nobility would not support themselves by trading. To begin with, they lacked the requisite funds (Steuart 1767, 1:84). More important, to sink to the status of a mere shopkeeper was unthinkable. The proper course for them was to establish themselves as prosperous capitalist farmers.
In a letter of 14 October 1777, he described this outcome in language that could have come from Adam Smith:
The allurement of gain will soon engage everyone to pursue that branch of industry which succeeds best in his hands. By these means many will follow manufactures and abandon agriculture,others will prosecute their manufactures in the country, and avail themselves at the same time of portions of land, proper for gardens, grass for cows, and even for producing certain kinds of fruit necessary for their own maintenance, (cited in Chamley 1965, 87]
Steuart himself appears to have been adept at the new husbandry (Chalmers 1805, 377; Campbell 1953, 25-26). In the words of one contemporary report on his agricultural practices, "No person who is acquainted with Sir James Stewart [sic], but must admire his genius and zeal to promote agriculture" (Wight 1778-1784, 3:544-46). Agricultural successes such as his, however, generally necessitated costly victories over the rights of tenants.
Steuart's proposition that the gentry engage in capitalist farming represented a clarion call to break with tradition by separating large numbers of such people from their means of subsistence. In the process, the farmers would no longer be limited to the customary rents. Steuart (1769, 286) acknowledged that "raising . . . rents was thought [by some] to be robbing the present possessor," but he came out squarely in favor of the new husbandry by virtue of its ability to raise rents (ibid., 2,8/ff.; Steuart 1767, i:28off.). In this sense, we may judge the new husbandry to have been most successful.
Steuart (1767, 1:204; see aiso l: 55) justified higher rents because "the surplus of the farmers . . . goes for the subsistence of others," adding, "The surplus I show to be the same thing with the value of rents." Higher rents would also serve to drive those remaining on the land to intensify agricultural production. As a result of such "silent compulsion," market forces would compel them to specialize in the production of commodities for the market, rather than continuing to produce so many goods as pure use values.
Steuart's position about rents is reminiscent of the Physiocratic school, but with a significant difference. In spite of the relatively extensive nature of the new husbandry that the Physiocrats proposed, they could suggest that the commercialization of farming would increase the supply of food on account of the large tracts of unused land in France, even though they ultimately rested their case on the net rather than the gross output.
Steuart made no such claim. Instead, he identified the march of progress with the replacement of cropland by pasture. In fact, he openly admitted that the mass of food produced would fall with the changes he recommended (Steuart 1767, 1:282; see also Malthus 1976, 106-7). The advantage of the extension of pasture was that it could increase the surplus (ibid., 1:5 5 ff.). When the crops had grown on the land, the people who grew them consumed a significant proportion of the harvest. Pastures require a minimum of labor, thereby leaving almost all the proceeds of the land to its owner.
Steuart versus Traditional Producers
The connection between the creation of a widespread wage-labor relationship and the social division of labor was essential to Steuart. He had no doubts that his plans required the destruction of traditional agriculture. In this respect, Steuart displayed one of his numerous affinities with the Physiocrats (see Weulersse 1910, 2:697). Well before he had begun the formal study of political economy in 1737, he expressed deep concern in a letter about "the laziness of the people," such as the peasants he saw in Spain (cited in Chamley 1965, 127).
Steuart did not even seem to think the self-sufficient peasant worthy of working unimproved land. He asked his readers, "How can extended tracts of bare land be improved, but by subdividing them into small lots of about ten, fifteen or twenty acres, and letting them to those who make their livelihood (by doing) . . . things for hire" (Steuart 1769, 328). He considered it to be "evident" that these lands would be so finely subdivided that it "is in no way sufficient to enable the possessors to maintain themselves, and pay their rents out of the product. The land will contribute towards maintaining themselves and their family; their industry must support their family and pay the rent" (ibid.).
As far as Steuart (1767, 1:111) was concerned, the mode of existence of the traditional agriculturalist was appropriate only for "rude and uncivilized societies." So long as they had been free to live off the spontaneous fruits of the earth, they could content themselves with a few wants and much idleness (ibid., 1:48, 62).
Thus Steuart (ibid., 1:65, 77; see also Marx 1977, 649) called for the "separation between parent earth and her laborious children" in order that they no longer be "suckle[d] in idleness." Otherwise, "who will increase his labour, voluntarily, in order to feed people who do not work for himself?" (Steuart 1767, 2:174). According to him, "Any person who could calculate his labours in agriculture purely for subsistence, would find abundance of idle hours. But the question is, whether in good economy such a person would not be better employed in providing nourishment for others, than in providing for other wants" (ibid., 1 : 1 1 0; see also Weulersse 1910, 1:687). As a result, the lives of rural workers had to be turned to purposes not of their own choosing.
Steuart's program owed not a little to Hume (i752d, 256-57), who had called for the employment of "superfluous hands" as soldiers to extend the power of the state. Taking his cue from his countryman, Hume, and consistent with Turgot and the Physiocrats, Steuart joined in the call for the elimination of the "free hands" who resided on the land. W. Arthur Lewis recently made this interpretation of rural development fashionable once again (1954).
These superfluous workers represented a substantial "burden on the husbandman" for Steuart (1767, 1:40, 43; see also Hume 1752d, 260-61; Turgot 1766, pars. 4, 8; Weulersse 1910, 1:350; Quesnay 1758, vi). Elsewhere, he categorized these same people as nothing more than "superfluous mouths" (Steuart 1767, 1:58, 198, 304). Steuart even went so far as to state that insofar as a person exercised the art of agriculture, "as a direct means of subsisting . . . , the state would lose nothing though [he] . . . and his land were both swallowed up by an earthquake" (1767,1:116; see also 4:314).
In the absence of an earthquake, what would come of the people who would be uprooted from the land? In answering this question, Steuart developed the most sophisticated analysis of primitive accumulation in the entire literature of political economy.
Steuart's Rhetoric of Primitive Accumulation
Steuart (ibid., 2:23) fretted that masses of people detached from the land could pose a serious political threat, given that capitalism threatened to unleash the dread forces of democracy. The danger was all the more troubling because the majority of people considered the property of the lairds to be illegitimate.
Steuart (ibid., 1 :98) believed the poor to be incapable of self-government, tracing the "principle cause of decay in modern states [to] . . . liberty" (ibid., 93). He asserted that the Spartan republic of Lycurgus offered "the most perfect plan of political economy" (ibid., 332; see also Hume i752d, 25758). At one point, he even seemed to have been comparing himself with Lycurgus, referring to him as "a profound politician, who had travelled over the world with a previous intention to explore the mysteries of the science of government" (ibid., 334).
Steuart's affection for a slave society may shock modern readers, but his sentiments were more common when he was writing. As religion had lost its appeal in some circles, many writers used Sparta as a convenient image for community. For example, Samuel Adams envisioned America's future as a "Christian Sparta" (cited in McCoy 1982, 52).
The frequent admiration of Sparta owed much to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who emphasized Sparta's collectivism and antipathy to trade (see Therborn 1976, 119-24). Praise of Sparta became a common characteristic of the tradition of civic humanism, which held that property was important because it allowed the possessor the independence to exercise civic virtue (see Pocock 1985a, 115; 1982, 92). In this vein, Goran Therborn (1976, 122) remarked:
The Enlightenment was strongly attracted by tradition and by collectivist traditions at that. It turned to an antique-pagan heritage, instead of a medieval-christian heritage. . . . The austere public virtues of Sparta, the Roman Republic, and even the Roman Empire at its zenith, were the social ideals of many of the philosophes, not a freewheeling individualism. Rousseau admired Sparta and in the Discourse on Inequality, the Spartan lawgiver Lycurgus is presented as the model of a revolutionary politician.
A number of Scottish writers portrayed Sparta in a positive light, including Adam Smith's "never to be forgotten Dr. Hutcheson" (cited in Mossner and Ross 1977, 309), in his chapter "Of the Nature of Civil Laws and their Execution," commended Lycurgus to modern legislators (Hutcheson 1755, 2:310).
What made Steuart's use of Sparta unique was not his approval of totalitarian methods, but his straightforward recognition that these methods could be used to further capitalist development. He admitted the futility of his hope of re-creating a Spartan republic based on slave labor supporting a commercial society of frugal warriors.
The Slavery of the Market
While Steuart (1767, 1:51) taught that slavery was a "violent method (for) making men laborous in raising food," he understood that the market, properly arranged, could accomplish the same objectives that Spartan slavery promised. In the past, he argued, "men were . . . forced to labour because they were slaves to others,men are now forced to labour because they are slaves to their own wants" (ibid., 1:52).
What did Steuart mean by "wants"? He wrote, "Those who become servants for the sake of food, will soon become slaves" (ibid., 1:28). Thus although wage earners, unlike slaves, are formally free, Steuart understood that workers would be subject to an increasingly strict discipline. In this sense, capitalism seemed to be the next best alternative to a slave society.
Although no other classical political economist would have been so blunt, this idea was not unique to Steuart. For example, Mirabeau, whose work differed from that of Steuart in many respects (see Chamley 1965, 73 ff.), exclaimed, "The whole magic of [a] well-ordered society is that each man works for others, while believing that he is working for himself" (Mirabeau's Philosophie Rurale-, cited in Meek 1963, 70). Cantillon's analysis of how feudalism and the market could lead to the same outcome offered an even closer parallel.
Not unexpectedly, Steuart's insensitive language did not win much acceptance. For example, one reviewer took Steuart to task on this point:
In plain English, that by one way or another, men are made slaves by statesmen, in order that the useful may feed the useless. This is, indeed, the present state of what is called liberty in England. But, in fact, they are not made slaves to their passions and desires, for that is common to all men. It is the hard hand of necessity at present, like that of the taskmasters in preceding times, which compels them to work. The hired husbandman has, indeed, one passion that engages him to become a slave, and to labour; it is the goading dread of starving that enslaves him, and urges him to toil without desire. (Reviewers 1767, 127)
This review should not be read as a refutation of Steuart, but as a clarification. Certainly, the reviewer's semantics, referring to hunger and poverty instead of wants, is more informative than Steuart's. Nonetheless, Steuart's presentation has the merit of reminding us of the power of the silent compulsion of the market.
Steuart (1767, 2:217) realized that the market had many advantages over the crude Spartan system, but he also understood that it could run amok. In his words, "The Lacedemonian form may be compared to the wedge. . . . Those of the modern states to watches, which are continually going wrong."
As a result, Steuart looked to a statesman to guide the system. This perspective led him to focus his attention on one overriding question: How were wants to be structured so that they would effectively enslave people?
Here we come to the heart of Steuart's work. Steuart found himself in a land where labor had not yet been fully subjugated to the needs of capital. His agricultural experience was well suited to equip him to become the theorist par excellence of primitive accumulation. He knew that the traditional Highlanders had wants, but they were not yet "slaves" to them in the sense that Steuart used the term. In responding to this situation, Steuart went further than any other classical political economist in trying to develop a program to integrate the traditional sector into the economy.
Steuart and The Organizing of Economic Development
Steuart (ibid., 2:80) clearly connected his desire to purge the land of free hands, as well as his antagonism toward subsistence farming, with the rise of commodity production: "Now the frequent sale of articles of the first necessity makes a distribution of inhabitants into labourers, and what we have called 'free hands.' The first are those who produce the necessaries of life; the last are those who buy them." Steuart realized that merely throwing people off the land would not necessarily lay the path for a smooth transition to capitalist social relations. He recognized the complexity of the underlying dynamic of primitive accumulation, along with the need to be specific about the nature of this momentous transformation.
Unlike other classical political economists, Steuart stressed that one cannot overlook the tempo at which changes are introduced. What may be disastrous when suddenly introduced might well be beneficial if it could be accomplished more slowly (ibid., 1:160-61, 284, chap. 19). In Steuart's words, "Sudden revolutions are constantly hurtful, and a good statesman ought to lay down his plan for arriving at perfection by gradual steps" (ibid., 1:1 11). The recent experience of the countries of the former Soviet Union also suggests how difficult the sudden transition to capitalism can be.
In particular, primitive accumulation required much caution. With this thought in mind, Steuart cautioned (ibid., 1:175), "A young horse is to be caressed when a saddle is put upon his back." For this reason, he called for the gradual conversion of cornfields into pasture (ibid., 1:181). Unfortunately, many modern economists, even with the benefit of hindsight, have failed to take the tempo of their project into account in confidently dismantling traditional agricultural systems around the world. In addition, some of the advisors of post-Soviet Russia could have benefited from looking at the dusty volumes that Steuart wrote.
A second consideration was more substantial. Steuart knew full well that although the Scottish gentry was able to throw masses of people off the land, eviction alone was not sufficient to force people into wage labor. Time and time again, Steuart (ibid., 1:8, 29, 237) repeated that the crux of his investigation was to discover how people came to submit voluntarily to authority. In a capitalist society, submission implied the acceptance of the wage relationship.
A third concern was closely related to the second. How could the first capitalist firm, say a shoe factory, emerge out of a noncapitalist economy? Since the factory would presumably be the first capitalist institution in the economy, the workers there could not exchange their wages to obtain the goods that they customarily consumed, except for shoes. The workers could use some of their earnings to purchase shoes, but in order to be a productive operation, the owners of the factory would have to ensure that the workers would be able to produce more shoes than they could afford to purchase with their wages.
Moreover, the workers have other needs besides shoes, even though no other commodity -producing firms are selling the goods that the workers in the shoe factory might want to purchase. Consequently, the shoe factory presumes the existence of other entities manufacturing consumer goods for sale. This phenomenon was doubly important in eighteenth-century England, where the absence of coin of small denomination led to the common practice of paying workers with a share of their product, which they then had to market on their own.
How, then, would the first factory come into existence? Paul Rosenstein-Rodan (1943; see also Hume 175 2d, 260-61), writing in the midst of the devastation of World War II, brought this question to modern economists while wondering about the possibility of the re-creation of a market in war-ravaged southern and eastern Europe. Nurkse (1953) later associated the solution to this problem, which he termed, the "big push," with the Smithian tradition, but it is the very antithesis of Smith's project.
We already alluded to Adam Smith's basic answer, which we shall examine in more detail (see chapter 10). According to Smith, the first institutions were not large factories, but the works of small artisans who gradually increased the scale of their operations. Unfortunately, Smith's approach does not shed any light on the process by which the artisans became wage laborers— a central concern of Steuart and the rest of the classical political economists.