Florence Pellegry 32 Silver Street Ely, Cambs.

,CB7 4JF Great Britain

Ely, the 3rd of April, 2007

AN END TO POVERTY?
A Historical Debate GARETH STEDMAN JONES Profile books Ltd., London, 2004.

Nicolas de Condorcet, par Jean-Baptiste Greuze

Thomas Paine, par Auguste Milliere

Note de lecture

Introduction: [Stedman Jones] produces an argument that is not only powerful in its own right but should act as a stimulus and inspiration to others. David Feldman, History Today. An End to Poverty? offers an excitingly redrawn map of intellectual history. It also makes a powerful case about our political present and future. Stephen Howe, The Independent. In An End to Poverty, Gareth Stedman Jones sets out to address current political issues in the light of theories dating back to the 18th century. Situating the origins of socialdemocratic thought in the decade of the French revolution, this renowned historian engages in a study of the first non-utopian proposals on how to end poverty, formulated by reformers such as the Marquis de Condorcet and Thomas Paine. In their respective works1 these republican supporters of enlightenment elaborated a set of resolutions which linked the pursuit of equality with commercial society and a republican polity2. If Stedman Jones wishes to revive this important, but often overlooked, episode in the history of social thought, it is because he is convinced that contemporary social democracy should follow the lead of these earlier thinkers. He sees the elimination of poverty as a theme that should once again be at the centre of political and social-policy debates. Gareth Stedman Jones is a British academic, Professor of Political Science at Cambridge University since 1997, fellow of Kings College Cambridge University since 1974, and director of the Centre for History and Economics since 1991. Being, as he himself observed, a radical student and then a radical academic, he first gained influence when he became attached to the New Left Review and served on its Editorial Board from 1964 to 1981. He was also co-founder of the History Workshop Journal in 1976. Although his early research dealt mainly with the question of poverty in Victorian England, after the seventies, he became

Nicolas de Condorcet's Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind (1795). Tom Paine's Rights of Man: Part Two (1792). 2 Gareth Stedman Jones, An end to poverty: the French Revolution and the promise of a world beyond want, Historical Research, Vol. 78, No. 200, May 2005. p.193.

deeply interested in the theories from which socialism stemmed. He sought to find out the origins, the genealogy of socialist ideas3 and eventually became an expert in the field. He is the author of Outcast London (Oxford, 1971) and Languages of Class: Studies in English Working Class History, 1832-1982, (Cambridge, 1983). He is also the editor of the Penguin Classics edition of The Communist Manifesto (Harmondsworth, 2002). An End to Poverty? A Historical Debate, is his most recent book, published in 2004 and has enabled him to explore, on a deeper level, his interest in the origins of socialism. It was written to accompany the 2004 Anglo-American Conference of the Institute of Historical Research on Wealth and Poverty. In this paper, I will discuss the main points and ideas contained in Mr Stedman Jones most recent work. Falling into six parts, this book initially examines the origins of the new radical social perspective which emerged in the 1780s and 1790s to later detail the immediate reactions in France as well as in England. He finally concentrates on subsequent developments, particularly on the ensuing polarisation of discourse and politics into two rival camps of laissez-faire individualism and socialism4. The first debates about ending poverty were influenced by a new interest in the power of scientific and economic progress as a means of possibly abolishing poverty. The Marquis Antoine-Nicolas Condorcet, a famous French philosopher and visionary mathematician, and Thomas Paine, an Anglo-American revolutionary and radical intellectual, were both very optimistic about the role of knowledge, reason and freedom in the overcoming of poverty, violence and ignorance5. Both men subscribed to a new form of republicanism inspired by the scientific and social advances of the eighteenth century. The science of statistics (the collection of mortality data) and mathematics (probability) had recently changed attitudes to chance and the future. The afflictions of the poor which were often perceived as a reflection of the will of God, or as the product of chance, were now perceived as controllable. Thanks to four decades of economic growth and relative prosperity, observers could for the first time see
3

Interview of Gareth Stedman Jones, Heaven on Earth, The Rise and Fall of Socialism (TV documentary, PBS, 2005), in http://www.pbs.org/heavenonearth/interviews_ jones.html, on the 13th of March 2007. 4 Frank Trentmann, Make poverty history: Debate. in http://www.historyandpolicy.org/ archive/policy-paper31.html, on the 31st of March 2006. 5 Gareth Stedman Jones, An End to Poverty: A Historical Debate, Profile books Ltd., London, 2004. p.26.

an underlying pattern to economic life. Poverty thus became remediable in principle, since it was man-made in practice6. The ideas of Adam Smith in Britain and Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot in France7 also had a great impact on these two thinkers. The idea that free trade and healthy competition could increase prosperity and eradicate poverty enabled them to embrace commercial society while devising a new, and more egalitarian project of a democratic community 8. Stedman Jones thus demonstrates, contrary to what is commonly believed, how the first generation of followers of Smiths laisser-faire libertarianism in The Wealth of Nations were closer to the political left than to the right. The Author reminds us that some misconceptions still need to be redressed by challenging the neo-conservative assumption of direct descent in their thinking from that of Adam Smith9. The revolutions of 1776 in America and 1789 in France also helped to radicalise the outlook of numerous intellectuals. People began to directly address questions about democracy and equality and to re-evaluate inherited conceptions of poverty and social hierarchy. The poor became fellow citizens, while the rich were reminded that their hegemony was provisional and contingent on the labour and good will of the lower classes10. It is in this context that Paine and Cordorcet came up with original and quite similar proposals for what could today be perceived as a welfare state (both men collaborated under the Girondin party during the French Revolution). From their work emerged the first schemes for a system of redistributive taxation and for a government-sponsored social welfare scheme, offering social security (health and unemployment insurance, child allowances, old age pensions, etc.), and universal education11. These new ways of thinking about poverty and welfare were however to be promptly extinguished by those who deemed them too threatening for Europe in the aftermath of the French revolution. In England, although The Rights of Man was one of the centurys bestsellers, the authorities quickly became anxious about its ideas. In the winter of 1792 - 93,
6

Gareth Stedman Jones, A history of ending poverty, The Guardian, 2nd of July 2005, in http://www.guardian. co.uk /comment/ story 0,,1519560,00.html, on the 26th of March 2007. 7 While Adam Smith gained influence through his famous The Wealth of Nations (1776) ; Turgot became known thanks to his participation in the French reforming liberal ministry of 17746. 8 Frank Trentmann, op. cit., on the 31st of March 2006. 9 Liana Vardi, Review of Gareth Stedman Jones, An End to Poverty? A Historical Debate, The American Historical Review, Vol.3, No5, December 2006. p.1466. 10 Gareth Stedman Jones, op. cit., p.13. 11 While Condorcet insisted more on the universality of education, Paine's social insurance proposals in The Rights of Man were designed to show how a European country like Britain could come to resemble the United States and therefore also become a republic (Gareth Stedman Jones, op. cit., p.54-55).

spurred on by loyalists, people in towns and villages burnt more than three hundred effigies of Paine in England and Wales. The repression of these republican ideas became so entrenched that radicalism virtually collapsed by the end of the century12. Paines radicalism was essentially different to that of most radicals in Britain due to his ties to French radicals and his American experience. According to Stedman Jones, he was the only English radical in the 1780s and 1790s to be openly contemptuous of the supposed virtues of the English mixed constitution, and of the aristocracy13. The majority of British radicals had little appetite for fundamental change and would never have proposed that Britain should become a republic14. In France, the success of the Americans had led to a renewal and modernisation of republican thought. However, although many legislators agreed with Condorcets ambition to eliminate poverty through education and a range of social provisions, his proposals were never applied due to the fall of Robespierre, the famine and the near bankruptcy of the Jacobin state in 1795. In Britain, Christian and conservative thinkers such as Edmond Burke and T.B. Malthus quickly demonized Paine and Condorcet, denouncing the republicans as intent on societys dissolution. Paines attack on the veracity of the Bible was deemed proof that irreligion, sedition and support for the national enemy were closely linked 15. Malthus and Burke also came to utilize a distorted version of Smith's ideas to support their own vision of a society based on individualism and laissez-faire economics. Presenting poverty as a natural component of the divine order of things, their views influenced British social policy for more than a century. According to the author, the position adopted by Malthus illustrates how the debate about poverty but also about polity as a whole, was fundamentally altered by fear of the French revolution. Here, Stedman Jones exemplifies his conviction that neoconservative economic philosophy derives less from Smith than from the frightened conservative reaction to the French Revolution16. The following decades thus saw a shift in the analysis of commercial society. Under the influence of Malthus and Jean-Baptiste Say, political economy was severed from progressive politics. The crude behavioural approach to human psychology of the former acquired a position of prominence in Britain and made poverty an issue of personal behaviour and

12
13

Gareth Stedman Jones, An End to Poverty: A Historical Debate, Profile books Ltd., London, 2004. p.97-8. Gareth Stedman Jones, op. cit., p.54. 14 Gareth Stedman Jones, op. cit., p.51. 15 Gareth Stedman Jones, op. cit., p.96. 16 Gareth Stedman Jones, in Howard, Meredith, Q & A with Gareth Stedman Jones, in http://www.columbia.edu/cu/cup /publicity/stedmanjonesqa.pdf, on the 13th of March 2007.

morality17. Economic theory thus ceased to deal with democratic culture and began to concern itself exclusively with economic freedom and market forces. British governments began to leave social insurance in the hands of provident and friendly societies, which often collapsed due to their lack of professionalism. In France, although Say also located the solution to poverty in a reform of manners, he was more liberal in his approach to political economy. He believed in the institution of a secular moral code which would operate in place of the Church. A few years later, James Mill would follow similar lines of thought in Britain and inspire the re-emergence of a stream of philosophical radicals in Britain after 1815. Such analyses, however, started to lose ground when faced with the changing conditions of the 19th century. The liberal political economy of Say and Mill appeared increasingly removed from the proliferating unknowns of the 19th century economic crisis18. The industrial revolution transformed the problem of poverty in Britain and France, bringing new wealth to the middle classes and creating a new class of poor industrial workers. New analyses denouncing machinery as the major cause of poverty and the decline in standards of living became increasingly popular (J.C.L. de Sismondi was among the first to attack the new industrial system). Under the influence of Auguste Blanqui, political economy in France started to defend the rights of humanity and the individual. The end of poverty thus became inseparable from the emancipation of labour. The revolutions and uprisings of 1830, 1848 and 1871 however prevented the adoption of any new measures, due to increasing political fear and suspicion and other more pressing political concerns19 taking precedence. On the other side of the Channel, British economists timidly began to question the accepted theories of Malthus, Smith and David Ricardo and, by the 1830s, they had begun extensive investigations into the economic role of machinery, fixed capital and inanimate power20. Social legislation wasnt enacted however until the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Under the influence of Emile Durkheim and Lon Bourgeois in France and Henry George, Samuel Barnett and Arnold Toynbee in Britain, both countries underwent profound shifts in their attitudes to social policy. The solutions offered by the French and British governments at the turn of the twentieth century were however far from the universalistic and egalitarian approaches put forward by Condorcet and Paine. Both governments seemed more
17

Malthus underlined how production, distribution, and consumption operated according to scientific laws unaffected by political changes (Peter Jelavish, Review of Gareth Stedman Jones, An End to Poverty? A Historical Debate, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Vol. 37, No 4, Spring 2007. p. 595). 18 Gareth Stedman Jones, op. cit., p.191. 19 Gareth Stedman Jones, op. cit., p.200. 20 Gareth Stedman Jones, op. cit., p.174.

concerned with their military prowess and the productivity of their workforce than with social welfare in general. Most women and part-time workers were excluded from health and unemployment insurance and the Welfare legislations21 passed by the British Liberal Government (1906-1914) were notably infused with a national and imperial vision 22. Universalism and a more balanced social conscience would not appear in either country until the Second World War, more than 150 years after the first proposals for social equity. Contrary to what is claimed by most experts in the field, Stedman Jones argues, in his final chapter, that social democracy preceded the genesis of 19th and 20th century socialism. It was then shelved in the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, by two extreme trends: Socialism, on the one hand, and laisser faire individualism, on the other 23. According to Stedman Jones, the labour and socialist movements ironically contributed to the fragmentation and corruption of true social democracy. By dividing society into workers versus capitalists, early socialists lost sight of the significance of commercial society for civic life while the liberalists individualistic view of the market naturally diverted them from the fight against poverty24. Numerous specialists however disagree with these arguments, arguing instead that the Victorian and Edwardian discovery of the consumer preceded new civic ideas of political economy, and was even at its source. Thus, for Frank Trentmann, Stedman Jones approach seems to minimise the contribution of subsequent traditions25. Others have also criticised Stedman Jones for applying impractical outdated ideas to the changing needs of modern society. According to Peter Jelavish, Paine and Condorcets ideas are too far removed from a post-industrial, bureaucratized, globalized world to offer much for todays social democrats26. Their notions of social justice indeed appear to correspond to a fairly homogeneous community with shared moral beliefs, rather than to a multicultural society. In this context, Stedman Jones model works as an illustration of the disregarded egalitarian approach of Paine and Condorcet, when compared with early welfare legislation which seemed hierarchical and exclusionary27. Furthermore, even if it appears that such proposals have little to offer to western governments which already spend large sums on social services, they could still have a role to play in the developing countries of the world. Consequently, to a
21

1908: Old age pensions act . 1911: National Insurance Act 22 Gareth Stedman Jones, op. cit., p.211 23 Gareth Stedman Jones, op. cit., p. 235. 24 Frank Trentmann, op. cit., on the 31st of March 2006. 25 Ibid. 26 Peter Jelavish, op. cit., p.590. 27 Frank Trentmann, op. cit., on the 31st of March 2006.

certain extent, Stedman Jones creates a credible link between the international struggle against third world debt by governments, charities and NGOs and the approach of 19th century Poor Law administrators and charity organisers at a national level28. As he affirms himself: It is to such a programme, transforming the recipients of charity and aid into empowered citizens, that the visionaries of today should be looking. For only a politics combined with justice - in other words, the building of a global social-democratic programme - can make poverty history29.

Conclusion: Stedman invites us to take a fresh look at the interaction of the French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution. In writing this book he took up a considerable challenge in that no one had convincingly attempted to address this key historical moment since Eric Hobsbawm some forty years earlier (The Age of Revolution: Europe 1789-1848 (1962)). By looking to Thomas Paine and the Marquis de Condorcet as the founding fathers of social democracy, he offers an original view of the birth of social democracy which is normally situated with the trade unions and the welfare state30. His account of the rise and fall of the republican socialdemocratic idea through the different readings of Adam Smith is also convincing and worthy of debate.

28

Gareth Stedman Jones, A history of ending poverty, op. cit., on the 26th of March 2007. 29 Ibid. 30 Frank Trentmann, op. cit., on the 31st of March 2006.

Bibliography

Books: . Feldman, David, Review of Gareth Stedman Jones, An End to Poverty? A Historical Debate, History Today, Vol. 55, Issue 8, August 2005. . Howard, Meredith, Q & A with Gareth Stedman Jones, in http://www.columbia.edu/cu/cup /publicity/stedmanjonesqa.pdf, on the 13th of March 2007. . Jelavish, Peter, Review of Gareth Stedman Jones, An End to Poverty? A Historical Debate, in Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Vol. 37, No 4, Spring 2007. . Stedman Jones, Gareth, An End to Poverty: A Historical Debate, Profile books Ltd., London, 2004. . Stedman Jones, Gareth, An end to poverty: the French Revolution and the promise of a world beyond want, Historical Research, Vol. 78, No. 200, May 2005. . Stedman Jones, Gareth, A history of ending poverty, The Guardian, 2nd of July 2005, in http://www.guardian. co.uk /comment/ story 0,,1519560,00.html, on the 26th of March 2007. . Stedman Jones, Gareth, Interview for the release of Heaven on Earth, The Rise and Fall of Socialism (TV documentary, PBS, 2005), in http://www.pbs.org/heavenonearth/interviews_ jones.html, on the 13th of March 2007. . Trentmann, Frank, Make poverty history: Debate. in http://www.historyandpolicy.org/ archive/policy-paper-31.html, on the 31st of March 2006. . Vardi, Liana, Review of Gareth Stedman Jones, An End to Poverty? A Historical Debate, in The American Historical Review, Vol. 3, No 5, December 2006.

Illustrations: Portrait of Marie-Jean-Antoine-Nicolas de Caritat, Marquis of Condorcet by Jean-Baptiste Greuze, in www.scholarsresource.com/browse/artist/556, on the 30th of March 2007. Portrait of Thomas Paine by Auguste Milliere, in www.billofrightsinstitute.org/.../index.htm, on the 30th of March 2007.