Early critiques: Bonald, Stael and Constant
As early as the first decade of the century, two kinds of critique were symptomatic of the range of political approaches hostile to free trade, different from that of Gracchus Babeuf (see Vol.
1, Chapter 9) for example. A first attack came, understandably, from the Counter-Revolution,[139] because its partisans in general were suspicious of the liberty symbolised by the new commercial society. In 1810, one of its most prominent political philosophers, Louis-Gabriel-Ambroise de Bonald (1754-1840), wrote a text titled “De la richesse des nations”, in which he opposed the new society based on individualism and competition, and stressed the fact that the phrase “wealth of nations” was misused by Adam Smith in his analysis of commercial society: it made no sense from the point of view of society. Smith, Bonald stated, only dealt with the material wealth of individuals. But the sum of the wealth of all individuals cannot be called the wealth of the nation, if only because a large part of the population does not have access to it: “in all Europe, there is nowhere more destitution than in the nations that we call affluent” ([1810] 1859, 307). Moreover, a nation is something different from the simple aggregation of individuals. Individuals are physical beings, and for them material wealth is the means of their conservation. Society, however, is a moral being and the means of its existence and perpetuation is moral wealth, that is, mores and laws, which give it strength. “Yes, society is a moral body; religion is its health; monarchy its strength; its goods are its virtues” ([1810] 1859, 308). The development of trade and markets ruined the stable hierarchy which used to organise nations both domestically and internationally, and the natural order was turned upside down. The spirit of commerce - the calculation of individual interests - caused the neglect of agriculture; domestic competition and international rivalry transformed economic activities into games of chance, dissolved all personal ties between individuals, and generated conflicts and wars. The foundations of private and public morals were destroyed ([1810] 1859, 313-14). As Bonald wrote in Theorie dupouvoirpolitique et religieux dans la societe civile:With respect to his fellow man, commerce... places man in a savage state, such as it can exist within civilised societies, and... it naturally allies itself with governments where the laws are only the particular wills of the depraved man.
([1796] 1859, col. 702)
More interestingly, a second attack came from the opposite political camp, that of the advocates of the Revolution’s achievements, that is, from the liberal camp itself. It was expressed by two writers and political philosophers: Germaine de Stael (1766-1817) - the daughter of Jacques Necker, the Swiss banker and minister of Louis XVI who played an important role in French politics - and Benjamin Constant.[140] They were at the centre of an intellectual group known as the “groupe de Coppet” - named after one of Stael’s estates, Coppet, in Switzerland - which included Sismondi among other intellectual figures. In a sense, as regards French intellectual life, Stael, Constant, Sismondi and their friends formed another Swiss connection,[141] distinct from the first which was the result of the editorial activity of authors gathered around the Bibliotheque britannique in Geneva (see Vol. 1, Chapter 9) - even if the two were in contact. The fundamental problem dealt with by Stael and Constant was the stabilisation of the Revolution after ten years of war and turmoil, both against the claims of the Counter-Revolution (to restore a form of Ancien Regime) and those of the radicals (partisans of a direct democracy, who often referred to an idealised Greco- Roman antiquity).
In a manuscript written in 1798 - Des circonstances actuelles quipeuvent terminer la Revolution, et des principes qui doivent fonder la republique en France - and echoing the revolutionary debates about the Ancients and the Moderns, that is, different ways to consider politics in Greco-Roman antiquity and in modern commercial societies, Stael asserted: “The liberty of present times consists of everything that guarantees the independence of the citizens from government.
The liberty of ancient times consisted of everything that guaranteed to the citizens the greatest share in the exercise of power” ([1798] 1979, 111-12). The historical evolution of society is irreversible. What the modern citizens seek now is total freedom to earn a revenue in whatever activity they wish, and the peaceful enjoyment of their wealth and life without taking up arms or being disturbed by other citizens or by political turmoil. The problem was thus to secure the new political regime based on liberty and representative government. As is well known, Constant developed these themes, especially in his Principes de politique, applicables a tous les gouvernements (1806-10) and his celebrated address, “De la liberte des anciens comparee a celle des modernes” (1819).Stael, however, noted that modern citizens were “peaceful egoists” ([1798] 1979, 109), which, in her view, raised important problems for the maintenance of society. If people are left freely to pursue their private activities, she asserted, society goes to ruin because self-interest destroys all social bonds. “Exaltation of self-interest” leads to moral and economic violence (Stael [1798] 1979, 236). In De l'Allemagne (1810), she developed her critique of morals based on self-interest and its philosophical underpinning: sensationist philosophy, which, reasoning in terms of pleasure and pain, brings self-love to the fore, weakens all other sentiments and induces human beings to devote all their time and effort to the pursuit of material well-being (Stael 1810, III, 50). True morals are destroyed and “man will be no more than a mechanism within the great mechanism of the universe: his faculties no more than clockwork, his morals a calculation, and his religion success” (1810, III, 26). Corrupted men hence equate the just and the unjust, or rather consider them to be part of a game played well or badly. “Finally, individuals will come to consider themselves no more than obstacles or instruments, they will loathe each other as obstacles, and regard each as no more than means” (1810, III, 180-1).
Yet it is impossible to discard the effect of sensations, although it should be possible to correct it through the presence of morals. Morals are necessary to counteract the corrosive effects of the modern form of liberty, both at the individual and collective levels: “every time that calculation fails to coincide with morals”, Stael insisted, “it is calculation which is wrong” (1799, II, 198). But where do morals originate? “Religion is the true foundation of morality” (1810, III, 205). “Morality, and morality bound by religious opinions, alone gives a complete code for all life’s actions, a code which unites men together through a kind of pact of the souls, an indispensable preliminary for any social contract” ([1798] 1979, 223). Something more than the habits instilled by religion through education, however, is needed to explain why a human being can sacrifice material interests for a moral attitude. The point here, Stael stated, is the very nature of the religious feeling: a “sentiment of the infinite” that every human being can feel individually. “All sacrifices of personal interest come from this need to place oneself in harmony with this sentiment of the infinite, whose attraction is fully experienced, even if it cannot be expressed” (1810, III, 268). Only this sentiment can induce people to defeat negative passions (1810, III, 331), contain self-interest and maintain society.
Constant’s opinion was no different, despite his many statements in favour of liberty and free trade, reasserted in the foreword to his Melanges de litterature et de politique:
I have defended the same principle for forty years: complete liberty, in philosophy, in literature, in industry, in politics. And I mean by liberty the triumph of individuality, in respect both to authority which seeks to govern through despotism and to the masses who arrogate the right to subordinate the minority to the majority.
(Constant 1829, vi)
“Leave egoism alone. Private egoisms clash with each other; they neutralise one another”, he wrote in his commentaries on Gaetano Filangieri’s La scienza della legislazione.
He added, however, that egoism is dangerous when institutions encourage it and destroy all counterweights. “Nature, which has given man selflove for his personal preservation, also gave him sympathy, generosity and pity, so that he would not destroy his fellows. Egoism becomes harmful only when this counterweight is destroyed” ([1822-24] 2015, 251). And this is unfortunately the case in a modern society based on free markets, sensationist philosophy and utilitarianism. Like Stael, Constant insisted that calculations in terms of pleasure and pain inevitably lead to moral decay. This is what he stated in his 1826 review of Charles Dunoyer’s L’industrie et la morale:[T]his state of civilisation tends toward... good order, rather than moral virtue. However, good order... is rather a means than an end. If, to maintain it, one sacrifices all generous emotion, men are reduced to a condition little different to that of some industrious animals, for well-ordered hives and artistically constructed huts cannot represent an ideal for the human species.
(1826, 421)
For Constant, the notion of natural rights is central, because it is independent of any calculation and gives men the sentiment of duty, as he stated against Bentham. The principle of utility “arouses hope of profit in the mind of man, and not the sentiment of duty. But the appraisal of profit is arbitrary; it is the imagination which decides; but neither its error nor its caprice are capable of altering the notion of duty” (Constant 1829, 144). And it is useless to put forth the notion of “interest well-understood” - or “enlightened self-interest” - so often evoked by Jean-Baptiste Say, among others, which was supposed to reconcile self-interest with morality and justice because men would then act according to their long-term interest, avoiding hurting other’s interests and thus possible retaliation. This kind of discourse, Constant stressed, is incomprehensible to most people. Self-interest only entails for them an immediate and restrictive meaning.
As a consequence, “when you say to them that they must govern according to their self-interest, they understand that they have to sacrifice to their interest all opposing or rival interests” (Constant 1826, 422) and the problem remains as before.[T]he word utility, following common usage, puts us in mind of a different idea to that of justice, or of law. Insofar as usage and common sense attach a specific meaning to a word, it is dangerous to alter this meaning.
(1829, 143-4)
It is thus necessary to keep awake in men sentiments which form a counterweight to self-interest. As for Stael, this is the role of morals, themselves originating in religious sentiment: everything comes from a kind of universal and intimate revelation that everybody can freely feel, independently of any intercession on the part of any clergy or dogma.
Yes, without doubt there was a revelation, but this revelation is universal, it is permanent, it has its source in the human heart. Man need only listen to himself, he need only listen to a nature which speaks to him with a thousand voices to be carried invincibly into religion.
([1824-31] 1999, 43)
Therefore, like Stael’s “sentiment of the infinite”, Constant’s religious sentiment cannot have any precise definition, as he himself admits.
If I were accused here of not defining religious sentiment in a sufficiently precise way, I would ask how one defines with precision that vague and profound part of our moral sensations which, by its very nature, defies all the efforts of language.
([1806-10] 2015, 133)
But the position of Stael and Constant was nevertheless clear: religious sentiment is a personal feeling, independent of any institutional organisation or clergy which could instead prevent its full development or even destroy it.[142]
Finally, Constant (1825, 672-3) asserted that a broad diffusion of morals and religion was not unfavourable to production and exchange: are not the countries in which religious sentiment is the most widespread - England and the United States - also the most economically successful?
Look around you. Intolerance did what it could to make religion odious. Incredulity did what it could to make it ridiculous, yet religious sentiment is lively everywhere. In England, look at this multitude of sects which make it the object of their most lively ardour and of their assiduous meditations. Yet England is first among European countries for work, production, and industry. Look at America... America covers the seas with its flag; it devotes itself, more than any people, to the exploitation of physical nature; yet such is the degree of religious sentiment in this region, that often just one family is divided into several sects, without this divergence disturbing the peace or domestic affection, because the members of this family come together in the worship of a just and beneficial providence, coming together like travellers at a destination which they have reached by different paths.
As a matter of fact, England and America were Protestant countries.[143] Constant’s assertions thus continued an old controversy about the comparative economic efficiency of Catholic and Protestant countries, already present in Montesquieu in a different context.[144]
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