Commerce and Culture

The first group is heading for an MBA and a career in “business.” (One of my many amusements is pointing out to such students that all jobs, by definition, are in business.) They are taking Introduction to Economics because they are sure it is the first step in unlocking the mysteries of the business world, keys which they need to have in order to land that first job which will enable them to get that MBA and amass much wealth.

The second group is dutiful fulfilling the need to take some social science distribution class, and either because it fit into their schedule or because of parental pressure to take a “useful” class like economics, they wander into the introductory course. (Another one of my amusements is pointing out to students that introduction to economics, as a part of the liberal arts, is, by definition, useless.) These students know there is a moral stench surrounding capitalism and hence economics, and have braced themselves to make sure they are not duped into thinking markets might serve a useful societal function.

Both types of students are a joy to teach. It is the fact that they do not understand one another than interests me.

I was recently at a conference at the Acton Institute, and one of the readings was a chapter from William Ropke’s book, A Humane Economy. The book was first published in 1960. One might think a few things have changed in the last sixty years, but in this respect, it was eerily contemporary.

Ropke is concerned that few people understand the cultural aspects of the economic realm. “The feeling for the meaning and dignity of one’s profession and for the place of work in society, whatever work it be, is today lost to a shockingly large number of people.” We all know work is important to pay the bills, but how often do we talk about the place of work in a society? Indeed, who even talks about such things? As Ropke notes:

This is the place, too, to note that the hard-boiled business world, which ignores such questions or leaves them, with contempt, to the “unbusinesslike” intellectuals, and these same intellectuals’ distrust of the business world match and mutually exacerbate each other. If the business world loses its contact with culture and the intellectuals resentfully keep their distance from economic matters, then the two spheres become irretrievably alienated from each other. We can observe this in America in the anti-intellectualism of wide circles of businessman and the anti-capitalism of equally wide circles of intellectuals.

That is a perfect description of my Introduction to Economics classes. One set of students needs to be persuaded that that thinking about economics is not simply thinking about how to get a job on Wall Street. The other set of students needs to be persuaded that thinking about economics is not just marshaling a list of critiques of capitalism.

This is more than simply an interesting pedagogical challenge, however. It is very much a cultural challenge in an age of specialization. Ropke was very concerned that if the two segments of society remained alienated from one another, the results would inevitably be “a vicious circle of mutually intensifying resentment which threatens to end up in catastrophe.”

Is there a solution? Ropke has one:

One has to break out of this vicious circle by making the world of the mind as respectable to the business world as, conversely, the business world to the world of the mind.

Ropke is certainly right. On the one side, the world of commerce is littered with philistines, who have zero appreciation for the cultural triumphs that allowed the creation of the economy in which they participate. If your only experience with Shakespeare was your 10^th grade English class, your only experience with Mozart was background music in a commercial, your only experience with Michelangelo was kitschy parodies, then your world is truly impoverished no matter how large your bank account is. Any rising business leader would benefit immensely from reading Macbeth or All the King’s Men and reflecting on the lessons therein. The trick is finding a way to convince people that they will enjoy doing this.

On the other side, the disdain for economics among the cultural mandarins is truly astonishing. Every time I hear a tenured faculty member making a six figure salary arguing about the evils of a capitalist system, I truly wonder if they have ever paused to wonder why they have such a high salary and a nice house and a job in which they can bite the hand that feeds them without once worrying about losing their job. The trick is finding a way to convince people that they should pause and think about such questions.

Thinking about both the world of commerce and the world of culture is not as odd as many people believe it to be. After all, Adam Smith wrote two books in his life, one exploring the wealth of nations and one exploring moral sentiments. He certainly did not think of these things as belonging to two different realms of thought.

There is one way that things have changed a bit since Ropke penned A Human Economy. The warring camps which view each other with intensifying resentment have themselves split into many factions. An interesting thought experiment: what is the book or movie or TV show or cultural event which spans the largest number of these groups?

The most obvious answer would be the most watched television event every year: the Super Bowl. What percentage of the American population watches the most watched event of the year? Less than one-third. Think about that for a moment. There is no show or event on television which even half of Americans watch. The highest grossing movie of the 21^st century (Avengers: Endgame) was seen by about 10% of Americans. The bestselling book (the first Harry Potter, obviously) has only been read by about a third of American children. And, believe it or not, less than a third of Americans read this here blog.

So, while you may think there are things that unite people across the spectrum, that is only because you live in a small little bubble. No matter what you read or watch, over two-thirds of Americans have not read or watched that. So, the problem has gone far beyond the fact that those in the world of commerce and those in the world of culture have no-overlapping interests, even within those worlds there are many subgroups with non-overlapping knowledge and belief sets.

Is this a new phenomenon? Not even remotely. What percentage of Elizabethan England do you suppose saw a Shakespeare play? What percentage of late 18^th century France had read Voltaire? Societies have always been broken up into small subgroups.

So, what is new? The vitriol? Again, the fact that one tribe hated another tribe is built into the fabric of human history.

I think what concerns Ropke, and what concerns us today, is not the existence of these mutually exclusive groups, but rather that those at the highest levels of a society are locked in “a vicious circle of mutually intensifying resentment.” It is one thing when the Hatfields do not like the McCoys, and quite another thing when the upper echelons of commerce and the cultural elites have utter disdain for one another. And when the resentment is mutually intensifying, sooner or later soothing must give.

What can fix this? Ropke’s solution is, to say the least, impressively simple:

The chain reaction between the business world’s distrust of intellectuals and the intellectuals’ retaliating resentment should be broken by both sides: the intellectuals should abandon untenable ideologies and theories, and the “capitalists” should adopt a philosophy which, while rendering unto the market the things that belong to the market, also renders unto the spirit what belongs to it. Both movements together should merge into a new humanism in which the market and the spirit are reconciled in common service to the highest values.

Let us all imagine the halcyon days of 1960 when such a statement would not cause an amused smile.

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