Munera Pulveris and Normative Economics

In 1862 and 1863, Ruskin wrote four economic articles in Fraser's Magazine as a sequel to Unto This Last and published a book Munera Pulveris - Six Essays on the Elements of Political Economy in 1872 after ten years of intellectual struggle.

Ruskin tries to construct the framework of argument by focusing on the concept of Life. ‘The object of political economy is the continuance not only of life, but of healthy and happy life. But all true happiness is both a consequence and cause of life.’ Life is defined again as ‘the happiness and power of the entire human nature, body and soul’ (vol. 17, 149). For Ruskin, Life is a normative concept in which perfection or excellence of body, feeling, and intellect is to be pursued by all members of a society.

For all the efforts he made to formulate his vision, Munera Pulveris remains the preface to a larger treatise on political economy that was never written. Given the overall relationship between art and economics, it is nevertheless worthwhile to examine Ruskin’s economic thought by inter­preting how the three key concepts of Life (‘capability’, ‘composition’, and ‘labour’) were elaborated and developed in the field of economics.

1.8.1 CommodityandCapability

In his discussion of Wealth and richness in Munera Pulveris, Ruskin newly introduces the distinction between ‘intrinsic value’ and ‘effectual value’. ‘Intrinsic value is the absolute power of anything to support life’ (vol. 17, 153). In order that this value may become effectual, a certain power is necessary in the recipient of it. ‘Where the intrinsic value and acceptant capacity come together, there is Effectual value, or wealth’ (vol. 17, 154). Wealth in the true meaning involves two requirements: the production of a thing essentially useful to Life and the production of the capacity to use it.

Ruskin's shift of attention from a stock of commodity to a stock of capacity in the definition of Wealth, the view anticipated by Xenophon, is the ground for criticizing classical economics under the perspective of Life. From Ruskin's standpoint of aesthetics, Life is regarded as a stock of overall human capacity to create the pleasure of Beauty in opposition to the utilitarian flow of pleasure or happiness. Traditionally, the well-being of a nation has been represented by either the aggregate of commodities as an index of Wealth or the aggregate of utilities as an index of happiness. Ruskin's notion of capacity or capability lies between commodity and utility. In a sense, his approaches to aesthetics and economics are synthe­sized by the idea of the double needs of Wealth.

As shown in the interpretation of the trinity thesis (Wealth = Life = Beauty), the focus on capacity is based on the conception of Life as a stock of powers to produce excellence of human nature in economic as well as artistic activities. Art is not only a representation of Life but also a means to Life. Similarly, economy is not only a representation of Life but also a means to Life. In both cases, the trinity is established by the development of capacity. What does not contribute to the enhancement and develop­ment of Life should be excluded from ‘Wealth’ and be regarded as ‘Illth’ (vol.

The recognition that Wealth depends upon the capacity of human beings is heterodox in economics, whose mainstream approach is a commodity approach or a utility approach. Ruskin’s idea of locating intrinsic and effectual values between both approaches is succeeded by Amartya Sen’s capability approach a hundred years later (Sen 1985).

1.8.2 Composition and Cooperation

Ruskin’s view of the richness or happiness of a nation is that it cannot be argued independently of distributive justice. The institution of competition motivated by the self-interest of individuals should be replaced by the scheme of cooperation based on social affection. For him, the ‘compos­ition' of the economic system is provided by imagination. This is the metaphorical application of aesthetics to economics. The idea of ‘compos­ition’ in painting is that Beauty is produced by the structural balance of the whole consisting of interdependence between parts on the canvas, and is now transformed into the theory of ‘cooperation’ and ‘help’ among the members of society as an organism. As was argued in his study of the Gothic architecture, the ‘cooperation’ between workers in producing art is essential to increasing the powers of Life, and is called ‘social cooperation’.

Time and Tide (1867) is a collection of Ruskin’s open letters to the labour class. Its first letter is important for it deals with the two kinds of ‘cooperation’ (vol. 17, 315-18). Whereas he treated ‘cooperation’ as opposed to ‘competition’ when he first applied the idea of ‘cooperation’ to the economic world, he now interprets ‘cooperation’ as opposed to ‘mastership’ in the mercantile system. ‘Mastership’, used also as the title of chapter 6 of Munera Pulveris, denotes hideous labour-management relations and distributive relations based on the egoistic profit motives of employers. The principle for the scheme of ‘cooperation’ is social justice based on paternalism. Thus, the idea of ‘composition’ inspired by aes­thetics is expanded as grounds for construing Life as the countermeasure against ‘competition’ and ‘mastership’ in Ruskin’s economic thought.

1.8.3 Labour as the Agent and Aim of Life

It is the role of labour as the agent of Life that combines Beauty and Wealth and contributes to Life in Ruskin. In this sense it is located at the centre of gravity in ‘Ruskin’s triangle’. Like other key concepts, in other words ‘capability’ and ‘composition’, the concept of ‘labour’ also plays a critical role against classical economics. When Adam Smith character­ized capitalist economic development, the division of labour was regard­ed as the institutional framework for increasing industrial efficiency. Ruskin argues that it is not labour that is divided, but men; men are divided into mere segments (vol. 10, 196). While workers of the Gothic architecture enjoyed happiness of Life that consisted of the whole human nature, the pursuit of mechanical efficiency in the dangerous, painful, and monotonous work of factory production means a denial of human Life. Workers cannot enjoy pleasures from factory labour and are liable to find pleasures solely from the satisfaction of material desires.

By the latter half of the nineteenth century, the criticism of capitalism for the alienation of labour was by no means novel. Ruskin was directly influenced by Carlyle’s religious view on the gospel of work, his originality was his critique on the grounds of aesthetic Life: his standpoint was a normative theory of virtue based on the idea of ‘cooperation’ that enables the full exertion of ‘capability’ at the site of ‘labour’. It is Thomas Hill Green who fully developed Ruskin’s artistic idea of ‘composition’ into the perfec­tionist ethics of ‘common good’ in a community.

In chapter 2 (‘Store-Keeping’) of Munera Pulveris, Ruskin argues about how to manage the Wealth of a nation. While Mill’s wage fund doctrine that labour is limited by the size of capital may hold in the ‘mercantile economy’ consisting of competition, the true limiting factor in the ‘political economy’ with which Ruskin is concerned is moral imagination of employers.

Out of a given quantity of funds for wages, more or less labour is to be had, according to the quantity of will with which we can inspire the workman; and the true limit of labour is only in the limit of this moral stimulus of the will, and of the bodily power.... Labour is limited only by the great original capital of head, heart, and hand. (vol. 17, 177)

In his study of art Ruskin postulated that the cooperation of ‘head, heart, and hand’, which constitutes the entire human nature, is the condition of great art. He now talks about ‘the great original capital of head, heart, and hand’, because he regards that what constitutes Life is power as a stock of the whole of human nature.

Following the definitions of Wealth and richness, cost and price are defined. In classical economics, labour means the pains and sacrifices of life and the wage is a price for the cost of toil and trouble. In contrast, Ruskin thinks that labour is an effort to create Life and wage is paid as a reward for the exertion of capabilities. ‘All labour may be shortly divided into positive and negative labour: positive, that which produces life; negative, that which produces death’ (vol. 17, 97). For him, the ideal economic management is to minimize negative labour and to maximize positive labour.

The theory of value he wishes to establish is neither an embodied-labour theory nor a commanded-labour theory, nor subjective utility theory, all of which are based on the assumption of ‘mercantile economy’. His goal is a normative theory of ‘political economy’ with the criteria of contributions to Life. He offers a critical examination of various aspects of ‘mercantile economy’ in which monetary values prevail. He is furiously offended with the economic doctrine that wage is determined by competition, and offers his style of invective: ‘I have no terms of English, and can find none in Greek nor Latin, nor in any other strong language known to me, contemp­tuous enough to attack the bestial idiotism of the modern theory that wages are to be measured by competition’ (vol. 17, 263). In chapter 6 on mastership concerning the relations between employers and workers and between the rich and the poor, it is argued that wages must depend on moral conditions. At the heart of Ruskin's endeavours is the belief that a series of moral virtues should be respected to support the scheme of ‘cooperation' in place of laissez-faire.

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