Thomas Carlyle is a well-known Scottish historian, satirical writer, and essayist who wrote a number of works on different social issues. The dismal science is a humiliating name for economics worked out by this historian in the 19th century. Different economists refer to his thoughts and mention his critical views in their research papers.
Thomas Carlyle is very famous for his critique of the back then-contemporary political economy. Once in his notebook he made a satirical note on the issue “Is not political economy useful? And ought not Joseph Hume and Macculloch to be honored of all men? My cow is useful, and I keep her in the stable, and feed her with oilcake and “chaff and dregs”, and esteem her truly.” (Peter Groenewegen, p. 81).
Carlyle’s critical views of political economy as a do-nothing philosophy at a time when the problem of the poor demanded urgent actions later grew into his main concept in his public writings. In his notoriously racist essay “Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question” Carlyle clearly states the essentials of the argument particularly succinctly in the fifth and sixth paragraph of the article, where they are couched in the language of political economy, that is, in terms of “supply and demand”. (Peter Groenewegen, p. 76). In Carlyle’s opinion, this is the key phrase of the science which deals with such matters as a special branch of the social sciences. “Science, however, has a remedy still. Since the demand is so pressing, and the supply so inadequate, increase the supply; bring more Blacks into the labor-market, then will the rate fall, says science.” (Carlyle 1853 1888, vol. 7, pp. 82-83). For Carlyle, the state of slavery, defining the natural relationship between negro and white man, provides the security, stability of employment, and general care secured by the life-long contract it entails. This, in his view, characterizes “free” European and British master-servant relationships in factory, on the farm, or in domestic service. Developing a deliberately paradoxical position, Carlyle argued that slavery was actually morally superior to the market forces of supply and demand promoted by economists, since, in his view, the freeing up of the labor market by the liberation of slaves had actually led to a moral and economic decline in the lives of the former slaves themselves.
Carlyle’s view was attacked by many liberal economists. It is still an open question why did Carlyle write the “negro question” essay. Some economists believe that this notorious essay was a powerful device to draw attention to the failures of political economy on matters concerning economic freedom.
The nineteenth-century British political economy gave birth to a number of literary critics who tried to reveal its weak sides through their works, essays, and articles; however, at this time, Britain was the leading country in the world from the point of view of its economic and political power. One of those critics who despised the Victorian model of the economy was Charles Dickens.
In his works Dickens usually tried, in this or another way, to depict with all possible minutiae the life of the poor, cruel work conditions in factories, hard juvenile labor, dramatical class inequalities, etc. Unregulated and improper work conditions caused a lot of pain to Dickens, especially, when it came to working of minors. In his novel “Nicholas Nickleby” Charles Dickens revealed awful conditions in the Yorkshire schools, where children worked for years at cheap rates. In this novel, the author highlighted problems of juvenile labor through the character of Smike, whose life was a long and sad story, whose suffering and eventual death were directly connected with the sadistic regime of that time.
The most vivid blame, which Dickens put on the British economic model, can be traced in his novel “Hard Times”. Here, the author pictured economic pressure and social inequality of the times. A number of literary critics find this novel as a critique of industrial society and value Dickens’s generous anger that is preserved throughout the story. In this work, he uses different stylistic devices to show how labor social class was termed “Hands” by the factory owners as if they meant not real people but adjuncts to the machinery that could not be operated without them.
Dickens had a strong stance as to education for poor children. He was a well-known promoter of the extension of education to all people. He believed that this would bring a lot of positive moments in the development of the country. However, he failed to offer a specific strategy to achieve this aim.
Thus, we can see that unlike Thomas Carlyle, who sought solutions to the problems in the economic system of 19 century in Great Britain through establishing slavery, Charles Dickens was a real anthropologist and in his novels he attracted people’s attention to the hard situation which took place at the times, trying to evolve in their aspiration for better work conditions and to make both owners of factories and government respect people’s work.
Bibliography
Catherine Gallagher. The Body Economic: Life, Death, and Sensation in Political Economy and the Victorian Novel Summary. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008. Print.
Chris R. Vanden Bossche. Carlyle and the Search of Authority. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1991. Print.
Peter Groenewegen. Thomas Carlyle, “The Dismal Science”, and the Contemporary Political Economy of Slavery. In History of Economics Review. Australia, 2006. Print.