Credo Ut Intelligam

Toqueville on Industrialism and Aristocracy

This time, I'll translate.

When an artisan gives himself over ceaselessly and entirely to the construction of one object, he achieves a remarkable dexterity in that work. But at the same time he loses the more general skill of applying his mind to the management of his work. He becomes, each day, more useful and less industrious. The man is degraded as the work is perfected.

What must we think of a man who has spent twenty years of his life in making pin heads? What application of that marvelous human intelligence, which has often moved the world, can he look forward to, except to seek for a better way to make pin heads?

When a laborer has spent a considerable part of his existence in this way, his thought is forever restricted to the object of his daily labors; his body has acquired certain fixed habits which cannot be gotten rid of. In a word, he is no longer master of himself, but only of the the work that he has chosen. In vain have laws and customs taken care to break all the barriers that surround such a man and to open for him on all sides a thousand different roads to fortune; an industrial theory more powerful than customs and laws has bound him to a trade and often to a locale that he cannot leave. It has assigned him a certain place in society from which he cannot escape. In the midst of universal movement he is afflicted with immobility.

Insofar as the principle of the division of labor receives a more complete application, the worker becomes weaker, more limited, and more dependent. The progress of the craft is the regress of the craftsman. On the other hand, insofar as it becomes more clear that the products of industry are so much more perfect and so much less expensive, and insofar as the business is bigger and capital more expansive, the wealthy and savy are drawn to exploit those industries that, previously, had been the provenance of rude and uneducated artisans. They are drawn by the grandeur of the efforts needed and the immensity of the results to be obtained.

Thus, while industrial science continually demeans the class of workers, it raises the class of masters. While the worker's intellect is constrained more and more to the study of a single detail, the master every day surveys a vast organization, and his mind expands as much as the worker's contracts. Soon, the latter will need only physical force without intelligence; the former has need of science, even of genius, to succeed. The one comes to resemble, more and more, the administrator of a great empire, the other a mere animal.

The master and the worker then have nothing in common, and they differ more and more each day. They touch each other only as the two ends of a long chain. Each occupies a place that is made for him and that he cannot leave. One is in a continual, narrow, and necessitous dependence on the other, and seems born to obey, while the other seems born to command.

What is this if not aristocracy?

Conditions become more and more equal in the nation at large, the demand for manufactured objects grows and becomes more general, and the cheap prices that put these objects within the reach of middling fortunes become a great element of success. So it comes about that the more wealthy and savy dedicate their wealth and knowledge to industry and to seeking, by opening great factories and strictly dividing labor, to satisfy the new desires that are manifesting themselves everywhere.

Thus, insofar as the mass of the nation turns to democracy, the particular class that is is occupied with industry becomes more aristocratic. Men come to be more and more alike in the one and more and more different in the other, and inequality grows in the industrial microcosm as much as it is diminished in society at large. In this way aristocracy seems to arise naturally out of the very heart of democracy.

But this aristocracy is not like those that came before.

First, since this applies only to industry, and only to a few of the industrial professions, it represents an exception, a monster, in the larger society. The little aristocratic societies that certain industries compose in the midst of the immense democracy of our day, contain, like the great aristocratic societies of ancient times, some very rich men and an poor multitude. The poor have hardly any opportunity to improve their condition and become rich, but the rich are always becoming poor, or else leaving the world of business after having realized their profits. Thus the membership of the lower class is mostly fixed, while the membership of the wealthy class is not. Indeed, although there may be wealthy individuals, there really is no wealthy class; for those individuals have no esprit de corp, no common objects, and no common traditions or hopes. So there are members, but no body.

It is not only that the rich have no solid unity among themselves; there is also no true connection between the poor and the rich. They are not settled, in perpetuity, near each other; their interests at each moment connect and separate them. The laborer is dependent on the masters in general, but not on any particular master. The two meet for business and have no further knowledge of each other, and while they touch each other at that one point, they remain at great distance at every other point. The business owner asks nothing of the laborer except his labor, and the laborer cares only for his wages. The one does not in any way engage to protect or defend the other, and they are not linked together with any permanence, either by habit or by duty.

The industrial aristocrats almost never live anywhere near the population of employees that they manage; their aim is not to govern them but only to make use of them.

Such an aristocracy cannot have the admiration of those they employ. Even if they should get it momentarily, it will soon be lost. They do not know how to will and to act.

The landed aristocrats of ages past were obliged by law, or felt themselves obliged by custom, to come to the aid of their servants and to alleviate their sufferings. But the industrial aristocrats of our day, after having impoverished and dehumanized those they make use of, deliver them in their time of crisis over to public charity for their sustenance. This is the natural result of what was observed previously. The worker and the master have frequent contact, but they have no true community.

--Alexis de Toqueville, de la Democratie en Amerique, vol. 2, deuxieme partie, chapitre 20.

Nupta Electa

I hope you all understand how jocular I was being in my last post. Life is too short for arguing, seriously, about whether or not so-and-so's essay, the substance of which I affirm, had an insufficient emphasis on this or that point. If I seemed to be doing that, it was only for the fun of calling Doug Wilson (of all people) baptistic! But behind my jocularity there was a serious point. The truth that, in the Lord's supper, we feed upon the very body and blood of Christ is a truth I care very much about. And I am sad that this truth is not taught in our churches (I only discovered it by reading Calvin). Of course, it isn't Doug Wilson who is leading the way in this forgetfulness of our theological tradition. Quite the contrary. When it comes to sacramental theology, Wilson and the other FVers are leading the way in exposing and correcting such forgetfulness. So, in my last post, I was really (if you can belive it) expressing my appreciation for FV theology. In this post, I want to continue expressing my appreciation for FV theology, this time in the area of ecclesiology and election.

What is Really Present?

Here's a point on which I'm more FV than Doug Wilson: I take a more realistic view of the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper. Wilson's view, as he expresses it here, is rather wishy-washy. Which is unusual for him. A Lutheran, Matthew N. Petersen, has been very deftly defeating Wilson in the comments.

Blunders

Has anyone else noticed how often scholars who aren't themselves part of the Calvinistic tradition get Calvinism so egregiously wrong -- I mean when they are writing as scholars specifically about Calvinism and Calvinists? Two quick examples -- one a blatant error of fact on a specific doctrine, the other a myopic inability to "get" the most basic ground-motive of the Reformed faith:

The Calvinists took the bread and wine as symbols only, simple reminders of the Last Supper. When Calvin was questioned about the Real Presence, he said that Christ was everywhere and hence present at the sacrament also. (p. 29 From Dawn to Decadence. Jacques Barzun. Harper-Collins, Perennial: 2001.)

Independence of mind ... was stimulated by the new Calvinistic faith. The Kirk had removed from its members any assurance of eternal salvation by the work of the Church and its sacraments. On the contrary, a man's salvation depended on himself: he must prove himself to be one of God's elect -- a congenial doctrine to people who had always believed in self-reliance and a man's importance to himself. (p. 70 The Scotch-Irish: A Social History. James G Leyburn. Chapel Hill U of NC Press: 1962.)

If scholars are so befuddled when it comes to a tradition that still exists contemporary with their scholarship, how much can we trust the conclusions of modern scholars when they tell us about the mindset of, say, second-temple Jews? Don't take that question as more cynical than it was meant to be. I think such scholarship needs to be given a serious look. But I also want to be cautious: the potential for unnoticed (and perhaps uncorrectable) mistakes needs to be taken into account. Stepping back from the work of examining the scholarship itself to see how compelling it is -- even the most compelling-seeming (from our vantage point) scholarship may face a reliability issue. I assume it is not completely unreliable. It is, then, "somewhat" reliable. What are we to make of this somewhat-reliable historical scholarship? What role should it play in our interpretation of Scripture?

FV: Wilson and Clark on justification sola fide.

It started when R.S. Clark challenged FVers to repent of "trying to enlarge faith in the act of justification to be more than simply 'receiving and resting' on Christ and his finished work, of trying to include fruit and sanctity in the act of justification in either faith or the ground of justification rather than simply allowing them to be fruit and evidence of justification."

There is potential ambiguity in this language of faith in the act of justification". Does he mean 1. faith when it plays its role in justification; or 2. faith insofar as it plays its role in justification. From what he says later it is clear that he meant 2. But as the debate continued Wilson kept taking him to mean 1, in spite of his clarifying remarks.

Clark never denied that regeneration precedes faith. That notion came from an argument Wilson was making against a thesis he wrongly took Clark to hold. Clinging to interpretation 1, Wilson figured Clark was saying that faith had no holiness about it when justification happened. Wilson argued against this by using the premise that regeneration precedes faith and drawing the conclusion that justifying faith is, from the start, obedient faith; He then "dared" Clark to deny the premise. But Clark does not deny the premise. In fact, he accepts the whole argument as sound, but he thinks it misses the point. And on this I agree with Clark.

What is at issue here is not chronology. Clark calls that a "red herring". What is at issue is not whether justifying faith IS always already living faith. Yes, Wilson's argument proves that to be the case, but that was never in question. What is at issue is not a matter of IS but a matter of BECAUSE (as Clark put it in a later response to Wilson). The issue is: Does faith play the role it plays in justification [which we all agree is an instrumental role only] in part BECAUSE it is a living, obedient faith. Wilson says yes:

The fact that my faith is alive makes it possible to see Christ, the sole basis or reason for anyone's justification. If my faith were dead, it would be blind also, and incapable of looking to Christ as the sole ground of justification.

(Clark's response to Wilson's argument by analogy, by the way, is just that the analogy fails. While in some respects the analogy of the seeing eye is a good one; like all analogies, when pressed too far, it falls apart; as my alternative analogy shows: although it is because it is alive that an eye can see, it is not because the compasses are red that they aid in navigation of the ship, and it is not because faith is active, obedient, and holy that it plays its role as instrument of justification.)

Word of the Day

Cynomorphic:

"Relating to a dog's ideas and ways of looking at things." (OED)

De Amicitia

from The Four Loves:

In a perfect Friendship this Appreciative love is, I think, often so great and so firmly based that each member of the circle feels, in his secret heart, humbled before all the rest. Sometimes he wonders what he is doing there among his betters. He is lucky beyond desert to be in such company. Especially when the whole group is together, each bringing out all that is best, wisest, or funniest in all the others. Those are the golden sessions; when four or five of us after a hard day's walking have come to our inn; when our slippers are on, our feet spread out towards the blaze and our drinks at our elbows; when the whole world, and something beyond the world, opens itself to our minds as we talk; and no one has any claim on or any responsibility for another, but all are freemen and equals as if we had first met an hour ago, while at the same time an Affection mellowed by the years enfolds us. Life -- natural life -- has no better gift to give. Who could have deserved it?

--C.S. Lewis