Ruskin Contra The Fable Of The Bees

Rather than consider his most obvious works upon the subject of political economy – the Nature of the Gothic in the second volume of The Stones of Venice, A Joy Forever (also know as The Political Economy of Art) Unto This Last¸ Munera Pulveris, Tide and Time, The Crown of Wild Olive, Sesame and Lilies and his collected letters to the workmen of Britain Fors Clavigera – for the roots of Ruskin’s economic thought one must begin as early as his first significant writings, Modern Painters. Though it is now viewed as an element of a particularly Victorian and romantic conception of aesthetics, rooted – much like the works of Wordsworth – in the concepts of nature and the sublime, for its time it was radical and met with an almost universally hostile reaction.

In this work Ruskin defends the modern painters, for example Turner (most significantly), Prout and Fielding, against the ‘ancient masters’. His reasons for this are in part their ability to reflect the beauty and abundance found in nature, though never completely – the creation is the ultimate artwork, which in turn reflects its creator – “it is the task of the painter to translate God’s work of art into one which makes visible to ordinary human beings the divine signature that marks every natural phenomenon”. Ruskin delineates two conceptions of beauty:  typical beauty and vital beauty. Typical beauty is the “symbolizing of Divine attributes in matter”. This beauty has six attributes or modes, which map onto aspects of the divine, of God, the most important of these being Unity.

Observing the almost infinite variety one finds in nature, Ruskin concludes that this must be an element of beauty. Ruskin mentions that “There is not one leaf in the world which has the same colour over its whole surface”, in a “state of perpetual variation”. Yet, variety is only truly beautiful when it placed within a greater unity, a sense of background and complementarity that draws out the best qualities, where when left alone it may be pedestrian. Thus a great painting, like those of Turner, might when considered in one sense appear disordered, but considered as a whole are intensely beautiful: colours, lines and shades working in harmony with one another as in nature. Ruskin uses the analogy of music, of notes struck together to form a beautiful chord, complementary yet independent of one another, where the removal of one note causes the chord to be entirely broken. Of unity, Ruskin writes that “the appearance of separation or isolation, and of self independence, is an appearance of imperfection; but all appearance of connection and brotherhood are pleasant and right, both as significant of perfection of things united, and as typical of that Unity which we attribute to God”. Variety is beautiful because of its unity and harmony, a variety which like nature may almost be infinite, yet like nature is contained within an overarching unity. Herein one can find already the outworking of his notion of society. In volume five of Modern Painters, writing in a section entitled The Law of Help, Ruskin asks his readers to “dwell a little on the word help”. Inanimate objects, like clouds, Ruskin says, may cohere, but they do not help each other, removing one part does not effect the whole cloud, just as removing one marble from a bag of marbles, does not effect the other marbles. Yet, with a plant, the removal of one part does hurt the rest, because all the parts are interconnected, they all ‘help’ one another. Ruskin then widens the scope of this observation:

The power which causes the several portions of the plant to help each other, we call life. Much more is this so in an animal. We may take away the branch of a tree without much harm to it; but not the animal’s limb. Thus, intensity of life is also intensity of helpfulness—completeness of depending of each part on all the rest. The ceasing of this help is what we call corruption; and in proportion to the perfectness of the help, is the dreadfulness of the loss. The more intense the life has been, the more terrible is its corruption.

He continues:

When matter is either consistent, or living, we call it pure, or clean ; when inconsistent, or corrupting (unhelpful), we call it impure, or unclean. The greatest uncleanliness being that which is essentially most opposite to life.

Finally, he turns to the widest issue:

A pure or holy state of anything, therefore, is that in which all its parts are helpful or consistent. They may or may not be homogeneous. The highest or organic purities are composed of many elements in an entirely helpful state. The highest and first law of the universe—and the other name of life, is, therefore, ” help.” The other name of death is ” separation.” Government and co-operation are in all things and eternally the laws of life. Anarchy and competition, eternally, and in all things, the laws of death. […] in true composition, everything not only helps everything else a little, but helps with its utmost power. Every atom is in full energy; and all that energy is kind.

Herein is Ruskin’s understanding of society – society is to be considered not a competitive system of parts independent and antagonistic, as in the self-interested utility maximising methodological individualism of the political economists, but as a harmonious whole, which each element interdependent and cooperative, one part being hurt is to cause the whole to be hurt, to damage the beauty of the chords chiming together. The inter-subjective and quasi-ecological nature of Ruskin’s ethical economics is plain, and as serious as his modern heterodox companions. It is also directly in opposition to the understanding of economics and the best moral ordering of society in his day. Bernard Mandeville’s Fable of the Bees, or Private Vice and Publick Benefits, concludes that “Vice is beneficial found”. Private self interest, and individualism leads to the harmony found in the bee hive. Likewise, in Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations dis-harmony comes to benefit the whole. Ruskin is opposed to both these conceptions. Indeed he reminds them as being the principles of his Political Economy in Unto This Last. This basic interrelation can be traced also to Storm Cloud of The Nineteeth Century, where nature, the morality of humanity and God are placed in relation. Brian Jay notes:

what we do to the atmosphere (“Blanched Sun”) affects the earth (“blighted grass”), which, in turn, affects humankind (“blinded man”). As a statement of troubled ecological morality, it argues that nature acts as an index of human misdeeds: “Of states in such moral gloom every seer of old predicted the physical gloom.” As a statement of Ruskin’s tripartite ecology, it reminds the reader that beyond the two terrestrial economies lies a divine economy (as the uppercase S in “Sun” attests), suggesting that humankind is doubly blinded, unable to see either nature or God, whose image is now clouded or “[b]lanched.”