A Poverty Of Thought

Conservatism has come to mean loyalty to an ideology called capitalism epitomised by the American historian, Gertrude Himmelfarbs collection of essays, The Demoralisation of Society: From Victorian Virtues to Modern Values (Verson paperback, special Indian price, Rs 325).

Himmelfarb is a conservative historian who believes that Americans can be rescued from their angst by emulating Victorian morals and manners. Read austerity. This is no nostalgia: the proposal has a highly developed economic and political agenda. Specifically, Himmelfarb would like the introduction of a New Poor Law to sort out the mess that is the inner-American city.

Englands Poor Law legislation in 1834 was designed to enforce a distinction between the worthy and the unworthy poor. The law enshrined less eligibility, the notion that if relief aid carried a harsh enough social stigma, fewer poor people would choose it..

Himmelfarb glosses over the fact that the Poor Law was a response to accelerating urbanisation in the industrial period when orphans and pauper children were sent in hundreds to work in factories. The New Poor Law which Himmelfarb proposes is a response to the failure of character created by the dole which means demoralisation. She believes that in the supposed absence of stigmatisation, we have lost the moral principles, to say nothing of the moral vocabulary to deal with the social pathology associated with poverty.

Himmelfarb says an effort should be made to discourage dependency and preserve the dignity of the independent poor, while providing the least minimal sustenance for the indigent. But who makes the distinction between poor and indigent? It would seem that she considers Victorian orphanages as an appropriate model for social policy. The orphanage in Oliver Twist to which she refers was in fact a workhouse where infants were farmed out. And the novel was written against the New Poor Law.

In an essay, The Mischievous Ambiguity of the Word Poor, Himmelfarb equates poor in ordinary British usage with the labouring classes, who, however poor, were self-sustaining. Thats not true: a working man might find himself part of the poor in the absence of any kind of social security system. The word poor was ambiguous because the reality was. Dickens knew this and used poor to mean pauper.

Because Himmelfarbs distinction between poor and pauper is murky, it is necessary to figure out what she means by the Victorians. She appears to refer to the wealthy few, although she doesnt say so clearly. She quotes Disraeli approvingly: The New Poor Law was... both a moral blunder and a political blunder (because) it announced that in England poverty was a crime, indicating that severe social censure upon plain destitution was justified.

Himmelfarb does not consider that because wages were so low there was little positive inducement to work. British economists, bar Adam Smith, assumed the natural wage of a worker was subsistence. With inflation and frozen wages, would stigma, workhouse, shame, less eligibility have any meaning?

Himmelfarbs policies advocate going back to a golden past that is part myth, part fantasy. She shouldnt have written this anthology; she is not an American historian of 19th century Britain She is a literary theoretician who should have stuck to her field.

l V.V.