Table of Contents
[The plan as you can see is to have the argument stated in the chapters titles, so that I am forced to keep the argument always in mind, disciplined by the expectations aroused in the readers’ minds]
The Bourgeois Revaluation:
How Innovation Became Virtuous, 1600-1848
Deirdre N. McCloskey
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All Towns had Bourgeois Capitalists
That is, Karl Polanyi Had it Wrong
And He was Wrong about the Ancient World, Too
Yet He Was Right About Embeddedness.
“Bourgeois” and “Capitalist” are Fighting Words, But Shouldn’t Be The Bourgeoisie Has Been Disdained Though There Were Precursors of a Self-Respecting Bourgeoisie Yet on the Whole the Bourgeoisies Have Been Precarious
The Dutch Preached Bourgeois Virtue And the Dutch Bourgeoisie Was Virtuous
Yet Still Old England Disdained the Market and the Bourgeoisie Aristocratic England, for Example, Scorned Measurement
And So the English Bourgeoisie Could Not “Rise”
But in the Late Seventeenth Century the English Changed The Words Show the Change Novels and Plays Measure It, Too Bourgeois England Loved Measurement
The New Values Triumphed down to 1848 A Change in Talk Made the Modern World Its Causes Were Not All Material It Led to a Hockey Stick of Growth The Rhetoric Was Necessary, and Maybe Sufficient Ethical Ideas and Their Rhetoric Mattered It Was a Rhetorical Change, Not a Deep Cultural One
(Very, Very Partial) List of Works Cited
