Vanity and productivity in Smith and the Irish Enlightenment
frivolous objects, little ornaments
The writers of the Irish Enlightenment, Swift and Berkeley especially, were hostile to vanity. They are harshly condemned the rich who spent money on imported luxuries and fripperies. To modern sensibilities, that might seem like sheer moral disapproval, the scowl of the churchman. But the idea recurs in Smith, who makes the point forcefully and directly. Like Berkeley and Swift, Smith recognised that this sort of expenditure was not going to contribute to the capital stock of the nation. From the end of II.iii.
When a man of fortune spends his revenue chiefly in hospitality, he shares the greater part of it with his friends and companions; but when he employs it in purchasing such durable commodities, he often spends the whole upon his own person, and gives nothing to any body without an equivalent. The latter species of expense, therefore, especially when directed towards frivolous objects, the little ornaments of dress and furniture, jewels, trinkets, gew-gaws, frequently indicates, not only a trifling, but a base and selfish disposition. All that I mean is, that the one sort of expense, as it always occasions some accumulation of valuable commodities, as it is more favourable to private frugality, and, consequently, to the increase of the public capital, and as it maintains productive rather than unproductive hands, conduces more than the other to the growth of public opulence.
Smith has spent this chapter discussing the difference between productive and unproductive labour. The labour of manufacture is productive, for example, whereas the labour of servants is unproductive. The word unproductive might, again, raise modern hackles, but Smith is merely distinguishing between labour that produces something that can be further used or exchanged—such as furniture—and labour that vanishes as soon as it is used. Think of the military: “The protection, security, and defence, of the commonwealth, the effect of their labour this year, will not purchase its protection, security, and defence, for the year to come.” Think of the work we expend in picking up children’s toys, only to find they need picking up again the next day. Whereas furniture is much more lasting. Indeed, I own a piece of furniture that was made in Smith’s lifetime.
And yes, he includes bloggers in the unproductive category, along with a few others.
In the same class must be ranked, some both of the gravest and most important, and some of the most frivolous professions; churchmen, lawyers, physicians, men of letters of all kinds; players, buffoons, musicians, opera-singers, opera-dancers, etc.
More than once, Smith remarks that this sort of labour leaves no trace in the world. He is frequently a beautiful plain writer, and his phrasing here is firm but plangent.
Like the declamation of the actor, the harangue of the orator, or the tune of the musician, the work of all of them perishes in the very instant of its production.
It is possible to take these distinctions to a moral extreme, as Ayn Rand did, but they are also central to Smith’s much more liberal ideas, as they were to those Irish Enlightenment thinkers who simply wanted to save their country from degradation.
