«Views of a Jewish “merchant” about justice (Sec 1)

Sec 1 #1

“a Jew merchant”

Ruskin engages in satire, both sharp and funny, in the opening of this chapter. The Old Testament's King Solomon is satirically presented as a successful businessman in order show his relevance to the business elite who are reading this. The books of the Old Testament that have been attributed to Solomon (especially the Book of Proverbs) are referred to as his “ledgers.”

Many of the Biblical quotations in this chapter are from the Book of Proverbs. If you want to know the sources of Ruskin's Biblical quotations see a scholarly edition of UTL or simply enter the quotations into an Internet search engine.

“a statue of the old Jew” 

The Ducal Palace in St. Mark's Square

Sec 1 #2

“these writings have fallen into disrepute”

The irony is that the Bible has fallen into disrepute. This is part of Ruskin's ongoing argument that modern commerce violates Christianity, and the capitalists have therefore chosen to largely ignore their own professed religion.

Sec 1 #3

“lying label, title, pretence, or advertisement”

Ruskin despises advertising.

In Ruskin's terms, we habitually pursue death because the pursuit of wealth through unjust means is leads to spiritual death. This is powerful writing.

“taking advantage of a man's necessities”

This is Ruskin's continuing preoccupation with predatory commerce arising from highly inefficient markets. The man has no choice but to sell.

“The . . . highwayman's . . . form of robbery”

Ruskin tells us, satirically, that “men of discretion” prefer economic robbery to actual highway robbery because economic robbery is more profitable and less dangerous. Both forms of robbery are equally immoral.

Sec 1 #4

Ruskin footnote 1—etymologies of “justice” and “righteousness”

More accurately, Sun of Justness; but, instead of the harsh word “Justness,” the old English “Righteousness” being commonly employed, has, by getting confused with “godliness,” or attracting about it various vague and broken meanings. prevented most persons from receiving the force of the passages in which it occurs. The word “righteousness” properly refers to the justice of rule, or right, as distinguished from “equity,” which refers to the justice of balance. More broadly, Righteousness is King's justice; and Equity, Judge's justice; the King guiding or ruling all, the Judge dividing or discerning between opposites (therefore the double question, “Man, who made me a ruler—δικαστὴς — or a divider—μεριστὴς—over you?”) Thus, with respect to the Justice of Choice (selection, the feebler and passive justice), we have from lego, —lex, legal, loi, and loyal; and with respect to the Justice of Rule (direction, the stronger and active justice), we have from rego, —rex, regal, roi, and royal.

“almsgiving”

Those who are charitable (as well as those who tell the poor to patiently endure) are well meaning but misguided. The only real answer is to incorporate justice into our business practices.

Ruskin footnote 2—“Helpful One and the Just”

In another place written with the same meaning, “Just, and having salvation.”

«Economists fail to see the necessity of justice (Sec 2)

Sec 2 #1—#2

In Chapter 2 Ruskin compares the healthy or unhealthy circulation of wealth in a nation to the healthy or unhealthy circulation of blood in the body. Here, he compares well-managed and badly managed national wealth to a well-managed stream that brings abundance or a badly managed stream that results in either parched land or flooded land and pestilence.

Sec 2 #2

Ruskin footnote 3—“hand of wisdom”

“Length of days in her right hand; in her left, riches and honour.”

Sec 2 #3–#4

Ruskin's point is that it is not enough for political economy to be the science of getting rich legally (justice narrowly defined.) Instead political economy must accept a much broader definition of justice that is deeply moral.

Sec 2 #4

“popular economist”

This phrase is significant because Ruskin is recognizing that the thinking of the more ethically responsible economists (which would include Mill) has been distorted by the popular economists.

Sec 2 #6

Ruskin footnote 4—lawyers' response to Ruskin's idea of legal profession

For Ruskin's idealistic statement regarding the function and responsibilities of the legal profession, see Chapter 1, Sec 6#2.

I hear that several of our lawyers have been greatly amused by the statement in the first of these papers that a lawyer's function was to do justice. I did not intend it for a jest; nevertheless it will be seen that in the above passage neither the determination nor doing of justice are contemplated as functions wholly peculiar to the lawyer. Possibly, the more our standing armies, whether of soldiers, pastors, or legislators (the generic term “pastor” including all teachers, and the generic term “lawyer” including makers as well as interpreters of law), can be superseded by the force of national heroism, wisdom, and honesty, the better it may be for the nation.

Ruskin footnote 5—rats and wolves live by law of supply and demand

Charles Darwin published his landmark book, On the Origin of Species, in November 1859. Ruskin never accepted the Theory of Evolution, but he very willingly compares the underlying assumptions of political economy to animals competing ruthlessly for survival, Darwin's idea of natural selection. Later the doctrine of Social Darwinism was to explicitly formulate the idea the human society was one more instance of the survival of the fittest.

It being the privilege of the fishes, as it is of rats and wolves, to live by the laws of demand and supply; but the distinction of humanity, to live by those of right.

«Just wages (Sec 3)

Sec 3 #2

Ruskin footnote 6—the exchangeable value of labor

It might appear at first that the market price of labour expressed such an exchange: but this is a fallacy, for the market price is the momentary price of the kind of labour required, but the just price is its equivalent of the productive labour of mankind. This difference will be analyzed in its place. It must be noted also that I speak here only of the exchangeable value of labour, not of that of commodities. The exchangeable value of a commodity is that of the labour required to produce it, multiplied into the force of the demand for it. If the value of the labour = x and the force of demand = y, the exchangeable value of the commodity is xy, in which if either x = 0, or y = 0, xy = 0.

Sec 3 #5

“national work”

Here, especially in this discussion of “national work,” Ruskin addresses an apparent disconnect in his idea that the wages we pay a workman for an hour's work should be equivalent to an hour of our own work. Ruskin knows that different occupations have different wages, and so one person will be able to pay another with fewer hours of his or her labor. National work seems to be a means of reconciling that difference. See also Ruskin's footnote 8.

Ruskin footnote 7—skill includes intellect and passion

Under the term “skill” I mean to include the united force of experience, intellect, and passion in their operation on manual labour: and under the term “passion,” to include the entire range and agency of the moral feelings; from the simple patience and gentleness of mind which will give continuity and fineness to the touch, or enable one person to work without fatigue, and with good effect, twice as long as another, up to the qualities of character which renders science possible— (the retardation of science by envy is one of the most tremendous losses in the economy of the present century)—and to the incommunicable emotion and imagination which are the first and mightiest sources of all value in art.

It is highly singular that political economists should not yet have perceived, if not the moral, at least the passionate element, to be an inextricable quantity in every calculation. I cannot conceive, for instance, how it was possible that Mr Mill should have followed the true clue so far as to write, —“No limit can be set to the importance—even in a purely productive and material point of view—of mere thought,” without seeing that it was logically necessary to add also, “and of mere feeling.” And this the more, because in his first definition of labour he includes in the idea of it “all feelings of a disagreeable kind connected with the employment of one's thoughts in a particular occupation.” True; but why not also, “feelings of an agreeable kind?” It can hardly be supposed that the feelings which retard labour are more essentially a part of the labour than those which accelerate it. The first are paid for as pain, the second as power. The workman is merely indemnified for the first; but the second both produce a part of the exchangeable value of the work, and materially increase its actual quantity.

“Fritz is with us. He is worth fifty thousand men.” Truly, a large addition to the material force; —consisting, however, be it observed, not more in operations carried on in Fritz's head, than in operations carried on in his armies' heart. “No limit can be set to the importance of mere thought.” Perhaps not! Nay, suppose some day it should turn out that “mere” thought was in itself a recommendable object of production, and that all Material production was only a step towards this more precious Immaterial one?

«The destructiveness of unjust wages (Sec 4)

Sec 4 #3

Ruskin's note 8—payment shall be distributed by grades of labor

I am sorry to lose time by answering, however curtly, the equivocations of the writers who sought to obscure the instances given of regulated labour in the first of these papers, by confusing kinds, ranks, and quantities of labour with its qualities. I never said that a colonel should have the same pay as a private, nor a bishop the same pay as a curate. Neither did I say that more work ought to be paid as less work (so that the curate of a parish of two thousand souls should have no more than the curate of a parish of five hundred). But I said that, so far as you employ it at all, bad work should be paid no less than good work; as a bad clergyman yet takes his tithes, a bad physician takes his fee, and a bad lawyer his costs. And this, as will be farther shown in the conclusion, I said, and say, partly because the best work never was, nor ever will be, done for money at all; but chiefly because, the moment people know they have to pay the bad and good alike, they will try to discern the one from the other, and not use the bad. A sagacious writer in the Scotsman asks me if I should like any common scribbler to be paid by Messrs Smith, Elder and Co. as their good authors are. I should, if they employed him-but would seriously recommend them, for the scribbler's sake, as well as their own, not to employ him. The quantity of its money which the country at present invests in scribbling is not, in the outcome of it, economically spent; and even the highly ingenious person to whom this question occurred, might perhaps have been more beneficially employed than in printing it.

Sec 4 #4

Ruskin's note 9—Fervent support for free trade

Here Ruskin declares himself to be a fervent supporter of tree trade, and he presents his argument.

I have to acknowledge an interesting communication on the subject of free trade from Paisley (for a short letter from “A Well-wisher” at my thanks are yet more due). But the Scottish writer will, I fear, be disagreeably surprised to hear, that I am, and always have been, an utterly fearless and unscrupulous free-trader. Seven years ago, speaking of the various signs of infancy in the European mind (Stones of Venice, vol. iii. p. 168), I wrote: “The first principles of commerce were acknowledged by the English parliament only a few months ago, in its free-trade measures, and are still so little understood by the million, that no nation dares to abolish its custom-houses.”

It will be observed that I do not admit even the idea of reciprocity. Let other nations, if they like, keep their ports shut; every wise nation will throw its own open. It is not the opening them, but a sudden, inconsiderate, and blunderingly experimental manner of opening them, which does the harm. If you have been protecting a manufacture for a long series of years, you must not take the protection off in a moment, so as to throw every one of its operatives at once out of employ, any more than you must take all its wrappings off a feeble child at once in cold weather, though the cumber of them may have been radically injuring its health. Little by little, you must restore it to freedom and to air.

Most people's minds are in curious confusion on the subject of free trade, because they suppose it to imply enlarged competition. On the contrary, free trade puts an end to all competition. "Protection" (among various other mischievous functions,) endeavours to enable one country to compete with another in the production of an article at a disadvantage. When trade is entirely free, no country can be competed with in the articles for the production of which it is naturally calculated; nor can it compete with any other, in the production of articles for which it is not naturally calculated. Tuscany, for instance, cannot compete with England in steel, nor England with Tuscany in oil. They must exchange their steel and oil. Which exchange should be as frank and free as honesty and the sea-winds can make it. Competition, indeed, arises at first, and sharply, in order to prove which is strongest in any given manufacture possible to both; this point once ascertained, competition is at an end.

Quotation from Pope (“Moral Essays,” Epistle III)

Misers (who hide their gold and won't spend it) don't just hate their neighbors. They hate themselves. Pope's satirical poem is about the abuse of riches.

Sec 4 #5

Ruskin's note 10—what we mean by employment. Everyone should work.

See below where Ruskin suggests that rich people need to do more work. Teaching at Oxford, Ruskin had his students mend local roads. Ruskin, in general, has no sympathy for people who are idle or lazy.

I should be glad if the reader would first clear the ground for himself so far as to determine whether the difficulty lies in getting the work or getting the pay for it. Does he consider occupation itself to be an expensive luxury, difficult of attainment, of which too little is to be found in the world? or is it rather that, while in the enjoyment even of the most athletic delight, men must nevertheless be maintained, and this maintenance is not always forthcoming? We must be clear on this head before going farther, as most people are loosely in the habit of talking of the difficulty of “finding employment.” Is it employment that we want to find, or support during employment? Is it idleness we wish to put an end to, or hunger? We have to take up both questions in succession, only not both at the same time. No doubt that work is a luxury, and a very great one. It is, indeed, at once a luxury and a necessity; no man can retain either health of mind or body without it. So profoundly do I feel this, that, as will be seen in the sequel, one of the principal objects I would recommend to benevolent and practical persons, is to induce rich people to seek for a larger quantity of this luxury than they at present possess. Nevertheless, it appears by experience that even this healthiest of pleasures may be indulged in to excess, and that human beings are just as liable to surfeit of labour as to surfeit of meat; so that, as on the one hand, it may be charitable to provide, for some people, lighter dinner, and more work, for others, it may be equally expedient to provide lighter work, and more dinner.

« The impossibility of equality. The evil of worshipping riches. (Sec 5)

Sec 5 #2

“on occasion even to compel and subdue, their inferiors”

This is a profoundly anti-democratic statement.

Sec 5 #3

“the rich have no right to the property of the poor”

This sentence begins with Ruskin strongly supporting the wealthy against the political radicals who would redistribute wealth. But, then, is a surprising reversal, Ruskin strongly suggests that the wealthy have accumulated their wealth by stealing from the poor.

Sec 5 #5

Ruskin returns to the theme, introduced in Chapter 1, that the fundamental principles of political economy directly contradict Christian beliefs.

Sec 5 #6

“Tai Cristian dannerà l' Etiòpe . . . ”

This is a quotation from Dante's Paradiso (xix, 109). The idea is that some heathens are more righteous than some Christians, and that God will prefer righteous heathens than insincere Christians.

“Christians like these the Aethiop shall condemn:
When that the two assemblages shall part;
One rich eternally, the other poor.”