4.1 The conundrum of Ricardo's popularity

What accounts for the popularity of Ricardo's Principles, and for the enduring dominance of the Ricardian system? The marginal utility ‘revolutionary’, W. Stanley Jevons, writing the preface to the second edition of his great Theory of Political Economy in 1879, was forced to complain of the continuing dominance of the Ricardian doctrine, and to lament that ‘when at length a true system of Economics comes to be established, it will be seen that that able but wrong-headed man, David Ricardo, shunted the car of Economic science on to a wrong line...’. Indeed. And Ricardo won the day with a theory that was not only far from self-evident but in many ways bizarre (such as the labour theory of value), and he wrote his work in a crabbed and obscurantist style that would hardly be expected to sweep the field, either among laymen or in those more particularly interested in economics.

Part of the explanation, as Schumpeter pointed out, is that Ricardo was politically in tune with the Zeitgeist. Even though his methodology was so abstract as to be divorced from and to falsify reality, Ricardo's motivation was not abstract theory but its use in advancing politico-economic conclusions. Ricardo, like Mill, was devoted to free trade and laissez-faire, and, as we shall see, to hard money, and he applied his abstract system like a hammer in their service. This ideology was fast becoming the wave of the future in England, in the circles of businessmen and intellectuals.¹

But what of Ricardo's abysmal writing, in style and in organization? Alexander Gray's heartfelt critique is on the mark:

As to the form rather than the substance of Ricardo's writings, it is perhaps sufficient to say that he was no writer. He himself dimly realized that he was a bad writer, but it is doubtful whether he can have known the whole truth. It is undiscerning flattery to regard his chief work, The Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, as a book at all. Rather does it suggest the sweepings of a busy man's study – chapters of very varying length, which he clearly found it difficult to arrange in the right order, brusque notes and memoranda on points which interested the author. In defence, it may be admitted that Ricardo... did not mean to write a book. These were indeed memoranda written for himself and his friends, published on his friends' [actually Mill's] incitement. But this is a poor consolation to the lonely traveller befogged in the Ricardian jungle.²

It is very possible, however, that it was precisely Ricardo's obscurantism that accounted for his success. For all too many people, laymen and professionals alike, obscurity and bad writing equal profundity. If they can't understand it, and they hear at every hand that so-and-so is a great man and his theories the current light, their belief in his profundity will be redoubled.^3,4 There are great charms to obscurity. Moreover, there are particular charms for the adepts who cluster around the great man, the circle of initiates who claim – probably correctly – that only they can truly understand his work. Only they can penetrate the fog caused by the depth of the great man's wisdom. Schumpeter notes that ‘quickly his circle developed the attitude – so amusing but also, alas!, so melancholy to behold – of children who have been presented with a new toy. They thought the world of it. To them it was of incalculable value that only he could fail to appreciate who was too stupid to rise to Ricardian heights.’⁵ Its murkiness and difficulty only heightened the enjoyment and pride of the adepts over their new toy. Nowadays, this effect is considerably heightened by the fact that obscurity gives disciples and critics more to talk and write about, and thus greatly multiplies the career opportunities for scholars in the current age of publish-or-perish.

Another reason for the popularity of Ricardianism was the persistent cadre activity of the indefatigable James Mill. One of Mill's important actions was to help found the Political Economy Club in London in 1821, a club that quickly became for many years the centre of economic discussion and learning in Great Britain. It is characteristic of the early nineteenth century shift of the locus of economics from Scotland to England that this transfer was one of occupation as well as location. In Scotland, economic thought had centred in the two great universities of Edinburgh and Glasgow, with influence spread through academic, literary and business circles, and members of social clubs in the two cities. In England, on the contrary, there was almost no academic economics in the fossilized university courses of the day. Of the 30 founding members of the Political Economy Club, only one – Thomas Robert Malthus – was an academic, teaching political economy at the East India Company's College at Haileybury. The other leading English economists in the club included David Ricardo, businessman and financier Thomas Tooke (1774–1858), with Colonel Robert Torrens of the Royal Marines chairing the first meeting. Others were businessmen, publicists, and government officials.

A few years later, academic opportunities began to open up. Mill's Scottish friend and fellow leading Ricardian, John Ramsay McCulloch, who had been lecturing for several years, became professor of political economy in 1828 at the University College, London, and joined the Political Economy Club shortly thereafter. But after four years of teaching he had to spend the rest of his life as a financial controller. The first economics post at Oxford was a chair founded by the banker and evangelist Henry Drummond in 1825, but the term of the chair was only five years. The first chair-holder was the attorney and important young economist Nassau William Senior (1790–1864), son of an Anglican vicar in Berkshire, who had studied at Oxford and had joined the Political Economy Club two years earlier.⁶ The new King's College, London, established in the same year as University College (1828) as a Tory and Anglican haven to offset its non-denominational neighbour, appointed Senior to its own political economy post in 1831. But Senior was kicked out unceremoniously for publishing a pamphlet urging a reduction in the budget of the Anglican establishment in Ireland, and he spent the rest of his career as a real-property attorney and government lawyer, with the exception of another Drummond professorship at Oxford in 1847–52.

Cambridge treated economics with such disdain that its only contribution was to have a young lawyer of no distinction in the field, George Pryme, teach economics without pay and at unpopular hours. Pryme taught under those conditions for over 40 years from 1816 on, remarkably becoming professor of political economy in 1828. Apparently he wrote nothing in economics and contributed to no important discussions.