The Debate About Luxury in Eighteenth and Nineteenth-Century French Political Thought Author Jeremy Jennings

The Debate about Luxury in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century French Political
Thought
Author(s): Jeremy Jennings
Source: Journal of the History of Ideas , Jan., 2007, Vol. 68, No. 1 (Jan., 2007), pp. 79-
105
Published by: University of Pennsylvania Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/30141868
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The Debate about Luxury in Eighteenth- and
Nineteenth-Century French Political Thought
Jeremy Jennings
INTRODUCTION: MELON VERSUS ROUSSEAU
In his "Last Reply"' to the criticisms directed at his Discourse on t

Effects of the Arts and the Sciences Jean-Jacques Rousseau mad
lowing comment: "It is true that up to now, luxury, although oft
lent, had at least at all times been viewed as a fatal source of infin
evils. It was left for M. Melon to be the first to publish the poiso
trine whose novelty brought him more followers than did the sou
his reasoning. I am not afraid to be alone in my century to fight t
maxims which only tend to destroy and debase virtue, and to mak
An early draft of this article was presented at the 2004 Annual Conference o
In its final form it has benefited greatly from conversations with Matthew W
Clark, Sheryl Kroen, Mihaela Bacou, and Vincent Michel. Research for this
aided by a Visiting Fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Study at Indiana
Bloomington, where I was able to make use of the wonderful collection of
century material belonging to the Lilly Library, and by a six-month visiting p
at the Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, Paris. With regard to th
thank in particular Ivona Hedin, Stephanie Lookenbill, and Aurelien Craiutu;
to the latter I thank especially Patrick Le Gales and Lucien Jaume. Finally,
anonymous reviewers for their extremely useful comments on the first subm
article and Warren Breckman for his sound advice and editorial encourageme
S"Last Reply by J.J. Rousseau of Geneva," in The Discourses and other ea
writings, trans. Victor Gourevitch (Cambridge: Cambridge University P
63-85.
Copyright 0 by Journal of the History of Ideas, Volume 68, Number 1 (January 2007)
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JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF IDEAS + JANUARY 2007
people and wretches, that is to say for wicked people in either event."" The
Monsieur Melon referred to was Jean-Francois Melon, former secretary to

John Law and the author of the Essai politique sur le commerce, first pub-
lished in 1734.- It is not difficult to appreciate what Rousseau must have
found so objectionable in Melon's argument; for it was indeed the case that
his text provided one of the first examples of what Christopher Berry has
referred to as the "de-moralization of luxury."4
According to Melon, if commerce could be defined as "the exchange of
the superfluous for what is necessary,"' then luxury was "an extraordinary
sumptuousness which flows from wealth and the security provided by gov-
ernment." Yet, luxury could be given no precise meaning because desires
were "relative to time and persons." Furthermore, Melon disputed the
claim that luxury encouraged immorality, contending that it had certain
moral benefits; most notably it was the "destroyer of sloth and idleness."
Melon also pointed out the futility of seeking to regulate luxury out of
existence. With Rousseau's Geneva in mind, he commented that such a
society more resembled "a community of recluses than a society of free
men." He similarly disputed the efficacy of sumptuary laws, believing them
fundamentally flawed in both design and intention. Crucially, they disre-
garded the human motive of emulation. From this followed a claim that
brought Melon's argument close to that of Mandeville. Why, he an-
nounced, should extravagant luxury be damned? Unspent, this money
would remain "dead to society," but when used in the pursuit of luxury, it
paid the gardener, fed and clothed his children, and encouraged him to
work for the future. Given away to beggars as an act of Christian charity,
that same money would only support idleness and debauchery.
From this argument, Melon drew two conclusions. It was the business
of the state to use luxury to its advantage. Secondly, the term "luxury"
should be banished from the languages of public administration and com-
merce because the meaning attached to it was "vague, confused and false"
and its abuse ran the risk of stifling industry "at its very source."''
2 Ibid., 84. For Rousseau's views of luxury, see Renato Galliani, Rousseau, le luxe et
I'ideologie nobiliare: etude socio-historique (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1989). The
treatment of Melon, however, is limited to one page of text: see 244-45.
3Jean-Francois Melon, Essai politique sur le commerce (Rouen: no publisher, 1734). The
edition of the text referred to is Collection des Principaux Economistes (Osnabruck: Otto
Zeller, 1966), 1: 701-835.
4 Christopher J. Berry, The Idea of Luxury: A Conceptual and Historical Investigation
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).
Melon, Essai politique, 709.
6 Ibid., 742-49.
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Jennings + Luxury in French Political Thought
Rousseau's response, outlined in his early Discourses,7 was to suggest

that "luxury is diametrically opposed to good morals." It produced "the
corruption of taste" and the decline of "true courage" and "military vir-
tues." Men became "soft and effeminate." Thus, to the question of what
limit should be placed on luxury, Rousseau's response was that everything
beyond what was absolutely necessary was "a source of evil" and that it
would be "exceedingly imprudent" to multiply our needs. Therefore, Rous-
seau stated, "it is one of the most important functions of government to
prevent extreme inequality of fortunes." Taxes should be designed so as to
construct a just society through the eradication of superfluous consump-
tion.
In summary, by reworking the classical themes of ancient republican

ism, Rousseau provided a comprehensive indictment of a society where th
pursuit and enjoyment of luxury had replaced a simple life lived according
to the dictates of virtue. We had lost our innocence and our morals. We
were slaves to vice. The poor groveled in their misery while the rich were
honored for their superfluous opulence. In our fellows we saw only compet-
itors. We lived only in and through the opinion of others. Everything was
reduced to appearances and play-acting. Moreover, to his own satisfaction,
Rousseau had proved that this was not our original state.
THE LUXURY DEBATE
It is the purpose of this article to suggest that the disagreeme

Melon and Rousseau transcends the narrow historical context in
was articulated. At stake was a new vision of human beings and
poses of society.' Until this moment, civic humanism, if not t
See "Discourse which won the prize of the Academy of Dijon in the year
question proposed by the Academy: Whether the restoration of the Science
has contributed to the purification of morals," in Rousseau, Discourses, 1-2
on the Origins and the Foundations of Inequality Among Men," in Disco
and "Discourse on Political Economy," in Rousseau, The Social Contract an
political writings, trans. Victor Gourevitch (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni
1997), 3-38.
1 Albert O. Hirschman, The Passions and the Interests: Political Argum
talism before its Triumph (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977
Rothschild, Economic Sentiments: Adam Smith, Condorcet, and the E
(Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2001), Pierre Force, Self-In
Adam Smith (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003) and Istvan H
of Trade: International Competition and the Nation-State in Historical Pers
bridge, Mass: Belknap Press, 2005).
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guage available to discuss political activity, was "the prevailing ideology"9;

however, with the gradual emergence of a commercial society, the individ-
ual pursuit of happiness, rather than the pursuit of virtue (and even less, the
attainment of personal salvation) came increasingly to denote the summum
bonum of human existence. In France, the precise context in which this
ideational transformation occurred was one of relative economic expansion
and urban growth, which combined to produce greater social mobility.
With this came dramatic changes in consumption patterns characterized by
the passage from a "society of scarcity" to one of expenditure and accumu-
lation."' The King and Queen ceased to be the sole arbiters of taste, and, to
that extent, this new material culture was linked to the demise of absolut-
ism and the collapse of traditional forms of political and social authority."I
These transformations met with far from universal approval. The word
"luxe" entered the French language in 1606 as the synonym for "superflu-
ity." In 1694, the Dictionnaire de l'Acade'nie Franoaise tied its meaning to
that of "excess," with an implied note of moral condemnation.12 Criticism
of luxury largely focused upon the lavish expenditure of the court at Ver-
sailles. Fenelon testified to this critical trend in his abidingly-popular text
of 1699, Telemachus in which he praised simplicity, labor, and the virtues
of agriculture.'3 Yet, by the mid-eighteenth century, censure of the aristo-
cratic culture of the court was extended to broader concerns relating to the
activity of consumption and its impact upon the fabric of French society.
Commercial prosperity was associated with a growing materialism that
brought with it a series of ills, including a confusion of ranks and a femini-
zation of the social body. As Sarah Maza has noted: "critics of luxury vastly
outnumbered and decisively out-argued defenders of the concept in the dec-
ades before the Revolution."l4 The scale and intensity of the debate was
quite astonishing. Daniel Roche estimates that in France alone, between the
9 M. M. Goldsmith, "Liberty, luxury and the pursuit of happiness," in The Languages of

Political Theory in Early-Modern Europe, ed. Anthony Pagden, (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1987), 232.
' Daniel Roche, Histoire des choses banales (Paris: Fayard, 1997), 67-91.
" See Sheryl Kroen, "A Political History of the Consumer," The Historical Journal 47
(2004): 709-36.
12 Philippe Perrot, Le Luxe: Une richesse entre faste et confort XVIIIe-XIXe siecle
(Paris: Seuil, 1995), 34n.2.
" Franlois de Finelon, Telemachus, trans. Patrick Riley (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 1994).
14 Sarah Maza, The Myth of the French Bourgeoisie: An Essay on the Social Imaginary,
1750-1850 (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2003), 55.
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years 1736 and 1786 over 100 texts were published that dealt with the
issue of luxury.'5
Nevertheless, some scholars suggest that by the time of the French Rev-
olution these passionate disputes had come to an abrupt and decisive end.
Jennifer Jones provides a sense of the arguments that have been brought
into play to explain this occurrence. Drawing upon earlier work by Ellen
Ross, she first contends that the Revolution "extinguished" the debate on
luxury in two ways. It revealed that the problems associated with luxury,
rather than being mysterious and rooted in human nature, had "compre-
hensible political causes and solutions." Next, the debate on luxury had
been a "primary form" of criticism of the ancien regime. The Revolution
allowed men and women to abandon such coded strategies and engage
overtly in political forms of opposition. To this, Jones herself adds a third
explanation. "By the late eighteenth century many of the problems which
women's luxury had been accused of causing in society had been 'solved'
through the ascendancy of a new conception of women, fashion and taste
which naturalized women's interest in clothing: the frenzy for fashions was
no longer considered a sinful state, harmful to the general health of society
and the maintenance of social hierarchies, but rather a natural aspect of
femininity, necessary for marital harmony and domestic bliss."16 By way of
summary, therefore, Jones concludes that "[t]his formerly serious debate
had been transformed into frivolous, bantering literature alternatively de-
ploring or upholding women's right to adorn themselves and their homes
lavishly.""17
All three arguments can be challenged. It did not require the onset of
the Revolution to demonstrate that the issues and problems arising from
luxury had political causes and solutions. Numerous writers (including
Montesquieu) had concluded that the effects of luxury varied according to
the political regime, especially with regard to monarchies and republics.
Secondly, the majority of those who wrote in the luxury debate were not
critics of the ancien regime but defenders of the hierarchy and stability of
the old order. Finally, Jones's own explanation is only convincing if the
luxury debate was limited to a consideration of the issue of women and
fashion. This was not the case. For example, Gabriel Senac de Meilhan's
'~ Roche, Histoire des choses banales, 88.

16 Jennifer M. Jones, Sexing La Mode: Gender, Fashion and Commercial Culture in Old
Regime France (New York: Berg, 2004), 199.
17 Ibid., 199.
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Considerations sur les richesses et le luxe,18 published on the eve of the

Revolution, was intended as a detailed refutation of the ideas put forward
by Jacques Necker in his De l'Administration des finances de la France.19
Necker argued that it was a mistake to attribute luxury uniquely to changes
in morals, the nature of government, or the acquisition of the New World.
In general, he believed, "luxury is the consequence of the inequality of
wealth." As such, luxury had its origin "in the natural course of things,"
and specifically in "the advancement of science." On this view, luxury was
not the cause of poverty. At best, government could temper the taste for
luxury. Governments, Necker therefore concluded, should be "neither in-
different to luxury nor to its excesses nor have the ambition to extinguish
it entirely." If, as indicated by Jones, S&nac de Meilhan made the point that
sumptuary laws were usually directed at women ("because it is in women
that resides the principle of luxury"),20 the greater part of the almost 500
pages of his text was devoted to the wholesale castigation of the political,
social, and moral consequences of luxury. Great states preserved themselves
not because of, but despite their luxury. Testifying to a permanence of dis-
course within the luxury debate, Senac de Meilhan wrote, "The immortal
author of Telemachus better understood and made known the problems
arising from luxury than most of those who have explored the subject."21
Published three years earlier, Antoine-Prosper Lottin's Discours contre
le luxe: Il corrompt les moeurs et detruit les Empires,22 began by announc-
ing that combating luxury was "the most important and patriotic of
subjects," and then proceeded, in addition to pillorying "the eternal incon-
stancy of fashions" and the reduction of society to a "perpetual ball," to
itemize how luxury destroyed the arts, the sciences, letters, industry, agri-
culture, public morals and manners, before finally destroying Empires
themselves. Citing Montesquieu and the example of the decline of the Span-
ish Empire, Lottin contended that wealth did not guarantee the greatness
of a state. Rather, this lay in a people devoted to agriculture and the "useful
arts" and one imbued with a sense of virtue and courage. For these writers,
18 Gabriel Senac de Meilhan, Considerations sur les richesses et le luxe (Amsterdam and
Paris: Valade, 1787).
19 Jacques Necker, De l'Administration des Finances de la France (Paris: no publisher,
1784). Chapter XI, Vol.III, 57-75 is devoted to "Considerations sur le luxe et sur le
progres."
20 Senac de Meilhan, Considerations sur les richesses et le luxe, 144-45.
21 Ibid., 174.
22 Antoine-Prosper Lottin, Discours contre le luxe: Il corrompt les moeurs et detruit les
Empires (Paris: Belin, 1783).
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the luxury debate was certainly not a frivolous and ephemeral matter of
taste and fashion.
The above is not intended to challenge the insights provided by Jones

with regard to the emergence of a new fashion system in eighteenth-century
France. Rather, it suggests that the luxury debate lost none of its vigor
towards the end of the eighteenth century and that the elements of that
debate remained relatively stable over time. Moreover, the Revolution of
1789 did not bring the discussion of luxury to a shuddering halt. In fact,
the reverse was the case. As we shall see, at the heart of the revolutionary
project was an ethic of simplicity and virtuous frugality that found no place
for the trappings of vulgar luxury. This was so because in France, as else-
where,23 the challenge was not merely to harness prosperity in such a way
as to ensure that the morally and socially debilitating consequences of lux-
ury could be avoided, but also to come to some agreement about the very
source of wealth itself, be it agriculture or industry, capital accumulation or
unbridled consumer spending. Consequently, at issue were broader issues
relating to the nature and sources of inequality and its relationship to com-
merce and the market. This in turn invited argument about the appropriate
model of government in a modern society. This article will therefore show
that the debate about luxury extended beyond the narrow confines of the
eighteenth century in which it is usually located.
THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY DEBATE ON LUXURY
Melon was not the first person in France to address the issue of
Montesquieu rejected the argument against luxury in Letter 106 of
sian Letters.24 "For one man to live in luxury," he wrote, "a hund
must work without respite." The passion for getting rich, combi
the enthusiasm for work, was being transmitted from class to cla
transforming the French nation; the "scene was one of universal
and ingenuity." Conversely, a nation where everyone worked the
where "to produce fancy goods and luxury was banned" would
most wretched on earth."
Montesquieu returned to the theme at some length in The Spiri
2r See Warren G. Breckman, "Disciplining Consumption: The Debate About

Wilhelmine Germany, 1890-1914," Journal of Social History 24 (1991): 485
24 Montesquieu, Persian Letters, trans. C. J.Betts (Harmondsworth: Pengu
193-96.
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Laws, devoting much of Book 7 to the examination of sumptuary laws in

republics and monarchies and Book 20 to the relationship of laws to com-
merce. Within that broad framework, Montesquieu made an important dis-
tinction between commerce "ordinarily founded on luxury" and commerce
"more often founded on economy." The ends pursued by each were quite
different. If the former rested on "the practice of gaining little. . . . and of
being compensated only by gaining continually," the latter sought to "pro-
cure for the nation engaging in it all that serves its arrogance, its delights
and its fancies."" "In general," Montesquieu wrote, "the poorer the state,
the more it is ruined by relative luxury, and the more, consequently, it must
have relative sumptuary laws. The richer the state, the more its relative
luxury enriches it, and one must be careful not to make relative sumptuary
laws there."26
Nevertheless, as indicated by Rousseau it was Melon who brought the

subject of luxury to the fore. This is explained in part by the fact that when
Voltaire published his controversial poem Le Mondain, he attached to his
reply to his critics (entitled Defense du Mondain: ou l'apologie du luxe) a
letter written by Melon to the comtesse de Verrue.27 In the first poem Volta-
ire indicated his preference for the modern world over a Garden of Eden
characterized by physical austerity. His reply focused less on the delights
to be derived from personal pleasures than upon the social and economic
advantages that flowed from luxury. The rich were born to spend their
money and the poor were there to receive it. Colbert and Solomon, both of
whom "through luxury [had] enriched the state," rather than the classical
heroes of Greece and Rome, were the objects of praise. Melon's letter added
weight to Voltaire's case. The comtesse de Verrue was cited by Melon as an
example of the wisdom of his doctrine that luxury was necessary for the
circulation of money and the maintenance of industry. "How many families
in Paris," Melon asked, "have subsisted solely through the protection you
have given to the arts?" If such tastes were to become extinct, thousands
would find themselves out of work and forced to flee abroad.
Voltaire took up this theme on many subsequent occasions. His Dic-
tionnaire philosophique contained an entry on luxury, and he touched on
this topic at various points in his Lettres philosophiques and elsewhere. He
continued to refer favorably to Melon, citing him as "a man of sense, a
2 Montesquieu., The Spirit of the Laws, trans. Anne M. Cohler, Basia Carolyn Miller,
and Harold Samuel Stone (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 340.
26 Ibid., 101.
2- See Oeuvres comrpletes de Voltaire (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2003), 16: 273-313.
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good citizen and an excellent philosopher."'2 Diderot also took up the

theme of luxury, most notably in his Observations sur le Nakaz.29 Here we
read of the benefits that accrue from the expenditure of the rich man, of
how "He makes his nation worth visiting for foreigners; he provides a liveli-
hood for a large number of citizens who are consumers and who give a
price to the fruits of the earth." Nevertheless, Diderot made what was later
to become a standard distinction between good and bad luxury. "Under
bad luxury," Diderot wrote, "people toil a lot, but only do bad work. Thus
the decline of the sciences and of the liberal and mechanical arts. Under
good luxury, people toil just as much; but they only do good work, because
everyone is in a position to pay for it. There, the sciences and mechanical
arts flourish." Bad luxury united the vices of opulence and poverty, while
good luxury produced wealth and prosperity for all.
A similar tone is found in the marquis de Saint-Lambert's entry of 1764
on luxury for Diderot's Encyclopedie.p' This long essay set out the argu-
ments both for and against luxury. Six points were cited in favor of luxury.
Luxury contributed to the growth of population. Luxury enriched states. It
facilitated the circulation of money. It softened manners and spread the
private virtues. Luxury was favorable to the advance of knowledge. It in-
creased the wealth and happiness of citizens. Against this were the argu-
ments that luxury encouraged the decline of the "useful" arts; it ruined the
countryside; it led to depopulation; it caused a confusion of social ranks;
and it weakened our sense of both honor and love of country. Saint-
Lambert's text endeavored to show that all of these assertions could be
contradicted by the facts and thus that the effects of luxury-beneficial or
otherwise-were relative to the situation in which it is found. "In this re-
gard," he wrote, "luxury is for peoples what it is for individuals; the multi-
tude of gratifications must be in keeping with the means to enjoy them."''
Saint-Lambert was clear that the consequences of what he termed "dis-
ordered luxury" were truly deleterious. Extreme cupidity and the pursuit of
frivolous wealth induced a progressive decline. Subject to especial oppro-
brium were those who performed no function in society and the nouveaux
riches who quickly became addicted to their idleness. In their desire to es-
28 Ibid., 276-81.
2 Diderot, Political Writings, trans. R. Wokler and J. Hope Mason (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1992), 124-25, 130-31.
'0 See Oeuvres completes de Diderot (Paris: Briere, 1821), 17: 235-77. This text can be
found in translation in Commerce, Culture and Liberty: Readings on Capitalism Before
Adam Smith, ed. Henry C. Clark (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2003), 477-501.
-' Oeuvres completes de Diderot, 17: 247.
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cape boredom they sought ever more indulgent and extraordinary forms of
gratification.
Saint-Lambert also detailed the conditions in which luxury could bene-
fit society as a whole. There would be no sudden fortunes. Extreme poverty
and extreme wealth would be rare. Luxury would not be detached from
usefulness. All classes would appreciate and enjoy the fine arts. Most im-
portantly, "luxury and the passions leading to it must be subordinated to a
spirit of community and to the goods of the community."'2 The first objec-
tive therefore had to be to put "luxury back in order." As Saint-Lambert
concluded, "I beg my readers to rid themselves alike of the prejudices of
Sparta and of Sybaris."33
As Christopher Berry has commented, it is apparent from his text that
Saint-Lambert was aware that the debate about luxury now took a predict-
able and standard form.34 What is also apparent is that Saint-Lambert mir-
rored the wider concern (to be found in the writings of Montesquieu,
Diderot, Helvetius and Condillac) to distinguish between the good and bad
uses of luxury and to specify that luxury could not be divorced from consid-
erations of social utility. Whereas Melon seemed unconcerned about either
the source of wealth or how it was used-it mattered only that money was
spent rather than hoarded-later writers were acutely aware that displays
of ostentatious, frivolous, and unearned wealth could deeply corrupt and
divide a society. Thus, while Melon was content simply to assert that "the
equality of man is a chimera"3" and to affirm that all consumption was
inherently beneficial, some of those who followed him were far from san-
guine about a society characterized by gross inequalities of fortune and
doubted the merits of exaggerated consumption.
If, however, the lines of the debate about luxury had now been drawn,
there was no lessening of the dispute between the pro- and anti-luxury
camps. Moreover, this debate would run right up to the outbreak of the
Revolution. Two texts in particular provide evidence for this claim: Butel-
Dumont's Thborie du luxe, ou traite dans lequel on entreprend d'dtablir
que le luxe est un ressort non seulement utile mais memne indispensablement
ndcessaire a la prosperite des Etats, first published in 1771,-6 and the Abbe"
12 Ibid., 250.
33 Ibid., 276.
14 Berry, The Idea of Luxury, 137.
3 Melon, Essai politique, 724.
36 Butel-Dumont, Theorie du luxe, ou traite dans lequel on entreprend d'etablir que le
luxe est un ressort non seulement utile mais mhme indispensablement ndcessaire a la
prosperite des Etats (Paris: J-F. Bastien, 1771), 2 Vols.
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Pluquet's Traits philosophique et politique sur le luxe of 1786.17 The au-

thors offer diametrically opposed views on the whole issue. The former was
content to define luxury in morally neutral terms as those things which were
"superfluous" and not "strictly necessary,"'" while the latter denounced it
as "the use of objects producing agreeable sensations considered necessary
by man, although by the laws of nature the use of these objects and the
agreeable sensations they produce are neither necessary nor useful to life or
health, nor necessary for the happiness of man."-9 Pluquet devoted more
than 900 pages to developing this theme, repeatedly disparaging the ideas
of Melon, Mandeville, Hume, and the other "panegyrists of luxury" in the
process. Butel-Dumont was content with a more modest 400 pages de-
signed to prove his argument that the most powerful peoples and states
were those that pursued luxury and that it was far better for states to reduce
their expenditure than to impose "inept" sumptuary laws.
THE IMPACT OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
Did the French Revolution and the fall of the Jacobins elicit a
attitude towards luxury in particular and towards commerce m
ally? The Abbe' Sieyes, the principal ideologue and architect of th
of the Revolution, had been fully aware that the distinctive feat
ern society was that it rested upon the division of labor, an in
he applied to his understanding of both politics and economics
wrote, "every individual concerned himself with all the objects
his own consumption, all individuals would be the same, and so
not depart from its state of infancy."41 Where Sieyvs diverge
physiocratic school was that he concluded that there was no fu
difference in productive potential between agriculture and man
and thus that the exclusive focus of the physiocrats upon the
misplaced. From this it followed that the privileged position ac
7 Abbe Pluquet, Traits philosophique et politique sur le luxe (Paris: Ba

Vols.
. Butel-Dumont, Theorie du luxe, 1: 121.
, Pluquet, Traite philosophique, 1: 79.
4" See William H. Sewell Jr, A Rhetoric of Bourgeois Revolution: The Ab
What is the Third Estate? (Durham & London: Duke University Press, 199
4' Roberto Zapperi ed., Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyes, Ecrits Politiques (Paris
archives contemporaines, 1985), 63.
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the ownership of land had to be removed and that anti-commercial preju-

dices, most obviously associated with the court and the aristocracy, had to
be eradicated.
Between the summer of 1789 and 1791 France moved in the direction
advocated by Sieyes and, to that extent, the dominant tendency was broadly
favorable to the further development of commerce. The feudal regime, with
its restrictions upon the free movement of goods and persons, was abol-
ished. Property rather than privilege was to be the basis of the new order
and was to define a person's status. The loi Le Chapelier of 1791 made
illegal all forms of restrictive trade corporations. But did this mean that
concerns about the potentially damaging consequences of gross inequality
and unbridled luxury had been forgotten?
The advent of foreign war and internal revolt opened the door to a
revival of the rhetoric of classical republicanism and with it not merely a
return to the notion of the virtuous, frugal citizen of ancient Greece and
Rome but also the victory of austerity and simplicity over ostentation and
display. The reintroduction of economic controls from 1793 to 1794
amounted to what Judith A. Miller has described as "the Economy of Ter-
ror."42 National price ceilings were introduced for grain and flour, and to
this were later added price ceilings on all "goods of first necessity." The
General Maximum of September 1793 was, according to Colin Jones and
Rebecca Spang, a "shibboleth of overt consumer renunciation," providing
"a snapshot of what Revolutionary Government regarded as prime necessi-
ties."43 Yet, by the same token, they argue, "it was a shimmeringly indeter-
minate document," revealing that "[d]espite their best attempts to look and
sound like Athenians and Romans, the French found it altogether more
difficult than their classical forbears to draw a hard-and-fast line between
the realms of necessity and luxury." In short, denouncing luxury was easy
but defining it proved well-nigh impossible, and constructing an economic
policy upon the basis of its eradication showed itself to be both catastrophic
and repressive.
With the fall of the Jacobins, the General Maximum was abolished.
This is how Rebecca Spang accounts for what followed and for what she
42 Judith A. Miller, Mastering the Market: The State and the Grain Trade in Northern
France, 1700-1860 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 155.
41 Colin Jones and Rebecca Spang, "Sans-culottes, sans cafe, sans tabac: shifting realms
of necessity and luxury in eighteenth-century France," in Consumers and Luxury: Con-
sumer Culture in Europe, 1650-1850, ed. Maxine Berg and Helen Clifford (Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 1999), 55.
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describes as "the end of luxury."44 The political debate over the designation
of some goods as necessities and others as luxuries subsided after 1794,
such that, by the end of the decade, "both terms, though not completely
abandoned, had lost much of their explanatory efficacy." In the world of
the Thermidorian republic, frivolous consumption ceased to be the moral
failing of the individual and was seen as integral to the flourishing of the
French economy. The broader social and moral ramifications associated
with luxurious consumption were increasingly forgotten, only to be re-
placed by "the personalized category of 'pleasure' " that made "individual
desires the basis (rather than the bane) of social organization." Spang con-
cludes that "By the middle of the nineteenth century, luxury was of analytic
usefulness for those interested in studying medieval sumptuary laws or cat-
aloguing the books collected by connoisseurs."45
Again, there is much of merit in these accounts and they capture espe-
cially well the fluid quality of what was understood by luxury in a society
that was increasingly characterized by commodity production. Yet, it
would be a mistake to believe that reflections on the nature of commercial
activity were suddenly divested of moral and political concerns and thus
that the question of luxury was now forgotten altogether.46 Indeed, as Mar-
tin S. Staum has argued, "concepts of public virtue remained indelibly
linked to economic theory despite efforts to construct a value-neutral sci-
ence based on private interest."'
LUXURY AFTER THE REVOLUTION
This can be shown by referring to the ideas of the most import

economist of the time: Jean-Baptiste Say. Say has usually been
a classical political economist who uncritically embraced and po
the ideas of Adam Smith. Pierre Manent, for example, states that
44 Rebecca Spang, "The frivolous French, 'liberty of pleasure' and the end o
Taking Liberties: Problems of a new order from the French Revolution to N
Howard G. Brown and Judith A. Miller (Manchester: Manchester Univ
2002), 110-25.
4S Ibid., 125.
46 See James Livesey, Making Democracy in the French Revolution (Cambridge, Mass:
Harvard University Press, 2001).
4 See Martin S. Staum, Minerva's Message: Stabilizing the French Revolution (Mon-
treal & Kingston: McGill-Queens University Press, 1996), 192; and Cheryl B. Welch,
Liberty and Utility: The French Ideologues and the Transformation of Liberalism (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1984), 70-96.
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d'eIconomie politique, first published in 1803, "constitutes the first great

post-Smithian synthesis of economic liberalism."48 A somewhat different
story might be told. In 1800 Say published a curious text entitled Olbie.49
It is an account of a utopian city recently established upon "the ruins of an
absolute monarchy." The text itself covers a variety of issues: for example,
the need to ban lotteries because they not only encourage "avarice" and
"laziness" but also reinforce the belief that wealth depends upon chance
rather than "industrie."50 In essence, what Say described was a society char-
acterized by "modest comfort" rather than "the excesses of wealth and of
indigence." "The Olbiens" Say wrote, "knew that the love of gain was a
snare as dangerous as idleness. When this passion is very strong it becomes
as exclusive as all the others; it extinguishes a mass of noble and disinter-
ested sentiments which must be a part of the perfect human soul. It is thus
that amongst certain peoples, or even amongst the habitants of certain
towns, who are too much involved with commerce any idea, other than
that of enriching oneself, is regarded as folly.""'51 Accordingly, the leaders
of the Olbiens declared their opposition to displays of luxury, themselves
adopting a "system of simplicity" and forbidding their servants and soldiers
to show a "stupid deference for luxurious livery." As the taste for luxury
diminished, the Olbiens came to consume nothing that was beyond what
was necessary for their utility and comfort. Happiness grew at the same
time as morals were reformed.52
In a note to the text, Say clarified what he took to be the import of his
argument. "In criticizing luxury," he wrote, "I would not insist on the fool-
ish pretension of returning man to a savage state where there are no utensils
but fingers and teeth." The use of everything that was conducive to well-
being in "rich and industrious nations" should be allowed but, he contin-
ued, "I do not hesitate to pronounce that luxury is harmful to states, large
and small, and that the country where there is least would be the richest
and happiest.""3 For that reason Say denied two of the main claims made
in defense of luxury. The production of luxury did not provide jobs. Rather,
Say insisted that there are "never fewer unemployed hands than in regions
where morals are simple and where, by consequence, few luxuries are pro-
48 Pierre Manent, Les Libdraux (Paris: Hachette, 1986), 2: 182.

41 Jean-Baptiste Say, Olbie, ou Essai sur les moyens de reformer les Moeurs d'une Nation
(Paris: Crapelet, 1800).
o Ibid., 34-35.
' Ibid., 29.
12 Ibid., 42-44.
s Ibid., 123.
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duced."54 Nor did luxury keep people alive. It was, Say argued, "only in a
country where there is no luxury, or very little, that one sees everyone well-
dressed, well-housed, well-nourished, and content."'s Accordingly, copious
praise was heaped upon Lycurgus and the institutions of Sparta, while the
fates of Carthage, Venice, and the Dutch Republic were cited as examples
of the dire consequences that followed from the exclusive concentration
upon the pursuit of wealth.
Conventional wisdom has it that the transition from Olbie to the Traite
d'dconomie politique, published only three years later, represented a shift

from a republican political economy to a laissez-faire liberalism based on
the inviolability of private property and minimum state activity. Richard
Whatmore has contested this account.56 While Whatmore does not wish to
deny that there were innovations-Say no longer believed that a republican

constitution was necessary for the inculcation of industrious manners nor
did he retain his faith in legislation as a form of moral catechism-he never-
theless holds the view that Say's ambition remained that of uniting industri-
ous patterns of behavior (especially frugality) with the republican manners
associated with moderate wealth and the absence of social hierarchy. Say,
in fact, was deeply concerned about the deleterious consequences of com-
merce as described by Adam Smith-not least the impoverishment of the
general population which would follow from the overzealous introduction
of the division of labor-and for all his emphasis upon the importance of
productive capital as the source of a nation's wealth, he continued to dis-
parage the unbridled pursuit of needless luxury.
Specifically, we should note that in his lengthy Discours Pre'liminaire
Say dismissed the maxim that "a state is enriched by luxury," further con-
tending that its application in the France of the 1720s had led to bank-
ruptcy. "Moderation and economy," he commented, "became terms of
ridicule."7s This anti-luxury theme was developed in the main body of the
text. In line with his preference for frugality over excess, Say began by ar-
guing that "[t]hose who say that money is only good to be spent and that
products are only made to be consumed are badly mistaken if by this they
54 Ibid., 125-26.
s1 Ibid., 126.
56 See Richard Whatmore, Republicanism and the French Revolution: An Intellectual Bi-
ography ofJean-Baptiste Say (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). See Evelyn L.
Forget, The Social Economics of Jean-Baptiste Say (London: Routledge, 1999). Forget's
text includes a translation of Say's Olhie: see 196-241.
57 Say, Traite d'Economie Politique, in Collection des Principaux Economistes (Osna-
brock: Otto Zeller, 1966), 9: 22-23.
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mean solely expenditure and consumption devoted to securing pleasure."'"

There was no merit in consuming everything one could, only in consuming
what was reasonable. Say acknowledged that the taste for luxuary was
among the motives that most determined private consumption. Luxury had
usually been defined in terms of what was superfluous, but Say found it
difficult to distinguish the superfluous from what was a necessity. "Like the
colors of a rainbow," he observed, "they are connected together and merge
into each other by imperceptible nuances."" Luxury and necessity had only
relative meaning and varied according to the stage that society had reached
and within society itself. Luxury, therefore, was best defined in terms of the
"expensiveness" of an object. Luxury, Say wrote, "has principally as its end
to excite admiration through the rarity, the high price, and the magnificence
that it displays.""' It was a form of ostentation designed to dazzle and
impress others. Most importantly, it was a form of "unproductive con-
sumption," and as such directed resources away from "reproductive expen-
diture."
This was no minor matter, as it related to one of the central conclusions
reached by Say and for which he was subsequently best-known. What be-
came known as Say's Law stipulated that total demand in an economy
could not exceed or fall below total supply in that economy. As he himself
expressed it, "products are paid for by products," and not by consumption.
Into what kind of error, he asked, "have fallen those who, seeing generally
that production always equals consumption (because it is necessary that
what is consumed should have been produced), have mistaken the effect for
the cause, have conjectured that unproductive consumption alone brings
about reproduction, that saving is directly contrary to public prosperity and
that the most useful citizen is the one who spends the most!""'
If this truth was demonstrated by economic theory, it was likewise
proven by history. Poverty, Say wrote, "always follows in the wake of lux-
ury." Do not be fooled, he counseled: a country in decline gives for a time
"the image of opulence," but it can never last and inevitably comes to an
end. Say concluded that "those people,who, through their great power or
talents, seek to spread the taste for luxury, therefore, conspire against the
happiness of nations.""' For Say, the challenge was to find a means of rec-
onciling the virtues of frugality and industry with commerce.
,x Ibid., 454.
I lbid,, 457.
6" Ibid., 458.
'i Ibid., 459.
6' Ibid., 462.
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Say's concerns about luxury were no isolated preoccupation. The de-

bate about luxury was central to the work of the most important of the
political theorists associated with the French Ideologues, Antoine-Louis-
Claude Destutt de Tracy. Destutt de Tracy discussed luxury at length in
two of his most important texts: his Commentaire sur I'Esprit des lois de
Montesquieu and the Traite' d'economie politique.6' There are many intri-
guing elements to his argument. First, Destutt de Tracy provided an account
of the origin of private property that was the very antithesis of that pro-
vided by Rousseau. The concepts yours and mine were never invented be-
cause they derived from the faculty of our will. Second, the will was defined
in terms of the desire to maximize pleasure and minimize pain, thus placing
us under a duty to satisfy our needs "without any extraneous consider-
ation." Yet Destutt de Tracy stood back from concluding that all consump-
tion was inherently good, and he did so because the force of his argument
was to be repeatedly directed against those he disparaged as les oisifs.
"Consumption," he wrote, "varies greatly according to the type of con-
sumer as well as according to the nature of the things consumed."64
Destutt de Tracy's fulminations against luxury bore a marked resem-
blance to the criticisms pronounced by Say. Luxury consisted essentially
in "non-productive expenditures." It varied according to time and place.
Nevertheless, it was wrong to believe that the increase of luxury would
enrich a nation. It did not favor commerce and encourage industry by
quickening the circulation of money. Rather it changed the nature of that
circulation and "made it less useful." It created only "a fleeting pleasure."
Only if the alternative was to bury one's money in the ground did it make
sense to spend it in this way, "however badly." "I believe myself entitled to
conclude," Destutt de Tracy wrote, "that, in economic terms, luxury is al-
ways an evil, a continuous cause of misery and weakness. Its true conse-
quence is continuously to destroy, through the excessive consumption of
some, the product of the work and industry of others."65
If Say's argument stopped at this point, Destutt de Tracy took it a step
further, contending that luxury was "an even greater evil" from a moral
point of view. It thrived on vanity and encouraged frivolity. In women it
led to depravity and in men to avarice, and in both "to a lack of delicacy
and probity." Luxury produced "these sad effects, not only amongst those
6B Destutt de Tracy, Commentaire sur l'Esprit des lois de Montesquieu (Paris: Delauney,
1819), 87-114 and Traite d'economie politique (Paris: Bouguet & L&vi, 1823), 232-65.
64 Ibid., 243.
6 Destutt de Tracy, Commentaire, 96-97.
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who enjoyed it, but also upon all those who admired it and who served to
provide it."66
Moreover, Destutt de Tracy found himself agreeing with Montes-
quieu's original contention that luxury was appropriate to monarchies;
however, he added that representative governments had no need to pander
to "the natural tendency of man to give himself up to superfluous expendi-
ture." Did this mean that governments, in whose interest it was to combat
the advance of luxury, should resort to sumptuary laws? Not only were
they an abuse of authority and an attack on property, but they served no
purpose "when the spirit of vanity is not incessantly excited by all institu-
tions; when the misery and ignorance of the lowest class are not so great as
to encourage a stupid admiration for ostentation; when the opportunities
to make fast and excessive fortunes are rare; when wealth is dispersed
promptly through the equal division of inheritance; when finally everything
leads us in another direction and towards real pleasures; in a word, when
society is arranged." There, he concluded, were "the true means to combat
luxury."' 6
LUXURY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
Yet, one could argue that concern to institute a moralized comm

ing upon republican principles was an increasingly difficult posi
tain, especially in the years following the Restoration of th
monarchy. If so, did this mean, as has recently been argued, th
turn of the nineteenth century luxury's focus diminished to issu
distribution, its social and psychological dimensions not to re-em
the turn of the twentieth century"?68
Philippe Perrot has suggested that the concept of luxury ceas
central concept of economic analysis. In his otherwise admirable
rot repeats the earlier claim of Serge Latouche that the concep
figure in any of the four major dictionaries of political econom
in France during the nineteenth century.69 This is simply incor
66 Ibid., 109.
67 Ibid., 112.
68 Maxime Berg and Elizabeth Eger, "Introduction," in Luxury in the Eighteenth Century:
Debates, Desires and Delectable Goods, ed. M. Berg and E. Eger (Houndmills: Palgrave,
2003), 5.
69 See Perrot, Le Luxe, 38; and Serge Latouche, "Luxe et &conomie," Revue de MAUSS
16 (1985): 71-72.
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are entries on luxury in Charles Ganilh's Dictionnaire analytique d'dcono-

mie politique of 1826 7 and in Sandelin's Repertoire general d'economie
politique ancienne et moderne of 1847.7' The same entry by Courcelle-
Seneuil figured in both the Coquelin and Guillaumin dictionary of 1852-53
and the dictionary edited by Ld0on Say and Joseph Chailley of 1892. More-
over, only the entry penned by Ganilh disclosed an indifference to the social
and psychological consequences of luxury. Sandelin concluded that luxury
went hand in hand with the "depravity" of morals, while Courcelle-Seneuil
wrote that, "[w]ith regard to luxury, the teachings of political economy
fully confirm those of morality."72 Luxury, the latter affirmed, thrived on
avarice, egoism and vanity; without fail, it engendered poverty and misery.
As this indicates, it would be wrong to conclude that the moral critique of
luxury disappeared altogether from view. It would be an even greater mis-
take to believe that the egalitarian voice of classical republicanism was now
silent.
This article began with an examination of the eighteenth-century con-

troversy over luxury. Out of this came a debate about the nature of a com-
mercial society and, in some quarters, praise bestowed upon England as the
country of commerce and liberty. Here seemed to be a country that embod-
ied the benefits and virtues of le doux commerce. Liberals, most notably
Benjamin Constant, developed this theme in order to suggest that a new
type of liberty was appropriate to the modern age and that older concerns
about republican virtue were misplaced in a modern commercial society.
The economic dimensions of this argument were most clearly developed in
Constant's text, Commentaire sur l'ouvrage de Filangieri.7" Here Constant
was able to revisit many of the key issues explored by eighteenth-century
political economy-population growth, the grain trade, principles of taxa-
tion, and restrictive trade practices-in order to provide a defense of free
trade, competition, reduced taxation and commerce. "The functions of
government," Constant wrote, "are negative: it should oppress evil and
leave good to operate by itself." The best policy was that of "laissez passer
et laissez faire."74 He thus agreed with Say that "the sole means of prosper-
70 (Paris: Ladvocat, 1826), 270-80.

71 (The Hague: Noordendorp, 1847), 4: 400-403.
72 Charles Coquelin and Gilbert-Urbain Guillaumin, eds. Dictionnaire de l'Economie Pol-
itique (Paris: Guillaumin, 1853), 2: 109-12; and Lion Say and Joseph Chailley, eds. Nou-
veaux Dictionnaire de l'Economie Politique (Paris: Guillaumin, 1892), 2: 191-94.
7 Constant, Commentaire sur l'ouvrage de Filangieri (Paris: Dufart, 1822-24); see Paris:
Les Belles Lettres, 2004.
74 Ibid., 316-32.
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ity for a nation was the employment of capital in productive consump-

tion."75 In this way, he distanced himself from what he took to be Rousseau's
earlier conclusions on luxury. Rousseau, Constant wrote, "had no know-
ledge of financial questions."''76
Whatever their complexion, all liberals in France accepted some ver-
sion of this argument. As Martin S. Staum has shown,77 liberal economists
were increasingly hostile to the idle and unproductive lifestyle of the aris-
tocracy and in the guise of the doctrine of "industrialism" became strong
advocates of the wealth-creating power of commerce. The key to wealth
was capital accumulation (not expenditure on luxury) and in this the cen-
tral figure, following Say, was the entrepreneur.
This argument was later developed with regard to luxury in the writ-
ings of the liberal economist and publicist, Frederic Bastiat. In one of his
most insightful essays, entitled Ce qu'on voit et ce qu'on ne voit pas, Bastiat
asked whether there was a "blatant contradiction" between what he terms
"the moral idea and the economic idea," between frugality and luxury.78
To illustrate his argument he took the example of two brothers, one a
spendthrift, the other a man who lived modestly within his means. It was
the "prodigality" of the former that received popular acclaim, because his
berlines, rich carpets, splendid mansion, and fine dinners provided work
and entertainment for many. Yet, as Bastiat pointed out, ten years hence his
wealth will have vanished and he will be ruined. "He is," Bastiat wrote, "no
longer the joy of the shopkeepers; he is no longer considered a promoter of
the arts and of industry." In contrast, the thrifty brother invested his wealth
and added to the national capital. He thereby supported industry and "con-
tributes to the progressive increase of remuneration of the working class."
Bastiat concluded that "Morally, the superiority of thrift over luxury is
incontestable. It is consoling to think that, from an economic point of view,
it has the same superiority." For Bastiat, in much the same way as for Say
before him, it was not the consumption of luxury goods that made wealth
grow but frugality and capital accumulation. In short, the moral critique of
71 Ibid., 221.
76 Ibid., 222. Constant had made the same point in his earlier Principes de politique.
Filangieri discussed luxury at some length, making the standard distinction between "use-
ful" and "dangerous" luxury and believing that it was not luxury that corrupted morals
but bad morals that corrupted luxury. See Oeuvres de G. Filangieri (Paris: Aillaud, 1840),
1: 256-69.
77 Martin S. Staum, "French Lecturers in Political Economy, 1815-1848: Varieties of Lib-
eralism," History of Political Economy 30 (1998): 95-120.
78 Frederic Bastiat, Oeuvres completes (Paris: Guillaumin, 1862), 5: 383-94.
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luxury was combined with one resting primarily upon economic considera-
tions. In contrast to that articulated by Rousseau, however, Bastiat's was a
critique of luxury that quite happily sat beside an endorsement of private
property and inequalities of wealth.
Beyond this, it is relatively easy to find evidence of a continuing con-
cern about the social and psychological dimensions of luxury. Unsurpris-
ingly, the literature of utopian socialism frequently displayed the hope that
the workers would avoid a taste for opulence and ostentation and limit
their consumption to the satisfaction of "real" needs. This was certainly
the view of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. Recognizing the divisions within so-
cialism on this issue-Proudhon described the Fourierists as "supporters of
luxury and of lust"-he contended that the error of socialism, be it "epicu-
rean or ascetic," with regard to luxury derived from "a false conception of
value." This led to a conception of community as "the religion of misery."
M. Cabet, Proudhon wrote, "has banned luxury. No more luxury! Down
with fashions and finery! Women will wear artificial feathers; diamonds
will be replaced by glass baubles; fine carpets and expensive furniture will
belong to the State, so that no one becomes jealous. Clothing will be de-
cided upon once and for all by a sovereign council."17
Yet, no better proof can be found of the continuing concern with the
social and moral implications of luxury than in the work of the legitimist
political economist, Alban de Villeneuve-Bargemont's Economie politique
chretienne, ou Recherches sur la Nature et les Causes du Pauperisme en
France et en Europe et sur les Moyens de le soulager et de le prevenir.x"
Although now largely forgotten, Villeneuve-Bargemont was no minor fig-
ure in his day. For example, his ideas had a major influence upon Alexis de
Tocqueville."' Villeneuve-Bargemont contended that the question of luxury
had never properly been resolved. The origin of the problem had to be
sought not in the form of government but within the nature of man himself.
Citing both Adam Smith and Jean-Baptiste Say against unproductive lux-
ury, he nevertheless concluded that all was error and confusion in the "En-
glish school" of political economy. Not only were the conclusions of the
7" Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Oeuvres completes: Systmne des contradictions economiques

ou philosophie de la misere (Geneva: Paris: Slatkine, 1982), 1 (2): 303-5.
1" (Paris: Paulin, 1834), 2 Vols. See also Villeneuve-Bargemont's Histoire de l'Economie
Politique ou Etudes Historiques, Philosophiques et Religieuses sur 1'Economie Politique,
2 vols. (Paris: Guillaumin, 1841).
XI See Michael Drolet, Tocqueville, Democracy and Social Reform (Houndmills: Palgrave,
2003), 95-111. See Tocqueville's "Memoires sur le paupbrisme," Oeuvres completes:
Melanges (Paris: Gallimard, 1989), 16: 117-57.
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"English School" false but they were also dangerous, "because it tended,
on the one hand, to produce the most excessive luxury and, on the other,
the most profound and fearful misery." In contrast, the school of Christian
political economy "condemns excessive luxury as damaging to the social as
much as the moral order." However, it gave its approval to "reasonable
luxury," a luxury that spread gradually through all the ranks of society and
that was the fruit of honest labor. Such luxury was the product of an indus-
trial system that sought "to distribute the profits of work more fairly and
to bring about the disappearance of gross inequalities in conditions." Ac-
cording to this view, if "excessive luxury" arose from materialism, "inno-
cent luxury" was indissolubly tied to Christian charity and duty.82 With its
concern to moderate luxury and to avoid both inordinate wealth and grind-
ing poverty, thereby preserving the foundations of the social and moral
order, there was little in Villeneuve-Bargemont's analysis that could not
have been found in many of the anti-luxury tracts of the ancien regime.
THE REVOLUTION OF 1848
As Villeneuve-Bargemont's call for an economy based upon agr

charity indicates, despite the advances made by the advocates o
alism," all was not well in the liberal garden. Political economis
Adolphe Blanqui, Michel Chevalier and Pellegrino Rossi had the
about an unrestricted free market, doubts that were deepened w
vere business slumps of the 1820s and 1830s. The turning poin
1848, if not slightly before. "The revolutionary upheavals and la
of 1848," Martin S. Staum writes, "proved ... that the libera
from willing to surrender central free market assumptions." C
was now described as a fundamental doctrine of human nat
insisted that the government could neither supply the worker
help when they were ill, nor provide for their security in old a
tions on minimum wages and maximum hours of work wer
excessive interference in the workings of the market and detrim
interests of the workers themselves."3 The same message can b
the writings of Frederic Bastiat.84 "The prevailing illusion of
82 Villeneuve-Bargemont, Economie politique chritienne, 463-78.

"I Adolphe Blanqui, Des classes ouvrieres en France pendant l'annee 1848
nerre, 1849).
14 See Bastiat, Oeuvres completes, 4: 353.
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wrote, "is that it is possible to enrich all classes at the expense of one an-
other-to make plunder universal under the pretext of organizing it." These
concerns likewise lay at the heart of the dispute between two of the tower-
ing figures of 1848, Adolphe Thiers and Louis Blanc, over the issue of the
right to work.'s In such circumstances, advocates of a moralized commerce
gave ground to the enthusiasts for a more overtly liberal conception of the
economy, a conception grounded upon a new vision of politics appropriate
to a post-revolutionary and post-Napoleonic order. It is this, in part, which
explains why Jean-Baptiste Say was later misread as a theorist of liberal
political economy.
Nevertheless, evidence of the enduring character of republican argu-
ments against luxury and, by extension, of republican hostility to the com-
mercial model embodied by England is not difficult to identify. In 1848
Charles Renouvier published his Manuel Republicain de l'Homme et du
Citoyen.86 This was a text commissioned by the Ministry of Public Instruc-
tion and was intended to be a civic catechism for the new (Second) Repub-
lic. If the text itself sought above all to define the rights and liberties to
be enjoyed by the citizen of the Republic, it clearly indicated Renouvier's
conviction that the Republic should embody "justice" and "fraternity" and
that its goal was to produce virtuous citizens. Complications arose when
Renouvier considered liberties associated with the right of property. "The
most important outcome of a well-ordered Republic," he wrote, "is to
guarantee for each citizen the protection of his person, of his rights and
of everything which belongs to him."87 This included a citizen's property,
described as "the fruits of a man's work." Equality of conditions was to be
rejected because "it could be established only by depriving citizens of their
liberty." How, then, could equality be made compatible with liberty? Re-
nouvier's answer, in true quarante-huitard fashion, was to call upon the
sentiment of fraternity. Therefore, towards the end of the dialogue that
makes up the text the questioning turned to the desirability of luxury.18 The
most striking aspect of what followed is that Renouvier addressed the topic
in terms which were almost identical to those deployed in the exchange
between Rousseau and Melon.
You speak, the student interlocutor remarked, of the "leveling of con-

ditions" but in such circumstances what will become of luxury and of those
8S See Adolphe Thiers, De la proprie't (Paris: Lheureux, 1848); and Louis Blanc, Le Socia-
lisme: Droit au travail: Reponse M. Thiers (Paris : Librairie du progrds, 1848).
86 References are to the Paris: Armand Colin, 1904 edition.
7 Ibid., 161.
88 Ibid., 265-80.
101

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who lived off its production? Was it not the case that great wealth "spent
ostentatiously serves at least to maintain workers?" Renouvier's reply was
to accept that at present the luxury of the rich provided livelihood for the
poor, but he then added that the poor would only die of hunger if the
abolition of luxury was not accompanied by an acknowledgement of the
right to work. Accompanied by such a reform, the worker would pass from
the production of luxury goods to the production of something of use and
of practical value. In addition, the "idler" who had previously paid for
luxury would now turn his reduced resources in the direction of something
more useful. Was luxury to be abolished altogether? Renouvier echoed the
very arguments deployed at the height of the 1789 Revolution89 when he
contended that there was a place for "collective luxury" in the shape of
libraries, theatres, museums, and so on, all of which could be regarded as
expressions of fraternity and civic education. There was even a place for
luxury in the hands of private individuals; but such luxury was scandalous
when so many people were denied the necessities of life. "In a Republic,"
Renouvier wrote, "where the solidarity between men is recognized, I find it
repugnant that luxury should spread before ease of circumstance has been
attained and that the caprices of men should be satisfied while the needs of
others cry out before Providence.""o To this he appended two further famil-
iar refrains. Renouvier declared that he trembled when he thought of those
nations-and in particular of England-whose wealth and prosperity con-
sisted in the perfect comfort of a few thousand families whose actions con-
demned millions to live on bare necessities. Secondly, the greater majority
of rich people were "enervated" by luxury, "debased" by dissolute living,
and "consumed" by boredom. However, this was "just punishment" for
those who had sought the "refinement" of their lives through "the exploita-
tion of their brothers." It was only in "an age of corruption," he asserted,
that such behavior was not condemned. For good measure, Renouvier then
concluded his discussion by asserting that it was not true that the arts and
sciences would perish with the end of luxury. Rather, both would flourish
when allied to the advance of human well-being. "Nothing is beautiful,
nothing is noble," Renouvier remarked, "which is not also useful."91
Republican arguments against luxury, inaugurated in the eighteenth
century, clearly retained their vitality and held center stage in the ferment
of ideas that followed the fall of the July Monarchy. Moreover, in the con-
89 See Perrot, Le Luxe, 80.

9o Renouvier., Manuel Republicain, 269.
91 Ibid., 278.
102

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text of 1848, the rhetorical force of these arguments had far more appeal
than liberal calls to commerce and individual liberty.
THE SECOND EMPIRE: MELON'S REVENGE?
In 1878 Henri Baudrillart, a member of the Academie des scien

published a four-volume Histoire du Luxe Prive et Public De
quit" jusqu'a nos jours.92 He began by recounting that when he
a set of lectures in 1866 on economic doctrines at the Collhge d
had decided to include the question of luxury. He did so, he fur
plained, because at the time the issue was 'a l'ordre du jour.' If
it was in part because the previous year the Attorney General, A
had introduced before the Senate a proposal which sought
women from wearing expensive clothing.93 This interventio
mately defeated but it did indeed cause a heated polemic. One of
pants in this debate was the novelist and archeologist, Ernest F
In 1866 Feydeau published Du Luxe, des Femmes, des Moe
Litterature et de la Vertu.94 If nothing else, the work was a spir
of luxury. Of no less interest is the fact that, in both tone and
replicated many of the arguments earlier presented by Jean-Fran
The debate on luxury, Feydeau began, had been around since th
and always the refrain was the same: luxury corrupts public m
must be stopped. But what was luxury? No two people agreed. W
luxury for Diogenes was a necessity for Rousseau. What is a supe
one, another will regard as the sine qua^ non of his existence.95 T
State to intervene in such matters was an "abominable tyranny
me therefore with my superfluities," Feydeau proclaimed, "If th
inconveniences, it is not you who suffer from them. I am a bette
you of what I need to live according to my tastes. If I am happ
myself, what is it to do with you? ..... I am irrational, you say.
am useless to humankind. Very well. I am an egoist. Perfect. I w
days in a hospital. That's fine. And afterwards? If happiness for
92 Henri Baudrillart, Histoire du Luxe Prive et Public Depuis l'Antiqui

jours. 4 vols. (Paris: Hachette, 1878).
9 See Victoria E. Thompson, The Virtuous Marketplace: Women and Men
Politics in Paris, 1830-1870 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,
94 Ernest Feydeau, Du Luxe, des Femmes, des Moeurs, de la Litte'rature e
(Paris: Michel Levy, 1866).
91 Ibid., 26.
103

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on a bed of rags, you who call yourselves liberals, leave me to die in

peace."96 Having thus defended the right of individuals to spend their
money as they wished (even unwisely), Feydeau next agreed with Montes-
quieu on the virtues of the rich spending their money in order to keep peo-
ple in employment. Here he deployed an argument that had grown in
importance since the eighteenth century. The production of luxury goods
was central to the French economy. To close such industries down would
be to force thousands of skilled workers "to break stones on roads, as they
had done in 1848." Those, therefore, who argued against luxury wanted to
impoverish France, to return to Sparta.
Moreover, for Feydeau, luxury was not only useful because it provided
work. It was also "legitimate." Luxury represented "the exterior form of
civilization." It was through luxury that prosperity manifested itself. Noth-
ing could be more absurd or oppressive than to impose sumptuary laws
stipulating how people dressed or how much they could spend. Rejecting
the arguments against the social mobility occasioned by luxury, Feydeau
argued that such measures were an attempt to petrify France "into an aris-
tocratic and hierarchical mould." They prevented the poor from seeking to
emulate the rich. Next (and echoing Melon's defense of the comptesse de
Verrue) Feydeau denied Dupin's charge that, in displaying their wealth, rich
women were setting the poor a bad example. Such criticisms were simply
based on envy.
Attempting to ban luxury, therefore, would only produce doleful con-
sequences, a "boredom" descending like a "poisonous fog upon an im-
mense city" and "a frightful increase in hypocrisy." There were only two
remedies to the problem of luxury. The first, which Feydeau did not recom-
mend, was war. This would give us back the virile qualities and passion for
glory that we had lost. The second, quite simply, was liberty.
CONCLUSION
It has long been acknowledged that, in the wake of the consumer

that characterized the final decades of the nineteenth century, deb
luxury again came to the fore in France.97 What has been shown
96 Ibid., 29.
97 See Rosalind H. Williams, Dream Worlds: Mass Consumption in Late N
Century France (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982).
104

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article, however, is that the debate which began in the eighteenth century
did not peter out before the revolution of 1789, did not end with the advent
of the Thermidorian Republic, and did not lose substance in the first half
of the nineteenth century. Indeed, the contest over luxury lost little of its
vitality in these years and remained an issue that was addressed by many of
the leading political thinkers and political economists of the period. Perhaps
even more remarkably, the contours of the debate changed relatively little
over time. To that extent, luxury can be described as a relatively stable
concept that was regularly deployed in the political thought of a relatively
unstable society. From Rousseau to Renouvier, the voice of classical repub-
licanism could be heard denouncing the injustice of luxury and the iniqui-
ties of inequality it entailed. From Melon to Feydeau, there were those
prepared to endorse the utility of our natural propensity to luxury and to
embrace the individual liberty through which it could be procured.
Throughout there was not only the repeated attempt to define and identify
the specific manifestations of luxury but also the effort to distinguish be-
tween useful and dangerous luxury, and to assess the virtues required of
individuals in societies characterized by increasing wealth and commerce.
Quite remarkably, very few were prepared to put aside all moral
qualms when faced with a world of expanding personal consumption and
seemingly needless luxury. Frugality and the productive use of resources
frequently remained the prevailing maxims, even for those who had aban-
doned the chimera of equality and the Spartan ideal. Beneath this lay a
constant engagement with England and the kind of social order it was
thought to represent. There is much that could be said about this fascinat-
ing theme.98 It was ever present in the political writings of eighteenth and
nineteenth-century France. At stake, however, were two very different mod-
els of society. It is tempting to suggest, over a century and a half later, that
similar concerns inform today's debate over the comparative merits of the
"modele social frangais" and what is usually referred to (with thinly dis-
guised hostility) as the "modele anglo-saxon."
Queen Mary, University of London.
98 See Jeremy Jennings, "France and the 'Anglo-Saxon' Model: Contemporary and Histor-
ical Perspectives," European Review 14 (2006): 537-54.
105

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The Debate About Luxury in Eighteenth and Nineteenth-Century French Political Thought Author Jeremy Jennings

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INTRODUCTION: MELON VERSUS ROUSSEAU

In his "Last Reply"' to the criticisms directed at his Discourse on t

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Monsieur Melon referred to was Jean-Francois Melon, former secretary to

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Rousseau's response, outlined in his early Discourses,7 was to suggest

In summary, by reworking the classical themes of ancient republican

THE LUXURY DEBATE

It is the purpose of this article to suggest that the disagreeme

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guage available to discuss political activity, was "the prevailing ideology"9;

9 M. M. Goldsmith, "Liberty, luxury and the pursuit of happiness," in The Languages of

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'~ Roche, Histoire des choses banales, 88.

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Considerations sur les richesses et le luxe,18 published on the eve of the

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The above is not intended to challenge the insights provided by Jones

THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY DEBATE ON LUXURY

Montesquieu returned to the theme at some length in The Spiri

2r See Warren G. Breckman, "Disciplining Consumption: The Debate About

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Laws, devoting much of Book 7 to the examination of sumptuary laws in

Nevertheless, as indicated by Rousseau it was Melon who brought the

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good citizen and an excellent philosopher."'2 Diderot also took up the

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Pluquet's Traits philosophique et politique sur le luxe of 1786.17 The au-

THE IMPACT OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

7 Abbe Pluquet, Traits philosophique et politique sur le luxe (Paris: Ba

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the ownership of land had to be removed and that anti-commercial preju-

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LUXURY AFTER THE REVOLUTION

This can be shown by referring to the ideas of the most import

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d'eIconomie politique, first published in 1803, "constitutes the first great

48 Pierre Manent, Les Libdraux (Paris: Hachette, 1986), 2: 182.

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d'dconomie politique, published only three years later, represented a shift

deny that there were innovations-Say no longer believed that a republican

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mean solely expenditure and consumption devoted to securing pleasure."'"

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Say's concerns about luxury were no isolated preoccupation. The de-

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LUXURY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

Yet, one could argue that concern to institute a moralized comm

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are entries on luxury in Charles Ganilh's Dictionnaire analytique d'dcono-

This article began with an examination of the eighteenth-century con-

70 (Paris: Ladvocat, 1826), 270-80.

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ity for a nation was the employment of capital in productive consump-

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7" Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Oeuvres completes: Systmne des contradictions economiques

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THE REVOLUTION OF 1848

As Villeneuve-Bargemont's call for an economy based upon agr