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Social Policy in Capitalist History
Social Policy in
Capitalist History
Perspectives on Poverty, Work and Society

Ayşe Buğra
Emeritus Professor of Political Economy, Bogazici University,
Turkey

Cheltenham, UK • Northampton, MA, USA

© Ayşe Buğra 2024

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a

retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical or
photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.

Published by
Edward Elgar Publishing Limited
The Lypiatts
15 Lansdown Road
Cheltenham
Glos GL50 2JA
UK

Edward Elgar Publishing, Inc.

William Pratt House
9 Dewey Court
Northampton
Massachusetts 01060
USA

A catalogue record for this book

is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023951212

This book is available electronically in the

Sociology, Social Policy and Education subject collection
http://dx.doi.org/10.4337/9781802209501

ISBN 978 1 80220 949 5 (cased)

ISBN 978 1 80220 950 1 (eBook)

EEP BoX
Contents

Acknowledgementsvi

Introduction to Social Policy in Capitalist History1

1 From charity reform to the New Poor Law 19

2 On equality, class and classical political economy precepts 56

3 From the post-Second World War ‘restoration of

habitation’ to the crisis of the restoration 92

4 Social policy in a globalized economy: neoliberalism,

crisis and response 134

Conclusion 184

Bibliography 192
Index 210

v
Acknowledgements
This book is based on my lifelong academic work in the fields of development
economics and social policy. The questions addressed in the book emerged
during my empirical studies on social policy change in countries without
mature welfare states, with special reference to the case of Turkey, and they
were pursued in a theoretical frame developed through my years of teaching
on theories of social policy, work and workers in a historical perspective, and
perspectives on equality and difference at Bogazici University in Istanbul. The
book owes a great deal to my students; it is largely their interest in the subject
and their perceptive and interesting questions and comments which gave me
the idea to write this book.
The book was written at a difficult period for Turkey, my country, and
my family in particular. I would like thank Alex Pettifer, Editorial Director
at Edward Elgar Publishing, without whose encouragement and support it
would have been impossible for me to carry out the project. I would also like
to thank the anonymous referees for their positive response. I am grateful to
my colleagues Volkan Yılmaz, at Ulster University, and Osman Savaşkan, at
Marmara University in Istanbul, who have read, criticized and commented on
the manuscript.

vi
Introduction to Social Policy in Capitalist
History
Social Policy in Capitalist History is an inquiry into the relationship between
capitalism and social policy. The book approaches social policy as a response
to socioeconomic tensions and conflicts brought along by the dynamics of
capitalist development and investigates the nature of this response in the way
it reflects and to a certain extent shapes the characteristics of the world of work
and socioeconomic life in societies integrated in the capitalist world order.
A historical overview of the ideas and politics of social policy is presented in
a discussion framed around the interrelated questions of ‘poverty’, ‘work and
employment’, and ‘membership in society’. In this overview, the approaches
to these questions in debates on social assistance, labour market regulation
and provision of social security and services are examined as an area where
it is possible to see a mutually constitutive relationship between the attitudes
toward social policy intervention and the imaginaries of society where the
terms of participation of different groups in society are approached from dif-
ferent perspectives. Ideas on the place of the poor and the working population
in society pertain to the broader question of the terms of co-existence in society
in a way to determine the ways in which membership in society is conceptual-
ized. Not only class positions but also differences of gender, age or conditions
of health and disability affect the way individuals participate in society, and
they are addressed in debates where inequality is accepted or problematized.
In this book, the continuity and change in the types of social policy-related
problems addressed and the way they are interpreted is examined in a long
time span by tracing the origin of modern social policy back to the period of
massive transformations in the early capitalist societies of Europe without
the common divide between the earlier forms of poverty relief and the later
measures of social insurance and social service provision. Although some
forms of support to people faced with ‘social risks’ such as old age, disability,
ill health or poverty could exist in all societies, what is discussed in this book
is the modern social policy interventions introduced by political authorities
and shaped by the conflicts and alliances between different segments of the
population through the expansion of capitalist relations and the formation of
labour markets. While slavery and different forms of bonded labour are inte-
gral elements of the history of the capitalist world economy, it is the problems

1
2 Social policy in capitalist history

of work, poverty and the terms of participation in society associated with the
rise of ‘free labour’ which are central to the modern social policy debate. This
book follows the historical history of this debate from its sixteenth-century
origins to the present in today’s advanced capitalist countries and includes
the approaches to social policy through structural change and socioeconomic
transformation in developing countries since the post-Second World War
period.
The book does not have the ambitious objective of presenting a dynamic
analysis of the changing social policy interventions and institutions through
centuries. It rather aims to place the ideas on social policy in the wider context
of capitalist transformations where societies are affected by the commercial-
ization of agriculture, the changes in the sectoral composition of production,
technological and organizational innovations or the changing patterns of
integration in the capitalist world economy. It follows the trends toward
the commodification of labour and the emergence of new forms of poverty
through these transformations and examines their appraisals in societies where
they were taking place. These appraisals are found in policy debates and social
analysis, as well as in fiction or cinema, and they constitute this book’s area
of investigation of the ideas on the impact of capitalist transformations on the
work and livelihoods of people which reflect different imaginations of society
and social cohesion. This historically grounded investigation follows a chron-
ological order as described by the detailed outline given below.
The idea to write this book has emerged during the health and economic
crisis caused by the global COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic has revealed
a series of serious problems which have been affecting the lives and liveli-
hoods of people throughout the world in the pre-pandemic international order.
In this environment, critical debates on economic globalization1 have acquired
a new relevance and, either explicitly or implicitly asked, the question whether
the end of the pandemic would be followed by the return to ‘business as usual’
or the crisis could be expected to have a transformative impact on the global
economy and perhaps instigate the advent of a ‘different type of capitalism’
has come on the agenda.2
Many of the problems revealed by the pandemic pertain to social
policy-related issues such as the precariousness of work and income, rampant
inequalities in living conditions or the inadequacies of the systems of health,
education and social care. State-provided social security has acquired a crucial
significance in all societies faced by these problems, and this has shed a new
light on the debates around the welfare state and drawn attention to the impor-
tance of social policy intervention in developing country contexts. In this
environment, in a briefing on the future of the welfare state in the post-COVID
world in the Economist magazine it was stated that ‘the pandemic has forced
a re-evaluation of the social contract’.3
 Introduction 3

The emergence of the post-Second World War international economic

order constitutes a well-remembered example of socioeconomic and polit-
ical transformations instigated by an international crisis. The collapse of
the nineteenth-century market-dominated world economy after the Great
Depression, the rise of fascism in Europe and the Second World War was
followed by the emergence of the international economic order regulated
by the institutions within the Bretton Woods system, the Keynesian welfare
state and national developmentalism in the capitalist periphery. In The Great
Transformation, written at the end of the war, Karl Polanyi wrote that ‘After
a century of blind improvement, Man is restoring his habitation’.4
Could we expect the global crisis caused by the pandemic to insti-
gate a similar attempt at ‘the restoration of habitation’ after four decades
of socioeconomic disruptions brought along by the late twentieth-century
market-dominated economic globalization and lead to the emergence of a
‘new social contract’? What could be the nature of the possible changes in the
approaches to social policy in our post-pandemic future and how would these
changes articulate with the political economy of the emerging capitalist order
at national and international levels? These questions inform the attempt this
book makes to remember the historical debates on the social policy-related
problems where certain ideas continue to appear and reappear in different
views on the economy and the terms of co-existence in capitalist societies.

CHALLENGE OF CAPITALIST DEVELOPMENT AND

THE RESPONSE OF SOCIETY

Capitalism is a socioeconomic order which is characterized, first and foremost,

by dynamic change; structures of production, patterns of employment as well
as forms of political government do not remain the same through centuries.
It also differs in its productive organization and in the institutional context of
economic and social policy between countries as examined in the comparative
literature on the ‘varieties of capitalism’ and the variations in ‘welfare regime
types’. However, capitalism has a tendency to reach beyond geographical
boundaries and become a ‘world system’ presenting common challenges to all
societies where markets expand. As Wolfgang Streeck puts it in the preface to
the second edition of Buying Time where he approaches ‘capitalism as a unity’,
‘difference and commonality are not mutually exclusive, and … depending
on the problem one is seeking to understand either one or the other may be
highlighted’.5 What is highlighted in the present inquiry into the place of social
policy in capitalist history is the continuity and change in the approaches to the
challenges capitalist development presents to societies.
In The Long Twentieth Century, Giovanni Arrighi approaches the world cap-
italist history by introducing the idea of ‘systemic cycles of production’ with
4 Social policy in capitalist history

different organizational structures of government and business.6 According to

Arrighi, these cycles alternate between ‘regulated’ and ‘unregulated’ ones in
a pendulum movement as the prevailing organizational structures become con-
straining for the capital accumulation process at a certain stage. This particular
imagination of the history of capitalism as a world system provides useful
insights especially to the analysis of the change in social policy approaches
from the nineteenth-century market-dominated global capitalism to the inter-
national capitalist order of the post-Second World War period and then to the
‘neoliberal’ global economy whose sustainability is now being discussed.7
However, the terms ‘regulated’ and ‘unregulated’ might not be useful since
orders of production and social relations, with the changes they undergo
through capitalist development, are always accompanied by some form of
socioeconomic regulation. Social protection systems are part of these forms
of regulation and, with the historically changing character of their objectives
and instruments, they remain present in all capitalist societies.8 Systems of
social protection are a part of these modes of regulation, and in their histor-
ically changing forms remain present in all capitalist societies. In each new
phase of capitalism social policy intervention is shaped in response to the new
challenges which affect all capitalist societies. In this book, the ideas on social
policy are situated in capitalist history by insisting on ‘creative destruction’ and
‘accumulation by dispossession’ as defining features of capitalism highlighted
in Marx’s writings, but the discussion is pursued beyond the boundaries of
class analysis by drawing on Polanyi’s ideas on economy, society and class.
We find a succinct description of the capitalist creative description in
a well-known passage from The Communist Manifesto:

The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments

of production, and thereby the relations of production and with them the whole
relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form,
was, on the contrary, the first and condition of existence of all earlier industrial
classes. Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all
social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation, distinguish the bourgeois
epoch from all earlier ones.9

The theme of ‘dispossession’ appears in Marx’s analysis of capital ‘as a rela-

tion’ between ‘free labour’ and the owner of means of production now sepa-
rated from the producers, where Marx writes about the severance of traditional
social relations and the loss of earlier forms of livelihood in the beginning of
the road to the labour market:

a mass of living labour powers was … thrown onto the labour market, a mass which
was free in a double sense, free from the old relations of clientship, bondage and
servitude, and secondly free of all belongings and possessions, and of every objec-
 Introduction 5

tive, material form of living, free of all property; dependent on the sale of its labour
capacity or on begging, vagabondage and robbery as its only source of income. It
is a matter of historical record that they tried the latter first, but were driven off this
road by gallows, stocks and whippings, onto the narrow path to the labour market.10

The dynamics of dispossession, whose origin is traced to the context of

emerging capitalism in this quotation, has continued in the following capitalist
centuries with further weakening of traditional relations of reciprocity which
could provide support to those in need, albeit with inequality and subordi-
nation as their characteristic features, with independent producers turning to
‘free labour’, with technological and organizational innovations leading to the
challenges to employment as well as changing the meaning of work in radical
ways.
The question is whether any human society could survive without taking
measures to control and check the impact of this capitalist development on
people and society. This question informs the framing of this book’s discus-
sion of social policy interventions as both reflecting the patterns of socioec-
onomic change brought along by the dynamics of capitalist development and
attempting to modify the play of the market forces.

POLITICS OF SOCIAL POLICY WITH INSIGHTS FROM

KARL POLANYI

In The Rhetoric of Reaction, Hirschman discusses three reactionary theses

against purposive policy action taken to improve the socioeconomic order.
The perversity thesis holds that policies implemented to remedy certain ills
only serve to aggravate the problems addressed; according to the futility thesis
the attempts at improvement of the existing conditions would fail to bring
about any change in the desired direction; the jeopardy thesis maintains that
the attempted reforms would put in danger the previously achieved objectives
of economic, social or political development.11 In Hayek’s ferocious criticisms
of socialist central planning and then the Keynesian welfare state, one finds
these three reactionary theses in their probably most typical form. However,
in different combinations and formulations, essentially similar arguments
have also been used by other writers who have contested the developments in
protective legislation through the history of the social policy debate. Protective
legislation has been challenged with reference to the incompatibility of
equality with society, the laws of the economy or the imperative of economic
progress. Nevertheless, social policy intervention has continued, albeit with its
objectives defined in different ways and pursued with different instruments, as
an integral part of the historically changing form of the society’s response to
market expansion. Measures of social protection could be introduced without
6 Social policy in capitalist history

necessarily contesting the ideas on the unavoidably of inequality, laws of the

economy or the requirements of economic development, but the debate has
always included criticisms voiced against the socioeconomic order where
the problems affecting people’s lives emerged. The views on the objectives,
instruments and institutions of social policy differed and these differences
shaped the environment of the politics of social policy in all periods of capi-
talist history.
Politics of social policy has a rich and complex history which would not
be easy to examine solely with reference to economic interests of different
classes. An alternative approach could benefit from Polanyi’s discussion of the
nineteenth-century developments, especially from the concept of the ‘double
movement’ which he introduces in his analysis of these developments. In his
analysis of the nineteenth-century market economy, Polanyi insists on the
uniquely powerful influence on economic policy of a particular perception of
the economy as an autonomous domain separated from politics. This was an
imagination of an economy disembedded from society and making it a reality
required the elimination of former mechanisms of protecting the natural and
human substance of society and its productive organization with the aid of
a ‘commodity fiction’. As Polanyi discusses, land, labour and money, none
of which are commodities produced for sale, were treated as commodities,
and the attempts to control socioeconomic disruptions by checking the pace
of economic progress were abandoned with a faith in market-led progress.
Nevertheless, no society could tolerate the subordination of its human and
natural substance and its productive organization of the society to the laws of
the market, market expansion had to be countered by a protective movement.
As Polanyi puts it, ‘[f]or a century the dynamics of the modern society was
governed by a double movement: the market expanded continuously but this
movement was met by a countermovement checking the expansion in definite
directions’.12
Polanyi argues that the countermovement was wide and comprehensive and
its dynamics was not limited to class action. He pursues this argument with
a criticism of narrow class theory and writes that sectional interests could
be a ‘vehicle’ of social and political change, but individual motives are not
determined by purely economic factors. Besides, economic interests which are
voiced only by those persons to whom they pertain would necessarily be less
effective than the interests which have a wide constituency. He insists that in
a society faced by the challenge of socioeconomic transformation, the threat
is to the society as a whole and the response is shaped by the reactions that
come from many different directions; class conflicts and alliances could not be
understood apart from the situation from the situation of society.
Polanyi’s discussion is situated in the context of the nineteenth-century
market economy which he sees as a ‘historical aberration’, a ‘stark utopia’.
 Introduction 7

Nevertheless, his analysis of the dynamics of the double movement has wider
historical relevance for an investigation of the politics of social policy. In
the mercantilist age of government-regulated economies, the economy was
far from being conceived as an autonomous domain separated from politics.
However, national wealth and economic development were important con-
cerns, and as capitalist development proceeded the appeal to ‘the natural laws
of the economy’ have become increasingly important in providing support to
the commodity treatment of labour much before the nineteenth century devel-
opments discussed by Polanyi. The trends toward commodification of labour
have been present through the history of capitalism. Braudel, for example,
observes that the labour market was not a creation of the Industrial Revolution
and writes that the idea that labour is a commodity like any other was already
discussed by Hobbes.13
At the same time, the claims for the introduction of different types of social
protection mechanisms against market expansion have never been absent. In
sixteenth-century European cities where poverty came to be considered as
a social problem, assistance to the poor was accepted as a responsibility which
lay municipal authorities had to assume by considering the moral as well as the
social and economic foundations of a stable society. In his impressive book on
the history of poverty, Geremek writes that from the emergence of early cap-
italism onward ‘modern views on poverty are all united by a common thread:
the conviction that the proper role and duty of the poor, the condition for which
they are naturally fitted, is work’.14 However, the tendency to reduce people
who are in a position to earn their living by working to ‘labour power’, which
is inherent in capitalism, was accompanied by the reality of mass poverty
which constituted a threat to social stability and informed the criticisms of
a society where those ‘who are naturally fitted for work’ remain idle and des-
titute for reasons which are beyond their responsibility. The effectiveness of
the measures taken to prohibit begging and to punish vagrants were questioned
and they were criticized on moral grounds. In the following centuries, the
co-existence of poverty and wealth, deepening inequalities or the deplorable
conditions of work of large groups of people have continued to form part of the
discussions on social justice in societies where capitalist progress proceeded.
The bourgeoisie, as Marx writes, continuously changes the productive
process and socioeconomic relations and this presents a threat to security
and social standing of large segments of the population both privileged and
underprivileged. Accumulation of capital is guided by the profit motive, and
the pursuit of economic interests would normally involve continued access to
a supply of cheap labour and the resistance to sharing the profit income with
other members of the society. However, through the history of capitalism these
interests, which position the bourgeoisie against protective legislation, have
required reconsideration in light of the threats to social stability presented by
8 Social policy in capitalist history

poor people’s riots, working-class agitation or socialist movements and poor

relief or other types of protective legislation benefitting the underprivileged
had to be accepted. Arguments guided by economic interest had to be pursued
with political concerns about the protection of law and order, but always with
some perception of broader social objectives with reference to which the terms
of co-existence in society are defined.
The imperative of economic progress could provide support to the pursuit of
bourgeois interests, but would be resisted not only by the working population
but also by those whose privileged status in society is threatened through cap-
italist transformation. The resistance to capitalist progress could be informed
by imagination of society where people are bound by unequal relations of def-
erence and protection, and hence could lead to a conservative support for the
grievances and claims of the working population. Through the history of cap-
italism, the divide between conservatives and progressive believers in market
expansion could, and often did, lead to political alliances between the former
and the working people. This alliance could sometimes involve working-class
support for authoritarian politics as it did in several historical episodes in the
nineteenth century and after.
Polanyi writes that ‘the chances of classes in a struggle will depend on their
ability to win support from outside their own membership, which again will
depend upon their fulfilment of tasks set by interest wider than their own’.15
The bourgeoisie has not been exempted from this requirement to serve inter-
ests wider than its own and it has been in a situation to consider its role as the
agent of economic progress in light of the impact of progress on society at
large. Hence, the introduction of protective legislation could be supported also
by progressive liberals.
In Polanyi’s words,

An all too narrow conception of human interest must in effect lead to a warped
vision of social and political history, and no purely monetary definition of interest
can leave room for the vital need for social protection, the representation of which
commonly falls to the persons in charge of the general interest of the community
– under modern conditions, the governments of the day. Precisely because not the
economic interest, but the social interest of different cross sections of the population
were threatened by the market, persons belonging to various economic strata joined
forces to meet the danger.16

Politics of social policy is shaped by this vital need for social protection which
political authorities in charge of the general interest of the community have
to address. It might be possible to approach social policy in its ‘legitimating
function’ along the lines of the Marxist structuralist theories of the state where
the state is seen to be in charge of assuring the survival of the capitalist order
by considering the objective of legitimation along with the requirements of
 Introduction 9

accumulation.17 This, however, would be too limiting for an overview of the

debates where certain salient themes are pursued in different ways in different
historical periods, shedding light on the dynamics of creative destruction and
dispossession in their effects on society and people in each phase of capitalist
development. It is in these debates that we find the controversies and agree-
ments on the nature of what is legitimated and by which means it is attempted
to make it compatible with the cohesion of society. Social policy interventions,
in different forms, are present in all capitalist societies including those with
authoritarian regimes whose ascendance is made possible largely by the failure
to contain market expansion in ways which would be compatible with social
cohesion without political repression.

THEMES OF THE SOCIAL POLICY DEBATE IN

HISTORY

The problem of poverty and the characteristics of the world of work – and the
close relationship between the two – have been central to the modern social
policy debate. Poverty as the condition of people unable to live by working
has always existed in all societies in different periods of history, but the
importance and the nature of poverty have not been the same across societies
and historical periods. Unemployment or precariousness of employment, low
wages and miserable conditions of work have not affected all working people
in the same way. Diversity has always been a characteristic of the working
population. In Capital, Marx gives some workforce statistics which show that
‘agricultural labourers’ and the ‘servant class’ together largely outnumber
the workers in manufacturing and mining with bitter comments on the large
number of ‘modern domestic slaves’ in the industrial English economy.18 In
the neoliberal era, we have seen the rise of new patterns of employment where
independent contract work, or workers having the status of self-employed
rather than employees of an enterprise, have become widespread in the ‘gig
economy’ or ‘platform economy’, and introduced a new element of diversity
in the world of labour.19 Apart from the difference in sectors and types of
employment, the diversity of skills as well as that of gender, ethnicity or race
have always been important.
This book follows the change and continuity of the ideas on the challenge
capitalist expansion presents to working people and to the society without spe-
cifically addressing the questions pertaining to particular ways in which differ-
ent groups of workers are affected by this challenge. Hence, immigrant labour,
which is an element of the diversity of the workforce and a major contentious
issue in contemporary politics and policy, does not form a separate subject in
this inquiry. Instead, the movement of workers to the city from the countryside
or between different regions and countries is regarded as an integral part of the
10 Social policy in capitalist history

debates on poverty and social policy as well as a constituent element of labour

market formation in different historical contexts. For example, Geremek
writes that in sixteenth-century Europe ‘the city poor, those who lived within
the walls, turn out, insofar as their origins can be documented, to be largely
recent immigrants from the countryside’.20 Eric Wolf insists on labour being
‘on the move’ through the nineteenth-century developments and argues
against the tendency to distinguish between ‘internal’ and ‘external’ migration
by writing that the internal cultural barriers between town and country or
between regions within the same polity were not different in kind from those
that faced the migrants in external or intercontinental movements.21 In the
twenty-first-century context of global capitalism, Çağlar and Schlick analyse
the relationship between migrants and cities by approaching the migrants as
part of the same dynamics of dispossession and urban development with the
non-migrant population.22
Notwithstanding the diversity of people affected by the conditions of
employment and work, in each phase of capitalism these conditions have been
characterized by salient trends typical of the historical period which were
problematized and addressed in social policy debate. The problems that were
discussed, the ways in which they were interpreted and the types of remedies
proposed changed through the history of social policy, but certain ideas
expressed in imaginations of possible alternatives to the existing organization
of production and social relations and some arguments against protective leg-
islation, albeit in different formulations, have continued to appear in different
periods. The history of social policy debate reflects both the historical dynam-
ics of capitalist expansion in a given period and the legacy of the past ideas
and policies which shape the questions raised and the way they are answered.
These past ideas and policies limit the extent to which poverty can be tolerated,
the laws of the economy can be invoked to justify the commodity treatment
of labour, and inequality is accepted. Social policy as a response to capitalist
expansion therefore comes with a potential to transform capitalism.
The discussion presented in the book draws on the studies on the early
modern period and the eighteenth-century developments,23 and comparative
studies on welfare state development written with a historical perspective.24 It
engages with the analyses of welfare state policies by situating them in a his-
torical context in relation to the ideas and politics of social policy intervention
which have preceded and followed them in different phases of capitalist
history. The section on social policy in developing country contexts covers the
post-Second World War period to the present.
The discussion begins with the sixteenth-century socioeconomic trans-
formations in both the rural and the urban economy in Europe which have
changed both the character and the perceptions of work and poverty. In this
period, poverty came to be perceived as a policy problem which required
 Introduction 11

measures beyond the traditional forms of private or church organized charity.

The need for a ‘charity reform’ was widely recognized, lay municipal authori-
ties appeared as actors in the provision of social assistance to the poor by using
public funds; systems of poor relief emerged and developed by incorporating
the objectives of providing education and work to the poor. The first chapter
‘From charity reform to the New Poor Law’ presents an overview of the con-
tinuity and change in the discussions around these developments through the
age of mercantilism until the nineteenth-century market-dominated capitalist
order.
Who are the ‘deserving poor’ and who is responsible for helping them by
which instruments were the first questions addressed in these discussions.
However, in the sixteenth century it was already clear that the traditional
perception of the deserving poor as the elderly, the sick, the disabled unable
to earn their living by working, was not adequate to deal with the poverty of
the able-bodied masses who were losing their previous forms of livelihood
and were on the move in search of work or alms. Beggars and vagrants were
a nuisance and a threat to society, but the question as to whether the prohibition
of begging and vagabondage was an effective or morally acceptable measure
was also raised. Attempts at disciplining the poor were also accompanied by
the criticisms of the ‘poverty increasing tendency’25 in the changing order. In
an environment where geographic discoveries have expanded the horizon of
the imaginations of society, these criticisms could incorporate quite radical
ideas about property and the organization of economic and political life as in
Thomas More’s Utopia or appear in social reform proposals such as those in
Juan Luis Vives’s On Assistance to the Poor.26
Rising inequality could be problematized in critical observations on the
transformations affecting socioeconomic life, but the ideal of equality came
quite late in policy discussions. In the late seventeenth century, when Locke
wrote that ‘all men by nature are equal’, he carefully qualified the statement
with reference to many different types of inequality which must be accepted:

Though I have said …. That all Men by nature are equal, I cannot be supposed to
understand all sorts of Equality: Age and Virtue may give Men a just Precedency;
Excellence of Parts and Merit may place other above the Common Level; Birth may
subject some, and Alliances or Benefits others; to pay an Observance to those whom
Nature, Gratitude or other Respects may have made its due.27

All men were said to be equal in the sense that they all have an equal right
to their natural freedoms without being subjected to the will and authority of
other men, but the society was seen to be necessarily unequal given the differ-
ences between the individuals in it.
12 Social policy in capitalist history

In Locke’s argument, although private property does not conflict with but
appears as the extension of natural rights to the property in the fruit of one’s
labour, it is also mentioned that the right to property is bounded by the right of
all to subsistence and could not be used without regard to the obligation to act
so as to serve the preservation of all mankind. With the advance of capitalism,
the natural right to subsistence has begun to be overshadowed by the impera-
tive of economic development. In the mercantilist era, the availability of a large
supply of cheap labour was presented as a prerequisite of success in interna-
tional trade relations and hence the wealth of the nation. The affirmation of the
laws of supply and demand had increasingly introduced a sense of inevitability
to the discussions on poverty and the criticism of existing poor relief systems
had marked the social policy debate in the eighteenth century. However, it was
also in this century that Adam Smith’s fierce criticism of the mercantilist polit-
ical economy precepts came with observations on the inequality and injustice
of the existing relations between workers and their employers and a perception
of poverty as a threat to the vital human need of participation in society. Smith
wrote that a society where the majority population is in poverty could not be
a flourishing and happy one. He regarded inequality as stemming not from the
individual characteristics of people, but from their position in the division of
labour. According to him, division of labour forms the basis for the wealth of
nations, but he also expressed concerns about its impact on the mental capabil-
ities and social aptitudes of the working population.28
Smith was writing for a human society, but his crucial influence on the
development of classical political economy could not be said to include his
insights on poverty and the inequality of class relations. Through the eight-
eenth century the systems of poor relief continued to be challenged and in
England the commodity status of labour was affirmed by the New Poor Law of
1834. However, the commodity treatment of labour continued to be contested
in the context of the nineteenth-century market-dominated capitalism.
With reference to the case of England, E. P. Thompson (1978) writes that
the movement from the eighteenth- to the nineteenth-century field of force has
taken place with the weakening of ‘the old paternalism–deference equilibrium’
and the bonds of reciprocity in the old society.29 As will be discussed in the
second chapter of this book ‘On equality, class and classical political economy
precepts’, in England and elsewhere the imagination of a society held together
by unequal ties of reciprocity between the privileged and the underprivileged,
the rich and the poor or the worker and employer has not fully disappeared
from the social policy debate. It appeared in the conservative criticisms of
capitalist development, but was also implicit in the appeal to private charity or
organized philanthropy often found in the economic liberal arguments against
social legislation.
 Introduction 13

However, the policy environment of the nineteenth century was shaped with
two revolutions in the background. With the Industrial Revolution the world
of labour had gone through a massive transformation. As Thompson writes, ‘It
is neither poverty or disease, but work itself which casts the blackest shadow
over the years of the industrial revolution’.30 Conditions of work in industry
and the dismal state of the working population was problematized not only
by socialists, but also by politicians and writers in different positions on the
political spectrum. With the rise of an industrial working class, the preoccupa-
tion with poverty and social assistance to the poor began to be dominated by
concerns about work.
At the same time, the French Revolution, with the ideas of citizenship and
citizenship rights, was an important element in the perceptions of class rela-
tions. In the French Constitution of 1793, it was stated that ‘The law knows no
such thing as the status of servant: there can exist only a contract for services
and compensation between the man who works and the one who employs him’.
However, with the idea of equal citizenship affirmed, the necessarily unequal
relations inherent in the free contract relation between the worker who has to
sell their labour power to be able to survive and the capitalist employer neces-
sarily introduced a new tension in the perception of social cohesion. ‘Natural
rights of all to subsistence’ could hardly hold without a redefinition of ‘rights
in society’ and this called for a reconsideration of the meaning of equality in
its relationship with socioeconomic differences. The claims of the rising indus-
trial working class were now expressed in a language of rights characterized by
the complementarity of political and socioeconomic demands. The question of
women’s rights would also enter the debate introducing yet another dimension
to the relationship between equality and difference.
The tension between rights claims and the affirmation of the commodity
status in a market-dominated capitalist order shaped an environment in
which what Polanyi calls the countermovement appeared in different political
manifestations. In England, a series of factory laws were introduced to limit
the length of the working day and to prevent the ruthless use of child labour.
The imagination of social cohesion in traditional societies informed the con-
servative attacks against the precepts of classical political economy, but the
observations of some conservative politicians and writers on the miserable
state to which the working population was reduced could be as radical as those
Marx made in his analysis of capitalist exploitation. Conservatives were not
always backward-looking in their perspectives on their views on alternatives to
the existing labour market relations. In France, not only the utopian socialists
but also Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, the ‘lumpen emperor’ in Marx’s 18th
Brumaire, explored ways of organizing production where employment would
be secure and work would cease to be torture.31 In Germany, Bismarck’s social
policies were strongly marked by the objective of controlling the rise of the
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humanity in order to seek it, and does not find it; and also if he
says the wisdom (i.e. wisdom generically) to know it (‘that wisdom
is given him to know it’) he is not able (or rather not enabled) to
find it. ‫ בשל‬in this place is no doubt used to express a new idea, ‘for
this,’ or ‘which cause.’ The object of man’s toil, i.e. the object he has
in his labour, is to find out some method by which he may rectify
what appears wrong in the course of God’s providence: in the strict
sense of the term this is impossible. The principle which pervades
Koheleth’s reasoning is, that enjoyment, as such, is God’s gift, and
that toil is useless. Labour, however, which is distinguished from toil,
is to be done in the fear of God, and the result left to his providence.
The argument which is to follow further enforces this.
 CHAPTER IX.

F OR all this ¹I
considered in my
heart even to declare all
this, that the righteous,
and the wise, and their
works, are in the hand of
God: no man knoweth
either love or hatred by
all that is before them.
¹ Hebrew I
gave or set
to my
heart.
F OR with respect to
all this, I have laid
to my heart that which is
to be deduced from it all,
which is, that right and
wisdom, and any service
they can render, are in
the hand of the Almighty,
and whether [an event
be an indication of His]
love or displeasure
either, no man knows
from anything he sees
before him,

IX. (1.) For with respect to all this, I have given it to (‫אל‬, not
‫את‬, which the LXX. render by εἰς) my heart, and to sift out (occurs
here only, but compare chapter iii. 18) with respect to all this (but
the LXX., dividing the words differently, evidently read ‫ולבי ראת כל זה‬,
which would mean, ‘when that heart was seeing all this.’ The number
of various readings――see Stier and Theile, Polyglot――show that
this passage was early one of difficulty. The rendering of
Symmachus, preserved by Jerome, ‘omnia ita statui [fort. ἔταξα] in
corde meo ut ventilarem universa,’ conveys the meaning; which is,
that Koheleth set to his heart that which is the result when the matter
is entirely sifted) which is the righteous and the wise (generic and
plural, all those things which are right or wise generally; ‘right and
wisdom,’ as we speak, is the meaning) and their works (i.e. what
they produce, or, better still, their ‘services’) are in the hand of the
Deity, also love (in the abstract), also hatred (also abstract, and ‫גם‬
being repeated gives the idea of both love and hatred too) is
nothing, knowing the man (the negative belongs to the noun, not
to the verb, and so the meaning must be ‘there is no man who does
know.’ Moreover, the two nominatives absolute, ‘love’ and ‘hatred,’
are the subjects of the whole sentence, ‘as to love or hatred either,
there is no man who knows,’ or, better still, ‘to whom is made
known,’ giving the import to the participle) the whole (generic)
before them (distributive plural, any of them, equivalent then ‘to
anything which is before them’).

2 All things come evanescence being that

alike to all: there is one
event to the righteous,
and to the wicked; to the
good, and to the clean,
and to the unclean; to
him that sacrificeth, and
to him that sacrificeth
not: as is the good, so is
the sinner; and he that
sweareth, as he that
feareth an oath.
which belongs to all.
That which happens is
just the same to the right
and to the wrong, to
good [and to bad, LXX.],
and to clean and to
unclean, and to the
sacrificer as to one who
never sacrifices; as the
good, so the erring
sinner, the forsworn as
 though he had feared
the oath.

(2.) The whole (but all the ancient versions read here ‫הבל‬,
‘vanity,’ and this makes better sense; the error, for such we believe it
to be, in the Masoretic text, was one so likely to occur, that,
considering the strong weight of testimony in favour of the LXX., and
the far better sense it makes with the context, we may well adopt it.
As an additional reason for following the LXX., we notice that the
Syriac reads ‘all that is before
him is vanity, all just as that which is to all,’ combining, therefore,
both readings together. Thus it appears that the variation in the texts
was a very ancient one. If this reading be adopted, then combining it
with the words which follow) as (or like this same) to all (the
meaning will be ‘transitoriness is exactly the same to all,’ or ‘all alike
are equally transitory.’ If, however, we retain the Masoretic text and
pointing, a good sense is made. ‘The whole is as it were to all,’
namely) a happening which is one to the righteous, and to the
impious, to the good (the LXX. add here to the bad), to the clean,
and to the unclean, to the sacrificer, and to one who has not
sacrificed; as is the good so the sinner (but general, including
things as well as persons), the forsworn as one who an oath
fears.

3 This is an evil This evil is in all which is

among all things that are performed in this work-
done under the sun, that day world: that there is
there is one event unto but one event to all, and
all: yea, also the heart of so the heart of the
the sons of men is full of
evil, and madness is in
their heart while they
live, and after that they
go to the dead.
human race overflows
with wrong, and foolish
anticipations are in their
inmost hearts while they
live, and what
succeeds――it belongs
to the dead.

(3.) This wrong is in all which is done (niphal, and therefore

objective; men both do and suffer as though this were so) under the
sun, how a happening which is one (i.e. the same) to all (the force
of this reasoning is made apparent by what follows, as there is no
visible reward to these righteous persons as compared with the
wicked, wicked men presume); and moreover, the heart of the
sons of Adam is full of (‘overflows with’ would represent the idea)
evil, and false expectations (‫ הוללות‬occurs chapter i. 17――see
references; the meaning deduced exactly suits this passage; it is the
false hope begotten of an evil action, a crime worse than a blunder,
to invert a celebrated aphorism) in their hearts (‫ לבב‬is ‘the inmost
heart’――see Concordance, sub voce, for the shade of difference
between ‫ לב‬and ‫)לבב‬, in their lives, and their future (i.e. what
comes afterwards) belongs to (the preposition is ‫אל‬, which the LXX.
note, and render by πρὸς) the dead (generic, with the article).

4 ¶ For to him that is For whoever he may be,

joined to all the living he chooses altogether
there is hope: for a living as regarding the living,
this being his
dog is better than a dead anticipation: for to a dog
lion. alive it is indeed better
than the lion when he is
dead.

(4.) For whoever (interrogative pronoun followed by ‫אשר‬,

compare Exodus xxxii. 33; it has here the sense, ‘For whoever he
be’) chooses (the Kri reads ‘is joined to,’ which the LXX., Syriac,
Targum, and Symmachus all have; but this and the pointing as a
pual is merely a Masoretic conjecture: it would be better with the
LXX. to take it in an active sense, κοινωνεῖ, ‘participates.’ The Chetib
is perfectly intelligible, however, and is to be preferred) towards (‫אל‬,
as in verse 3) all (but ‫ כל‬is without the article; hence it has the
meaning, the ‘whole of’) the lives (with the article, and hence
generic, ‘lives generally.’ Thus the meaning is, ‘For whoever he be,
he is one who chooses entirely with relation to the living’), it is (‫יש‬, it
exists as such) an expectation (‫בטחון‬, occurs 2 Kings xviii. 19, and
its parallel Isaiah xxxvi. 4 besides this place only, in the meaning of a
‘confidence’ or ‘expectation,’ and this meaning gives excellent sense
here: ‘is his expectation that he will live:’ no man makes plans on the
supposition that he is going to die; he may indeed provide for others
after he is dead, but the horizon of his own hopes is necessarily
bounded by his life). For (an additional reason confirming the above)
to a dog alive it is (emphatic) good above the lion (with the article,
because this is generic; it is not a lion, but lion qualities generally),
the dead (again generic, for the same reason――‘a live dog is better
than the lion when he is dead,’ is the exact turn of thought).

5 For the living know Yet the living are quite

that they shall die: but aware that they shall die;
the dead know not any
thing, neither have they
any more a reward; for
the memory of them is
forgotten.
but the dead are not
aware of anything; and
they can have no further
recompense, because a
forgotten thing is their
memorial:

(5.) For the living ones are knowing that they will die (this is
an additional reason to the above, and so may be rendered, ‘but the
living are certain that they will die‘), but the dead (plural, with the
article, ‘the dead persons generally’) are not those who are
knowing anything (it is not here, be it observed, the existence of
knowledge on the part of the dead which is denied, but that, from the
author’s point of view, the dead are persons who do not know
anything: an unevangelic sense has been given to this passage by
not attending to this distinction), and there is nothing further to
them (emphatic) which is a hire (or a reward in this life accruing to
them as a recompense for their toil), because forgotten (niphal in
its usual objective sense) is their remembrance.

6 Also their love, and and then their love and

their hatred, and their
envy, is now perished;
neither have they any
more a portion for ever
in any thing that is done
under the sun.
their hatred also, and
their envy as well, as far
as this Present is
concerned, are perished;
and there is no further
participation for them in
the age, in anything that
 may be done within this
work-day world.

(6.) Moreover their love, moreover their hatred, moreover

their envy (the triple repetition of ‫ גם‬brings this word into
prominence, equivalent to ‘their love also; yes, their hatred and envy
too’) in this present (‫כבר‬, see chapter i. 10, references; the word
occurs again in its technical sense of the ‘present state of things,’
and makes excellent sense here), perish (abstract ‘is a thing
perished’) in all which (full relative) is done under the sun. On this
follows the most touching piece of sarcasm in the whole work. There
is a force and pungency about it which is very striking.

7 ¶ Go thy way, eat Go then, eat thy bread

thy bread with joy, and
drink thy wine with a
merry heart; for God
now accepteth thy
works.
with gladness, and drink
in good heart thy wine, if
in the present the
Almighty prospers thy
works.

(7.) Go, eat (i.e. enjoy) in pleasure thy bread, and drink in
heart of good thy wine; for so in the present hath prospered the
Deity thy workings.
 8 Let thy garments At every opportunity
be always white; and let let thy garments be
thy head lack no white, and the oil to thy
ointment. head do not spare.

(8.) In all season (‫עת‬, a providential season――see chapter iii.

1, 19) let them be (even) thy garments white (it is hardly possible
here, when we remember the constant use in Scripture of white
garments, not to discover one of those hidden allusions with which
this book abounds to a pure as alone a happy life; the garments of
the sensualist and drunkard are, in the emphatic language of the
apostle, ‘spotted with the flesh’), and oil (see chapter vii. 1, as the
symbol of luxury and wealth) on thy head do not spare (chapter
iv. 8; ‘do not stint’ or ‘save it as for another time,’ is the meaning: ‘use
it when you have the occasion’).

9 ¹Live joyfully with Enjoy life with that

the wife whom thou
lovest all the days of the
life of thy vanity, which
he hath given thee under
the sun, all the days of
thy vanity: for that is thy
portion in this life, and in
thy labour which thou
takest under the sun.
woman whom thou
lovest, all the days of thy
evanescent life, which
He grants thee in this
hot work-day
world,――all these
evanescent days, I say,
for that is all thou canst
possess in thy life, and
 from that toil thyself art
¹ Hebrew
See or
toiling ever in this same
enjoy life. work-day world.

(9.) See lives together with the woman which thou lovest (it
is to be remarked here that Koheleth speaks of a woman in the
singular; the idea thus implied is cognate with that of the white
garments, it is pure domestic love) all the days of the lives of thy
vanity (i.e. thy evanescent life) which He gives to thee (the
nominative is no doubt the Deity; but as this nominative is so far off,
the verb becomes almost an impersonal) under the sun all the
days of thy vanity (repeated); for that same is thy portion in lives
in thy toil which thou (emphatic) toilest at under the sun
(repeated, and therefore having the meaning, ‘under that same sun,’
the whole being thus strictly limited to the horizon of this world).

10 Whatsoever thy All that thy hand finds to

hand findeth to do, do it
with thy might; for there
is no work, nor device,
nor knowledge, nor
wisdom, in the grave,
whither thou goest.
do, to the utmost do it,
because there is no
work, nor device, nor
wisdom, nor knowledge
in the grave, and that is
whither thou art
hastening.

(10.) All which shall find thy hand in order to do (that is,
everything which it is in thy power to perform in regard of the above),
in thy might do it, because there is nothing of a work, or a
contrivance, or a knowledge, or a wisdom (all these being without
the article, and singular) in Sheol, which (is the ‘place,’ or ‘end,’
etc.; for we have in English to supply some general word here) thou
(emphatic) art going unto (the meaning is, ‘and that is whither thou
art going unto’).

11 ¶ I returned, and But to return, I

saw under the sun, that
the race is not to the
swift, nor the battle to
the strong, neither yet
bread to the wise, nor
yet riches to men of
understanding, nor yet
favour to men of skill;
but time and chance
happeneth to them all.
perceived how in this
work-day world that not
to the swift ones is the
race, nor to the strong
ones the battle, nor even
to wise ones bread, nor
yet to prudent ones
wealth, nor yet to the
instructed ones favour.
For time and chance
happens with regard to
them all.

(11.) I turned, and see under the sun (‘see’ is rightly joined by
the accents to the word which follows it; it is, as this formula of
introduction shows, another aspect of the same truth as that set forth
above) how not to swift is the race (‫מרוץ‬, occurs here only), and
not to mighty ones the war, and also not to wise ones bread,
and also not to prudent ones (occurs Genesis xli. 33 of Joseph,
and 1 Kings iii. 12 of Solomon) an increase, and not to knowing
ones a favour: (these three nouns, ‘bread,’ etc., are singular and
without the article, the other two are with it), for time (the
providential season, that is) and chance (occurs 1 Kings v. 4 as a
noun only; the meaning of the verb, which occurs frequently, is, ‘to
meet,’ ‘to approach’) happens with respect to (‫את‬, which the LXX.
notice by making the verb compound, συναντήσεται) all.

12 For man also For so also Humanity

knoweth not his time: as
the fishes that are taken
in an evil net, and as the
birds that are caught in
the snare; so are the
sons of men snared in
an evil time, when it
falleth suddenly upon
them.
knows not its time, but
just like fishes which
have been caught in a
net, or birds held fast in
a snare, just like them
the sons of men are
ensnared in some evil
time, as it falls upon
them――suddenly.

(12.) For also not knows (it is the verb which is here negatived)
the man (humanity) his time (with ‫את‬, which the LXX. note by the
article), as fishes which may be caught (contract relative and
plural niphal) in a net, the evil one (an evil net), and like also birds
when caught in a snare (notice the difference between ‫שנאחזים‬,
which is niphal participle plural, occurs Genesis xxii. 13, and ‫האחזות‬,
pual participle, ‘the fishes are caught, the birds are held’); like them
are ensnared (‫יוקשים‬, see Deuteronomy vii. 25) the sons of the
Adam to a time (which is) evil, as when it falls upon them
suddenly. (It would result from this reasoning that wisdom is of no
use at all; but in order to meet this objection, Koheleth cites an
instance where it was of great value.)
 13 ¶ This wisdom
have I seen also under
the sun, and it seemed
great unto me:
Nevertheless, I have
observed the following
instance of wisdom in
this work-day world, and
which appeared to me of
great moment.

(13.) Moreover, this I have seen (i.e. an instance of) a wisdom

under the sun (i.e. in this world, where wisdom avails so little), and
great (but the noun is an abstract, ‘of great value’ or importance, ‘a
really great thing’) is it with regard to me (LXX., πρὸς, i.e. he
considered that, notwithstanding the observation above, he ought to
take it as of considerable account; here was an unexpected
deliverance, by means of wisdom, from one of those snares, ‫מצודים‬,
spoken of above).

14 There was a little There was a little city,

city, and few men within
it; and there came a
great king against it, and
besieged it, and built
great bulwarks against it:
and the men therein
were a few; and there
came a great king
against it, and invested
it, and built a net-work
[of fortifications] around
it.
 (14.) A city small, and the men (‫אנשים‬, ‘weak men’) in it
(emphatic, ‘in that same’) a few, and there came against it a king
(who was) great, and he surrounded it, and built over against it
networks very great ones;

15 Now there was Now there was found

found in it a poor wise
man, and he by his
wisdom delivered the
city; yet no man
remembered that same
poor man.
therein a poor wise
working man, and he it
was who saved the city
by his wisdom; yet men
did not remember that
same person because
he was a poor working
man.

(15.) and was found in it (again emphatic) a man (‫איש‬, the rest
are ‫ )אנשים‬poor (chapter iv. 13, and here only, ‫מסכן‬, LXX. πένητα. The
meaning of πένης is that kind of poverty which seeks its food by
labour, and differs from πτωχὸς, which signifies a mendicant. Fuerst
gives the derivation, ‫ס־כן‬, of the root, which would imply such a
meaning as the LXX. have), wise (there is no copula between these
two qualifying words. It is not a poor and wise man, but a man
economically wise――who could make his wisdom go a long way),
and saved (even) he (the turn of meaning is, that the safety of the
city was found in himself, as the embodiment of wisdom) the city
(with ‫ את‬emphatic, which the LXX. notice by the rendering, δ ι α σώσῃ
αὐτὸς τ ὴ ν πόλιν) in his wisdom; and a man (not exactly ‘humanity,’
which we have seen would require the article, but ‘man’ as
representing the individuals generally) did not remember (the verb
follows the nominative), with respect to that man (‫את‬, with the
article, which the LXX. notice by σὺν, with a genitive! but in reality the
genitive is governed by the verb, σὺν being adverbial), the poor one,
even that same. (The shade of meaning given by the article is, that
mankind, as a rule, do not adequately remember, and so neither
reward, wisdom when associated with poverty. ‘The poor inventor
and his sorrows,’ have passed into a proverb.)

16 Then said I, Yet I should say myself

Wisdom is better than
strength: nevertheless
the poor man’s wisdom
is despised, and his
words are not heard.
that wisdom was a real
good, and better than
strength, yet the wisdom
of the poor working man
is despised, and his
words just those which
are not listened to.

(16.) Then said I (in opposition to ‘man,’ above), good is

wisdom above might; and the wisdom of the poor (with the
article) is despised, and his words (or reasonings, used still in the
technical sense common to this book) are those which are not
listened to.

17 The words of wise These words of the

men are heard in quiet wise in a silence are
heard:
more than the cry of him More than the shriek
that ruleth among fools. of a ruler with fools.

(17.) Those words (repeated) of wise men in rest are heard

(but notice ‫ בנחת‬is an ambiguous word,――see Job xxxvi. 16; the
root ‫ נחת‬is to press down, and hence the equivoke. These words of
the wise man in ‘a going down’ are those which are heard, i.e. in a
‘time of pressure,’ or in distress; ‘in quiet,’ is also a meaning, and a
very good one, being that which expresses, without doubt, the main
intent in the passage) above the cry (Genesis xviii. 20. Fuerst
considers that ‫ צעק‬is an older form and ‫ זעק‬modern, yet both are used
in Genesis xviii. 20, 21, but the references will be seen to support the
idea that ‫ זעקה‬is the ‘cry of emotion,’ while ‫ צעקה‬is any ‘loud cry;’ if so,
there is a special reason why it should be used in this place. Again,
‫ מזעקה‬might be a participle meaning a ‘cry of distress,’ thus giving
force to the equivoke), of a ruler with the befooled.

18 Wisdom is better A real good is

than weapons of war: wisdom above weapons
but one sinner of fight: but a single
destroyeth much good. erring sinner destroys
this good very much.

(18.) A good (repeated, so that it corroborates what is found in

verse 16) is wisdom above weapons of an encounter, and
sinning once (in the sense of making a wicked mistake, or ‘one
wicked mistaker,’ either person or thing) destroys good the much.
 CHAPTER X.

D EAD ¹flies cause

the ointment of the O NE of a swarm of
blow-flies tainting
apothecary to send forth corrupts the
a stinking savour: so confectioner’s conserve,
doth a little folly him that and esteemed above
is in reputation for reason and above
wisdom and honour. reputation too is of false
prudence――just a little.
¹ Hebrew
Flies of
death.

X. (1.) Flies of death (‫זבוב‬, occurs Isaiah vii. 18 only, as an

emblem of the Egyptian plague) cause to stink (singular, i.e. a
single blow-fly out of many will do this, see Proverbs xiii. 5 for the
only other instance of future hiphil), and cause to belch out (Psalms
lix. 7, Proverbs xv. 2, i.e. with putrefaction) the oil (see chapter vii. 1)
of the apothecary. Precious more than wisdom more than
honour (i.e. and more than honour also), follies (but observe ‫סכלות‬,
elaborate follies or false prudence, chapter ii. 3), a little (distributive
singular, one out of many such. The LXX. render τίμιον ὀλίγον σοφίας
ὑπὲρ δόξαν ἀφροσύνης μεγάλην, ‘and a little wisdom is more precious
than great glory of folly.’ The objection to this rendering of the LXX. is
that they displace, quite contrary to their usual custom, ‘a little,’
which comes at the end of the sentence, a difficulty which D. F. X.
palliate by reading μεγάλης――‘than the glory of great folly.’ The
Syriac reads, ‘so a little folly is more weighty than wisdom and great
glory.’ Symmachus reads, κἂν μικρά, ‘even if a little.’ On the whole,
however, and remembering the meaning of ‫סכלות‬, which is a perverse
or false wisdom, the text as it stands makes very good sense: ‘A
single blow-fly will corrupt and make ferment the [carefully prepared]
oil of the apothecary; so more precious than wisdom or honour, even
is a little one out of the many perverse follies,’ i.e. this perverse kind
of wisdom will destroy a reputation for intellect and probity, and that
also even when the gain proposed is but a small matter, and will
cause the subject of it to sacrifice prudence and reputation for the
sake of some whim which he knows is not worth having).

2 A wise man’s heart The heart of the wise

is at his right hand; but a man is at his right hand,
fool’s heart at his left. but the heart of a foolish
one is at his left hand.

(2.) The heart of a wise man is at his right, but the heart of a
foolish one is at his left (the heart is really at the left side, but this
is the natural heart. Heart is however to be understood not as
meaning the understanding, but moral sentiments, which is its
metaphorical signification in this book).

3 Yea also, when he And also in the way, like

that is a fool walketh by the wise fool he is, out of