Economic Development and Cultural Change

Louis Dumont. From Mandeville to Marx: The Genesis and Triumphof

Economic Ideology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977. Pp.
ix+236.

George Rosen
University of Illinois at Chicago Circle

It is of significant intellectual interest that two books devoted to the

rise of economics, written by distinguished authors from different fields,
have appeared simultaneously and independently of each other. Both of
the books developed from the authors' interests in the process of eco-
nomic development and the consequences of that process. The author of
the book being reviewed is one of the world's foremost anthropologists,
whose most famous book, Homo Hierarchicus, analyzes India's caste
society as a type of society "characterized essentially by its adherence to
hierarchy as the primary value" (p. 3). The other is Albert Hirschman's
The Passions and the Interests (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University
Press, 1977), by one of the world's leading development economists,
whose previous work has been characterized by the application of a wide
range of knowledge from history, anthropology, and political philosophy
to illuminate the process of economic development.
Dumont comes to the subject matter of this book as his first step
in an attempt to analyze the values of contemporary developed societies.
Traditional hierarchical societies "value, in the first place, order: the
conformity of every element to its role in society-in a word, the society
as a whole; this is what I call 'holism.' " Our contemporary societies
"value, in the first place, the individual human being; for us, every man
is, in principle, ... equal to every other man, and free. This is what I
call 'individualism.' " (p. 4). For Dumont, this "modern revolution in
values represents the central problem in the comparison of societies ...
whether we propose to understand [traditional] societies ... , or whether
we propose to locate our own society in relation to others" (p. 9). These
tasks of understanding traditional societies or of comparing our type of
society with those types are significant parts of the subject matter of
anthropology. Dumont hypothesizes that the "[economic] view must be
deeply rooted in the mental constitution of modern man" (p. 26). As an
anthropologist studying the change from traditional to modern society
and the differing values of each, he is interested in the development of
an economic view separate from politics and ethics and in the rise of that
economic view to primacy. This book carries out that study of the dis-
entanglement of the economic point of view by examining "the genesis
of economic thought from the seventeenth century to Adam Smith." It
then goes on to study Marx, in whose work economics is "reintegrated
[with politics and ethics, but] . . . this time in a dominant position, within
the general configuration" (p. 29). Thus, this volume is an introduction

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 Reviews

to the anthropology of the contemporary egalitarian society of Homo

aequalis, characterized by the primacy of economic individualism, in con-
trast to Homo hierarchicus.
Hirschman comes to his volume from a far more limited aim, but
the results are not dissimilar within those periods that overlap. For many
years American economists and political scientists either argued or sim-
ply assumed that economic development would have desirable political
effects, contributing to greater democracy within the developing countries
and to improved relations among countries. Hirschman, like many others,
was struck by the contrast between those assumptions and arguments
and the results that have in fact occurred. He was aware that many of
the great European and British political philosophers and economists
(frequently the same persons) of the seventeenth and eighteenth cen-
turies wrote upon that problem during the time that their countries were
developing economically-as they sought to understand the consequences
of that process. What did they have to say about that question? Thus,
Hirschman's focus is not on the ideological foundations of modern soci-
ety. But as part of his book he explores how economic "interests" be-
came separated conceptually from other types of interests and passions,
how the term "interest" became narrowed to include only economic and
material matters, how that one "interest" achieved primacy above the
various other "passions," and why the philosophers considered this
achievement of primacy desirable both for the internal well-being of a
country and for relations among countries. Obviously, like Dumont, he
is looking at the rise of the economic viewpoint and its consequences,
but to answer a specific question. Most of the philosophers he studies
agree that the expansion of commerce and industry, the growth of the
market economy and the resulting importance of interest in contrast to
the passions, is beneficial for the quality of government and for relations
among countries. As material interests and interrelationships became
more important, so too would calculated and cautious behavior both by
and among individuals. This would replace the passionate and arbitrary
actions of kings and nobles, which all too often were destructive of in-
ternal well-being and external peace.
This is a review of Dumont's book, but in writing it I will point out
similarities of interpretation by the two authors-and one of Dumont's
major conclusions may provide one possible answer to Hirschman's lead-
ing question of why developing countries often become authoritarian. In
my review of Dumont I will not deal, except incidentally, with the final
section on Marx. This is in part because Hirschman's book does not
include Marx, but also in part because Dumont's discussion of Marx calls
for a knowledge of Marx's intellectual development and range of philo-
sophical interests that I do not have.
Both Dumont and Hirschman stress as a key institutional element
behind the rise of the economic viewpoint, the growing importance in the

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 Economic Development and Cultural Change

seventeenth and eighteenth centuries of movable wealth as opposed to

immovable wealth. "In the traditional type of society, immovable wealth
(estates) is sharply distinguished from movable wealth (money, chat-
tels) by the fact that rights in land are enmeshed in the social organiza-
tion in such a manner that superior rights accompany power over men.
Such rights or 'wealth', appearing essentially as a matter of relations be-
tween men, are intrinsically superior to movable wealth, which is dis-
paraged, as is natural in such a system for a mere relation between men
and things" (p. 5). Immovable wealth-land-associated as it was with
power over men, was both the clearly more important and superior form
of wealth in a traditional society-and because of this association it was
natural that the political and economic viewpoints were not conceptually
separated in such a traditional society as India. " 'Interest' remained an
attribute of the king" (p. 34).
As society modernized, and trade and industry, not directly linked
to land, became of greater importance, "the link between immovable
wealth and power over men was broken, and movable wealth became
fully autonomous in itself, as the superior aspect of wealth in general,
while immovable wealth became an inferior, less perfect aspect. . . . It is
only at this point that a clear distinction can be drawn between what we
call 'political' and what we call 'economic.' This is a distinction that tra-
ditional societies do not admit" (p. 6).
For Hirschman too, the development of a class of movable property
is a significant factor underlying the thought of various of the political
philosophers he examines. Montesquieu, Spinoza, the Physiocrats, and
Adam Smith all discuss its significance for politics. The ability of indi-
viduals to move their property from one country to another was seen as
a curb upon the excesses of the rulers in any one country. This is argued
first in Montesquieu, but at a later date both the Physiocrats, who were
dubious of the superiority of movable property over land, and Adam
Smith agreed on this. At an earlier date, Spinoza had also argued that
the very fixity of land led to conflicts over ownership. As a result of com-
merce and industry there are no absolute limits to movable wealth. Thus,
efforts on the part of individuals to increase their holdings of such wealth
by increasing the total wealth contributed to a network of mutual obli-
gations and a degree of interdependency among them that resulted in
reducing instead of provoking conflict.
Spinoza's argument is similar to Dumont's, that the growing impor-
tance of movable property was a major factor in ending the belief that
"in trade the gain of one party is the loss of the other." There was little
or no trade in land, so that it usually changed hands by force; when this
did not occur, it was a loss to the party that surrendered the land. When
trade in movable goods was unusual, a similar belief that one party had
to lose in the exchange carried over. The resulting disparagement of
trade is "characteristic of traditional societies in general." But as trade

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 Reviews

in movable property became frequent and increased in importance and

the total of such property became significant, the idea also arose that
both parties gained from such trade. This was first recognized in the
discussion of domestic trade; it was resisted longest in international
trade, where the fear of loss to the state through trade was one of the
roots of mercantilist thought. The idea of "exchange as advantageous to
both parties represented a basic change [from the traditional viewpoint]
and signaled the advent of economics" (p. 35). The mercantilist position
represented a "mingling" of the new economic viewpoint and the tradi-
tional politics. In the remainder of the first section of his book Dumont
traces the separation of economics from politics, and the resulting rise of
a purely economic viewpoint, through the thought of Quesnay, Locke,
and Mandeville to Adam Smith.
Dumont argues that Quesnay "fits a properly economic system"
into a "sociology-and-politics" theory that is traditional. Quesnay ex-
pounds a theory of a natural law ordained by God, which determines the
world's order. In this order real wealth consists of land which is asso-
ciated with power over men in the political system. But this traditional
world order includes an economic system within which wealth circulates.
The basic condition of the economic order is private ownership of prop-
erty, free from the interference of the state. "Holism in its traditional
religious-and-political form, individualism on the economic level" are
combined in Quesnay. Although this framework allowed Quesnay to see
the economy whole, it functions within a traditional framework-"order
commands property and freedom" (p. 46).
Locke was the philosopher who separated the economy, and the
individual, from traditional order. In his Two Treatises of Goverment,
replying to Filmer who had postulated a hierarchical society with a king
at the peak and individuals subordinate to the king in a regular order,
Locke denies the existence of inherent differences and hierarchy among
men. "[A] holistic view centering on subordination and encompassing ...
economic phenomena has been replaced by a view centering on prop-
erty-that is, on the individual and on economics" (p. 49). An individ-
ual's right to property is based on that individual's labor and not on his
hierarchical position and need; in fact, in the later stages of society Locke
holds that there are no limits to the individual's ability to accumulate
property. It "is in the guise . .. of property that individualism raises its
head, knocks down any remnant of social submission and ideal hierarchy
in society, and installs itself on the throne thus made vacant .... [Eco-
nomics] as a 'philosophical category' represents the acme of individualism
and as such tends to be paramount in our universe" (p. 54, emphasis
added).
Locke replaces subordination as the social glue with moral obliga-
tion: "morality must provide an equivalent of social order . . . [but it] is
finally human order, as it appears to the individual, who is bound to

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 Economic Development and Cultural Change

think in terms of hedonism" (p. 54). The political order has become an
adjunct to the economic order and "can be constructed by men according
to their lights. . . . Economics is not simply juxtaposed to politics, but
is ... superior to it" (pp. 49, 60). This is the ideological equivalent to
the change from a holistic to an individualistic view of society.
While Locke provides the intellectual basis for the separation of
economics and politics, Mandeville's Fable of the Bees supplies the foun-
dation for the separation of economics from traditional morality. Man-
deville, by making the material desires of the individual the basis of
social and economic organization, enables economics to "escape the
filters of general morality . . . at the price of assuming a normative char-
acter of its own." This normative character arises from Mandeville's
idea that "passions are so arranged that 'their apparent discords harmo-
nize to the public good' " (p. 61). Smith goes further by identifying
"economic action within human action in general as the particular type
[of action] that escapes morality without being contrary to morals in a
wider sense" (pp. 69-70). This occurs through the free operation of the
individual's self-interest. But it is with Mandeville that "the concrete
society resolves itself into its sole economic aspect (and social good is
identified with economic prosperity ...). And society resolves itself into
economics because only Individuals, men stripped of all social characters,
are considered. . . . [Morals] regulate the relationships between men,
whether or not goods are involved, while Mandeville focuses on gain,
wealth, material prosperity, as the core of social life .... [Morality] fits
(perhaps) the small and stagnant society (of yesterday), not the large
and powerful society (economy) of today" (pp. 76-77). Society now
exists apart from the individual; it has simply become the mechanism
through which particularinterests harmonize. Society has thereby become
a natural system in the sense that human beings, like natural objects or
pieces of property, are simply part of the natural world, but within that
system the harmony of individuals working for their own good makes
for the public good. Since it is such a system, Mandeville was also able
to replace the deductive analysis of moral behavior used by Hobbes and
Locke and their predecessors with an inductive analysis based on the
direct observation of the behavior of individuals in society-the method
used by his successors.
Smith's Wealth of Nations is the culmination of all these forces.
"He welds together a global model of the economic process that comes
from Quesnay, including the production-distribution dichotomy, and a
view of production, that is, a theory of value based on labor that comes
from Locke-and represents an unfiltered individualism unknown to
Quesnay" (p. 84). Wealth derives from things created by individuals
working on and with nature, which is an object. The relation of man
and things that characterizes the production process results in an ex-
change of things among men; it is by such exchange that the individual's
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 Reviews

effort "works for the common good, for the wealth of nations" (p. 97).
Hirschman points out that this common good is not only the wealth of
the nation but includes a better political system within the nation and
greater peace among nations.
On the basis of this review of the history of early economic thought
to show the rise of the economic viewpoint, Dumont draws certain con-
clusions. "On the one hand we see emancipation [of economics] from
politics and establishment of [economics in] a special relation to general
morality[;] on the other, the natural harmony of liberalism as a univer-
salist doctrine. In other words, these [latter] doctrines . . . are nothing
else but the direct assertion in concrete terms of the economic dimen-
sion" (p. 104).
"I conclude that the rise of economics ... and the full accession of
the modern individual . . . are solidary aspects of one and the same phe-
nomenon. . . . On the level of the general Ideology this Individual is
ourselves. For all practical purposes we are those who have . . . en-
throned private property in the place of subordination, or, for that mat-
ter, have chosen to be possessing and producing individuals and have
turned our backs on the social whole, because of the subordination it
entails, and on our neighbor, at least insofar as he would be superior or
inferior to us" (p. 106).
Dumont draws the implication from this underlying ideological role
of economics in modern society, in its relation to the role of the individ-
ual, that any program to downgrade the primacy of the economic value
in our society will either "confront the best rooted and most central and
unanimous of modern values and be defeated, or if, contrary to expecta-
tion, it proves the more powerful, it will undermine, weaken or destroy
that value" (p. 107).

[In] that case, we should returnto subordination,unless we are able to

produce at short notice a consensus bearing on a still unseen third
path. . . . [The] constraints inherent in our ideology are such that we
are not at liberty to decree that, from now on, it will be downgraded
to the rank of a servant...
Some socialists or totalitarian countries . . . have put an end to the
autonomyof the economy and have appliedit to the service of political
or social ends. To think that it is possible to do the same without a
similar oppression-that is involuntaryor imposed subordinationand
the disregardof the Individualas value-is a view devoid of founda-
tion for the present.[P. 107]

Dumont applies this conclusion directly to such a modern totalitarianism

as Nazism.

[Totalitarianism] is no holism . . . it is quite different from the tradi-

tional naive conception of the society as a whole. .. . Yet as the to-
talitarian regime constrains its subjects most radically, it appears to
oppose individualism in the current meaning of the term .... To solve

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 Economic Development and Cultural Change

[this contradiction]one should rememberthat . . . the totalitarianide-

ology is contained within modern ideology. The hypothesis is that to-
talitarianismresults from the attempt in a society where individualism
is deeply rooted and predominant,to subordinateit to the primacy of
the society as a whole. It combines unknowingly conflicting values.
The contradictionthat we encounteris internalto it. Hence its inordi-
nate, ferocious stress on the social whole; hence its violence and its
worship of violence . . . [Violence] abides in the very promoters of
the movement, torn apart as they are by conflicting forces and thus
doomed to desperateattemptsto substituteviolence for value. [P. 12]
This would seem to imply a "road to serfdom" defense of private
enterprise, but Dumont specifically disavows presenting "in a new form
a defense of private enterprise" (p. 107); several statements make clear
his awareness of the limits of individualism. "[The] predominant con-
temporary ideology [modern individualism] represents a favorable con-
dition for terrorism and . . . the widespread confusion between norm
and fact, between institutionalized law and morality, between justice and
tyranny, between public and private is a harbinger of barbarity" (pp.
13-14).
Dumont is writing his conclusion on the potential for totalitarian-
ism within our modern developed society. Nevertheless this throws light
on the potential for authoritarianism in today's less developed coun-
tries-and thus upon the question that provoked Hirschman's book. The
developing countries are in fact moving from a holistic to an individual-
istic type of society as economic growth becomes a major goal for them
and as economic values and individualism become primary. But in those
countries there has not been over a century of ideological preparation
for the rise of economic values as occurred in England. The traditional
principles of hierarchy and subordination still retain great strength pre-
cisely because the transition is occuring so swiftly. It would therefore
not be at all surprising-and in fact would be likely-that some of these
countries would first seek to use authoritarian rule to achieve economic
goals, and in others there might be a return to hierarchy and dictator-
ship, even if they had initially adopted democratic forms, after difficul-
ties in the economic development process became strong.
If the traditional rulers had been overthrown or had lost their pres-
tige at an earlier stage in the country's history, new rulers may be looked
for, who may try to assume the trappings associated with the traditional
rulers. Without the prestige of tradition to support them, these new rulers
may have to impose their domination, and the consequent subordination
of others, by force. In such a process the armed forces will obviously
play a big role.
I clearly consider Dumont's book to be a very important one. It is
a study by an anthropologist of the assumptions and values underlying
modern society. Among those values he find the economic value, which
assumes the functioning of the individual in the marketplace, to be the

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 Reviews

primary one. His book is a study of the identification of that value and
of its rise to a position of primacy among contemporary values. While it
makes extensive use of more conventional histories of economic thought,
especially Schumpeter's great History of Economic Analysis, it deliber-
ately differs from most of those books by approaching its subject matter
from outside economics. At times, this results in a different interpreta-
tion of the development of economic thought during the comparable
periods studied. It is thus a useful and provocative supplement to those
books. In fact, however, in its analysis of the ideological base of modern
society, Dumont's book is closer to another of Schumpeter's, Capitalism,
Socialism and Democracy-which as one of its themes examined the
presumed decline of the economic ideology among intellectuals and the
consequences of that decline for modern society. Dumont does not refer
to that book. The book that it has closest affinities to, and one that he
refers to often, is the work of another distinguished European econo-
mist-Gunnar Myrdal's The Political Element in the Development of
Economic Theory-which specifically examines the ideological assump-
tions of economic theory as it developed over time. Myrdal agrees with
Dumont in his stress upon the relationship between the ideological as-
sumptions of economic theory and individualistic market capitalism.
Perhaps my major question concerning the book is its conclusion, to
which the author may have been carried away by his logic. For Dumont
there is no logical position between the ideology of market economics,
the presumed basis of our society of individuals, and totalitarianism. If
other values replace economic values in primacy, for Dumont the logical
consequence is a society that attempts to reestablish subordination and
hierarchy. In today's world this results in totalitarian methods and vio-
lence. As I have pointed out, he carefully stresses that he is looking at
the underlying values of the system, and he disavows his book as a plea
for free enterprise. But it is difficult to accept this distinction in either
logic or fact. Among modern Western societies there are significant vari-
ations among the types of democratic governments in the importance for
their populations of noneconomic values within their total value structure
and in the roles of their governments in their societies (e.g., the United
States, Great Britain, and Sweden differ in these respects). Significant
steps can be taken to limit the functioning of pure market forces within
a society without adopting totalitarian methods-even though this does
mean a greater role for political, rather than market, decision making in
economic matters. What the limits of such political decision making are
we do not know, but they are not determined by logic, but rather by
history, political forces and skills, and traditions and ideas within a
country.
In looking at this issue, Dumont raises the question of whether a
new ideology could be constructed in short order to replace the economic
ideology as the basis of our society-an ideology that might permit new
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 Economic Development and Cultural Change

but nontotalitarian forms of government. He understandably considers

this improbable. Edward S. Mason asked a similar question in his famous
article, "The Apologetics of Managerialism" (Journal of Business 31,
no. 1 [January 1958]: 1), which Dumont might have found interesting.
The studies by Veblen of pre-1914 Germany and Japan also raised ques-
tions concerning societies in the process of economic development but
with strong influence from traditional values, which Dumont might find
of interest.
In summary, this is a challenging book, raising fundamental and
provocative issues of the relation of economics and social organization.
It is, however, not an easy book to read, because of both its terminology
and its style. I have deliberately not considered the section on Marx for
the reasons given earlier. In addition, the reading difficulties are far
greater in the section on Marx than in the earlier section-in part be-
cause Marxian thought uses an unaccustomed language anyway. But I
strongly recommend it for anyone interested in the growth of economic
thought and in the significance of that growth for the broader develop-
ment of our Western democratic society and our present condition.
Finally, it raises fundamental issues for the comparison of Western de-
veloped countries to the traditional developing countries. In the process
it throws light on the relationship between economic development and
political change in those latter countries. This is the same issue that
Albert Hirschman simultaneously explores in his classically elegant re-
view of preclassical and classical political philosophy and economy.

The World Bank. Kenya: Into the Second Decade: Report of a Mission
Sent to Kenya by the World Bank. John Burrows, chief of mission and
coordinating author. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975.
Pp. xiii+533.

H. W. Singer
Institute of Development Studies

This book is the result of a World Bank mission to Kenya under the
leadership of John Burrows in March/April 1973. It also incorporates
the results of other World Bank missions and of an agricultural sector
survey which took place in October/November 1972 under the leader-
ship of L. T. Sonley. The reports have been well used and coordinated
by John Burrows and form a well-written and reasonably homogeneous
book, even though some traces of the diverse origins are still visible.
It will be noted that the mission preceded the big rise in oil prices
resulting from OPEC action, which has hit Kenya particularly hard
(Kenya has no oil and is within the UN category of the Most Seriously

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