Empire of Liberty - Chapters 8 and 9

These two chapters explicate and analyze the republican agenda that lead to one party rule in the US during the first 2 decades of the 19th century.

The centrality of adaptive efficiency and the role that Douglass North's conception plays in economic change is evident - "It was all part of the process of learning . . ." (314).

Wood has outlined the pace and scope of transformation - economic, political and social during this period and the positive result - economic growth and increasing standards of living argue for emergent adaptive efficiency in the new republic.

Chapter 8 - The Jeffersonian Revolution of1800

I must start with a startling assertion by the author in his evaluation that Thomas Jefferson is/was the

. . . supreme spokesman for this nation's noblest ideals and highest aspriations. (277)

Really?

The next paragraph provides an attempt to contextualize or limit this incredible assertion. I am eagerly awaiting the book club discussion on this statement.

Another topic, reoccurring then and now, is this idea of American exceptionalism. Jefferson's first inaugural address:

American was the world's best hope. (286)


The recent PBS series God in America touches on the seeming consensus and traces the religious foundations of what Jefferson articulated - the United States is the best hope for the entire world, and that implies a responsibility that the United States ignored at home throughout the 19th end 20th century (Native Americas and African Americans - two issues that Jefferson was a clear spokesman).

On a lighter note, I visualize Jefferson as the Dude in the Big Lebowski, doing business in a bath robe.

Chapter 9 - Republican Society

Woods points out the speed of change as he opens this chapter with a description of ". . . the same dynamic forces that had been at work . . ."(315)

The next paragraph points out the futility and hubris of human efforts at design and prediction and underscores the insight articulated by Hayek of the essential nature of understanding institutions as a result of human action and not human design and the task of economics is to underscore what we do not understand.

The transformation of society resonates through this chapter and I wonder about the tension between Jefferson's efforts at control (think his work in the 18th century Land Ordinances, the surveying attempt to construct new states out of the new territories in geometric design and the Louisiana Purchase. A history radio podcast indicates this last issue is illustrative of the essential non heroic nature of Jefferson. I might observe that the slavery question is a much better example.)

"Many others, however, were frightened and confused by what seemed to be a whole society being taken over by money-making and the pursuit of 'soul-destroying dollars"(356)

This section of Wood's work is must reading and I hope we explore the legacy that this accelerating belief had on development and growth in the US. Our reading of Sowell - Intellectuals and Society, Hayek and modern confidence in the commerical society (see the current CATO discussion for animated discourse on this topic.

The take away here is that the elites (Jeffersonian republicans would be part of this elite as well as the Federalists) deeply believed that individual freedom had gone too far and opposed the emergent and spontaneous order that encourages adaptive efficiency that North would argue laid the foundation for economic growth in the US rather than economic stagnation or disintegration.

I would like to explore the contention presented by Woods early in chapter 9:

"If the United States were eventually to become a fiscal military state capable of . . . " (318)

Now this would appear to be the intent of Federalists and much of Jefferson's administration was an effort to prevent this evolution - while he may have succeeded in delaying the evolution I wonder is this an inevitable consequence of growth? North et al seem to argue that it is in their recent work - Violence and the Social Orders.

In the key paragraph in this work (323) I think that Wood overstates and misses the case when he writes:

"Only when the market system became separated from the political, social and cultural systems constraining it and became its itself an agent of change . . . ."

By definition the market system is an agent of change and may well have caused the political, social and cultural changes that Wood is describing. More importantly, society and culture are institutions that are deeply interconnected with the systems of economic decision making whether mercantile or market and the evolution of change during this period was reflected in all institutions and the causation is not as clear as Wood would have us believe.