How we ended up in modernity
The Reformation brought us the dawn of modernity, bringing prosperity and unease. Here you can read how modernity still defines our society, and dominates the great themes of toleration.
England has more beautiful regions than Staffordshire. The landscape of the Midlands is not that inspiring. The industrial city of Stoke-on-Trent is located in the middle. Search online for the city's reputation, and you'll come across terms like "grim" and "the city without hope." The River Trent runs through the town, which deposited red clay in the valley. Coal was also mined nearby. Due to the presence of clay and coal, the area has been teeming with potteries since the early Middle Ages. Small businesses that were usually passed on from father to son, and where rather lumpy pottery was produced.
Wedgwood, the modern potter
Josiah Wedgwood was born into one of those potter families in 1730. He was raised as a Unitarian, a relatively liberal Protestant movement outside the Church of England. Until he had to work as an apprentice potter at the age of fourteen, after the death of his father, he attended a Calvinist-Puritan school. Since the Act of Toleration of 1688, inspired by John Locke, it no longer a significant social obstacle if you didn’t align with the Church of England. Unitarianism related well to the Enlightenment: God was not only found in the Bible, but also in the natural world. Science and faith went hand in hand.
After apprenticeships in a number of family businesses, Josiah started his own business at the age of thirty. English pottery was not yet particularly refined. Increased prosperity created a great need for beautiful tableware as a status symbol, especially due to the tea mania on the island. The most beautiful pottery came from overseas: the richest drank their tea from Chinese porcelain. Initially, Wedgwood produced richly decorated rococo pottery, but when fashion became sleeker and simpler, he broke through with the white creamware tableware. He soon opened a store in London, and gradually his products became popular throughout Europe, especially among the European royal houses.
In his biography, Wedgwood emerges as a serious, hard-working, capable businessman. He owed his success to a combination of innovations: technical, financial, artistic and business, and his ability to retain talent. Pottery involves more chemistry than one might suspect. You need to know the properties of each type of clay, control the mixing ratios, the addition of metals and minerals to the clay, and control the temperature in the kilns. Good chemical knowledge is also essential for the glaze. Wedgwood worked systematically, and was also able to call on an excellent network of scientist friends. Wedgwood also managed to attract a large number of artists for the design and painting of his vases and tableware for artistic innovation. His business talent was reflected in a fine sense of marketing and the fashions of the time.
Wedgwood wanted expansion. Canals were built which gave Staffordshire a better connection with the seaports. To improve profitability, Wedgwood pioneered cost accounting to gain precise insight into the fixed and variable costs of his products. As a result, he discovered that the variable costs were dwarfed by the fixed costs. The costs of personnel and raw materials were low in relation to the costs of the equipment and ovens. From a business perspective, it made sense to increase production volume so that company resources were used more intensively.
In the 18th century, the pottery industry was still organised in traditional ways. Potters were craftsmen who had a dish or vase from clay to oven. It took years before they mastered that craft. Master potters were therefore scarce, and they knew it all too well. The work ethic was low and wage demands were high. 'Saint Monday' was infamous: on the first day of the week, little came out of their hands.
Wedgwood changed course. The labour process was split up. An assembly line system was created, with specialists for each part of the manufacturing process: painters, grinders, printers, liners, borderers, burnishers and scourers of the coloured ware; turners, slip makers, scourers and ornamenters; throwers and moulders; engravers, polishers, dippers, wedgers, placers and coopers. The management of the factory was also bureaucratised. A clerk for manufacturing, a weights and measures officer, and human resources inspectors were appointed. The production volume shot up and the cost price fell. The factory could make do with less specialised, cheaper personnel.
Wedgwood's modernity was not limited to his business operations. He was an ardent supporter of free trade and the abolition of protectionism. When the like-minded industrialist Boulton threatened to also enter the pottery business, Wedgwood was unimpressed: the industry would only benefit from competition.
In 1707, England, Scotland and Wales formed one united kingdom. Under the reign of a series of successive Georges, the United Kingdom established itself as a self-confident nation state in the 18th century, a sovereign trading nation, colonial power and almost untouchable at sea. Wedgwood rode wholeheartedly on those waves of patriotism. Wedgwood consciously contributed to this with chauvinistic scenes of national heroes and won battles.
Although now also a purveyor to the court, Wedgwood was critical of the monarchy. It had to be much more modern and democratic. When the colonies in North America declared their independence in 1776, Wedgwood felt that the kingdom had to accept it. Wedgwood advocated free trade, less corruption, lower taxes and electoral reform. The king and his aristocratic clique stood in the way of innovation.
The French Revolution of 1789 could therefore count on Wedgwood's enthusiasm. After the fall of the Bastille, he wrote to his friend Erasmus Darwin (the granddad of…): “I know you will rejoice with me in the glorious revolution which has taken place in France. The politicians tell me that as a manufacturer I shall be ruined if France has her liberty, but I am willing to take my chance in that respect.”
Wedgwood was also concerned with his fellow man. In 1787 he had medallions produced with an African slave on his knees, with the text: "Am I not a man, not a brother?" Proceeds benefited the Society for the Abolishment of Slavery.
Below, you can watch a short documentary about the life and work of Josiah Wedgwood.
But what makes this potter all the more interesting? Wedgwood illustrates a changed spirit of the times, with a term that he himself often used: modernity. I end this series on toleration and Christianity with modernity, which was partly the result of the change in mentality we talked about in previous episodes.
Modernity and Reformation
Martin Luther was a remarkable person and a gifted theologian. But his historical significance is greater than Luther the man. Before Luther, there were others who had challenged the authority of the Church of Rome. But through a combination of circumstances, Luther succeeded where others failed.
The Reformation thus became the key to a large number of historical processes. Some of these, such as individualisation, had started centuries earlier. Some, such as the emergence of constitutional democracy, would not begin until much later, but can be traced back to the movement that launched the Reformation. Others, such as the rise of mass communication, were not caused by the Reformation, but Luther's Reformation would probably not have succeeded without the printed book. And then there are processes in which the Reformation itself played a key role, such as the development of capitalism and the scientific revolution.
This article is about modernity, which received a huge boost with the Reformation. If you zoom out, and I like to do that, you can see this whole toleration project as a commentary on modernity.
Below, I will discuss the following essential elements of modernity:
Secularisation
Separation of church and state
Individualisation and egalitarianism
From community to society
Nation states and nationalism
Constitutional democracy
Human rights, freedom and equality, ideology
Globalisation and mass media
The Scientific Revolution
Commodification
The topic is very big to cover in one article. I can just briefly explain the elements of modernity, make a link with the history of Christianity, explain whether they will be discussed later if there is a connection with toleration, and I will try to briefly outline the complications involved.
Secularisation
Scottish sociologist Steve Bruce has modelled the complex relationships between Reformation, secularisation and modernity. Of course, details can be argued about, but he has made his point. Below is a simplified representation of his model. You see all kinds of elements of modernity interwoven with each other, with the Reformation and with secularisation.
Until roughly the 11th century, the church played a minor role in the daily life of the average European. Everyone was nominally Christian, but if one did not feel called, the church stood at a distance. With the rise of a trading class, urbanisation and the disintegration of feudalism, the church gradually took control from the 11th century onwards. But until the Reformation, the theological knowledge of the common man remained limited. Unless you became a threat to the power of the church, you were fine with having your own ideas. Mediaeval toleration was primarily one of geniality and conviviality.
That would change with the Reformation. Theological discussions were fought at the sharp end. Literate citizens now also had access to the Bible in their own language, resulting in wildly divergent interpretations. Where everyone was generally Christian until the Reformation (the word Catholic was not yet in vogue), your religious community now became an individual choice and part of your identity.
It was only a matter of time before the discussion about freedom of religion would lead to new insights that would mark the beginning of secularisation. Pierre Bayle's role was especially great. To be a good person, you don't have to be a believer. And you should not want to combine knowledge and faith. The church thus increasingly ended up in the wings of daily life: faith became an individual, personal matter. Discussion about tolerating undesirable behaviour, undesirable opinions and undesirable people moved from theology to political and social theory.
Gradually it became more and more socially accepted if you no longer showed up in church. The trend in Europe has been going on for centuries and is irreversible. In a few generations, organised Christianity in Europe will only play a marginal role; just look below at the decline of Christianity in half a generation (12 years).
Separation of church and state
Part of modernity is a separation of church and state. In Europe, the church no longer formally exercises much influence on state affairs. I previously devoted an entire article to the separation of church and state. I have little else to add to that.
The Reformation recalibrated the influence of the church in state affairs. In state affairs, the church still had influence in both Lutheran and Calvinist states, but little power.
That does not mean that church morality has no influence on government policy. Christian voters do exert influence through the democratic process. But due to the progressive legalisation of, for example, gay marriage, euthanasia and abortion, you see in Europe that the church is gradually losing influence through its voters.
Individualisation and egalitarianism
The Church of Rome owed much of its success to individualisation: conversion to Christianity was an individual choice, regardless of the faith of your family or the gods of your people. This opened the door to ever-increasing individualisation. You could choose the Christian faith based on conviction. What would prevent you from making individual choices within that faith? Well, said the church, only from her was salvation available. But that dogma died after the Reformation. As early as 1588, Jean Bodin thought that you can enter heaven regardless of your faith. That idea gradually gained more support, which contributed to church fragmentation and secularisation.
Another religious factor that contributed to individualisation was the idea of equality that is ingrained in Christianity. From God's perspective all mortals are equal — we are all sinners. If we are equal, we don't have to worry about the opinions of others: other people's opinions are 'just an opinion'. We can choose our own path.
The individualisation of conscience went along with this. I already wrote about Jean de Gerson, who broke with the scholastic tradition of risk avoidance in moral matters. It is impossible to deliberate endlessly in everyday life. Sometimes you just have to make a decision. Access to written sources as a result of the printing press contributed to this. Previously you had to rely on literate priests for your information, now you could read the Bible yourself in your native language, you had access to translated classical authors, and printed pamphlets on religious and political matters passed from hand to hand.
Economic development also contributed to individualisation. As a city dweller you had a free choice of profession, and if you were economically successful, you could act more autonomously. Even factory workers individualised. Many consciously decided to move from the countryside to the city, into modernity, with the prospect of a stable job, and perhaps more.
And their profession no longer defined their entire identity. Social status became task-specific: people could occupy different positions in different hierarchies. As a person you could play multiple roles, such as family member, employee and church member, for example. Later, urban association life would contribute even further to this.
From community to society
The distinction between community and society was coined in 1887 by the German sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies in his book Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft and was elaborated a generation later by the German thinker Max Weber. What they described is a centuries-long development from small-scale, informal communities, such as a farming village, to an (urbanised) society in which people go through life anonymously and, for example, hardly know their neighbours anymore.
In the community there are intensive mutual ties, there is close social control, strong value is attached to traditions and cooperation is self-evident. Tolerance is present if you can tolerate the gossip, but you shouldn't go too far, because then you will quickly become an outcast.
In a society, people can interact with each other much more superficially. Social control is weaker, traditions can be ignored, which allows to act more freely, autonomously and non-conformist, but alienation is the downside. There is more social mobility and diversity; knowledge and dynamics are more widely available. Societies revolve around industrialisation, bureaucratisation and efficiency. A typical problem in society is the free rider problem: parasitic behaviour that enjoys the benefits but not the burdens is common. Public services can only be maintained by formal rules, enforced by bureaucratic institutions. Societies can therefore easily degenerate into totalitarianism. In order to prevent that, toleration must also be formalised.
Nation states and nationalism
We saw how our eighteenth-century potter Wedgwood on the one hand was very critical of the political system of his country, but on the other hand was a fanatical patriot: Rule Britannia! This was related to the rise of the nation state.
In general, the origins of the nation-state are associated with the Peace of Augsburg of 1555 and the Peace of Westphalia of 1648. Traditionally, there was little connection between the nation (a people with its own ethnicity) and the state. The size of the state was determined by what the sovereign controlled, traditionally through conquest and inheritance. Language boundaries, for example, hardly mattered. Great empires such as the Carolingian, Habsburg and Ottoman were an ethnic receptacle. On the other hand, nations such as the German and Italian were divided into microstates.
The Peace of Augsburg agreed that the religious choice of the monarch should be respected. That principle was elaborated in the Peace of Westphalia, which ended the Thirty Years' War and the Dutch uprising, wars between Catholic and Protestant states. These wars arose when numerous princes had chosen the side of the Reformation. The Peace of Westphalia was concluded with a number of underlying principles: sovereignty, equality and non-intervention. That eternal game of land grabbing had to stop.
When the sovereigns realised that the borders of their countries would in principle no longer be determined by the accidental military balance of power, a process of nation building began in countries such as France and Great Britain, with centralisation and bureaucratisation of government. This also gave rise to the seeds of romantic nationalism that has gripped Europe (and the rest of the world) since the 19th century. This was convenient, because the disappearance of religion as a binding factor meant that heads of state could make good use of a substitute source of unity, as Jean Bodin suggested in 1576.
I will discuss the dark sides of this ethnic nationalism in detail later: in practice it appears to be an inexhaustible source of social intolerance.
Constitutional democracy
Earlier I explained that we did not learn our democracy from the ancient Greeks. But democracy is a European invention.
Other great empires, such as the Chinese, Byzantine and Abbasid, were organised top-down, like a pyramid, with the ruler at the top. That is the most logical choice, in which the sovereign ultimately pulls all the strings. But in Europe the power of the sovereigns only became central with the rise of the nation state in the 18th century, and by then they were already under the thumb of their parliaments. I will now explain how that went.
Since the fall of the Roman Empire, European kings have been unable to centrally regulate tax collection. The Romans did that. But then in the 5th century, the Roman Empire was overrun by numerous barbarian tribes. These tribes had little in common, and they did not coordinate matters among themselves. The great Roman Empire fell apart into numerous smaller states. The Roman system of central tax collection disappeared. All those small states were constantly at war with each other. The war chest was therefore always empty. If a local ruler managed to gather a larger country, his rule remained fragile. There was barely enough money to defend the country, let alone to set up a proper central administrative apparatus. These monarchs therefore remained dependent on local nobles and cities for tax collection. These did ask for something in return, namely participation, in the form of a diet or a parliament.
As a result, more or less the same game was played throughout Europe. The king was short on cash, mostly due to war, and he turned to the cities and the gentry. They usually eventually agreed, but the help never came for free. The king had to make commitments, and those commitments increased the power of the parliaments and decreased the power of the king. This became a vicious circle for the kings.
For example, William III of Orange took control in England in 1689. But in return he had to make significant concessions to parliament. These concessions are known as the Bill of Rights of 1689. He was henceforth obliged to hold parliamentary elections and consult parliament for important decisions. That Bill of Rights would set the tone for relations between sovereign and parliament throughout Europe for the next hundred years (or perhaps even longer). The elites had their kings by the balls and were not going to let go. The increasing power of the bourgeoisie would result in the French Constitution of 1791, which would eventually lead to constitutional kingship, democracy and separation of powers throughout Europe according to the teachings of Montesquieu.
Only towards the end of the eighteenth century did the first European nation states manage to centralise taxation. It is no coincidence that this development approximately coincided with the introduction of a precursor to universal suffrage. Broadly speaking, taxpayers would also demand the right to vote. Due to increasing prosperity as a result of the Industrial Revolution, more and more citizens became liable to pay taxes, the level of education increased, and they also gained the right to vote. Ultimately, the idea of egalitarianism and the emerging workers' and women's movements from the end of the 19th century would provide the final push: universal suffrage was introduced in most European countries in the early 20th century.
Like most others, democracy as part of modernity does not come without disadvantages and reservations. Constitutional, indirect democracy has very dysfunctional features. I have explained these disadvantages in detail in a separate series on political toleration. If you would like to read more about this, I refer in particular to the final article in that series, about parliamentary democracy as the least intolerant system and about the search for systems with more legitimacy.
Human rights, freedom and equality, ideology
Another typical product of modernity is the proclamation of human rights. I have discussed this in detail in a separate series; we will not repeat it here.
One of the greatest political controversies in modernity is the tension between the ideals of freedom and equality. Most so-called human rights are either freedom or equality rights. They are both very important for the concept of toleration: they each deserve their own series in this project. Those series will follow soon. Historically, the most important ideologies are those of liberalism and socialism. Both are a product of modernity. One emphasises freedom, the other focuses on equality. And then, with some good will, there is a third major ideology, conservative or reactionary in nature, which resists modernisation itself.
Globalisation and mass media
At the beginning of this century, one of my friends had his first mobile phone. Somehow he had gotten a random South Korean phone number that he had saved on his phone. When he was bored, and probably tipsy, he would give his phone the voice command “Korean.” The phone rang in Korea, and he was in contact with this random man, who of course had no idea why he was getting a wake-up call from this stranger whose language he didn't understand. The more desperate the Korean reacted, the more we laughed.
Globalisation is the transformation from local to global phenomena, a process of convergence, towards a single, global society that includes all the people of the world. People from different parts of the Earth can communicate with each other better, easier and faster, they can reach more people and initiate economic activities with each other. Technological development plays a key role in this. They also understand each other better culturally; a global (mass) culture is emerging and joint institutions are being created. This makes collaboration easier.
Globalisation inevitably leads to feelings of discomfort. Local traditions and cultures are under pressure, diversity is disappearing, intensive contact with strangers leads to clashes, and the transformation of institutions leads to fear of loss of control. Mass migration to rich countries leads to great dissatisfaction; it is a major cause of the current polarisation in Europe and North America. Globalisation can also lead to suspicion about the agenda of global elites whose grip on the world is increasing. It also helps the spread of diseases, from malaria and the plague to the coronavirus.
People have always migrated. Apart from a few islands, Hawaii and New Zealand among others, by 10,000 BCE there were already people in all habitable parts of the world. There has always been travel for trade. With some good will, one could point to the construction of roads and trade routes and the creation of large empires as the beginning of globalisation, as well as, for example, the domestication of pack animals such as camels in the third millennium BCE, and the simultaneous development of shipping , both mainly in the area between Egypt and India. Gradually, in the first millennium BCE, trade arose between civilisations, with the Chinese trade with the Roman Empire via the Silk Road as the best-known example, but also by sea, especially across the Indian Ocean. As a Roman inland sea, the Mediterranean Sea was intensively navigated, mainly for trade.
The next wave of convergence was not commercial in nature, but religious. Buddhism spread across India and surrounding areas in the third century BCE. Christianity followed a few hundred years later, followed by Islam. The latter, in the Abbasid Caliphate (750-1258), formed a vast multi-ethnic network with enormous convergence. Intensive trade and exchange of knowledge and technology took place under the same (Sharia) legislation.
Initially, the maritime explorations of the 15th and 16th centuries by the Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch and British were a logical continuation of explorations that other cultures had already undertaken. What made them sustain, was the bureaucratic management of overseas trading posts and the unprecedented profitability of trade monopolies, enforced by the superior firepower of European artillery. World trade started in porcelain, silk and cotton, sugar, tea, tobacco, spices, gold and silver: things that initially only the elites could afford. When European prosperity began to increase around 1800 as a result of the Industrial Revolution, the demand for those goods from the middle classes increased, and the emphasis shifted from trade to colonisation, with the establishment of large plantations and the use of African slaves.
The major turning point in globalisation took place around 1850. While globalisation until then was mainly a matter for the elites, around 1850 the masses started to participate. Steam trains and steamships made large-scale transport possible. The construction of the Suez Canal and the Panama Canal became serious options. Telegraph cables connected continents. Countries began to negotiate the lifting of import blockades and an international postal treaty was drawn up. World exhibitions were held in which countries competed with each other on their technological innovations. Singer, a major American sewing machine manufacturer, began manufacturing overseas. Millions of Europeans decided to migrate, especially to North and South America. Proportionate numbers of Chinese and Indians also sought a new life overseas. Karl Marx founded the first International in 1864. French, British and American architecture, fashion, gastronomy and art were imitated worldwide. Latin American crops such as the tomato and the potato were served all over the world.
The undercurrent in globalisation that started around 1850 was technological innovation in combination with increasing prosperity. It was a legacy of the Industrial Revolution. While the fruits of globalisation were initially only available to the very rich, gradually broader layers of the middle class could afford more and more. As a result, more money became available for technological innovations, which in turn created greater prosperity. Although it falters occasionally, that flywheel still turns. Billions of Africans, Asians and Latin Americans are still eager to join the lower middle class that can travel internationally, eat pizza, and order foreign goods online. In the wealthy West, only the elite is culturally, politically and financially independent of their country of origin. That perspective now also beckons for the middle class. The process of globalisation is far from complete.
The Scientific Revolution
In mediaeval Europe, monasteries in particular were centres of knowledge and innovation. But until the 16th century, these innovations were still mainly mechanical in nature; thorough scientific knowledge was not yet required. If a watch or a lens worked, it worked, you didn't have to know exactly how.
The expansion of knowledge was based on Aristotelian deduction based on rhetorical syllogisms. To give an example of a syllogism:
All people are mortal. Francis is human. So Francis is mortal.
The English thinker and politician Francis Bacon (1561–1626) found this method inadequate. Because first of all, statements you make must be (empirically) verified by experiments. And knowledge does not start with assumptions, but with observations, so you should not start with syllogisms, but with experiments, on the basis of which you can draw conclusions (induction). Under the influence of Bacon's missionary work, all and sundry, especially in the countries around the North Sea, enthusiastically made observations and experiments, which would lead to an avalanche of scientific discoveries.
Knowledge is power. Anyone who has ever worked in a politicised organisation knows how that goes. You don't share strategic information with your colleagues, because they don't do that either. You're not Silly Billy, after all. Only when a culture is created in which everyone shares information will everyone reap the benefits. But you need trust for that. In the Middle Ages it was common to keep scientific discoveries under wraps, hiding them in jargon or even in cipher. But somehow, with the Reformation, a different culture emerged, focused on sharing knowledge. The printing press was of course very helpful in this.
Civilisations in general tend to close themselves off to outside influences. The elite has a lot to lose, and you don't know what you will gain if you allow knowledge from overseas. This attitude characterised both the Ottoman Empire and the Chinese and Japanese empires in the late Middle Ages. Trade was welcome at times, but the exchange of knowledge was usually a bridge too far. But Europeans had become much more curious. The fact that a culture of curiosity emerged was due to the fact that Europe was divided in numerous states, which were so close to each other that they had to compete with each other. From the 16th century onwards, European elites became obsessed with knowledge and innovation. Universities also waged a prestige battle among themselves: recruiting a famous scholar benefited the prestige of the entire academy.
All knowledge – even that from a foreign source – could thus provide a competitive advantage. The Europeans thus became captivated by foreign knowledge, for example in Arabic algebra or Japanese lacquerware. Even despicable pagans could be useful trading partners or have interesting technologies. The curiosity about new discoveries and strange civilisations even became a cultural phenomenon. Books about new discoveries, inventions, secrets and unknown lands became bestsellers; Cabinets of curiosities were set up, and French diplomats brought back treasures of new knowledge from Ottoman Constantinople around 1540. Later, Europe would even fall under the spell of orientalism and chinoiserie.
Moreover, with René Descartes, Pierre Bayle, and later David Hume, the taboo on scepticism was broken. All knowledge could be questioned, even knowledge that had been protected by Christian dogmas since time immemorial.
This gave rise to the Scientific Revolution, which was closely linked to the Reformation. The Church of Rome had lost its hold on the discovery of knowledge, primarily with the astronomical discoveries of Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo. Protestants, especially dominant in the countries around the North Sea, did not care about papal scientific taboos. For many Calvinists, scientific discoveries were synonymous with the study of the work of God as creator of nature, as we just saw with Wedgwood. Moreover, the advent of religious freedom of conscience also created a culture of contradiction in science. The truth always surfaces in the end, Coornhert had stated. As long as you don't molest each other, it is important to tell each other the unvarnished truth, Roger Williams had advocated. Bayle had equated religious discussions with competition in a marketplace that ultimately benefits everyone.
The hallmarks of the scientific revolution were empiricism, experimentation, rejection of teleology, falsification and a culture of contradiction, publication and accountability, mathematisation, progress thinking, and institutionalisation. None of these principles have proven to be outdated. The scientific revolution is still going on.
Commodification
I saved the hottest topic for last. This topic is worth an elaborate study in itself, so I must do my best to get the gist of it succinctly.
Commodification is the process by which goods become interchangeable, thereby lowering their price. Compare an oil painting with a pack of copy paper.
An oil painting is unique, it involves a lot of creativity and manual work, the market price is difficult to determine, the appreciation is personal, ownership can give you status, and it is difficult to interchange with another painting. It's one of the reasons why investing in art can make a lot of money, if you know what you're doing.
A pack of copy paper is standardised; you don't care what brand name is on the wrapper. Nobody is excited about a beautifully manufactured sheet of copy paper. The market for A4 sheets is therefore so transparent and competitive that manufacturers can only make a sliver of profit if they can sell enormous volumes.
In 1905, the German sociologist Max Weber published a revolutionary work: The Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism. He had noticed that prosperity in Europe was unevenly distributed: Protestant areas were richer and more modern; Catholic areas had remained relatively poor and backward. That couldn't be a coincidence, could it? He delved into Protestant doctrines and came to a remarkable conclusion: Protestant, and especially Calvinist, theological dogmas had a direct influence on the work ethic of their believers. Catholics were traditionally used to taking life as it came. As long as you dutifully participated in the Catholic rituals and did what the pastor told you, you would probably end up in heaven, eventually. But for Protestants, and especially Calvinists, things were very different. Whether you would go to heaven was uncertain. You had to do your best for that, and even then you better not count on anything.
Premodern societies are inherently averse to social mobility and the accumulation of wealth. This causes social unrest. And with low economic growth, which is typical of pre-modernity, one person's wealth comes at the expense of another. Premodern societies were zero sum societies. You had to accept your social position, that was the norm; your reward for good behaviour will come in the afterlife. (Judaism and Confucianism took a slightly different position, I will come back to that later.)
The pre-modern aversion to wealth and social mobility also applied in Catholic Europe. But the Protestants turned it around: prosperity is proof that God has good intentions for you. This new ethic generated enormous activity in Northwestern Europe and North America. Only in the mid-twentieth century did areas that remained Catholic begin to catch up economically.
We were talking about commodification. The Industrial Revolution is central to this. There is consensus that it started in England around 1760, coincidentally just when Wedgwood started his own factory. The Scientific Revolution had already been going on for about 200 years. There was now plenty of knowledge in Europe. In 1688, the English Parliament had extracted significant commitments from the new king, particularly protective of property rights. Anyone who had money or land did well. Capital therefore sought a destination. Parliament had also decided to protect patents. Inventors therefore had a greater incentive to market their inventions. One and one makes two: the combination of capital and knowledge led to investments in innovative production. This set off a flywheel: production became larger-scale, more machine-based and more efficient, and therefore cheaper. More people could therefore afford goods, the prosperity of the middle class increased, as did trade, and the manufacturers' profits were reinvested in economies of scale.
In the case of Wedgwood, we read that he also appointed middle managers and made professionals as unnecessary as possible by introducing series production. This meant he could make do with cheaper staff. More did. It led to the creation of large industrial enterprises with many low-skilled employees, managed bureaucratically and impersonally. It was precisely this development that horrified Karl Marx. Where in pre-modern activity people still had personal ties and were treated as human beings, people had now become a production factor, interchangeable and cheap: the commodification of labour. It wasn't fair: anyone who had capital literally struck gold. But those who had to work with their hands had a miserable and hopeless existence. I already mentioned how desolate Stoke-on-Trent is now. That has everything to do with it. The disadvantage of the working class in a polluted and impoverished urbanised industrial area has still not been caught up. Wedgwood no longer produces its plates in Staffordshire; production has been moved to Indonesia.
Marx's analysis was brilliant, but he also overlooked a lot. The memory of industrialist Henry Ford is overshadowed today by his anti-Semitism and his cordial ties with the Nazis, but he was also a visionary innovator. Cars were an expensive luxury at the beginning of the twentieth century. Ford made every effort to produce a car that was affordable for the common man. Production was rationalised to the point of absurdity, and the mass-produced Model T was a stripped-down automobile. He managed to put the car on the market for a tenth of the then prevailing price. But it still wasn't enough for him. In 1914, he decided to drastically increase the wages of all his workers. His competitors were puzzled. Why would you do that if you pay so much attention to cost control? Ford's answer was revolutionary: his workers had to be able to afford a Model T too. Workers were not just a factor of production; if they earned enough, they would create a mass consumer economy.
Just as Marx had overlooked that, he also failed to see that manufacturers would gradually need better trained workers. Personnel who initially had to be able to at least read, write and calculate. For that reason, in the second half of the 19th century, general compulsory education was introduced in most European countries. A flywheel turned again: the working population became better educated, became more productive, earned better, and had more and more to spend, causing consumption to rise, which in turn benefited companies, which were therefore able to hire more and better paid staff.
Tradition, modernity, postmodernity
Modernity has opponents everywhere. The pre-modern world considers modernity unnatural and amoral and is attached to traditions, old ties with one's birthplace, family and community, and to the mysteries of life that must be left undisturbed. Individualisation can be portrayed as selfishness. Secularisation leads to the decline of charity, spirituality and morality, religious circles claim. Globalisation leads to flattening and uniformity, to pandemics, large-scale abuse of power and to ethnic tensions, the anti-globalists say. Bureaucratisation and legalisation removes humanity from the system and turns people into automatons. Constitutional democracy leads to suboptimal outcomes that no one is really satisfied with. Ideology simplifies and polarises. Nationalism pits peoples against each other and is the source of numerous armed conflicts. And then we haven't even talked about the criticism of the market economy and its commodification. It leads to the erosion of human dignity, alienation, class conflicts, exploitation, inequality and ecological exhaustion, say its opponents.
Modernity has been declared dead numerous times. Nowadays it is fashionable to speak of postmodernity, as if we have developed a viable alternative. In this article you have seen that modernity is still alive and kicking. “The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated,” Mark Twain cabled in 1897 to the news agency that reported his death. He kept it up for years.
But how to deal with all those disadvantages of modernity? In essence, that is the common thread of this toleration project. Dealing with controversial people and ideas. And consciously allowing this, despite the disadvantages. Is toleration itself perhaps also part of modernity?
For further reading
Ferdinand Tönnies, Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft (1887)
Max Weber, Die protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus (1905), also available online in English as The protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism
Leo Gross, The Peace of Westphalia, 1648-1948, The American Journal of International Law (1948)
Anthony Giddens, The consequences of modernity (1990)
Mark Meier, Henry Ford “and a car in every garage”, Origins (1994)
István Bejczy, Tolerantia: a medieval concept, Journal of the History of Ideas (1997)
Ronald Inglehart, Modernization and postmodernization. Cultural, economic, and political change in 43 societies (1997)
Mark Dincecco, Fiscal centralization, limited government, and public revenues in Europe, 1650–1913, The Journal of Economic History (2009)
Peter Stearns, Globalization in World history (2010)
David Stasavage, Representation and consent: why they arose in Europe and not elsewhere, Annual Review of Political Science (2016)
Steve Bruce, Secularization and its consequences, in: Phil Zuckerman, John Shook (ed.), The Oxford handbook of secularism (2017)
Linda Raeder, Postmodernism, multiculturalism, and the death of tolerance: the transformation of American society, Humanitas (2017)
Joel Mokyr, A culture of growth (2017)
J. Brookes Spencer et al., Scientific revolution, Encyclopaedia Britannica (2019)
Tristam Hunt, The radical potter. The life and times of Josiah Wedgwood (2021)
This was the last newsletter in a long series: Toleration and Christianity. An overview of all articles in this series can be found in the overview article Toleration in the history of Christianity.
In the next episode I will resume the series on Toleration and Morality, with an article on the Deontology of Immanuel Kant.