The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce

72 chapter 2have until the twentieth century very many of the numerous high-statuscivil servants, among them party-line professors, that Germany and Francehonored and multiplied in the nineteenth century.But even in England the clerisy was at least talky. In their study of theEnglish middle class 1780–1850 Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hallobserve that “lawyers, teachers, doctors, and above all the clergy and writersspent their lives manipulating words, explaining the middle class to itself.”They quote a writer on legal matters in the middle of the nineteenth centuryasserting that “the professional classes . . . form the head of the greatEnglish middle class, keep up to the mark its standard of morality, anddirect its intelligence.” 8 The clerisy overwhelmingly originated from theeconomic bourgeoisie—and from the literal clergy. Increasingly the “standardof morality” was critical of the fathers of the owning and managingbourgeoisie, to the advantage of the clerical sons wielding the pen.We have a paradox at the outset here. Marx’s father was a lawyer, Engelshimself a factory owner. French painters in the nineteenth century werealmost all from the bourgeoisie—with only an occasional Renoir from theworking class or a Toulouse-Lautrec from the aristocracy. Yet the clerisy inits Romantic mood claimed a separate perch in the class system, separatedespecially from its parents of the bourgeoisie, a virtual papacy from whichit issued bulls and excommunications. “How did it happen,” asked CésarGraña looking back on the mid-nineteenth-century treason of the clerisy,“that while one section of the bourgeoisie was efficiently gathering profitswith unbending matter-of-factness, another was giving itself over to philosophicaldespair, the cult of sensitivity, and the enthronement of the nonutilitarianvirtues?” 9By now the “creative class”—Richard Florida claims it is 30 percent of theAmerican workforce, up from 10 percent in 1900—includes occupationsonce viewed as working class or, if especially profitable, mercantile. Think,for example, of painters in seventeenth-century Holland, who were apprenticesor masters, poor or rich, but anyway mercantile. 10 Contrast the clericaland antimarket cast of modern painters. They chatter as much as they paint.Language is often as important in modern art as is the artwork itself. One isalways a little surprised at the smooth articulateness of modern painters,selling, selling. Often language becomes the art: Ceci ne pas une pipe.American and British journalists once thought of themselves as workingmen,mostly, right through World War II: Scoop or Front Page. Journalists on