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This feature addresses the history of economic words and ideas. The hope is to deepen the workaday dialogue of economists, while perhaps also casting new light on ongoing questions. If you have suggestions for future topics or authors, please write to Joseph Persky, c/o Journal of Economic Perspectives, Department of Economics (M/C 144), University of Illinois at Chicago, 601 South Morgan Street, Room 2103, Chicago, Illinois 60607-7121.
Carlyle Commissions Captains of Industry
In current business magazines, the phrase "captains of industry" is most commonly applied to business leaders from financial, media and information technology companies, like Warren Buffett, George Soros, Rupert Murdoch and Bill Gates. To call someone a captain of industry carries implications of personal wealth and business clout, along with a general tone of approbation that is sometimes hedged or grudging, yet unmistakable. But when the term "captains of industry" was introduced by the Scottish historian and essayist Thomas Carlyle in the mid-nineteenth century, its meanings and associations were very different.
Thomas Carlyle was born in 1795 and died in 1881.1 As he aged, he developed the view that the "organization of labor"-a euphemism by which he meant "Managing the Working Classes" and especially dealing with idleness, strikes and the like-was fast becoming the great social issue of his time. He also believed that the principles of economic freedom and liberty and market forces of supply and demand could not and should not address this problem.
Whenever this matter is discussed by Carlyle, and it was a theme that came to dominate his social and political commentary, he puts forth the view that the "law of supply and demand" has to be subjugated to a greater law. This is because his German-Romantic philosophy led him to believe that the nature of the interactions associated with markets and economic individualism would destroy social responsibility. In particular, he felt that replacing the Christian gospel with the "law of the shop-till" would inevitably result in anarchy and disorder. "Laissez-faire, Supplyand-demand, and so forth were not, are not and will never be, a practicable Law of Union for a Society of Men," Carlyle (1843, p. 33) wrote. Instead, he argued that social order can exist only through transcendental authority2 and that earthly manifestations of this authority...