The Origin of the Term "Dismal Science" to Describe Economics

Generations of students and the reading public have been taught that it was Thomas Carlyle who gave economics (political economy as it was then known) the name "the dismal science" and that he did so as a reaction to the pessimistic predictions of Malthus in relation to population growth and its consequences. I shall demonstrate that, although it is true that Carlyle was the person who first described economics as the dismal science, he did not do so in response to the writings of Malthus (or Ricardo). We shall see that Carlyle first used the term in the context of a debate which was unrelated to Malthus's writings on population (indeed unrelated to Malthus at all) and that the specific context (slavery v. the market as an organising principle for plantation labour in the West Indies) is not only interesting but also uplifting. For this reason, the origin of the term "dismal science" is worth exploring with students.

Carlyle and Malthus

Many writers, including authors of textbooks in the history of economic thought, have claimed that the origin of the term "dismal science" is to be found in Carlyle's reaction to Malthus. For example, we have been told that: "The influences flowing from [Malthus's] findings [on population] were largely responsible for provoking Carlyle to label political economy as 'the dismal science'" (Barber, 1967, p 68); "It was with Malthus and Ricardo that Economics became the dismal science" (Galbraith, 1977, p 35); "[A]fter he had read Malthus, Carlyle called economics 'the dismal science'" (Heilbroner, 1986 p 78); "There was a final if unintentional, Malthusian legacy, one for which he was responsible along with Ricardo. Economics would hereafter be associated with the atmosphere of unrelieved pessimism and gloom, and economists would be given the name and reputation (by way of Carlyle) that survives to this day, that of Respectable Professors of the Dismal Science" (Galbraith, 1987, p 81); "Thomas Carlyle, after reading Malthus, called political economy the 'dismal science'" (Oser and Brue, 1988, p 91); "[Malthus's] prediction of misery led Carlyle to call economics 'the dismal science'" (Staley, 1989, p 59). Indeed, the notion that the origin of the term "dismal science" lies in Carlyle's reaction to Malthus is so widespread that it has become part of the folklore of our discipline.

In the remainder of this article I want to show two things. First, Carlyle did not, strictly speaking, use the phrase "dismal science" in relation to Malthus' population doctrine. Second, he instead first used the phrase in the context of discussing the relationship between White plantation owners and Black plantation workers in the West Indies where he felt that the laws of servitude, which he admired, should dominate over the laws of supply and demand, which he did not admire.

To begin with, there are only two references to Malthus in Carlyle's thirty-one volumes of Collected Works and I have been unable to find even a single reference to Ricardo. Even where he does refer to Malthus, in neither case, strictly speaking, does he ever link Malthus or Malthusian doctrine to the phrase "dismal science".

The first reference which Carlyle made to Malthusian doctrine is in a work titled Sartor Resartus ('The Tailor Re-clothed') which was published as a series of articles in Fraser's Magazine in 1833-34. In the latter part of this work he refers to the ideas of a (fictional) man who is such a "zealous" follower of Malthus that he has a "deadly fear of population" (Volume 1 of Collected Works, p 180f). Although he does not use the word "dismal" or the phrase "dismal science", Carlyle writes that: "Nowhere, in that quarter of his intellectual world, is there light; nothing but a grim shadow of hunger" (p 181). Carlyle's goes on to explain that over-population in Europe can be dealt with by emigration and he wonders where the leaders of this emigration are to be found. The whole discussion, with a great many asides, takes up only four pages. The second of the two references to Malthus in Carlyle's works is in a pamphlet titled Chartism first published in late 1839. Carlyle writes: "The controversies on Malthus and the 'Population Principle', 'Preventative Check' and so forth, with which the public ear has been deafened for a long while, are indeed sufficiently mournful. Dreary, stolid, dismal, without hope for this world or the next, is all that of the preventative check and the denial of the preventative check" (Volume 10, p 419). Taken in its context, it is clear that Carlyle is not so much objecting to Malthus's views in particular, but to any debate which focuses only the material conditions of life. Carlyle, here and elsewhere, objects to that way - what he claims is political economy's way - of looking at 'man'. Notice also that, although the word "dismal" is used, Carlyle does not here (or anywhere else where he talks about Malthus) use the phrase "dismal science".

Carlyle, slavery and the term "dismal science"

Well, if not in relation to Malthus, in what context did Carlyle (first) use the phrase "dismal science"? It made its appearance in an article by Carlyle titled 'Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question' published in Fraser's Magazine in December 1849 and reprinted in the form of a separate pamphlet in London in 1853 with the title 'Occasional Discourse on the Nigger Question'. This piece deals with the labour situation in the West Indies where the white planters were complaining that following the emancipation of the slaves they were unable to obtain enough labour at the prevailing wages and conditions of work to carry on their business. Carlyle puts the view that 'work' is morally good and that if a "Black man" will not voluntarily work for the wages then prevailing he should be compelled to work. He writes of those who argued that the forces of supply and demand rather than physical coercion should regulate the labour market that: "the Social Science ... which finds the secret of this Universe in supply and demand and reduces the duty of human governors to that of letting men alone ... is a dreary, desolate, and indeed quite abject and distressing one; what we might call ... the dismal science" (Volume 11, p 177). He also uses the term "dismal science" in a derogatory way a number of times later in the work, where it is lumped together with other unwelcome (to Carlyle) features of the political scene as "ballot boxes", "universal suffrage" and "Exeter-Hall Philanthropy". At one point he tells us that it is unwise to have a situation where "supply and demand [is] the all-sufficient substitute for command and obedience among two-legged animals of the unfeathered class" (p 186). He writes that the one who is "born lord" (p 205) of the other must compel the one "who is born to be a servant" (p 193) to work and if necessary compel them to work by the "beneficent whip" if "other methods avail not" (p 202). Carlyle says that "decidedly you [the Negroes] will have to be servants of those that are born wiser than you, that are born lords of you; servants to the Whites" (p 205). In short, Carlyle was of the view that compulsion, rather than market forces should regulate the supply of labour on plantations in the West Indies because the laws of supply and demand are not appropriately applied to the relationship between White and Black as they are contrary to "their mutual duties" (white = master and black = servant) as ordained by "the Maker of them both" (p 207). In Carlyle's opinion: "declaring that Negro and White are unrelated, loose from one another, on a footing of perfect equality, and subject to no law but that of supply and demand according to the Dismal Science", "is clearly no solution" to the problem (ibid). Instead, Carlyle offers life-long servitude "after the manner of the old European serfs" as the best solution because in such a regime, "it ought to be rendered possible, for White men to live alongside Black men, and in some just manner to command Black men, and produce West Indian fruitfulness by means of them" (ibid).

It was the economist John Stuart Mill who responded to Carlyle in the next issue of Fraser's Magazine. Mill argues that the "law" which propels Carlyle is "the law of the strongest", "a law against which the great teachers of mankind have in all ages protested" (Mill, 1850, p 87) and says that history teaches us that human improvement comes not from the tyranny of the strongest but instead from the struggle against such tyranny. Mill remarks that if people are to be compelled to work because 'work' is so good for them then surely "we would not hold from the whites, any more than from the blacks, the 'divine right' of being compelled to labour" (p 92). Mill especially objects to Carlyle's notion "that one kind of human beings are born servants to another kind" (p 92) and says that if, as Carlyle asserts, "the gods will this, it is the first duty of human beings to resist such gods" (p 87). Mill ends his piece by expressing regret that Carlyle had offered substantive support for the institution of American slavery "at a time when the decisive conflict between right and iniquity seems about to commence" (p 95). By providing such support, Mill concludes, Carlyle has done "much mischief" (ibid).

These then are the true circumstances in which Political Economy (or Economics) was first labelled "The Dismal Science". It is a circumstance we should draw to the attention of our students. They, like us, can be proud to be associated with those economists who were the target of Carlyle's scorn.

Robert Dixon

University of Melbourne

© http://www.economics.unimelb.edu.au/TLdevelopment/econochat/Dixonecon00.html

Other articles written about Thomas Carlyle: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9]

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