Dear Unknown Friends:

It’s an honor—and also thrilling—to continue serializing Economics Is Diverse, by Eli Siegel. There’s an urgency about doing so too, because this talk of November 1970 is part of Mr. Siegel’s landmark Goodbye Profit System lecture sequence—in which he explained so much that humanity needs right now to understand.

He showed in those talks that history had reached the point at which an economy based on contempt could no longer work well. And the once celebrated “profit motive” is, indeed, contempt for one’s fellow humans. It’s the seeing of other people in terms of money for Me. How much profit can I as employer squeeze from this worker’s labor by paying him or her as little as possible? How much profit can I as seller extract from buyers because of their needs—often their desperate needs?

In 2024, what Mr. Siegel described is still true, and even more obviously so. Profit economics staggers along, but it is inefficient. No matter how many statistics people are presented with, they don’t believe the economy is “working” for them, and they increasingly resent taking part in it.

The NY Historical Society, 1814, Had This

In the section of Economics Is Diverse presented here, Mr. Siegel uses a document of 1814: a catalogue of holdings by the New York Historical Society. And he has us feel more widely and closely what economics includes, through people of then.

It’s important to see that this is one section of a full lecture, which lecture itself is part of a rich series. And certain sections of a lecture may have a pace different from that of others—somewhat as the movements of symphonies have different relations of slowness and speed, probing and immediacy, exploration and vividness. In the particular section that’s here, Mr. Siegel reads some of the first titles listed in the New York Historical Society’s document catalogue. And for each title, he comments swiftly, seemingly casually, though in a way that has those documents be alive for us.

For the purpose of our current publication, it’s right that I try to place a little how Aesthetic Realism sees economics itself, including matters present in that Historical Society list. I hope that in doing so I don’t interfere with one’s sense of surprise at Mr. Siegel’s words, or detract from his lively yet always thoughtful pace as he looks at a work of once.

Economics Is about Ethics

Economics has been seen as about, for instance, the fluctuations of prices and the mechanisms of markets. Well, it includes these. But Aesthetic Realism explains that economics has to do with the very basis of the human self—that which is central to us every minute. Economics is always about ethics: the ethics that is as basic to us as the circulation of our blood and is present in us whatever we do. Whether we’re kissing someone, or watching a movie, or thinking about a co-worker, there is an ethical imperative within us, which we’re either true to or are betraying. The ethical imperative in us, Mr. Siegel shows, is to do all one can “to give oneself what is coming to one by giving what is coming to other things” (Self and World, p. 243).

The ethics in us has been referred to by various names, including conscience and scruples, and has taken the form sometimes of gnawing regret. This ethical insistence within our very being is something people have tried to get around and thwart: history, economics, and lives have been replete with the being untrue to it. Meanwhile, our like of ourselves and the authenticity of our expression depend on our trying to be true to it.

Further, the ethics of the human self is also aesthetics, described in this Aesthetic Realism principle: “All beauty is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves.” We long to do what art does, music does, a good painting, an authentic poem: make a one of such opposites as freedom and accuracy, knowing and feeling, humility and pride, self-assertion and fairness to what’s not oneself. But unjust economics has had in it a division of these opposites, and has encouraged that division in millions of people.

The Fight—in History & Us—about Ethics

There is a fight, Aesthetic Realism shows, in everyone: between the desire to respect the world different from us, and our hope to have contempt for what’s not ourselves. The same fight is throughout history. And it can be felt in some of the documents Mr. Siegel comments on. For instance, there are titles having to do with that contempt—that complete use of human beings for one’s own profit—which is slavery. And we can discern conflicting ways of seeing it.

In one of the documents, of 1788, the Constitution of an Abolitionist society, there is a certain respect for humanity: a saying that this hideous thing, slavery, must end! At the same time, we know, there was generally, and for decades, a horrible taking for granted: that slavery was simply part of American life. So two opposed ways of seeing were there, and for a long time it seemed as though the acceptance of slavery was the clear winner.

I remember Mr. Siegel saying in another class that for so many years the protest against slavery seemed confined to so few individuals—so few people seemed to care—but then, in 1861, the army of the nation itself was at war to stop it! The objections of course should have been much sooner and stronger and more multitudinous—yet there was an objecting force within America and history that most people had not imagined.

As Mr. Siegel speaks of other document titles, we see other ways that ethics asserted itself even as contempt tried to stop ethics from succeeding. There was the attempt of shoemakers to act as a union so as to get more of what they deserved. They were stopped, we learn, by contempt as power: the fact that having a union had been made illegal. Again, two determinations were present: 1) for more justice, more respect, to be; and 2) for contempt, including economic contempt, to have its way.

And again: though it shouldn’t have had to take so long, unions did come; people gave their lives for unions to be, and to be strong. Nothing has been more in behalf of justice in economics than unions have been, because a union is based on the idea that the wealth a worker produces should (at least to a substantial degree!) belong to him or her. Unions said: a person should not have to wear his or her life away to put a little food (usually not enough or of the right kind) on the table. Nor should workers get occupational diseases or be maimed in the machinery.

All the good brought to people by unions was a lessening of the profits that unscrupulous employers thought should be theirs. And so there has been, including in recent decades, an attempt to crush unions. But today Americans have been showing freshly that they are in love with unions. It is a true love. It has in it what Mr. Siegel called the force of ethics. And the foiled shoemakers of Philadelphia, 1806, are now celebrating with their victorious colleagues of today: autoworkers and screen actors and more.

What about Poverty?

There is much, in the titles Mr. Siegel speaks of, about poverty. And again we see two drives, one in behalf of respect, the other in behalf of contempt. We see various attempts to ameliorate poverty, have there be more kindness. Then, there is a sort of awful acceptance, a feeling that some poverty, of some people, has to be.

Why is there still poverty, in 2024? I remember Mr. Siegel explaining that poverty in America could end if people really wanted it to: there is enough money in America to stop anyone from being poor. Poverty exists because of that unethical and unaesthetic thing contempt: the feeling that I am important because I’m superior to other people. There is a pleasure in feeling oneself is more (including financially) and others are less.

There are some lovely items in the list Mr. Siegel comments on. For instance, having a beautiful, readable typeface is in behalf of justice. And having a canal built where it’s needed is beautiful too and can strengthen a nation; it does not have to be corrupted through someone’s using its construction as a chance for remunerative tricks.

A Prelude

As a prelude to this section of his lecture, we include a 1961 poem by Mr. Siegel—“The Waving of the Grain”—and his note to it. Both are published in his collection Hail, American Development. I’ll say for now that the poem’s four lines are immensely musical, and their sheer factuality is tender. We feel the American earth as having sweetness and might, and also the exactitude and wonder of economics at its truest.

—Ellen Reiss, Aesthetic Realism
Chair of Education

A Poem & Note by Eli Siegel

From Hail, American Development

The Note by Mr. Siegel. This summer grain will wave again—much of it tall—in the United States. However beautiful wheat, corn, barley are, they are commodities. The sun is concerned with them, but so is the Stock Exchange or a Board of Trade. Labor and machinery are concerned also with the proud grain, bending and rising at various heights in United States fields. The western United States has most of the tallest grain: acres, miles, many of them, have grain, waving, dominant in them. Grain prevails in millions of square feet of western land beyond the Mississippi. The economics and the beauty are inseparable there. These should be in the best possible junction with each other and indivisibility about each other.

This Has to Do with Economics

By Eli Siegel

I’m going to get to some evidence, from a source quite different from the one I used earlier, of what history has gone toward. This is volume two of a work called Collections of the New-York Historical Society, for the Year 1814. And we have “New-York: Printed by Van Winkle and Wiley, Corner of Wall and New-streets.”

I’m reading from this work because one of the things that can show the history of economics is the catalogue of books that the New York Historical Society had then. After the comparative modernity of the book on economics I just read from, it is well to get into the long-ago.

One of the works the New York Historical Society had and lists is: Constitution of the Abolition Society of Pennsylvania, with Acts of Pennsylvania for Gradual Abolition of Slavery (octavo, Philadelphia, 1788). What we see is, it took a long time for people to think there was something amiss with slavery. There were works on the subject before this, one of which I have quoted: Samuel Sewall’s tract The Selling of Joseph—of 1700. The Constitution of the Abolitionist Society of Pennsylvania was of 1788—and the people in that society felt, This is no way to conduct work!

Then this catalogue has a title the meaning of which I’m not sure about. I’m rather sure but not sure—I haven’t seen the book or pamphlet: Constitution of the African Marine Fund for the Relief of the Distressed Orphans and Poor Members of This Fund (duodecimo, Newark, 1810). I think what that title means is: There were Black people working on ships in America, and this is a time when the American sailor had trouble. Black sailors could die, and they had children who could be orphans. So there were people who came together to take care of the orphans of Black sailors. It might mean something else. But we find an interest in the casualties of life: fathers would die without notice, or were killed. That is part of economics, and it belongs to what is called welfare now.

Something that is obviously in the field of welfare is the next work listed. It deals with the Almshouse in New York City: Rules for the Government of the Almshouse in the City of New York, Agreed to at a Common Council (1800, octavo, New York). What have been called “the virtuous poor” were in the almshouse. And you had to regulate that, and also appoint a superintendent—which might have been a political job at the time. (It might not have been.)

Taxation & the Feelings of People

A big field where economics has to do with history is taxation. The American Revolution began, as is well known, in a dispute about taxation. There were disputes about rights of export and import, rules for American shipping, the mercantile system, the Navigation Acts. England said that American ships shouldn’t take certain goods elsewhere. But what made for obvious protest were things having to do with taxation. That is, you couldn’t have a will without a stamp, or a certain business form without a stamp. (The stamp was the sign that you had paid the required tax.) And this was not liked. There was such an objection in 1765 to the Stamp Act that it was repealed the next year—with the British government, however, saying it had the right to impose such a tax.

All this is background for one of the books listed in the catalogue. It is by a famous man of God of New England, Nathaniel Appleton of Cambridge, Massachusetts: Thanksgiving Sermon, 20th May, 1766, Occasioned by the Repeal of the Stamp Act, Dedicated to William Pitt (octavo, Boston). Pitt was on the side of the colonists. —That has to do with economics. Anybody who thinks the Stamp Act didn’t have to do with economics should take up athletics exclusively.

About a further item in the catalogue: while the city of New York was interested in helping the poor, the help came mostly from private societies. So there is this document in the New York Historical Society library: Constitution of the Assistance Society, for Relieving and Advising Sick and Poor Persons in the City of New York, Adopted 10 December 1808 (duodecimo, New York, 1809). That is interesting: “advising sick and poor persons.” New York didn’t have many people in 1808, but it seemed it had enough of the sick and poor to make for attention.

Another document listed in this catalogue has to do with economics and sanitation. In New York City there were, for example, gaugers—testers and examiners who went to the markets and saw that everything was right—and they were employed by the city. It must have been interesting to see them wandering around the Battery and looking, or near the North River or the Hudson, seeing what the markets were offering. And we have the following—which is possibly about a state act: Act for Salting, Repacking, and Inspection of Beef and Pork for Exportation, Enacted by the Legislature of New York (octavo, New York, 1800). This “repacking” is interesting. Beef would come in, maybe from the west, but it would be in New York and would then be exported. And how was it packed, and how was it salted? That’s what this document deals with. It has to do with economics, because food is one of the great commodities of the world.

Unions, Slavery, & One’s Life

Some of the early history of unionism is in the next item: Trial of the Boot and Shoemakers of Philadelphia on an Indictment for Combination and Conspiracy to Raise Their Wages—Taken in Short Hand by Thomas Lloyd (octavo, Philadelphia, 1806). If the workers came together in order to get higher wages, it was called “combination and conspiracy.”

Then, there’s a document described this way: The Trial of Amos Broad and His Wife on Three Indictments for Assaulting and Beating a Slave and Her Child, in the City of New York (octavo, New York, 1809). It seems a family matter, almost: husband and wife together assaulted a slave and her child. And both husband and wife are indicted.

A River Is Thought About

There’s a very interesting matter, which I found out about from this catalogue. It seems there was an attempt to get the Bronx River further into the city of New York. At that time there was a great to-do about canals. There was a feeling that water could be diverted. So we have the attempt mentioned here; but it was found to be impractical: Report of William Weston on the Practicability of Introducing the Bronx River into the City of New York (Octavo, New York, 1799).

However, there’s this item about another matter concerning water, something that came to be a little later: Remarks on the Importance of the Contemplated Grand Canal between Lake Erie and Hudson River (octavo, 1812). The next decade, under De Witt Clinton, there was a canal, the Erie Canal, which still functions. But this document is of a time when it was first being thought about.

The item that is next has to do with art, only through one of the “trades,” as they were called: Specimen of Printing Types by William Caslon, Letter Founder to the King (octavo, London, 1798). Type founders or letter founders were persons engaged in designing or producing metallic type to be used by printers. Caslon is the type predominant in the 18th century, but Baskerville also is there. —So it seems that William Caslon sent out his types. Something related is being done still. And that is in the field of economics too: type founding.