Find all blog entries at A Commoner Manifesto Substack.
Merker: The Rise and Fall of Victorian Morality
During the life of Queen Victoria, from 1819 to 1901, Britain transformed itself from an agricultural and trading empire into “the leading industrial economy of the 19th century”. Population doubled, and per-capita GDP tripled.
Needless to say, to undergo the greatest change in methods of production since the introduction of agriculture, and to do so in the span of less than a century (roughly from 1790 to 1840), is bound to entail considerable social disruption.
And Britain did so without a political disruption. It passed Factory Acts, and reform of working conditions, and expanded the franchise. But the political regime endured.
This political continuity goes against the “Stein-Marx ‘materialist conception of history’”. For Marx, the Bourgeois revolution was to be followed by a Proletarian revolution. Yet, by 1872 Marx was forced to concede that, “in England, ‘the workers can achieve their aims by peaceful means’”.
How could this “world historical economic revolution” occur without political disruption?
It was due in part to a universe of voluntary associations, including
self-help and mutual-aid societies… charity schools, ragged schools (for destitute children and orphans), Sunday schools, societies to promote piety and virtue, others for the relief of aged widows, penitent prostitutes, the dear, dumb, blind, and otherwise incapacitated, mothers meetings, soup kitchens, maternity charities, crèches… working men’s associations, slate clubs, medical clubs, lending libraries, natural history societies… holiday funds, penny banks, saving banks, visiting societies, temperance societies, pension societies, and more.
Meanwhile government and religion weathered the disruption, and often thrived.
But over and above all this were cultural norms.
[C]entral cultural norms pertaining to family, sex roles, personal responsibility, work ethic, public demeanor, decorum, and standards of respect (“respectability”), not only retained their traditional orientation, but were in some respects deepened and consolidated in this era.
Call it “Victorian morality” or “Victorian ethos”. And it extended down to the “laboring poor”.
The Victorian ethos was… eminently compatible with — and perhaps even a causal contributor to — a culture of diversifying enterprise that supported a rising population, rising standards of living, and international great power status based on a vast maritime empire.
And all this was going on while the Brits led the world in ending slavery.
Victorian virtues were domestic virtues.
They centered on the family, and… defined what was required of you to earn the respect of your fellows… as a function of your manners, attitudes, and behavior.
To succeed in a life of Victorian virtue was to have “character”. Its culture promoted life-long marriage, division of domestic responsibilities. Divorce was very rare, and even without modern contraception, illegitimate births declined from a peak of seven percent in 1845 to four percent at the end of the century.
Was this all very stuffy and cramped? Not according to Robert Wright in The Moral Animal.
[I]n the case of either sex, Victorian sexual mores have the effect of promoting male parental investment in spouse and offspring[.]
Victorian Britain gives us a glimpse
of a culture in which the exertions of ordinary people — anyone, in fact — are channeled in socially productive directions by making social respect contingent on living up to a code of rectitude and responsibility that lies within everyone’s capacity to fulfill, given will and earnest effort.
So what went wrong? Why do we regard the Victorians as stuffy and cramped?
First, there were the “partisans of overthrow” and the myth of the “unfinished revolution” in France. If you believe in revolution, then the success of ordinary morality and its ethic of “hard work, rectitude and personal responsibility/accountability”, then Marxism and revolution “would be a dead letter”.
Second, there were those that looked down on efforts to provide
education, poverty, insurance… by private initiative and voluntary organization as an unsystematic and ineffective way to deal with the problems that should, they insisted, be the responsibility of government.
Social reformers were therefore on the same side as the partisans of overthrow. They both wanted the power to realize their ambitions. But by validating the power of the state they created an opportunity for corporate and financial interests to get in on the state power game:
government contracts, subsidies, concessions, tax exemptions, tariffs, capture of regulatory agencies… and additional forms of rent seeking[.]
Third, there were those opposed to “Victorian attitudes to sexuality and sexual mores”. They wanted to live “unconventional sexual” — even libertine lives.
What about women’s liberation? Elizabeth Roberts, in A Woman’s Place: An Oral History of Working-Class Women, 1890-1940, found that working-class women were down with “Victorian values”.
“Victorian values” were embraced by the Victorian working class no less than by its middle class, but women by and large expressed contentment with their lives shaped by those values, to the point of experiencing a sense of satisfaction and fulfillment in their roles and wives and mothers.
For the ordinary middle class and working class, the “Victorian ethos” was a good thing. But for those who itched for something else, “with other visions of the good life and the kind of society that might realize it” the ethos had to be dismantled. And so it has, piece by piece.
How the enemies of the Victorian ethos advanced their cause is the subject of Book 2: Down a slippery slope greased by two world wars.
More to come.
| Mon, 24 Aug 2026 22:38:21 GMT |
We’re on the Cusp of Something
I’ve been reading Bjorn Merker’s Perishing Promise in PDF. It’s about the failure of the West to implement its promise of freedom and equality. Because we now live under a
soft despotism that wields the slogans of popular sovereignty, self-governance, and democracy as means to buttress its power over the populations under its jurisdiction.
One of the key moments in Merker’s Western story is the socialist frenzy of the university rich kids in Berlin in 1840. Of which our pal Karl Marx was a contributor. Merker represents Marx as a kid who resented having to get a job when his father died and his mom withdrew his allowance.
As they say: history doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes.
In our day we have the DSA frenzy of the university rich kids — featuring the girls this time — who really resent… well, something. It looks as if they are taking over the Democratic Party, and, they think, the world.
But as a famous philosopher said, nearly 200 years ago, there is a tendency for historical events to appear: “the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce”.
In 1840, as Marx & Co. were all ablaze, the economy was in the middle of the second technological revolution in 50 years. First was machine textiles in the 1770s, and then steam and railways in the 1830s. The fact is that humans tend to feel totally adrift when the economic foundations are shaking.
I suspect that was particularly true for the educated middle class of 1840. Marx came from Trier, in Germany just east of Luxembourg. You can imagine that the fixed world of guilds and lawyers and bourgeois security was under attack from a rising generation of textile and rail entrepreneurs. Socialism, the best people knew, would put an end to all the turmoil.
Same thing in our era. The Age of the Educated Class, with the credentialed holding forth for the best interests of society overall from their tenured positions in academia, administration, and media, seems to be under attack.
What’s left for a professor if her students can answer the questions on a test with AI? What’s left for traditional media when podcasters can reach millions with YouTube and the internet? What’s left when a college degree isn’t the key to a career in corporate administration any more?
Back in 1840 all the best minds were focused like a laser on the plight of the industrial workers. There was a bit of a cock-up in the US Panic of 1837.
Triggered by wild land speculation, reckless state bank note printing, President Andrew Jackson’s anti-central bank policies, and a collapse in cotton prices, it resulted in widespread bank failures and massive unemployment.
Oh yeah. The end of the Second Bank of the United States. What could go wrong? And in Europe the Hungry ‘40s, as told by Mrs. Gaskell in Mary Barton. Mary’s father was a textile machine worker and big into unions.
What do we have, in 2026? The late COVID unpleasantness with a 40% increase in the money supply. Plus AI. Plus Woke Politics. No wonder the kiddies are all upset.
In the late Cambridge University Unpleasantness, a brilliant black professor was outed by a Dirty Jew. Professor Nathan Cofnas was fired from Cambridge by its girl Vice-Chancellor Deborah Prentice and is now, apparently, under fire at his new job from the transgender girl rector of Ghent University. I kid you not.
And over last weekend devoted activists held a peaceful protest in memory of the late fabulist Jason Arday in London’s Trafalgar Square.
I know. You couldn’t make this up.
Really, lefties? You make a huge issue about blacks, because slavery abolished roughly 200 years ago. Then you promote unqualified blacks into prestigious academic positions. Then you push back and fire an academic that exposes your follies (or should we say, injustices)?
Then you hold a vigil in Trafalgar Square when the fabulist understandably commits (presumed) suicide?
We all push back mightily when our belief system betrays us, and reality hits us right in the solar-plexus. It’s not that we don’t believe it. It’s worse than that: it’s “inconceivable.”
Ever heard of that River in Egypt?
I don’t know what comes next. Nobody does. But I am certainly getting a feeling that we are approaching a “turn.”
Here’s a Narrative to explain the whole thing.
Back in 1840 when the Marxes and the Engels were holding forth it made sense that the jumped-up bourgeois capitalists were a menace. They were new; they didn’t have credentials. Or breeding. So we all decided to put the curbs on the industrialists to make sure they didn’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.
But as usual, the problem wasn’t the capitalists. They went on to create steel steamships and internal combustion engines and cars for the common man, and the internet and reusable rockets and AI. The problem was the activist politicians, the Lenins and Trotskys and Maos that demolished the nascent exchange economies in Russia and China and sent 100 million souls to an early grave.
And now the fans of Stalin and Mao want us to elect them for a redo on socialism?
I don’t think so.
Just for a refresher here’s Google’s take on the notorious Robber Barons:
John D. Rockefeller: Controlled the oil industry through Standard Oil, buying out or crushing competitors with aggressive pricing.
Andrew Carnegie: Dominated the American steel industry using vertical integration and severe labor suppression.
Cornelius Vanderbilt: Built a massive empire in shipping and railroads, earning the nickname “The Commodore”.
J.P. Morgan: Consolidated giant corporations like U.S. Steel and dominated American finance and banking.
Jay Gould: A notorious railroad tycoon and Wall Street speculator known for stock manipulation and bribery.
Well? Here’s my take:
John D. Rockefeller: Invented the oil industry, saved the whales including Moby Dick.
Andrew Carnegie: Invented the steel industry, allowing architects to create skyscrapers.
Cornelius Vanderbilt: Built a massive empire in shipping and railroads, helping ordinary people to travel about.
J.P. Morgan: Cleaned up all the railroad debt defaults and bankruptcies.
Jay Gould: Fought Vanderbilt over Erie Railroad. Tried to corner the gold market. But fixed Union Pacific and pushed against monopolistic rate-fixing.
Today we have the tech lords and the venture capitalists. Should we Fight Oligarchy with Bernie or just let the tech bros do their thing and vaporize the education industrial complex with AI?
I think it is time to admit that the Robber Barons weren’t much of a problem, and the tech “oligarchs” even less so.
| Fri, 21 Aug 2026 22:25:59 GMT |
Switch to Substack for more blog posts
Christopher Chantrill
He runs usgovernmentspending.com, the go-to resource for government finance data, and is a frequent contributor to the American Thinker. He lives in Seattle, Washington. Click for more.
“I love this guy.” — Steve Ballmer
A Commoner Manifesto
Commoners have nothing to lose but their shame
The last refuge of a political scoundrel is the scapegoat.
A racist is absolutely anyone who’s pissed off a lefty — Glenn Reynolds
The simplest way to understand human society is as Three Layers such as Nobles, Yeomen, and Serfs.
My take on Three Layers is my Three Peoples Theory of Creatives, Responsibles, and Subordinates.
I believe that we moderns live in Three Worlds: the War World of politics, the Market World of the economy, and the Life World of family and neighborhood.
And the trouble with politics is that it reduces human society to a war against the enemy, as determined by Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt.
The world that we all live in today is the one created by the German Turn in philosophy, psychology, science, and meaning.
But our modern elite, the educated elite, has taken, I believe, a Wrong Turn and has imposed a cultural Great Reaction on the world, a lurch back to the primitive. This manifests in the elite’s conceited Activism Culture and its patronage of Subordinate people as its Little Darlings.
The principal reason for the elite’s Wrong Turn has been that it does not understand and does not want to understand how the Three Peoples’ Religions are necessarily different.
The root of the educated elite’s Wrong Turn is its conceit that it knows what the world needs. I think there is a better way; I call it “A Good Life Better than the Left”.
ABC of Politics – Activism Culture – “Anatomy of Revolution” – Allyism – Critical Theory – Downstream-ism – Dutch Finance – German Turn – Good Life – Great Reaction – Little Darlings – Perfect Plan – Women in the Public Square – Ruling Class – Three Layers – Three Peoples – Three Peoples Religion – Tribalism – Two Cultures – Wrong Turn
Today’s topic: A Critique of Critical Theory
