I'm rereading Wilkie Collins chronologically and these days I'm on The Moonstone. A great deal of the plot hinges on various members of the gentry being deeply in debt. Despite the fact that all the laws, all their violent enforcement, are in their favor, after all, they write the laws, they absolutely can't escape their debts without finding some way to pay them.
Their laws provide them with all their wealth through the violence of enclosure and slavery. They provide them with endless serfs,* servants, and employees by (a) making it illegal to be unemployed and (b) taking away every possibility of employment other than wage labor, and yet, even with their frictionless ability to legislate whatever they want they've given themselves no escape from debt other than payment or imprisonment. Why?
I can't think of any reason besides the stability of the capitalism they all rely on for their obscene wealth. Yes, they take everything from their slaves, their colonies, and their working class, but to be able to repudiate debts would take everything from the finance industry on which their wealth also depends. There'd be no one to sell to them. They'd have nothing to do with their money without the vast luxury economy which supplies everything that makes their wealth worthwhile.
So as a class from time to time they'd sacrifice some of their peers to the violence of law enforcement because it was necessary to save the whole system from collapse. But none of this adds up to a respect for the rule of law or a system of equality under the law, either of which would also cause collapse.
Capital's control over the social narrative was relatively primitive in the mid 19th century, and it's easy for us to spot the contradictions, but nothing's changed at its core. Even now the law applies to the ruling class as necessary to stabilize capitalism and to the working class, slaves, and colonial subjects as necessary to control and continue their violent exploitation. Things look a lot better now on the surface because they've had to evolve that way to preserve stability, not because anything is different in essence.
And for all that it's a really banging novel, highly recommended! This, along with The Woman In White and (my personal fave) No Name are just pure Victorian fun (bracketing the ocean of bloodthirsty imperialist capitalism on which their entire society floats, as does ours).
#WilkieCollins #VictorianLiterature #TheMoonstone #Capitalism
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* Speaking metaphorically.
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