Spinoza and Smith on meritocratic political climbing in aristocratic government

One of my pet peeves about Spinoza scholarship (see this paper) is the tendency to treat Spinoza as a partisan of or fellow traveler of the De Witt regime. This is often inferred from the tenor of the Theological Political Treatise as well as a famous anecdote (whose ultimate source is Leibniz) that after the (1672) massacre of the De Witt brothers, Spinoza was inclined to place a sheet of chapter at the murder site with, “ Ultimi barbarorum.” Even if one accepts the veracity of the anecdote, and without claiming that Spinoza thought the De Witt brothers had it coming to them, when Spinoza treats of aristocracies in his (posthumously published) Political Treatise, his view of such matters is well represented by the following passage.

In every council the secretaries and other officials of this kind, as they have not the right of voting, should be elevated from the commons. But as these, by their long practice of business, are the most conversant with the affairs to be transacted, it often arises that more deference than right is shown to their advice, and that the state of the whole dominion depends chiefly on their guidance: which thing has been fatal to the Dutch.

Because the Secretaries in each Council, and the other ministers of that kind, don’t have the right to vote, they must be chosen from the plebeians. But because their lengthy experience dealing with public affairs gives them an exceptional knowledge of how to conduct these matters, it often happens that more deference is given their advice than is due their rank, and that the condition of the whole state depends chiefly on their direction.

This has been disastrous for Holland. [This] can’t happen without arousing great envy among many of the elite. And of course we can’t doubt that a Senate whose wisdom is derived, not from the advice of the Senators, but from that of their ministers, will be populated mostly by those who lack skill. (8.44; Curley’s translation modestly modified.)

Here Spinoza suggests that apparent meritocracy may actually undermine aristocracy in practice.

Now, it’s a bit tricky to establish what Spinoza’s underlying argument about the disaster for Holland is (except that in the 1670s Holland was nearly overrun by the French). So what follows is highly tentative. But I suspect it’s something like this: political systems with limited democratic franchises delegate key political functions to men of ability from the lower and middle classes.

They do so for two reasons: first, they need some relatively neutral or impartial functionaries who can steer ordinary decision making without themselves being partisans in the debates. Second, the sons of the rich are not all interested and qualified to steer the ship of state. So, there may well be a talent or epistemic deficit in aristocratic councils.

However, this dependence on meritocracy creates two kinds of political problems: first, the aristocrats start to undermine the very men of ability they have entrusted government, too. Second, the men of ability may well end up having over-confidence in their own abilities — this is pretty much Hume’s view on the Fall of De Witt in the History of England (see my paper) — or, more subtly, they end up instantiating the epistemic limitations of monarchic government dependent, as they are, on the narrow judgment of one person. So, interestingly enough, Spinoza is downright pessimistic about the stability of oligarchy/aristocracy not the least due to the fact that they end up relying on meritocratic principles to select their de facto rulers.

Adam Smith partially echoes Spinoza’s analysis in (1759) The Theory of Moral Sentiments:

[The aristocrat’s son] he shudders with horror at the thought of any situation which demands the continual and long exertion of patience, industry, fortitude, and application of thought. These virtues are hardly ever to be met with in men who are born to those high stations. In all governments accordingly, even in monarchies, the highest offices are generally possessed, and the whole detail of the administration conducted, by men who were educated in the middle and inferior ranks of life, who have been carried forward by their own industry and abilities, though loaded with the jealousy, and opposed by the resentment, of all those who were born their superiors, and to whom the great, after having regarded them first with contempt, and afterwards with envy, are at last contented to truckle with the same abject meanness with which they desire that the rest of mankind should behave to themselves. (TMS 1.3.2.5)

Unlike Spinoza, Smith seems to think the meritocratic political social climber turns the tables on the high born despite the animosity from them. What’s interesting about Smith’s position is that it anticipates some of David Hume’s and his own worldly success in British government, but that he had not experienced yet when he first published this passage.

Of course, Smith was quite familiar with the political trajectory of John Law (the banker), who briefly was the most powerful person in French kingdom, and in an earlier generations (say) William Petty and William Temple. And he may well have had his late father (who died before he was born) in mind. Smith lacks here the sense of fatal tragedy that shapes Spinoza’s writing on this topic. And I suspect that part of his optimism is due to his study of the meritocratic elements in the Chinese imperial bureaucracy (WN 5.1.d.17, pp. 729-730 & WN .5.2.d.5-7, p. 838-9.)