Wordsworth against the Capitalist Ideology of Labor in “The Last of the Flock” and “Simon Lee”

Shuting Sun

doi:10.5539/ells.v7n2p132

Abstract

In several places in the Lyrical Ballads William Wordsworth challenges the capitalist ideology of labor. In Wordsworth’s view one of the key weaknesses the way this ideology manifests itself in economic thought is the way it generalizes about different people and their situations. The result of such generalizations is that they miss out the different meanings people give to their economic activity and applies to them a crude classification of either rational or irrational. Wordsworth believed that this erroneous economic thinking had infected moral theory. In the Lyrical Ballads Wordsworth investigates specific instances of people for whom capitalist economic imperatives no longer make sense. The implication of these instances is that these people are being marginalized by their failure to be assimilated to alienated labor. They either fail to adapt to alienated labor or adapt to it for motives other than those prescribed by the capitalist ideology of labor. This article will show how “The Last of the Flock” gives an instance of the former kind and “Simon Lee” gives an instance of the latter. In the Lyrical Ballads morality critiques economic thought. Wordsworth uses poetry to reaffirm the authority of moral thought to inform economic thought. This is an act of rebellion against the tendency he saw in his times of economic thought to stand above moral thought.

Highlights

The capitalist ideology of labor involves a number of closely related ideas in economic thought
Both cases conflict with the ideology of labor because they involve attitudes to labor that are driven by the same economic imperatives that mobilized the kind of labor that was displacing them but at the same time cannot be reconciled with the attitudes that motivated modern labor
“the lower orders” are manipulated in ways that both damage individuals and society.” (Allen, 2010, p.78). This tendency to generalization in economic thought is shown here to cross over into government policy. Wordsworth wrote his poems in part as a way of focusing attention onto the individuals that the abstractions of economistic thinking missed out.It is very interesting to note that Wordsworth attached a complimentary copy of the Lyrical Ballads to his letter to Fox in his belief that poems therein were an aesthetic way of challenging the ideology of labor

Summary

Introduction

The capitalist ideology of labor involves a number of closely related ideas in economic thought. This article will indirectly refute Levinson by pointing out the numerous ways that two poems in the Lyrical Ballads far from seeking a way of avoiding discussion of social change, directly address the capitalist ideology of labor in a way that does not embody a reactionary or conservative political agenda. This tendency to generalization in economic thought is shown here to cross over into government policy Wordsworth wrote his poems in part as a way of focusing attention onto the individuals that the abstractions of economistic thinking missed out.It is very interesting to note that Wordsworth attached a complimentary copy of the Lyrical Ballads to his letter to Fox in his belief that poems therein were an aesthetic way of challenging the ideology of labor. This is the last time this article will mention Levinson: It is worth saying that this is a basic historical fact that Levinson seems to ignore in her argument that Wordsworth’s poems turn away from social-political strife

The Ideology of Work as a Burden

Conclusion