Gregory Clark proposes that the differential reproduction of the rich led to the industrial revolution. He’s probably wrong.

Blair Fix

I thought I would spark some controversy by reviewing Gregory Clark's "A
Farewell to Alms". Clark offers a social Darwinist theory of why the
industrial revolution occurred in England. Most social scientists will
likely dismiss Clark's arguments as absurd. I will say off the bat that
I think Clark's thesis is wrong. But it contains an uncomfortable grain
of truth that we need to acknowledge.

Clark's thesis is that the seeds of the industrial revolution were laid
in medieval England. During this time, the rich consistently out-bred
the poor. I've copied Clark's figures that demonstrate this fact. Figure
4.3 shows how male fertility increased as a function of wealth. Figure
6.2 shows how the number of surviving children increased as a function
of wealth at death.

![birthrates](https://i0.wp.com/economicsfromthetopdown.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/birthrates.png?resize=723%2C486&ssl=1){.alignnone
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![surviving_children](https://i0.wp.com/economicsfromthetopdown.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/surviving_children.png?resize=723%2C507&ssl=1){.alignnone
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Because the rich out-bred the poor, Clark argues that the children of
the rich would have slowly filtered into lower classes. This had to
happen because the rich reproduced faster than their replacement
fertility rate. As a result, children of the rich had to (on average)
drop in class. Clark argues that this led to the genetic spread of
bourgeois values such as literacy, non-violence, and a productive work
ethic. This eventually led to the industrial revolution. I won't go into
the details, because I think they're unimportant. Instead, I want to
focus on differential reproduction by social class and what Clark gets
right and wrong.

So let's start with what Clark gets right. This requires a brief review
of Darwinian theory. The central argument in Darwinian theory is that
evolution is driven by differential reproduction. Organisms that have
more offspring will have their genes spread throughout the gene pool.
This is a tautology --- it has to be true. The interesting (and far
harder) task is to understand why some organisms have more offspring
than others, and to understand what traits are being spread.

Clark is correct to assert that the differential reproduction of the
rich has all the characteristics needed for Darwinian natural selection.
The rich out-breed the poor, thus their genes will spread throughout the
population. But this is all that Clark gets right.

Where does he go wrong? For starters, differential reproduction by
social class is a feature of almost every human society, not just
England. Laura Betzig has done fascinating research on this topic
\[1,2\]. She finds that those with greater social status consistently
have greater reproductive success. Betzig argues that the urge to seek
power is in fact Darwinian. Power is a *proximate* goal. The *ultimate*
(unconscious) goal is to use power to achieve greater reproductive
success.

So the problem with Clark's argument is that differential reproduction
by the rich is not unique to medieval England. It is a feature of
*every* hierarchical human society. So it cannot be used to explain why
the industrial revolution happened in England.

Clark's next mistake is to assume that differential reproduction of the
rich led to the genetic spread of bourgeois values. The problem is that
Clark makes no attempt to determine what genes are being spread. And
even if we knew this, we would need to establish that these genes
determined bourgeois behaviours (such as literacy, non-violence, work
ethic). This seems far-fetched, but we cannot dismiss it completely.

Genes undoubtedly influence behaviour. We know this from animal
breeding. The Russian zoologist Dmitry Belyayev famously [bred foxes for
tameness](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domesticated_red_fox). Over a
few dozen generations, he was able to transform a wild fox species into
a breed as tame as dogs. The same principles must apply to humans. The
problem is that the gene-behaviour relation is complex. Of all animals,
human behaviour is the least genetically determined. If we are going to
make a gene-behaviour argument, we need to be on a solid empirical
footing. At present, there is simply not enough evidence to make much of
an argument. Thus, Clark's thesis remains dubious because he cannot
establish what genes are spreading and how these genes affect behaviour.

There are many ways that the differential reproduction of the rich might
affect human behaviour over time. There is no guarantee that this will
select for "good" characteristics. Consider the example of Genghis Khan,
one of the most fertile males in history. By [some
estimates](http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2010/08/1-in-200-men-direct-descendants-of-genghis-khan/#.XA6OqstKjeQ),
1 in 200 living males are descendants of Khan. How did he achieve this
differential reproductive success? By raping and pillaging. By violently
conquering much of Asia. By being the quintessential despot. In other
words, Khan was a terrible human being. But in Darwinian terms, he was
the epitome of success. Did Khan's descendents inherit this tendency for
despotism?

A chilling possibility is that differential reproduction by hierarchical
elites has slowly led to the spread of the ["authoritarian
personality"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authoritarian_personality).
The reasoning is that those who achieve differential reproductive
success are those who have a genetic urge to seek power. In other words,
they have authoritarianism in their genes. What is interesting is that
authoritarian individuals not only like to give orders --- they also
like to follow them. The authoritarian personality believes
wholeheartedly in obedience. In other words, they believe in the
legitimacy of hierarchy.

We could argue that this is how humanity was transformed from
egalitarian hunter gatherers to a hierarchical capitalist society.
According to Christopher Boehm, hunter-gathers are remarkably intolerant
of those who seek power \[3,4\]. Groups of individuals actively suppress
power-seeking individuals, sometimes violently. Is this a genetic
tendency that has been bred out of modern populations by the
differential reproduction of hierarchical elites? This is an incendiary
idea. It is highly speculative, but no more so than Clark's thesis.

To conclude, Clark's thesis contains a grain of truth that is
unsettling. There are clearly Darwinian selective forces operating in
human societies. Hierarchical status and wealth is a reliable way to
achieve greater reproductive success. The evidence for this is
overwhelming. The question is, what is this selective pressure doing
over the long-term? At present, we have no idea.

The problem is that many social scientists will likely find this whole
line of reasoning abhorrent. Thus they will dismiss it out of hand. But
this is misguided. Humans are a product of evolution and natural
selection and there is no reason to suspect that this selection has
stopped. We should be skeptical of Clark's conclusions because they
require a leap of faith. The intermediate steps in his thesis currently
have no empirical support. But this does not mean they are false.

### A note to readers

This review was originally posted to the capitalaspower.com
[forum](https://capitalaspower.com/forum_archived/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=498&p=1420&hilit=alms&sid=d7bdae69d740e3f4e048fdff4b9a9e6e#p1420).

### References

\[1\] Betzig, L. L. (2012). Means, variances, and ranges in reproductive
success: comparative evidence. Evolution and Human Behavior, 33(4),
309--317.

\[2\] Betzig, L. L. (1982). Despotism and differential reproduction: A
cross-cultural correlation of conflict asymmetry, hierarchy, and degree
of polygyny. Ethology and Sociobiology, 3(4), 209--221.

\[3\] Boehm, C. (2009). Hierarchy in the forest: The evolution of
egalitarian behavior. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

\[4\] Boehm, C., Barclay, H. B., Dentan, R. K., Dupre, M.-C., Hill, J.
D., Kent, S., ... Rayner, S. (1993). Egalitarian behavior and reverse
dominance hierarchy \[and comments and reply\]. Current Anthropology,
34(3), 227--254.

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I thought I would spark some controversy by reviewing Gregory Clark’s “A Farewell to Alms”. Clark offers a social Darwinist theory of why the industrial revolution occurred in England. Most social scientists will likely dismiss Clark’s arguments as absurd. I will say off the bat that I think Clark’s thesis is wrong. But it contains an uncomfortable grain of truth that we need to acknowledge.

Messaggi di Rogue Scholar

A Review of Gregory Clark’s “A Farewell to Alms”