A System Illusory and Immoral: Jonathan Swift and the Emergence of the Modern Economic Polity

Abstract

Jonathan Swift, Dean of St Patrick’s Dublin, sometime Drapier, has entered history at least in part for his writings about money. He was a man of his time — at least in so far as an understanding of economics was concerned — and even a cursory reading of Swift’s work should make it clear that his reflections on how money influenced the functioning of society owe nothing to modern economic theory or practice, drawing, instead, upon traditional understandings of the interconnection of wealth and societal welfare. It is a distinction often overlooked, at least in part because of modern readers’ own confusions about the connection between money and economics, and, additionally, about the change in intellectual mores required to establish modern capitalist theory as the guiding principle of British economic activity.