Egoism and Capitalism in Les Misérables
The Integrity of Jean Valjean
Chapter Eight of The Moneyball Method is titled Be Your Own Hero. To anyone whose childhood spark for learning and discovery still burns, it is real. For those who believe nothing is certain and no one is perfect, its sounds trite and unreasonable. The difference can be found in the self-esteem of the egoist.
For the egoist, their self-regulating character and productiveness is what defines them. They do not borrow their pride from the strengths or weaknesses of others, but they learn principles and take inspiration from heroes. For the selfless, the discovery of legitimate heroes may be the spark for reigniting the fire. But like every great journey, it begins with a necessary first step.
And romantic novelist Victor Hugo frames it this way: “Such are inventors. When one cannot discover America, one discovers a little wagon. At least it is something.” That something is from Hugo’s novel Ninety-Three, but this essay will cover a small sample of another heroic character, this time the protagonist in Hugo’s Les Misérables:
He was indistinctly conscious that the pardon of this priest was the greatest assault and the most formidable attack which had moved him yet.
Reason
Jean Valjean is a fictional character living in early 19th century France. Born a peasant into a caste system of feudal monarchy that led to revolutionary anarchy, desperation and poverty was all he knew. That society gave way to another feudal monarchy, and for Valjean, it led to imprisonment and slavery for stealing bread to feed his sister’s starving children.
It is nearly impossible for 21 century Americans to understand how common this was in Europe only 200 years ago, or the psychological effects. Here, Vasily Grossman described in 1960 the starvation of Jews enslaved at Treblinka in the early 1940s, “Hunger weighs down the soul, drives away joy and faith, destroys thought and engenders submissiveness, base cruelty, indifference and despair.” It gets a lot worse, but his epic novel, Life and Fate, was not published in French until 1980, and 1985 in English.
I mention that to help illustrate how “the pardon of this priest” became “the greatest assault and most formidable attack” on Jean Valjean. His identity, his very existence, was defined by submission, base cruelty, indifference and despair. No one wants to hear that their long-held beliefs are wrong. And nearly no one wants to hear that reality is certain, and everyone has perfection’s potential embedded in them:
In less than three years the inventor of this process had become rich, which is good, and had made every one about him rich, which is better. He was a stranger in the Department. Of his origin, nothing was known; of the beginning of his career, very little. It was rumored that he had come to town with very little money, a few hundred francs at the most. It was from this slender capital, enlisted in the service of an ingenious idea, developed by method and thought, that he had drawn his own fortune, and the fortune of the whole countryside.
That few hundred francs had been earned by the idea, method and thought of someone. It was the legacy of someone’s productive virtues and gifted by Bishop Myriel. The character who now went by Monsieur Madeleine had seemingly discovered the virtues of earned wealth after discovering rational egoism. But how?
Did a voice whisper in his ear that he had just passed the solemn hour of his destiny; that there no longer remained a middle course for him; that if he were not henceforth the best of men, he would be the worst . . . Let us say it simply, it was not he who stole; it was not the man; it was the beast, who, by habit and instinct, had simply placed his foot upon that money.
Individualism
To set up the epiphany of Jean Valjean, Victor Hugo’s depth of soul created a scene that steals your heart by stealing the heart of a child:
One of those gay and gentle children, who go from land to land affording a view of their knees through the holes in their trousers. Without stopping his song, the lad halted in his march from time to time, and played at knuckle-bones with some coins which he had in his hand—his whole fortune, probably.
With base cruelty, Valjean forced submission from the boy who ran off in fear. At first, he was indifferent to the despair that he had caused, but after many minutes realized he had never before done this to anyone who was innocent:
At that moment he caught sight of the forty-sou piece, which his foot had half ground into the earth, and which was shining among the pebbles. It was as though he had received a galvanic shock. “What is this?” he muttered between his teeth. He recoiled three paces, then halted, without being able to detach his gaze from the spot which his foot had trodden but an instant before, as though the thing which lay glittering there in the gloom had been an open eye riveted upon him.
Perhaps the open eye was that of the little boy, who had earned the money, sometime after discovering a little wagon and on his way to discovering America. Perhaps the open eye was awareness that began its ascent into Valjean’s consciousness – independence, justice, integrity and pride:
On his arrival at M. sur M. he had only the garments, the appearance, and the language of a workingman. It appears that on the very day when he made his obscure entry into the little town of M. sur M., just at nightfall, on a December evening, knapsack on back and thorn club in hand, a large fire had broken out in the town-hall. This man had rushed into the flames and saved, at the risk of his own life, two children who belonged to the captain of the gendarmerie; this is why they had forgotten to ask him for his passport. Afterwards they had learned his name. He was called Father Madeleine.
With his moral compass realigned and reputation established, Monsieur Madeleine was able to command his strength and talent for productive work. Risking his safety in this fire was a calculated risk and the outcome served his newly formulated principles. Courage is principles in action.
The future life, the possible life which offered itself to him henceforth, all pure and radiant, filled him with tremors and anxiety.
Capitalism
Most likely, Monsieur Madeleine (Jean Valjean) is considered a hero because of his selfless dedication to the welfare of his adopted town, Montreuil-sur-Mer, his heroic attempt to save the life of Fantine, saving Marius from the barricade, and creating a new life for Cosette. But there was nothing selfless about it. Their welfare was justice and self-esteem.
In fact, those stories are magnificent, but not the subject of this brief essay. Hugo brilliantly illustrates the internal conflicts of the main characters, but the socioeconomic conflict in Les Misérables is the State vs. individual. That is personified by Valjean vs. Javert, and Javert has his own demons with which to wrestle, not the least of which is the unlikely wealth and political capital earned by now Mayor Madeleine:
This very small change had effected a revolution. This very small change had, in fact, prodigiously reduced the cost of the raw material, which had rendered it possible in the first place, to raise the price of manufacture, a benefit to the country; in the second place, to improve the workmanship, an advantage to the consumer; in the third place, to sell at a lower price, while trebling the profit, which was a benefit to the manufacturer. Thus three results ensued from one idea.
Markets reward efficiency, profits attract capital, capital finds talent, and talent obeys reality. In his line of chosen work, Monsieur Madeleine had lowered costs, raised wages, increased GDP, improved quality, lowered prices, and increased his own wealth and influence.
Without all of that, it would have been impossible for him to rescue Fantine or Marius and get them to hospital, or save Cosette from the submission, cruelty, indifference and despair of the Thénardiers.
The lesson to take from this 1861 dramatization of 1821 capitalism – a term invented as a pejorative by Karl Marx in 1848, is that concentrations of earned wealth are a very good thing. The more the better – and there are secondary benefits:
In the course of seven years the expense of collecting the taxes had diminished three-fourths in the arrondissement of M. sur M., and this led to this arrondissement being frequently cited from all the rest by M. de Villèle, then Minister of Finance.
There is a cause to this effect - productivity increases are the natural consequence of specialization in division of labor economic systems. Not to mention the satisfaction and pride that accrues to those whose talents are matched with productive work:
When Fantine saw that she was making her living, she felt joyful for a moment. To live honestly by her own labor, what mercy from heaven! The taste for work had really returned to her. She bought a looking-glass, took pleasure in surveying in it her youth, her beautiful hair, her fine teeth; she forgot many things; she thought only of Cosette and of the possible future, and was almost happy. She hired a little room and furnished on credit on the strength of her future work.
Fantine had created her own credit - and credit must be created before money will become available for loan. Before that, wealth must be created before money can be exchanged. And all because Jean Valjean had an epiphany - one that I interpret had included the virtues of money through the eyes of Little Gervais that he once was.