My favorite title of anything, ever:
The Great Law of Subordination Considered; or the Insolence and Insufferable Behaviour of SERVANTS in England duly enquired into
This work, by one Daniel Defoe, is quoted by EP Thompson in Time, Work-Discipline and Industrial Capitalism, and was published in England in 1724. Yes, that Daniel Defoe (Robinson Crusoe), who, I must say, seemed to have a knack for funny titles: he also penned the riveting Political History of the Devil (whom he apparently considered a very real and potent historical actor) and an essay on Conjugal Lewdness.
This is not all fun and games, however. Insufferable servants are but one target of the menacing, puritanical scribe: the original title of the latter essay was supposedly Conjugal Lewdness or, Matrimonial Whoredom, which later became A Treatise Concerning the Use and Abuse of the Marriage Bed. In it, Defoe outlines in no uncertain terms his contempt for all forms of contraception (an "abuse of the marriage bed"), comparing it to infanticide.
The colonial underpinnings and primitive economics of the Robinson Crusoe novel (whose actual title runs more than sixty words) were joyfully appropriated by classical economists of the ensuing century to illustrate their claims about free market relations of production and trade. The old man (KM) even references the novel in Capital (mostly to lampoon the Smithian admirers) but also to make a point about the labor theory of value.
It's odd how works find their way into the cultural lexicon, and persist, in various forms, within it. The SERVANTS essay title reminds me of the Masterpiece series Downton Abbey, a gossipy upstairs/downstairs drama set in an English manor just after the turn of the century. I won't go into a big thing on it now, but here is what I find most interesting about the series: the way in which the "downstairs" staff resembles the staff of any upscale restaurant today. From the menu, to the preparation, to the service (the characters describe themselves as working "in service") of meals, there is a strong affinity between the manners (or 'manors' if you like) of this "bygone" era and our own. Friends who work in expensive restaurants here in New York are taught to cater to every need of patrons (on whom they receive "slips" of relevant information -- who the guest is, who they work for/who works for them, their preferences, and so forth). Going for a meal should be just as seamless as the cleaning of the house, the care of the children, and the managing of daily needs, all of which is outsourced to the city's working classes.
One of the show's taglines makes reference to the "disappearing class system" of pre-industrial England. By 1912 (the year in which the series begins) industrial capitalism is firmly established in England, and the aristocracy is quickly fading into irrelevance. Or is it? To this day a "royal family," a monarchy, retains a place in English political and social life -- but I think there are less obvious, and much more interesting ways in which this system persists. The service industry is the pre-eminent example. Hordes of us are at work serving the rich and petty rich, obeying feudal codes of conduct, and making upstairs run smoothly while keeping the machinery of downstairs hidden from view.
As the old man said, nothing ever really goes away -- certain feudal relations persist under capitalism -- just as manor manners persist today. Downton is based on current source material, not a century-old novel, and although I haven't seen the entire series yet (I'm giddily about to start season two), but it's clear that "the future" is rapidly displacing "the past." But the most interesting moments are those in which we see the ways in which the past isn't dead, it isn't even past. The Great Law of Subordination is still very much in force, probably because those pesky servants remain such an insufferable and insolent lot. I duly demand an enquiry!
