Luxury, Crisis and Consumption: Sir James Steuart and the Eighteenth-Century Luxury Debate

The paper examines the contributions made by Sir James Steuart in his Principles of Political Economy (1767) to the debates about luxury consumption in the eighteenth century. The paper begins by highlighting the main contemporary arguments both for and against luxury in France and Scotland, and why the consumption of luxury goods was a contentious issue. In the next section, Steuart’s positive views on luxury are examined and located within his theory of growth. Steuart presents luxury goods as a necessary by-product of the movement from an agricultural society to an expanding manufacturing society. Unlike other contributors to the debate, such as Marquis de Mirabeau, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Adam Smith and David Hume, Steuart purposely avoids talking about luxury as a means to refine or corrupt society. By instead focusing on the workers’ role in innovation and creating desirable luxury goods, Steuart contributes a unique view of luxury not only as a generator of economic growth and increased living standards, but also as both an incentive mechanism for all economic sectors and a buffer against economic crisis. The continual creation of new luxury goods is shown to benefit society by ensuring an ongoing flow of payments, goods, and services among landlords, farmers, and manufacturers.