CARLYLE AND JOHNSON AND THE CASH NEXUS. Thomas Carlyle inveighed against the “cash nexus,” in which people were related to each other only by a neutral transaction. I have always objected to his argument, which seemed to me to reflect nostalgia for feudalism where peasants knew their place. The neutrality of cash can have its advantages, as Samuel Johnson pointed out.
I like the personal touch, so I was struck by Samuel Johnson’s comment that a personal relationship can create anxieties. I was told by a Virginian many years ago that he was shocked by the way Northeners would buy something without first having a personal discussion with the sales person. Now, as for Carlyle, he always shocks me when he talks about class or slavery. For example, from the link (Carlyle is I think longing for feudalism): “the old Aristocracy were the governors of the Lower Classes, the guides of the Lower Classes; and even, at bottom, that they existed as an Aristocracy because they were found adequate for that.”
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Neutrality may simply mean impersonal without any sense of human connection. To be really trite, let me contrast Lionel Barrymore as Henry Potter and Jimmy Stewart as George Bailey in “A Wonderful Life.” Economic exchange probably has better long term consequences when it occurs within some sense of community, shared values and/or face to face interaction.
Is that “nostalgia for feudalism?”