Before he became best known to younger generations as Obi Wan Kenobi in Star Wars, British actor Alec Guinness was known in part for his comedies.
Guinness made his name in six Ealing Studios film comedies between 1949 and 1957, most notably playing eight characters in Kind Hearts and Coronets and lead roles in The Ladykillers, The Lavender Hill Mob and The Man in the White Suit. The latter film, released in 1951, has a deserved reputation as one of the great movie comedies of its era. It also happens to be both libertarian and individualist in its wry themes.
Not only that: The Man in the White Suit has an ingenious plot whose premise is clearly science fiction, making the film of even greater interest to the Libertarian Futurist Society.
WHY FREE-MARKET INNOVATIONS SPARK OPPOSITION
Veteran libertarian thinker Sheldon Richman, writing on his Free Association blog, reminds us just how powerful the film’s themes are in clarifying the positive but disruptive impact of progress and innovation via free markets – and why such progress can spark shortsighted opposition from both labor and capitalists.
“What are we to make of this story? If you look carefully, you see that it is not, as you might have expected from filmmakers, an indictment of capitalism or an endorsement of socialism,” Richman writes.
“It shows complacent businessmen and workers in a negative light: both are willing to use force directly against an innovator to protect their positions.”
AN EVERYMAN/UNDERDOG STORY
Guinness plays Sidney Stratton, a gifted research chemist obsessed with developing a clothing fibre that resists dirt and never wears out. Despite repeated dismissals from jobs at textile mills in Northern England, Stratton secretly gains access to research equipment and succeeds in producing the revolutionary synthetic.
“Think of it: clothing for all that would never need cleaning or replacing. Who could object? Boss Birnley’s daughter, Daphne, thinks it’s a wonderful idea,” Richman writes.
“She tells Sidney, ‘Millions of people all over the world, living lives of drudgery, fighting an endless losing battle against shabbiness and dirt. You’ve won that battle for them. You’ve set them free. The whole world’s going to bless you.’”
When a brilliantly white suit is tailored from the material, Stratton is celebrated as a scientific pioneer by the press – at least at first. But strong opposition develops from both textile-mill managers and organized labor once they grasp that if clothing made from the material never wears out, the textile trade will collapse.
Resisting attempts to coerce him into giving up his formula and to suppress his invention, Stratton refuses to compromise. In a powerful everyman/underdog saga, the inventor’s life and liberty are threatened from various special interests willing to use force and the threat of force, backed by mob behavior.
WHY SOME FEAR CHANGE
“It is not just the owners who abhor the innovation,” Richman observes.
“The textile workers do too: they fear for their jobs. ‘Capital and labor are hand in hand in this,’ an owner tells the workers. Even an old woman who takes in other people’s wash is angry: ‘Why can’t you scientists leave things alone?’ she asks the naive and perplexed Sidney.
Richman’s insights are particularly wise in illuminating how ignorance, various forms of irrationality and short-term thinking and emotional biases and prejudices undermine consistent support for freedom and free markets.
“In Sidney Stratton, we behold a visionary individualist opposed by people who fear change,” Richman writes.
“Sidney’s antagonists are too myopic to realize that while innovation indeed disrupts in the short run (think of Schumpeter’s “creative destruction”), when an innovative product economically satisfies people, that is progress. Even those who are disrupted gain access to improved products and new opportunities, if the market is substantially free.
The workers in the movie mostly overlook that:
1. They are consumers who frequently wear clothes, and
2. since people’s desire for better lives knows no limit, the potential for productive opportunities will always exist. (That is, if entrepreneurial alertness is left unfettered.)”
THE ALTERNATIVE TO PROGRESS: STAGNATION
While fearing and opposing various types of innovation, progress and new technologies, many people fail to consider the multiple downsides that existed or arise from a lack of progress.
“Think of the alternative to progress: stagnation. If the anti-innovation attitude had prevailed consistently throughout history, we’d still be living in caves, or the few people who could survive would be,” Richman writes.
“Today, because of visionary entrepreneurs, relative freedom, and global trade, most of the world’s eight billion people live better and longer than people have ever lived before. Those still lagging lack capitalist institutions. Ironically, the complaint about capitalism these days is that it produces too much and too many new things, not that it suppresses new products.”
A CLASSIC COMEDY THAT’S FUNNY AND WISE
Those are just a few of Richman’s observations in his essay (“TGIF: Damn Those Innovators!”) about the film, but the whole thing is worth reading.
I first saw and enjoyed The Man in the White Suit as a boy watching television in the 1960s. That was a decade before I learned enough about economics, politics, ethics, philosophy and history to evolve from a Democratic liberal into a classical liberal and libertarian.
Thanks to Richman’s article, I was reminded of the film and have now bought my own copy of The Man in the White Suit (available on Blu-Ray for $18.40 and on DVD for $9.99 on Amazon).
Watching this wonderful film comedy again as an adult who’s been a libertarian for roughly half a century, I can appreciate anew how good it is – funny, suspenseful and more deeply insightful in making the case for freedom and individualism than I’d imagined as a youth.
Here’s the conclusion of Richman’s eloquent and wide-ranging post, which I heartily agree with:
“The Man in the White Suit is a timeless and romantic tale of rational individualism, creativity, and the persistent pursuit of values—and those who resent people who live those virtues. The most revealing line is the narrator’s: “The news of Sidney’s failure brought relief to the world.” Really? Ayn Rand could have written this story.”
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I have always liked Alec Guinness, in his comedy roles and his dramatic roles (and, yet, in Star Wars) but I have never seen this movie. Thanks for bringing it to our attention. I’m going to watch it.