I have just finished reading Richard Hofstadter's The Age of Reform. I was familiar with his essays on anti-intellectualism and the paranoid style in American politics, both of which struck me as having grasped fundamental truths. One of the concluding paragraphs of Age of Reform reads:
Much of America still longs for -- indeed, expects to see -- a return of the older individualism and the older isolation, and grows frantic when it finds that even our conservative leaders are unable to restore such conditions. In truth we may well sympathize with the Populists and with those who have shared their need to believe that somewhere in the American past there was a golden age whose life was far better than our own. But actually to live in that world, actually to enjoy its cherished promise and its imagined innocence, is no longer within our power.
I have often made the comment (which I may have picked up somewhere, and if so, my apologies to the original) that history does not repeat itself, but the present does echo the past. Now, about a century later, I have also commented that we are echoing the period following the civil war, reconstruction and what follows. My basic contention would be that the civil rights movement and the national rending produced by the Vietnam War are the echo of the abolitionist movement and the Civil War proper. Of course, the analogue is not exact, but an echo, and I wouldn't want to press it too closely because, as with all such arguments, the devil will be in the details.
That said, we are (re)living the aftermath of reconstruction. Hofstadter characterized the general theme of "progressivism" as "the effort to restore a type of economic individualism and political democracy that was widely believed to have existed earlier in America and to have been destroyed by the great corporation and the corrupt political machine; and with that restoration to bring back a kind of morality and civic purity that was believed to have been lost." Though they would be aghast at hearing the label "progressive," that particular label having been appropriated by the democratic party, he nevertheless could have been describing the Tea Party, and the more populist wing of the so-called conservative party. The "great corporation" is pivotal in all this, and renders both the conservative and the liberal arguments ironic, and I will return to it later.
In the meantime, Hofstadter is correct when he suggests that the "American tradition of democracy was formed on the farm and in small villages, and its central ideas were founded in rural sentiments and on rural metaphors (we still speak of grassroots democracy)." It is the "freedom" and "democracy" celebrated in country music, and their patriotism is not necessarily extended to either New York or Los Angeles, neither of which are seen as part of the real "America." I could spend considerable time unpacking the notions of "freedom," but mostly its a notion of "positive freedom" --- that is to say, the ability to do what one damn well pleases, and if there are moral restraints on what pleases, they come mostly from community sentiment and consensus, and from religion, especially the sort of sentimental religion that we still hear celebrated in country gospel. If there are political and legal restraints, they should be local, very local, in scope. The more distant the "government" imposing restraint, the less tolerable the restraints become, and the more likely they are to be labeled "socialism," even if one generally might agree with the restraint.
So far as economic individualism is concerned, the story is more complex. Hofstadter makes a convincing case that the "family farm" or the "family business" provides the core metaphor. If one is to be successful, it is fundamentally necessary that one "work hard," and this finds its moral imperative in old timey, and mostly old testament religion -- it's the sweat of one's brow that brings forth bread. Hard work might be necessary, but most realize it's not sufficient, and there is a strain of popular sentiment that valorizes those who have worked hard without the reward. Their reward, no doubt, will be in heaven. Indeed, it seems, the more physically demanding and physically debilitating the fruitless work, so long as they don't lose faith, the greater their reward in heaven. For those who are successful, however, it is just generally assumed that they "worked hard" for their rewards and their "hard work" gives the rewards, like those of Job, moral sanction. They "earned" their rewards. It is also generally assumed that they had other defining characteristics that helped bring in the bread -- mostly a form of "savvy," not to be confused with "intellectual prowess" of the sort that earns PhDs and university professorships. Quite the contrary, the popular sentiment would see "intellectual prowess" and "savvy" in inverse proportion to one another, the latter acquired through the "hard knocks" of experience. It's the sentiment captured in the bumper sticker slogan, "if you're so smart, why aren't you rich?"
All of which might have been appropriate, when "being rich" was more modest, a time when one's riches were centered on the family farm and aligned along main street in the family business. As Hofstadter goes on to write, "up to about 1870 the United States was a nation with a rather broad diffusion of wealth, status, and power, in which the man of moderate means, especially in the many small communities, could command much deference and exert much influence. The small merchant or manufacturer, the distinguished lawyer, editor, or preacher, was a person of local eminence in an age in which local eminence mattered a great deal." Of course, as Hofstadter implies here, and details throughout, there were several transformations of American life that began after 1870, not least the increasing industrialization, which generally speaking made America more urban than rural, and which concentrated more and more wealth in fewer and fewer hands. Although one could argue that the "local eminences" carried on as before, with little diminishment of their actual wealth, it was clear however that, relative to the Carnegies, their wealth was modest and that the deference and influence was limited to the local, and a mass communications revolution with the telegraph and telephone, along with new forms of journalism, reinforced their diminished stature on the national stage. Hofstadter designated the Mugwump type, those who were "progressives not because of economic deprivations but primarily because they were victims of an upheaval in status." These were men who "suffered from the events of their time not through a shrinkage in their means but through the changed pattern in the distribution of deference and power."
Several have made similar observations about our current situation. Trump's brand of populism might be better seen as a new Mugwump type. As Buffalo Springfield might have put it, "there's something happening here, and what it is ain't exactly clear," but there are echos. Contrary to the industrialization of the late 19th and early 20th century, America is going through a process of de-industrialization. Just as in the past fewer and fewer people were employed in agriculture, today fewer and fewer people are employed in manufacturing. Part of this deindustrialization can be attributed to the outsourcing of labor to emerging nations, part can be attributed to the automation of labor, with the former (I believe?) giving way to the latter. Just as the mechanization of agriculture meant fewer and fewer hands in the field growing food, it's not that manufactured good aren't being made, and sold, but rather it takes fewer and fewer hands. This has the salutatory effect of keeping stuff cheap for the shelves of Walmart, but it also has a significant impact on manufacturing sector employment. And speaking of Walmart, following a familiar pattern of concentration and monopolization, they have made small scale retail virtually impossible in most small towns and cities across the US. They are welcomed because they offer "jobs," but not the sort of proprietorship that peopled main street and stoked civic pride. Then too, Walmart may eventually be "disrupted" by the on-line sale and distribution of goods. All of which suggests that the "new Mugwump type" is emerging as a "local eminence" that finds even its local deference and influence threatened, if not rendered irrelevant, by an emerging economy that has little use for them, and to top it off, by a new forms of celebrity influence fueled by the so called "social media," which ultimately might be bettered labeled sociopathic media. Consequently, the yearning for a golden age (with the usual elisions of nostalgia) is comprehensible, and helps explain why the Trump voter aren't only those who have suffered actual economic dislocation, but those who feel their deference and influence in the world threatened.
There is another shift regarding "work" and the "work ethic." It's not unusual for the older generation to look at the younger and decry their lack of work ethic, but here again there's something happening, though the full outline isn't yet clear. One of the shifts that happened along with the industrialization of America was a shift from the economic independence of "self-employment," to the dependencies of "wage labor." On the order of "self-employment," think of the family farm, the proprietor of a small business, or the professionals -- not the cowboys, but the doctors and lawyers and such. Part and parcel of economic individualism was the underlying assumption that, if one worked for someone else, and if one possessed the necessary drive, sufficient savvy, a dollop of thrift, then one could parlay that work into self employment. One could be, so to speak, one's own boss. For the vast majority of people, the hope for fiscal independence was delusional, and the need to engage in "wage labor," to hold down a "job," became a more or less permanent condition of life. Although economic independence was still the desired state, the wage laborer found themselves caught up within webs of dependency over which they had little influence, much less power. As an aside, it strikes me that the incipient forms of unionism were caught within a fundamental tension, or paradox, the felt need to assert some level of economic independence as well as a modicum of deference from the "powers that be," a felt need that could be satisfied only through another form of dependency, solidarity within a class identity and a dependency on others of that class, a solidarity and dependency that rankled against the felt need to assert one's self as an individual.
As a bass line beneath, there lurked notions of accountability and responsibility. Although Hofstadter would accuse me of overstating the case, I will go ahead and point out that the American soul is principally a Protestant soul and we have "inherited the moral traditions of rural evangelical Protestantism." Implicit in the Protestant soul is an "ethos of personal responsibility." Broadly speaking, it is the sense that we are primarily accountable to ourselves and responsible for our own salvation, not only in the exalted religious sense and in the mundane sense of subsistence. While the sense of accountability may extend outward to family and from there to one's local community, the further out one goes the more tenuous the accountability. I may have a duty to my wife and children, and I may need on occasion to be my brother's keeper, but I am not responsible for my neighbor's happiness. If Emerson saw the greatest sin as "limitation," the petty conformity to sanctified community standards, he would agree that, for the protestant soul at large, the greatest (if not the most salacious) sin was dependence, the failure to be self-reliant.
This "ethos of personal responsibility" works well enough for those who are self-employed -- particularly within that Jeffersonian, Jacksonian mythos of an agrarian America -- less well within an industrial America with systemic need for wage labor, where one is no longer accountable to oneself, but to an employer, who sets the terms and conditions to which they will be held accountable. The employee meets his responsibilities and consequently behaves responsibly when he or she conforms to the terms and conditions of work and can, thereby, not only support himself, but also meet his familial obligations. There is some autonomy associated with wage labor, insofar as it is not outright slavery, and one is bound only to the implicit contract that exchanges labor for cash. So long as he remains working, the wage laborer avoids dependence on others -- the extended family, charitable institutions, the government -- but unlike the small stake farmer, who was dependent only on his own labor, nature, and nature's god for his subsistence, the wage laborer is unambiguously dependent upon his employer, who not only sets the terms and conditions of work, but provides the work itself. The vast majority of wage laborers are not free not to labor, and to be without work is felt to be shameful, not only because one can no longer "support himself," but also because, having work, being gainfully employed, was an individual responsibility. So long as there is work to be done, jobs to be had, this ethos of personal responsibility seems justified, and those without work could perhaps be accused of a character flaw, the least of which was laziness, which kept them from labor.
While the "ethos of personal responsibility" may have had it origins in the traditions of rural evangelicalism, and while the wage laborer felt the obligation to work, the employer, subject to the imperatives of capitalism and imbued with the same ethos of personal responsibility, did not feel the same obligation to provide work, and when they did provide work, did not feel the obligation to provide necessarily "a living wage." By the "logic of capitalism," I mean simply this: business owners do not hire people out of a sense of largesse, or patriotism, or obligation to their employees, or because tax cuts have provided them with additional cash on hand. They hire people only in response to demand, and then they incur the expense of an employee only when they must to meet demand. To exact the greatest return on their investment, it is in their interest not only to keep the number of employee, but also their wages as low as possible. The imperatives of capitalism work on both large and small business, though for the latter, caught up within and subject to a local community, the imperatives of capitalism might find it necessary to compromise within "a preponderantly rural society with a broad diffusion of property and power," not to mention the American tradition "of unusually widespread participation of the citizen in the management of of affairs, both political and economic." As Hofstadter goes on to point out, however, "the growth of the large corporation, the labor union, and the big impenetrable political machine" were at some remove from and no longer particularly subject to local communities, or perhaps more precisely, no longer subject to the Mugwump type, those who commanded more localized wealth and influence. While the large corporation and the labor union had competing agendas, both were subject to the same unresolved tension, both stood against economic individualism and both were "clotting society into large aggregates and presenting to the unorganized citizen the prospect that all these aggregates and interests would be able to act in concert and shut out those men for whom organization was difficult or impossible." As Hofstadter notes, to a degree, "the Progressive movement was the complaint of the unorganized against the consequences of organization," or to put it another way, those who had lost a commanding voice in how things were organized.
There are two ironies or perhaps hypocrisies in all of this. The first and most obvious might be called the "for me" syndrome. The greatest of the great capitalists, of course, believed deeply in the economic individualism and the "ethos of personal responsibility" -- that is to say, they were deeply committed to their own autonomy, their own individual freedom to do as they damn well pleased to secure and increase their wealth. They were responsible for and therefore deserving of their wealth and entitled to exercise the influence that came with it. In other words, for the greatest of the great capitalists, economic individualism was a great thing "for me," though others should be subject to corporate economic and organizational needs. Moreover, for the greatest of the great capitalists, the rhetoric of economic individualism was a great thing "for me," in part because it justified their wealth, in part because it justified their efforts at organizing the social and economic structures to meet the needs of the modern corporation. Others are perfectly free to become "just like me" -- and clearly, if they had the necessary drive and savvy, they would become "just like me" -- but clearly they have failed. They clearly lack drive and must be compelled into labor, if not by whips and chains, then by push of penury. They clearly lack savvy and so must be subject to the terms and conditions of those who provide remunerative labor -- that is to say, accountable to the needs of the modern corporation.
The second and less obvious might be called the irony of progress itself. As Hofstadter points out, against the wholly independent individuals, "the processes of modern technology and machine industry -- not to speak of the complex tasks of civic life (much, much, much more so the complex tasks of urban life) make organization, specialism, hierarchy, and discipline utterly necessary." Within the agrarian world of Jefferson and Jackson, one can imagine the atomistic (or Adamistic) individual believing they were more or less a jack of all trades, the master of his own small piece of the world, subject to no one but himself, nature, and nature's God -- and so far as God is concerned, with sufficient piety, like Job, believing also that they could turn even nature and nature's God to account. As Hofstadter points out,
It had been their tradition to believe that prosperity and economic progress came not through big or monopolistic businesses -- that is, through the gains and economies of organization -- but rather through competition and hard work and individual enterprise and initiative. They had been brought up to think of the well-being of society not merely in structural terms -- not as something resting upon the sum of its technique and efficiency -- but in moral terms, as a reward for the sum total of individual qualities and personal merits. This tradition rooted in the Protestant ethic itself was being wantonly defied by the system of corporate organization.
Along with Thoreau, for example, they might critique the railroad as only an improved means to an unimproved end, but it nevertheless represented an improved means, and very few really want to forego the benefit of improved means. One could say the same thing about modern medicine, that it is only an improved means to an unimproved end, but when the "end" is saving and improving lives, it would seem foolish to reject wholly the benefit of its "improved means." Within a world that includes such "improved means," it is more difficult to imagine the atomistic (or Adamistic) individual as the master of his own small piece of the world, and as Hofstadter points out, "the progressives, object though they might to the many sacrifices of traditional values that the new society demanded, did not seriously propose to dismantle this society, forsake its material advantages, and return to a more primitive technology." Or in other words, I am suggesting that both the turn of the century "progressives" and our more current conservative radicals were and are "trying, in short, to keep the benefits of the emerging organization of life and yet to retain the scheme of individualistic values that this organization was destroying."
There is, perhaps, a third irony or paradox. The very idea of "democracy" seems deeply connected to the Protestant ethic as well -- society seen not as a structure, but as "we the people," or as Hofstadter put it above, "the sum total of individual qualities and personal merits." I'm not sure who said it first, but it is accepted as a truism that there are essentially two dangerous classes of people, the very poor and the very rich, those who have nothing to lose and those who have everything to lose. To put it simply, the many who have little tend to form mobs, while the few who have much tend to form repressive regimes to suppress and control the mob. Having few other tools at its disposal, the mob tends toward violence, which in turn is met with violence in order to maintain some semblance of social order. The French revolution is the principle case in point, and it is often accepted also as a truism that the American revolution escaped the fate of the French because there was greater social and economic equality within American society. Our political system can be democratic largely because the majority of people belong, neither to the very poor, nor the very rich, but rather to a broad segment of the population that could be considered "comfortable," or at least "comfortable" enough that they had no desire to over-throw the existing order of things, in part because they had the hope of joining the ranks of the "slightly more comfortable."
Then too, it is also accepted more or less as a truism that democracy and laissez faire capitalism go hand in hand, the "market place" being the place where "the people" go vote with their wallets, where the "sum total of individual economic decisions" act as a self-regulating "invisible hand" guiding the economy. A business competes for market share, or popular approval, and if a business succeeds (or fails) it does so because "we the people" have decided it should succeed (or fail) with our pocketbooks. There is, however, an inherent difficulty with laissez faire capitalism and the Jeffersonian idea that government is best when it does least, when a hands off approach, benign in an agrarian society, becomes cancerous. Within a wage earning society, where the comforts of the comfortable are contingent upon having secure employment, the imperatives of capitalism tend to work against the stability associated with the so-called "middle class," those who are comfortably neither very rich nor very poor. The more "laissez faire" the capitalism, the more the imperatives of capitalism work against the wage earner, suppressing employment, and where that is not possible, suppressing wages. Within a wage earning society, I probably don't need to point out that the imperatives of capitalism are ultimately self-defeating, insofar as employment and wages can be suppressed so effectively that they constrain demand, which further suppresses employment, which further suppresses demand, et cetera, into a vicious cycle of collapse. At this point, one of two things can happen. On the desirable side, at least from my perspective, "democracy" kicks in, not as laissez faire capitalism, but rather as government imposing constraints and mandates on laissez faire capitalism through redistributive taxation, relief for the poor and unemployed, various forms of economic stimulus, all designed to improve demand and reinvigorate employment. On the less desirable side, "autocracy" kicks in, and exercises its monopoly of power to "protect property" -- repressive measures designed, for the most part, to protect the power and influence of the rich against the growing discontent of "the people."
Neither the implicit "socialism" of the former nor the various styles of "autocracy" are particularly conducive to "individualistic values." The former does make one dependent upon the "state," reducing the whole human individual to a set of bureaucratic criteria that determine the amount and type of "assistance" available. The latter can "feel" more supportive, if not of "individualistic values," per se, then of certain "identity values," defined typically against race, religion, and ethnicity. They offer, not a redistribution of wealth per se, but a redistribution of power and influence, or more to the point, a reaffirmation of the prestige of the majority race, religion, and ethnicity -- particularly when the majority "feels" the erosion of power and influence and is seeking targets of opportunity for blame. (If not the Jews, then the Mexicans and Muslims.) They offer, again not a redistribution of wealth per se, but symbolic gestures aimed at "the people" while consolidating actual wealth among the autocrats. (The current tax cuts are a case in point, while everyone got a tax cut, they will not make a significant difference in the lives of "the people," but they have taken significant steps to consolidate and perpetuate the power and influence of the already powerful and influential.)
At the moment, the real threat to American democracy comes from the very rich, the incipient autocrat in the white house, his facilitators in the house and senate, and his so-called base, those white male protestants who feel most acutely the erosion of their power and influence, their prestige. At one point, Hofstadter writes that "one of the primary tests of the mood of a society at any given time is whether its comfortable people tend to identify, psychologically, with the power and achievements of the very successful or with the needs and sufferings of the underprivileged." At the moment, I'm not sure where the sympathies lie. It seems clear enough that they don't lie with the "needs and sufferings of the underprivileged," else the "black lives matter" movement might have garnered more steam, and there would perhaps be a bit less vituperation directed at minorities generally. The so-called "me-too" movement might be a point of light, focusing attention on victims of sexual harassment, except that I'm pretty sure the movement is less about the Hispanic chambermaid accosted in a hotel room, more about those who seek the moral affirmation of being victims while enjoying extreme forms of celebrity privilege as they "come out." Even my wife finds it difficult to feel very sorry for the victims of Harvey Weinstein. It's not altogether clear, however, that the sympathies lie with the "power and achievements of the very successful" either. The sort of disdain aimed at "elites" is a case in point. Though he has in his actions come down squarely on the side of privileged, rhetorically Trump plays both sides of the fence, his "success" serving at once as sufficient evidence of his drive and savvy, while at the same time placing him outside and above the influence of the hated elites, particularly wall street and government elites who are, or so it is felt, uniformly corrupt.
There is, however, a strong consensus that we are divided, and that anything can become fodder for the war horses on either side of the divide, and that our divisions are more and more irreconcilable in part, or so I would suggest, because the core conservative ambition is simply impossible. It's not just that we cannot turn the clock back to a golden age -- a time when America was "great." It's that we want to turn the clock back without relinquishing the very conditions that make us want to turn the clock back in the first place. I might echo Hofstadter, and suggest that, in order to understand today's conservative sympathetically, "it is important to think of them not as stupid or incapable men who [are fumbling] a simple task, but as men of reasonable and often indeed of penetrating intelligence whose fate it [is] to attempt, with great zeal and resourcefulness, a task of immense complexity and almost hopeless difficulties." Having said that, however, I am not sure how much sympathy I want to extend, in part because there is one significant difference between the progressive of yore and the conservative of today. In the past, "the Progressive agitations turned the human sympathies of the people downward rather than upward in the social scale. The progressives, by creating a climate of opinion in which, over the long run, the comfortable public was disposed to be humane, did in the end succeed in fending off that battle of social extremes of which they were so afraid." I have suggested elsewhere that the conservative party seems no longer "disposed to be humane," and are, as I suggested in a previous post, not only cultivating a climate of fear and a culture of cruelty, but are also actively pushing us toward that "battle of social extremes."
All of which might have been appropriate, when "being rich" was more modest, a time when one's riches were centered on the family farm and aligned along main street in the family business. As Hofstadter goes on to write, "up to about 1870 the United States was a nation with a rather broad diffusion of wealth, status, and power, in which the man of moderate means, especially in the many small communities, could command much deference and exert much influence. The small merchant or manufacturer, the distinguished lawyer, editor, or preacher, was a person of local eminence in an age in which local eminence mattered a great deal." Of course, as Hofstadter implies here, and details throughout, there were several transformations of American life that began after 1870, not least the increasing industrialization, which generally speaking made America more urban than rural, and which concentrated more and more wealth in fewer and fewer hands. Although one could argue that the "local eminences" carried on as before, with little diminishment of their actual wealth, it was clear however that, relative to the Carnegies, their wealth was modest and that the deference and influence was limited to the local, and a mass communications revolution with the telegraph and telephone, along with new forms of journalism, reinforced their diminished stature on the national stage. Hofstadter designated the Mugwump type, those who were "progressives not because of economic deprivations but primarily because they were victims of an upheaval in status." These were men who "suffered from the events of their time not through a shrinkage in their means but through the changed pattern in the distribution of deference and power."
Several have made similar observations about our current situation. Trump's brand of populism might be better seen as a new Mugwump type. As Buffalo Springfield might have put it, "there's something happening here, and what it is ain't exactly clear," but there are echos. Contrary to the industrialization of the late 19th and early 20th century, America is going through a process of de-industrialization. Just as in the past fewer and fewer people were employed in agriculture, today fewer and fewer people are employed in manufacturing. Part of this deindustrialization can be attributed to the outsourcing of labor to emerging nations, part can be attributed to the automation of labor, with the former (I believe?) giving way to the latter. Just as the mechanization of agriculture meant fewer and fewer hands in the field growing food, it's not that manufactured good aren't being made, and sold, but rather it takes fewer and fewer hands. This has the salutatory effect of keeping stuff cheap for the shelves of Walmart, but it also has a significant impact on manufacturing sector employment. And speaking of Walmart, following a familiar pattern of concentration and monopolization, they have made small scale retail virtually impossible in most small towns and cities across the US. They are welcomed because they offer "jobs," but not the sort of proprietorship that peopled main street and stoked civic pride. Then too, Walmart may eventually be "disrupted" by the on-line sale and distribution of goods. All of which suggests that the "new Mugwump type" is emerging as a "local eminence" that finds even its local deference and influence threatened, if not rendered irrelevant, by an emerging economy that has little use for them, and to top it off, by a new forms of celebrity influence fueled by the so called "social media," which ultimately might be bettered labeled sociopathic media. Consequently, the yearning for a golden age (with the usual elisions of nostalgia) is comprehensible, and helps explain why the Trump voter aren't only those who have suffered actual economic dislocation, but those who feel their deference and influence in the world threatened.
There is another shift regarding "work" and the "work ethic." It's not unusual for the older generation to look at the younger and decry their lack of work ethic, but here again there's something happening, though the full outline isn't yet clear. One of the shifts that happened along with the industrialization of America was a shift from the economic independence of "self-employment," to the dependencies of "wage labor." On the order of "self-employment," think of the family farm, the proprietor of a small business, or the professionals -- not the cowboys, but the doctors and lawyers and such. Part and parcel of economic individualism was the underlying assumption that, if one worked for someone else, and if one possessed the necessary drive, sufficient savvy, a dollop of thrift, then one could parlay that work into self employment. One could be, so to speak, one's own boss. For the vast majority of people, the hope for fiscal independence was delusional, and the need to engage in "wage labor," to hold down a "job," became a more or less permanent condition of life. Although economic independence was still the desired state, the wage laborer found themselves caught up within webs of dependency over which they had little influence, much less power. As an aside, it strikes me that the incipient forms of unionism were caught within a fundamental tension, or paradox, the felt need to assert some level of economic independence as well as a modicum of deference from the "powers that be," a felt need that could be satisfied only through another form of dependency, solidarity within a class identity and a dependency on others of that class, a solidarity and dependency that rankled against the felt need to assert one's self as an individual.
As a bass line beneath, there lurked notions of accountability and responsibility. Although Hofstadter would accuse me of overstating the case, I will go ahead and point out that the American soul is principally a Protestant soul and we have "inherited the moral traditions of rural evangelical Protestantism." Implicit in the Protestant soul is an "ethos of personal responsibility." Broadly speaking, it is the sense that we are primarily accountable to ourselves and responsible for our own salvation, not only in the exalted religious sense and in the mundane sense of subsistence. While the sense of accountability may extend outward to family and from there to one's local community, the further out one goes the more tenuous the accountability. I may have a duty to my wife and children, and I may need on occasion to be my brother's keeper, but I am not responsible for my neighbor's happiness. If Emerson saw the greatest sin as "limitation," the petty conformity to sanctified community standards, he would agree that, for the protestant soul at large, the greatest (if not the most salacious) sin was dependence, the failure to be self-reliant.
This "ethos of personal responsibility" works well enough for those who are self-employed -- particularly within that Jeffersonian, Jacksonian mythos of an agrarian America -- less well within an industrial America with systemic need for wage labor, where one is no longer accountable to oneself, but to an employer, who sets the terms and conditions to which they will be held accountable. The employee meets his responsibilities and consequently behaves responsibly when he or she conforms to the terms and conditions of work and can, thereby, not only support himself, but also meet his familial obligations. There is some autonomy associated with wage labor, insofar as it is not outright slavery, and one is bound only to the implicit contract that exchanges labor for cash. So long as he remains working, the wage laborer avoids dependence on others -- the extended family, charitable institutions, the government -- but unlike the small stake farmer, who was dependent only on his own labor, nature, and nature's god for his subsistence, the wage laborer is unambiguously dependent upon his employer, who not only sets the terms and conditions of work, but provides the work itself. The vast majority of wage laborers are not free not to labor, and to be without work is felt to be shameful, not only because one can no longer "support himself," but also because, having work, being gainfully employed, was an individual responsibility. So long as there is work to be done, jobs to be had, this ethos of personal responsibility seems justified, and those without work could perhaps be accused of a character flaw, the least of which was laziness, which kept them from labor.
While the "ethos of personal responsibility" may have had it origins in the traditions of rural evangelicalism, and while the wage laborer felt the obligation to work, the employer, subject to the imperatives of capitalism and imbued with the same ethos of personal responsibility, did not feel the same obligation to provide work, and when they did provide work, did not feel the obligation to provide necessarily "a living wage." By the "logic of capitalism," I mean simply this: business owners do not hire people out of a sense of largesse, or patriotism, or obligation to their employees, or because tax cuts have provided them with additional cash on hand. They hire people only in response to demand, and then they incur the expense of an employee only when they must to meet demand. To exact the greatest return on their investment, it is in their interest not only to keep the number of employee, but also their wages as low as possible. The imperatives of capitalism work on both large and small business, though for the latter, caught up within and subject to a local community, the imperatives of capitalism might find it necessary to compromise within "a preponderantly rural society with a broad diffusion of property and power," not to mention the American tradition "of unusually widespread participation of the citizen in the management of of affairs, both political and economic." As Hofstadter goes on to point out, however, "the growth of the large corporation, the labor union, and the big impenetrable political machine" were at some remove from and no longer particularly subject to local communities, or perhaps more precisely, no longer subject to the Mugwump type, those who commanded more localized wealth and influence. While the large corporation and the labor union had competing agendas, both were subject to the same unresolved tension, both stood against economic individualism and both were "clotting society into large aggregates and presenting to the unorganized citizen the prospect that all these aggregates and interests would be able to act in concert and shut out those men for whom organization was difficult or impossible." As Hofstadter notes, to a degree, "the Progressive movement was the complaint of the unorganized against the consequences of organization," or to put it another way, those who had lost a commanding voice in how things were organized.
There are two ironies or perhaps hypocrisies in all of this. The first and most obvious might be called the "for me" syndrome. The greatest of the great capitalists, of course, believed deeply in the economic individualism and the "ethos of personal responsibility" -- that is to say, they were deeply committed to their own autonomy, their own individual freedom to do as they damn well pleased to secure and increase their wealth. They were responsible for and therefore deserving of their wealth and entitled to exercise the influence that came with it. In other words, for the greatest of the great capitalists, economic individualism was a great thing "for me," though others should be subject to corporate economic and organizational needs. Moreover, for the greatest of the great capitalists, the rhetoric of economic individualism was a great thing "for me," in part because it justified their wealth, in part because it justified their efforts at organizing the social and economic structures to meet the needs of the modern corporation. Others are perfectly free to become "just like me" -- and clearly, if they had the necessary drive and savvy, they would become "just like me" -- but clearly they have failed. They clearly lack drive and must be compelled into labor, if not by whips and chains, then by push of penury. They clearly lack savvy and so must be subject to the terms and conditions of those who provide remunerative labor -- that is to say, accountable to the needs of the modern corporation.
The second and less obvious might be called the irony of progress itself. As Hofstadter points out, against the wholly independent individuals, "the processes of modern technology and machine industry -- not to speak of the complex tasks of civic life (much, much, much more so the complex tasks of urban life) make organization, specialism, hierarchy, and discipline utterly necessary." Within the agrarian world of Jefferson and Jackson, one can imagine the atomistic (or Adamistic) individual believing they were more or less a jack of all trades, the master of his own small piece of the world, subject to no one but himself, nature, and nature's God -- and so far as God is concerned, with sufficient piety, like Job, believing also that they could turn even nature and nature's God to account. As Hofstadter points out,
It had been their tradition to believe that prosperity and economic progress came not through big or monopolistic businesses -- that is, through the gains and economies of organization -- but rather through competition and hard work and individual enterprise and initiative. They had been brought up to think of the well-being of society not merely in structural terms -- not as something resting upon the sum of its technique and efficiency -- but in moral terms, as a reward for the sum total of individual qualities and personal merits. This tradition rooted in the Protestant ethic itself was being wantonly defied by the system of corporate organization.
Along with Thoreau, for example, they might critique the railroad as only an improved means to an unimproved end, but it nevertheless represented an improved means, and very few really want to forego the benefit of improved means. One could say the same thing about modern medicine, that it is only an improved means to an unimproved end, but when the "end" is saving and improving lives, it would seem foolish to reject wholly the benefit of its "improved means." Within a world that includes such "improved means," it is more difficult to imagine the atomistic (or Adamistic) individual as the master of his own small piece of the world, and as Hofstadter points out, "the progressives, object though they might to the many sacrifices of traditional values that the new society demanded, did not seriously propose to dismantle this society, forsake its material advantages, and return to a more primitive technology." Or in other words, I am suggesting that both the turn of the century "progressives" and our more current conservative radicals were and are "trying, in short, to keep the benefits of the emerging organization of life and yet to retain the scheme of individualistic values that this organization was destroying."
There is, perhaps, a third irony or paradox. The very idea of "democracy" seems deeply connected to the Protestant ethic as well -- society seen not as a structure, but as "we the people," or as Hofstadter put it above, "the sum total of individual qualities and personal merits." I'm not sure who said it first, but it is accepted as a truism that there are essentially two dangerous classes of people, the very poor and the very rich, those who have nothing to lose and those who have everything to lose. To put it simply, the many who have little tend to form mobs, while the few who have much tend to form repressive regimes to suppress and control the mob. Having few other tools at its disposal, the mob tends toward violence, which in turn is met with violence in order to maintain some semblance of social order. The French revolution is the principle case in point, and it is often accepted also as a truism that the American revolution escaped the fate of the French because there was greater social and economic equality within American society. Our political system can be democratic largely because the majority of people belong, neither to the very poor, nor the very rich, but rather to a broad segment of the population that could be considered "comfortable," or at least "comfortable" enough that they had no desire to over-throw the existing order of things, in part because they had the hope of joining the ranks of the "slightly more comfortable."
Then too, it is also accepted more or less as a truism that democracy and laissez faire capitalism go hand in hand, the "market place" being the place where "the people" go vote with their wallets, where the "sum total of individual economic decisions" act as a self-regulating "invisible hand" guiding the economy. A business competes for market share, or popular approval, and if a business succeeds (or fails) it does so because "we the people" have decided it should succeed (or fail) with our pocketbooks. There is, however, an inherent difficulty with laissez faire capitalism and the Jeffersonian idea that government is best when it does least, when a hands off approach, benign in an agrarian society, becomes cancerous. Within a wage earning society, where the comforts of the comfortable are contingent upon having secure employment, the imperatives of capitalism tend to work against the stability associated with the so-called "middle class," those who are comfortably neither very rich nor very poor. The more "laissez faire" the capitalism, the more the imperatives of capitalism work against the wage earner, suppressing employment, and where that is not possible, suppressing wages. Within a wage earning society, I probably don't need to point out that the imperatives of capitalism are ultimately self-defeating, insofar as employment and wages can be suppressed so effectively that they constrain demand, which further suppresses employment, which further suppresses demand, et cetera, into a vicious cycle of collapse. At this point, one of two things can happen. On the desirable side, at least from my perspective, "democracy" kicks in, not as laissez faire capitalism, but rather as government imposing constraints and mandates on laissez faire capitalism through redistributive taxation, relief for the poor and unemployed, various forms of economic stimulus, all designed to improve demand and reinvigorate employment. On the less desirable side, "autocracy" kicks in, and exercises its monopoly of power to "protect property" -- repressive measures designed, for the most part, to protect the power and influence of the rich against the growing discontent of "the people."
Neither the implicit "socialism" of the former nor the various styles of "autocracy" are particularly conducive to "individualistic values." The former does make one dependent upon the "state," reducing the whole human individual to a set of bureaucratic criteria that determine the amount and type of "assistance" available. The latter can "feel" more supportive, if not of "individualistic values," per se, then of certain "identity values," defined typically against race, religion, and ethnicity. They offer, not a redistribution of wealth per se, but a redistribution of power and influence, or more to the point, a reaffirmation of the prestige of the majority race, religion, and ethnicity -- particularly when the majority "feels" the erosion of power and influence and is seeking targets of opportunity for blame. (If not the Jews, then the Mexicans and Muslims.) They offer, again not a redistribution of wealth per se, but symbolic gestures aimed at "the people" while consolidating actual wealth among the autocrats. (The current tax cuts are a case in point, while everyone got a tax cut, they will not make a significant difference in the lives of "the people," but they have taken significant steps to consolidate and perpetuate the power and influence of the already powerful and influential.)
At the moment, the real threat to American democracy comes from the very rich, the incipient autocrat in the white house, his facilitators in the house and senate, and his so-called base, those white male protestants who feel most acutely the erosion of their power and influence, their prestige. At one point, Hofstadter writes that "one of the primary tests of the mood of a society at any given time is whether its comfortable people tend to identify, psychologically, with the power and achievements of the very successful or with the needs and sufferings of the underprivileged." At the moment, I'm not sure where the sympathies lie. It seems clear enough that they don't lie with the "needs and sufferings of the underprivileged," else the "black lives matter" movement might have garnered more steam, and there would perhaps be a bit less vituperation directed at minorities generally. The so-called "me-too" movement might be a point of light, focusing attention on victims of sexual harassment, except that I'm pretty sure the movement is less about the Hispanic chambermaid accosted in a hotel room, more about those who seek the moral affirmation of being victims while enjoying extreme forms of celebrity privilege as they "come out." Even my wife finds it difficult to feel very sorry for the victims of Harvey Weinstein. It's not altogether clear, however, that the sympathies lie with the "power and achievements of the very successful" either. The sort of disdain aimed at "elites" is a case in point. Though he has in his actions come down squarely on the side of privileged, rhetorically Trump plays both sides of the fence, his "success" serving at once as sufficient evidence of his drive and savvy, while at the same time placing him outside and above the influence of the hated elites, particularly wall street and government elites who are, or so it is felt, uniformly corrupt.
There is, however, a strong consensus that we are divided, and that anything can become fodder for the war horses on either side of the divide, and that our divisions are more and more irreconcilable in part, or so I would suggest, because the core conservative ambition is simply impossible. It's not just that we cannot turn the clock back to a golden age -- a time when America was "great." It's that we want to turn the clock back without relinquishing the very conditions that make us want to turn the clock back in the first place. I might echo Hofstadter, and suggest that, in order to understand today's conservative sympathetically, "it is important to think of them not as stupid or incapable men who [are fumbling] a simple task, but as men of reasonable and often indeed of penetrating intelligence whose fate it [is] to attempt, with great zeal and resourcefulness, a task of immense complexity and almost hopeless difficulties." Having said that, however, I am not sure how much sympathy I want to extend, in part because there is one significant difference between the progressive of yore and the conservative of today. In the past, "the Progressive agitations turned the human sympathies of the people downward rather than upward in the social scale. The progressives, by creating a climate of opinion in which, over the long run, the comfortable public was disposed to be humane, did in the end succeed in fending off that battle of social extremes of which they were so afraid." I have suggested elsewhere that the conservative party seems no longer "disposed to be humane," and are, as I suggested in a previous post, not only cultivating a climate of fear and a culture of cruelty, but are also actively pushing us toward that "battle of social extremes."
No comments:
Post a Comment