Neoconservatism is a topic that has received a fair amount of commentary during the course of the past six years, and seems likely to receive still more, as a lame-duck administration continues to wallow in lameness, the war continues to drag, and the host organism of the neoconservative movement, the Republican Party, hurtles toward the abyss of 2008. Neoconservatism is a topic warranting serious reflection, for while the media and the average American might well content themselves with the knowledge that some neoconservatives promoted a foreign policy that resulted in a Mesopotamian quagmire, the tendency is not one that will be slinking off to die on one of history's ash-heaps anytime soon.
In light of these considerations, it seemed preferable - instead of offering a quick response to a thoughtful comment - to elaborate upon the nature and origins of neoconservatism.
It has been argued that neoconservatism is the survival of the consensus liberalism that preceded the radicalization of the Democratic Party. Were the relationship of neoconservatism to this consensus liberalism controverted or ambiguous, it would be necessary to undertake a painstaking, tedious analysis of the respective political and economic doctrines, to unearth information about the social formations or groups from which prominent liberals and neoconservatives emerged, and to attempt to trace the lineage of institutions and interests that the neoconservatives have come to represent. Fortunately, none of this is necessary, strictly speaking, inasmuch as most neoconservatives openly avow their intellectual origins in the liberalism which preceded the great unraveling of the Sixties; in order to understand neoconservatism, in addition to grasping the causes of neoconservative alienation from the Democratic Party, it is only necessary to understand something of that older liberal consensus.
That older liberal consensus might be categorized as the American technocracy, a creed of a caste of managers and professionals whose knowledge of the intricacies of modern political economy, finance, and governance imparted a heightened awareness of the imperatives and possibilities of rational administration, and, in a sense, entitled them to exercise power. Through rational administration, the application of the methods of science to the resolution of political, social, and economic problems, all citizens, possessed of equal rights, would be empowered to participate on equal terms in the luminous future of the Democracy. In other words, in order to identify the specific difference of this liberalism, it is not sufficient to retrace the course of intellectual history; it is necessary to identify the difference of the institutions they inhabited; it is imperative that the specific difference of managerialism, as analyzed by James Burnham, and later, by Samuel Francis, be grasped. Sketching the lineaments of Burnham's theory, Francis writes:
Although in a narrow sense Burnham's theory sought to explain the civilizational impact of the "separation of ownership and control" in the corporate economy and the rise of large corporations directed by professional managers rather than by traditional individual owners and partnerships, in a broader sense his theory applies to political and social, as well as economic, organization. The characteristic feature of twentieth-century history has been the vast expansion in the size, scale of transactions, and complexity and technicality of functions that political, social, and economic organizations exhibit. This expansion, which Pitrim Sorokin also noted under the label "colossalism", was itself made possible by the growth of mass population and by the development of technologies that could sustain the colossal scale of organization. Just as business firms expanded far beyond the point at which they could be operated, directed, and controlled effectively by individual owners and their families, who generally lacked the technical skills to manage them, so the state also underwent a transformation in scale that removed it from the control of traditional elites, citizens, and their legal representatives. Just as in the mass corporations a new elite of professional managers emerged that replaced the traditional entrepreneurial or bourgeois elite of businessmen, so in the state also a new elite of professionally trained managers or bureaucrats developed that challenged and generally became dominant over the older political elites of aristocrats and amateur politicians who occupied the formal offices of government.
Continuing with an elaboration of the consequences of this development, Francis continues:
Traditional social relationships, especially the inheritance of leadership and property through family and community bonds, became irrelevant in the large corporation, controlled by managerial "meritocracies" and not by the owners of property. The units of the economy - corporations and mass unions - themselves became closely integrated with the mass state and dependent on the state for legal privileges, subsidization, and the regulation of aggregate demand through fiscal and monetary policy.
There is, all of this is to say, a tremendous difference, and that one of quality, and not mere degree, between the older order of smaller businesses, entrepreneurs, and local production and distribution, and the order of managerial capitalism (though there is a certain continuity of logic, which nonetheless required an alteration of social and legal forms in order to be realized - but that is a topic for another occasion); just as there is such a difference between, say, the Republic as outlined in the Constitution and the semi-unitary state, replete with standing civil-service bureaucracies, under which we now live.
And so we come back, full circle, to the neoconservatives, who, once more, avow without reservation that it is from this managerial liberalism that they have come. And to it they return. The error of neoconservatism is essentially to conflate the two, knowingly or inadvertently, as if to presuppose a continuity of the forms, institutions, animating ethoses, legal frameworks, and sociologies of the respective orders. This error presupposes that the narrative of American history expresses the progressive, teleological unfolding of an immanent logic; hence, all of the talk about the Constitution containing a superior economic idea, as well as the susceptibility of neoconservatives to Hegelian talk of The End of History, or, more recently, the universality of the longing for democracy and capitalism. The idea is quite silly, really: all of that controversy between Jeffersonians and Hamiltonians, between agrarians and industrialists, free-traders (in those days, the agrarians, about which more anon) and tariff-men, supporters and opponents of the Bank; the legal - and thus inescapably political - elaboration and emergence of new corporate forms, particularly in the post-bellum period; the emergence of the railroads (an undertaking of a mixed, corporatist economy if ever there was one) and national, mass markets; the expansion of the control of banks over the agricultural economy through the expansion of credit, precipitating both agricultural consolidation and Populism - all of this neoconservatives actually do discuss, and yet in its detail it betrays the uniqueness and contingency of the social formations they wish to portray as inevitable.
Succinctly stated, the neoconservative narrative, and the ideological apologetic, thus conflates a sort of subsidiarist economy with a corporatist one, and as Michael Novak demonstrates, appeals to the virtues and resonant evocations of the former in order to legitimate the latter. Neoconservatism, as the heir of consensus liberalism, the liberalism which could confidently, if anachronistically, proclaim that there was nothing of conservatism in the American story, and that conservatism was naught but a series of irritable mental gestures, supports concentration in that it supports big business - which by nature straddles public and private spheres - and has, to be specific, embraced the New Deal and its legacy. This is precisely what we see of neoconservatism today, what with its support for globalization, mass immigration, and the managerial state.
This leads into the specific issues that our commenter had with my initial piece on neoconservatism. It is certainly true that neoconservatives tend to find any policy that even hints of 'protection' for domestic production and labour horrifying; but to note this is not to settle the question. "Protection" is one of those categories of political economy that only acquires meaning within a definite context; rather than carrying a univocal meaning, its meaning is relative to the interests of the class or classes requesting the favour of the government. To be accorded protection is to be accorded legal and fiscal measures favourable to one's interests and ambitions, and our narrow use of the term for policies that Pat Buchanan would favour obscures much more than it illuminates; it is obtuse and obfuscatory, inasmuch as it conceals from view the political processes which alone make our 'free trade' possible. The more rooted (relative to successors) economic elite of, say, the Great Barbecue of the last third of the nineteenth century demanded 'protectionist' measures in the form of tariffs and the like, as that period was characterized by the emergence of large-scale industrialization, and by a massive consolidation of productive enterprises. With the emergence of managerialism, with its separation of (nominal) ownership (stock-trading, etc.) from actual control, the dominant economic elites shift, and with the shift, the interests embodied in the system shift; the interests are no longer primarily those of proprietors, but those of professionals seeking ever-wider fields for the exercise of the skills "only they possess", which exercise entails not the administration of a stable piece of property, but the movement of capital, the manipulation of economic assets, hard or soft, the elaboration of new forms of trade and new trade relationships, and even the movement of "human capital" (love that dehumanizing, instrumentalizing terminology!), all in the pursuit of efficiency, "improvement", expansion - which is to say, a higher rate of return, a greater exchange value.
In such circumstances, structural changes themselves render obsolete - relative to the interests of technocrats, that is - old-fashioned protectionist measures; but they do not render obsolete the necessary legal and political structuring of political economy. Protection now becomes the stabilization and expansion of the opportunities of the managerial class, whence the removal of old political restraints, and the enactment of new ones, which enable, facilitate, and secure 'free trade'. The new restraints limit the possibilities of republican deliberation, while simultaneously freeing the managers to ply their trade and, often enough, securing them with subsidies, Ex-Im guarantees, cozy arrangements with unsavory regimes, legal and administrative changes that increase leverage over now disfavoured groups (Labour, suppliers to certain mega-corporations, citizens at large through mass immigration), and measures that favour large producers over smaller outfits. Neoconservatives may often inveigh against "corporate welfare" of the direct transfer type; but it is not necessary for them to support this in order to support the advancement and security of the interests of a concrete social group, in this case one unquestionably elite.
Finally, while neoconservatives have often articulated more nuanced understandings of democratic capitalism - and Irving Kristol is a paramount example of this, about which I might write next week - the very structural logic of managerial capitalism, particularly in its globalist phase, is incontrovertibly consumerist; and while most neoconservatives may rightly condemn the excesses and dissolution consumerism entails, they are in the contradictory position of advocating the private cultivation of virtues that the system they defend, whether with two cheers or as the End of History, not only undermines, but often subverts with vices that are the opposite numbers of those virtues. So frugality and self-discipline are made to war with "go forth and shop" consumerist crapulence. Neoconservatism cannot fully escape this tendency, for it is invested in the defense of a system which not only makes it possible, but requires it to a significant extent if it is to be sustained and perpetuated. Francis, characterizing a passage from Novak's The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism, writes:
The preferred instrument of progress for neoconservatives is the managerial corporation and "democratic capitalism," which, in neoconservative Michael Novak's view, engenders a "continuous revolution' resulting in increasing levels of material affluence and cultural "openness" in place of the confining institutions and values of traditional and bourgeois society.
Even allowing for some degree of interpretive bias, there remains much talk of dynamism and growth in neoconservatism, as well as much talk about openness; the most charitable conclusion one can draw is that neoconservatism is divided against itself, a direct consequence of the attempt to incorporate the legacy of the Enlightenment into a Christian framework (or vice versa; you choose), as it is the former that bequeathed to us the ideological, rationalizing temper and the conception of man as a being whose desires are not only potentially infinite, but to be harnessed as the great anthropological engine of material progress. Both of these are, as they say, features, and not bugs, of the system of democratic capitalism.
Comments (16)
Nice post, Maximos. This touched on what I (as someone with an economics degree) find so frustrating about Novak's work.
The most frustrating aspect of the economic analysis of neoconservatives (especially Michael Novak) is how slapdash it is. In their writings, they simply pick some aspect of the market economy and give a religious or moral gloss (usually involving the "virtue" of competitiveness or some such nonsense). There is very little attempt to look at the market economy as an integrated whole. Novak and his allies want to look exclusively at the producer side of the economy and, so, go on an on about how producing for the market requires hard work and other good qualities. Yet, they never really integrate consumption into their analysis. What does the insistence on consumption in today's economy mean for those "virtues" of hard work that went into production? More broadly, because Novak only talks about production, he can't really grasp, let alone do justice to, the broader pernicious social trends that the market has set in motion (e.g., both parents working, consequent weaker family ties, etc.).
I think that since Novak has been repeating this stuff for so long (nearly 30 years now!), the oversimplifications have taken on an almost ideological character, designed to reduce the complexity of life for true believers.
Posted by scriblerus | May 5, 2007 10:27 AM
You are very kind to respond, and to respond so thoughtfully. The reply the post deserves is not the one I have time to write at the moment. I hope you will be charitable to a quick response which is by nature scattered and incomplete.
1. The genealogy is unimpeachable: the neoconservative founders, almost without exception (J.Q. Wilson?) began their intellectual lives as New Dealers or Trostkyites.
2. The neoconservatives did, however, turn fairly decisively against the elite classes of those two systems.
3. It is nonetheless correct to note that any economic policy creates some elite, and that many of the beneficiaries of last 30 years (consultants, investment bankers, hedge fund traders, LBO groups and other financial engineers) benefit as much from free flows of capital and laissez faire as earlier elites did from tariffs and government monopoly.
4. That said, it is not obvious that neoconservative economic policy aims at benefiting these groups. I rather imagine the growth of the hedge fund industry took neoconservatives (as it took us all) rather by surprise.
5. Immigration seems to me an issue apart, or at least, analytically separable from other neoconservative economic policy. One can, I think, easily imagine a neoconservatism which seeks very strong limits on immigration. It is much harder to imagine a neoconservatism that seeks very strong government limitation on capitalist 'creative destruction' stemming from technology.
6. The action is exactly where you say it is: the question of whether modern, industrial, capitalism is intrinsically hostile to Christian (or republican) virtue, and if so, how to ameliorate the damage.
Posted by Ben A | May 5, 2007 6:19 PM
Neoconservative economic analysis does often amount to the application of a veneer of morality or religiosity to a feature of a market economy which is simply assumed as a given. I suspect that at the deepest levels, this is the consequence of a sort of inversion of the Fable of the Bees sort of analysis, which acknowledged the vices which the older tradition perceived as underlying the newer economic system, yet imagined that a marvelous unplanned concinnity would transmute private vices into the public virtue of abundance. Neoconservatives seem to argue, in their glosses, that private virtues generate this marvelously fecund system of economy, that nonetheless contains incentives to vice... which we must guard against by restating the virtues which give rise to the system.
Whenever I perceive that sort of circularity and point-missing, I begin to suspect that something more is at work. For neoconservatives, that "something more" can be Ledeen-style lunacy, or something quite banal: this is the system we're stuck with, so lets refrain from both thinking too deeply about it and rocking the boat by trying to reform it, as reform efforts simply play into the scripts written by the left.
The neoconservatives did, however, turn fairly decisively against the elite classes of those two systems.
Well, the neoconservative relationship to the managerial establishment is more complicated, I believe. The neoconservatives were disquieted by the radicalism of the counterculture and its companion movements in politics, and they tended to analyze this emergent class as a product of the very abundance generated by democratic capitalism:
Neoconservatism acknowledged that the new class emerged from the very logic of the capitalist economic system, but did not on that account repudiate the system that created such radicals; rather, neoconservatism rejected the critique of the counterculture as an attempt to politicize the operations of the capitalist system by means of the imposition of cultural ideals which transcend the operations of that system considered in itself. The problem of the New Class in neoconservative literature is restricted to a condemnation of an adversarial culture, centered in the universities and elitist in tendency, a culture which, in its profound ingratitude for the munificence of the capitalist system, nonetheless strives to deligitimate and subvert that system.
The neoconservatives jettisoned their allegiance to socialism as they were compelled to confront the evidence of the utter failure of actually-existing socialism; they were provided an additional stimulus toward this end by the critiques of the establishment articulated by the New Class/New Left, which presupposed socialism as the repository and realization of the allegedly humane values denigrated and thwarted by capitalism. Relatedly, they did not so much repudiate the New Deal as reject the cultural engineering undertaken by the Great Society, which, while it could be interpreted as an extension of the promise of the New Deal, came to be interpreted as an attempt to achieve a package of cultural ends (social equality and integration) and economic advances by means of a political process that generated perverse incentives. As with the critique of the New Class, neoconservatives seemed to be arguing that it was the attempt to politicize the operations of the system, in pursuit of goods the system could not acknowledge of itself, that created perverse incentive structures and rendered the Great Society futile.
All of which, I suppose, is a roundabout way of stating that while the neoconservatives repudiated, and that pretty decisively, the socialist fascination, along with something - the Great Society - that could be regarded as an extension of the New Deal, they did not repudiate the latter, or the managerial system of which it is a constituent part, so much as a cultural mutation made possible by that system. Rather than perceiving the New Class/New Left as an organic growth of a system already alienated in its operations from the concrete structures of traditional life, the neoconservatives abstracted the New Class from its origins, regarding it as a sort of systemic contradiction that could be analytically and politically detached. Hence, the arbitrarily truncated theory of the New Class found in neoconservatism:
The neoconservative attempt to sever the connection between the New Class and the counterculture and the managerial establishment is, at any rate, now moot, as the counterculture has been reabsorbed by the establishment.
That said, it is not obvious that neoconservative economic policy aims at benefiting these groups.
Well, neoconservative economic policy need not necessarily aim consciously and directly at benefitting a specific class of elites, though it does frequently exhibit this characteristic. Rather, all the policies need do is secure the system and provide for its expansion/elaboration, and the nature and logic of the system of democratic capitalism will "take care of the rest".
Immigration seems to me an issue apart, or at least, analytically separable from other neoconservative economic policy.
Well, again, yes and no. One might argue that several of the fellows and writers of the Manhattan Institute fill this bill, for example. Nevertheless, the general tendency of neoconservative doctrine regarding immigration is to support immigration on grounds of the imperatives of equality and nondiscrimination, which are considered as entailments of the propositional conception of American identity (a product of the logic of managerialism), while actually arguing for immigration on economic grounds (which argumentation tends towards innumeracy). This is obviously not a universal pattern, but it is one that occurs with such frequency that it is reasonable to suspect that the actual arguments do not quite touch the ideological core of the neoconservative position.
Yet, they never really integrate consumption into their analysis. What does the insistence on consumption in today's economy mean for those "virtues" of hard work that went into production?
The action is exactly where you say it is: the question of whether modern, industrial, capitalism is intrinsically hostile to Christian (or republican) virtue, and if so, how to ameliorate the damage.
The general form of the issues broached by these questions is that of the relationship of concrete social and economic structures to the the moral life of the virtues. Historically, I think it obvious that different social structures incentivize different manifestations of virtue and vice - incentivize, that is, not determine. But I think it sufficient to observe that it is only under the pressures imposed by limits of various types that man develops and manifests virtue. An economic system which, by its very structural logic, incessantly overcomes all limits, all fixities and stabilities, and requires consumers to replicate this logic personally if it is to be sustained, ill conduces to either the personal qualities or the social relationships and institutions (diffused, subsidiary powers, local authority, etc.) presupposed by republicanism. Or, if you dislike big government, you'd best not have big business.
Posted by Maximos | May 5, 2007 9:41 PM
Mr. Martin,
I am familiar with your writing from your comments over at Daniel's blog, and I’m pleased that this new group blog will be a more regular forum for your thoughts. Daniel has forced me to re-examine some of my cherished neoconservative foreign policy beliefs, so perhaps you will do the same with respect to political economy. But for now, I think this post obscures more than it illuminates. To wit, you suggest that it is correct to characterize neoconservatism as “the survival of the consensus liberalism that preceded the radicalization of the Democratic Party.” You then go on to define this “consensus liberalism” as
"…American technocracy, a creed of a caste of managers and professionals whose knowledge of the intricacies of modern political economy, finance, and governance imparted a heightened awareness of the imperatives and possibilities of rational administration, and, in a sense, entitled them to exercise power. Through rational administration, the application of the methods of science to the resolution of political, social, and economic problems, all citizens, possessed of equal rights, would be empowered to participate on equal terms in the luminous future of the Democracy."
Finally, you say that neoconservatives “embraced the New Deal and its legacy” and you define this legacy as “support for globalization, mass immigration, and the managerial state.”
Setting aside your quixotic description of this legacy, I think your description of neoconservatives is incomplete and perhaps a better description of the history of neocon thinking. While it is true that depending on how you define the New Deal’s “legacy” and “consensus liberalism”, the neocons were not animated by
"wholesale opposition to the welfare state which had marked American conservatism since the days of the New Deal. Unlike older schools of American conservatism, they were not for abolishing the welfare state but only for setting certain limits to it. Those limits did not, in their view, involve issues of principal, such as the legitimate size and role of the central government in the American constitutional order. Rather, they were to be determined by practical considerations, such as the precise point at which the incentive to work was undermined by the availability of welfare benefits, or the point at which the redistribution of income began to erode economic growth, or the point at which egalitarianism came into serious conflict with liberty". [from Norman Podhoretz’s Neoconservatism: A Eulogy, found in The Norman Pohoretz Reader, 2004]
However, it is also true that folks like Kristol (in the journal The Public Interest) and Poderhertz, through their critiques of the welfare state’s increasingly statist tendencies, realized the damage the welfare state was doing to the traditional conservative virtues of hard work, thrift, and stable families, and began to implicitly sympathize with the “older schools of American conservatism” without explicitly acknowledging this intellectual debt. To use just one example, Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), informally known as welfare, was singled out for harsh criticism for its destructive effect on the two-parent family (particularly in the black community) and its harmful effects on the incentive to work. From here it is not a far leap to begin to wonder whether other aspects of the welfare state (e.g. Social Security) might lead to the same harmful effects.
And so, in their later years, neo-cons recognized the folly of “rational administration” (perhaps increasingly influenced by smart libertarians, as well as their own strong intellectual defense of capitalism, see for example, Michael Novak) and Podhoretz could claim in 1996:
"By now most neoconservatives have pretty well given up on the welfare state – by which, as they see it, American society has been mugged just as surely as they themselves once were by reality. They may disagree with other schools of conservative thought, and with one another, over the best and most humane way to phase out particular features of the welfare state, or over the question of whether state can do a better job than the federal government in administering social policy…Nor is there any disagreement over the desirability of working to get rid of the welfare state, or at least as much of it as is politically possible". [from Norman Podhoretz’s Neoconservatism: A Eulogy, found in The Norman Pohoretz Reader, 2004]
Finally, we come to the question of what we both mean when I refer to capitalism (or democratic capitalism) and what you mean when you refer to “managerialism” or “managerial capitalism, particularly in its globalist phase” which you claim “is incontrovertibly consumerist”. Here I must confess that I find all your (and Sam Francis’) descriptions quite silly. All of political economy is “consumerist” in the sense that all individuals are consumers and the study of economics is simply the study of the allocation of scarce resources. I just don’t understand the paleo concern with scale and technology, for in my simple analysis these are simply ways in which people can allocate scarce resources more effectively than they could in the past. And just as you had laws and the cultivation of private virtue (usually through Christianity, at least in the West) keeping greed and theft in check when life was characterized by “proprietors” or small family farms, so we have laws and Christianity keeping the same human vices in check today.
Again, quoting your critique of the neocon support for the modern economy (which has really morphed into the mainstream conservative/libertarian position), you say:
"Protection now becomes the stabilization and expansion of the opportunities of the managerial class, whence the removal of old political restraints, and the enactment of new ones, which enable, facilitate, and secure 'free trade'. The new restraints limit the possibilities of republican deliberation, while simultaneously freeing the managers to ply their trade and, often enough, securing them with subsidies, Ex-Im guarantees, cozy arrangements with unsavory regimes, legal and administrative changes that increase leverage over now disfavoured groups (Labour, suppliers to certain mega-corporations, citizens at large through mass immigration), and measures that favour large producers over smaller outfits."
To all of this, the only sensible response is to wonder what you are talking about. Because in just the next sentence you point out that neocons (and again, I should note that it is really all sorts of mainstream conservatives) are opposed to corporate welfare, or more specifically the efforts of the government to subsidize one sector of the economy at the expense of another. Everything you list above (“subsidies, Ex-IM guarantees, etc.) are programs I would guess 95% of all mainstream conservatives, including the neocons, would oppose.
In short, I don’t believe you make a persuasive case that a) the managerial class is a special and separate phenomenon from modern capitalism and b) this class is in any way harmful to capitalism in a special and separate way from any group that might want to use government to influence public policy. More importantly, the neocon support for the modern, technologically advanced capitalist economy is really just a belief that
"[this economy] was far better than socialism at producing wealth…[and] it even managed to distribute it more widely; and not only that it was good in itself, being a form of freedom…[and] a great bulwark against totalitarianism." [from Norman Podhoretz’s Neoconservatism: A Eulogy, found in The Norman Pohoretz Reader, 2004]
In contrast to the quote you provide by Mr. Francis, I would suggest that “the values of traditional and bourgeois society” are perfectly compatible with dynamic capitalism, although I agree that tensions between the two will arise from time to time and it is perfectly sensible to talk about using government to help resolve these tensions.
(I wrote the above before reading the latest comments, so forgive me if I don't address some of your newer points)
Posted by Jeff Singer | May 6, 2007 3:10 PM
Mr. Singer, it is nice to see you over here.
Unlike older schools of American conservatism, they were not for abolishing the welfare state but only for setting certain limits to it. Those limits did not, in their view, involve issues of principal, such as the legitimate size and role of the central government in the American constitutional order. Rather, they were to be determined by practical considerations, such as the precise point at which the incentive to work was undermined by the availability of welfare benefits, or the point at which the redistribution of income began to erode economic growth, or the point at which egalitarianism came into serious conflict with liberty".
...it is also true that folks like Kristol (in the journal The Public Interest) and Poderhertz, through their critiques of the welfare state’s increasingly statist tendencies, realized the damage the welfare state was doing to the traditional conservative virtues of hard work, thrift, and stable families, and began to implicitly sympathize with the “older schools of American conservatism” without explicitly acknowledging this intellectual debt.
By now most neoconservatives have pretty well given up on the welfare state – by which, as they see it, American society has been mugged just as surely as they themselves once were by reality.
I hope that it will be apparent that my object in quoting such substantial passages is not to achieve a new level of tedium and redundancy, but to make three intertwined points. First, the neoconservative scepticism concerning the welfare state was not rooted - or, at a minimum, granting that neoconservatives, as you argue, were borrowing aspects of traditional conservative philosophy without express attribution, not firmly rooted - in a principled, philosophical stance regarding the nature and limits of governmental power, the federal, subsidiary system of governance, and so on. Their concerns were almost wholly pragmatic, which is also to say, technocratic, and pace what I take to be the argument here, inseparable from the methodologies of rational administration: it is absolutely impossible to determine the point at which a given programme of a welfare state apparatus begins to subvert incentives to work, or begins to undermine the foundations of growth, except by the application of the rational methods of the "social sciences", which are the tricks of the trade of rational, managerial administration.
Second, this pragmatic, technocratic orientation has led the neoconservatives to be somewhat diffident in their repudiations of the legacy of the welfare state in America. While one can find examples of neoconservatives who commendably argue that there no longer obtain any principled justifications for the welfare state, and that the only serious open question is that of the immediate political feasibility of measures to dismantle it, one can also pour over issues of the Weekly Standard - and, to a lesser extent, National Review - and find articulations of such things as "National Greatness Conservatism", "Big Government Conservatism", and "Compassionate Conservatism". One might postulate that there exists a diversity of opinion on the subject within neoconservatism, but the movement does have the tendency to devise reformulations of the original concept, striving with each iteration to hit upon the formula that will best embody that rational balance between means and ends.
Third, the passages quoted suffice to demonstrate that at the core of the neoconservative disavowal of socialism was the realization that socialism simply failed to deliver on its terrestrial promises of material abundance and social harmony. Neoconservatives might well attribute this failure to the stubborn realities of human nature, but that human nature is one conceived after the fashion of the early political economists, along with such eminences as John Locke; these doctrines of human nature foreground the acquisitive instincts in a manner which is arguably unbalanced and scarcely consonant with the broader sweep of the great tradition. The consequence of this is that the neoconservative rejection of socialism, along with some of the works of the welfare state, is itself flawed or equivocal, inasmuch as it reposes on a flawed conception of human nature; the conception of the ends of human nature is either somewhat constrained, or unbalanced.
All of political economy is “consumerist” in the sense that all individuals are consumers and the study of economics is simply the study of the allocation of scarce resources.
Yes, in some nominal sense, this is simply true - true by definition - since it is obviously the case that few people will ever achieve perfect self-sufficiency, and so will be compelled to barter, truck, and trade in order to acquire the necessities of life. However, what this rationalist understanding of the economic effaces is precisely the question of the manner in which economic and social organization privileges certain expressions of human nature over others, where certain expressions may or may not be more consistent with man's deepest nature and longings. Or, to provide the matter with a different formulation, this modern understanding of economy tends to slight consideration of the social institutions - the restraints and institutional frameworks, customary and otherwise - within which the allocation of resources takes place; political economy may consider them, but seldom grasps that these restraints upon purely economic rationality exist precisely because people are often willing to sacrifice economic goods for the sake of higher cultural, religious, personal, and communal goods.
I just don’t understand the paleo concern with scale and technology, for in my simple analysis these are simply ways in which people can allocate scarce resources more effectively than they could in the past.
The paleo concern with scale and technology is simply this: increasing economies of scale, and the undiscriminating approach to technology that often animates the pursuit of such economies, both by nature (the emergence of large-scale industrial production of goods rendered obsolescent small craft producers, but those smaller enterprises made possible a more rooted community life, and enabled the craftsmen themselves to develop integral goods which industrial employment simply did not) and by means of the concentration they at once make possible and ensure, thwart the realization of many personal and social goods, resulting in a fragmentation of the personality, and engenders the emergence of economic and political institutions inimical to robust self-governance. This is a story history tells incessantly, whether we are referring to the history of the enclosures and the dispossession of the peasantry of England, which concentrated economic and political power in the hands of a new aristocracy, leading ultimately to the emergence of the Empire, or our own history, in which the emergence of the national, corporatist economy in the several decades subsequent to the Civil War was not only accompanied by an increasing nationalization of political power and energies, but also precipitated reactions which themselves further concentrated political power at the national level. Britain would not have had her dalliances with socialism, nor America her progressivism, were it not for the dislocations generated by those "paleo bugbears of scale and concentration", dislocations resented by the people, who stubbornly clung to the belief that there existed real goods of human flourishing that could not be achieved by purely economic means. People desire any number of goods that cannot be encompassed by a social order that permits enormous concentrations of economic and political power, and such goods correspond to ends integral to human nature itself: stability, some sense of rootedness, the sense the one's employment is not mindless Dilbert drudgery, but actually develops the personality (perhaps even the virtues), some measure of influence over the forces and factors that impinge upon the course of life, connection to others ina community of persons who are more than social atoms - all of which necessitate smaller-scale political, social, and economic organization.
And just as you had laws and the cultivation of private virtue (usually through Christianity, at least in the West) keeping greed and theft in check when life was characterized by “proprietors” or small family farms, so we have laws and Christianity keeping the same human vices in check today.
The salient difference between "then" and "now" is that "then", the very structures of society themselves conduced to the development of a sense of limits and responsibility, in the absence of which the cultivation of virtues becomes more difficult, their realization more tenuous; "now", the very structures of society provide scant restraint upon immoderate passions which, by availing themselves of 'economies of scale', often issue in the annihilation of entire ways of life, ways of life which anchor communities and impart identity. Immoderate passions, tending to vice, have been granted public status, while virtue has been almost wholly privatized.
To all of this, the only sensible response is to wonder what you are talking about.
In the passage concerning 'protection', I was attempting to articulate the argument that our national discourse, in which "protectionism" has come to refer to a single class of policy proposals aimed at the retention of domestic industry, is something of a shibboleth, a political hieroglyph invoked by certain factions as a curse, which obscures much more than it discloses. The salient point is not so much whether specific policies are maintained, but that any set of policies embodies and institutionalizes a certain set of interests; the question, therefore, concerns the nature of the interests served by any particular policy-set, and their contribution to, or subtraction from, the common good of the people. Furthermore, what I intended by remarks upon various forms of corporate welfare was only that, regardless of the opinions of neoconservatives on the subject - and I should say that those opinions seem to me to be somewhat less than uniformly opposed, though this matters little to my argument - we seem to receive such policy outcomes anyway. In any event, recent expressions of big-government conservatism, all arising from the neoconservative milieu, have assumed forms not at all inconsistent with the provision of such benefits.
In short, I don’t believe you make a persuasive case that a) the managerial class is a special and separate phenomenon from modern capitalism and b) this class is in any way harmful to capitalism in a special and separate way from any group that might want to use government to influence public policy.
I was not endeavouring to advance the claim that the managerial class is either separate from capitalism or uniquely harmful thereto; my argument was that the managerial class is integral with capitalism in its late-modern form, an organic growth of a capitalism which achieved certain levels of concentration and complexity. Being integral with this form of capitalism, it is difficult to perceive how it could be separate from or harmful to it; rather, the argument is that this managerial capitalism exercises deleterious effects upon other institutions and goods of society, ranging from small communities to the family itself. And while it is indeed true that neoconservative support for this system is grounded in the belief that
It is my argument that this is a reductive approach to political economy and philosophy. It is insufficient as justification to cite the system's manifest and incontestable superiority in generating and distributing wealth, and its effects in counteracting the totalitarian temptation of Twentieth-century politics. In light of the efficacy of this system in subverting and displacing other goods of human flourishing, to defend it solely or principally in these terms is to defend, if tacitly, the proposition that economic efficiency and prosperity are the paramount goods of human social organization; and to defend it as a form of freedom, a good in itself, is to beg the question of the status and importance to a flourishing form of life of numerous other goods that it effaces and ultimately weakens to the point of extreme attenuation. And to appeal to the utility of this economy in opposing totalitarianism is to ignore the manner in which it promotes the aggregation of political power, both within singular nations, and between them. If history is to count as a witness for either the prosecution or the defense, it would seem that history will weigh in on the ledger of the prosecution, for the only history we possess suggests that this specific form of capitalism is corrosive of virtue, and that all arguments to the contrary are counterfactual and unsubstantiated.
Posted by Maximos | May 7, 2007 2:57 PM
I was eagerly anticipating your response today and you didn’t disappoint. Thanks so much for taking the time to engage me. This little discussion we are having is interesting in light of the latest issue of The American Conservative which has a cover story by Benjamin Barber, the author of a new book called Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole. As you can imagine, you and Mr. Barber seem to be intellectually simpatico, although as you can also imagine, I found Barber’s essay totally unconvincing and I was left with even more questions than I was from reading your blog post.
I think the heart of my disagreement with both you and Mr. Barber, is the notion that my understanding of the modern technologically advanced and large-scale economy “effaces…the question of the manner in which economic and social organization privileges certain expressions of human nature over others, where certain expressions may or may not be more consistent with man's deepest nature and longings.”
Or to put it another way, what is “man’s deepest nature and longings” and what is the best political organization to accomodate this nature and these longings? I thought the answer to these questions is the “conservative” answer of family, religion, and work. What I don’t understand is how the modern economy is necessarily inimical to these answers and how it is you explain the following:
"People desire any number of goods that cannot be encompassed by a social order that permits enormous concentrations of economic and political power, and such goods correspond to ends integral to human nature itself: stability, some sense of rootedness, the sense the one's employment is not mindless Dilbert drudgery, but actually develops the personality (perhaps even the virtues), some measure of influence over the forces and factors that impinge upon the course of life, connection to others in a community of persons who are more than social atoms - all of which necessitate smaller-scale political, social, and economic organization…In light of the efficacy of this system in subverting and displacing other goods of human flourishing, to defend it solely or principally in these terms is to defend, if tacitly, the proposition that economic efficiency and prosperity are the paramount goods of human social organization; and to defend it as a form of freedom, a good in itself, is to beg the question of the status and importance to a flourishing form of life of numerous other goods that it effaces and ultimately weakens to the point of extreme attenuation."
Which leads me to ask you (and this question kept creeping into my head as I was reading Mr. Barber’s essay): how do you know that back in the good old days of “smaller-scale political, social, and economic organization” life was better? Or to put it in paleo terms, how is it that you know “human flourishing” has suffered? You suggest history is a good guide, but again, what are you measuring when examining history? Opinion polls of happiness? Life expectancy (it is hard to live a “flourishing” life when combating disease and illness all the time)? Religious worship (you might have a good case for Europe, but even then I’d want to read a careful analysis of church attendance for the average person in 19th Century versus 20th Century Europe)? Conflict and war (there was just a great article in "The New Republic" by Steven Pinker looking at the historical record as it relates to violence – its title was “We’re getting nicer every day”, so you can imagine which side I think history is on)?
In conclusion, I read a lot of paleo writing about human flourishing and how this flourishing has declined thanks to modern-day classical liberalism, but none of it ever gives me data to wrestle with. More explanation, less assertion, and you might have an argument someday!
Posted by Jeff Singer | May 7, 2007 4:12 PM
Every argument is but assertion to the one who does not accept the premises.
'Human flourishing', I would argue, is not primarily a matter of external indicators, such as quantifiable levels of prosperity, life expectancy, or opinion polls. To the contrary, any judgment as to the nature and extent of human flourishing in any given social milieu must distinguish between intrinsic and extrinsic goods, goods which are good inherently - by nature - and those which are good merely instrumentally - that is, contingently. Intrinsic goods are those which pertain to the nature of the human being; they are integral with that nature in the sense that they fulfill the telos of that nature. They are accidents of persons, and not accidents of persons. For example, that one learns to appreciate beauty, and that one marries and raises children - these are integral, intrinsic goods. That one does so in a state of perfect health, surrounded by every luxury civilization is capable of providing - this is merely instrumental and contingent.
Comprehending the distinction is, I believe, imperative, if the differences between paleoconservatism and traditionalism, on the one hand, and neoconservatism, on the other, are to be grasped. Extrinsic goods, such as economic growth and life expectancy are not, on this account, indifferent; rather, they are subordinate to a conception of the good grounded in an apprehension of the ends of human nature, an apprehension arising more from philosophical and theological reflection - often through the medium of literature - than from the social sciences, with their methods of quantification.
Now, the first good of human nature is simply that the faculties thereof be rightly ordered. Man is being mediate between the angelic natures and the animals; for his nature to be rightly ordered, his rational and spiritual faculties must govern his passions, his appetites - his lower nature - by disciplining them and reducing them to their proper measures and orientations. Only by achieving the proper order within the soul will man be liberated from the disorder of the passions, and enabled to realize the potentialities of excellence inherent in his rational nature. The paleoconservative will thus judge the social order on the basis of its contribution to, or inhibition of, the realization of these goods and excellences, which include such things as family stability and harmony, friendship, justice and order, virtue (inclusive of the excellences that are made possible by ownership and responsibility for an enterprise or undertaking, as opposed to wage-work and repetitive, mechanical labour), participation in deliberation as to the common good (hence, the emphasis upon local institutions, as no such deliberation actually occurs on the national level), and the appreciation of beauty, to name but a few. Within such an openly teleological framework, material progress per se is subordinate to the intrinsic goods - of rationality, virtue, and excellence in skill or craft - of activities that might be termed "economic". Or, to state the matter differently, paleo views are more sympathetic to the old notion, derived from Aristotle, that economy is a subset of the management of the household and family, and of its goods, rather than to the notion that economy is a matter primarily of the maximization of efficiency and GDP.
However, as we understand, any argument the premises of which one does not accept is naught but an assertion.
Posted by Maximos | May 8, 2007 11:38 AM
I apologize for letting my own intellectual frustration bubble over into my last comment. When I said, “more explanation, less assertion” what I was really trying to say is that I didn’t understand the arguments you were making. It wasn’t a question of accepting your premises (more on that below), but a question of understanding them in the first place.
This last post cleared up some of my confusion. I think the key to understanding your definition of “human flourishing” is your definition of intrinsic goods:
“Intrinsic goods are those which pertain to the nature of the human being; they are integral with that nature in the sense that they fulfill the telos of that nature.”
Later you go on to explain what you mean with more specificity:
“Now, the first good of human nature is simply that the faculties thereof be rightly ordered…by achieving the proper order within the soul will man be liberated from the disorder of the passions, and enabled to realize the potentialities of excellence inherent in his rational nature. The paleoconservative will thus judge the social order on the basis of its contribution to, or inhibition of, the realization of these goods and excellences, which include such things as family stability and harmony, friendship, justice and order, virtue (inclusive of the excellences that are made possible by ownership and responsibility for an enterprise or undertaking, as opposed to wage-work and repetitive, mechanical labour), participation in deliberation as to the common good (hence, the emphasis upon local institutions, as no such deliberation actually occurs on the national level), and the appreciation of beauty, to name but a few.”
One of the reasons I love paleocon writing and conservative writing in general (including the neocons) is the willingness to try and answer the grand questions of human existence and meaning (first things!) And while there is a lot to chew on in the above paragraph I just quoted (e.g. as a libertarian blogger once said to me, it is not clear why there should be a relationship between what is and what ought to be), I think I will limit myself to just two general comments:
1) As I said above, I think you’ll find plenty of neocons and their “fellow-travelers” using literature, philosophy and theology along with the social sciences to support their arguments. Podhoretz, to name the one guy I’m most familiar with, was writing essays all the time using great literature to tease out lessons for human flourishing.
2) Looking at your list of “goods and excellences” above, it is not clear that the modern, capitalistic economy is necessarily at odds with their realization. For example, the “appreciation of beauty” can be realized in many ways these days as the “common man” can use the computer to access classic works of art (and art history) or architecture, can use his greater leisure time to cultivate a taste for beauty at the local museum or take classes at the local college or university on art appreciation, can even buy art supplies at a chain store (maybe even a national chain store…the horror) and attempt to create his/her own art. Of course, the same modern, capitalistic economy provides ample opportunity to also indulge baser passions and allows individuals to access the vulgar as well as the beautiful. But again, from a historical perspective, it is unclear to me how (if at all) the modern, capitalistic economy has blocked man’s attempt to learn to appreciate beauty and as I suggest above, may have even helped the learning process in certain ways.
Posted by Jeff Singer | May 8, 2007 3:16 PM
I thought of you reading this blog post:
http://cafehayek.typepad.com/hayek/2007/05/civilization_an.html
I find much to agree with when it comes to the economic analysis of libertarians (e.g. "Cafe Hayek", "Cato Unbound", "EconLog", "Positive Liberty", etc.), but share many of the traditional conservative concerns related to their positions on a range of social issues, including immigration. I wonder what this means...
Posted by Jeff Singer | May 8, 2007 4:39 PM
With respect to the literary interests of Norman Podhoretz, or, for that matter, the more subtle aspects of the thought of Irving Kristol on the cultural proclivities of capitalist societies, what seems evident is that there has occurred a precipitous decline in the quality of neoconservative thought over the past generation.
Beauty, and the pursuit thereof, may be facilitated by certain of the technological developments of modern capitalism, but these benefits are accidental, and contingent solely upon the preferences of individuals. The pursuit of beauty, the communal recognition and appreciation of ideals and models of beauty and harmony, is not an integral aspect of the modern economy, as the barrenness of some suburbs, the sterility of modern architecture, and the homogenized banality of most public spaces amply attest. The pursuit of a good integral with human nature has been reduced to a mere preference, an occupation of eccentrics and dilettantes, while the pursuit of private material satisfactions has become the ordering force of public life. It is important to grasp this reality, for in doing so one comes to understand not merely an aspect of our civilization, but the significance of what has been one of the salient facts about it for over two centuries; to wit: the alienation of artists and cultural elites from the underlying civilization. They are not simply ingrates, resentful of a system, striving to undermine it, out of a sense of perversity; no, a civilization in which commerce is the ordering logic is a civilization predicated upon quantification - money, GDP, accumulation, and consumption - in an attempt to fulfill longings which are ultimately for something altogether different: quality, things good in themselves. For late moderns, this good-in-itself becomes pleasure, an ephemeral, elusive thing that evanesces the moment it becomes self-reflective; and one can grasp the utter futility of this. By contrast, the artist, if he senses his vocation and remains true to it, is called to discern the qualities of things, their meaning, their resonances with Being - and he discovers that, even if he remains true to this calling, his disclosures of Being are regarded as naught but individual preferences, and not the constitutive elements that the very telos of artistic endeavour suggests that they should be.
The alienated artist who promotes dubious, often unspeakably vile political causes, is merely the obverse of a materialistic civilization.
Posted by Maximos | May 8, 2007 8:51 PM
Mr. Singer: It means you are a paleolibertarian (like those who inhabit www.lewrockwell.com), or at least someone who would sympathize with their views.
Posted by T. Chan | May 9, 2007 1:22 AM
Maximos, in the immortal words of William Wallace (or at least Mel Gibson) --FREEDOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I am always concerned by the seeming longing for either "the good old days" or some wistful future utopia. And I am appreciative for the changes of heart wrought on the NeoCons, while agreeing partly with your analysis of their errors. What concerns me is the strident accusations you make against the natural consequences of human freedom, if property and contractural rights are protected -- cooperation for mutual betterment, AS DETERMINED BY THE PARTICIPANTS. Many people are profoundly troubled over what is termed “our consumer culture.” In “getting and spending, we lay waste our powers” said Wordsworth. And, somehow, we feel this is so. Who can't recall daydreaming about a new house, a new car, or some item that we “want” but don’t “need”? And what about the TV shows about “lifestyle” that garner so much attention. In my household we watch the hit ABC series “Extreme Home Makeover” both for the compelling human interest aspect and to gawk at the “cool stuff” they end up doing to those houses. Insightful teachers admonish us to be “in” but not “of” this world. The constant barrage of advertising often feels so…dirty, so degrading. Certainly it is true that commerce can be crass. The relentless change of fashion (in cars, clothes, décor, etc.), with the accompanying pressure to conform can obscure our view of the things that really count. Yet, upon examination, I am always led back to the view that the tension is a product not of the market, but of human nature and inclination that in the best case is disciplined to restaint by a higher call. The First Law of Economics, I teach my students, is "Everyone wants to be better off." Or as Michael Oakeshott said, "to replace what is with what ought to be." Ludwig von Mises simply called it "Human Action."
In looking at this issue, a key question which must be asked is the classic economist’s inquiry, “compared to what?” In this case it must be, “is the shallowness of existence represented by commercial culture exclusive to that culture? Or, is greed exclusive to such cultures, or even more prevalent therein?” I will contend that the answer is “no”, or at least not knowable. As a prime example, what existence could lead to as little contemplation and reflection as that of bare subsistence? To those in such circumstances, getting and spending (in this case, eating, or simply being clothed) requires an unrelenting preoccupation. I must eat, even if you don’t. While some have chosen spare lifestyles specifically in order to be contemplative, these ascetics are the barest exception, not the rule, nor are they normally in abject want. “The desperate annals of the poor” is a phrase pregnant with the idea of a necessarily dominant focus on the immediate and the material. The history of the world is one in which such desperation is the rule, not the exception. The few existing at the expense of the many, the “zero-sum game,” has been (and largely continues to be in the Orient and Africa) the status quo of humanity. Economic/political systems which subjugate the masses in misery stand in stark contrast to those which arose from the exclusive Judeo-Christian recognition that “all men are created equal” before the law. Most of those in need around the world are so because of the socio/political systems in which they find themselves. “Western” people are not smarter, more energetic, rarely better educated and certainly not inherently “better” in any way. They are simply beneficiaries of better Ideas; ideas which they did not originate and for which they cannot take credit (except to the incomplete extent to which they have applied them).
The free market is by its very nature a democracy, in which we all offer our “candidacies” in the form of our produce (either skills and talents or actual goods) to the market for its “vote” (the price we receive). It is because of this that the unencumbered market works so well and needs so little control. This is not to say that people don’t make mistakes in the marketplace (buyers regret and businesses fail) or that the market is somehow immune to the seven deadly vices (pride, greed, sloth, lust, gluttony, anger or envy) , but rather that the market will never continually reward individuals and organizations that behave in such ways. Enron was crushed in the stock market years before its executives had their day in court, and its lessons have been internalized by employees or shareholders who might formerly have trusted blindly in management! Further, the free market “forces” us (in order to achieve lasting success) to do things that are particularly biblical, particularly Christ-like, and which are inherently lacking in command and control economies; it causes us to put others’ needs and desires at the top of our agenda.
Think about it: to make myself or my product valuable enough to you to “win your vote” (get hired, make the sale, etc.), I must necessarily figure out what it is you are looking for (even if you yourself are not entirely sure). This is the very essence of entrepreneurism, which is from the French word often used for explorers. I must “explore” the opportunities that exist to satisfy you (from the First Law of Economics). Sounds suspiciously like the Golden Rule (Matthew 7:12 and Luke 6:31 – I must “do” unto you as I myself would desire to have done to me; that is, I want to be better off, and in order to be so, I must give you something that you value. Again quoting Adam Smith, “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest… by directing (his) industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an Invisible Hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. Nor is it the worse for the society that it was no part of it. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it.”
When thought of from this perspective, we see quickly that the most successful entrepreneurs -- the Henry Fords, Sam Waltons and Bill Gates of the world – have figured out how to serve people extremely well in terms of giving them things they value highly; greater mobility, greater purchasing power or more time and information. And these great ORGANIZATIONS of "free cooperators" necessarily require skilled managers who concern themself with the "big picture" and move the parts around FOR THE BENEFIT OF ALL INVOLVED.
Not only that, but by foregoing self-subsistence and engaging in cooperation, THE "little people" gain in a multitude of ways -- they receive interim payment for my services without waiting for a crop to mature (or not) or craftwork to be finished. The quantity of goods goes up and the price goes down. Abundance frees more capital to discover new "needs", and so on.
What to do? What most seek to do is to restrain this system in some way, either for their personal benefit or the "greater good". Both are tyrannical at their roots. Rent-seeking, meaning attempt to create through coercion financial income which is not matched by corresponding labour or investment in the market sense, is precisely what Adam Smith criticised in The Wealth of Nations. Rent in this sense arises from manipulation of the economic environment (e.g. monopolies, import and trading restrictions, subsidies). To the degree that NeoCons perpetuate such arrangements, they should be opposed. And to the degree that they seek to use the power of the state to "open markets" by force, they are wrong. But it is not wrong to seek open markets persae.
Since in a free market there is no coercion, and since in a transaction between free individuals each, by definition, gives up something that they value less than what they received, they both perceive themselves to be better off than before. Whether they made a good choice, or whether or not they violated an eternal principal (against greed or against pride or anything else) is not for the market to decide – it is between them and God. However, the Bible never condemns riches as such (think Job, Abraham, or even Solomon), and applauds success all through the Proverbs as a sign of the application of God’s principles. The biblical admonition is against considering material security to be eternal security – which is a strong tendency of all men. We struggle with the desire to “be as God” – exercising full control over all things that touch our lives. I contend that this struggle exists at all points on the material spectrum, and must be contended with by all mankind. The market is not, then, the cause of the problem. In fact the market, as a reflection of the inherent God-given characteristics of man (free will, creativity, responsibility) and godly principles (cooperation, concern for others, fairness (equity), honesty, etc.) is a great gift which the bulk of men are sadly unable to savor.
Nevertheless, rich or poor, we must constantly “test ourselves” to see whether our lifestyles reflect our faith. The test is not to some absolutely objective standard. America contains the richest poor people in the world, measured by lifestyle – 99% of all poor households enjoy indoor plumbing, 89% have television, 80% have air conditioning, etc. The test from scripture would be a very subjective one – what do we prioritize as that of chief importance. “But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven…for where you treasure is, there will your heart be also.” (Matthew 6:20-21)
To a large degree, it seems to me, the question of what constitutes an excess of earthly goods must be seen within the context of one’s culture. To assume that a relatively “rich” society is ipso facto selfish or obsessed with worldly things, or especially that its “greed” and “selfishness” exist at the expense of materially poorer cultures is at best misguided and at worst harmful to those poorer societies. As a recent ad sponsored by the Christian economics think-tank, the Acton Institute, pointed out, a group of pastors in Kenya recently asked their American counterparts to urge American Christians not to send their used clothing to Kenya, as has been occurring through relief agencies for years. The reason: The availability of free cast-off clothing from “wealthy” Americans suppresses the ability of the many indigenous textile and garment workers to make a living. The same has long been true for native agriculture when free “relief” food floods the market.
In a culture of plenty, having plenty is the norm. As such it is not necessarily a sign of either greed or worldliness, though it may be both. The American middle class corresponds in its level of wealth (measured as lifestyle) to the very highest echelons of many societies around the globe. Such abundance is seldom recognized to have originated in eternal values – the product of a God of abundance. It should be. And yet we know that every one of God’s good and perfect gifts is subject to corruption by fallen Mankind. Regardless of the material context of our culture, we should all pray the prayer of old – “Give me neither poverty or riches…otherwise, I may have too much and disown you and say, ‘Who is the Lord?’, or I may become poor and steal and so dishonor the name of my God.” (Proverbs 30: 7-9)
I realize that this post has been an excursion not totally related to NeoCon "sins", but I have trouble with some of the underlying premises that have been espoused. Please excuse my bombast.
Posted by Jim McAlister | May 10, 2007 11:35 AM
One more thing, if you will indulge me. Far from having removed the individual craftsman from the scene, the free(er) market of America has led to the golden age of individual craftsmen. Never have so many been able to be employed at such arcane pursuits at such profits. Affluence does that; people, if they can afford it (and SO many more CAN afford it than ever before) want the unique, the custom, item. Mass production, paradoxically has the dual blessing of providing formerly luxury goods to ever-poorer strata of consumers, while freeing the savings for investment in new products and services or, in this case, one-of-a-kind items. I have a close friend who makes a decent living crafting Lancaster flintlock rifles -- I have owned two of his guns. Go to the craft fairs across the nation and see the explosion in small-crafting. And, oh by the way, can we say MICROBREWERIES?!
Posted by Jim McAlister | May 10, 2007 1:13 PM
One last thing: in case I didn't make myself crystal clear earlier, while I will absolutely defend management WITHIN a firm made up of free contractors as a particularly beneficial specialization, I absolutely REJECT it from a societal standpoint. The example I use in my class is that of a Commodore 64 computer (Remember those? They were one of the first generation PCs) vs. a Cray supercomputer processing multiple terabits of data. Even if you could assemble a room-full of the very smartest and morally best people in the country (or the world, for that matter) as your planners, they simply do not have the brainpower or, most importantly, the "processing speed" (decision feedback) of millions upon millions of free actors (even dumb ones) making decisions and adjusting to outcomes. This is what is otherwise known as the Invisible Hand, and it works when it is allowed to function. Garbage in/Garbage out -- another phrase for central planning
Posted by Jim McAlister | May 10, 2007 4:23 PM
In re one point: the US had, until 1914, effectively no limitations on immigration at all, save for a certain amount of discrimination against Asians. This was true throughout the 19th century.
Posted by S.M. Stirling | May 11, 2007 2:36 AM
Hello
Very interesting information! Thanks!
G'night
Posted by hiutopor | September 17, 2007 3:33 AM