January 11, 2018: Back to the Farm, Contradictory Assumptions, Protection from Themselves

“A republic rests upon the assumption that the sum total of individual ignorance equals mass wisdom; capitalism rests upon the assumption that the sum total of individual greed equals the greater good. Both assumptions are contradictory; both assumptions are false.”

                             ----from “The Quotations of Chairman Joe”

The year 1776 gave us two of the pillars of our republic, the Declaration of Independence and Adam Smith's “Wealth of Nations”, the third being the Constitution of the United States 13 years later. While still mired in a slave economy, these documents served to lay the framework from which the United States would lay claim to both the emerging industrial order and the dawning democratic age.

It was during one of my visits to the 'farm' (1) that, confronted by my great uncle, my horizons concerning our often blind assertions, even our basic assumptions, began to be stretched.

I'd like to take credit for the inspiration of the above quote but it was during a conversation with my great uncle Lionel that my comfortable certainties were abruptly brought up short.

“Do you believe in democracy?” he asked.

“Of course I do”, was my predictable reply.

“What makes you think that the sum total of individual ignorance equals mass wisdom?” was his reply as he once again flashed his toothless smile.

To this query, I could muster no acceptable answer.

Here my ageing uncle would, in a short exchange, teach valuable life lessons; for not only did he succeed in jarring the foundations of a world-view that had been handed down by countless schoolmasters, but he taught me to question the very foundations of our common misunderstandings. It was a skill I quickly began to put to use as I would engage my peers and sometimes my elders in robust debates. It was a skill that led, in time to likewise question our fundamental economic assumptions leading, by degrees, to the quotation above, the first part of which is a variation of the question put to me by my great-uncle; the second is mine alone.

However, it would be years and much reading before I could fashion an answer to his direct question for the query put to me at the old farmhouse set me out in search of new answers to what were clearly fundamental contradictions. The journey would take me through countless history books, biographies, philosophers, and political economists. From Rousseau to Feuerbach, from Plato to Galbraith, from Jefferson to Roosevelt, from Marx to Nietzsche, and, finally, Madison's Federalist No. 10.

It was professor Lynn Mapes who put me on to “The Federalist Papers” and my friend Larry Hamp who, disgusted that in the wake of a marital separation and pending divorce found that I had given up reading, presented me with a boxed copy of the work. Therein I discovered that the founding fathers were indeed aware of these implicit contradictions and were clear-eyed and without illusions as to the difficulties involved in compensating, if not overcoming, them. The “Papers” opened my eyes to the degree to which those who met a Philadelphia were aware not only of the difficulties involved in determining, in Rousseau's words, “the will of the people”, but likewise the necessity of protecting said people from the “passions” that would inevitably sweep the country; in a word, protecting the people from said “will”, protecting the people from themselves. Accordingly, they set about establishing what they hoped would be certain safeguards to keep the population safe from the public's presumed “right to err”.

They did this by fragmenting governments, first fragmenting government vertically by creating a federation in which state and local governments were clearly distinct and, in some measure, independent of the national government and, secondly, horizontal in that the national government would be divided into three equal branches, the Legislative, the Judicial, and the Executive, each with distinct powers, each depending upon but separate from the others. In this way, it was held, no one man would be able to grab all the reigns of power and establish a tyranny.

But equally important the founders, remembering their English ancestry, quickly passed a “Bill of Rights” guaranteeing certain personal freedoms. Today Americans like to see these first ten amendments as rights protecting the individual from capricious governance but they are more than that, far more than that. For by protecting the Press, by protecting the Churches and prohibiting the state from the interference thereof, the amendments served to establish and protect institutions what would be and were intended to be, in professor John Kenneth Galbraith's term, 'countervailing powers”. Institutions beyond the reach of governments acting as independent checks upon the 'popular will'. Likewise protections against self-incrimination, unlawful searches and seizures and so on. The founders knew quite well the capricious nature of Rousseau's 'popular will' which can all to easily degenerate into a type of lynch mob.

They put other measures into place as well, the Electoral College, a feature we have become painfully re-acquainted within recent years. The Senate elected by the state legislatures of the several states, a feature that was changed in the early twentieth century as well as a senator's term of office lasting two years longer than that of a sitting president and only 1/3 of the Senate up for re-election during an election year. This would provide some greater measure of stability, further safeguards against the “passions of the moment”. The government was intended to be cumbersome, inefficient, slow. It was intended to be so as to protect the people from their passions, and, hopefully, give greater stability and therefore longevity to the experiment for the founders knew how short-lived republics tended to be. To protect the people from themselves...

Likewise with the emerging economic order. Federalist No.10 is a long essay by James Madison arguing for the adoption of the constitution. In it he forthrightly addresses Montesquieu's critique, citing historical examples such as the Greek City-States, Venice, and the Hanseatic League, that a republic covering a vast territory cannot long endure. Madison responded in No. 10 with the argument that precisely because the United State traversed so much territory that a certain stability would be ensured, arguing that such a republic would be too large and too complex, having too many interests for one group, one cabal, much less one man to dominate. In this document, Madison laid the foundations for what would become our “interest-group democracy” in which the various major interests would contend and, in the process, neutralize each other. It was a concept put to the test with sectional disputes leading to civil war in the 19^th century and the dominance of cartels during the 'Gilded Age' and our own. Moreover, Madison argued in another essay, the single most important reason to adopt the constitution was to regulate the economy. The constitution gave Congress broad power to do so. What became known as the 'commerce clause', gives Congress all the power that is 'necessary and proper' to regulate. The founders had no illusions crafting the best structure they could to protect the public from capricious and arbitrary rule as well as economic exploitation and rapine. To protect the people from the likes of Caesar Disgustus.

The lessons taught so long ago bear fruit.  To disagree and to know why is a mark of intelligence; but, perhaps more importantly, to agree and to know why is a mark of wisdom.  Setting one free of one's acquired certainties sets one on the path to understanding; for any 'truth' can only be discovered alone. Thank you my mentor. 

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1. see December 15, 2010: Northwest of Custer, The Farm, Damn Democrats as well as November 5, 2011: Return to Custer, A Word about The Word, Pigs Breakfast.