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. 

_________________

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.

September 22, 2014: I Am a Log, Serious Stuff, Platitudes Bromides and Certainties.

As I recall it, well now over 40 years after the fact, I was sitting in the classroom studying psychology when Professor Morgan asked the assembled to draw pictures of who we thought we were, with a few notes of explanation.  Shortly we began to go around the room and each student duly presented his or her artwork and accompanied by a brief oral discription of who they were.  When he got to me I produced a picture of a log, explaining that I was just sitting there like an old log observing the world as it passed by.  Professor Morgan, a bit taken aback asked incredulously, “What’s a log, man?”  “I don’t know, but whatever it is its more natural than being an electrical engineer or administrator” was my reply.  A hush settled about the room generated by a certain uneasiness as the assembled moved about a bit in their chairs.  “Explain, if you will”, intoned the professor.   “I am not my occupation”, I said, “I am more than that.  I exist, I occupy space in this time on this planet, while I’m here I am many things, most of all a social animal embedded in a web of social relationships all of which define who I am.  It’s more than a question of vocation, or economics, we are all larger than the pidgeonholes in which we sometimes all too willingly allow ourselves to be contained and defined”.   “That’s serious stuff” remarked the professor. 

 My contributions to the class consisted of scoring two principle points.  First the infamous “I am a Log” statement in which I tried to drive home the point that the essence of personhood is not and should not be narrowly defined by one’s occupation.  The second point came at the end of the class.  The students were asked to tell the class what their grade should be and defend it.  There were two, what seemed to me at the time, ‘old’ ladies who commuted together each day down from Whitehall to take classes.  The ladies in question were, I suppose, in their 40’s at the time working on their degrees in hopes of becoming elementary school teachers.  Now it transpires that it just so happened that this class, all about child development and pedagogy, was at the vangard of a new approach to teaching little Jane and Johnny.  In the hopes of stirring latent ‘creativity’ it was thought, the old school approach of sitting at desks and being confronted with a structured program was hopelessly outdated to be replaced by an ‘open’ classroom where the young charges would be allowed to wander about and, when he or she became ready, the student would naturally, following some inherent curiousity, sit down and master the task at hand.  I saw the movement as a passing fad, like modern Rap, but just like the modern musical abortion this proved to be one of those institutional movements that would endure.  In any case when the ladies presented their case for their grades to the class, a rather condescending classmate opined that it was refreshing indeed that the old foggies should, at such a late date, still have the mental abilities, as well as the extraordinary courage to adopt new ideas.  The exchange, after a time, went beyond unsettling and began to resemble harrange bordering on harrassment.  I moved to step in.

 I raised my hand and had no trouble at all getting the attention of Professor Morgan who by this time was becoming visibly uneasy.  Gaining recognition and the floor I began my observation.  “You know I’ve been at this institution for four years now and have read many books. I have labored long and hard over this time and at quite an expense.  It is at once gratifying and depressing that I find myself here today.  Gratifying that I have at last found, between the covers of this textbook the TRUTH.  I need look no further, for alas, we have indeed reached the pinnacle if not the end of the quest for knowledge.  I can, therefore rest from my labors and enjoy a lifetime in quiet repose.  I am depressed though because the TRUTH, it transpires, has been right beneath my nose all the time and it has taken so long for me to find it and for this institution to lead me to it.  I suspect, though, that in 40 time some enterprising ‘expert’ in the field of education will make his or her reputation by proposing a program of matriculation that is wholly at odds with what we have learned here and this program will likewise be received with all the enthusiasm and certainty that we currently are showering on the authors of this text.”  The dear Doctor simply nodded with a wry smile, acknowleging the point and relieved that the tension had left the room. One must be careful with platitudes, bromides and certainties.  One must not be about the business of erecting monuments lest one be slain by a falling statue.  A healthy skepticism is in order for without it one loses one’s peripheral vision and what is presented to us as certainty all to often is simple illusion. 

 Alas, Professor Morgan, one of those cherished few souls with courage to wander outside the ‘box’, was soon pressured to leave my alma mater, soon to be replaced with god know’s what since the Governor had placed the likes of Richard DeVos, he of the Scamway company, on the Board of Control.  But before he left, I was priveleged to be among those who benefitted by his insights and willingess to have his students confront life and the meaning of life. 

September 21, 2014: Radio Daze, Canned Platitudes, He Hasn't Read His Marx

Back in the 1970’s an old college buddy was deeply involved with a local community radio station in Grand Rapids, Michigan.  Among his storied duties included hosting an hour long talk program dealing with current affairs and observations.  To this end, he would occasionally invite me to observe or participate.  One Sunday evening I was at the station awaiting our turn in the studio when I overheard the guest on the radio defend the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan.  It transpired that the person in question was one of those faux radicals present on campus in the late 60’s and early 70’s reincarnated here as a hopeless apologlist for anything the Commissars in the Kremlin were engaged in.  When the program was over, I confronted old Jim.

 The question quickly boiled down to basic, as he understood it, Communist Ideology, with me questioning the legitimacy of the actions taken by the state.  It was a reiteration of the old Orthodoxy, at least as it is past on in American schools, and I quickly pounced.

  “What’s the difference between the state expropriating the fruits of labor and the Capitalist doing so.  Is not the state simply the Capitalist writ large?”,  I inquired.  He was taken aback by the question, clearly not anticipating it.  As I remember he responded with the usual canned platitudes. 

  “So I take it you’ve never read the ‘Paris Manuscripts of 1844’ (1) have you?” I asked.

  “What’s that?” was his befuddled response.

 I went about trying to explain to him that this is the work that preceeded all others.  It was here that Marx began to hone his famous Theory of Alienation and lay the groundwork for his critique of Capital.  It is the underpinning of all that will follow, including his ‘withering away of the state’.  Marx, I contended would have been appalled at the spectre of the Soviet Union.  If you want to see Communism in action, he would later write, look to the Paris Commune.  This was an elected government briefly formed in Paris when the regime was toppled by the German invasion in the Franco-German war of 1871.  It was, in fact, light years from the heavy handed Stalinist regime the remnants of which were still in place.   Later, one of our mutual friends, taken aback by the exchange, said “he wasn’t ready for that was he’?  “No,” said I, “He has not read his Marx”. 

 __________

 (1)   Published under the title “Economic and Philosophic          Manuscripts of 1844”       
              The work is commonly referred to simply as the  
               "Paris Manuscripts"                                      

October 11, 2013: Thoughts off The Left Field Wall, Dominance Over Nature, Implicit Contradictions

“The implicit contradiction of Marxism is that man can only overcome his own self-alienation by attenuating his alienation from his origins.”  ---from The Quotations of Chairman Joe

As a young lad studying in a parochial school, I was taught to loathe the teachings of Marx and Nietzsche.  Upon completing college I went about the business, in my mid 20’s, collecting the works of these authors thinking, to paraphrase Nietzsche, that they had to be worth something to be hated in so indecent a fashion.  The following was composed in the spring of 1977, a little more than a decade before the collapse of the Soviet Union.  Herein is a short essay encapsulating my critique of Marx as his doctrine pertains to the post-industrial world: 

 Alienation is at least as old as religion itself; which is to say that it may be as old as man.  In fact one could see religion as the manifestation of the first alienation.  Further, in contradistinction to our Marxist friends, the religious aspects of alienation have been transformed into economic and political alienation, coinciding historically with the secularization of the state and, later, the industrial revolution.  To put it more concisely, to understand current economic and political alienation, one must first understand religion; for the manifestation of the industrial system is itself the bludgeon we have fashioned to execute our preconceived values concerning man versus nature.  Religion gave us the postulate of man’s domination of nature, and the rise of the nation-state together with the industrial revolution gave us the means to inflict our dominance on an ever more massive scale.  Therefore to embrace the industrial revolution, as Marxism implicitly does, is to embrace the alienation of man from the natural order.

 As George Novack points out in his essay The Problem of Alienation, “The most primitive forms of alienation arise from the disparity between man’s needs and wishes and his control over nature.  Although they have grown strong enough to counter pose themselves as a collective laboring body against the natural environment, primitive peoples do not have enough productive forces, techniques and knowledge to assert mastery over the world around them.  Their helplessness in material production has its counterpart in the power of magic and religion in their social life and thought.  Religion, as Feuerbach explained and Marx repeated, reverses the real relations between mankind and the world.  Man created the gods in his own image.  But to the superstitious mind, unaware of unconscious mental processes, it appears that the gods have created men.  Deluded by such experiences—and by social manipulators from witch doctors to priests—men prostrate themselves before idols of their own manufacture.  The distance between the gods and the mass of worshippers serves as a gauge for estimating the extent of man’s alienation from his fellow men and his subjugation to the natural environment….Alienation is therefore first of all a social expression of the fact that men lack adequate control over the forces of nature” (1)

 These, then, is a short summary of orthodox Marxist teaching concerning religion and alienation, but let us subject these underlying premises to the close scrutiny of the natural order.  First, orthodox Marxism teaches the implicit acceptance of the domination over and the control of nature.  “For it is hard to deny that the potential wealth of society, the degree of satisfaction of rational needs, and the possibility of thereby eliminating the coercive mechanisms in the social and economic organization, have been advancing with giant strides for a whole century—and especially in the last quarter of this century—in what is called ‘industrial’ society.  Why should it be supposed that this tendency cannot result in a qualitative ‘leap’ by which man’s enslavement to the necessities of a ‘struggle for existence’ would wither away and his capacity to dominate his own social organization, no less that he dominates the forces of nature, would come to full flower” .(2)

 The problem of central concern here is that the domination and control over nature by man has itself become the central linchpin of Marxist theory; for the Marxian remedy lies precisely in the acceleration of this control.  For according to Marx and his disciples the alienation and self-alienation of the individual can only be overcome by way of “increasing general conditions of abundance of material goods, the principal goal of production becomes that of producing fully developed individuals, creative and free. In proportion as man becomes the “principle productive force” through the enormous extension of scientific technologies, he is less and less directly “integrated” into the production process.  In proportion as ‘living labor’ is expelled from the production process, it acquires new significance as the organizer and controller of this process.” (3).  In this capsulized form we find the adherence of Marxist philosophy with adopting the growth syndrome of Western technological societies.  Indeed, for the Marxist, the only avenue toward the overcoming of alienation is the shopworn expedient of ever increasing production of material wealth or, to put it bluntly, massive increases in GDP.  Indeed Mandel’s apology for the obvious failure of the Socialist countries efforts to address themselves to this problem stems from their collective failure to increase the material output of their respective economies.  With this in mind, let us return to the previous statements concerning man and his control over nature as they relate to the problem of alienation.

 It seems that Marx was well on his way toward unraveling the problem, but then fell prey to the primitive form of alienation”, says Novack, “arise from the disparity between man’s needs and wishes and his control over nature.  Although they have grown strong to counter pose themselves as a collective laboring body against the natural environment, primitive peoples do not have enough productive forces, techniques and knowledge to assert mastery over the world around them”.  It was out of a desperate desire to control nature that man created god.  It is the creation of god itself that is the hallmark of alienated behavior, for here man confuses the part with the whole, her man makes himself the measure of all things.  Likewise is not the separation or ‘gap’ between needs and fulfillment that creates alienated behavior, rather it is the pathological introduction of the concepts of ‘control’ or ‘dominance’ that creates truly alienated activity.  Thus, man was acting in harmony with the natural order when he counter posed himself vis a vis

Nature but as soon as he sought mastery over the world around him, he embarked on the road of futility.  As soon as he sought mastery over nature he declared war on all his natural instincts, on his animal origins, on his life support systems.

 The Marxist avenue to the ‘transcendence’ of the human problem of alienation itself rests on the domination and control of both nature and human nature.  For Marx the human being is only fully realized through labor.  The fully developed human being is a creative soul whose creativity can only be realized through production.  A tree, said Marx, has value only when it is studied by a scientist or transformed into a piece of furniture or a home; when it is an object of scientific inquiry or cut down and cut up and bent to human purposes.   

 Such ‘transcendence’, it must by now appear obvious, itself rests on the alienation of man from the natural order.  That is on the control, indeed on the exploitation of the earth.  ‘Transcendence’ rests on the reckless adherence to the growth syndrome—indeed growth at all costs—even to the implicit acceptance of the industrial revolution.  This blind acceptance of the industrial order, this faith in technology must itself belie a belief in the major presupposition of the industrial revolution—that is on the transcendence of man from the natural order through the domination and control of nature.  Is it not obvious that such ‘transcendence’ of alienation is itself based on pathological alienated activity?  It appears that Marxist philosophy concerning the transcendence of alienation, at this level, betrays an adherence to the fundamental basis of religious alienation.  That is, it is not the separation of god from man that is alienation, rather the creation of god itself.  So too it is not the separation of man from the technological/industrial order that is alienation, rather it is the creation of technologies in order to dominate and control nature that is the essence of alienation itself.  The industrial order was created in order to make manifest man’s alienation from the world by seeking dominion over it.  The liberal, socialist, leftist teaching is, in the broad view, nothing other than a secular religion for it seeks to create a material heaven on earth and it can do so only by declaring war on the natural order and on the earth it rests on. 

 Marx said that all generations stand on the shoulders of their fathers.  In this sense we are all the victims of the institutions and values we inherit.  The avenue toward transcendence of alienation must begin with the industrial/technological state.  However, if it is the industrial/technological order that has produced the highest form of alienation, based as it is on the alienation of man from nature, it is not logical to conclude that the acceptance of that alienation through adherence to unlimited industrial growth will solve the problem.  While Marxian solution may solve certain aspects of the alienation between men, it does nothing to solve the problem of the alienation of man from his eco-system, and from his natural origins.  In short it does nothing to solve the problem of self-alienation, that is, alienation from natural man.

 In any case as the industrial order presses against the barriers of resources and energy as well as creating massive problems with pollution, waste disposal and population growth, the Marxian dream of the transcendence of alienation through postindustrial growth will be revealed for what it is.  Industrialization, like religion, reverses the real relations between man and the world, our task is not to control the natural environment, but to control the industrial/technological revolutions.

 

________________________

 

      1.     Novack, George “The Problem of Alienation” in George Novack and Ernest Mandel The    Marxist Theory of Alienation New York, Pathfinder Press, 1973. P.66

      2.     Mandel, Ernest “Progressive Disalienation through the Building of Socialist Society Or the Inevitable Alienation in Industrial Society” in The Marxist Theory Of Alienation. P. 46

      3.     Mandel, Ernest. P.42

 

October 5, 2013: Camfield’s Fearless Forecast, Immoral By Definition, Think About It

The following was written sometime in the late summer of 1974 during the high tide of the cold war before weapons of mass destruction were a threat in the hands of terrorist groups.  Nevertheless the commentary, here envisioned as a 19^th century poster, contains salient points that I hereby submit for the reader’s consideration.  So, without further ado, here is my composition on why there will be no nuclear war:

 

Camfield’s

Fearless Forecast

By

That all seeing, all knowing

Wonder of Wonders

And

Former soda jerk at Arno’s Take Out

Camfield Himself!!

A mental ejaculation

On

Why there will be no

NUCLEAR WAR!

COMPLETE IN ARISTOTELIAN SYLLOGIMS

For lack of better form

(The Conservative)

Major Premise:  All politicians are self-seeking, power-hungry megalomaniacal alphas by definition

Minor Premise:  Nuclear war tends to liquidate omega populations, fertile sources of ego-gratification,
and incidentally,

***CIVILIZATION***

Conclusion:  Nuclear war is both ego-shattering and inoperative

 OR

As Camfield Himself once said:

“What politician is wont to rule over 2 million square miles of ***RUBBLE?***

 OR

If you don’t accept that,
TRY THIS!!!

 (The Liberal)

For you idealists in the crowd, here’s a bone:

Major Premise:  All politicians are altruistic, self-sacrificing, other-directed DO-GOODERS!!!

Minor Premise:  Nuclear war tends to liquidate the recipients, hence the purpose and goals of

 ***DO-GOODERISM***

 Or

 As both Camfield Himself and P.F. Sloan once said:

 “There’ll be no one to save

With the world in a grave”

Conclusion:  Nuclear war, leaving no one to save, is therefore immoral
 by definition. 
 No matter how we look at it,
we lose. 
Think about it.

 

 

 

 

 

August 19, 2011: The Politics of Silence, Specialization Of Knowledge and the Generalization of Ignorance, America Struck Dumb

The following was written in early 1979 and originally presented to Penthouse Magazine for publication.  Robert Guccionne, in his wisdom, chose not to publish it.


Richard Nixon’s notion of the “Silent Majority”, an image of millions of mute Americans inaudibly whispering wisdom for which only Nixon had ears, bespoke a political truth remarkable for such a pathological liar.  With the “Silent Majority”, Nixon presented us with the most frightening political truth of our time: pre-industrial ideas concerning the legitimacy of the democratic order have little reality in post-industrial society.  The American Consensus no longer is produced by the knowledgeable debate of ideas in the political arena, but is instead a product of a growing complexity–a complexity produced by a growing specialization of knowledge-- which in turn produces a generalization of ignorance.  It is this emerging ignorance that gives legitimacy to the politics of silence.

A healthy democratic system rests upon a political consensus that is itself the product of a number of assumptions. First, there must exist a wide and pervasive, almost ‘all-powerful’ middle class; extremes of wealth and poverty must not confront each other with significant economic and, therefore, political power.  Accordingly the United States early developed a progressive democracy based on the abundance of middle class farmers and workers given security by the scarcity of labor and the abundant frontier.  Political life, founded upon this emergent yeoman farmer, created a consensus making possible expression through institutions like the New England Town Meeting and the Virginia House of Burgesses.  Consensus politics is, therefore, first an economic proposition.

However, Consensus Politics must also rest on the assumption of ‘universally’ understood causes of problems and ‘universally’ understood avenues of remedy.  In the age of the Jeffersonian yeoman farmer issues were, in relation to our time, much less complex and centered around measures promoting agriculture and assimilating the wilderness.  Consensus politics produced landmark legislation like the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, canal and railroad projects and capital investment in agriculture.  This sharing of economic, political, and social views produced government actions of fundamental importance; low tariffs, universal white manhood suffrage, and proportional representation.  These were means to ensure that the agricultural middle class would not be overpowered by others through the use of political power.  The early republic, formalized by the committees at Philadelphia, rested upon a political consensus itself rooted upon a wide and pervasive agricultural middle class confronting a ‘universal’ set of economic problems and working on a ‘universal’ set of solutions.   That is this middle class set about the business of expanding into and settling the wilderness through the work of men like Clay and Webster who assiduously worked to bind the nation together with roads, canals and railroads in a headlong race to head off the centrifical forces of sectionalism and disunion.  At its peak it produced the “Jacksonian Democracy”, a government anyone could presumably run.

The Nullification crises of the 1820s and 30s was the beginning of the end of the dominance of the yeoman farmer in American politics and, accordingly, the American political consensus was destroyed in the flames of the Civil War.  The age of High Capitalism, or the “Robber Barrons” to use Mark Twain’s terminology, ensued with the agricultural remnants acting not as dominant, but as a countervailing force giving impetus to the Greenback, Populist, and Progressive movements, as well as the New Deal–all agricultural movements serving to expand the franchise, alter monetary policy, and defend the political power of the middle class against the rising industrial cartels known at the time as the “trusts”, finally legitimizing organized labor.  The New Deal Coalition was produced by consensus politics, itself a descendant and heir to the political tradion of the Jeffersonian and Jacksonian yeoman farmer. 

As the Industrial Revolution moved the majority of Americans off the land and into the cities, a most fundamental change was wrought not only in the nature of the middle class, but in the nature of the American Political Consensus.

With the Industrial Revolution came the specialization of labor.  This served not only to reduce the urban laborer to an automaton–an appendage to a machine–but the urban worker, unlike the farmer, no longer concerned himself with the whole process of production and the marketing of finished product.  Social and political questions became specialized as labor became increasingly specialized.  International trade,    futures markets, and monetary exchange rates for example, matters of some concern to the farmer is for the industrial worker only an abstraction as are questions of currency and stewardship of the community and the land upon which it rests.  Notably the urban worker was not prevelant in the “Greenback” or “Progressive” or, for that matter, the early “New Deal”.  For the laborer’s toiling in the packing houses of South Chicago, William Jennings Bryan’s “Cross of Gold” speech had little resonance. It was Bryan’s fate to emerge upon the national scene at precisely the time when his audience was growing deaf to his impassioned appeal. 

Specialized labor also produced specialized knowledge known as the Technological Revolution.  This made imperative, as John Galbraith pointed out, the committee as the only effective means to manage industry or government.  Committees of engineers, design, cost and marketing specialists create an autonomous “technostructure” making the basic decisions about production, allocation, and marketing.  The corporate head must ratify decisions made at these middle levels lest ignorance be imposed on the system.  Henry Ford’s celebrated resistance to color changes, alternating electrical current, and college trained personnel brought Ford Motor to near ruin.  The principle holds true for government as well.  Andrew Jackson’s war on the National Bank produced the depression of 1837; the policies of both Herbert Hoover and the Federal Reserve prolonged the Great Depression.  Because no man can possess all the requisite expertise of a large modern enterprise, we have upon us an effective and growing ignorance at the highest levels.

If ignorance reigns at the highest echelons clearly, for many of the same reasons, a pervasive ignorance exists at lower levels.  The Technological Revolution has specialized knowledge beyond the grasp not only of the President of the United States, but clearly beyond the comprehension of the man in the street.  Indeed, the middle-level expert possesses a grasp of the problem only so far as it relates to h is respective area of expertise.  It is an ignorance that runs not only vertically but horizontally across departmental lines of expertise.  It is an ignorance that not only fragments authority and control, but confronts the complex issues of our time–energy, nuclear power, thermopollution, ecology–with the politics of silence. 

We are led back to the original proposition that the democratic system rests upon a wide, pervasive and knowledgeable middle class.  This foundation has been transformed by the Industrial-Technological Revolutions from the Jeffersonian yeoman farmer to the modern urbanite.  In both a similarity of economic station and political moderation exists.  However there is a qualitative difference between the two.  In the latter, the Technological Revolution has created a prevailing ignorance of social problems and remedies.  Technology has also fragmented lines of control from top-down, bottom-up and laterally across the departments of middle-level expertise.  It has specialized knowledge and generalized ignorance, and it is upon this foundation of ignorance that social debate must now take place.  It is upon the consensus of mindlessness; it is upon the consensus of ignorance; it is upon the consensus of silence–legitimized by the state as ‘tacit consent’ that the structure of political debate and the nature of political legitimacy now rest.  Consensus is now held incapable of political expression with debate reduced to a deafening silence, and political legitimacy reduced to the groan of ‘tacit consent’.

If “King Richard” failed in his attempt to resolve the dilemma by proclaiming the President sovereign, he succeeded, for once, in presenting us with something more than a mere caricature of truth.  He presented us with the spectre of America, terrorized by ignorance, struck dumb.

January 11, 2011: A House Divided, The Center Gives Way, From Transcendence to Triangulation

“War on the middle class is war on the republic itself”

---The Quotations of Chairman Joe


The term “Banana Republic” became part of our political lexicon in the twentieth century. It has quite a specific meaning. The nomenclature emerged from several and repeated failed experiments in representative government originating in Latin America where the United States, in an effort to gain legitimacy for its hemispheric hegemony, engaged in repeated attempts to impose its form of government on its neighbors to the South. The result, with rare exceptions, was throughout the last century largely disappointing. There were furtive attempts at establishing Republican forms of government throughout central and South America usually ending in the overthrow of these governments by indigenous forces or, as in the case of Haiti, Brazil, Guatemala, Chile, the Dominican Republic, at the instigation of the United States itself. What became clear, from these experiments in social engineering, was that the establishment of representative government in countries with severe maldistributions of wealth proved to be problematic. A pattern began to emerge. The landless and impoverished masses given the vote would in due course elect an assembly that would move to redistribute wealth. The moneyed interests, screaming communist plot, would then call out the military and, either on their own or painting the populist movements as pawns of the “international communist conspiracy”, excite the ever virulent strain of paranoia that lurks just beneath the surface in the United States to enlist American aid and gain legitimacy for the ensuing repression. Let’s be clear about this. In Nicaragua the entire country was but a plantation for the Samoza family. In Venezuela the top 10% owned nearly 90% of the country. Other countries, like Mexico, presented a democratic tradition in which the PRI, which took power with the revolution in 1910, held sway for over 80 years. Many of the noble experiments quickly degenerated into one-party rule or outright dictatorships. Again what would happen is that the people would gain voice through the various parliaments and would move to redistribute land and/or wealth. Wealth would first seek to buy back power and, failing to effect a favorable outcome, call out the military bringing a swift end to the “democratic” experiment. In those countries wherein the military proved insufficient or reticent to crush its own people, the elites would then turn to the United States to destabilize, help overthrow, or simply send in the marines. Here in this political Petri dish the conditions necessary for the establishment of stable representative government came fully into relief. These experiments in making the entire hemisphere over in our own image demonstrated a political principle our forefathers understood: that representative government can only be established in a society wherein there is an equitable distribution of wealth. If the gulf between the have’s and have not’s is too wide the foundations of the republic will not hold. As Lincoln would say in a different context nearly a century later “a house divided against itself cannot stand”.

What distinguishes us from the classic Banana Republic is that advanced democratic societies are characterized by a large, vibrant and controlling middle class. This is no accident. It is necessary for the Middle Class to be strong enough to counter the weight of the extremes of poverty and wealth whose interests stand diametrically opposite one another. If wealth is concentrated in too few hands then it will simply buy power, as is becoming more evident in each election cycle. If the poor begin to outnumber the Middle Class and society becomes bifurcated into two camps—the wealthy few and the impoverished many—then the democratic experiment is bound to fail as in the classic example of the Banana Republic wherein wealth wins; or the French Revolution where wealth loses. Without a strong and pervasive middle class to act as a referee, to stand as a “middle ground” for which the polar opposites must compete, then there is no “buffer” there is no compromise.

Benjamin Franklin, so the legend goes, was stopped on the street as deliberations ended on the new Constitution. A woman walked up to him and asked, “what kind of government have we, Mr. Franklin?”

“A Republic, if you can keep it”, replied the old inventor.

If we can keep it…the founders knew this was an historical experiment. They knew their creation was a fragile one and many did not expect the republic to outlive them. As Arthur Schlesinger points out in his “Age of Jackson” many not only distrusted the Eastern Mercantile interests but understood from their reading of history that a true republic must be born of a large and controlling class of middling station. So in the 19th Century Jefferson’s yeoman farmer became the Bulwark of the Republic so to speak.

Lets be clear about this. The middle class is not a product of great wealth, it is not something handed down to us from above as a manifestation of philanthropy or even enlightened self-interest. The middle class has always been the creation of political will. The idea that the wealthy will, out of some exaggerated sense of “noblesse Oblige” or out of their own economic interests, create and defend a social middle class is laughable on it’s face. Nothing in the history of man demonstrates this. In fact the moneyed interests have forever been found kicking and screaming and standing foursquare against everything from banning child labor, unionization, the eight-hour work day, the forty hour work week, the minimum wage, social security, health care, civil rights (read about the “anti-abolition riots” in New York City in the 1830’s and the business community’s support of the rioters) environmental and consumer protections, to name but a few articles of reactionary litany.

Let’s get back to this: the middle class is a product of political will. If the last three decades demonstrate anything it is that with the reduction of taxes and the growing share of the national economic pie taken by the wealthiest Americans almost none of that money has found it’s way into the middle class. In fact, left to their own proclivities, the wealthy have done what they always do…pocket the money. In the last decade they have commandeered two thirds of the tax cuts and fully three quarters of the wealth produced by the increases in worker productivity. Nothing is “trickling down” to the next social rung as evidenced by the stagnation of incomes, and the absolute decline in purchasing power of those of ‘middling means”.

The middle class in America was and is a creation of political will. Whether it was through the outright rejection of the attempt to transplant European aristocracy to the new world during the colonial period, the expansion westward as a way of insuring the survival of the yeoman farmer, the institution of income and estate taxes early in the last century, the breaking up of trusts and other economic combinations, the passing of education, and home mortgage programs in the postwar era, to laws making it easier for workers to organize (until Reagan that is), to minimum wage, unemployment and worker’s compensation insurance, to Medicare and Medicaid these were political acts taken by the people’s representatives assembled. As a case in point: before the passage of Social Security being old was almost synonymous with being poor. In fact as late as the early 1960’s over 30 percent of the elderly lived in poverty. With the passage of Medicare and Medicaid and other such programs that level has been reduced to nearly 10%.
The passage of this legislation and the institution of these programs not only served to create a ‘fairer’ distribution of wealth but served the more important function of shoring up the modern American Middle Class and, by extension, the foundation of the republic itself.

I have not been understood. The middle class is itself a creation of political will designed to give stability to the republic. Without a middle class, in a representative society, one has contention, strife, war, revolution or repression. Only an all-powerful middle can insure against the extremes and for that reason war on the middle class is war on the republic itself.

In November last year, the center gave way. The ship of state was ripped loose of it’s moorings and cast to sea piloted by a ship of fools. Losing over 60 seats in the house to the modern “No-Nothing” party, the Speaker’s gavel was handed over to John Boner of Ohio who, upon taking the dais, announced that the first act of the new Congress will be the repeal of the Health Care law. Obama, with the opposition in control of committees, investigations and spending, will now be forced to do what Clinton had done, become the buffer between his own party and the newly re-emergent troglodytes. “Triangulation” it was called then; a strategy of positioning the President in the middle in which he becomes not an advocate of his agenda but an architect of a series of miserable compromises. The promise of ‘transcendence’ becomes the reality of ‘triangulation’. The last time we found ourselves in this position, we witnessed so-called ‘welfare reform’, trade agreements that savaged manufacturing jobs, cuts in social spending, the further dismantling of New Deal banking regulations, and the continued decline of the share of national wealth controlled by the Middle Class. If recent history is any example, it means the resumption of the war on the middle class and, by extension, the Republic itself.