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Chapter 4

SOCIAL OBSTACLES TO GAINING CONSENSUS

There is reason to hope that those who have long been opposed to capitalism and acommercial society, and have instead favored a mixed economy or even socialism per se, will share in the objectives of limiting the powers of the state and of continuing a vigorousmarket sector. The social-democratic parties in Europe have for several decadesacknowledged an important role for the market economy, marking a sharp change indirection from the earlier socialist parties.

This makes it realistic to pose a question that will be central for us here: whethersuch readers will desire to share common ground with the classical liberalism that has beenone of the underpinnings of American society. We can well suppose that they will want asystem that is humane, respectful of individuals and genuinely participative. This shouldcause them to consider it vital to constrain the concentration of governmental power that amajor on-going program of economic distribution could potentially entail, if not done right.

If so, there will be common ground for people who until now have held widelydivergent views. I mentioned earlier that readers who are not classical liberals, orconservatives, would do well to stay the course to join our odyssey later. We havereached that point. It is now possible, in light of the foundation laid in the precedingchapters, to see how such readers can share in a search for answers here.

A major stumbling-block needs to be faced candidly. During the past forty years, Ihave devoted much of my writing to a phenomenon called "the alienation of the intellectual"that has been one of the principal forces in modern civilization since Rousseau in the mid-eighteenth century. Especially since the beginning of the Romantic Movement in the early

nineteenth century, the main literary, artistic and academic culture (to which there have beenmany individual exceptions) has been deeply disaffected from the mainstream "bourgeois"(i.e., middle class, commercial) culture. Socialist thought arose out of this alienatedsubculture, in fact, as its members sought out, in succession, every unassimilated ordisaffected group as allies in the ideological, political struggle with the commercial middleclass and sought to mold an ideology that would appeal to those groups. Much of the social-political history of the past two hundred years has reflected this bitter division, and themajor systems of thought about society and politics have systematized the viewpoints of theantagonists.

There have been several reasons for this alienation. I believe they go much deeperthan just the complaints the Left has found to make against a market economy. I analyzed

several causes in detail in Chapter 11 of my book Understanding the Modern Predicament .1

Just the same, the objections to capitalism certainly were one of them. To the extent thatthose complaints have been a significant cause of the disaffection, a move into a commonoutlook based around a "shared market economy" should remove a major cause of thealienation. If that happens, the world will literally pass into a new phase of history for areason additional to those I have already mentioned. It will not be the end of conflict, sincehuman beings will still retain their mixed nature from which power and avarice, along withmuch honest disagreement, will never disappear. But the basis will exist for a reconciliation


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of many of the antagonisms the world has known for several generations. (SamuelHuntington's book The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order reminds usthat civilizational differences embodying religion and culture will offer plentiful sources of conflict. But much of the ideological conflict typical of the conflict between the Left andthe Right during the past 250 years will be lessened.)

It is an open question, however, whether the alienation will actually wither away,because of its other causes that are at work. During the Communist years in Eastern Europe,two Hungarian social scientists, George Konrad and Ivan Szelenyi, wrote a book under thetitle Intellectuals on the Road to Class Power . That very name raises this question: Is therea yearning by "intellectuals" for power that will continue even into a new, much moreegalitarian, age? I would ask each of you who may identify with what has long been anangry artistic and literary culture to ask yourself, probing deeply into your thoughts andemotions, just how you feel about that. Fundamentally, there will be conflict, notreconciliation, between those who want an egalitarian society as a vehicle for power andthose who want it to serve individual liberty.

Eric Hoffer believed that a major cause of the alienation of the intellectual from

bourgeois society was that the intelligentsia as a class felt displaced in a commercial societyand longed for places of position and prestige. If a society centered on a shared marketeconomy hopes to prevent the kind of cleavage that has split the world into left andright fo r two centuries, it will do well to make special provision for its artists, writers andliterary figures. To do this if they hate the society will, of course, be self-defeating; but wemight hope that under the new conditions they will no longer feel the alienation they havelong felt, and can occupy an honored place within a society they respect.

An equally fundamental problem will come from the existentially unchanneled nature of a leisured population . There is potential for a spiritual and cultural breakdown among thepopulation in general, or some significant part of it, when people no longer center their livesaround work. In his book In Our Hands , Charles Murray predicts spiritual malaise: Givepeople plenty and security, and they will fall into spiritual torpor. When life becomes anextended picnic, with nothing of importance to do, ideas of greatness become an irritant.Such is the nature of the Europe syndrome. If millions turn into Yahoos of the sortdescribed by Jonathan Swift in his most biting satire, going into a stupor of druggedconsciousness, sexual license, and the like, the society will be in immense trouble.

If, however, a given society strongly acculturates people to make constructive andself-fulfilling use of their retirement-like existence, and the people find it within themselvesto respond accordingly, the possibilities for a good life far exceed what our imaginations cannow conceive. It will be imperative to have a culture of civilized values, with strongfamilies and communities. This will require a vastly different orientation and moral-behavioral tone than recent generations of Americans have come to accept. This will almostcertainly be one of the great issues of the future. It will be a great civilizational tragedy if itis not resolved constructively.

A society centered in part on much distribution-without-work will put the varioustheories of human nature to the test: Were Swift, Thomas Hobbes (and, more recently, AynRand in her view of the great proportion of people) right in expecting a dog-eat-doghumanity? Or is there something to the classical liberals vitalist perspective that looks tothe energies of ordinary human beings for much good? Perhaps the two poles will be


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mixed, and a titanic question will become how the constructive forces deal with thedestructive.

If the vital energies of millions of people are to be the answer, it is true that the life-force within those people will be a major factor. It would be a mistake, though, to think thatculture, institutions, ideas, education and such contributions as an elevating intellectual

subculture can make, assuming it is not alienated and thus turned toward the nihilistic willnot also be imperative elements.It is tempting to think that the chance for a constructive answer to the possibility of

social breakdown is unlikely, and to think that that gives reason to oppose a broaddistribution of income. What we must realize, however, is that the alternative to suchdistribution is not the civilized existence we have enjoyed historically; instead, it is thechaos and conflict that will come from a desperate population that has been displaced fromwork.

If economic displacement proceeds apace and is not satisfactorily addressed, it is probable that chaos and conflict will result from such displacement in the United Statesand any of the advanced societies, since it is to be supposed that the members of what has

been a broad middle class will hardly be inclined to be passive in the face of theirdisplacement. Hundreds of millions of people worldwide live lethargically in squalor insocieties run by a few. That has been so commonplace in history that we are forced toacknowledge that it is something of a natural condition for humanity. But it isntnatural for the peoples who have known from experience that something else is possible.We may venture to predict that they wont stand for being relegated to the trash -strewn lotsof urban slums (although the assurance of this is weakened by the fact that the Americanpublic is much more passive than it was, say, in the early nineteenth century). We can addto this prediction a clarion-call for a moral imperative that they not allow that to happen. If they do, it will be one of historys calamities.

The recent marriage of free-market thinking with a worldwide elite poses a particularproblem. There is a certain naivete in the hope I have expressed that classical liberals,conservatives, libertarians, and others who have supported a market economy wil l join mein reexamining their respective philosophies to face the issues this book is raising. Thereason for the naivete is that in recent decades, with the advent of globalization and the endof the Cold War, a worldwide elite has formed that has adopted as its ideology a deep andself-interested commitment to free-trade and global laissez-faire . While superficially thisseems to have its origins in classical liberal market thinking, it is in fact profoundly at oddswith classical liberalism, which has long championed the liberty and well-being of people atlarge and has opposed aristocracy. This elite is much- discussed in todays literature . It isoften called the Davos culture (named after the community in Switzerland where a major conference, the World Economic Forum, is held annually).

This means there is more than ideology or philosophical principles holding many of todays market enthusiasts both to the theory of a market economy as we have known it andto the peculiar form of state-capitalism that has come to prevail. To the elite itself, and tothe countless tag-alongs (individuals, non-governmental organizations, public officials,politicians, lobbyists, and the like) who prosper on its periphery, there is the likelihood thatthey will cling to their self-interest as they perceive it. This can cause them to resist anymove away from the intellectual edifice that has become so central to their thinking.


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The hold that this elite has on contemporary society and politics in the United Statesand elsewhere today is so great that it is almost impossible to overstate. A populist revolt todisplace it will be extremely difficult, if not impossible. Since the alternative, ultimately,will probably be revolution, one can hope that at some point members of that elite will cometo see the danger they are in if they do not revisit their ideology. They need to fit the great

bulk of mankind into the affluence that the new technology can create, or they will pay theconsequences. The result, if they hold steady to their current position, will be miserable foreverybody, not the least for the elite itself.

ENDNOTES

1 This book, and my other writings, are available to read and download atwww.dwightmurphey-collectedwritings.info

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