[This is Chapter Twenty-One from Murphey’s
book The Emerging Crisis of Economic Displacement.]
Classical
liberals would have reason to despair if there were no way out of the
predicament that will be posed by the crisis of the market economy. But there
is such a way, and this offers hope that instead of
meeting disaster the human race can move to a higher plateau of affluence and
freedom. Society does not have to sink into chaos, revolution, war and mass
migration. People as individuals do not have to suffer the ravages of perpetual
downsizing. The best aspirations of all the social philosophies can be met: the
individual liberty and limitation of State power desired by classical liberals;
the underpinning of ample personal security desired by socialists; and the
cultural richness desired by traditional conservatives. Well-being, not
displacement and anguish, can be the lot of people generally. Science
and technology and a competitive world market can proceed into realms
now only dimly dreamed of. World ecology can be improved. Advanced
civilization can be furthered.
Just the same, the transition will
be supercharged with danger. People need to become aware of the crisis and the
astonishing speed at which it is approaching, and also
that there is a way out -- and to see these things before polarization and
despair become widespread and produce angry ideologies that lead to social
disruption, carnage and totalitarianism. If those things happen, constructive
solutions will be remote.
In this and the next chapter, I will
tell the solution as I see it. This chapter will discuss the overall desiderata
that the free society of the future must meet. ("Desiderata” is a useful
word that means "desired essentials.") Chapter 22 will discuss the
detail of the "shared market economy" as a specific way to satisfy
these needs.
I will enumerate several basic
needs, but it is predictable that even they will not include everything
important. To point out everything would require a review of all aspects of a
desirable civilization -- and, further, that I have the requisite wisdom.
Accordingly, let me invoke the idea of "intellectual dialogue" that I
invited you into in Chapter One. After you have read the desiderata that I
consider important, think the thing through for yourself, perhaps to come up
with others or perhaps to modify the ones I am listing. Then, of course, what
we will have both produced will be only a start. What will eventually come out
of the transition is probably impossible to foresee. Hopefully, a consensus
will emerge. If that consensus comes close to the type of society I am
proposing, I will be pleased; but the result will necessarily be the product of
many millions of peoples' thought and effort, and perhaps of considerable
conflict.
As I state the desiderata, you will
be on sound ground if you demand to know, "how does he justify that?” The
answer is that the justification will be in the total vision that the elements
spell out, when taken together. Is that vision something an overwhelming
portion of the human race will find desirable to support? Is it achievable? Do
the parts fit together? Will it work? I am not basing the values I list on any
theological or metaphysical claim. They will gain their legitimacy, if at all,
because people find that the vision is of a society they would welcome (and
because they agree with me that it is workable and attainable).
Desideratum #1. To continue
an active, sharply competitive, global market economy.
The
consensus that much of the world has developed recently to the effect that
a competitive market economy is incredibly innovative and productive is
certainly sound. Under competitive pressures, the profit-motive leads to an
incessant drive toward lower costs and the rapid development of new products
and services. It is an engine that can result in greater and greater
want-satisfaction. When combined with science, it is a key to the vast unlocked
progress that lies in store for the future.
Much of the message of this book is
egalitarian. If that is taken to an extreme in which egalitarianism becomes the
rage, however, that will destroy this engine of progress. I should not be
understood as urging anything like a total leveling.
It would be a mistake to think that
the continuation of a competitive market with the profit motive is no more than
a choice for materialism. The dire need that much of the world faces is not a
need founded in false values, but in survival itself, and beyond that, in a
desire for a decent life. Even in the advanced economies, further innovation
does not have to serve frivolous values, but can introduce highly fulfilling
dimensions to life. Included in these may be much-improved health and a far
longer life span. Everything that Chapter 4 mentioned about the "utopian
possibilities" has a bearing here.
The critics of the market will find
that the other desiderata will remove most, if not all, of the reasons for
their criticism. They may even find themselves enthusiastic about the total mix
I am proposing.
A competitive market can continue
and grow even in the context of the distributional system I will be suggesting.
It will require that people be able to strive for profit and for extra earnings
and property, subject only to the limits I will mention. These things will be
important to the motivation that will drive the economy onward and upward.
There is no reason they cannot own producer goods or more corporate stock than
other people do. As we have seen, though, the non-labor-intensive technology
just will not have a need for billions of participants on the production side.
Those for whom there will be no place will have to participate, instead, on the
distributional side.
Desideratum
#2. To
provide for a broad distribution of economic well-being, which
will overcome the effects of displacement and polarization, and thereby assure
the society's legitimacy by serving everybody.
Friedrich Hayek didn't hesitate to conclude that a
free society must act appropriately to counter the effects of economic
dislocation from forces beyond the individual's control. His discussion
centered, of course, on the conditions of his time, which included the trade
cycle; he was not foreseeing vast dislocation from non-labor-intensive
technology. Here is what he said, which is consistent with the values I am
expressing: "We shall take for granted the availability of a system of
public relief which provides a uniform minimum for all instances of proved
need, so that no member of the community need be in want of food or shelter.”
He said that he saw force in the argument that a higher level of support should
be assured where "sudden and unforeseeable changes in the demand for labor
occur as a result of circumstances which the worker can neither foresee nor
control.”1
This should be done, if the
situation permits, in a way consistent with continuing a competitive market
economy. That is why in the next chapter I will propose a "shared market
economy" in which everybody in the society holds stock in index mutual
funds representing the economy as a whole. To create that stock, hundreds of
billions of dollars will be pumped into the firms that make up the present
economy -- and further billions as time goes on. This will provide capital to
enterprises and entrepreneurs. The payment of dividends on that stock won't be
any different than businesses' paying dividends to stockholders today. The
difference will be in the fact that the stock going to the public at large will
not have been "earned" by the people receiving it. It will come from
other sources that I will discuss in the next chapter.
Countries that don't have much of an
advanced market economy, and that find it terribly difficult to create or to
continue such an economy under the competitive conditions that will be brought
about in the future by non-labor-intensive technology, may not be able to use
this shared-ownership approach, since there will be little or no private
economy in which to share. It will then be essential -- if their people are not
going to starve and if a total meltdown of the society through chaos and
revolution is to be avoided -- for the government (or agency designated by
government) to use the advanced technology to produce goods and services for
direct distribution to the public. This will be the old socialist “production
for use and not for profit.”
Classical liberals have detested
this because of the dangers it poses of statist
abuse, and because it lacks crucial motivation through market incentives, but
what we are talking about is a society without a market alternative and without
the means to trade for what they need. It will be a society that is today
almost entirely agricultural, but in which farming is made obsolete by indoor
laboratory farming in the advanced economies.
I am not listing our reaction to
this as a separate "desideratum," but perhaps it should be; it is
this: that opponents of socialism will be well-advised
not to consider a country vicious for resorting to this expedient in a case
where there is no alternative. (Of course, if there are workable alternatives
for such countries, those should be pursued.) Given the necessities of the
future, we would do well to lower our voices, muting our criticisms of other
peoples if they are doing what they consider vital to their own existence. By
saying this, I am not intending to criticize the aversion to socialism that I
have myself felt under past conditions.
Where will those societies obtain
the technology and the capital? One of my later desiderata will be that the
advanced countries share technology and capital with them, giving them the
means to support themselves. To conservatives who have long opposed the
“giveaways” of foreign aid and have resented the taking of substance for that
purpose from the American taxpayer, I can only say what I have said so often in
this book: it will be a necessity. The alternative will be for the advanced
countries to be flooded with perhaps billions of immigrants, washing out by
sheer numbers the very existence of the countries they enter. Much of the
opposition to foreign aid, by the way, has been toward programs that don't help
people help themselves. The type of assistance I am talking about will have to
be the sort that is conducive to self-help, since a world with many billions of
people will be a bottomless pit. Aid in the form of consumer goods will
scarcely help fill it.
No society should simply accept, or
allow to happen, the horrors of mass displacement or
the unjust warpings of sharp polarization. These
threats must be met and overcome. If they are, what technology portends for the
future is bright; if they are not, there will be chaos and misery.
No society will attain general
acceptance (i.e., "legitimacy") -- or have grounds for arguing that
it deserves it --unless provision is made for everybody in the society.
Desideratum
#3. To
use government to put into place the broad sharing of ownership (or, in
countries that can't hold their own in a future economy, to produce goods
directly for distribution); and to use government to create a
"commons" and to make possible ways of life that markets won't be
able to sustain, if that is what the people in a given society choose.
One
of the hardest things for conservatives, classical liberals and
libertarians to give up will be the notion that “government is the enemy and
nothing it does is any good." (The better philosophers do not say it quite
that way, except perhaps Herbert Spencer a century ago, but it represents an
extremely common attitude in the
As we go through the desiderata, I
will stress that government has to be tied down, and will revisit a point that
was made in the preceding chapter: that there is an opportunity even to limit
its functions in many things when compared to what government does now. But the
crisis of the market will force the use of non-market political mechanisms in
ways that limited-government advocates today consider off-limits. It will be
very unfortunate, probably even disastrous, to cling to views that bar
government from serving those purposes.
The main call upon government that
arises out of the market's crisis relates back to the second desideratum: the
creation of a system of distribution. That can be done in a way, as we will
see, that leaves the market economy intact and that involves no undue
intervention by government into the lives people lead. But the institutional setting-up of a system
of shared ownership, if that is the direction a society chooses to go, will
require the use of governmental power. The shared ownership won't snap into
existence by itself.
Are
there other functions that should be added?
Yes, but only if a given people,
through their political processes, want them. In a world where work is no
longer central and where the market will no longer determine what most people
do on a day-to-day basis, the people of a given society may well choose to
adopt ways of life that would not come about through autonomous individual
action, but that require some institutional structure or even protection.
Some of the additional functions may
have to do with cultural direction. Assume the French decide they want a
pastoral tone to their civilization, and for this purpose to have millions of
their citizens live, if they choose, a rural existence
as small family farmers. That is a cultural decision, let us supposed, that the
French make out of a love for that type of life and a placing of high value on
that type of people. Those farms will not be "economic," in the sense
of "lowest-cost producers," if factory farms are putting agricultural
products on the world market at extremely low prices. The alternatives for
France will be: (a) for government to do nothing in this cultural direction, in
which case people can farm as "hobbyist" farmers, but only if they
can afford to do so on the income they derive from the shared ownership and
from other personal sources; (b) to spend public funds to subsidize the
farmers; or (c) to "protect" the farmers by tariffs or other charges
on the less-expensive sources, making the family farmers competitive on the
domestic market. The same alternatives apply to countless other pursuits the
French might prefer.
In a country with the individualist
heritage of the
If a given society opts to subsidize
or protect certain directions of activity, such a choice will amount to a
departure from the world competitive market. In Free Trade thinking today, any
such thing is an immoral breaking of the rules of the game, which ought to be
those of laissez faire capitalism. We will be foolish, however, to
continue to take that view of it. Why not embrace the notion that the
"rules of the game" of the world market will be that any nation will
participate in the market to such an extent as its people want it to?
Again, in an economy in which scarcity is not a central fact, economics will
not need to be the highest end. To say this is not to denigrate economic
processes.
Another function may be to provide
increased public services, creating more of what is called "the commons.”
Libertarians are right in wanting such things done privately -- if a convincing
case can be made that private effort is sufficient to get it done and made
available to all. Otherwise, the performance of such services is a political
choice. This issue goes beyond the types of services that we might think of today, and even extends to such things as the future
existence of universities.
Hayek pointed out that "though
a few theorists have demanded that the activities of government should be
limited to the maintenance of law and order, such a stand cannot be justified
on the principle of liberty. Only the coercive measures of government need be
strictly limited... [T]here is undeniably a wide field for non-coercive
activities of government and... there is a clear need
for financing them through taxation... There is no reason why the volume of
these pure service activities should not increase with the general growth of
wealth."2
If we consider the case of today's
public universities, we see that they are primarily funded on the basis of
"credit-hour-production" (i.e., the number of class-hours taught).
Within a short time, these institutions will face a crisis as more and more
teaching becomes available at extremely low cost over the Internet (or whatever
comes to take its place, since everything seems only transitional in today's
technology). This will be interactive teaching and the instruction will be able
to lead to degrees and other credentials offered from sources, accredited and
non-accredited, of all sorts. It is hard for anyone who has spent years
teaching classes in today's setting to imagine that some considerable desire
for face-to-face instruction will not continue. But on the scale that exists
today? Almost certainly not. Now, if we think a step
further, we notice that the scholarly work of universities and their faculty,
which the faculty itself considers the heart and soul of university life and
the university mission, has been a "tag-along" that has been funded
by the money coming for instruction. This gives rise to the question of whether
taxpayers, acting through legislatures, will want to fund aggregations of
hundreds of professors "living the life of the mind" when substantial
teaching is no longer present as a visible product. This, too, virtually
answers itself -- almost certainly in the negative. The result will be that "the
academic market" will no longer support public universities as it has in
the past, and it will become a decision for the community, acting through its
political agencies, whether it wants to maintain campuses and faculties. If it
does so, it is making a decision in favor of a certain part of “the commons.” The case against the alternatives that
involve government action will not be nearly as strong as it has been in the
past. Here are the reasons:
·
The market will be peripheral, not nearly so
central, to peoples' lives in a world where there is little work.
"Choosing how to live" will be an existential question that will be
answered much more by unconstrained choice than it is today, since most people
won't have their lives filled with careers engendered by the need to make a
living. There will be a greater sense that economic productivity is a resource
to be shared for whatever the community finds desirable. The moral basis for
property and earnings will be substantially different than they are today in
light of the existence of a very sizeable "unearned increment,” a point I
discussed in Chapter 18. We will be rather far removed from the present market
rationale that militates against public funding.
·
There will be far less basis for a conviction
that any redirection of energies “robs the system of the optimum allocation of
resources.” I showed in Chapter 18 why
the "optimum allocation" concept is logically fallacious. If we
substitute for "optimum" a simple concern for “dealing well with
scarcity,” we find that even that will be less important in the world of the
future. "Scarcity" will exist only in the sense I have spoken of
previously that compares means to the "infinitely expanding desires"
that economists talk about. It will not be scarcity for the ordinary things of
life. The productivity to allow a society to make life-style choices will be
there and the grounds for objection "that we are depriving ourselves of
additional production" will be far less compelling. To put it in economic
terms, we can say that in a world where there is a much larger economic
product, the "marginal utility" of more production will be less.
If for
these reasons a given people opt for cultural decisions that differ
from what individual interaction would produce, are they necessarily running
counter to what would best serve classical liberal values? On
balance, no.
Certainly much more will be open to
political decision than is the case in non-socialist countries today. This has statist dangers, to be sure, which is
something I will talk about in this and the next chapter. But it is important to notice that in other
ways the use of public resources for objectives the society chooses can serve
an advanced civilization well -- and even strengthen its peoples' immunity from
totalitarian abuse. This requires a lengthy explanation, but one that will be
rewarding:
Such larger objectives may be much
more conducive to high civilization than purely individual action is. The
ancient Greeks created a sublime architecture, for example, while individuals
spending the money they receive as dividends from shared ownership of the
economy probably would not do that.
Not only will that elevation of
architecture be valuable in its own right, if the country's people want it, but
such cultural cultivation may go a long way toward dissolving the
"alienation of the intellectual,” which is a central fact of the modern
age that I have pointed to many times as central to understanding modern life.
One of the causes of the alienation has been that many artistic and literary
people have considered "bourgeois" society hopelessly mediocre in
these dimensions, which they aren't wrong in thinking important. If reaching a
higher elevation helps the alienation dry up, something that should also dry up
will be the alliance that the established artistic, literary culture has so
long had with anti-bourgeois values. This militantly adversarial relationship
with the main culture is what to a large extent creates our present culture's
artistic, literary emphasis on dissonance, ugliness and bizarre novelty. If
those ingredients change, civilization might move more or less easily to a much
higher intellectual and spiritual plateau, while at the same time a major acid
eating away at an individualistically free society will be reduced, perhaps
even eliminated.
The removal or significant reduction
of intellectual alienation will also lessen the demand for an alliance of the
intelligentsia with dissident groups. At the same time, the broad-based
distribution of economic product should do much to prevent the very existence
of disaffected groups. Thus, some of the main driving forces toward messianic
ideology and even totalitarianism will be lessened. This should allow the
society -- even though it will have a significant additional governmental role
-- to be much more accepting toward what we might call "normal human
existence" than we have seen during the past two centuries of
ideologically-driven programs.
It is a mistake to think, as so many
people have for several decades in the
In the preceding chapter, I
mentioned the possibility that a more constrained State might again become
practicable once a system of broad-based economic distribution is in place.
Virtually all of what we know as "the Welfare State" can then be
abolished: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Aid to Families With Dependent Children, Food Stamps, low-cost housing, and
hundreds of other programs of that kind. Michael Levin, writing for the Mises Institute, observes that "there are hundreds of
overlapping federal, state, and municipal programs" for the poor. He says
that “in
The American Left has thought that
crime is mainly a result of economic deprivation, while conservatives have
attributed it primarily to moral and character breakdown. The presence of
economic support for everyone through the dividends paid on the shared
ownership of the economy will put both theories to the test. Economic
deprivation will no longer be an arguable breeding ground for criminal
behavior, since it will not exist. To the extent it has played a role in the
past, the policing function of the State will be lessened, including the need
to maintain as many judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys, public defenders,
probation officers, social workers, wardens, jails, penitentiaries, etc.
Desideratum
#4. That
governmental action to create the system of broad-based distribution will have
to come at the political level where people feel themselves to be a people, and
have strong bonds of mutual identification. In today's world, this means the
national level, and sometimes even the local level.
Why
should there be a preference toward the national and
sometimes local levels? The answer is, so that the distribution --an absolutely
essential precondition of future civilization -- actually gets done. Is a
system of "shared ownership" imaginable on a world scale today? It
would destroy the advanced economies and thereby remove the engine by which all
peoples everywhere will gain the means, through technology and capital, for
their own salvation.
The imperative of national solutions
to the displacement problem points to the importance of halting the erosion of
national sovereignty that is occurring in the world today. The future will have
great need for the nation-state, not as something atavistic, but as the vehicle
for what needs doing.
National and local life is also the
context within which the sort of cultural preferences I just discussed can find
expression. Unless a nation "as a people" can settle on such
preferences because its citizens have a common sense of life, the cultural
choices will be impossible. Without that sense of shared community, the choices
will engender irreconcilable conflict.
Clearly in connection with this last
point I am making a value judgment against a completely homogenized "world
culture.” There is little value in my pointing out the possibility of
distinctively local and national culture if what we want is a uniform
international culture. Such a uniform culture is certainly the tendency of the
world market, mass marketing of commodities, cheap transportation,
instantaneous communication, and mass entertainment.
It may be, although it is doubtful,
that people throughout the world will have no objection to that developing
uniformity and will not seek to cultivate their respective cultures. Just the
same, political action at the national level will be essential to solving the
crisis of distribution.
Many
countries are not "nations" in the sense that they embody a
single people with a shared sense of life. This is especially true in
The "crisis of the market"
forces a need for political action. That is a tragedy in settings where
agreed-upon political action about things fundamental to the society cannot be
arrived at peacefully. The former
Desideratum #5: That
we must not allow the closed system of laissez-faire ideology to deter
us from doing what is necessary to preserve and extend a civilization that is
both free and advanced.
This
intellectual openness is necessary to attain the other desiderata. I would
devote considerable time to its discussion now if I had not already done so in
Chapters 18 and 20. You will recall that my criticism of the closed system
isn't based just on the flaws I see in it, but on the belief that the classical
liberal philosophy of a free society will become detestable in the eyes of
countless millions if laissez1aire ideology is pursued without regard to
the immense changes occurring in the world demand for work. I want to preserve
a free society, not a statement of its philosophy that will become increasingly
ill-suited.
The great
twentieth century classical liberal Wilhelm Roepke
did not limit his philosophy of a free society to what the closed ideological
system calls for. He was able to say that "the market economy isn't
everything. It must find its place within a higher order of things which is not
ruled by supply and demand, free prices, and competition."4 If that
was true before the world's move into worker displacement, it will be much
truer in the near future. The Hayekian thinker Samuel Brittan agrees; he has
written recently that "the right kind of market economy can be an
instrument of human freedom and a way of satisfying human wants... A great deal
of attention is required to provide the right kind of framework -- especially
the redefinition of property rights and the general rules of the game. Too many
free market tracts simply supply reassurance for the believer...."5
Desideratum #6: That
even though major innovative steps are essential along some lines, as I am
indicating, there is considerable wisdom, as to other things, in the conservative
preference for slow, incremental change evolving out of a people's experience.
Traditionalist
conservatives, from Burke forward and probably well before that,
have long urged that society change through careful evolution, seeing changes
as needed but in keeping with the spirit of the whole. Classical liberal
economist Friedrich Hayek picked up a major conservative theme when he made
this a centerpiece of his own philosophy. He argued that many things in society
reflect knowledge gained by thousands of people over time, which is knowledge
that no one person has; and that caution should accordingly be used in making
changes. He opposed the type of constructivist "rationalism" that
thinks itself wise enough freely to substitute its judgment for the established
ways.6
This brings to the fore the "intellectual
humility" that is so important to the theory of a free society. The idea
is not to tear everything down, as the Russian nihilist Nechayev
urged, so that everything can be rebuilt; instead, it is to make necessary
changes, but otherwise to follow the medical profession's conservative theorem
of "do no harm."
Desideratum #7: That
we should reject any anti-science, anti-technology ideology (such as continues
to arise out of the legacy of nineteenth century Romanticism) and should fully
pursue the development of science and technology, putting on them only such
limits as are necessary to prevent abuses.
The world is still a
sink of unmet needs. Humanity still has the stars to reach.
Science and technology can serve people in the
most profound ways. The prediction that they will bring dehumanization need not
be accurate. Contrary to popular imagination, there is nothing in them that
tends inexorably in that direction. In fact, the old images of factories with
robot-like people manning them, such as were so frighteningly put forward in
Fritz Lang's 1927 silent film classic Metropolis, are increasingly
out-of-date. Robots may man the factories, but they will be computer-driven
machines, not people.
Science and technology will be needed to
accomplish the overall vision that is captured by these "desiderata."
To sustain billions of people who no longer have a place in an economy of work
will require immense productivity. It takes even more to go beyond
"sustaining" them without misery and to raise them to a life that is
fulfilling.
Whether science and technology can continue to
be encouraged will largely depend upon the attitude the world's religions take
toward them. The Romantic Movement in
early nineteenth century Europe was marked by a repudiation of the
Enlightenment and a harking back to mysticism. Theodore Roszak's
Where the Wasteland Ends was a New Left classic rooted in what Roszak praised as the "shamanism" of
other-worldly religion.
As people make their choice about the religions
they prefer, they must keep in mind that the present {and future) world
population lives by virtue of modern science, technology, economics and
medicine. Take those things away, and billions will die -- and civilization
with them, since they won't go quietly. A society based on Rousseau's
"state of nature" could sustain only a small fraction of the
population that is alive now.
The possibility of millions of people turning to
religions that repudiate science and technology will be much greater if no
solution is arrived at for the problem of distribution. In the absence of such
a solution, people will strike out against what they see as the cause of their
desperation.
Desideratum #8: That
the science, technology and production should continue to be made more and more
environmentally friendly.
I
haven't been an enthusiast for what is called "the environmental
movement." It became popular primarily in the 1960s and was characterized
by a heavy-handed anti-capitalist bias (as witness The Environmental
Handbook, which spoke of "the worms of capitalism," published
just before the first "Earth Day" in 1970).7 Since then, in its efforts "to get the
world's attention," it has persisted in exaggerations of the grossest
sort, and in the misuse of science itself to make its case.8 To say this is not to suggest that there are
not a great many sincere and well-meaning people who do support the
movement and the many groups that make it up.
But no one who cares about the world in which we
live, and who loves such a thing as the Colorado high country the way I do,
will let the sins of environmentalism as we have known it obscure the
importance of preserving and even restoring the wondrous world that is home to
us.
Fortunately, the technology that is now arising
isn't much like the old "smokestack industries" of the Age of Coal.
More and more, science and technology offer the solutions to
environmental problems, not a source of further pollution. If this book has by
now conditioned you to look far enough ahead, consider this: when farming comes
to be done in laboratory-like indoor factory farms, virtually the whole world
will become available as a park, however owned. Hobbyist farming becomes
possible, with a more rural existence for many people. A greater, not a lesser,
reverence for nature can be nourished.
Desideratum #9: That
vigilance should be exercised to prevent the rise of a dominating technical or
intellectual elite, or of an elite based on extreme wealth.
Richard
Herrnstein and Charles Murray's The Bell Curve pointed
to the growing polarization in American society based on intelligence.9
This is largely a phenomenon of the growing Information Age technology. The
economy is becoming more and more a matter of applied science and technology --
which means that the coming age will increasingly be the heyday of the bright,
often brilliant, people whose element that is. Others, as we have seen, will be
ever more displaced or marginalized.
(Even many people who will be among the skilled workers while computers
are being introduced into all facets of life will be displaced eventually, as
what they install becomes more user-friendly for less skilled people to operate
or becomes able to operate itself with little labor of any kind.)
In this context, the existence of a
technical elite will be unavoidable. At the same time, there will be a tendency
toward what today is called "a jet-set elite," based on the
incredible fortunes that the most successful players in the world's mass market
will be able to reap. Thirdly, we have seen two centuries during which the
subculture of the world intelligentsia has sought "class power" (to
use the words that Konrad and Szelenyi
used in their book The Intellectuals
on the Road to Class Power after years of observing Communism in Eastern
Europe and the old Soviet Union). There may be a continuing drive in that
direction even though I see the potential removal of some of the causal factors
behind the long-standing alienation of the intellectual. The result of these
three tendencies may well be the rise of a powerful elite, or perhaps of
contending elites. If the elite factions seek allies outside their own ranks, a
phenomenon similar to the Left of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries could
result.
We know from history how possible, indeed how
likely, the growth of elites that see themselves as separate from the rest of
humanity is. When that happens, domination and exploitation aren't just
ideological rationalizations of the Left, but fundamental realities. The elite
feels its place rightful and normal; those outside it often acquiesce, allowing
themselves to be persuaded of the same thing. As an enemy of this, classical
liberalism fought the class-structuring that typified the Old Regime in Europe,
and has never been a friend of class hierarchy. It is no part of the vision I
hope to project.
At the same time, the philosopher Jose Ortega y Gasset was right when he said in The Revolt of
the Masses that the tone and value of a civilization depend on the
aristocratic principle. An ocean of mediocrity is spiritually and
intellectually deadening, and sucks the best out of life. The discussion of the
next desideratum will explain how an aversion to class hierarchy and a support
for "the aristocratic principle" can be reconciled.
Desideratum #10: That
each free society should strive to foster an intellectual subculture that is
“appropriate to itself.”
Allow
me to interject this desideratum into the middle of the point
about elitism. At this juncture we see the central need that I have stressed in
my writing for many years (reiterating a point made by John Stuart Mill in his
essay On Bentham and Coleridge): that a free society needs an
intellectual culture appropriate to itself. We can broaden this to say that it
needs an elite appropriate to itself. What "appropriate to itself"
means is that even though it is somewhat separate from the rest of society it
is attuned to the core values of that society and is committed to an elevating
relationship with it. Economist Wilhelm Roepke wrote in 1960 that "every society should have a
small but influential group of leaders who feel themselves to be the whole
community's guardians of inviolable norms and values and who strictly live up
to this guardianship. What we need is true 'nobilitas
naturalis.' No
era can do without it, least of all ours…."10
The intellectual subculture of the Left hasn't
provided this. Just the opposite: it has been on the attack. Nor have wealthy
Americans, for the most part, subject to exceptions: many of the wealthiest or
most economically successful people of our time have felt themselves outside
what they have looked down upon as "bourgeois morality." In this connection, I wrote an article for Conservative
Review's May/June 1997 issue entitled "The Deviant Elite that
Mocks American Democracy." It centered on the recent revelations about the
lives of John F. Kennedy (and of the Kennedy and Bouvier
families) and William Clinton.
How can we assure that the elite -- of
intellect, technical ability and wealth -- is "appropriate to a free
society"? It would help if there
were underlying forces leading in that direction. If there are any, I don't see them, other
than the factors that can dissipate the alienation of the intellectual. In their absence, the free societies of the
future will have a particularly difficult challenge. If "the price of liberty is eternal
vigilance," similar vigilance will also be the price of preventing a caste
system. The question becomes one of who
will provide that vigilance. Our
experience in twentieth century America doesn't lend itself to much confidence
that anybody will. The mass of
"regular folks," though wonderful people, are apathetic and
conformist when they are comfortable.
This amounts to a profound morbidity so far as "democracy" is
concerned. If it is to be solved, people
in and out of the elite will have to understand the problem and make it their
continuing goal to correct it.
Unfortunately, that understanding isn't assured; and even if it were, it
amounts to a major task.
So far as a wealthy caste is concerned, it will
be far easier to prevent it from coming into being where it doesn't exist
already, than it will be to eliminate it or even soften its features after it
is in place. Once a caste is established, it often possesses political and
social dominance. Ironically in light of positions the ideologies have taken in
the twentieth century, this suggests that inheritance taxation can play an
important role precisely for the classical liberal purposes of assuring a
society of individual freedom and limited power. An "estate tax"
taxes the total estate based on its size; an "inheritance tax" is
concerned about the size of the fortunes left to the respective legatees, and
levies taxes that would limit how much each recipient is given. The inheritance
tax isn't against wealth per se, but helps prevent the vast accumulation
of it. Two centuries ago, classical liberalism fought the rule of primogeniture
by which estates were handed down to the eldest son for the purpose of keeping
them undivided. An identical issue will be posed with regard to the passing of
enormous wealth within families from generation to generation. The prevention
of an hereditary elite is especially important. (We should remember that I have
given reasons why enormous wealth will have no justification in the first
place, and that certainly relates here.)
The continuation of a competitive market economy
will also help with this problem of elites, since it will constantly raise up
newly-successful people and at the same time cause the decline of some
fortunes. A market is a constant enemy of rigidification.
Desideratum #11: That
"democracy" should be a core value in the sense of universal
participation and inclusion, although this might well be accomplished best
through the old ideals of a “republic,” if circumstances are ever such
that they can be adopted.
It is
important to express this value, since it is the affirmative side of
the concern just voiced about possible domination by an elite. It is a value in
keeping with modern sensibilities, and so is one that barely needs
justification here.
There is clearly a value-judgment involved in
opting for it. If someone were to say, "no, I want to champion an elite or
a particular part of the population rather than all of it," he would be
expressing a value-judgment for which there is no scientific refutation, since
such preferences are personal. If we favor the democratic value, it helps
confirm our choice for us to know that an elitist preference sets up a clash of
interests between parts of the society, and hence the potential for
long-lasting conflict. A non-inclusive system has often existed historically.
The slave trade importing black slaves into the American colonies created a
bifurcation of that sort, so that an historical irony occurred: of a society
that was founded on the Enlightenment nevertheless having a strata of human
beings who were not fully counted as such. Interestingly, it was the ideals of
the Enlightenment that quite soon made a moral issue out of it, since the
bifurcation just wasn't consistent with what supporters of a free society
believed.
Desideratum #12: That
care must be taken to address equitably the problems inherent in a “zero sum
game.”
Ludwig
von Mises spoke of "the Montaigne Dogma," based on the writings of Montaigne, who Mises said held
that "the gain of one man is the damage of another; no man profits but by
the loss of others."11
Today, in the context of modern game theory, the same tradeoff is spoken
of as "a zero sum game."
The great merit of a market economy, Mises pointed out, is that in a voluntary act of exchange each
person benefits. Neither is placed in a worse position than he was before.
If either party didn't see his position as being improved, he wouldn't be
motivated to enter into the transaction. Multiply what is true for one
transaction by millions, and you have an economic system to which the Montaigne Dogma or "zero sum game" concept has no
application.
The German Historical School countered that this
extension from the micro to the macro isn't entirely true. By opting for a free
market economy and the "bourgeois commercial society" that goes with
it, there was a preclusion of other cultural alternatives. The facticity of life, that doing one thing precludes another,
still held.
We cannot resolve that debate at this time, but
it is important in the present context to note that (a) since the
"distributional crisis of the market" forces political action to
establish a system of distribution that the market would not otherwise provide
for, and (b) since cultural choices are becoming possible in the new context
that are also different from what individually autonomous behavior would lead
to, we are in fact coming into a world where the Montaigne
Dogma has an important application. Each choice that a body politic makes does
have the feature of precluding other choices. We see this in the United
States in the periodic debate over budgetary and taxation priorities. It exists
in any system of political decision, as Mises would
have been quick to point out. It is mitigated, of course, by the extent the
"economic pie" grows. Politicians find it considerably easier to
solve the "priorities" issues when resources are ample than when they
are tight.
The need for prioritized choice heightens the
possibility of conflict. Accordingly, it makes all the more necessary an ethos
that demands the equitable treatment of everyone within the population.
Value judgments will be inescapable, but wisdom will dictate that they be
fashioned to secure legitimacy; i.e., overwhelming assent. If this is to be
accomplished, it is almost certainly necessary that the political unit that is
acting have a citizenry that is strongly homogeneous. A multicultural society
will have great difficulty resolving issues of social equity.
This one-thing-precludes-another feature is also
evident with regard to immigration. In the creation of the shares of ownership
in a "shared market economy," in which each person will have at least
a given number of shares in an index mutual fund and thereby own a certain part
of the total economy, the Montaigne Dogma ("zero
sum game") will clearly apply. Each new immigrant will dilute everybody
else's share, taking a portion that would have been distributed among those
already here. Right now, each new immigrant automatically gets the benefit of
all that has been spent before on infrastructure (highways, parks, etc.). This
will be magnified greatly if coming into the society means participating in the
shared ownership. It is only mitigated to the extent that an immigrant actually
increases the overall economic product (but this will become increasingly
difficult for all but the most skilled to do as we get into a relatively
work-free age).
Desideratum #13: That
policies should be adopted for the transition that will tend toward the
attainment of the total mix of desiderata, while at the same time easing the
shocks inherent in the coming displacement.
At the
present, people are absorbed in addressing political, social
and economic issues in terms of the way those issues have appeared in the
immediate past. The debate goes on as though the world weren't changing.
Virtually everything that is said and proposed is obsolete, or rapidly becoming
so.
This doesn't mean that we aren't going to have
to continue to address current issues, and to do so in terms of a world that is
still mostly what is has been rather than what it will soon become. Practical
politics and policy demand that. What we need to see is that we are in a period
of profound transition. If we understand that, we will understand the need to
adapt not only our thinking but all of our policies, as we adopt them, to the
transition. The transition must itself become a factor that is considered.
We cannot do this, though, unless we have an
idea what the problems are going to be and what we are trying to make a
transition toward. That is the purpose of everything I am saying in this book.
We need a vision of where we want to go, and then to begin to take steps to get
there.
The next chapter will discuss the transitional
steps to the "shared market economy," and will mention some of the
other transitional issues. However, I am not going to consider it my province
to attempt to solve them. There are a great many bright people who can better
formulate the technical steps than I can, and in any case the political system
will make mincemeat of any suggestions, probably changing their shape more than
once before any are adopted. We must be prepared to leave the details to
economists, policy wizards, and future doctoral candidates.
Desideratum #14: That
we must be concerned about the political power that will come into being, and
will be well advised to use the means that classical liberalism has long
favored to constrain the power of the State.
I was
telling the secretary of my academic department the thesis of this
book recently, and even though I told her I am a conservative, it sounded very
much as though I were adopting the outlook of a twentieth century American
"liberal."
That will only be true, however, if such
liberals come halfway in my own direction. As a classical liberal, I have
an abiding fear of the power of the State, which is something they don't
presently feel (except where they think government goes against the rights that
are integral to their theory regarding the abuse of minorities and of
dissidents, which is not a general theory of limited government). I have
mentioned before that in January 1998, even in the midst of the Lewinsky sex
scandal involving President Clinton, there was a strongly favorable public
reaction to Clinton's State of the Union speech. There was little sensitivity
to the fact that Clinton was calling for massive new federal involvement in
education and police work. These are precisely the areas where, if we are to
continue to erect safeguards against totalitarian power, we should want not to
centralize political authority. There isn't much of the old "States'
Rights" and "Tenth Amendment" sentiment left on behalf of
federalism, even among many Republicans.
[Note in 2003: Consistently with what I have just said, the
George W. Bush administration has little regard for these traditional
conservative concerns.] But we will need
to persist in the desire for decentralization of these two functions, if no
others. You will notice that I am concerned about maintaining barriers
against totalitarianism, which is integral to classical liberal theory, even
though many people think that prospect is too remote for our society to worry
about. I cite this to show how far the current mindset is from what I am
proposing. It will take a sea-change in mentality for present-day
"liberals" and the millions who as "moderates" accept
virtually all their premises to come to share my desire, which I hold in common
with conservatives, classical liberals and libertarians generally. Despite all
I have said, I remain a classical liberal, wanting a society of limited
government and individuals free to live their own lives. It is to be hoped that
Americans generally will share this desire.
What are the means that can be used to delimit
government? Let us review them in the impending context:
One, which we just saw, is the decentralization
of political functions wherever feasible, leaving in centralized hands only those
that can't adequately be performed any other way. This was the genius of our
"federal" system, with its "division of powers" between the
national government and the states. Since the 1930s, the state governments have
been transformed more and more into administrative agencies of the national
government, carrying out its mandates. What we will need is a vital new sense
of the value of decentralizing power, especially as to education and police.
Another is the doctrine of "separation of
powers." Here, governmental functions are broken into parts, with the
parts assigned to different people so that no person has all of the strands of
power in his sole possession. The Constitution separated legislative, judicial
and executive functions and reposed them in three different branches of
government. The rise of the independent federal administrative agencies has
added a de facto fourth branch.
This principle can be used as an important
guarantee that the governmental power of creating a system of economic distribution
not be abused. The State with its coercive functions can be considered one
thing, while an independent agency accountable to the electorate can be charged
with doing everything needed for the creation of the "shared market
economy." The latter will, of course, inescapably perform a political
task, but at least the concept of "separation of powers" can be used
to keep the power that can say "conform or starve" out of the hands
of that part of the State that performs police and military functions. To make
the economic agency truly separate from the other government, it will be
advisable to have its members elected for reasonably long terms that will be
staggered. ("Elected" seems desirable, but some other method of
selection, such as by the state legislatures the way United States Senators
once were, may be satisfactory. It is this sort of question that it would be
foolish to attempt to resolve here.)
In the separation and division of powers,
certain "checks" were created by the U.S. Constitution by which one
part was given power to restrain another. The president's veto over legislation
is one of these; the courts' power of "judicial review" to declare an
act of one of the other branches unconstitutional is another. Thought should be
given to whether one or more of the branches of the State that exercises
coercive functions should be given a power to restrain the distributional
agency if it ever tries to use its power to tell anybody "conform or
starve." The judiciary would seem an ideal choice for this.
Two other means to limit the State are
Constitutionalism and the Rule of Law. Political entities will have a
substantial role in the societies of the future for the reasons I have
discussed. This will make it all the more important to "chain them down"
by use of the Rule of Law criteria: known rules that are applicable as much to
themselves as to the people under their power; prospective rather than
retroactive; general in nature; equal in their application; clear in meaning;
and subject to review by an independent judiciary. Certainly the process of economic
distribution in a shared market economy should be subject to this regimen. The
rules can be such that there is very little for the agency to do once they are
in place. Supporters of limited government will find it significant that in The
Constitution of Liberty Friedrich Hayek considered the application of the
"rule of law criteria" a sufficient guarantee against arbitrary State
conduct. This view was criticized by commentators such as myself who held that
procedural criteria aren't enough, since substantive aspects must also be
considered. In the context of what we are now considering, however, no
substantive objection is present.
Since no provision is made in the United States
Constitution for such an agency, and since we ought to still care about the
integrity of the Constitution, a Constitutional amendment will be the desirable
way to establish it. A question will be whether to invest this agency with the
powers of taxation and money-creation (now centered in the Open Market
Committee of the Federal Reserve System) that will be necessary to supply the
funds for purchasing the stock that will go into shared ownership. A truly
meaningful application of the separation of powers would suggest so, since putting
these powers in the economic agency will reduce the powers of the regulatory
State.
Of course, significant other checks on the power
of government, in the new setting as well as in the past's, already exist in
the American Constitutional structure. Freedom of speech and press are vital
offsets. It is dangerous to have media, as we have for several years, that are
so venal and partisan that people lose confidence in the performance of their
functions. The solution lies not in killing the freedoms, but in working toward
an improvement of what is done with those freedoms.
Desideratum #15: That
a choice should be made in favor of an elevated, decent life; for the
attainment of advanced civilization; and for addressing spiritual needs.
We do
not know what the effects will be of a great many people not having
much, if any, work to do. They can use leisure for attainment and elevation,
hobbies, crafts, the arts, learning, literature, athletic excellence or simple
participation, mere relaxation, smelling the flowers, photography, enjoyment of
family and friends; or they can allow themselves to be bored to death and
express their ennui in destructive and dehumanizing ways. Of course, this
describes the ends of the continuum between civilization and barbarism. Actual
life will almost certainly be somewhere between the poles. And people will
predictably react in a variety of ways, not all the same way. The question will
be where the center of gravity lies.
Jeremy Rifkin looks forward to peoples being
occupied, as they now are in jobs, in an "independent or volunteer
sector" in which people "give one's time to others." He points
to the 1,400,000 nonprofit organizations that already exist in the United
States. "Community service is a revolutionary alternative to traditional
forms of labor... It is neither coerced nor reduced to a fiduciary
relationship." Such participation would go far toward giving people a
sense of purposeful activity, enriching themselves and their community. Rifkin
sees this "third sector" as "a place where personal
relationships can be nurtured, status can be achieved, and a sense of community
can be created."12
It should be apparent that the texture of future
life depends upon how these issues are resolved. Considerable barbarism is
possible unless the society corrects certain factors that are now present. As
discussed earlier, the present intellectual subculture must be replaced by or
evolve into an intellectuality that is "appropriate to a free
society." If this were to occur, the attack on acculturated values would
stop, and so would the alliance that now exists in the United States between
the dominant artistic-literary-media culture and the perverse. Whether such an
intellectual subculture will come into being depends upon whether the "alienation
of the intellectual" fades away or remains a central feature of society.
The late Jose Ortega y Gasset,
author of The Revolt of the Masses, would warn that many millions of
people are content to recline back in life, not putting expectations upon themselves,
but nevertheless becoming ubiquitous in society by their sheer numbers. (As
illustration, consider the intrusive noise that now vibrates the walls of ones
home from the frequent "boom boxes" [“extreme low frequency
amplifiers”] in cars that drive by playing “rap music.”) Ortega decried the fact that the "mass
man," in this spiritual sense, had so filled the world in the modern era.
The answer to this will have to come, if at all, from acculturation. We will
have to develop a new way of life -- and we can fervently hope it won't be the
life of the slob.
Of course, it will be harder to tell just what
it means to "be a slob" under the new conditions. Right now, we judge
that largely by the work ethic. Substitute standards will have to be developed,
and can only be formulated as society comes to experience what peoples’
tendencies are. If we want a wide range of personal freedom, it will be a
mistake to confuse a spectrum of lifestyles with slovenliness. As much as I
abhorred the "hippie," I can see how that kind of life -- or
something like it, perhaps with shoes and shirt on, and without drugs -- may be
perfectly acceptable in the future, if what it means is a relaxed,
non-competitive acceptance of life and its joys. There is a danger in saying
too much at this early stage, since it is all something our grandchildren will
have to work out.
Religion will have a profound role in the area
of spiritual elevation. I count myself as highly religious in a secular sense
of caring about the ultimate questions, but I don't invoke a higher power as
the basis for my thinking. Most religious people will think this isn't enough,
and will see the need in terms of Christianity or one of the other main
religions. John Howard, former president of Rockford College and now with the
Rockford Institute, has written me along these lines: "I find your
analysis every bit as demanding of new thinking in the realms of religion,
education, the family and literature as in economics. The coming generations of
youth will be faced with disorienting uncertainties in the decades ahead beyond
anything the present leadership can imagine. The need to imbue the young with
deep-rooted serenity is profound. They must be armed not with self-confidence
and self-importance, but with humility, courage, and above all faith."13
Wilhelm Roepke wrote that "my picture of man is
fashioned by the spiritual heritage of classical and Christian tradition. I see
in man the likeness of God; I am profoundly convinced that it is an appalling
sin to reduce man to a means... and that each man's soul is something unique,
irreplaceable, priceless, in comparison with which all other things are as
naught." He added that "the ultimate source of our civilization's
disease is the spiritual and religious crisis which has overtaken all of us...
Above all, man is Homo religiosus, and yet we
have, for the past century, made the desperate attempt to get along without
God...." 14
These passages remind us that the question of
"the meaning of life" will loom larger than ever in a world where
boredom is a distinct possibility and appeals to unadorned hedonism are
powerful. "What are we to be?"
Never will the question have been posed with so many alternative
answers.
Desideratum #16: That
a new cultural understanding should be sought about ways to evaluate
achievement and human worth.
This is
part of what was just discussed, but it is important enough
to be made a "desideratum" by itself.
Desideratum #17: That
a choice should be made for a free, not a regimented, life, at least within
western civilization.
The
existence of any sort of culture precludes the "existential
freedom" that the New Left yearned for. Parents will raise children with a
certain outlook and set of values, and the society will do the same through
influences and pressures brought to bear on each person. The idea that
individuals should be free of these formative influences was always incredibly
foolish, both because it is impossible and because a number of "social
cements" are needed to hold a society together. Those cements are so
extensive that they form a significant antithesis to the "do your own
thing" notion of freedom. And I
would even strengthen the formative influences that come to bear on individuals
when I urge the preservation of particular cultures.
What I mean, then, by a "free, not a
regimented, life" is one in which the culture allows the individual a wide
range of autonomy, notwithstanding that the outer edges of that autonomy will
necessarily be defined by the culture. This is what we might speak of as
"breathing space" or a "private sphere." Here, I am
expressing my classical liberal preference. I wouldn't like a life in which
everybody ate at the barracks table, as in Sparta; or could only mouth an
adulation for Chairman Mao, as in Red China; or could voice no other opinions
than are "politically correct," as is insisted upon with some success
in the United States today. There is a totalitarian frame of mind that insists
that everybody think and act alike. This mentality used to stem from certain
types of religion; today it comes more from social ideology. Whatever the
source, the authoritarian personality is the same. I am including this
desideratum to stress that that type of personality should not prevail.
Fred Block writes wisely that “this process of
designing blueprints forces us to confront the danger of totalitarianism -- the
risk that even a well-intentioned vision of a good society could degenerate
into dictatorship... This means retaining many of the inherited techniques for
avoiding the concentration of power while also inventing new ones. It involves,
as well, rejecting the implicitly totalitarian dream of a New Socialist Man or
Woman in favor of a multiplicity of visions of what it is to be human.”15
Desideratum #18: That
the possibility of evolving toward a life of simple wants should be kept in
mind as potentially desirable.
A world
that doesn't revolve around work and competitive striving, even though
those things will remain important for people who participate in the continuing
global market economy, may be one where there is less psychological pressure
for people to acquire things beyond what is necessary for their own
fulfillment. Socialists have pressed for this all along, opposing a competitive
milieu; and such a social conservative as Thomas Carlyle railed against the
"cash nexus." There would seem to be no reason why classical liberals
will not also see the value in it under future conditions. If technology
provides affluence, there will be far less necessity than in the past that
people be motivated to strive so hard economically. What I have in mind is one
couple my wife and I know who especially seem to live simply (and, of course,
there are others). They have lived in the same small house, which is
comfortable for them, for 35 years even though they could afford (since both
have had professional earnings) to "move up." There are no
pretensions about them, and you would just think of them as "grand
people.”
There is some ambiguity, of course, in speaking
of "simple wants." Our wants expand almost imperceptibly as the means
for their satisfaction become available. This morning, I took my cairn terrier
Molly to the veterinarian to diagnose a chronic skin problem. The bill was $91
-- which is small compared to the money
my wife and I spent on a series of operations after she was run over three
years ago. Compare this with what families used to do. When I was a boy, it was
unthinkable to spend that kind of money on pets, even though we loved them
every bit as much as we do now. What a "middle class American" is
willing and able to do for a pet is much greater now than it was 50 years ago.
Does this invalidate the whole idea that
simplicity may, for many, prove desirable? I don't think so. It doesn't show
the concept is without meaning; it just shows it isn't static.
Desideratum #19: That
the opportunity should be taken to preserve the cultures that people care about
-- not the least among them western civilization.
I
talked about this in Chapter 13, relating to western civilization,
and Chapter 14, relating to other cultures. All that I said there has a bearing
on the choices we make for the type of societies we want in the future.
The great thing is that now we will have the choice. An extrapolation of forces presently at work in the world -- the global market; ease of communication and transportation; the migration of Third World peoples into Europe, the United States, Canada and Australia; the ceaseless cultural attack on everything European and American -- points to the extinction of western civilization in anything like the form we know it and even the extinction of other distinctive cultures. Of all these factors, only the ease