[This is Chapter Six of Murphey’s book Socialist Thought.]

Chapter 6

THE TONE OF MODERN MAN

In the various chapters that make up Part I of this book, we are looking at several factors that make up “the origins and underlying dynamic of the Left.” Since no doubt a great many factors have contributed to the rise of the Left, I don’t wish to be understood as being so presumptuous as to say that we are covering them all. We are just discussing those I consider most fundamental.

As modern society emerged from the shattering of the medieval consensus, it had no agreed-upon paradigms from the past, even though it did enjoy the benefit of a rich heritage. Modern civilization was existentially indeterminate. Socialist thought as we have seen it in modern life is one of the systems for mediating social reality that arose in that context. So far, in analyzing that rise, we have (1) noted certain continuities from ancient and medieval thought, and (2) discussed at length the very important phenomenon of the alienation of the intellectual.

At least two factors of the utmost importance remain to be discussed. The one reviewed in this chapter has to do with the role played by the qualitative level of average humanity during the modern period. It is true that the intellectual has played a crucial role, but what has been the qualitative milieu in which he has acted? What is to be said of the remainder of humanity and of the factors within that humanity that have either lent themselves to, or led away from, the rise of the Left? From these questions we can see that we will have omitted a major dimension if we focus exclusively on the role of the intellectual.

The final factor, discussed in the next chapter, pertains to the weaknesses within capitalism. Socialist thought has in large measure seen itself as a reaction to the flaws of capitalism. In a single chapter we will not be able to make a definitive discussion of those flaws, both supposed and real, but we will seek to gain some perspective regarding them.

Seen from the classical liberal point of view which I consider most valid, the primary question about the qualitative level of modern man is whether he has what it takes to develop and sustain a liberal civilization. To the extent the answer to this is in the negative, we will be seeing some explanation of why modern society has slid away from liberal values into one or more of the authoritarian and direct action systems.

These matters of “human nature” and “qualitative level” were themes in the first book in this series, Understanding the Modern Predicament. Chapter 6 of that book discussed the role of human nature in underlying the various social and political philosophies. Classical liberalism is based on a mixed view. It assumes a substantial amount of human capability in private affairs and potential for civic virtue in public matters, but at the same time does not presume that the neurotic tearing within the human race will vanish. It seeks decentralization of power within a contractual nexus precisely because it fears those neuroses, while at the same time it is affirmative in its view that a contractual nexus can work.

Even though classical liberalism is not utopian, we need to appreciate that it is a form of civilization that can only flourish fully within a strong ethical consensus and a more-or-less ubiquitous commitment to liberal values and institutions. Not only does it need sustenance from such a consensus; it also needs further perfection of its values and institutions through a sustained period of experience and reflection. Those values and institutions are only at an early level of sophistication. This is one of the reasons the movement of the intellectuals away from liberal values has been so damaging. It is also a reason any failure in the commitment of the underlying corpus of mankind to liberal values is very significant.

Chapter 8 of the earlier book related in detail the critique that the Spanish philosopher Jose Ortega y Gasset made of modern man. In common with many serious observers, he was deeply pessimistic about the qualitative level. He described the average man, the "mass man," as being a primitive who has been born into advanced circumstances. Self-satisfied, making few demands on himself, thinking that he already knows everything, psychologically spoiled and therefore impatient of the less-than-direct methods of a truly civilized mode of behaviour, this "mass man," Ortega says, has established the tone of the modern age by filling all its spaces. Such a man is given precisely to "direct action" techniques, since his limitations lend themselves to no other. The mass movement and the powerful state take their place as organized instruments for this direct action. Liberal values, liberal institutions get short shrift.

Chapters 2 through 6 of Understanding the Modern Predicament sought to lend a broader perspective to these observations by pointing out that mankind is indeed in its cosmic infancy. Civilization, and certainly advanced civilization, is very new, if seen from an anthropological perspective. I reviewed the ancient Greeks, the Romans and the Middle Ages to show how immaturity had affected them all, and how none of them provided final paradigms for secular, rational man to follow. The fault, I said, does not lie exclusively with modern "mass man." Rather, the average humanity of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries should be understood, as Ortega himself acknowledged, as being on a higher, not a lower, level than the main body of mankind has occupied in the past. It is simply that the literacy, affluence and social mobility of the past century or two have not obliterated the inherent immaturity within humanity; and that, again as Ortega pointed out, there is increased reliance upon average humanity because the aristocracies of the past have been knocked out.

The reader is directed to the earlier book for a more complete discussion of each of the aspects just mentioned.

What we need to bring to mind right now is the extent to which these inherent weaknesses undermine liberal civilization, thereby leading to one or the other of the socialist (including fascist) alternatives.

Looking beyond Western Europe and America, we see that in the vast continents of Asia, Africa and Latin America the illiterate millions do not yet satisfy the preconditions for liberal society. This is a fact pregnant with tragedy. It is compounded by the fact, too, that, precisely because of the pressure from the Left and from an understandable impatience to move quickly into an enjoyment of the fruits of advanced society, these peoples are not being permitted to take their time to create those prerequisites and, in addition, are not receiving the intellectual leadership to do so. From a liberal point of view, what those people most need is the empathy and assistance of advanced civilization in moving ever closer to the cultural, institutional and intellectual prerequisites. A desideratum that is of crucial immediacy is population control, but that is negated by the primitiveness itself and by ideological, religious and cultural perceptions that run directly counter to their own long-term liberal interests.

If then we turn our attention to the peoples of Eastern Europe, including those of the Soviet Union, we see that they have so far had either no, or little, experience in liberal self-government. They moved almost directly from feudalism into totalitarianism. From a liberal perspective they are still tragically below the threshold. [Note in 2003: The long-term success or failure of those societies in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union and of Communism will provide a valuable historical test of the observation I made here. Needless to say, I would hope that their lack of experience in self-government won’t prove crucial.]

The observations that Ortega and other serious observers such as Richard Weaver and John Stuart Mill have made about the continued primitivism of modern man should be placed in context as constituting a criticism of what is precisely the more advanced form of average humanity, that of Western Europe and North America. They point to the continued weakness even within that part of mankind that has seemed most to surmount primitivism. The observations are in the nature of pointing to the Emperor's new clothes: they relate to the fact that the higher level of attainment serves partly as a veneer for an immaturity that has not evaporated.

A glance at the daily paper is adequate to establish the fact of immaturity. So also is a sensitive awareness of the nuances of human relationships on a day-to-day basis within ones own life; or the application of even the most elementary aesthetic, moral or intellectual tests to the life that goes on so normally around us. This would not be so obvious were it not for the more egregious examples of flagrant behavior that have flashed constantly before us during the twentieth century. They punctuate the fact, so that it should be apparent to even the most accepting person. Last night on television, for example, I saw a special that analyzed the factors that nurture the existence of Red Brigade terrorism in Italy. Opinion polls in that country show that there is a significant element of the population that actually romanticizes and identifies with the bombings, assassinations and kidnappings.

I have mitigated this pessimism in the past by pointing out that average humanity has not really been put to a fair test in the twentieth century. We have seen what the people of Western Europe and America have done in the absence a supportive intellectual culture that is so vital to liberal civilization. With all its faults, there is much that is positive that can be said for the result. How much better might those societies have done if they had had the supporting infrastructure that needs to suffuse a culture on an on-going basis with edifying criticisms and insights? We can't really know, since that has yet to be tried.

Before we end the present discussion, it is important to notice that, as paradoxical as it may seem, the very same weaknesses that have caused modern man to slide away from liberalism and toward the authoritarian systems will necessarily bar socialism from attaining any of the utopian goals that have been so alluring a part of its vision. It should not to be a subject of self-congratulation, to a sincere socialist, that modern man has been tenuous in his commitment to liberal values. Clear-sighted men could and did predict that there would be no withering away of the state within Marxism-Leninism. The Stalinist and post-Stalinist outrages are not aberrations, as so much wishful thinking among socialist humanists likes to suggest. A people that is not fitted to liberal individualism, which after all presupposes quite an elaborate framework of law and ethics, will not step naturally into the even higher responsibility that utopianism takes for granted. About the best that can be hoped for is that the ruling elite might sometime become more humane. Even if the ruling elite is the intellectual class, the result will not be the same thing as has been promised for so long under the guise of democracy.

I am aware that a socialist will not perceive the qualitative level in nearly the same way as I have described it here. The move toward socialism in the twentieth century will not appear to him "a failure to sustain liberal values," but will seem, instead, a promising affirmation of those values as best understood (or else, to the dialectical materialist, at least an evolution toward later stages in the dialectic).

But the socialist should reflect upon this carefully. He will acknowledge that his own perception of people even in Europe and American is not at all favorable, viewing them as they are. The alienation of the intellectual has not just been an alienation against the bourgeoisie, but against virtually all strata of modern life. The question the socialist should ask himself is whether it is really satisfactory to believe that these failings are primarily the warpings induced by capitalism and the pursuit of materialistic values. Is there actually, as Herbert Marcuse has postulated, resorting back to Rousseau, an "original human nature" that is there to shine through when only the warpings are removed? This is a large and difficult question. For my own thinking on it, I will refer the reader to my chapters on the long-term immaturity of mankind that appear in Understanding the Modern Predicament.