It is natural to assume that the degree of political
strife we are experiencing is uniquely troubling and leading us to some sort of
catastrophe. Troubling it is, and
disaster may be just over the horizon, but unique it is not. Wildly disparate colonies had to be united to
win a revolutionary war and form a nation; we fought the Civil War to resolve
issues related to slavery and reunite the nation; we had to send troops to the
South to enforce the legal findings demanding the dismantlement of the Jim Crow
regime. One can argue that our current
predicament is a continuation of a series of confrontations derived from our
original sin of accepting slavery as a viable economic and social construct. Firmly imprinted racial and social attitudes
have become inflamed as internationalism and multiculturalism test our ability
to accept change.
We survived and moved on from the previous disputes; can
we expect the same to happen again?
Perhaps it is possible to gain insight by sampling the wisdom of people
who have lived long lives and survived even greater conflicts than we can
anticipate for ourselves.
Albert O. Hirschman (1915-2012) lived a remarkable life
that spanned some of humanity’s darkest moments. He survived and had a long and productive career
as a working economist, yet he was also one of our most insightful political
commentators. Malcolm Gladwell produced
an excellent review of his life for an article in The New Yorker: The Gift of Doubt: Albert O. Hirschman and the power of failure. Hirschman’s short books on economics and
politics, Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States (1970) and The Rhetoric of Reaction: Perversity, Futility, Jeopardy (1991), are brief but powerful
expositions. The former has been
discussed here. The latter is the present topic.
Hirschman was driven to understand the phenomenon
associated with the rise of neoliberal economics and the associated
conservative threats to what might be described as the “postwar welfare state”
during the Reagan years. Political
polarization might not have progressed as far as it has today, but the seeds
had already been planted.
“The unsettling experience of
being shut off, not just from the opinions, but from the entire life experience
of large numbers of one’s contemporaries is actually typical of modern
democratic societies. In these days of universal
celebration of the democratic model, it may seem churlish to dwell on
deficiencies in the functioning of the Western democracies….Among them there is
one that can frequently be found in the more advanced democracies: the
systematic lack of communication between groups of citizens, such as liberals
and conservatives, progressives and reactionaries. The resulting separateness of these large
groups from one another seems more worrisome to me than the isolation of anomic
individuals in ‘mass society’ of which sociologists have made so much.”
Hirschman’s interest in this divide was aroused by
studies he was asked to participate in that questioned where all this might
lead in the context of the existing “welfare state.” With pressure coming from the liberal side,
there was the temptation to view illiberal thinkers as somehow lacking in
proper cognitive capabilities.
“But this sort of head-on and
allegedly in-depth attack seemed unpromising to me: it would widen the rift and
lead, moreover, to an undue fascination with a demonized adversary. Hence my decision to attempt a ‘cool’
examination of surface phenomena: discourse, arguments, rhetoric, historically
and analytically considered.”
He organized his study around a framework provided by the
English sociologist T. H. Marshall that categorized the progress of society as
having successively overcome resistance to the attainment of individual rights,
the right to vote, and the right to some minimal level of economic support.
“According to Marshall’s scheme,
which conveniently allocated about a century to each of the three tasks, the
eighteenth century witnessed the major battles for the institution of civil citizenship—from freedom of
speech, thought, and religion to the right to even-handed justice and other
aspects of individual freedom….In the course of the nineteenth century, it was
the political aspect of citizenship,
that is, the right of citizens to participate in the exercise of political
power, that made major strides as the right to vote was extended to ever larger
groups. Finally, the rise of the Welfare
State in the twentieth century extended the concept of citizenship to the social and economic sphere, by
recognizing that minimal conditions of education, health, economic well-being,
and security are basic to the life of a civilized being as well as to
meaningful exercise of the civil and political attributes of citizenship.”
Hirschman went back over the history of these three
periods and tallied the arguments used in reaction to these progressive
initiatives. He discovered that there
was a definite pattern that emerged.
“In canvassing for the principle
ways of criticizing, assaulting, and ridiculing the three successive ‘progressive’
thrusts of Marshall’s story, I have come up with another triad: that is, with
three principle reactive-reactionary theses, which I call the perversity thesis or thesis of the
perverse effect, the futility thesis,
and the jeopardy thesis. According to the perversity thesis, any purposive action to improve some feature of
the political, social, or economic order only serves to exacerbate the
condition one wishes to remedy. The futility thesis holds that attempts at
social transformation will be unavailing, that they will simply fail to ‘make a
dent.’ Finally, the jeopardy thesis argues that the cost of the proposed change or
reform is too high as it endangers some previous precious accomplishment.”
In the course of his study, Hirschman discovers, somewhat
to his surprise, that liberals or progressives also have a standard set of
arguments that they use to promote their ideas and counter reactionary
arguments. He provides the reader with
this tabulation of typical arguments and counterarguments.
Reactionary:
“The contemplated action will
bring disastrous consequences.”
Progressive:
“Not to take the contemplated
action will bring disastrous consequences.”
Reactionary:
“The new reform will jeopardize
the older one.”
Progressive:
“The new and old reforms will
mutually reinforce each other.”
Reactionary:
“The contemplated action
attempts to change permanent structural characteristics (‘laws’) of the social
order; it is therefore bound to be wholly ineffective, futile.”
Progressive:
“The contemplated action is
backed up by powerful historical forces that are already ‘on the march’;
opposing them would be utterly futile.”
Hirschman warns us that arguments that are used over and
over again should be viewed with suspicion.
“Once the existence of these
pairs of arguments is demonstrated, the reactionary theses are downgraded, as
it were: they, along with their progressive counterparts, become simply extreme
statements in a series of imaginary, highly polarized debates. In this manner they stand exposed as limiting
cases, badly in need, under most circumstances, of being qualified, mitigated,
or otherwise amended.”
One is tempted to think of democracy as a place where
citizens come together and debate their ideas on how to move forward. Ensuing from this debate emerges a compromise
that all can live with. Hirschman warns
us that that is not how actual democracies work. He must have been well aware of the “confirmation bias” that affects all
human deliberation: the tendency to believe what supports an existing
viewpoint, and the tendency to discount anything that is counter to an existing
viewpoint. This is something that we
know intuitively from our own personal experiences, but which we often
forget.
People don’t debate political issues to gain understanding;
they debate in order to win the argument.
“In the process it would emerge
that discourse is shaped, not so much by fundamental personality traits, but
simply by the imperatives of argument,
almost regardless of the desires, character, or convictions of the
participants.”
And what does history tell us about nations as divided as
ours? Have we become an outlier among
democracies?
“Modern pluralistic regimes have
typically come into being, it is increasingly recognized, not because of some
preexisting wide consensus on ‘basic values,’ but rather because various groups
that had been at each other’s throats for a prolonged period had to recognize
their mutual inability to achieve dominance.
Tolerance and acceptance of pluralism resulted eventually from a standoff between bitterly hostile
opposing groups.”
“Even in the most ‘advanced’
democracies, many debates are, to paraphrase Clausewitz, a ‘continuation of
civil war with other means.’ Such debates,
with each party on the lookout for arguments that kill, are only too familiar
from democratic politics as usual.”
Hirschman’s final message to us is a warning that
democracy is not a very stable construct.
The ideal of citizen groups having common goals but different means to
attain them who debate and compromise is seldom attained. What we refer to as democracy and its social
advancements can be acquired, but they can also be lost.
“Is it not true that not just
the last but each and every one of Marshall’s three progressive thrusts has
been followed by ideological counterthrusts of extraordinary force? And have not these counterthrusts been at the
origin of convulsive social and political struggles often leading to setbacks
for the intended progressive programs as well as to much human suffering and
misery?”
“Once we contemplate this
protracted and perilous seesawing of action and reaction, we come to appreciate
more than ever the profound wisdom of Whitehead’s well-known observation, ‘The
major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies
in which they occur’.”
The lesson to be learned from Hirschman’s study is that in
a country like ours, where ‘civil war is continued by other means,’ it is
dangerous for one side of the battle to attain too much power. Both contentious political parties have
recognized this peril and, inadvertently or not, established a mechanism by
which the minority party can exercise greater influence than pure numbers would
allow. Both parties have used this
mechanism when they were in the minority and viewed it as a necessary means of
controlling excessive ambitions on the part of the majority.
We are approaching a state where we are little better
than savages assembling on a battlefield.
It is disconcerting that the only thing that might keep us from open
warfare is the much-maligned filibuster rule in the Senate. Beware the day when that rule is fully rescinded.
The interested reader might find the following articles
informative:
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