After the Future

November 5, 2012

Tom Frank on Fizzling Protests

From a Salon Interview: Occupy once looked like it could play that role. Certainly the focus on income inequality and the concept of the 99 percent never would have resonated…

From a Salon Interview:

Occupy once looked like it could play that role. Certainly the focus on income inequality and the concept of the 99 percent never would have resonated without their hard work. And it just …

It sort of fizzled. That was a real shame. I was real excited about it at first. There was a moment when I was on the subway train in D.C., and this guy comes on, and he’s clearly just come back from a trade show or something. He’s got a tote bag with one of those slogans that you see about how winners are really awesome, something like that — one of these corporate slogans about delivering shareholder value or some such bullshit. And it was at the height of Occupy, and this guy was clearly uncomfortable with this on his person. What a moment that was!

There really was a moment when you could tell that the hedge-fund guys felt shamed, that Wall Street was on the defensive.

Well, it should have gone on. It should have built and built. It was a great start that didn’t go anywhere, and that’s also tragic — really tragic. It wasn’t the first massive left-wing thing we have seen in a long time because the progressive people signing up for Obama was a massive thing that also failed. Before that, the protests in Seattle in ’99 — people were enthusiastic about that, and that fizzled, too. There’s a larger problem here about why the left can’t get off the ground, take off, failure to launch…

And the problem is what?

Well, there’s a bunch of interrelated problems, but a big part of it is the academization of protests. I don’t mean that it is just student-based — students should be protesting, I think. They are totally being screwed by the universities these days — the mounds of debt they are forced to incur, all those things. There’s a bunch of different problems, but one of the problems is that these movements always — somehow — get sucked into the academy. They get taken over by people who are absolutely determined to not speak in a way that is comprehensible to average Americans. In fact, [these are] people who have enormous contempt for average Americans. The whole idea of the left is about empowering average people, and you can’t do that if you despise them.

There’s another thing I’d like to add to this, and that is the issue of the state. Occupy tended to be pretty unsophisticated about the state. They sound like libertarians, frankly, when they’re talking about the state. If you want to do something about Wall Street in this country, there is only one power that can do it — and that’s the state, obviously. That’s government. And government did perform that role for a long time. Glass-Steagall, that was the law of the land. Banks were closely regulated; you didn’t have anything like this sort of madness of the last decade, the shadow banks … (Source)

Two key takeaways. There are two problems that Frank talks about that are central to why the progressive politics is not taken seriously and won't be until they get fixed. First, the progressive educated class's contempt for the people (whom Frank calls "average Americans") who don't share their cultural libertarian or cosmopolitian values. Second, the left's political libertarianism, its naively idealistic, anarchic refusal of hierarchy (i.e., transparent, accountable leadership) and the organization and the discipline effective political mobilization requires.

We Americans say we are for freedom and equality, but at this moment in our history 'freedom' is the only one of the two we really care about, the only one that gets us steamed and energized when it is restricted in any way. The political left gives more lipservice to equality than the right, but it's on choice in the cultural sphere is the only thing they'll organize around, and the political (libertarian & Tea Party) right only gets excited about removing government restraints in the economic sphere. (The cultural right isn't particularly concerned about either freedom or equality; the people there are in their own cramped little world, but they tend to align with the political right regarding economic freedom. Why the cultural right aligns with the political right is the focus of Frank's book, What's the Matter with Kansas.)

But as I've written about here, Freedom and Equality are not absolutes, they are polarities that balance one another, and have to be kept in a kind of creative tension. When things are unbalanced in the direction of freedom, equality suffers; when things are unbalanced in the direction of equality freedom suffers. It's neither one nor the other; it's both, and a mature politics understands that and finds ways to keep things in balance. Right now American society is unbalanced in the direction of freedom, and the consequences are clear: we are living with the highest rates of economic inequality in our history and in the world.

The people who are most damaged by the politics of inequality (most of us) are living in different cultural silos, and as such we are divided and conquered. And until somebody or some movement emerges that works to effectively break down those cultural barriers, the bad guys (the oligarchs who love inequality so long as it favors them) win.

So I've said it before, and I'll say it I'm sure many times again. It's not that the cultural issues aren't important, but while the family members are preoccupied with their heated arguments in the front parlor, the bad guys are coming in the kitchen door in the back and robbing them blind. At some point the family has to come together, agree to disagree (about abortion or whatever), and get back into the kitchen to deal with a very serious problem that threatens the good of all.

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7 responses

Jonathan

November 5, 2012

Where in the American cultural tradition is “equality” defined as parity of material wealth? Equality with a capital E means equality before the law. That’s it. Maybe behind the Iron Curtain it was supposed to mean “to each according to his needs, from each according to his gifts.” But not in America, not in the liberal west. Equality is a legal concept, not an economic one over here.
I’ve never understood this outrage over income inequality. Surely the differential between the wealthiest and the least wealthy does not in itself contain any philosophical significance. Rather, the problem is poverty and cultural disenfranchisement. But this has nothing to do with an income gap per se. If the vast majority of Americans were (note the subjunctive) sufficiently provided for in terms of material comfort and personal opportunity, what would it matter if a few Americans were ludicrously over-privileged? Maybe my logic’s flawed, but I just have to think we’ve been derailed in all this talk of income inequality. Behind it, I detect envy and covetousness, as well as self-righteousness. There is also a serious misunderstanding about what sort of country the USA set out to be. A land of opportunity and the pursuit of happiness — pursuit being the key word. Happiness and success are not guaranteed, nor should we want them to be. The problem with Wall Street is not that there is so much money there. If there weren’t, we’d be in a lot worse trouble. The problem is twofold: much of the wealth is a fantom, and the ethics of those who hold it are sketchy, or nonexistent. But again, this has nothing to do with an income differential itself. Neither does the argument from economics that sees the need to financially empower the 47% or the 99% or whatever fraction you choose. That’s undeniable, but it has nothing to do — conceptually — with some tiny fraction at the top being exponentially wealthier.
I think there are many reasons to believe the large middle class in America and Europe since the end of the Second World War was a historical freak. The idea of a middle class has come to totally dominate our discourse, but its day may be done. I don’t care about a so-called middle class. The term irks me, full as it is of disdain for the always unmentioned lower class, and envy for the upper class. Yet it is a shibboleth of American politics. I care rather that the non-rich classes should have the opportunity to enjoy good life. As long as the rich don’t use their wealth to mentally and spiritually degrade the rest of us, and pervert the functioning of government, I don’t care how much money they have. Of course, right now they do have those two effects. . .

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JP

November 5, 2012

” It’s not that the cultural issues aren’t important, but while the family members are preoccupied with their heated arguments in the front parlor, the bad guys are coming in the kitchen door in the back and robbing them blind.”
One of the issues might be as to why fornication, abortion, and homosexual relations, etc. are not evil while theft is evil?
It’s hard to cooperate with people you consider to be depraved in order to deal with a second depravity.

Reply
Jonathan

November 5, 2012

JP, many factors distinguish between evident moral wrongs, like theft or rape or murder, and cultural mores which, e.g., might condemn some particular kind of sexuality. One of the more important factors moral philosophers consider is that of consent. No one consents to be murdered, raped or despoiled of property. In the case of the most obvious crimes, personal autonomy is violated. This is not the case with what you call “fornication.” No one’s human rights are on the line in a consensual homosexual act. Unless you think it’s a human right to be straight. In that case, you must have some serious grievances with natural law.

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JP

November 5, 2012

My point was that for many people, the concept of cultural mores and moral wrongs are one and the same.
The post was about the reason that the different cultural groups are not cooperating. My response was that cultural group “A” viewed cultural group “B” as depraved already, so the cultural mores were not considered cultural mores, but rather morality.
Some people consider theft wrong for the same reason that non-marital sex is wrong. Because it violates the objective moral order.
That was my point.

Reply
Jack Whelan

November 5, 2012

I don’t have time today for a more extensive reply to Jonathan, but I’d agree that income equality isn’t per se in our tradition, but I think that what I’m saying about the balance/imbalance between liberty and equality in the economic sphere is true, and I’d argue that there is an American thought tradition that regards having a strong dominating middle as ballast against predatory oligarchs. There’s a pretty strong literature about not allowing a new wealthy caste to take over, and the basis to justify a heavy taxe on inheritance and the progressive income tax. But these are rooted in a Progressive Era/New Deal mentality that we have all but forgotten.
And I’m trying to ground this idea of a tension on quasi-philosophical grounds while tipping my hat to the principle of subsidiarity, which seeks another kind of tension between top down and bottom up, with a bias for the latter, but at least recognizing that complex social entities need some level of hierarchy.

Reply
JP

November 5, 2012

I see the imbalance in the current situation as a throwback to the Roaring 20s or the Gilded Age.
I think that we’ve been here before and that it’s quite American (in the sense of being a cultural flaw).

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JP

November 6, 2012

Anyhow, here’s a fun book on “The Making of Fornication”. It actually sounds like a fun read. Seriously.
“This provocative work provides a radical reassessment of the emergence and nature of Christian sexual morality, the dominant moral paradigm in Western society since late antiquity. While many scholars, including Michel Foucault, have found the basis of early Christian sexual restrictions in Greek ethics and political philosophy, Kathy L. Gaca demonstrates on compelling new grounds that it is misguided to regard Greek ethics and political theory—with their proposed reforms of eroticism, the family, and civic order—as the foundation of Christian sexual austerity. Rather, in this thoroughly informed and wide-ranging study, Gaca shows that early Christian goals to eradicate fornication were derived from the sexual rules and poetic norms of the Septuagint, or Greek Bible, and that early Christian writers adapted these rules and norms in ways that reveal fascinating insights into the distinctive and largely non-philosophical character of Christian sexual morality.
Writing with an authoritative command of both Greek philosophy and early Christian writings, Gaca investigates Plato, the Stoics, the Pythagoreans, Philo of Alexandria, the apostle Paul, and the patristic Christians Clement of Alexandria, Tatian, and Epiphanes, freshly elucidating their ideas on sexual reform with precision, depth, and originality. Early Christian writers, she demonstrates, transformed all that they borrowed from Greek ethics and political philosophy to launch innovative programs against fornication that were inimical to Greek cultural mores, popular and philosophical alike. The Septuagint’s mandate to worship the Lord alone among all gods led to a Christian program to revolutionize Gentile sexual practices, only for early Christians to find this virtually impossible to carry out without going to extremes of sexual renunciation.
Knowledgeable and wide-ranging, this work of intellectual history and ethics cogently demonstrates why early Christian sexual restrictions took such repressive ascetic forms, and casts sobering light on what Christian sexual morality has meant for religious pluralism in Western culture, especially among women as its bearers.”
http://www.amazon.com/The-Making-Fornication-Christianity-Hellenistic/dp/0520235991/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1352248111&sr=8-1&keywords=The+Making+of+FOrnication
It has nothing whatsoever to do with the current problem of political fragmentation, but still, a fun read.

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Tom Frank on Fizzling Protests

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