IV. Karl Marx

Any conservative readers who’ve come this far, please hold your nose for a moment and consider Marx as social theorist and not the Marx whose ideas of revolution went horribly wrong in the twentieth century. Yes, Marx thought the U.S. had some aspects of greatness. We were an industrial society without aristocracy and the baggage of feudalism, though we had slavery and its aftermath against us in his scale of social evolution. He thought well of our ability for peaceful revolution(s) by votes. “You know that the institutions, mores, and traditions of various countries must be taken into consideration, and we do not deny that there are countries–such as America, England…–where the workers can attain their goal by peaceful means.”[i]

Marx might stealthily admire the cleverness of the bourgeoisie in keeping the capitalist system running through the welfare state as in life he admired that class’s ability to remake the world. His The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon is perhaps his most relevant work regarding how the U.S. and other industrialized nations have found stability despite economic disparities and how they may lose it.

Marx had his own axe to grind against de Tocqueville’s bête noire. His biggest problem with Louis Napoleon was in terms of class theory: how did this con artist seemingly displace the authority of both the dominant bourgeoisie and the classes that contended against it? The answer was that the class struggle had created a partial political paralysis and vacuum into which Napoleon III could step. In Marx’s view, Napoleon III relied on the support of the riffraff (what Marx called the lumpenproletariat), the acquiescence of the largely inert peasantry (Marx called them a sack of potatoes), the proletariat’s general chaos, and the haute bourgeoisie’s fear of sticking their own necks out again into politics.

This last bit—the reluctance or inability of the wealthiest to assume the highest offices—persisted in many modern democracies. The haute bourgeoisie has mostly left direct governance to others that they have financed, rather than becoming themselves focal figures for political and class hostility. Indeed, Marx thought that a too prominent and direct political role for extremely wealthy individuals would be dangerous to the capitalist class as a whole.

Marx was wrong in one crucial respect about Napoleon III—he wrote early in his rule that class tensions would soon end his reign, when in fact it lasted twenty years and was only ended by total military defeat. There’s a lesson here for critics of our current regime who think historical forces will do the work for them.

We’ve done a good job up in the U.S. of avoiding a Louis Napoleon-style figure—until now. The new regime combines Louis Napoleon’s lumpenproletarian appeal with a quasi-haute bourgeoisie leader and other billionaire appointments. The prominence of the ultra-rich in this regime could be dangerous in terms of class struggle, but that may be the least of it.

Marx might note how this regime’s rise may lead to the end of American exceptionalism. In its original social scholarship sense, American exceptionalism is a particular set of theories about the mitigation of class consciousness and class struggle here in the U.S. as compared with Europe. But, under the regime’s policies, the increase in income disparity and the dismantling of the welfare state may provoke class antagonisms. The regime’s attack on voting rights may also close an important safety valve of class tension. Together, the regime’s efforts against the conditions that made America exceptional in social theory could lead to the rise of American class consciousness as a distinct political force. That may be good news for a Marxist, but bad news for American greatness.

[i] “The Possibility of Non-Violent Revolution” [1872 Amsterdam speech] from The Marx-Engels Reader, p. 522, 523.

III. John Stuart Mill.

Reading Mill is like a long conversation with someone who thinks he’s always the brightest guy in the room–though with supergenius Mill, that’s usual true. The guy learned Greek at age three.

Mill argued for utilitarianism in the broadest sense–a refinement of Smith’s looser distinction between long-term self-interest and short-term selfishness. First, utilitarianism involves a kind of happiness math—the greatest good for the greatest number—so the happiness of a particular part of nation shouldn’t come from the unhappiness of the other parts. But Mill tweaked this math a bit: not all happiness is equal. He believed that it was better to be Socrates than a pig, because while Socrates could appreciate and choose between both lower and higher forms of pleasure, a pig could only wallow in the lower. Mill also loved free speech and believed that in a free marketplace of ideas the best ideas would ultimately win out.

Therefore, to have a society that would seek the higher forms of happiness and have the best marketplace of ideas, it was necessary to have quality education for all.

Mill was ahead of his time as an advocate of women’s rights. Some of this was just doing the utilitarian math again—the oppression of half the population simply couldn’t be justified in his theory. But his personal life also influenced his views. Mill’s high-pressure learning had driven him to a nervous breakdown at a young age, and his long-time friend and eventual wife probably helped to keep him sane and socialized. She also contributed greatly to his writings.

In sum, for Mill, America’s greatness would be as an engine of general human happiness. We have broad individual liberty, toleration, compulsory education, freedom of speech, and women’s rights—the necessary tools in his view to supply the greatest good for the greatest number.

So, how would Mill view our new regime? Whatever his own views, he would have approved of free speech for the regime’s alt-right supporters and of right to tweet whatever one desired at 3AM. But he may have been dismayed with apparent failure of our marketplace of ideas to come out along the classical liberal, tolerant, and rational lines for which he would have hoped, and the long term consequences this failure may have for our society’s general happiness.

More than the other social theorists in this essay, Mill believed that people could be educated to be rational actors in his own hyper-intellectual self-image, and that’s probably just plain wrong. But I don’t think he was wrong about the importance of education for our collective happiness. Mill probably would not have had a problem with the regime’s support for a voucher system, but he would have insisted on quality options for low-income families, and those do not appear to be a priority of the regime.

Assuming he still had his nineteenth century prejudices while viewing today’s world, Mill might not have objected to the statements of the regime against certain immigrants—he made similar statements himself. But I think he would have drawn the line at the new regime’s profound disrespect for women, and he would probably agree more with Samantha Bee than the regime.

II. Alexis de Tocqueville.

Like the nation of narcissists that we are, we love de Tocqueville because he wrote big books full of nice things about us. Particularly he liked our decentralized institutions and values (mores). In contrast, he also had a lot to say about the two failed attempts at political democracy in France—the French Revolution and the revolution of 1848.

For de Tocqueville, democracy wasn’t just a mode of governance but a type of society–one tending toward less aristocracy and more equality among its citizens. As society becomes more democratic in this sense, the government tends to centralize, with more authority in one body or one man. It seems paradoxical, but when everyone is relatively equal, the total despotism of an individual leader becomes easier.

De Tocqueville believed that the U.S. avoided that outcome through its strong sources of opposing power in its institutions and mores. Such values and institutions don’t arise overnight—in America, they had roots going back to at least colonial times.

In France however, centralization had increased steadily under the old monarchical regimes, and local and intermediate governmental and societal institutions had correspondingly declined. Thus, after each new revolution’s effort at political democracy, France would eventually revert to a centralized, autocratic government

A man who embodied the failure of political democracy in France for de Tocqueville was Louis Napoleon, whom his opponents saw as a political grifter who promised to make France great again. He became Emperor Napoleon III, but his vision of French imperial greatness faltered in a series of foreign and military misadventures and came to an end where French hopes would fail again 70 years later—at Sedan against the Prussians. (More on Louis Napoleon later from Marx.)

De Tocqueville famously predicted that America and Russia would eventually be great opposing powers: “One has freedom as the principal means of action; the other has servitude.” He was rooting for the American way to win.

So, how would de Tocqueville view our current regime? He may have applauded the new regime’s attack on the central government, but only if they resulted in more local governmental power and not if they led instead to power being consolidated in the executive, which appears to be the current regime’s rhetorical thrust.

He would have been dismayed that we’ve become subject to Russian influence and that so many of us are enamored with Russian authoritarianism. Such Americans seem like de Tocqueville’s description the French revolutionaries who “always understood the liberty of the people to mean the despotism exercised in the name of the people.”

Finally, de Tocqueville would have found the very idea of one man claiming the power to make America great as in itself running contrary to the very things that he admired about America, and all too reminiscent of Louis Napoleon in the run-up to his coup d’état.

This is the first post in a series drawn from an essay that I wrote for an anthology/time capsule that Stu Segal is putting together. The topic question for the anthology is “will Trump make America great again?” Stu approached authors who were both pro and con, and I’m decidedly the latter–I even object to the question. But as you’ll see below, I decided to look at the issue through an impersonal (if still mostly contrary) lens.

I’ll be giving you more information about Stu’s project as it becomes available.  In the meantime, I hope you enjoy this series.

INTRODUCTION

I don’t think you want to hear my personal reaction to the new regime. The reasons are obvious: 1) Who the hell cares what I think? I write science fiction, a genre with interesting ideas but by definition removed from our present reality. 2) My antipathy is as common as dirt. It’s shared by many and you can find it (whether you want to or not) in plenty of other venues. You don’t need to go hunting for hostility in a book.

It strikes me though that my problem is analogous to one that Alexis de Tocqueville observed about all citizens in America’s democracy: we are obsessed with our individual opinions even though we are by and large part of an undifferentiated mass.

And there’s my solution: thinking about de Tocqueville reminds me that I studied social theory before turning to fantasy thrillers. I’ll give you what seven classical social theorists said or might have said about American greatness and its relationship to the new regime: Adam Smith, Alexis de Tocqueville, John Stuart Mill, Karl Marx, Max Weber, Émile Durkheim, and Sigmund Freud. You might not agree with any of them, but their opinions are worth knowing.

I. Adam Smith

In social theory, Adam Smith is our ur-capitalist. Lawmakers used the principles of Smith’s work against the agrarian tariffs for the benefit of the old landed, rent-seeking aristocracy that constrained the new wealth-generating industrial sector. He published The Wealth of Nations the same year as the birth of the United States, uniting it almost mystically with our free market destiny.

So, it’s completely likely that Smith would have found some of America’s greatness in its relatively free markets. He would have approved of America’s post-World War II general policy of encouraging open international trade and its institutions.

But Smith’s Wealth of Nations is best read in conjunction with his The Theory of Moral Sentiments. In that work, Smith distinguishes long-term self-interest from short-term selfishness. For Smith, the capitalist conjunction between virtue and self-interest can break down for the rich and powerful who think they are above the law and capitalist imperatives of quality and thus free to indulge their viceful, selfish whims and maintain a large company of flatterers and deceivers. In Wealth of Nations, Smith’s particular example of such a failure to distinguish long-term self-interest from short-term selfishness is the great proprietors of Medieval Europe, who by selling their birth-right “for trinkets and baubles… became insignificant.”[i]

How does the new regime stack up in Smith’s thought? First, it has attacked existing free trade agreements and institutions without any sort of rational backup plan and has threatened the mercantilist tariffs that Smith abhorred. It has also attacked the foreign aid and other forms of soft power that helps encourage free global markets. In general, the regime supports the modern equivalents of landed wealth–oil, mines, real estate–against the generators of new wealth.

Reflecting its own collective personality, the regime has encouraged the forces of short-term selfishness across our government, but perhaps the most noteworthy instances in a Smith-eyed lens are the anti-environmental policies that serve the immediate interests of the modern equivalents of landed wealth to the long-term detriment of our country and the world. Contrary to the popular shallow view of Smith and despite his free market principles, I don’t believe he’d approve of such short-sighted selfishness.

[i] The Wealth of Nations, III, iv, 14.

Reading: Friday 6PM
Autograph: Sunday 3:30PM

Panels:
Fri. 5PM If I Were in Charge of Star Trek…
Sat. 7PM Mythology as a Basis for Speculative Fiction
Sun. 10AM Making Your Worlds Real: Tolkien’s Concept of
Subcreation
Sun. 1PM SFF Resistance
Sun. 8PM The Century-Old Barbed Wire: The Great War & SF

If you’ve had any problems using your American Craftsmen audiobook promotional codes on Audible, please let me know at tmdoyle2[at]yahoo.com, and let me know where you got the code. I’ll make sure you get the audio one way or another.

I expect this giveaway to be approved in the next couple of days.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

American Craftsmen

by Tom Doyle

Giveaway ends October 09, 2016.

See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.

Enter Giveaway

My schedule this Saturday, Sept. 24th at the Baltimore Book Festival:
12 Noon Dangerous Voices Variety Hour (I’ll be co-hosting with Sarah Pinsker, with guests Kiini Ibura Salaam and Andy Duncan).
1 PM From Darth Vader to Hermione Granger: Memorable Characters in SF & Fantasy
2 PM Long Ago and Far Away: History in SF & Fantasy
4 PM Signing
6 PM Meet the Authors Party

The American Craftsmen audiobook is now available–please spread the word! http://www.audible.com/pd/Sci-Fi-Fantasy/American-Craftsmen-A-Novel-Audiobook/B01L9U2RIM

I hope even people who’ve read the book already will take a moment to listen to the audio sample of American Craftsmen on Audible.com to get a taste of the marvelous work that Conan McCarty did as the narrator, though you won’t know the full extent unless you hear all the voices he does for the book–from rural New England to cowboy Ukrainian. He’ll next be performing in the theatrical version of Frankenstein in the Denver Theatre.

Balticon Schedule (at the Inner Harbor) this weekend, with items particularly important to me first:
Friday, 2PM. Writing seminar.
Sat. 3PM. Reading (with 3 others)
Sat. 2PM. Mass autograph session
Sat. Noon. Politics, Law, and Policy panel
Sat. 5PM Political Models for SF Worlds panel
www.balticon.org