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No One to Hate
In his new book, Suicide of the West: How the Rebirth of Tribalism, Populism, Nationalism, and Identity Politics, is Destroying American Democracy, Jonah Goldberg argues that classical liberalism – belief in individual responsibility, equality under the law, and free markets – is not natural. Human beings spent most of their 200,000 to 300,000 years on earth living in tribes organized on the basis of cooperation and mutual obligation.
Free markets are also based on cooperation and mutual obligation, but the scope is the world rather than the tribe. As Milton Friedman explains in his summary of Leonard Read’s classic essay, “I, Pencil,” free markets foster cooperation between millions of people in different parts of the globe – people who have never met, who don’t speak the same languages, or worship the same gods.
The problem, as Goldberg sees it, is that the everyday, worldwide cooperation needed to create even the simplest products – such as the pencil – is not obvious. We long for the visible, face-to-face cooperation and sense of shared purpose that came with tribal existence.
There’s another difference between classical liberalism and tribal thought that Goldberg doesn’t address in his book but that is every bit as important: Classical liberalism doesn’t exclude anyone. It doesn’t provide us with an “other” to hate.
Socialism, fascism, Nazism, mercantilism, identity politics, and all the other throwbacks to tribal existence supply that unfortunate, but very human, desire. Socialism is based on the idea of class warfare. Fascism was arrayed against capitalists. Nazism, Hitler’s version of fascism, added Jews and other “non-Aryans” to its list of enemies. Mercantilists are aligned against foreigners and foreign products. Identity politics posits a world split between light-skinned oppressors and the dark-skinned oppressed.
Classical liberalism, by contrast, offers equality under the law regardless of class, race, religion, or wealth. Free markets are concerned with the color of a person’s money and not his skin. As Voltaire wrote about capitalist England, “Go into the Exchange in London, that place more venerable than many a court, and you will see representatives of all the nations assembled there for the profit of mankind. There the Jew, the Mahometan, and the Christian deal with one another as if they were of the same religion,…”
Published in General
While these relationships are good, I don’t think they’re the same as cooperation or obligation. It’s exchange – there’s nothing wrong with exchange but it isn’t the same kind of thing.
Unfortunate indeed, but not a desire. Fear is natural when confronted with potential disruption to one’s accustomed life practices. That disruption need not be based on anything in particular, but it is there as a protective reaction. An initial disruption may become part of every day life and, at some point, its disruption met with similar fear.
It is true some look for that fear, but only if taught to do so. The reaction may be described as tribalistic, but probably better described as “comfort zone-istic.” For example, many D’s look for offenses to the moral comfort zone they’ve established as “right-thinking individuals.” Thus, the perception of R’s as “others” and lesser beings. This moral position is learned, and often validated by stoking of fear by those that profit from it. And R’s, for our part, are no different in our establishment of comfort zones. I highly doubt there are any who have lived and not felt this protective instinct, even if they never manifest an external reaction.
All of that is just a quibble and really goes to support your main point in the last paragraph. Good stuff!!
Not only do we long for a sense of shared purpose or common identity, I happen to think it’s essential still. I also think that where we get into trouble is when we have too narrow or too few identities or affinities (opening the door to fascism, racism, etc) or so many that none mean much of anything (nihilism, cosmopolitanism, etc.). If we disavow or undercut the more wholesome and productive outlets for this desire for identity then the vile and destructive will surely fill in. No man is an island, and even Galt gathered others to live in his gulch community. Exchange is insufficient basis for community to form and thrive.
I think the genius of the American system has been to create a series of superseding and interlocking tribes (city, state, country) to sit on top of any narrower, more contentious, or non-rational affiliations. One ring to rule them all, or something like that.
I think of it this way: Socialists want to base society on a tribal model in which people are bound by mutual concern and reciprocal obligation. In a tribe of no more than 150 individuals (Dunbar’s number), this model works well; people can easily keep track of whom they owe and how much they owe. In a tribe of millions, however, tracking obligations is far more difficult.
Suppose, however, that some sort of token is used to certify that the holder has provided a good or service to another. A token’s holder could then exchange it for another good or service provided by a third party.
While tokens solve the problem of determining whether an obligation has been incurred, there is the issue of determining the value of each obligation – assuming we want comparable exchanges. We also have the additional complication of subjectivity: different people in different circumstances will place different values on a given good or service.
These problems go away if people are free to exchange – and free not to exchange – their goods and services for tokens. The millions of transactions that occur will reflect the relative values that people place on that which is being exchanged at any given moment.
In other words, to create the socialist ideal of large societies based on mutual respect and obligation, we would need to either artificially recreate the market system or simply allow free markets to emerge. Free market prices send information around the world, allowing countless people, though unknown to each other, to cooperate with each other and coordinate their actions.
Very nicely put
Don’t conservatives also want a society based on mutual concern and reciprocal obligation? I think the answer is yes, though that doesn’t have to be via government. The system of free exchange you describe is definitely a good, but I still think it’s different than cooperation or obligation. I also still think that free exchange alone is insufficient by itself to sustain a society/community.
Sure. But we want it coordinated via the free market rather than by government dictate.
I don’t think either of those, free market or government, can effectively coordinate mutual concern and reciprocal obligation.
Ed G is describing a moral exchange and Mr. Fulmer is describing an economic exchange. They are not equivalent.
I’m uncomfortable with this idea of global economic exchange. At the national level, trade disputes are handled by the closest governing body both citizens have in common.
In a global transaction, the conflict would necessitate the formation of a mutual governing body where none exists. The UN exists for UN members as such a governing body.
The insistence on finding this praise-worthy strikes me as obscene. But then, I’m in favor of far more local governance than even the USA federal system has on offer.
You might say I’m a bit tribal.
Listen again to Milton Friedman’s summary of “I, Pencil.” He describes how the market coordinates reciprocal obligation across the globe and does it very effectively. I tried, and apparently failed, to make the same point in post #4. The free market scales up reciprocal obligation beyond the tribal level far better than does any other socio-economic system.
The market doesn’t “coordinate” mutual concern, but it does encourage it. If I want customers and if I want to keep them, I’d better be interested in their concerns and in finding ways to address them. Similarly, if I wish to get ahead in the workplace, then I need to care about the concerns of my co-workers, those who work for me, and those for whom I work.
For closer, more personal relationships, look to family, neighbors, community, and community organizations such as churches and volunteer groups.
Socialists try to substitute the nation for all of these countless “points of light.” In doing so, they insert politics into every nook and cranny of life. They also make government so powerful and so invasive that gaining control over it eventually becomes a matter of life and death as it has in Venezuela, Russia, China, Myanmar, the Middle East, and much of Sub-Saharan Africa.
There are some other ways to look at this. When it comes to governing the danger is that at some point the process of government regardless of type is idolized. The moral implications of a decision are not examined. In a democracy if enough voters sanction an action, or their legislators do, it may be legal, or law, but the question remains is it ethical, or moral? It is no different in a totalitarian state.
Free market exchange, voluntary personal affiliations, and tribal or political affiliations resulting from birth are not the same thing and may not be related at all. Goldberg makes the following mistake: every human natural instinct and resulting behavior is not required to manifest itself while humans are in a primitive state of being. Human development has yielded classical liberalism but not all of humanity has reached that level of development or chosen to accept that result.
I recall recent discussions about whether or not the Executive has an obligation to enforce laws that the Executive deems unconstitutional. The U.S. Constitution is mostly a product of classical liberal thought and an important basis is Christian morality. I think it is reasonable to consider not enforcing a statutory law if the moral effect is questionable.
With regard to tribalism, we have a very good example in our own American Indians (or Native Americans). They mostly lived in extended family/clan-sized groups who came together with others of their “tribe” for common activities such as hunting, marriages, crop-gathering, war, etc.; but had no central governing body until they were forced them to come together for protection from the European invaders. They lived in what was pretty close to the normal state of man.
In researching some of my books, I learned that it was common for the Indians to refer to their local group/tribe by their word for “the people,” while those not of their own group were identified as “the other” or by a, usually derogatory, term of some perceived physical characteristic or dietary habit.
I think modern “progressive-ism” it trying to move us back to that state.
When Voltaire airily wrote those sentences, the Test Act was still in force, and the Jew and the Mahometan could not sit in Parliament or hold other public office, though the color of one’s money was certainly a high value.
Further, the power discrepancies between the disenfranchised poor, the landholders, and the aristocracy in the England of Voltaire’s day crossed the Atlantic and resulted in the civil wars of 1776 and 1860. This was in part due to religious differences:
Michael Vlahos:
Except sometimes the effect of not enforcing the law also results in something morally questionable.
This is ridiculous. Of course human natural instincts manifest in primitive states. Instincts, by definition, require no conscious thought to operate, and do require both conscious thought and suppressive training to avoid. Unsuppressed instincts manifest whenever their triggering conditions exist.
I think that Goldberg does make the point that hating outsiders (especially if they are more successful) is kind of the default condition, a necessary corollary of the innate tendency towards tribalism.
That great social analyst Mel Brooks captured the essence of the (Goldbergian) default condition in the “2000 Year Old Man” routine with Carl Reiner. When asked by Reiner if there were national anthems back in caveman days, Brooks (the 2000-year old man) responded that in his cave there was indeed an anthem and he sang: “The hell with everybody else except Cave Seven…”
Transformation is better than suppression. Apes and monkeys hurl feces. Even calling someone a [fecal expletive] is better than that, and “Your thesis is both good and original. Unfortunately what is good is not original, and what is original is not good” is better yet.
Worse than either is the project to cover every detail of every eventuality by statute.
Every nucleus of every cell in our body is the story of Cain and Abel written in the language of genes. Before we were even born, we were conceived in hatred as well as love.
Yeah. There’s probably a way to express my thought without using ‘instinct’.
Afternoon Richard,
Jonah highlights that we lack proper gratitude for our modern Western life, and as Matt Ridley noted life expectencies are increasing world wide and protein consumption is increasing and the percentage of people living in extreme poverty world wide is the lowest in history. In material terms the increasing adoption of market economics has made life measurably better. That so many humans are having their lives improved so fast is evidence of the power of markets to use the information contained in price to make production much more efficient. When individuals are allowed to profit from their work the gains made by individuals can be enormous as in China and India.
There are aspects of the Western life which have come along with the great material success and the great personal freedom which are threats to that success. None of the Western countries have populations which are reproducing at replacements levels, we are no longer working so that our kids can have a better life, we are spending their money. Jonah makes comments about the culture; he seems not to know much about the elements of culture or how culture might enhance personal or civic responsibility. So what about material success corrodes the drive that once was emblematic of much of the culture? How can we regain the drive to build a better future and structure our traditions so that the next generation will not only have a drive for material success and status success but couple status with morality and civic responsibility?
I like and agree with your comment. One question I do have. Is there a logical reason to think that a given group of people, such as the population of a Western country, must always reproduce at or above replacement level in order to survive?
Is conscious thought not natural?
When the leaders of the part of the world that has defined “Free Markets” to mean the end of tariffs so that jobs go off to whatever portion of the globe where people are willing to work so cheaply they commit suicide in droves, one has to wonder about it all.
The Trans Pacific Trade Agreement, that certainly would have become law had Hillary Rodham Clinton achieved the Oval Office, that agreement would have ensured that tariffs remained forgotten and that workers remained obliged to sell themselves out to the Global Corporate Store. The TPP also would most likely have imposed the right of the Big Pharmaceutical Industry to levy much higher prices in places where those products are now actually attainable.
Of course, many here might argue that pharmaceutical products should be priced according to whatever the Merck, Phizer, Bayer corporations et al wish to charge. After all, there is a doctrine of “Free Market.”
But then when a person examines how the US taxpayers fund the research for these companies and yet see how only small dribbles of the tremendous profits made on the products the tax monies have helped create will ever get returned to the US Treasury, while these same tax payers have to cut their meds in half to try and stay alive, one wonders who invents all these laudable sounding terms such as “Free Markets” and “Free Trade.”
Afternoon Bob,
In the “The Triple Package” Chau and Rubenfeld note that certain immigrant groups do well better than native born Americans, folks from India, China, Nigeria specifically. I suppose if we could keep importing these groups we could sustain for a while folks with the type of drive which produce superior academic and material achievement, like our culture possessed at an earlier time. However, like socialism runs eventually out of other people’s money, America would soon run out of immigrant groups to carry on. Unfortunately not all groups are over achievers, the Hmong have a third of their children living in poverty, also the children and grandchildren of the high achieving immigrants tend to become more like our native population in that the drive and willingness to sacrifice for the future gets supplanted with the life of ingratitude and entitlement which we already have in abundance. Western cultures seem to leak vitality, or the luxury of life robs purpose of the younger generation as they are growing up, and they lose the value and appreciation of work.
Of course. But that says nothing about specific thoughts or ideas. And:
I would dispute this assertion, if you mean human development in any natural sense. Infants adopted from the most oppressive cultures on the other side of the grow up perfectly American here. Our natural capacity for culture does not dictate any specific culture. Or morality. Jonah’s entirely correct on this point.
I don’t think that experience is anything new.
From the blog and URL below:
https://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/the_first_generation_builds_the_business_the_second_makes_it_a_success_and/
Entry from January 13, 2011“The first generation builds the business, the second makes it a success, and the third wrecks it”
“The first generation builds the business, the second makes it a success, and the third wrecks it” is another version of the old saying: “It is only but three generations from shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves.” American businessman Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919) wrote the “three generations in America from shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves” remark in 1886, but the expression has been cited in print since at least 1874.
“Shirtsleeves” represents a working person’s shirt, but the expression is dated in an information age and the longer explanation is often used. An older expression—possibly from Lancashire in the 1700s—is “from clogs to clogs in three generations.”
Wikiquote: Andrew Carnegie
Andrew Carnegie (25 November 1835 – 11 August 1919) was a Scottish-American businessman, a major philanthropist, and the founder of the Carnegie Steel Company, which later became U.S. Steel.
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My comment:
I have seen that in our lifetimes, the creation of “Golden Parachutes” means that many families now skip over the Second Generation and go directly to Generation Three. Why come into work every day,when you can risk what your parents set up by putting on those boring business suits 24/7 for decades? Instead a thinking Gen Two can risk it all on speculation, hoping to score big. And when that when that doesn’t exactly pan out, they still get a tidy sum of money via the insurance industry to ease the pain.
Depopulation by low birthrate has never happened before in recorded history. The blue canary for this is Japan, technically not a Western country, but close enough.