Morality, Markets and Me.
Who Needs the Salt of the Earth? It is probably unwise for a mouse to enter a discussion between a cat and a lion. But I am not wise. Peter Suderman and Ross Douthat have exchanged a few posts about the free market and its effects on community and morality. The conversation touches on quite a few other topics and so this post will cast a wide net. I'm somewhat hesitant to even write this as I've corresponded with Peter recently and find him amiable and our conversation convivial. I hope he takes any criticism in the spirit I offer it. I also hesitate because the wonderful libertarian women at Fey Accompli have linked to this blog - and I don't want to have the bad manners of emphasizing the 5% on which we disagree. I also fear the considerable wrath of Will Wilkinson as I am treading on his territory. Here goes:
Ross, Peter and I all agree that economic growth is a good thing. It is undoubtedly true that many Americans are quite far away from the economic hardships that their grandparents were exposed to just 70 years ago.
The increase in the standard of living for everyone has not come, as some libertarians claim, because of the tech boom or the transition to a service economy but it seems it has come through incredibly cheap imports, through debt, refinanced mortgages at low interest rates - etc. It is easy for poor people in America to have more than one T.V. because Wal Mart can purchase them at incredibly low prices due to an incredible amount of new cheap labor after the fall of the Soviet Empire and the further opening of China. Libertarians ought to be conscientious to avoid appearing to advocate "free market" policies in America that give prosperity based on Chinese labor. People will start asking questions like: do libertarians object to what Peter Hitchens saw in China "Work Hard Today, or Look Hard for Work tomorrow" signs lining the sweat shops?
Anyway, back to the topic at hand, Ross comes right to the point but doesn't hammer it home when he says:
If conservatives are worried about the rise of Home-Alone America - and we should be - then we need to admit that it's not just feminism that led to the rise in two-earner families, but the economic realities of the post-industrial age. If we're concerned about the collapse of a common culture, and the eclipse of our national identity, we need to recognize that this eclipse is as much as result of free trade (and our present free-market approach to immigration) as of declining patriotism and left-wing identity politics. And if we don't care for the mores and prejudices of our Blue-State elite, we need to recognize that this is the elite that globalization has given us - an elite that's brilliantly-adapted to the capitalist world order, in spite of its superficially socialist leanings. - Ross Douthat
He's right, of course and I recommend entirely this Gramscian style analysis of free trade and free markets. But he is also right to name several things we value more than economic prosperity, perhaps even more than idealized libertarian economic freedom: common culture, shared prosperity etc. He hints at the disappearance of the family wage, (which in turn hints at the problem of a de-industrialized economy in America). To this we could also add the value of economic independence. If we are to retain the nation state in the face of globalization - it is more important to be able to manufacture computer chips (for, say, our missiles) ourselves, than to get them cheaply from a potential enemy or competitor who is perfectly capable of ignoring the advice of his libertarians and issuing an embargo on the United States for political reasons. Economic independence as much as economic prosperity gives real freedom for a nation. A man who works for himself and makes 50K never has to worry that an unlucky or negligent boss will suffer badly in, say, a divorce proceeding and lay him off.
This is not to advocate a radical distributist economy which would devolve ownership to workers (but unlike communism make that ownership private, not collective and public) but to illustrate the point that the free market does not give us inviolable commands - that prosperity is not worth servility and dependence.
Secondly, Peter says that as a Christian he is concerned about the coarsening of public culture. But is he willing then to do something about it- like regulate pornography? Or even stigmatize the making and buying of it in some way? I do not know how one could accomplish this in the age of the internet - but the philosophical point is crucial. In the free market I'm not compelled to buy pornography. However I live in a culture that is vulgarized by it - and I have no choice in that. It would be a form of madness if a Christian felt hesitant at unemploying pornographers - or driving them underground. If one legalized marijuana - the stigma against pot-smoking would be considerably weakened once it is robbed of the moral authority that law carries. If you argue that pornographers will continue their work in a black market - I will say that every criminal continues to commit crime in the shadows. There are, I'd wager a considerable amount of porn stars and pornographers who would not continue their work if it were stripped of "first amendment rights" status and instead greeted with fines or jail time.
There are question to be raised about whether the free-market does the things that some of its advocates say. Does it create peace among people of different creeds? That would be great. But what if instead it created religious indifference? What doth it profit a man?
Michael Brendan Dougherty
in Culture, Politics
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Comments like these come from folks who would love to return to the idealized small town communal atmosphere of Fiddler on the Roof—and in doing so they forget that even in its idealized musical form, little Anatevka was poor, hungry and oppressed. These Luddite, primitivist nostalgia trips forget that technological development fueled by economic growth has eliminated massive amounts of human poverty, hunger and suffering—surely that’s better, in the end, than knowing the name of the butcher. -
Nor is it worth pretending that many of the cultural trends that conservatives find objectionable - the pornographication of the public square, the death of an aspirational middlebrow culture and the growing highbrow-lowbrow divide, the coarsening of American childhood - don't have something to do with capitalism's habit of wreaking "creative destruction" on longstanding social norms. If conservatives are worried about the rise of Home-Alone America - and we should be - then we need to admit tha
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More importantly, economic liberalization (free markets) has helped more people become higher-skilled, and indeed, education (and the higher-skill levels it brings) has become increasingly available and attainable. Higher education has, over the past century, gone from being a extreme rarity to an upper middle class luxury to a mass market phenomenon—and much of its increased availability can be attributed to economic growth. The wealthier a country, the more likely it is to be generally well ed
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Response: A "Modest Rebuke" IndeedIt is curious what ironies and amusements life will present to you. Just the other day Michael Brendan Dougherty and I were corresponding about our respective styles of blogging (with Michael as the debonair master of fashion and style, while...
Reader Comments (9)
Your nationalistic, anti-cosmopolitan point of view strikes me as morally wrongheaded and practically dangerous. You seem to take it as a kind of axiom that people who happen to be citizens of the United States have very many, very deep special obligations to one another on the basis of that largely morally arbitrary fact. (It is not entirely arbitrary. I was born here, which is arbitrary. Consuela chose to immigrate partly for moral reasons, which is not. She does not, however, owe me or any other citizen anything in particular due to co-citizenship except compliance with the *just* laws in our common jurisdiction.)
If there is some kind of tension between trade and the nation-state, then the problem is the nation-state. Outside of the love, solidarity, and altruism of family, trade is the paradigmatic human moral relationship. Strangely, you seem to be disturbed by the fact that trade IS mutually beneficial. We ARE indeed making the Chinese better of by trading with them. And we are also making ourselves better off. Our trade deficit with China is precisely what gives them a huge stake in the health and welfare of the American economy. And trade is strongly negatively correlated through history with war for just this kind of reason. And yet you worry we are strengthening a potential enemy?! That's crazy. Withdrawing from the friendship of trade is an act of enmity and the surest way to create an enemy.
"Economic independence" is such a monumentally vicious idea that it is hard to know where to begin. Let me just say that I would be willing to die in a war against a state that made it policy to deny me my natural liberty to enter into voluntary, mutually benficial exchanges with every other human being who does not happen to have a social security number. If you are worried about "servility and dependence," then you must reject this economic independence nonsense, because it will make us servile to and dependent upon the state. Economic growth driven by economic interdependence (division of labor and comparative advantage) is by far the best thing that has ever happened to humanity. There is, in secular terms, nothing that even approaches the gifts of economic interdependence.
(Anyway, you don't need to worry. A cursory familiarity with history show that the strongest nation-states are most often among the freest traders. Trade makes you rich, and riches make you strong. Your attachment to that particular 350 year old form of political organization strikes me as wholly unmotivated, however.)
There's a couple ways to understand Ross's talk of "common culture" and "national identity." One way is illiberal, repugnant, and dangerous. According to the other way, our common culture and national identity is robust and not at all endangered.
The stuff you're toying with here is really poisonous, Michael. This is not conservatism. This is illiberal, authoritarian, nationalist collectivism, and there is almost nothing good to say on its behalf. Bad stuff. Bad bad bad.
as for the supposed "pornification", please consider the real alternative - it's not a society free from boob-flashing and sexy commercials, it's a society where your right to carry a Bible in public can be taken away because it offends someone else. pluralism in a liberal society is in your best interest, so i advise reconciling yourself to it serving the interests of pornstars as well.
finally, do not pass the buck onto the free-market liberal society - it's YOUR job as a religious person to prevent "religious indifference" if that concerns you. It's the pluralistic society's job to protect your right to do so and nothing more.
Anyway, China is "booming" - okay - but they don't have political freedom and the frightening thing about the Hitchens article in the Spectator is that China may effectively de-link economic prosperity and political freedom. The Soviets had no freedom and therefore we thought - no good products to buy. The Chinese government which is still deeply repressive has simply allowed prosperity to those whose loyalty is essential.
My response about religious indifference is that free traders have promised peace - in my response to Will's comment I try to show that it has not always and in fact rarely succeeds in doing this. Free traders promise religious tolerance. Free traders promise all sorts of beneficial things - essentially they acknowledge that a political economy has a profound effect on the character of society. But if you dare express concern for how it changes the character of society libertarians say "its not our responsibility, its yours as an individual." Libertarians can't have it both ways.
Also the point about how porn and the Bible can equally be regulated. In theory, yes. But can't we be honest? Can't we have a little courage. It is not just that porn offends me. (I wouldn't tell you if I did look at it.) It is that porn is corrosive to a healthy society. It helps to break down the sexual mores that produce the next generation of people. But then I guess, libertarians would say "posterity is your problem if you want it to be". Or your child's innocence isn't my concern - let the market decide. This is why I end up harping on my disagreements with libertarians.
Being a localist at heart, I don't much like the nation-state. But I'd prefer that modern leviathan to an even less responsive and even more culture-blind globally-regulated market.
I have no idea what this means. People that consume porn stop reproducing? Sexual mores being abstinance and monogamy? Check out the history of the world - the "traditional family" notion that makes us so nostalgic is a relatively new invention. Not that it's bad - it makes people happy and I agree that stable families are a good thing. But we've made it a long way without it, and changing it up a little won't be anyone's demise except those who overestimate the necessity of its continuity. Sounds like the call for courage belongs in the other direction.
And the mores I meant - were just these - that sex, monogramy and children are tied together. Combine the social effects of birth control, and a culture that says "ok" to sexual freedom - and you have unlinked sex,marriage and children from each other. Men no longer feel responsible to take care of women with whom they conceive children (they can take care of it -as a single mom or consumer of an abortion service). Traditional cultures had their dead-beat dads and their whores, and promiscuous people - but they normally looked down at these people, stigmatized them, or even criminalized (in one way or another) their socially destructive behavior.
Actually, Mr. Wilkinson’s use of such loaded labels –nationalistic and anti-cosmopolitan -- to describe your position tells the reader more about him and his ideology than accurately describes your well reasoned musing.
The presumption that the open exchange of goods and its extreme cousin the worship of markets represents the panacea of most of the worlds ills is awfully tiresome at best and morally wrongheaded at worst.
It futher illustrates the anemic political and philosophical anthropology that seem to undergird libertarianism. As an ideology, it continues to misrepresent and misread human tendency and human nature.
The eminent historian John Lukacs puts it quite rightly –so on the mark is Prof Lukacs that his latest compendium: Remember Past, received a requisite hatch job from an otherwise reasonable liberterian (David Gordon). But, as Tom Fleming notes, liberarians are more unforgiving than other leftist when one goes of the ideological ranch…
“The capitalists, depending on the abstract myth of Economic Man, mistake the interstate movements of capital as a supreme reality; they believe that these things determine the everyday lives and desires of different peoples. They ignore the condition that, especially in the democratic age, economic transactions, indeed material realities in the lives of men and women, depend on what they believe and on what they think.” (John Lukacs - The End of the Twentieth Century and and the End of the Modern World, p.81.)
Regarding Wilkinson’s charge of moral wrongheadedness, Lukacs continues – much in your vain Michael -- that he finds the Catholic concept of human nature utterly convincing: “As Pascal said, men are both beasts and angels—because of the essential inclinations of their souls. By the way, my view of human nature is the opposite not only of Karl Marx, but also of someone like Alan Greenspan, or Bill Buckley, or Adam Smith. I believe that the most important thing in the world is what people think and believe, and that the entire material organization of the world is the consequence of this…”
Libertarians and market worshipers have for far too long coopted the moniker cosmopolitain implying that markets in and of themselves produce or guarantee sophisticated. History simply doesn’t support this misjudgment as illustrated by the utter barbarism one views in our conspiucous consumerist culture. Civilization does not reduce to commerce and consumption, nor do human beings reduce to consumers and worker insects.
As noted previously, the bedrock purpose of economic activity is to support human survival and reproduction, and an economy's proper function, then, is to ensure the continued existence of a people and its society and civilization. Unfettered pursuit of money is destructive to conservative values.
As argued so eloquently by the late John Attarian:
"America's other dominant ideology is economism, the worldview which reduces humans to utility-maximizing, appetite-driven economic animals, reduces life to economics, and argues that only economics matters, for both individuals and public life. Economism maintains that man's proper course in life is to manipulate matter, money, and other people so as to attain affluence and gratify his appetites, which are by assumption insatiable. One corollary of this is that the pursuit of material appetite gratification is the primary, or even only, source of happiness. Another is that economic efficiency is a primary value. Another is that noneconomic concerns, such as national identity, loyalty to kin, place, religion, nation, ethnic group, race, or way of life are irrational, unimportant, and expendable."
It is an absurd assertion that one’s place of birth is largely a morally arbitrary fact. Taking this long of thought to its logical conclusion, being born at all becomes a largely morally arbitrary fact as I – the subject, the agent, the self – had no say in where or if I was to be born. This further illustrates the moral bankrupty of the tyranny of place argument made by the likes of Tyler Cowan…
Rubbish.
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MBD,
I think if you wanted to suggest that the measurable material benefit from comparatively free trade or from comparatively unrestricted immigration (i.e. free trade in labor) is commonly exaggerated in public rhetoric you could (I suspect) find econometric studies that bear that out (among them those by George Borjas). A digression: I once attended a lecture by the economic historian Stanley Engerman in which he explained that the measurable effect on prosperity and economic dynamism of any discrete factor you could name is often quite small (his favored example being the 'social savings of the railroad'). That having been said, he also offered a surfeit of mercantile controls does accrete and induce a sort of ecoonomic sclerosis. If your imposts be 15% or if they be 4%, it likely makes scant difference in and of itself.
With that in mind, I do not think you can attribute domestic prosperity to the habit of consumer debt or cheap imports. The former may be most unsalutary if the running of chronic current account deficits (as we have done since 1982) may puts us in the cross-hairs of a sudden disequilibrium in international currency markets, but as of now it means the nation as a whole is living beyond its means to the tune of 4-5% per year, or about 3 years growth in real income. Please also recall that the ratio of imports to gross domestic product has been (I think) about .16 in recent decades and the benefit to real income of all foreign trade is but the inverse of the loss to be induced by a conversion to a hypothetical autarkic state, which might be 6-7% of contemporary GDP, or less than four years of economic growth. Please note that improvements of real income per capita of 2% per year (about the mean since 1929) will induce a trebling of this measure of prosperity every 55 years. I am not sure you could find a scholar of economic history that would attribute this to something other than refinements of the division of labor and to technological applications.
It might be illuminating if we contemplated the effects of pornography as analagous to the effects of unrestricted use of common property resouces. Robert Bork once compared pornography to industrial effluvia, but I am not sure if he undertook a full bore analysis of the sort a resource economist might.