Rude Awakenings
Chapter 5 (Part 1 of 4) of the book
The Discovery of First Principles, Volume 3
Edward J. Dodson
Secrecy, national demands,
military influence, have sapped the moral nerve of physics. It
will be a long time before ... any single physicist can speak to
all men with the calm authority of Einstein or Bohr. Their kind
of leadership has now passed to the biologists, who have so far
not been so essential to governments. It will be they, I think,
who are likely to throw up the great scientific spokesmen of the
next decades.[1] [C.P. Snow]
The struggle between democracy and totalitarianism revolves
about the concept of class and caste. Under democracy such
stratification of society should no longer be in effect, and
democracy must substitute some other form of control in its
place. When prosperity and education have proceeded far enough
in a democracy, the substitution can be made. And in the
long-established democracies there is beginning to be
substantial evidence that it will be made.[2] [Vannevar Bush]
|
From the moment of its inception, the United Nations had been working
under a cloud of suspicion in the eyes of many anti-communist Conservatives
in the United States. Alger Hiss, they were quick to remind their
fellow citizens, had helped to draft the UN Charter, which was to them
one of many signs that the UN had been organized to advance Soviet
interests. In the then-prevailing atmosphere, one should not be
surprised to find the role played by Hiss as the first
Secretary-General of the UN scrutinized before the U.S. House
Committee on Un-American Activities.
UN member nations had gone on to subsequently elect the Norwegian
socialist leader Trygve Lie to succeed Hiss. Another socialist, the
Belgian Paul-Henri Spaak, was elected President of the General
Assembly. Conservatives could also point to the fact that Lie had been
nominated by Andrei Gromyko, and that while Secretary-General Lie had
consistently supported Soviet positions. Against official U.S. wishes,
Lie also campaigned in 1950 to grant member status to the Communist
Chinese. When Lie retired in 1953, he was succeeded by Sweden's Dag
Hammarskjold, the only non-socialist[3] in the Swedish cabinet.
Hammarskjold had represented Sweden in the negotiations establishing
the Organization for European Economic Cooperation and was considered
by all those who voted for him as a person who believed more in
compromise than in standing for principle. Trained in the law and in
economics, Hammarskjold had studied (in the company of Gunnar Myrdal)
the works of Knut Wicksell and John Maynard Keynes and accepted much
of what these two economists provided as guides to a stable economic
future.
Despite what U.S. conservatives convinced themselves was true,
adherence to the doctrines of democratic socialism did not mean these
statesmen were ready to do Stalin's bidding. Trygve Lie played an
important role in organizing the UN response in Korea (in return for
which the Soviets exercised their veto against his re-election).
Hammarskjold brought his own brand of pragmatism and organizational
management skills to the position of Secretary General. Among his
closest advisers he chose two Americans -- political scientist Andrew
Cordier and diplomat Ralph Bunche (an African-American who had been
awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in negotiating the truce
between the Arabs and Israelis).
During these turbulent years, the social democracies were to learn
just how little respect Soviet and Communist Chinese leaders had for
the democratic process or for behavior consistent with the UN's
charter. The very concepts of voluntary association and pluralism were
anathema to the communist or state socialist mentality. Transnationals
were reminded by the Soviet Union's delegate, Andrei Vishinsky, that
the Stalinist regime absolutely rejected the idea that the laws of a
society ought to be consistent with objectively-derived moral
principles. "The rights of human beings cannot be considered
outside the prerogatives of governments, and the very understanding of
human rights is a governmental concept,"[4] he had written
for all to read and ponder.
Given such doctrinaire adherence to moral relativism by state
socialists (paralleled in a somewhat more restrained manner by
establishment leaders in the social democracies), transnationals
should have realized that the near-term promise of the United Nations
was extremely limited. At best, transnationals could look forward to
opportunities for networking more closely with one another and to a
gradual expansion of shared principles on the part of the more
independent-minded and reflective persons coming to the UN from around
the globe. Working against this development was the fact that
delegates to the UN were divided by ethnicity, religious orthodoxy,
race, socio-political philosophy, tradition and language. Their
respective societies were, in fact, moving at vastly different rates
of development along the historical continuum. Many transnationals
nonetheless convinced themselves these people from diverse societies
had been brought together so that reason and understanding might
prevail over ethnocentrism and ideology, and that a global
confederation might evolve sometime in the future. No less a Cold
Warrior than John Foster Dulles had personally blessed the UN:
Nothing that is practical or desirable would be attained
by destroying or undermining the United Nations or losing faith or
hope in it. It is of the utmost importance to preserve an
organization, almost any kind of organization, which has in its
membership all the great powers and representation from both the
Communist and the non-Communist bloc. The very fact that relations
between these blocs are tense, that there are many points of
conflict, and that war is possible makes it all the more important
to have a place where the tensions can be openly discussed, and
where the differences may be fought out with words rather than with
bombs.[5]
Dulles notwithstanding, Establishment policy analysts in the
U.S. came to view the UN as an impediment to effectively organizing
the social democracies into an anti-communist bloc. "In a
time when we were struggling to organize a world-wide defensive
coalition against the Communist threat," wrote Lincoln P.
Bloomfield in Foreign Affairs, "we had to meet and
negotiate with our allies in the presence of the enemy."[6]
The workings of the UN interfered with bilateral diplomacy, a process
with which many of the old guard were far more comfortable. Equally
important, the ability of the United States to act unilaterally was
also inhibited by concerns over image within the arena of world
opinion.
Soviet bloc opposition to U.S. positions was to be expected.
Virtually from the beginning, however, the U.S. claim to the moral
high ground was being challenged by many nationalist leaders who saw
U.S. policies as little more than opportunistic support for
imperialism, colonialism or despotic dictatorships. What U.S. leaders
found most difficult to accept was that despite their interventions on
behalf of anti-communist regimes, in the UN the Soviets were getting
consistent support not only from communists and socialists but from
others who feared Soviet power more than they trusted the continuity
of U.S. assistance. By 1954 the extent to which U.S. desires were
being undercut caused John Foster Dulles and Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. to
press for the reorganization and centralization of certain UN
agencies. Representatives of other nations had, writes Inis Claude,
Jr., "persist[ed] in irritating hyperconservative American
nationalists."[7] And, they would continue to do so in an
atmosphere of mutual distrust and frequent deceit.
Over the next decades even the most idealistic proponents of world
government were to be repeatedly disappointed by the performance of
the organization they fought so hard to establish. As the 1950s
unfolded, transnationals decided to work for changes to the UN Charter
designed to transfer power from governments to citizens. In a
statement prepared for presentation to the 1955 Peoples' Convention
assembled in Florence, Italy, Albert Einstein recommended "that
the United Nations should be strengthened by inserting the provision
that members of the Assembly no longer be responsible to their
governments, but rather that they be locally elected and responsible
to no one." As an acknowledgment that the sovereign
nation-state was not any time soon going to relinquish power, Einstein
added that although "the Security Council should be continued
as a representation of governments, its members should no longer enjoy
the right to veto."[8] Sadly, Einstein would not live long
enough to hear his words read on his behalf. His prestige and
reputation as a voice for reason was to be greatly missed over the
next decade.
Another advocate for citizen government, Stringfellow Barr,
challenged the transnational community to work together for
substantive change, arguing that, "if the men and women in
the world wait until national governments act, they will never get the
common government which the world clearly needs."[9] The
problem for Barr and others of like thinking, however, was that the
overwhelming majority of activists in the world desired, as ethnic or
ideological nationals, more not less sovereignty. Transnational
thinking was still a long way from becoming organized into even a
minority collective force. "The strength of the movement in
the United States is probably not so great as is assumed or asserted,"
Inis Claude, Jr. reported in 1955, "either by its opponents,
many of whom are neurotic conservatives given to depicting themselves
as a heroic remnant defending the last redoubts of Americanism against
a multifarious horde of subversives, or by its champions, who tend to
share with the bulk of the prophetic profession an aversion to the
idea that they are doomed to crying in the wilderness."[10]
Neurosis there may have been, particularly at the conservative
fringe; however, within the Remnant there also existed a small
number of principled individualists who understood history and who
feared the State as the most potent enemy of liberty. True, they were
few and largely without influence; but the power of their ideas
continued to reach an occasional person in or close to power. Raymond
Moley, the political scientist who had brought Rexford Tugwell and
others into Franklin Roosevelt's brain trust (and subsequently
split with Roosevelt over what he viewed as unwarranted
interventionism and erosions of liberty being championed by New Deal
Democrats), was one. Another was Dwight Eisenhower's brother Milton,
who was appointed by Harry Truman to the U.S. contingent within UNESCO
(the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization).
Milton Eisenhower was one of the few Establishment
spokespersons who seemed to understand just how far humanity still had
to travel along the path toward a common set of values and moral
principles. Reflecting on his experience at UNESCO, he later pondered
the task transnationals had set for themselves:
Was it possible, then, to unite the world through ideas
alone -- ideas divorced entirely from coercion? Could mental
persuasion be counted upon, by itself, to extend and maintain social
order?[11]
...Since single nations, with common histories, ideas, cultures,
institutions, and homogeneity of population often could not maintain
internal peace, what could we expect in the larger world? Peace,
wherever it existed ... was patently to a considerable degree the
product of power. Man was (and is) an ambivalent being; he was both
good and bad. Power must normally repress the evil in man. The good
would prevail and we could live in peace only so long as events were
compatible with group desires. Organized man, encountering forces
which conflicted with his beliefs and major wishes, would again
resort to the use of power. So any social system which ignored
either the good or the evil in man was by that fact doomed to
failure.[12]
History and his own experiences had taught Milton Eisenhower that
human societies, by their very nature, require rules and effective
means for their enforcement. Our forefathers struggled and we continue
to struggle to identify the principles upon which such laws must be
fashioned so that the just society can emerge. We have seen that there
has never been a time in our history when broad clarity of thought
prevailed. At best, individuals such as Thomas Paine and Henry George
by some miracle of insight came to understand what principles of
socio-political organization would best contribute to the prosperity
and happiness of the people everywhere. Always there has been only a
small number of people able to see beyond conventional wisdoms and the
powerful influence of inherited traditions and societal institutions.
Now, in the 1950s, hopes for bringing together the diverse peoples of
the world were tied to the UN and its potential for gradual evolution
into an enterprise where principles, accepted after full and open
debate, became the basis for decision-making and action.
Milton Eisenhower was cautiously optimistic, believing he recognized
a subtle but very important change in attitudes developing -- at least
within the community of transnationals, who declared their willingness
to consider subordination of national sovereignty to the interests of
all. Intellectuals generally were grappling with the difficult
philosophical issues raised by the postwar confrontation between the
United States and the Soviet Union, between social democracy and state
socialism, between modernization and morality. One such effort was
made by philosopher William Esslinger, whose book Politics and
Science was described by Albert Einstein as "especially
suited as a basis for the discussion of the vital questions of the
relation between theory and practice in politics, which, as far as I
know, has been strangely neglected."[13]
William Esslinger believed in the scientific method and in the
practical application of scientific thinking to socio-political
problems. What stood in the way of understanding and of the changes
required to ensure survival was "group conservatism"
and "the natural hostility of the group to new ideas."[14]
He, as did Einstein, believed world government was both necessary and
possible. In response to skeptics, such as Reinhold Niebuhr, Esslinger
stressed that coercion in order to rid humanity of the threat of
future wars was a justifiable first step to forging an international
morality. To be overcome was the long ascendancy of irrationalist
thought that "deprecated reason in favor of feeling"
and "placed will above reason."[15] Reason (and
scientific reasoning, in particular), he declared, showed clearly that
"the answer to the problem of peace is enforcement of world
law by a world authority (world government)."[16] Others were
not so sure. Ayn Rand, an emigre from Soviet Russia was just then
telling the world that the answer to the problem of peace was
individualism and its product, global capitalism. Her ideal world came
from within her mind and her conscience, as dictated by her own powers
of reasoning. She wrote with a deep intensity of the prospects of life
in a global society in which the individual acted guided by moral
conscience and unfettered by the State:
The essence of capitalism's foreign policy is free
trade -- i.e., the abolition of trade barriers, of protective
tariffs, of special privileges -- the opening of the world's trade
routes to free international exchange and competition among the
private citizens of all countries dealing directly with one
another.[17]
History revealed the extent to which entrenched leaders held onto
power and privilege by periodically raising the banners of ethnic
nationalism, tribalism or religious orthodoxy, exciting the masses
with demands for geo-political sovereignty and escape from external
control. To a very large extent, holding onto power was linked as well
to restricting the free movement of people and goods. Responding to
these conditions was a matter of principle broadly held by
transnationals, and particularly so within the Remnant. Theirs
were voices in the wilderness, competing for attention with those of
entrenched power and privilege.
From an ethical standpoint, one has a difficult time defending claims
to sovereignty by any group, tribal or otherwise. In many ways, this
difficulty is a practical difficulty as well. Developments in
transportation and communications systems, as well as the transfer of
technologies associated with industrial production were bringing the
diverse peoples of the world closer together and accelerating
interdependence. Scientists were beginning to warn, additionally, that
pollution respected neither national borders nor artificial boundaries
established over the open seas. Yet there existed no socio-political
structures for reconciling the differences between statist-dominated
societies (in which all rights were abrogated by the State and
dispensed as privileges, major and minor in nature) and
individualist-dominated societies (in which certain rights were
alienated by the State, ostensibly by means of democratic
decision-making). In each case, those who governed did so responsibly
only to a limited extent. Worse, accountability for unprincipled
behavior was often nonexistent. As Esslinger looked into the future,
he concluded that "[p]lanning for freedom and
decentralization [would be] a difficult task,"[18] in part
because even among those who opposed state-socialism and
totalitarianism there was an ignorance of universal principles of just
law against which regional cultural norms and entrenched law could be
tested. Despite these difficulties, the task of organizing for
permanent global peace and wise management of the earth had to be
undertaken. Humanity could not wait until the oppressive weight of
state-socialism resulted in collapse of those peculiarly corrupt
regimes. People throughout much of the rest of the world struggled to
survive even more despotic government and destructive civil wars. Even
so, the effort had to be made to find ways to achieve constructive
change within the constraints of the existing world system and the
diversity of socio-political arrangements and institutions.
Transnationals faced a terrifying truth. Although the intentions of
some individuals who seek and gain political office are sincerely
benevolent, in the aggregate no group of people on earth has been
governed in accord with principles that: (a) secure and protect
individual liberty; (b) prevent to a high degree the exercise of
criminal license; (c) foster an environment of equality of
opportunity; (d) work to eliminate privilege; and (e) effectively
regulate monopolistic economic licenses (i.e., those licenses issued
by the State that come to have exchange value in the market place).
When any individual or group of individuals makes a claim of
sovereignty, what is really being advanced is the doctrine of moral
relativism. Neither democratic processes and institutions nor the
anarchistic virtue of voluntary association provides a socio-political
remedy. Even if every member of a tribal society, a community or a
nation-state agrees to live by a particular set of rules, those rules
are just only to the extent they meet the test of
objectively-reasoned, moral principles (i.e., contribute to the above
societal objectives). Reason and our moral sense of right and wrong,
nurtured by a thorough understanding of history, are key to the broad
appreciation of what justice really means. Opposing this quest for
truth is the accumulated attachment to tradition, orthodoxy and ritual
that is the legacy of the past and the instrument for the exercise of
power even today.
"The disorderly thinking of our time on the relation of
politics and morals comes from the conflict between modern nationalism
on the one hand and the humane traditions on the other,"[19]
writes Esslinger. He might have added that cooperation has long been
recognized as among the most essential of our humane traditions; and
yet, we demonstrate only a limited and sporadic ability to act
cooperatively on matters of utmost importance. The pull of vested
interest and the seeking of privilege through monopoly licenses are
quite strong -- and have been throughout the human experience. And, as
we know all too well, so is the willingness of individuals to act in a
purely criminal manner.
ONLY ONE EARTH
Only One Earth[20] is the title of a book jointly written in
1972 by economist Barbara Ward and microbiologist Rene Dubos,
commissioned by the UN Conference on the Human Environment. Nearly
seventy of the world's most respected social and natural scientists
provided constructive criticisms to the authors' initial manuscript.
The catalyst for much of their work had come out of the global
reaction to Rachel Carson's ground breaking challenge to the
scientific community's contribution to the endless development of
poisonous chemical compounds released into the environment with
virtually no thought to the long-run consequences on the planet.
Carson's warning was profound:
Through all these new, imaginative, and creative
approaches to the problem of sharing our earth with other creatures
there runs a constant theme, the awareness that we are dealing with
life -- with living populations and all their pressures and
counter-pressures, their surges and recessions. Only by taking
account of such life forces and by cautiously seeking to guide them
into channels favorable to ourselves can we hope to achieve a
reasonable accommodation between the insect hordes and
ourselves.[21]
"Again and again in Rachel Carson's book," writes
Ward and Dubos, "the plea was for more knowledge, more
research, more exact information about performance and consequences."[22]
One could observe everywhere that human activity was endangering all
life on the planet, and there was scant insight into the resilience of
the earth as an ecosystem to sustain the onslaught or eventually
recover.
A heavy dose of reality gradually combined with an expansion of
transnational values to challenge the old ways of thinking. For many,
the imminent danger of annihilation by nuclear war converted fear into
activism in the cause for disarmament. For others, a growing awareness
that degradation of the land, pollution of the atmosphere and
destruction of the life-giving qualities of the seas were affecting
even the most isolated of societies also brought activists from all
around the globe together. Solutions to these problems, the most
enlightened political leaders begrudgingly began to acknowledge,
required cooperative effort on the part of many governments and the
prohibition of behavior found to threaten our ecosystems. What we have
learned over the past thirty years or so is that conversion of
recognition into enforced action is an extremely slow process --
resisted for all manner of reasons tied to real and imagined
self-interest.
Accompanying the understanding that the very survival of life depends
on establishing uniform limits to freedom have been parallel claims of
sovereignty by ethnic nationalists and other groups. Transnationals
have progressively responded to these challenges by a heightened
attention to declarations of human rights and by publication of
scientific studies challenging the status quo. Incrementally, and
accompanied by continuous violence perpetrated against activists,
transnational values have become established as a competitive standard
for evaluating the human rights orientation of governments. There have
been some successes. There is a very long distance yet to travel. The
essence of the struggle was captured in 1980 by Carl Sagan in his
marvelous televised series, Cosmos. In the final episode, Who
Speaks For Earth?, Sagan spoke with grave concern about the
future:
The human species is now undertaking a great venture
that if successful will be as important as the colonization of the
land or the descent from the trees. We are haltingly, tentatively
breaking the shackles of Earth -- metaphorically, in confronting and
taming the admonitions of those more primitive brains within us;
physically, in voyaging to the planets and listening for the
messages from the stars. These two enterprises are linked
indissolubly. Each, I believe, is a necessary condition for the
other. But our energies are directed far more toward war. Hypnotized
by mutual mistrust, almost never concerned for the species of the
planet, the nations prepare for death. And because what we are doing
is so horrifying, we tend not to think of it much. But what we do
not consider we are unlikely to put right.
Every thinking person fears nuclear war, and every technological
state plans for it. Everyone knows it is madness, and every nation
has an excuse. ...[23]
The global balance of terror, pioneered by the United States and
the Soviet Union, holds hostage the citizens of the Earth. Each side
draws limits on the permissible behavior of the other. ...The global
balance of terror is a very delicate balance. It depends on things
not going wrong, on mistakes not being made, on the reptilian
passions not being seriously aroused.[24]
How would we explain the global arms race to a dispassionate
extraterrestrial observer? ...Would we argue that ten thousand
targeted nuclear warheads are likely to enhance the prospects for
our survival? What account would we give of our stewardship of the
planet Earth? We have heard the rationales offered by the nuclear
superpowers. We know who speaks for the nations. But who speaks for
the human species? Who speaks for Earth?[25]
Who, Indeed ... Shall Carry The Torch?
Back in the early 1950s, the fundamental problem faced by
transnationals and internationalists alike was to find the means by
which measures could be routinely and effectively imposed to bring
recalcitrant governments into conformance with rules and regulations
adopted by a multi-governmental parliament. Robert M. Hutchins, who
longed ultimately to see the emergence of a world community -- and had
been extremely supportive of Mortimer Adler's "Committee to Frame
a World Constitution" -- was concerned enough to warn other
advocates to be careful what they wished for:
One world which brings in closer contact the sparks of
greed and ambition is sure to be in constant explosion. One world
under one tyrant, or one association of tyrants, would be worse than
many. In many worlds there is at least the chance of escape from one
to the other.[26]
Hutchins may have been thinking of the role played by the North
American frontier as a safety valve for the dissident and oppressed
populations of Old World societies -- and their descendants who
suffered under the factory system that arose as the United States
shifted from agrarian to industrial landlordism. He certainly
recognized that escape from oppression was becoming less and less
possible for those living under the Soviet and Chinese Communist
regimes . Nor was there much chance of finding refuge from the
destruction in the event of nuclear war. Radioactive fallout would
threaten the entire planet in the same way as other forms of
pollution, with the added quality of immediacy. Perversely, in fear
there also rested the hope for agreement and -- if not cooperation --
at least an agreement to disagree without full-scale nuclear warfare.
We can look back in awe that we have somehow managed to avoid
destroying ourselves. Not that we are out of the woods. Yet, there is
reason for cautious optimism. To be sure, we must guard against
complacency in a world still troubled by socio-political upheaval,
economic deprivation, continued militarism and the willingness of true
believers to sacrifice themselves for what they accept as a
righteous cause. Now is a time for transnationals to aggressively
champion the common interest. Bringing to light the meaning of our
common interest is, I trust the reader grasps, what this book has
undertaken to explore and explain.
What transnationals discovered during the 1950s was that the peoples
of the world were by and large wholly unprepared for discussions over
the voluntary subordination of ethnic or national sovereignty to
anything like an international rule of law. Hutchins, Esslinger, Adler
and others nonetheless pressed for the opening of dialogue on how to
incrementally achieve world government. They accepted the fact that
the UN, set up as "an association of independent, sovereign
states,"[27] was a necessary if dangerous first step in a
long process, but a first step only. Considerable time was going to be
required before the UN -- an international association composed of
sovereign-claiming nation-states -- created a system of law the effect
of which was to protect human rights against privilege. Advocates of
world government understood that moral relativism and vested interest
dominated the very fiber of virtually all socio-political arrangements
and institutions.
To Hutchins, one of the more thoughtful voices in the wilderness, the
just society was one in which individual liberty was maximized and
where government intervened wherever criminal or economic license
threatened liberty or equality of opportunity:
[The individual] must be free from want as long as he is
willing to work. [The individual] must be free from the fear of
tyranny, oppression, and exploitation. [The individual's] claims to
life, liberty, and the dignity of the human person are inalienable.
...[T]he necessities of life must be the common property of the
human race, and ... the management of the necessities of life by
individual owners is a trusteeship which such owners hold subject
always to the common good.[28]
By virtue of the above criteria, Hutchins argued that "a
world government must be a democracy, because only democracy gives
every man his due."[29] And yet, there was no
democracy -- and the Democracy (meaning the United States) had
not proved to be an exception -- in which anything close to all
persons were guaranteed equal protections and opportunities under law
or equal access to nature (from which all material necessities of life
are derived).
In some instances within the social democracies the visible signs of
privilege were becoming less pronounced. Even those at the bottom of
the socio-economic scale were gaining some access to the basic goods
of a decent human existence. Their share of a growing storehouse of
societal wealth was increasing in absolute terms, even if
proportionately those at the top controlled an ever increasing share
of that wealth. Heavy taxation of large incomes and of assets passed
on by inheritance was seriously discussed and tentatively implemented
here and there. In the United States, where for an apparent majority
of citizens economic circumstances were steadily improving,
transnationals struggled to influence public thinking and opinion.
Those within the Remnant who championed the perspectives and
proposals of Henry George had a particularly difficult time getting
their message across. Only a small number of people bothered to study
economics, and those who did were uninterested in non-mainstream
analyses of how economies and societies were organized. For most
citizens, economic affairs seemed to have become far too complex for
all but the highly trained to grasp. Governments and university
research groups gathered and published mountains of data for analysis
economists, who dutifully summarized this information in endless
graphs and charts. The media reported on the daily fluctuations in the
stock market, on the interest rates paid to purchasers of government
securities, on changes in reported (i.e., "official")
unemployment, changes to the consumer price index, and to Gross
National and Gross Domestic Product. Most citizens were too busy
trying to make a living and raise families to spend time learning
economics (or, political economy as offered by the Henry George School
of Social Science). They quite naturally were compelled to focus their
energy on learning necessary job skills. Only as the number and
quality of employment opportunities increased in the financial
services sector did the study of mainstream economics become come to
be accepted as an integral part of the basic technical training for
individuals preparing themselves to become decision-makers in business
and government. As economic professors assumed a greater role in
training the new managerial generation, their theoretical focus
narrowed even more. Questions of just wealth distribution were
relegated to an ideological fringe.
Robert M. Hutchins faced a similar problem concerning the studies
supported by the Fund for the Republic. The citizenry of the United
States was too self-absorbed to take much notice. The 1950s were fast
becoming a decade of relative complacency by those relatively
unaffected by lingering societal inequities. Although the nation put
its faith in scientists and other experts to provide guidance to
public officials, Hutchins continued to worry that the moral and
ethical lessons of the past were not being taught or learned. He had
done his best to protect the classical liberal curriculum at the
University of Chicago, but in the end left dismayed at the
intransigence and narrow thinking of the faculty. His response to this
rapidly growing problem was to propose the creation of a very
different sort of institute, one that would bring together our most
thoughtful intellectuals to participate in "seminars,
conferences, discussions, and debates"[30] on common
problems. The written and recorded transcripts of their deliberations
could then be distributed broadly for maximum impact on the public
dialogue. In 1959, at the recommendation of Hutchins, the Fund for the
Republic purchased a forty-two acre estate in the hills above Santa
Barbara in California; and, there, Hutchins established the Center for
the Study of Democratic Institutions. Located far away from any
community of intellectuals and organized in a fashion alien to the
inclination of scholars to work in isolation, the Center never really
coalesced into a cooperative intellectual enterprise (although its
programs continued for a decade after of death of Hutchins in 1977).
William F. Buckley, Jr., not surprisingly, once referred to the Center
as "Mr. Hutchins' tax-exempt zoo."[31] Mortimer
Adler later wrote that one of the most important things he learned
from the early efforts by Hutchins to create such an academy was "how
undisciplined are even the very best minds in the world when they turn
from the solitary tasks of thinking and writing to the collaborative
task of discussion."[32] Nonetheless, the Center represents
an experiment that deserves thorough examination for what went right
as well as what did not.
Adler had already determined to take a different path in the
encouragement of intellectual activism. In 1952, he established the
Institute for Philosophical Research in San Francisco. With a Ford
Foundation grant, Adler began working on what would become a
two-volume study on The Idea of Freedom, the first volume of
which was published in 1958. He somehow also found time to work with
Milton Mayer (1906-1986) on The Revolution in Education, and
with Louis Kelso on The Capitalist Manifesto, both also
published in 1958. The Institute sponsored a series of seminars on the
idea of freedom over a period of two years, until funding from the
Ford Foundation disappeared after the departure of Paul Hoffman. From
1956 on, the Institute acquired substantive financial support from The
Old Dominion Foundation (headed by Paul Mellon). Despite Adler's
always heavy commitments, whenever Hutchins called, Adler was ready to
work with him on whatever project Hutchins had in mind. Their
association was cemented by the decision in 1961 of the directors of
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc. to begin annual publication of a new
survey of The Great Ideas, with Hutchins and Adler as
editors-in-chief. The importance and relevance they attached to the
project was clearly stated in the first few introductory pages:
We often feel bewildered by contemporary happenings
because, on the surface, they appear to be such chaotic mixtures of
chance, human caprice, and grim necessity. But a deeper look at them
changes the picture and makes it more intelligible. The political
and social problems of the day become less puzzling when they are
seen in the larger perspectives provided by the accumulated
experience and wisdom of the race. That accumulated experience and
wisdom is available to us in the great books, but we must also make
the effort to apply it to our current concerns. We must ask Plato,
Aristotle, Aquinas, Hobbes, Montesquieu, Locke, and Mill for their
editorial comments on the front page stories of the year.[33]
In essence, they were urging us to accept The Great Ideas as
living ideas applicable to the human experience across time and space.
To the extent these thoughtful persons from the past had been able to
step outside their own circumstances and examine the human condition
objectively, they were instrumental in advancing the quest for first
principles. As I have endeavored to show in this rather long study,
even the best among us could not find in themselves the intellectual
or moral perspective to fully identify and articulate the principles
essential to the just society. Hutchins and Adler were no exceptions,
although each contributed to an atmosphere of open investigation that
has survived the onslaught of writing and reporting in defense of
conventional wisdom and the status quo.
Adler was, in his own way, not of the Establishment, which is
probably one of the reasons he and Hutchins collaborated on so many
projects over the years of their association and friendship. Hutchins
also enjoyed an intimate association with the Remnant. In the
first year of his tenure as president of the University of Chicago, he
had invited Francis Neilson, one of only a handful of Georgists to
earn respect within the transnational intellectual community, to
deliver a series of thirty lectures. Their contacts and discussions on
what they mutually believed was a disintegrating state of higher
education continued for a number of years thereafter. Both men viewed
the acceptance of John Dewey's educational philosophy by so many
others as a serious problem. In fact, following the publication of the
book by Hutchins, The Higher Learning in America, Neilson took
up the task of responding to the counter-attacks coming from John
Dewey and others. Neilson found that most critics had either not read
Hutchins or deliberately distorted what he had written. In 1951,
Jerome Nathanson[34] resurrected the Dewey-Hutchins controversy, which
he summarized as follows:
Education is, after all, inseparable from our theories
of human nature. To those who assume that human nature is fixed and
unchanging, it follows that society has to be organized along
certain lines in order to meet the actualities of what human beings
are. It follows, further, that the function of a basic education is
so to raise children and adolescents that they will adequately find
their individual places in society. In addition, if human nature is
what it is, once and for all, then the methods by which individuals
learn anything can be carefully observed and, once they are clearly
seen, they can be standardized as educational procedure. Pedagogues
will be aware, of course, that learning is relative to the things to
be learned. And the things to be learned will be regarded as those
which, out of the accumulated experience of the human race, have
proved essential to survival and beneficial to carrying on the work
of the world. The key to education for such people, accordingly, is
"training" and "disciplining" the mind and
person, so that ... children ... may be fashioned into the civilized
adults that contemporary society demands.
Unfortunately, the "culture," which designates what
anthropologists mean by the total organizational complex of a
society, is subdivided in the Culture of a cultured gentlemen on the
one hand and the ways of making a living on the other. The former,
Culture, is the essence of the aristocratic tradition, embracing the
humanities and the arts. Logic and mathematics, Greek and Latin,
rhetoric and theology and metaphysics -- these are the studies
through which the intractable child is taught by repetition and
imitation, if not by rote, and the educational process becomes, in
its way, as much a ritual as any ecclesiastical organization could
wish. Unfortunately, again, the native abilities of many children
are so "deficient" that they cannot participate in this
learning process. By definition, therefore, they cannot genuinely
share in the Culture that distinguishes Education. Nevertheless,
they, too, have lives to be lived. What is to happen to them? The
only education for which they are fitted is not properly education
at all. This is, it is not a matter of training their minds for the
"higher things" of life, but training their hands to do
the physical work that has to be done. ...
This has been the dominant tradition in Western education, however
it has been over larded and disguised. And its revival by Robert M.
Hutchins and other leaders of "education for freedom" is
one of the superb ironies of a democratic society. One way or
another, however, despite the aims of democracy, the fixed view of
human nature has fathered educational methods that perpetuate the
aristocratic tradition.
What follows educationally from Dewey's opposing view that human
nature is not fixed, but is itself one of the changing, growing
aspects of experience? In broad terms ... it means that no limits
can be set to the possibilities possessed by human beings. At the
same time, if democracy as a way of life means anything at all, it
means a profound faith in these very possibilities. The key problem
of democratic education, accordingly, is to devise methods that will
stimulate the development of individual possibilities, whatever they
are, and regardless of traditionally accepted views of "learning."[35]
As is often the case when passion for one's position is involved,
proponents on either side of an issue take any significant criticism
as rejection. Sober reflection on one's own assertions is difficult,
at least until the heat of the moment passes. Dewey and his disciples,
Hutchins and his, debated past one another and ignored in each other's
position what thoughtful contemplation reveals as important truths.
Hutchins had not argued, as Deweyites claimed of him, that there was
nothing left to discover in the realm of socio-political philosophy or
that only those able to learn passively and by rote memorization
deserved to be considered for higher education. What he had argued is
that not all fields of learning were of equal importance, and that
there was an appropriate ordering that begins with investigations into
moral principles and values. Learning how to make a living, though
important, was secondary to learning how to be a good citizen and
ethical human being. In essence, Deweyites reacted to the threat posed
by Hutchins to their orthodoxy by attacking the old orthodoxy rather
than what Hutchins actually wrote and said. Dewey rightly feared the
reactionary position of "overemphasizing convention and
tradition"[36] in the formation of ideas about what was and
was not ethical and consistent with moral principle, but this was very
different from the declarations by Hutchins calling for education that
exposed students to the long intellectual and philosophical journey
traveled by the best minds humanity had produced. Dewey, on the other
hand, believed that education had to counter the long-standing crisis
in liberalism, the result of which was to put the Democracy at
risk:
Soon after liberal tenets were formulated as eternal
truths, it became an instrument of vested interests in opposition to
further social change... The direct impact of liberty always has to
do with some class or group that is suffering in a special way from
some form of constraint exercised by the distribution of powers that
exists in contemporary society. ...
...We are always dependent upon the experience that has accumulated
in the past and yet there are always new forces coming in, new needs
arising, that demand, if the new forces are to operate and the new
needs to be satisfied, a reconstruction of the patterns of old
experience.[37]
Dewey as historian reminds us that those who gain power and establish
privilege for themselves are remarkably adept at wrapping their
actions in a shroud of tradition by embracing the accepted wisdom
of earlier generations when such wisdom corresponds to their own
interests. On the other hand, as I have attempted to document, each
generation has had a few courageous individuals willing to discard
conventional wisdoms in search of truth. The virtues and the
weaknesses of any socio-political arrangements could only be fully
understood by acquiring an appreciation for the philosophical and
practical justifications advanced throughout history to defend or
challenge the status quo. Discussing Plato and Aristotle, Rousseau and
Paine, are deemed essential by Hutchins to the societal responsibility
of nurturing the young. Not that all ideas deserve equality of
support, which is why the quest for first principles remains so
important. The constant examination of our practices against a higher
moral sense ethic is an essential cornerstone of the nurturing process
for our young -- and a reinforcement process for us as adults.
Mortimer Adler was fast becoming one of the great practical
philosophers in the tradition of Locke, Smith, Paine and Henry George
-- although for some inexplicable reason Adler did not devote the same
energy as his intellectual predecessors to the task of examining the
moral and economic consequences of allowing rent to become
privately appropriated. Adler did add his own voice to that of Francis
Neilson in defending Hutchins from Deweyite attacks. In the process
and over the expanse of a half century, Adler quietly and calmly built
his case. He eventually harmonized the concerns of both Dewey and
Hutchins into a dramatic proposal for the reform of education that
would bring to all persons the educational experience necessary "for
full citizenship and a full human life."[38] Adler already
understood the relationship between full citizenship and liberty;
the one was dependent upon the other. To his credit, Dewey also
recognized that there is a distinction between freedom and liberty,
writing that "[u]nless freedom of individual action has
intelligence and informed conviction back of it, its manifestation is
almost sure to result in confusion and disorder."[39] Adler
responds with greater specificity, observing that unless freedom of
action is constrained by laws based on just principles the result is
criminal or economic license. The role of government as agent of the
citizenry is, in the instance of criminal license, prevention and/or
remedy by punishment; in the instance of economic license, the role of
government in some instances might appropriately be prevention, or
regulation or merely collection (for distribution to citizens) of rent.
Remarkably, Adler never made this last distinction with regard to the
control over locations or natural resource-laden lands, or the value
of monopolistic licenses. As close as he would come occurred (as I
have earlier elaborated) in his collaboration with Louis Kelso in
their attempt to lift capitalism out of its traditional
association with agrarian and industrial landlordism.
Neither Adler nor Hutchins can be legitimately thought of as integral
members of the Remnant, although they were certainly renegade
members of the intellectual establishment. Adler, for example,
remained for a time on the Board of Editors of the American
Journal of Economics and Sociology, whose advisory board included
both John Dewey and Francis Neilson. Dewey also had long held the
position of honorary president of the Henry George School of Social
Science. Internationally, the Georgist community (by this time the
number of committed activists had fallen to such an extent one is
hard-pressed to use the term movement) was in the process of
regrouping in the aftermath of the Second World War. In a community of
activists dominated by speakers of the English language, London had
since the time of Henry George himself, been a primary center of
agitation for socio-political reform consistent with his proposals.
Four years after the founding of the Henry George School of Social
Science in New York, Lancaster Green (an investment manager, member of
the School's volunteer faculty and, for the next six decades, a
trustee of the school), spoke before the fifth international
conference of Georgists, held in September of 1936 in London. He urged
those in attendance to think "of the world as the campus of
the ... School."[40] At the time, with global depression
ripping at the heart of the structure of laissez-faire
interventionism, he presented a hopeful story of the effort to
increase familiarity with the contributions made by Henry George to
the discovery of first principles:
At first, [Oscar] Geiger was the only teacher. His
classroom was a small room adjoining his living apartment. The first
year the School enrolled 84 students in eleven classes in that one
room. The second year showed an increase of 1,322 students in 65
classes in 23 cities. In the third year, up to 1st May last, there
were 3,247 students in 163 classes in 73 cities, and now the
extension work of the School, carried on almost entirely by
enthusiastic volunteers, is expected to take 10,000 students through
the study of Progress and Poverty in the next year.[41]
This was an almost unbelievable beginning. The establishment of an
affiliate Henry George School in London soon followed; and, it too,
continued to experience success, gathering momentum and graduates
until interrupted by the Second World War. After the war, regaining
lost ground proved very difficult for the schools. Adults proved
less and less interested in studying political economy from a book
written eighty years earlier. In 1952, at the 8th International
Conference (this time held in Odense, Denmark), Vic H. Blundell, one
of the leading London Georgists, announced the publication by Land &
Liberty Press of an abridged and rearranged edition of Progress &
Poverty that the London Georgists believed would "make
the reading assignment much smaller without the loss of essential
reading matter, and much which has a specific reference to America
and to certain domestic matters of George's day, will be deleted."[42]
At the same conference, Robert Clancy of the New York School
reported that Henry George Schools were now active in other
countries as well, including New Zealand, Italy and India.
Australians had formed their own "School of Social Science"
operating independently of the New York school. By 1955, schools
were also operating in Spain and Formosa. Although these reports
were heartening, in reality the intellectual reach of the Georgist
community was not expanding. Thoughtful and sincere individuals
persevered but were becoming ever more isolated and distanced from
the transnational intellectual community as well as mainstream
education in economics. By 1959, Robert Clancy had to report that
only thirteen of twenty branches of the School remained solidly
established. Some 85,000 students had taken courses or attended
programs at the Schools in the United States and Canada since the
beginning. Yet, even within the Remnant, only a handful of
Georgists could be described as activists. An even smaller group
maintained contact with the individualists determined to forge from
the Remnant a real libertarian movement. The sad truth was
that few among the 85,000 students of the schools came forward with
their time, energy or financial resources to take up the Georgist
cause.
Frank Chodorov, himself becoming more and more isolated from his
connections to the Georgist community, slowly drifted from the
Georgist policy agenda, and by 1952 was devoting most of his energy
to his quest to bring the message of individualism to the generation
of students then emerging from the nation's colleges. Faced with
these external challenges to the work of the Henry George School, in
1955 the industrialist John C. Lincoln hired Samuel Burkhard, a
retired professor of education and sociology, to perform a study of
the Henry George School and its programs. One of Lincoln's
objectives was to see that the School's courses would be accepted
for college credit. Of the quality of teaching and interest in the
School's program, professor Burkhard wrote:
Having spent many years in college education where
teachers work for salaries, I was amazed to see what excellent
teachers can be secured without pay to do the work of the school.
While it is true that the teachers in the Henry George School are
not all equally competent as teachers, one can truthfully say that
a good level of work is maintained in the classes in economics.
One of the things to which we may look to account for the high
quality of teaching is to be found in the fact that the teachers
come to their work with a sense of having a mission to carry out.
Convinced that there are conditions in human affairs that need to
be corrected, they give time and energy to the education of others
in order that desired improvements may come.
Further, the teachers have a deep interest in human beings and
delight to see them grow mentally. Interest of this sort is
essential to the making of good teachers.[43]
Interestingly, professor Burkhard also expressed the view that
payment of salaries to faculty would not result in any measurable
upgrading of professionalism or teaching effectiveness. Rather, he
encouraged the School to work with colleges and universities by way
of conferences on Henry George to introduce George's ideas into
existing courses on economics. Unfortunately, the convergence of
societal trends operated to marginalize the educational efforts of
the School and the interest among academics in the interdisciplinary
-- and activist -- approach to the study of human behavior and
civilization to which Henry George had dedicated himself. Although
the School would continue to attract many students, the number of
stalwart Georgists contributing time and financial reserves to the
activist cause was on a path of continuous decline. Perhaps more
importantly, when prominent Georgists such as John Dewey, John C.
Lincoln or Francis Neilson died, there was no one of a similar
stature standing in the wings ready to carry the torch within the
higher echelons of business, government or academe. Always a
difficult endeavor, the commitment of one's life to cooperative
individualism and the ideas of Henry George would yield few tangible
rewards to those who continued the effort during the 1950s and
after. Only in an atmosphere of widespread disenchantment with the
continued failings of liberalism has the societal framework
of cooperative individualism worked its way back into the public
dialogue, particularly within the community of activist
transnationals concerned with global justice and protection of the
environment.
If one accepts the importance of using The Great Ideas to
nurture the intellectual development of the young, then Robert
Hutchins must be held in high esteem for his tireless efforts to
prevent the total displacement of liberal studies with vocational
training. So long as the young were still being introduced to the
intellectual giants of antiquity, the Enlightenment, the Age of
Revolution and the Progressive era, there was hope. Long years of
neglect had to be overcome, to be sure. As Francis Neilson observed
in a review of Arnold Toynbee's A Study of History: "The
masses demand short-cuts to knowledge and nonstop expressways to
wisdom. It is high time they were reminded by a great scholar that
we owe the best of our learning to sages of the past."[44]
If in earlier generations the young were denied the opportunity to
enjoy the freedom of being children, too many children in the United
States of the 1950s were spending too little time (their lives less
and less burdened by physical labor) in the pursuit of knowledge.
What, Neilson and Hutchins wondered, would become of Western
civilization when these young people began to assume positions of
leadership and responsibility in business, education, government and
labor? We have come to understand what the consequences would be.
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