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PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE We believe that the social movements of the 1960s reflected a crisis in American society, which had been some time in the making. The events of that decade may have propelled the United States more rapidly in certain directions than might otherwise have been the case. In the long run, though, the underlying forces would probably have produced many of the same results. On the basis of further research and thought, however, we have revised our views as to the nature of the these forces, and even as to the pattern of social change. The remainder of this essay summarizes the conclusion we would write to "Roots of Radicalism" today. The essential differences between the traditional and the modem psyche stem from the development of a powerful superego or conscience. To primitive man, power lies outside the self, although the boundaries of self and nonself are not clear. One seeks power by following rules set by the gods, through the charismatic leader or tightly knit community structures. The problem is that, unless the gods continually speak, their message dims. Social organization of any kind, therefore, requires rigid and continuous community controls. Communities adapt to their environment. They rarely attempt to master it beyond that which is necessary for survival. The stranger and the different are suspect, and forbidden impulses are projected upon them. The super-ego of primitive man is largely located outside himself While he longs to identify with shamans or gods, he has little sense of a consistent self as an actor who can exercise power over others to serve internal needs (Gutmann, 1973). Modem Western man has been different. While psychoanalysis tends to emphasize the punitive qualities of the superego, it is not without positive aspects (Schafer, 1960). By providing an inner mechanism of control, the superego permits the individual to develop a stronger sense of self. Primitive man believes that the gods help the one who does their bidding. Modem men and women attempt to overcome obstacles by living up to their inner ideals. The source of power is within, not without. Furthermore, the sublimated energy derived from modem man's internal control of both erotic and aggressive drives fosters the development of the ego. This enables him to examine and to manipulate nature, to adapt to new circumstances, and to bring creative energies to bear upon them. It also enables him to overcome fear of the unknown, and of other groups, as he develops rational models for understanding nature. In these ways the development of superego and ego strength permit the emergence of the principled nonauthoritarian, relatively democratic, flexible man or woman. Drawing upon Max Weber (Bendix, 1973) and others, we can trace this development to Christian doctrines and, more particularly, to the Reformation. Weber demonstrates that the unintended consequences of Christian and more specifically Calvinist doctrines, included the emergence of the modem world in the form of "liberal capitalism," that is, a capitalist economic system associated with individualism and gradual, if imperfect, democratization. Weber emphasizes the capitalist side of the equation, but the contribution of this cultural complex to democratization is well-documented (Woodhouse, 1951). Obviously, none of the distinctions we have drawn is absolute. Some internalization occurs in all societies, even the most primitive. It is also clear that every great historical civilization has been accompanied by a heightening of superego development, usually based on the emergence of a new, more universalistic religious system (Coulbom, 1959). It is possible, moreover, that in some of these civilizations, superego development was comparable to that of the West. As Weber argues, however, cultural developments in the West were unusual from the outset. First, the emergence of a prophetic religion gave a peculiar intensity to the superego. Second, the emphasis was on an individual rather than a communal relationship with God. Third, religious-cultural imperatives stressed general, universal, moral rules. Fourth, God was conceived as standing apart from nature, and his workings could be comprehended through reason. Finally, great emphasis was placed upon repressing the passions in the service of worldly asceticism, that is, fulfilling one's obligations through activity in this world. Liberal capitalism, whatever its limitations, historically has encouraged rationality, emotional complexity, growth, and the capacity for a democratic polity. To be sure, some of these themes were present in other civilizations. Historically and comparatively though, this was a unique combination. It is undoubtedly true that Confucianism, with its emphasis on the control of the passions, produced a similar end result in China and Japan via a shame culture (De Vos, 1973). Indeed the Chinese produced perhaps the greatest and certainly the most long-lasting premodern state. However, Confucian doctrine did not encourage a breakthrough to a modem scientific worldview, and surrounded the individual with a network of kin and other social obligations inhibiting the growth of that individualism that played so important a role in the break with tradition in Europe. It also encouraged or, at least, did not discourage, magical thinking among the general populace. Thus, Confucian regimes were highly conservative. While the Japanese, for example, could later use the energy derived from the repression of sexual and aggressive drives in the service of science and industry, Confucian doctrine was such that neither the Japanese or Chinese could bring the modem world into existence. In the twentieth century then, given an appropriate response by elites in Japan (and later Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, Korea, and finally mainland China), these areas could adapt to the requirements of an industrial society fairly easily, as compared to other Asian, African, or even Latin American nations. America can be viewed as a paradigmatic case of the relationship between Calvinism, capitalism, and democracy, for it has epitomized the Western version of modernity. Perceived as an "empty land" by the English Protestants who initially shaped its culture, it came quite early in its history to represent the ideal type of liberal capitalism for observers as diverse as Tocqueville, Hegel, and Marx (Lipset, 1977, 1990). To be sure, there were myriad other influences, including the frontier and mass immigration. Nevertheless, American liberalism, with its highly individualistic and relatively egalitarian and "pragmatic" social ideology and reality, lacked the earlier communal European traditions with which European liberals had to struggle. American liberal individualism emphasized freedom, but within a framework that set stringent limits upon its expression. Individuals were free to act but were held responsible for their actions. However, their behavior was mediated by an emphasis upon the restraint of impulse, including sexual impulse, and their energies were concentrated on hard work and the accumulation of material wealth. For example, contrary to popular folklore, the Puritans were not anti-sex. Rather they emphasized fidelity and measure in marriage and constancy of emotion in sexual as well as other aspects of behavior (Leites, 1986). Originally, then, the justification for restraint, the acceptance of discipline and hierarchy, and the accumulation of wealth all rested on religious foundations. These foundations, however, assumed a sense of community that also set boundaries for individualism. Those who were fortunate enough to make wealth had a duty to exhibit "mercy, gentleness, [and] temperance." As late as the end of the nineteenth century, this creed, in somewhat different form, played an important role in shaping the American ethos. And, of course, it evolved in tandem with patterns of child rearing (Leites, 1986; Demos, 1986). Bell (1976) has pointed out that the religious values that underlay American culture began to erode during the late nineteenth century, partly as the result of rationalizing tendencies inherent in liberal capitalism itself. As these values decayed, religious justifications for the goals and limitations imposed by the culture were replaced by a belief in material progress as an end in itself. Hard work and self-restraint in a liberal capitalist system would lead to secular progress and ever better tomorrows for all. Because they were contributing to that end, businessmen could still count on the respect of ordinary citizens to persuade them that their work constituted a genuine achievement. Of course many businessmen retained their religious beliefs. Others continued to follow patterns of behavior that were derived from a Calvinist perspective even though they no longer considered themselves to be particularly religious. By the 1940s, however, as Leo Lowenthal (1944) discovered, the "idols of production" had been partially replaced by the "idols of consumption"; and by the late 1950s segments of an affluent middle class were adding the consumption of experience ("self-realization") to the consumption of material goods as a desired end. Lacking a religious base, the requirements of work and self-discipline had been further undermined by affluence. The Beats of the 1950s were probably an expression of this, but there were many others, as the popularity of the writings of Erich Fromm and Abraham Maslow attest. The shift in cultural values was accompanied and encouraged by the growth of a stratum of new strategic elites, themselves products of economic and social as well as ideological changes. Many of these people were highly educated professionals working either in the public sector, or in the private sector areas associated with the production and transmission of knowledge. These elites include psychiatrists, social workers, college professors, journalists, and (more recently) producers, writers, and directors of motion picture and television entertainment. These new "Metro Americans," as Erich Goldman (1969) called them, tended to be rather skeptical of traditional values, of the economics of liberal capitalism, and of American foreign policy. By the mid 1960s traditional bourgeois liberalism had been replaced in large segments of the professional middle class by new strands of liberalism, including what Robert Bellah has called "expressive individualism" (Bellah et al., 1985, 1991). As a cultural system, expressive individualism is characterized by a shift in the meaning of the individual from a "being" to a "self"; a shift from restraint of impulse to its free expression, or, more generally, a rejection of the old for the new. The culture of expressive individualism is centered around the exploration of experience and sensation-unfettered, impulsive, and nonrational. In the arts, humanities, and letters, it rejects traditional standards in favor of the avant-garde. It emphasizes the search for new and allegedly superior modes of artistic and literary representation. The rejection of the old is inevitable, given the expressive individual's trust in self-generated truths. In classical, Catholic, and even traditional Calvinist thought, all human beings possess a common nature related to their humanity and their place in the cosmos. These things tie them to, even as they separate them -from, other species. In contrast, as unique individuals realizing themselves through a set of freely chosen meaningful experiences, men and women lack a fixed nature that defines them. They are merely the creations of themselves and/ or the societies of which they are part. The contrast of expressive individualism with prior bourgeois culture could not be starker. The Protestant ethic stressed sobriety over playfulness, restraint over expression, and self-restraint over emotion. Despite the conservative veneer of the 1950s, expressive individualism had clearly won the cultural battle in America by the end of that decade. The anti-bourgeois aesthetic triumphed especially within institutions in which intellectuals played a significant role (e.g., the universities, mass media outlets, television, motion pictures, book publishing). Another strand of the new ideology is "collectivist liberalism," a phrase coined by John Dewey. The threads of this strand have been extensively analyzed. Suffice it to say that a major component is the value placed on equality. All individuals are alike in some fundamental way. Therefore no person is of greater worth than any other, although some income differentiation is permitted-that is, professionals can be permitted to earn larger salaries than ordinary workers. Tied closely to this is the belief that the political order should play a major role in maximizing social, political, and economic equality. In contrast, the central value for the more traditional view is economic freedom, rather than economic equality. A traditional ideology of free-market capitalism rests on the assumption that the greatest good arises from each individual freely pursuing his own chosen activities. The ideology of free market capitalism assumes that each individual knows best what is in his economic interest. Each individual ought then to be free to pursue his own economic ends. The collective good is the aggregation of all individuals acting in pursuit of their individual private goods within the rules set by the community to regulate human intercourse. In the 1920s, there were few government programs protecting workers from the harshness of the private economic sector-unemployment, inadequate wages, dangerous and unsanitary working conditions, industrial accidents, and almost no regulations dealing with work in the private factory. Needless to say, there was no assumption of federal intervention in education, civil rights for minorities, women and the disabled, health and medical care for the poor and elderly, poverty programs, and so on. In contrast, contemporary collectivist liberalism demands that the regulatory state create among various groups of Americans an equality of both opportunity and (at least to some extent) result in wealth, housing, education, civil rights, health and medical care, and culture and the arts. The new liberalism is, in many ways, an inversion of the old. Traditional liberalism called for economic freedom within a framework of emotional and expressive restraint. The new liberalism discards expressive restraints but adds bureaucratic controls. The crisis of the 1960s integrated both collectivist liberalism and expressive individualism into a new pattern, adding the dimension of social alienation. In the view of the most radical elements in the New Left, American society is inherently oppressive. Further, bourgeois notions of reason and objectivity are designed to legitimate power of the dominant groups in the society and have no inherent validity. By rejecting such notions one works toward ending the power of these groups and the dehumanized society that they maintain. This perspective carried over to and was further developed by feminist and other scholars in the 1980s and 1990s in the forms of deconstructionism and multiculturalism. The description of the new liberalism we have offered is not simply a creative construct. Its content was suggested to us by a factor analysis of questions asked of random samples of various elite groups in the United States which we surveyed during the mid 1980s. We naturally cannot measure the changes that have taken place since the turn of the century, but the new cultural elites and traditional elites continue to differ fairly sharply from each other on all three factors in expected directions. For example, journalists tend to be liberal collectivists and expressive individualists; businessmen are neither (though we strongly suspect that they are more supportive of both perspectives than was a previous generation). On the other hand, the creators of motion pictures are only moderately liberal on economic issues, but they are very strong supporters of expressive individualism. A detailed description of our data analysis will be published in "American Elites" (Lerner, Nagai, and Rothman, 1996). Liberal capitalism, then, is in a state of decay. The unconscious restraints that underlie the rationality of action in liberal capitalist societies are eroded by both affluence and rationality itself. Rationality undermines the religious foundations of that restraint, and affluence undermines the need to discipline one's behavior in the marketplace. Thus, rational self-interest, restrained by unconscious assumptions about the legitimate parameters of behavior, is replaced by the pursuit of any sensation or experience that gives satisfaction without directly harming others, or the immediate satisfactions of wealth or power. Rationality itself finally comes under attack because (whatever the arguments offered) it is perceived as derived partly from the superego, thus limiting possibilities for choosing one's own life-style. The "metro Americans," whose children formed the leading cadres of the New Left, were the first to adopt the values of expressive individualism. But these values have gradually spread to other segments of the population, especially other elites (Rothman and Lichter, 1982). As traditional elites (businessmen, corporate lawyers, etc.) are won over by the new ideologies, they begin to follow suit. Those who enter business today are less likely to regard it as a calling than were their nineteenth-century counterparts. In addition to personality factors, the religious sources of their achievement drive have withered, as has social respect. Large businesses today are often anonymous bureaucratic enterprises whose leaders may inspire envy but rarely the respect that their forebears did. They are managers rather than genuine entrepreneurs. They may become celebrities, but they have no personal ties with other members of a viable local community. Further, why should they seek public esteem for their work when under the best of circumstances esteem probably will not be forthcoming. Thus, the cultural changes spread by the new elites have consequences for both personality and social action. As usual, such changes have produced structural shifts in the society, including new family patterns. Marriage, childbearing, and the family have became experiences in self-realization rather than duties and obligations. This fundamental change in emphasis has had a far-reaching impact. For example, children are no longer disciplined in the traditional manner, both because parents (both married and single) want to allow them to "realize themselves" and because it is too much trouble and takes too much time. Added to this are an escalating divorce rate, which leaves an increasingly large number of children to be raised by one parent, usually the mother; the development of widespread drug dependency; and a popular culture that increasingly stresses both sexuality and violence (Lasch, 1977, 1978, 1985; Carlson, 1988; Hamburg, 1992; Christensen, 1991; Phillips, 1988; Polokow, 1993). The character of this culture can be seen in such diverse popular entertainment formats as rap and death metal music, violent interactive video games, no-holds-barred "ultimate fighting," and fin-de siecle movies that titillate with graphic combinations of explicit sex and disturbing violence. It is not accidental that a few years ago a Florida jury decided with ease that the following lyrics of the rap group 2 Live Crew are not obscene: Grabbed her by the hair, threw her on the floor/ opened her thighs and guess what I saw... He'll tear the cunt open 'cause it's satisfaction.... Bust your cunt then break your backbone... I wanna see you bleed. There is good reason, then, to believe that the patterns of ego control, so laboriously constructed in Europe and the United States, are breaking down even as are conventional superego restraints. The result is an erosion of the capacity to sublimate both aggressive and erotic drives in the service of civilization, and the replacement of bourgeois commitments to achievement and constancy by increased defensive projection, "acting out," and drives for power and control. Again other factors have played important roles, including the legacy of our racist past, the changing relations between men and women, the new immigration, the changing demographics of the society, and the technological revolution. However, it seems reasonably clear that a society sufficiently sure of its own values would be dealing with these factors rather differently than is present-day America. In the place of the Protestant, bourgeois ideology that once characterized so much more of American society, and appears to have been associated with certain personality types, what do we now see? The evidence around us in the cul-ture suggests that many of those in the middle and upper-middle classes have lost the internal gyroscope and external metaphors that gave the lives of previous generations structure and meaning. As a result they feel torn between the desire for power and gratification on the one hand, and the fear of losing control on the other. They lurch between longings for complete autonomy and the wish to lose themselves in something that will give their lives order-hence the proliferation of cults, from New Age channeling to Scientology, that appeal to this social stratum. This change bodes ill for the long-term future of a liberal democratic order in the United States, despite the collapse of many Soviet-type regimes. Those who think that the "liberation" of the inner person and "doing one's thing" (provided that one does not harm others) will produce a better tomorrow are simply wrong. The undermining of restraint and the encouragement of constantly attacking all forms of authority are releasing demons and infantalizing large numbers of people. Paradoxically (though it would not have seemed a paradox to Freud) liberation and decay appear to go hand in hand. One cannot help but think of Yeats' foreboding: ... now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? Stanley Rothman, S. Robert Lichter April 1996
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