Society, Individualism, Laissez-Faire, and Eighteenth Century Sensibility

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As we’ve been following the laissez-faire thread for some time, it’s nice to end up seeing it as part of a larger social and literary pattern.

From “Varieties of Eighteenth Century Sensibility”:

The feeling of an intensely social view of literature within the Augustan trend has to be qualified by an interpenetration of social and individual factors that were there from the beginning. The base of operations in Locke’s Essay is the individual human being, not the socially constructed human being: Locke’s hero stands detached from history, collecting sense impressions and clear and distinct ideas. Nobody could be less solipsistic than Locke, but we may notice the overtures in Spectator 413, referring to “that Great Modern Discovery . . . that Light and Colours . . . are only Ideas in the Mind.” The author is speaking of Locke on secondary qualities. All Berkeley had to do with this modern discovery was to deny the distinction between primary and secondary qualities to arrive at this purely subjective idealist position of esse est percipi, “to be is to be perceived.” If we feel convinced, as Johnson was, that things still have a being apart from our perception of them, that, for Berkeley, is because they are ideas in the mind of God. It is fortunate both the permanence of the world and for Berkeley’s argument that God, according to the Psalmist, neither slumbers not sleeps [Psalm 21:4]. But Berkeley indicates clearly the isolated individual at the centre of Augustan society who interpenetrates with that society.

The same sense of interpenetration comes into economic contexts. In the intensely laissez-faire climate of eighteenth-century capitalism there is little emphasis on what the anarchist Kropotkin called mutual aid: even more than the nineteenth century, this was the age of the work ethic, the industrious apprentice, and the entrepreneur: the age, in other words, of Benjamin Franklin. A laissez-faire economy is essentially an amoral one: this fact is the basis of Mandeville’s Fable of the Bees, with its axiom of “Private Vices, Publick Benefits.” The howls of outrage that greeted Mandeville’s book are a little surprising: it looks as though the age was committed to the ethos of capitalism, but had not realized the intensity of its commitment. (CW 17, 29-30)

Quote of the Day

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Andrew Sullivan today on why the GOP are not conservatives:

As I studied political philosophy more deeply, the core argument for conservatism was indeed that it was truer to humankind’s crooked timber; that it was more closely tethered to earth rather  than heaven; that it accepted the nature of fallen man and did not try to permanently correct it, but to mitigate our worst instincts and encourage the best, with as light a touch as possible. Religion was for bishops, not presidents. Utopias were for liberals; progress was not inevitable; history did not lead in one obvious direction; we are all limited by epistemological failure and cultural bias.

So on taxes today, a conservative would ask: what have we learned about the impact of lower rates over the last two decades – now the lowest as a percentage of GDP since the 1950s? In healthcare, what have we learned about the largely private system the GOP wants to preserve? A conservative would look at home and abroad for empirical answers, acknowledging no ultimate solution but the need for constant reform because society is always changing. On gay rights, a classic social change, he’d ask what a society should do in integrating the emergence of so many openly gay people, couples and families. On foreign policy, he’d move on a case by case basis, not by way of a “doctrine.”

On these terms, today’s GOP could not be less conservative. I’d insist it’s less conservative than Obama. It does not present reality-based reform for emergent problems. It simply reiterates dogma and ruthlessly polices dissent or debate.

So no tax increases are allowed, period. Why? Because they “kill jobs”. So why do we have record unemployment after a period of unprecedentedly low taxation? No answer. If lower taxes have led to stagnation, the answer must always be: lower taxes some more. Why not end them all together?

(Cartoon from Jesus’ General: “An 11 on the manly scale of absolute gender.”)

Bloomsday

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It’s Bloomsday.

Radio Bloomsday will be reading the text all day. You can listen to it here.

From Frye’s review of New Directions in Prose and Poetry in Canadian Forum (December 1942):

Pendulum theories of art don’t work. Poems and pictures are real things; “tradition” and “experiment” are abstract nouns. To judge a concrete thing in terms of one abstract quality is to study it in one of many possible aspects. Which may well be worth doing. But to look at all art as split down the middle into an antithesis of abstract qualities hamstrings all criticism and insults all masterpieces; for the better the work of art, the more rewarding it will be to study it from opposing points of view. Thus, one could write an interesting essay on Ulysses as an experimental novel, and an equally interesting one on Ulysses as a traditional novel. But Ulysses is not “essentially” either; it is not “essentially” anything but a novel. (CW 29, 21)

Frye on God: “That unlucky notion of ‘substance'”

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Thanks to the Rapture that didn’t happen in May, we’ve been following a thread from false literalism and the Bible, to Christian fundamentalism, to laissez-faire and democracy. There’s no reason not to follow it back again with Frye’s observations on God.

From “Pistis and Mythos“:

Several of the central Christian doctrines (e.g. the Real Presence; Christ is God and Man; in the Trinity one is three) can only be expressed metaphorically. The effort to adapt them to conceptual predication afflicted philosophers with that unlucky notion of “substance” that they are still trying to wriggle out of. (CW 4, 7)

Frye: “Democracy is in essence cultural laissez-faire”

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A perhaps unexpected but delightful inversion of values: Laissez-faire may be anti-democratic, but democracy is culturally laissez-faire. From “War on the Cultural Front,” (written in August 1940, when the war was going badly for the British Imperial forces, including Canada):

Democracy is in essence a cultural laissez-faire, an encouragement in art, scholarship, and science. The list of people tortured and banished by Hitler includes Jews, Catholics, Protestants, Freemasons, homosexuals, and sponsors of rival brands of Nazism like Strasser. No one can be equally sympathetic with all these groups, but in the last century English culture has received contributions from Jews (Disraeli), Catholics (Newman), Protestants (Browning), Freemasons (Burns), homosexuals (Wilde), and a spokesman of potential English Nazism (Carlyle). Obviously there has been some considerable anarchy in English culture, a hopelessly inconsistent inclusiveness about it, and that large inconsistently is the basis of democracy. For it implies the acceptance and practice of the scientific attitude on the part of the people as a whole: the inductive suspending of judgment until enough, not only of the facts and discoveries and techniques, but of the viewpoints and theories and gospels and quack panaceas, are in, before changing the direction of social development. Opposed to this is the crusading religious temperament of the dictatorships working with a partial and premature cultural synthesis. Out of this inclusiveness of outlook springs everything else we associate with democracy, and it is on that basis that democratic countries rest their claim to be more hightly civilized. (CW 11, 186)

Frye: “Laissez-Faire is Anti-Democratic”

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The trillion dollar bailouts of just three years ago demonstrated that we now have a “too big to fail” oligarchy who fleece citizens by whatever means necessary. It has nothing to do with democracy; it is kleptocracy

Laissez-faire is as anti-democratic is as it is “anti-Christian“:

The geopolitical America, unlike the European countries, was able to add its colonies to its own body, and hence was a kind of proving ground for all the expansionist energies of its age, economic laissez-faire, political liberalism, and religious individualism included. The belief that men can be and have a right to be equal and independent is the growing point of this expansionism and the source of everything vital in it, and that belief, rather than any political modus operandi, is what is usually implied first of all by the word “democracy.” As the conception of democracy has matured, it has separated itself from its vague background of Utopian optimism. Many Americans still believe that laissez-faire is the economic aspect of democracy, but there is a growing realization that laissez-faire by itself does not lead to democracy, but to oligarchy, and thence to managerial dictatorship. Laissez-faire by itself is antidemocratic: all progress in the conditions of the working classes has been wrung from it in a kind of cold civil war — not always so cold, as it has included lynchings, sadistic beatings, systematic starvation, and an occasional massacre. (CW 11, 251)

“Community as God Wants to See It”

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“The Emanation of The Giant Albion” from Blake’s Jerusalem (1804)

Further to Michael’s earlier post “Laissez-Faire is Anti-Christian,” in this week’s issue of The New Statesman, guest edited by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Reverend Dr. Rowan Williams, there’s a fascinating editorial about the corporatist actions of the coalition government in Britain. Perhaps most interesting, and in line with my understanding of Frye’s politics, are the last three paragraphs:

For someone like myself, there is an ironic satisfaction in the way several political thinkers today are quarrying theological traditions for ways forward. True, religious perspectives on these issues have often got bogged down in varieties of paternalism. But there is another theological strand to be retrieved that is not about “the poor” as objects of kindness but about the nature of sustainable community, seeing it as one in which what circulates – like the flow of blood – is the mutual creation of capacity, building the ability of the other person or group to become, in turn, a giver of life and responsibility. Perhaps surprisingly, this is what is at the heart of St Paul’s ideas about community at its fullest; community, in his terms, as God wants to see it.

A democracy that would measure up to this sort of ideal – religious in its roots but not exclusive or confessional – would be one in which the central question about any policy would be: how far does it equip a person or group to engage generously and for the long term in building the resourcefulness and well-being of any other person or group, with the state seen as a “community of communities”, to use a phrase popular among syndicalists of an earlier generation?

A democracy going beyond populism or majoritarianism but also beyond a Balkanised focus on the local that fixed in stone a variety of postcode lotteries; a democracy capable of real argument about shared needs and hopes and real generosity: any takers?

Many years ago, a younger and more intense then-Mr. Williams quoted a Russian theologian named Nikolai Fyodorov to get at the same basic point of what society based on Christian principles might look like: “Our social program is the dogma of the Holy Trinity.” Reaction to the Archbishop’s statements has largely cast his editorial as attacking the government, rather than seeing it as a call to conversation about serving the best interests of the people. (A summary of reactions here.)  This  rhetorical strategy attacks without engaging, seeking to sweep the concerns he raises to one side–a tactic overused on this side of the pond, too. Consider as just one example the concern of senior Democrats about how the media is focusing on Rep. Anthony Wiener instead of on Republican efforts to drastically cut Medicare–a programme that provides health insurance for those over 65.

Saturday Night at the Movies: “The Bed-Sitting Room”

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httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EX3ltFkrngY

The Bed-Sitting Room is one of those oddball comedies from the 1960s that seemed to be possible thanks to a generalized countercultural outlook informed by some combination of drugs, free love, rock ‘n’ roll and fear of nuclear holocaust, the latter being the especially active ingredient in this post-apocalyptic black comedy. Movies were made at that time for relatively little money and only required a modest return (this was the days before the blockbuster and the franchise set the standard for profits), and mainstream audiences were perhaps a little more adventurous than they are now. There was also a remarkable lineup of writers, performers and directors who were willing to produce these labor-of-love films. In this case, the director is Richard Lester, who directed the Beatles movies, and the performers make up a high-end ensemble of character actors that it is difficult to imagine putting together now.

Here is the cast as they appear in the credits, in order of height:

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