What You Can't Make a Profit At

I've been thinking lately of what would be on the list of things that are essential but which you can't make a profit at (or enough of a profit). Last night on Bill Moyers Journal (first show of a new series) mention was made of how 'expensive' it is to hire the personnel necessary to research and report real factual news stories as opposed to how cheap it is to hire pundit 'experts' who merely sit and pontificate about their opinions. As a result more and more newspapers, 'news' magazines like "Time", and news bureaus for TV are getting rid of their news reporters/researchers and hiring more 'experts' to give opinions. Fewer facts and more opinions: the 'modern' fourth estate. The free press that is so essential to democracy.

I recall a fellow who had just finished yet another book on our health insurance 'crisis' who pointed out how it just wasn't profitable to provide care for people with serious chronic illnesses. Since we are such a 'Christian' society I guess Jesus would have preached that those people with chronic illnesses would just have to fend for themselves. (The Gospel according to capitalism.)

Being responsible for cleaning up one's own environmental pollution is apparently not profitable either.

I've heard discussions of medications in which it was revealed that certain drugs are just not profitable enough, thus drug companies don't research improvements in those regardless of how efficacious they would be for health. I guess Jefferson should have written:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness, if said rights can be profitably pursued. — That to secure these rights, Corporations are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the Board of Directors.

Robert Nisbet's Conservatism

American sociologist Robert Nisbet (1913-96) wrote a book entitled Conservatism: Dream and Reality, which was published in 1986. Nisbet was a widely read, erudite fellow and the book adds some things to other writings on conservatism, at least it articulates some conservative principles in a fresh manner. However, there are several things that bother me about the book. One of these is Nisbet's giving far more words to criticism of the French Revolution than he does to the Industrial Revolution. On p. 64 Nisbet wrote:

Yet another aspect of the conservative philosophy of property in modern history is found in the frequent criticisms of capitalism, together with its industrialism, commerce, and technology, by conservatives. As I have stressed above, conservativism is almost as much a response to the industrial as the democratic revolution at the end of the eighteenth century.

I have several problems with this statement: 1) my reading suggests that it is not true that his emphasis has been almost as much on the industrial revolution; as I read him criticism of the French Revolution gets far more attention and always is mentioned first, while the critique of capitalism and industrialism appears as second and something tacked on after fulsome criticism of the French Revolution; and, 2) this "democratic revolution at the end of the eighteenth century" must, in large part be a a reference to the French Revolution and it is at least questionable whether that Revolution was primarily 'democratic' as it had significant elitist elements. In general, I think Nisbet and other conservatives use 'democratic' somewhat loosely. He certainly approves of the republican, representaive system articulated in the U.S. Constitution which was certainly democratic in some sense even if not absolutely so.

His secondary emphasis on the Industrial Revolution and capitalism is important because it seems to me likely that these forces have had far more profound influence upon the modern world than the French Revolution. Certainly this is utterly true of the United States; the U.S. Constitution and federal government were already in place when the French Revolution occurred and although the latter was a topic of heated debate in the U.S. it had minimal influence upon U.S. institutions. However, the only true social revolution the U.S. has undergone is the Industrial Revolution. I believe American 'conservatives' like Nisbet are less consistent in the application of conservative principles to the Industrial Revolution because that would be a bit too non-conformist in the USA. The American Ideology pretty much holds capitalism and the Industrial Revolution in the highest regard for their contribution to American consumer abundance. Nonetheless, I believe it is inconsistent and timid to hold certain principles and yet soft pedal their application where it is politically inconvenient.

Nisbet makes it clear that the revolutionary social change, the destruction of local groups and authority and 'massification' of modern urban capitalist life, the crass materialism, and the individualism of American industrial capitalism are thoroughly repugnant to a genuine conservative philosophy; yet glorification and protection of American industrial capitalism are a major tenet in the pseudo-conservatism of William F. Buckley, et. al. from the the 1950s until today. Under the pressures of political ambition and will to power, actual conservative principles have been jettisoned by American pseudo-conservatives.

Conservatives, Liberals and Authoritarians: Cleaning Up American Political Terminology

In her The Authoritarian Dynamic, political scientist Karen Stenner has been a great help in clarifying the landscape of American political ideology. On p. 138 Stenner wrote that "the way in which the notion of 'conservatism' is typically employed in American politics... hopelessly entangles... three dimensions we have so far striven to distinguish: authoritarianism, status quo conservatism and laissez faire conservatism.... In contemporary U.S. politics, 'conservative' does tend to mean, all at once, intolerance of difference, attached to the status quo, and opposed to government intervention in the economy."

Stenner correctly distinguishes these three ideological stances and argues that they can be largely independent of one another; one can endorse laissez faire and be quite critical of the status quo (say you were a bourgeois for laissez faire in Louis XVI's pre-revolutionary France), one can support the status quo and be opposed to laissez faire (say you were a loyal Communist under Brezhnev), and, most important of all for my purposes, being a 'conservative' who wishes to avoid radical or abrupt changes in the status quo does NOT make you an authoritarian (say you are a moderate Republican critical of the Bush-Cheney administration's super-patriotism, hyper-nationalism, moral intolerance, and subversion of political dissent).

Stenner, with characteristic conceptual care, differentiates 'status quo conservatism' from authoritarianism (p. 151): to status quo conservatives “a stable, institutionalized, and authoritatively supported respect for diversity should always be preferable to dismantling those well-established protections and moving toward an uncertain future holding out prospect of greater uniformity of people and beliefs, yet at the cost of intolerable social change and uncertainty.” In other words, if you want to preserve the status quo and you in fact exist in a society respecting diversity, then that’s the status quo you’d wish to preserve; however, if you’re an authoritarian existing in a diverse society you might wish for even abrupt radical changes in the status quo if they promised more uniformity of people and beliefs. A 'status quo conservative' presumably would support whatever status quo existed in his/her society; an authoritarian is predisposed to want uniformity of people and beliefs in whichever society he/she lives and may be willing to risk change to increase uniformity.

Let's parlay this into a clarification of American political ideology.

1) As both of the two patron saints of laissez faire doctrine, Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek believed, those supporting laissez faire should not be called ‘conservative’ at all, but ‘classical liberals’ (here I depart somewhat from Stenner in that I agree with Hayek and Friedman that 'laissez faire' and 'conservative' designate different views). If contemporaries won't take the word of Friedman and Hayek that 'conservative' is an inappropriate term it's because ideologues like William F. Buckley wished to 'fuse' disparate and often contradictory ideological traditions for their own intellectually inconsistent political purposes. Buckley and those around him in the 1950s put together a witch's brew of 'conservatism' that still confuses American political discourse today. A true conservative, like Edmund Burke, refers to someone who opposes abrupt and/or radical changes in contemporary social institutions but supports temperate evolutionary changes as needed. (Two qualifications: 1) in the U.S., with its longstanding and widely held commitment to less government and more 'free' market, a Burkean respecter of the status quo would also tend to support laissez faire, but this is a culturally and historically specific association; historically specific because there were times in American history when leaders who were in many ways staus quo conservatives advocated more government intervention in the economy: e.g., Alexander Hamilton, Henry Clay; 2) since capitalism is always a force for innovation, change, and "creative destruction", it is difficult to be consistently pro-capitalist, i.e., laissez faire, and be a Burkean respecter of the status quo. Go figure. I suspect laissez faire and status quo are too often contradictory.)

2) Classical liberals, like Friedman and Hayek, are opposed to undue interference in the economy, and in society more generally (they would oppose legislating morality), by the central government. The libertarian (see U.S. Libertarian Party) of today tends toward the beliefs of the classical liberal, but also strives for consistency in pursuing liberty by supporting strong civil liberties, opposing government legislation of morality (support for women's rights to abortion), and opposing a meddlesome, interventionist foreign policy requiring the central government to have a huge 'defense' and 'national security' establishment.

3) So what's a 'liberal'? The ‘modern liberal’ or ‘progressive’ believes that the rise and growth of modern corporations in the America of the 19th century has interfered massively and significantly in the 1825 (pre-industrial) world of the classical liberal; this growth has enabled corporations to interfere with the ‘free market’, enabled representatives of corporations to exercise excessive influence over government and elections, and enabled the ‘collectivism’ of the corporation to exercise undue influence over most social decisions (environment, health care, retirement, unionization of workers, development of law, popular tastes, favored entertainments, use of the broadcast airwaves, etc., etc., etc.). Thus the modern liberal believes that government--as the only institution within modern capitalist society having adequate power to regulate the corporation as well as being under some popular control through democratic elections--that this central government must be supported in its role of corporate regulation. Other than this, and with some notable backsliding (McCarthyism, the Cold War, the 'war on terror'), the modern liberal probably agrees with the libertarian on many issues. That the three examples of 'backsliding' that came to mind concern foreign policy is no coincidence; probably the biggest problem for modern liberalism is that 'liberals' support aggressive, 'idealistic' foreign policies in which the U.S. brings its 'superior' values to the poor and benighted of foreign lands. I believe such interference in the affairs of sovereign countries contradicts liberal principles of freedom, equality before the law, and self-determination for all peoples.

4) What is an "authoritarian" or pseudo-conservative? As Stenner argues, an authoritarian is someone who likely has an innate disposition to strongly favor uniformity of beliefs for all members of society, and sameness of characteristics of all members, and thus tends to be racially, politically and morally intolerant of diversity and dissent; the authoritarian when threatened or challenged by a perceived excess of diversity and/or dissent responds with an aggressive, coercive punitiveness aimed at suppressing unwanted difference and enforcing uniformity upon others. Thus, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, along with many of their most fervent supporters, are more accurately considered authoritarian pseudo-conservatives and should never have been labeled 'conservative' at all. Republicans like Dwight Eisenhower, Senator Robert Taft (1889-1953), and George H. W. Bush might more accurately be considered 'conservative'.