"Information Superhighway," they said. "Utopia of Informed Choice and Freedom," they said. Well, that worked out, didn't it?
There is no opting out of the real world. It is huge and complex and ill-intentioned, and full of conflicts. You may not like the look of it; you may not be interested in it; but it is interested in you. Of course it is: you are its raw material, your time, your body, your attention, your possessions, your health, your life chances.
Just by itself that would be hard enough to process, even if there were clear information about everything. However, everything is designed to be hard to think through, and to obscure what is being played out. There isn't time to understand everything. The conflicts are polarised and loud; they are fraught theatrical spectacles, threatening and compelling and outrageous. They provoke intense tiring emotions and there isn't the energy to process it all.
It's easy to lose sight of what the shouting is about, and of what is at stake.
Whilst it would be nice for someone authoritative to explain it all, it can be difficult to know who to trust. There are so many competing voices; they want you to react to what is urgent; they want you to stop thinking and adopt a particular attitude.
It is up to you. That doesn't mean you are on your own, necessarily; more that if you don't take care of your life and all you care about, other people will make decisions for you. There is no substitute for doing your own thinking, however hard it is.
Considering how things were thought about in the past can help clarify what you really think now. Apart from anything else, it forces you to disengage, for a while, from the constant hurly-burly; the similarities and differences make for illuminating comparisons. There are patterns that indicate the underlying intentions and processes.
The attitudes of the past resemble contemporary thoughts, feelings and beliefs, but are not the same. That said, however novel everything nowadays seems, few of the ideas behind it all are very new. The language is different, which casts a critical light on the way issues are talked about today - although, they were just as determined by their own perspectives as we are. It can be less charged, which makes it easier to respond with reflection rather than emotion. The effort required to appreciate what they said makes it harder for you to be bounced into a particular opinion with off-the-shelf talking points. Understanding how things were thought about in the past can clarify your perspective and increase your confidence. When you come back, it's easier to view the current debates with more detachment; and to make informed judgements about public figures: What do they really believe? What are they trying to bring about? Who should you rely on?
Consider for example, The Suicide of the West . It was published by American political theorist James Burnham in 1964, and is his attempt to define what liberalism is.
Burnham's The Managerial Revolution foretold the technocratic attitudes of today’s governments, and was a big influence on Orwell's 1984. The Suicide of the West was written after Burnham shifted from radicalism to anti-communism: it is recognisably mid-20th century, and much of the 300-odd pages refers to events and personalities current sixty years ago. But it still will be familiar to anyone concerned with the ideas and attitudes behind today’s political conflicts.
For example:
Can human nature can be moulded by political action? How should identity, hierarchy and inequality be understood?
How effective is rationality in discovering truth, individually or politically? Are social problems all soluble, or is that an illusion?
Are social evils due to social conditions, or other causes? Can bad institutions be got rid of? Are political institutions the only obstacles to a good society?
How much can education achieve?
What responsibility does the state have for individuals? Should government be national, or should supranational organisations be involved?
Should established ways of doing things be maintained or thrown out?
Should a society allow the expression of calls for is destruction? What political conflict is allowable? What are the aims of social life and politics?
Section 7 of The Suicide of the West is a summary of the attitudes characteristic of mid-20th century liberalism, contrasted with some non-liberal attitudes. The non-liberal positions are recognisable as traditional conservative & humanist beliefs current today. However, the mid-20th century liberalism is markedly more liberal than today’s progressivism. For example, in free speech and tolerance of opposing political positions; in identity politics it was the time of Martin Luther King's character, not skin colour. Many of the liberal attitudes seem like political positions adopted for tactical reasons e.g. "The fact that an institution, belief or mode of conduct has existed for a long time does not create any presumption in favor of continuing it."
From The Suicide of the West : An Essay on the Meaning and Destiny of Liberalism by James Burnham (1964)
Section 7: A CRITICAL NOTE IN PASSING
“So that the complete syndrome may be freshly and simultaneously before us, I shall now make a summary list, though this will oversimplify, of the nineteen liberal ideas and beliefs that were discussed in Chapters III-V. But in order to know what a thing is, we must understand what it is not. To clarify the liberal beliefs still further and to help, perhaps, to objectify our estimate of them, I shall draw up a list of nineteen corresponding contrary beliefs, also stated summarily. In each case more than one contrary belief, in fact an infinite number of contraries, are logically conceivable; but since our positive interest is merely to throw more light on the meaning of liberalism, I have given only one of the possible contraries, as it happened to occur to me in first writing the list down.”
L Liberal) Elements comprising the doctrinal dimension of the liberal syndrome:
X Non-liberal) One possible set of contrasting nonliberal elements:
HUMAN NATURE
Liberal 1) Human nature is changing and plastic, with an indefinite potential for progressive development, and no innate obstacles to the realization of the good society of peace, justice, freedom and well-being.
X Non-liberal 1) Human nature exhibits constant as well as changing attributes. It is at least partially defective or corrupt intrinsically, and thus limited in its potential for progressive development; in particular, incapable of realizing the good society of peace, justice, freedom and wellbeing.
RATIONALITY AND TRUTH
L2) Human beings are basically rational; reason and science are the only proper means for discovering truth and are the sole standard of truth, to which authority, custom, intuition, revelation, etc., must give way.
X2) Human beings are moved by sentiment, passion, intuition and other non-rational impulses at least as much as by reason. Any view of man, history and society that neglects the non-rational impulses and their embodiment in custom, prejudice, tradition and authority, or that conceives of a social order in which the non-rational impulses and their embodiments are wholly subject to abstract reason, is an illusion.
OBSTACLES TO A GOOD SOCIETY
L3) The obstacles to progress and the achievement of the good society are ignorance and faulty social institutions.
X3) Besides ignorance and faulty social institutions there are many other obstacles to progress and the achievement of the good society: some rooted in the biological, psychological, moral and spiritual nature of man; some, in the difficulties of the terrestrial environment; others, in the intransigence of nature; still others, derived from man's loneliness in the material universe.
SOLUBILITY OF SOCIAL PROBLEMS
L4) Because of the extrinsic and remediable nature of the obstacles, it follows that there are solutions to every social problem, and that progress and the good society can be achieved; historical optimism is justified.
X4) Since there are intrinsic and permanent as well as extrinsic and remediable obstacles, the good society of universal peace, justice, freedom and well-being cannot be achieved, and there are no solutions to most of the primary social problems which are, in truth, not so much "problems" as permanent conditions of human existence. Plans based on the goal of realizing the ideal society or solving the primary problems are likely to be dangerous as well as Utopian, and to lessen rather than increase the probability of bringing about the moderate improvement and partial solutions that are in reality possible.
WORTH OF EXISTING INSTITUTIONS
L5) The fact that an institution, belief or mode of conduct has existed for a long time does not create any presumption in favor of continuing it.
X5) Although traditional institutions, beliefs and modes of conduct can get so out of line with real conditions as to become intolerable handicaps to human well-being, there is a certain presumption in their favor as part of the essential fabric of society; a strong presumption against changing them both much and quickly.
HOW MUCH CAN EDUCATION ACHIEVE?
L6) In order to get rid of ignorance, it is necessary and sufficient that there should be ample, universal education based on reason and science.
X6) There is no indication from experience that universal education based on reason and science—even if it were possible, which it is not—can actually eliminate or even much reduce the kinds of ignorance that bear on individual and social conduct.
CAN BAD INSTITUTIONS BE GOT RID OF?
L7) The bad institutions can be got rid of by democratic political, economic and social reforms.
X7) There is no indication from experience that all bad institutions can be got rid of by democratic or any other kind of reforms; if some bad institutions are eliminated, some of the institutions remaining, or some that replace them, will be bad or will become bad.
SOCIAL CONDITIONS CAUSE SOCIAL EVILS
L8) It is society—through its bad institutions and its failure to eliminate ignorance—that is responsible for social evils. Our attitude toward those who embody these evils of crime, delinquency, war, hunger, unemployment, communism, urban blight should be not retributive but rather the permissive, rehabilitating, educating approach of social service; and our main concern should be the elimination of the social conditions that are the source of the evils.
X8) There are biological, psychological and moral as well as social causes of the major evils of society. A program of social reform combined with a merely permissive, educational and reformist approach to those who embody the evils not only has no prospect of curing the evils —which is in any event impossible but in practice often fosters rather than mitigates them, and fails to protect the healthier sectors of society from victimization.
EDUCATION - NEW IDEAS OR OLD WISDOM?
L9) Education must be thought of as a universal dialogue in which all teachers and students above elementary levels may express their opinions with complete academic freedom.
X9) Unrestricted academic freedom expresses the loosening of an indispensable social cohesion and the decay of standards, and permits or promotes the erosion of the social order. Academic discourse should recognize, and if necessary be required to recognize, the limits implicit in the consensus concerning goals, values and procedures that is integral to the society in question.
POLITICS UNIVERSAL OR LIMITED?
L1O) Politics must also be thought of as a universal dialogue in which all persons may express their opinions, whatever they may be, with complete freedom.
X1O) Unrestricted free speech in relation to political matters—most obviously when extended to those who reject the basic premises of the given society and utilize freedom of speech as a device for attacking the society's foundations— expresses, like unrestricted academic freedom, the loosening of social cohesion and the decay of standards, and condones the erosion of the social order.
TRUTH IS PERSONAL VS TRUTH IS SOCIAL
Lll) Since we cannot be sure what the objective truth is, if there is any such thing, we must grant every man the right to hold and express his own opinion, whatever it may be; and, for practical purposes as we go along, be content to abide by the democratic decision of the majority.
Xll) Whether or not there is any truth that is both objective and capable of being known to be so, no society can preserve constitutional government or even prevent dissolution unless in practice it holds certain truths to be, if not literally self- evident, then at any rate unalterable for it, and not subject to the changing will of the popular majority or of any other human
GOVERNMENT SHOULD BE OF THE PEOPLE
L12) Government should rest as directly as possible on the will of the people, with each adult human being counting as one and one only, irrespective of sex, color, race, religion, ancestry, property or education.
X12) A number of principles have been appealed to as the legitimate basis of government, and most of these have been associated in the course of time with bad, indifferent and moderately good government. Government resting on unqualified universal franchise— especially where the electorate includes sizable proportions of uneducated or propertyless persons, or cohesive subgroups—tends to degenerate into semi-anarchy or into forms of despotism (Gaesarism, Bonapartism) that manipulate the democratic formula for anti-democratic ends.
SUPERANATIONAL ORGANISATIONS & WORLD GOVERNMENT
L13) Since there are no differences among human beings considered in their political capacity as the foundation of legitimate, that is democratic, government, the ideal state will include all human beings, and the ideal government is world government. Meanwhile, short of the ideal, we should support and strengthen the United Nations, the World Court and other partial steps toward an international political order and world government, as these become successively possible in practice.
XI3) In their existential reality, human beings differ so widely that their natural and prudent political ordering is into units more limited and varied than a world state. A world state having no roots in human memory, feeling and custom, would inevitably be abstract and arbitrary, thus despotic, in the foreseeable future, if it could conceivably be brought into being. Though modern conditions make desirable more international cooperation than in the past, we should be cautious in relation to internationalizing institutions, especially when these usurp functions heretofore performed by more parochial bodies.
INEQUALITY
L14) In social, economic and cultural as well as political affairs, men are of right equal. Social reform should be designed to correct existing inequalities and to equalize the conditions of nurture, schooling, residence, employment, recreation and income that produce them.
X14) It is neither possible nor desirable to eliminate all inequalities among human beings. Although it is charitable and prudent to take reasonable measures to temper the extremes of inequality, the obsessive attempt to eliminate inequalities by social reforms and sanctions provokes bitterness and disorder, and can at most only substitute new inequalities for the old.
HIERARCHY
L15) Social hierarchies and distinctions among human beings are bad and should be eliminated, especially those distinctions based on custom, tradition, prejudice, superstition and other non-rational sources, such as race, color, ancestry, property (particularly landed and inherited property) and religion.
X15) It is impossible and undesirable to eliminate hierarchies and distinctions among human beings. A large number of distinctions and groupings, rational and non-rational, contributes to the variety and richness of civilization, and should be welcomed, except where some gross and remediable cruelty or inequity is involved.
IDENTITY
L16) Sub-groups of humanity defined by color, race, sex or other physical or physiological attributes do not differ in civilizing potential.
X16) Whether or not sub-groups of humanity defined by physical or physiological attributes differ congenitally and innately in civilizing potential, they do differ in their actual civilizing ability at the present time and are likely to continue so to differ for as long in the future as is of practical concern.
WHAT ARE SOCIAL LIFE AND POLITICS FOR?
L17) The goal of political and social life is secular: to increase the material and functional well-being of humanity.
X17) Among the goals of political and social life, well-being is subordinate to survival; and all secular goals are in the last analysis subordinate to the ultimate moral or religious goal of the citizens composing the community.
CONFLICT
L18) It is always preferable to settle disputes among groups, classes and nations, as among individuals, by free discussion, negotiation and compromise, not by conflict, coercion or war.
X18) Disputes among groups, classes and nations can and should be settled by free discussion, negotiation and compromise when—but only when—the disputes range within some sort of common framework of shared ideas and interests. When the disputes arise out of a clash of basic interests and an opposition of root ideas, as is from time to time inevitably the case, then they cannot be settled by negotiation and compromise but must be resolved by power, coercion and, sometimes, war.
WHAT RESPONSIBILITY DOES THE STATE HAVE FOR INDIVIDUALS?
L19) Government, representing the common good democratically determined, has the duty of guaranteeing that everyone should have enough food, shelter, clothing and education, and security against unemployment, illness and the problems of old age.
L19) Except in marginal and extreme cases, the duty of government is not to assure citizens food, shelter, clothing and education, and security against the hazards of unemployment, illness and old age, but to maintain conditions within which the citizens, severally and in association, are free to make their own arrangements as they see fit.
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Brilliant, informative piece on Burnham’s lesser known work. Thank you Dylan. I will come back to this again.