We need a new way of thinking about the interplay of individualism and community.
The American Dilemma is an old dilemma. It predates Obama; Addams, too. In fact, it is as old as the American Project, itself. The Puritans felt it. So did the Founders. Today, some of us feel it more acutely than they did; others hardly feel it at all. Why?
The American Dilemma is an old dilemma. In fact, it is as old as the American Project, itself.
As Jim Sleeper explains (in a forthcoming issue of Democracy Journal), the Puritans felt it because their covenanted communities welded together public and private purpose and maintained a balance between individual freedom and social obligation.
To the Puritans’ language of covenanted community, the Founders added the language of civic republicanism. It provided another means of joining individual and collective wellbeing. Consider the republican idea of freedom. In the classical liberal vision, freedom is the absence of constraint and protection from interference. In plain language: doing what you want and asserting your rights, so long as you cause no physical injury to others.
Republican freedom is more demanding. It involves “civic virtue”: active participation in self-government and self-sacrifice for the common good. For the Founders, then, freedom was not autonomy; it was not “riding off into the sunset” or “hitting the open road.” It was skillful action that aims at the common good.
The language of the covenant and the republic are still not dead. Recall the text of Obama’s 2008 “race speech.” The narrative drew from the Hebrew Bible. There was talk of founding covenants (the Declaration and Constitution), of original sins (African slavery), of a people’s backsliding and marching (Jim Crow and Civil Rights), of a Promised Land that was always just over the horizon. The opening line was taken from the Constitution: “We the People, in order to form a more perfect union.” Still, the language of the covenant and the republic do not resonate the way that they used to. Why not?
In part, because it has been crowded out by another language: the language of liberalism. It has many dialects. Some are high-brow: contractarianism, utilitarianism, and economism, for example. Others are low-brow: libertarianism, relativism, and subjectivism, for instance. What all these dialects share, whether high or low, is a deep devotion to the individual and a deep suspicion of the social. As Daniel Rodgers has exhaustively documented in his recent book, Age of Fracture, the concept of the social has been pushed to the margins since the late 1940s. Our public discourse is an individualistic one.
It’s not just a problem of language, of course. It’s also a matter of power. Until the mid-20th century, the Puritan ethic lived on in the WASP elite, as did a commitment to civic virtue qua “public service.” FDR, JFK and Bush the elder are paradigmatic examples. For them, privilege still brought responsibility, or at least some sense of responsibility.
Then came the meritocracy. Starting around the 1950s, the gates of Andover, Exeter, Harvard and Yale were opened wide—wide enough that a lowborn mutt such as myself managed to slip through two of them. The service ethic did not disappear altogether. It lived on in the service section of student’s resumes, as evidence that the winners of the admissions lottery deservedto be there, were entitled to be there. They had worked so hard! Accomplished so much! That’s why they didn’t owe anyone anything. On the contrary, they were owed for the sacrifices they made on the road to success.
Then, in the 1980s, the meritocracy met the winner-takes-all-society. Talk about power couples! Elite colleges had always been the fast track to plum jobs in banking and finance. But now the plums were so much sweeter and came in so many appealing varieties: investment banking, management consulting, hedge funds, and tech start-ups to name the juiciest. From a financial standpoint, the American Dilemma was now easily solved. The opportunity costs in choosing public service over private equity became astronomical. Unless service could be made into an opportunity: Teach for America became another stepping-stone to Goldman Sachs.
In the 1980s, the meritocracy met the winner-takes-all-society. Talk about power couples!
The marriage was not an equal one though. Before long, the winners started to take apart the meritocratic ladder. One by one, the middle rungs were removed. Sure, a few preternaturally skilled climbers were still able to leap from the bottom to the top. Where they were welcomed! After all, their presence was a handy alibi for the people who started life on the top rung. Who were staring down into an abyss and holding on for dear life.
For those who still speak the old languages of social obligation, who still hear the echoes of the nation’s foundings, then, the American Dilemma has become more acute. For those whose mother tongue is the liberal language of individual autonomy, on the other hand, the American Dilemma is a nagging memory at most.
To solve our American Dilemma, we need to do two things. We need to find a new language for talking about the complementarity of personal and social accountability and freedom and responsibility. The old languages of covenant and republic can give us some of the vocabulary we need.
We also need to make public service less costly and more attractive. The income gap between private enterprise and public service is part of the problem. Bankers should earn less; teachers should earn more. Lack of opportunity is another part of the problem. Why not institute a National Day of Service? Better yet, why not institute an entire year of national service—civil or military—for all young Americans?
Philip Gorski is Professor of Sociology at Yale University, co-editor of Max Weber’s Economy and Society: A Critical Companion and author, most recently, of the forthcoming book, A Republic of Prophets: Civil Religion and Culture Wars from Winthrop to Obama (Princeton University Press, 2015).
Read Next
Stanford University Press blog
On navigating the tension between individualism and fellow feeling.
Stanford University Press blog
When Jane Addams Met Tolstoy ⇨
How the social reformer's encounter with the canonical Russian author influenced her activism.
Stanford University Press blog
The most sweeping change can begin with the simplest connections
Stanford University Press blog
The Tangible Effects of Connecting with Your Neighbors ⇨
What's lost when we lose a sense of community?
Kirkus Reviews
Schneiderhan's biographical comparison of Jane Addams and Barack Obama illustrates how little has changed regarding the difficulties of community building.
Comments