BELLE LETTRES

To the Editors of The Crimson:

In the Crimson of March 2, 1976, there is a purported review of my book The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism, and of the Tenth Anniversary issue of The Public Interest, the magazine of which I was co-founder, by Jim Kaplan.

Mr. Kaplan writes:

...taken together, these two volumes reveal the emergence of an American intellectual Right on the European model, basing its conservatism on a collective--rather than an individualist understanding of society.

If I had to rate his essay for philosophical acumen and historical knowledge, I would have to, in these days of inflated grades, give Mr. Kaplan a C-.

He begins with an astonishing historical mishmash:

For two hundred years and more the United States has been generally free of what Europeans would call 'Men of the Right.' An amalgam of radical individualism and nativist Main Street values--antiblack, anti-foreign, fundamentalist--has historically passed as a unique American conservatism.

But this was never--in the writings of an Ignatius Donnelly or the politics of a Tom Watson--conservatism; it was radical populism. Mr. Kaplan has not read, would probably not even recognize, the names of American conservatism--a long and deeply embedded tradition in this country. This would include Charles Eliot Norton, co-editor of the North American Review and James Russell Lowell, the editor of The Atlantic; Henry James and Henry Adams; Irving Babbitt and Paul Elmer More; Leanth Brooks, co-editor of the Southern Review and John Crowe Ransom, editor of the Kenyon Review; or more recently in political philosophy Russell Kirk and Leo Strauss. He seems to be singularly unacquainted with the history of Harvard, since four of the men, Norton, Lowell, Adams and Babbitt were professors here. And on more recent developments he should read George Nash's forthcoming The Conservative Intellectuals, based on a Harvard Ph.D. thesis, to get the right scorecard.

Mr. Kaplan writes:

Their philosophical goal, as Bell makes clear in his book, is the separation of the capitalist system of production, which the group thoroughly endorses, from the liberal theory of politics and economics--a theory which postulates absolute freedom [sic!] and the pursuit of each individual 'unit's' self-interest.

I don't know whether "the group" thoroughly endorses the capitalist system, no vote was ever taken; but if anything it is clear, it is that Mr. Kaplan has not read my book and the only thing I can do is to present the relevant quotations and ask Mr. Kaplan to read this again--and slowly.

I wrote, following Kant's distinction of public and private:

What these four arguments add up to, in their sociophilosophical consequences, is the rejection of bourgeois hedonism, with its utilitarian emphasis on economic appetite, yet the retention of political liberalism with its concern for individual differences and liberty. Historically, political liberalism has been associated with bourgeois society.... But economic liberalism has become, in corporate structure, economic oligopoly, and, in the pursuit of private wants, a hedonism that is destructive of social needs. The two can be sundered. We can reject the pursuit of bourgeois wants, as lacking a moral foundation for society, and insist on the necessity of public goods. [p. 277]

And, in the concluding section of the book, which is entitled "A Reaffirmation of Liberalism." I wrote:

The centrality of the public household...is, to go back to Aristotle, a 'concern more with the good condition of human being than with the good condition of property.' It is a recognition of the distinction between ends and means and the reinstatement of social purposes as the 'good condition' which public policy has to seek. It is the centrality of conscious decisions, publicly debated and philosophically justified, in the shaping of directions for the society. Where bourgeois society separated the economy from the polity, the public household rejoins the two.... The public household requires a new socio-economic bill of rights which redefines for our times the social needs that the polity must try to satisfy. It establishes the public budget...as the mechanism whereby society seeks to implement 'the good condition of human beings.'

The first requisite for any debate is an accurate presentation of a person's point of view. Mr. Kaplan has completely twisted mine, in part I would guess because he is captivated by the idea of applying a gaudy political label. Yet such labelling, which not only simplifies but caricatures the nature of a complex argument, can only be destructive of discourse and intellectual debate. Daniel Bell   Professor of Sociology

P.S. It is not true that Samuel Huntington's essay was "rejected" last year by the Trilateral Commission for being "too anti-democratic." The essay was debated at the Tokyo meeting of the Commission, but was subsequently published by the Trilateral Commission.

On reflection, grade inflation or not, I have to change that C- to a D.

I said in my review that Bell and the Public Interest theorists exemplified anti-democratic elitism. Now Professor Bell has offered independent and personal evidence for this conclusion; his arrogance and condescension--e.g. "read this again"--hardly seem to issue from a concern with "intellectual debate." I have read the passages that Professor Bell has assigned (and more, perhaps in the hope of raising my grade?) and here is my response to his points.

First, American conservatism of the type both of us are talking about--that which postulates an organic, collective and hierarchical vision of society with a network of rights and responsibilities appropriate to each social group--is not a "deeply embedded tradition in this country." On the contrary, Bell's list of European-influenced literati and academics only reinforces my point: this brand of conservatism has never received a popular following in America, owing largely to the absence of a feudal aristocratic past. We have been "generally free of what Europeans would call men of the Right"--Right in the sense not of a few relatively ineffectual theorists but in the sense of "parties of privilege," like the German conservatives prior to World War I, numerous Spanish monarchist parties, or even the British Tories for much of their history.

Second, it is true, as Bell says, that his intention (in his terms) is to separate economic "hedonism" from democratic rights and liberties, restraining the former and preserving the latter. But this is precisely what I could not grant him in the review (stated in my terms). In a society which justifies itself in terms of opportunity and mobility, we cannot restrain social groups in their economic demands--and historically "restraint" under corporate capitalism means sacrifices mainly borne by the working class--without restraining them politically. This would entail, in practice, vastly curtailing the power of the labor unions and suppressing the protest movements which would necessarily arise from such enforced "restraint."

But Professor Bell who does not advocate this solution outright, then has only one alternative: he postulates the creation of a new culture (the old one, he says, has run its dissolute course) which may differentiate between the "sacred" and the "profane." The growth of a culture of restraint, as opposed to one of hedonism, might well avoid the need for an end to the political freedom we have known: social groups would moderate their own economic demands, making political repression superfluous. But the creation of such a culture out of whole cloth--against the traditions created by a more or less constantly expanding economy--seems extremely unlikely. The way out of this potential conflict between social resources and needs, it seems to me, would lie in the creation of a society where everyone exercised some basically equal degree of control over decision-making at the point of production; "restraint" if required, would then be equally distributed--and decided by the collectivity--rather than imposed as a "culture" from above.

According to The Crimson of June 11, 1975, Huntington decided to revise his initial paper to the Trilateral Commission because of the "sharp debate" it provoked among the commission's members. The reason for the criticism was, as I understand it, the Huntington paper's anti-democratic tone. In substance, this constitutes enough of a "rejection" for me, if not Professor Bell.

I am glad for the opportunity to debate Professor Bell, although if I take any of his courses I will do so on a pass/fail basis.