Who's Ruptured the Comity?

IN HIS 1976 BOOK, Michael Harrington had the gall to contend that Daniel Bell--among several other scholars--had misinterpreted Marx, and proposed to present the "authentic Marx." Bell, a man whose intellectual prowess does not outstrip his intellectual pride, did not respond kindly. In a 1977 review essay entitled, "The Once and Future Marx," Bell diligently and thoroughly devasted Harrington's version of the "real Marx," leaving readers gasping for breath and muttering, "please, please stop, our young liberal spirits want so badly to believe in something fresh and new and radical." But Bell will not stop. He further charges that Harrington's book is a "cheat," and, depressingly, he proves it.

"The Once and Future Marx" is just one brief, though characteristically prolix essay that appears in The Winding Passage, a collection which Bell terms "the essays of a prodigal son." Representing an assortment of his sociological writings from 1960-80, they are also his personal favorites. These essays not only compose an impressive body of knowledge and rhetoric, but also evoke a classical dilemma--the role of the intellectual. While Bell fights, and wins, war in the abstract, his victories seem pyrrhic. By the end of his 17 essays, any reader will beg for a solution to the problems he has raised. Although each essay contains a trace of hope, Bell always falls short of an answer, or even advice, leaving the reader in despair.

An example: in "the 'Intelligentsia' in American Society," Bell lists three "tableaus" used to define the role of the intellectual--as a guardian of learning, as expert, and as a critic or ideologue. If another category, the intellectual as activist, fits his model, Bell makes no attempt to make it readily apparent. Bell's "intellectuals" are the professors and the men of letters, the men who can conveniently transcend the fray. There is no room for a Michael Harrington, a Herbert Marcuse, or a C. Wright Mills in Bell's scheme. Indeed, much of The Winding Passage attempts to discredit these idealists--and succeeds. In method, Bell is a tantalizing combination of Muhammad Ali and Roberto Duran; he taunts, he baits, but he never refrains from slugging it out. He punishes his opponents, and occasionally his readers, with an aggressive and assertive style. The prose of these essays is a relentless onslaught.

Bell, like several of his Harvard colleagues, has been labeled a neo-conservative, placing him in the company of Nathan Glazer (to whom The Winding Passage is dedicated), Sam Huntington and James Q. Wilson. Neo-conservatives worry about things like the breakdown of authority patterns, the political paralysis caused by manifold interest groups and the economic woes associated with greater state control over the economy. Bell denies the sobriquet "neo-conservative" to his students, but he clearly shares many concerns with those who actually do enjoy the label.

In one essay, "The New Class: A Muddled Concept," Bell challenges the idea of the "new class," put forth by, among others, his friend Irving Kristol, editor of "The Public Interest." As Bell puts it:

The "new class" consists of individuals who have carried the logic of modern culture to its end... they make up a cultural phenomenon that mirrors the breakdown of traditional values in Western society. It is not a "new class' in any social-structural sense. It is the endpoint of a culture in disarray.

Reiterating the argument he forwarded in The Cultural Contradiction of Capitalism. Bell goes on to say capitalism has "lost its original justifications" and has "taken over the legitimations of an antibourgeois culture to maintain the continuity of its own economic institutions." He worries about insidious widespread hedonism, the development of a pornotopia--no doubt influenced by those pleasure-seeking, authority-challenging students of the late '60s.

In another essay, "Ethnicity and Social Change," he ascribes the upsurge of ethnic identification to "a strategic choice by individuals who, in other circumstances, would choose other group memberships as a means of gaining some power and privilege." He argues that people choose ethnic identification because the increasingly bureaucratic social structure weakens other identities; traditional authority structures break down and hence there is an increased need for ethnic organization to achieve increased rights. He proves his case vigorously, but offers no therapy for the ills he diagnoses. He is assuredly a guardian of learning, a refined expert, and a trenchant critic, but although he has his doctorate, he has no practical prescriptions.

PERHAPS BELL LONGS for the day when authority patterns were easily defined and well respected; for the day when undergraduates at their most unruly would never dare question the good professor. It is precisely this premise--that life is set out in a hierarchy, and that elders should not be challenged--that had the students of the late '60s up in arms. Henry Kissinger '51 might drop bombs, but students should not have to drop them for him. So, at least, the reasoning went.

Most neoconservatives make the case for reduced government intervention in the economy, for the forsaking of equality of outcomes for the equality of opportunity--that same opportunity which characterized America's rugged growth. Greater individualism, a truly liberal ideal, they argue, can (to use the words of a genuine conservative) "make America great again." And yet it is the longstanding inequality of results which allowed the growth of hierarchical society; and it is the traditional values that locked in inequality.

But, as Bell points out in "The End of American Exceptionalism," "A society is a people shaped by history and bound by comity. It is the rupture of comity, the play of ideological passions to their utmost extreme, that shreds the society and turns the city into a holocaust." If equality and liberty were once coincident in America, this is no longer the case. It is clear what Bell believes. In "Liberalism in the Post-industrial Society," he says:

Those...who mock liberty by questioning its value to a starving man who first needs bread, forget the simple fact that often the man has been denied bread because he has been denied the liberty to fight for that bread.

But in any fight for bread, there will be winners and losers--in a time of scarce resources, a contest will be a zero-sum proposition. Bell recognizes this, and points out the equality-liberty question as problematic.

And if Bell relishes greater liberty in the form of equality of opportunity, it is the emphasis on individualism which has "ruptured the comity" and caused the breakdown of traditional values. He always stands with one foot in each camp--sometimes he desires the good old days, other times he craves the conditions that destroyed the good old days. He wants it both ways.

In a provocative piece called "The Future World Disorder," Bell comes closest to resolving this dilemma. He calls for a new international division of labor, and the use of the market principle for social purposes. People would be given money to buy the services they need according to their diverse needs, rather than through any governmental program. He sees the major problems confronting society as ones that can be solved through the principle of "appropriate scale." Thus he calls for an international division of labor to achieve what national economic interests cannot, and a reduction of government programs that have proven inefficient. He hopes for the primacy of themis--"the characteristic human good"--over techne, man's ability to conquer nature.

And his musings will no doubt prove prescient, his analysis correct. Michael Harrington probably did "cheat" Marx, in the abstract. Nonetheless, Marx hoped for--nay, expected--the merging of theory and praxis. His was a resounding call to action. Bell's ideas have a powerful appeal, but Michael Harrington is out on the streets, trying to affect social change, while Bell is in his office, analyzing social change. The choice is stark: this weekend, you can skim The Winding Passage and absorb ideas; or you can attend the nearest DSOC meeting