The last posting introduced
Daniel Elazar’s continuum of ideas about how Americans view the relationship
between individual citizens and government.[1] The first of these concepts is individualism,
and that posting describes how Elazar sees that relationship. In order, the concepts beyond individualism
are collectivism, corporatism, and federalism; this posting looks at
collectivism.
It can be viewed as a
reaction to more extreme individualism in which that self-centered view,
history has demonstrated, leads in sufficient cases to social irresponsibility
especially on the part of the rich. That
tendency has proved to be an influential factor since it has encouraged the electorate
to support policies that have sought solutions to those actual or perceived
abuses. But this development jumps to
more recent years and ignores earlier versions of collectivism.
As pointed out in the last posting, this view can be traced
all the way back to the colonial origins of the country. Upon close inspection, one can detect
collectivist models of colonization in such efforts as establishing Jamestown
and Plymouth. That is, those colonies
began as the efforts of collectives – joint ownership arrangements – of the
colonies’ assets. In both cases, these
collective efforts were abandoned, and they fell back to individual enterprises
in which individuals owned the various assets within those colonies.
But this did not kill off this concept. It has, during the years, resurfaced from
time to time. First in other colonial efforts,
but more memorable were the utopian efforts in the nineteenth century. In those cases, they seem to be reactive attempts
to resolve various private or individual exploitive conditions that groups
organized to address.
These examples had limited
effects on the economy or the social makeup of Americans since the bulk of these
experimental efforts was isolated communities that eventually dissolved or
transformed into more common arrangements.
Their ultimate failure was due mostly to their inability to ensure its
members – in sufficient numbers – to meet their responsibilities in providing
needed services or goods. So, until the
1930s, collectivism, as a coherent mode of organizing, had little influence on
the social/economic conditions of American society.
But then there was the
Great Depression. With historic levels
of unemployment and loss profits, the nation was primed to seek public policy
to meet the emergency. In response, the
federal government, under the stewardship of the Franklin Roosevelt
administration, introduced large doses of collectivist policies which are summarily
known as the New Deal.
Those policies can be
characterized as being aimed at relief (providing needed essentials to
unemployed workers), recovery (increasing gross demand), and reform (changing
systemic arrangements within the economy, e.g., the establishment of Social
Security). A lot of these policies were
experimental in nature and some survived their initial enactments, some did
not. Consequently, to this date, the
nation has collectivist policies in effect.
But this initiation in
collectivism, as an idea, did not begin with the New Deal, there was actually a
vibrant social advocacy for such policies stemming back to the years after the
Civil War. Mostly through a strain of
Progressivism – and some Progressive experimentation through the
administrations of Theodore Roosevelt, Howard Taft, and Woodrow Wilson – a good
deal of theorizing preceded what would later find expression in the New Deal. Different schools of progressive thought
emanated from that time period.
One school that had a particular
influence on the Theodore Roosevelt administration under the advisement of such
thinkers as Herbert Croly, milder forms of collectivism did make their way to
actual policies. The general aim of the
progressives under TR’s leadership was to avoid giving up industrialization
while taking into account the interests of the working class.
A book of that time that
had a bit of collectivist input was the novel, Looking Backward, by Edward
Bellamy which promoted a fairly collectivist view of an ideal society with a
military style social/economic arrangement.
While being a best seller of that time – and still read for its historical
value – it had little effect on actual policy.
While the Progressive policies
and those they suggested did influence the New Deal policy makers, their
overall immediate effect was limited in terms of their collectivist attributes
or in terms of their duration. The
nation, during the 1920s, entered a highly laissez faire – i.e., individualistic
– period under the administrations of Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and
Herbert Hoover. But before leaving the
TR-to-Wilson period, Elazar judges that Croly’s ideas did have their effect on various
developments that the New Deal was to institute some years later.
Summarily, Elazar writes,
This is not to say that the
New Deal was itself collectivist. It was
far too unsystematic for that, and it is unlikely that Franklin D. Roosevelt
wished to foster a collectivist America, but among those around him there were
people who saw in collectivism – democratic collectivism to be sure – the only
solution to the problems facing the country.
Capitalizing on the moralistic strain in American society which
periodically encourages Americans to try to impose single standards of
behavior, even in delicate areas, upon the American public, they and their
heirs have succeeded in the intervening decades in creating a substantial
collectivist thrust within the body politic.
Needless to say, it is not known by that name. Sinclair Lewis once said that fascism [a
right-wing collectivist-political arrangement] could only come to the United
States in the name of liberty. So too,
with collectivism.[2]
This last note reminds this
blogger of what the insurgents yelled as they stormed the Capitol last January
6. One can upon reflection see as with
these insurgents, that extreme individualism can and has led to collectivist movements,
sometimes as a remedy to extreme individualism and at other times as an
expression of it.
Currently the nexus seems
to fall on identity politics; back in the thirties it was economic deprivation. And as in any continuum, this ideation of the
relationship between the individual and the government leads to the next level,
corporatism. This blog will focus on corporatism
in its next posting.
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