A PROVERBIAL AMERICAN TENSION

I have from time to time in this blog used the expression: the freedom to do what one should do, not necessarily what one wants to do. I have further associated this expression with the vision of liberty promoted by federalist thought – at least as an ideal for which federalists strive. I have also made the claim that the founding generation of our political system – those patriots we recognize as starting our republic – were swayed, more so than by any other construct, by federalist thought. Therefore, one can readily assume that I see the founders believing in a severe socialization of youth in which they are taught that the good of the community trumps the good of the individual. By so doing, we can solve the Rousseauean problem: “… we no longer have citizens.”¹ Or stated another way, the founders argued: we should all conduct our lives in such a way that we place the interests of the community above our own. That is what it means to “do what we should do ...”.

The nation, during its Puritanical beginnings and for many years thereafter, placed this kind of burden on individuals. The earliest settlers might not have taken this notion as far as Rousseau did, but religiously stern discipline characterized many of the expectations of those New England settlers. In this blog, I have traced the history of how the harsh initial conditions of the frontier demanded this kind of discipline to assure the very survival of the early settlements. But naturally, as those conditions softened, the rationale for such a view became ever more difficult to maintain. Slowly, the more hospitable environment – caused in no small measure by the discipline exerted by the earlier Americans – led to political and social perspectives that liberalized our laws, customs, mores, and ethos. In addition, writers other than Rousseau, such as John Stuart Mill and John Locke, presented arguments that individuals are entitled to rights and that the community cannot and should not impose burdens on individuals that transgress those rights. These rights are provided by nature.

Since prior postings have spelled out this development, my purpose here is to merely remind you of this overall evolution and to point out that by the time of the founders of our present republic, there was still a very strong sense of societal duty and obligation, but that this sense had been somewhat compromised – how compromised is up to interpretation and debate. Read what a current scholar believes about the state of mind most founders were in by the late eighteenth century:

[The Federalist – collection of essays promoting the newly written constitution of 1787] presumed … that man is selfish and his politics factious. Moreover, stability of the regime is assured only through “mechanical devices” aimed at pitting “ambition against ambition” within government and faction against faction in society. …

It can no longer be taken for granted, however, that the American constitutional founders – even the authors of The Federalist – can be described as Lockean liberals. … I will argue that the revisionists were right in asserting that the constitutional founders were more civic-minded, more concerned about the dispositions of citizens to undertake public duties, than the “possessive individualist” … I reject what I see as a tendency in the revisionist literature [though] to assume that where civic virtue is discussed – and practiced – liberalism must be absent.²

In other words, it is hard to peg the founders on a continuum from republicanism – with a commitment to civic duty – and liberalism – with a commitment to individual interests. My take is that the difficulty lies in the nature of the transition the nation was only beginning to experience at that time and is still progressing today.³

One thing we should not forget when considering the founders is that they saw themselves creating a layered polity. A problem they were trying to solve was how do you get citizens to take on the burdens of obligations and duties without the resulting regime being oppressive. How do you, at the same time, maintain within each of us the ambition to help build that great nation with a vibrant economy that not only provides a better material life, but provides the resources to make the nation strong in relation to other nations? How do you create the conditions that would lead to a foreign policy sufficiently vibrant to protect our national interests? The national layer of the polity was to set the political infrastructure by which such a posture could be created. It would set about a governmental framework to allow this more ambitious agenda by allowing people, at least as far as the national government was concerned, to advance their individual goals and aims. It would create those conditions that would allow a national market with a free trading zone to be established and unleash the natural ambitions of Americans to not only prosper on the Atlantic seaboard, but to conquer a continent chock full of resources. With these aims eventually accomplished, they believed that prominence, power, and wealth would naturally follow. Allegiance to this more grandiose government would be based on its protection of individual rights by first limiting its powers to those delegated in the national compact and later by adding a set of rights spelled out in the Bill of Rights. On the other hand, as far as promoting what Richard C. Sinopoli calls “a sentiment of allegiance,” the local government, under the auspices of the state governments, would take the lead in this more communal ambition.

Why? Because the national government was, in the eyes of the founders, probably too big and represented too many diverse interests to be able to engender the attachment and allegiance upon which civic virtue depends. Smaller entities, like the states, with more limited populations, interests, and diversity can engender those bonds of attachment the founders believed essential. Of course, what exactly was viewed as deserving allegiance would be, from state to state, very different and, of course, in one area this diversity almost led to the union dissolving. As it was, it led to a bloody civil war.

Where are we today given this tension between the interests of the individual and the interests of the community? A lot of politics today is an expression of this tension. If anything, the alternative views between the two are being expressed with more intensity than what had been the case some thirty years ago. The presidency of Ronald Reagan gave a shot in the arm to those views promoting the individualist side of the debate. Recently, those who champion the duty and obligation side have had some successes. For example, the passing of the Affordable Health Care Act has been interpreted by many as the society taking on the responsibility of providing health insurance to many who can't afford it. This provision, in turn, is viewed as a program that will lead to a healthier nation and, as such, promotes the common good. The final outcome of Obamacare will go a long way in defining where we are: are we tilting toward the “me” or are we tilting toward the “us”? Are we finding morality under a doctrine of individual determination or under a doctrine of societal welfare calculation?

1Quoted in Sinopoli, R. C. (1992). The foundations of American citizenship: Liberalism, the constitution, and civic virtue. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, p. 3.

2Sinopoli, R. C. (1992). The foundations of American citizenship: Liberalism, the constitution, and civic virtue. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, pp. 4-5.

3In terms of the prominent views of those in the political class between the writing of the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution, I am partial to the description provided to us by Gordon S. Wood. See Wood, G. S. (1998). The creation of the American republic 1776-1787. New York: W. W. Norton and Company. This seminal work was originally published in 1969.

LOOKING AT POWER RELATIONS

Back in the early fifties, a political scientist, Floyd Hunter,¹ came out with an influential study on power and power relations in a local community. The volume presenting the study is entitled Community Power Structure: A Study of Decision Makers. Such a study has to, early on, define the concept, power. In this blog, I have used the definition for power as that social factor in which one party can get another party to do something he/she would not do otherwise. Here's Hunter's definition: “[p]ower is a word that will be used to describe the acts of men [and women] going about the business of moving other men [and/or women] to act in relation to themselves or in relation to organic or inorganic things.”² I judge Hunter's definition to be in agreement with how I use the term. So, his study is a view of a local community he names Regional City and how the power relations of that community are structured.

While his study is about the structure of power relations, he readily admits in his introduction that there are other factors, beyond structure, that can influence the nature of those relations. Including structure, he identifies four factor categories. These categories are elements of social life in a community that can and usually do influence how power relations operate and function within that community. In his study, he is focusing on only one of the factors directly. The other three are designated as “residual elements” and he admits that while influential, they would fall outside the scope of his study. The other three are historical reference, psychological motivation, and values, morals, and ethical considerations. By identifying these factor categories, Hunter provides civics educators a helpful set of topics that, if used, can provide a conceptual framework by which to attack this whole area of concern: community power relations.

This posting will give a short description of each element and comment on how they might be addressed in civics lessons. First let's look at historical reference. Here, the claim is that what has been discussed and written in the past about power will have an influence on how power is used and how people will form their expectations regarding power. The list of writers who have addressed the meaning and uses of power includes a who's who of political thinkers. They include Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Machiavelli, Marx, and many others. Just to cite one of these, look at the influence Marx had, on a global basis, during the twentieth century. And this influence was not limited to national political debates, but filtered all the way down to the local affairs of those nations that fell under communist rule. Another angle to the historical factor has to do with how a particular area has developed or failed to develop from traditional societal conditions to modern and post modern conditions. This development has a lot to do with who has power. Historical development is the context in which power positions are created and the definitions of legitimacy are formulated. All of this is relevant to how power is defined, used, and abused.

In a civics class, the historical context should always be addressed. Even if the main aim of a lesson is not the history of a relation, students need to know how an event or set of events fits, at least on some minimum level, within its historical time. In so doing, an educator should seek out those historical stories that provide the human touch that can liven up what is being addressed. Often, in order to make what is being studied understandable to young students, real stories can provide meaning that an abstract presentation cannot. Let me use an example from my own education on power relations. I, like any American student, read about the “Know Nothing” movement in the US. This movement was an attempt to “purify” American culture and politics from any foreign influence, particularly from the onslaught of Irish immigrants and their Catholicism. Textbook descriptions of the movement never really caused in me much of a response. But when I saw the feature film, Gangs of New York, I understood many of the nuances involved in the power relations associated with the “Know Nothing” movement. That vividness not only provides useful information, but stirs the senses needed to be able to get the whole meaning of how power in a city like New York has been affected by the history of such a time. Even today, the roots, beliefs, traditions, and other aspects of the power relations that were established over a hundred years earlier still have meaning in that city.

The second power factor identified by Hunter is psychological motivation. Once the parties of a relation are made known, knowing what psychological factors affect them becomes a very useful thing to determine. Knowing what psychological motives such as ambition, greed, loyalty, fear, respect, and the like are in play is useful to ascertain whether one is actually engaged in a power relation with someone else or is studying a power relation. To accurately determine what psychologically motivates the subjects of a relation will go a long way in predicting power moves in the future or gaining understanding as to why a person or group acted in a particular way in any given power interaction. Of course, to know what motivates a person or group is hard to determine. We, at times, have a hard time figuring out why we act the way we do, much less why someone else acts as he or she does. But the effort is not only helpful in understanding a given situation, but it gives insight as to the nature of human behavior in general. The need for this type of knowledge is self-evident, but to actually determine motivations can be a very daunting task.

Of course, we don't expect civics students at the secondary level to be knowledgeable enough about psychology in order to determine what the motivations of people are, but asking about why people act as they do is a natural line of questioning. Students engage in such questioning all the time: why did my girl/boyfriend storm off; why did mom insist I wear this dorky outfit; why did Mr. X pile on such an assignment just before vacation? The aim here would be to get students to understand that motivations are varied and oftentimes not obvious or direct. As I stated above, even the person under our analysis might not know his or her own true motivation.

The third power factor Hunter mentions is values, morals, and ethical considerations. Somewhat related to motivations, the values factor has to do with what people consider to be moral or good or, by implication, what is evil or bad. When talking about politics, politicians, and even businesspeople, we often think that such considerations don't come into play. This is not true. How people see the ethical considerations of a situation, especially when the exertion of power is involved, can and do affect how they behave even if what's under consideration is the implementation of a power advantage. Most people attempt to be “good” when they deal with others. The challenges appear when the consequences become highly rewarding or highly costly. The consequences might affect them directly or might affect a loved one or an enemy or someone who can provide him or her an advantage or disadvantage. The real world can become complicated. It is quite an advantage for students to think of these things in the safe confines of a secondary classroom. It is beneficial if they have to think through dilemmas that reflect these complications before they might appear in real life.

The final power factor is structure. This is the most straightforward of the factors and one with which a student would do best to start. Here the aim is to identify the parties involved in a power relation, how the relation is organized in formal and informal ways, and how the relation is situated within larger organization(s). For students, while this type of information is essential and informative, it is, compared to the other above concerns, the most easily determined. Yes, some structures are hidden, usually intentionally for some advantage by those involved, but eventually such information becomes known by journalists and other interested observers. How a person or group is structured gives one hints as to those historical references, psychological motivations, and value considerations that are at work in determining or influencing how a power relation will function. So, as I indicated, this factor is probably the best place to start when one is beginning to study a power relation.

1Hunter, F. (1953). Community Power Structure: A Study of Decision Makers. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press.

2Ibid., pp. 2-3.