[This posting picks up
where the last one ended. It was posted on
March 11 and if you have not read it, I suggest you do. In that posting, I laid out a basic
historical shift that was taking place in both Britain and the US. As result of that change, the growing
commercial and industrial class was growing and beginning to make claims on the
political system. They latched on to the
ideas of John Locke who glorified the productive efforts of this class. In doing so, their argument undermined, here
in the US, the republican/federalist perspective that by all accounts was
dominant in the early years of the eighteenth century but that lost influence
due to the economic successes of the commercial and industrial sector. The postings, this one and the last entry,
reflect the arguments of Isaac Kramnick.[1] Let me continue …]
I contend that the
over century-old bias toward communal perspectives that characterized
federalist thinking of pre-Revolutionary Americans was not going to go away so
simply. And here I believe, lurking in
the backdrop of our social thinking, we have a definite split between our
espoused theory and our theory-in-use.
Our espoused theory would continue to be one supportive of civic
humanism, but more and more of our behavior would take on the actions of
self-interest to the exclusion of acting to advance the common good. To a historical point in time, not until
after World War II, we continued to feel guilt associated with such behaviors
that disregarded the common good. Today,
there is little to no such remorse and shame seems to have become a remnant of
the past.
Let me describe these
radicals, the disciples of Locke, a bit more.
I mentioned the new radicals (and their radicalism) that sprang up during
those years in the late 1700s and took on the fight to wrest away the inherited
privileges of the nobility in Britain (or as they might have been referred to
as the “no ability” – a Thomas Paine term).
These radicals wanted “in;” that is, they wanted their seats at the
tables of power, both economically and politically. The one galvanizing issue that brought this
struggle in focus was the fight for equal representation in Parliament. The phraseology used in their debates
mirrored Locke’s language as it appeared in his The Second Treatise on Civil Government. Let’s pick up Kramnick’s description:
Even
more important than this textual linkage between Locke and the reformers,
however, is the far deeper theoretical bond the reformers constructed between
themselves and such Lockean themes as contract, state of nature, and natural
rights and government as a trust in all of their writing on taxation and
representation.[2]
What seemed to be welling
up among the radicals was an indignant attitude in which they felt they were
being deprived of what was theirs. And
that reform needed to be comprehensive, including overturning institutionalized
practices – hence the title radicals for these advocates.
In the US, as I
indicated in my last posting, the mix was a bit different. I mentioned the yeoman farmers. Those farmers functioned in the style conducive
to capitalist processes; they established commercial connections; they believed
[a]lthough
agriculture was a morally superior pursuit, its superiority did not lie in any
more virtuous, precapitalist ideal.
Commerce had less value only insofar as it drained away resources: “To foster every, or any other employment of
capital at the expense of agriculture – by diminishing the savings of the
farmer and forcing him to maintain the manufacturer – or by tempting the
capitalist from agriculture into manufacture, is plainly contrary to our most
undoubted policy.”[3]
The yeoman’s moral
concern was the perceived dependency of the commercial and industrialist
classes on the farmer. This was an
analogous argument of the country faction abusing the town faction in Britain.
This sense of promoting self-interest found sympathetic ears here in America
among these yeoman farmers and the
business interests in the city. So, in
the late eighteenth-century in the US, there was a link to British reform
reflecting socioeconomic changes. This
link was not available to republican motivated advocates.
But there is still one
last overlap between the republican-federalist advocates and natural rights
advocates. And this, I think, is important
to keep in mind because on the one hand it provides the language of many of the
arguments that have been expressed in our political debates since the late
eighteenth century and on the other hand has highlighted the moral perspectives
of those earlier advocates of the natural rights perspective.
Locke couches his
argument in nearly religious language as do those who favor the civic humanist
view. But the language changes from one
of equality of consent to an inequality of favoritism. He points out that God has created us with
the abilities to be industrious and rational, but that those gifts are not
evenly distributed. Some people are just
more industrious – more energetic – and therefore they will end up with more
property. He writes in an accusatorial
tone about those who are not so blessed, which is a bit illogical. They should
not acquire or, as is the case during those years, inherit property. He describes them as “the fancy or the
covetousness of the quarrelsome and contentious.”
Property is central
here – he argues that property is an extension of a person. Property reflects the person infusing
him/herself into nature. And who were
these quarrelsome and contentious lowlifes?
Why, some country squires and all of the poor.[4] In general, Kramnick tells us that Locke
expressed little sympathy or empathy for the poor; one questions how
knowledgeable he was of their challenges.
Let me end with this
summary of Locke’s argument. A corrupt
system is one in which unproductive people, privileged parasites, hold
positions of power. The radicals took up
Locke’s ideas and language to exert political activity to advance their
interests. These interests were based
mostly on their business activities, that of yeoman farmers, tradesmen, and
industrialists. They directed their vehemence
toward patronage and other privileges of the favored, entrenched powerholders. And so, Kramnick contends that the
republican/federalist concerns for the common good were replaced in the minds
of Americans with economic productivity and a morality of hard work. Who was the moral person? To answer, one needed only to apply the
criteria of hard work and productivity.
I guess the criterion of success was also applied. We even see these themes in children’s
literature beginning to appear during that time. One more quote from Kramnick’s article:
Hence,
not just Adam Smith but a chorus of writers in the last decades of the
eighteenth century sang the praises of specialization and the division of
labor. The very heart of civic humanism
was repudiated and its values reversed by the radical middle-class crusade to
professionalize and specialize, to replace what it saw as corrupt political man
with virtuous and productive economic man.[5]
That’s
Kramnick’s argument; I, for the most part, disagree.
[1]
Kramnick,
I. (1992). John Locke and liberal
constitutionalism. In K. L. Hall (Ed.)
Major problems in American constitutional history, Volume I: The colonial era through reconstruction (pp.
97-114). Lexington, MA: D. C. Heath and Company.
[2] Ibid, p.
105.
[3] Ibid., p. 107.
[4] According to
Kramnick, Locke suggested “working schools” for the children of the poor where
they would be taken from their parents and put to spinning and knitting to cure
their idleness. The profits gained from
these learning experiences would pay for the costs of maintaining those
“schools.”
[5] Op cit.,
Kramnick, 112-113.
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