On my last post, [1] I concluded that nations are born and built on notions of liberty—which begs a fundamental, philosophical question: what is liberty for, and how does it arise among a people? In the American experience, the early colonists knew that conflict is inevitable in any society, so they created a system of liberty, with limits and constraints, on the exercise of their “liberties.” Their solution to the problem? Build fences. The more, the better. Good fences, in their view, make good neighbors. Good neighbors cooperate to mend fences. To mend fences is a task of cooperation and coordination of tasks. Rather than involve battalions of laborers, a small squad of people is all that is necessary to complete the job. Adjoining neighbors to the fence, pool from their own “platoons” to complete the mission of mending a broken fence. These “platoons” have distinct missions to assist the larger society in both breaking down barriers and mending fences. The tragic historical circumstance of a failure to mend fences was the American Civil War. It also divided families—brother against brother, father against son, fathers-in-law against sons-in-law. The divided families ultimately reconciled, but so did the nation. After a brief treatment of American reconstruction, I will discuss new developments in postwar society that have endured to this day. This is not a story of wars, generals, and captains of industry; but rather the squads, or little platoons, that are essential and a priori to the great events of history, which I shall discuss below.
[1] See my previous post NORTH AMERICA: A TALE OF TWO PROGRESSES, in which progress “played out” in two different ways, based on historical exigencies and philosophical assumptions of two nations—the United States and Canada.
RECONSTRUCTION AND RENEWAL
After the American Civil War ended in 1865, the economy resumed pre-war growth rates. Despite a long period of Reconstruction lasting until 1877, and brief depressions occurring in 1873 and 1893, America’s growth continued apace until 1900 as industrial output outstripped the next two largest economies combined, Germany and Great Britain. By 1913, on the eve of World War I, the U.S. was producing 36 percent of the world’s industrial output. In fueling this growth was a burgeoning population consisting of natural increase and large waves of newly arriving immigrants from southern and eastern Europe, and from the Pacific Rim of East Asia, notably China and Japan.
The last 35 years of the nineteenth century witnessed the rise of new empires, i.e., Germany, Italy, and Japan; rapid industrialization through new inventions and technologies; and the opening of new markets and new sources for raw materials—all propelled by new energy sources—would eventually draw all Europe and the industrialized nations into the sanguinary tragedy of the First World War.
This was also an age of increasing skepticism in matters of religious and moral significance, obscured through such aphorisms as the “God is dead” mantra, associated with Friedrich Nietzsche; exploration of the dark corridors of the mind by Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic suggestions; Social Darwinism’s survival of the fittest by the law of natural selection; and a new science of eugenics that tapped Darwinian disciples’ conclusory consequences for the justification of seizing lands and dividing spoils among the imperial powers.
Innovations in communications, such as the telephone, motion pictures, and the wireless, and new methods of distributing content, such as through the tabloids, the feuilleton, and comic books, brought America and the West into a new age of culture. The new cult was neither political nor religious, but a cult of celebrities and gossip, fads and crazes, with newspaper columnists and sensationalistic publications feeding the frenzy. Instead of much ‘hard news’, the new journalism devoted its scribblings to intrusively reporting on the intimate personal lives of well-known entertainers, politicians, and captains of industry. The pervasiveness of such “tell-all” tidbits brought disrepute on the entire news industry, with the call to simmer down and leave people alone. A recognition was developing of the sanctum of an inner life to be protected and to be codified in law.
THE RIGHT TO PRIVACY
What is the nature of this sanctum of an inner life that is to be guarded against such unholy intrusion? It was clearly a phenomenon that was real and growing, imposing itself on an unwilling public without their consent. In December 1890, a relatively short law review article was published, giving a name to this phenomenon. A then relatively unknown law professor by the name of Louis Brandeis called for a new right to be recognized in law. In an article entitled The Right to Privacy, Professor Brandeis proposed this new right—which he defined as a right “to be left alone.” Brandeis defined privacy as “an individual possessing full protection in person and in property.” The concept of property not only protected tangible property but also to ‘intangibles,’ consisting of protection against injury or damage to one’s good name and reputation. A right to privacy would provide redress and remedies in a standing to sue for the purpose of being made whole again, i.e., having one’s reputation restored.
Meanwhile, the press kept expanding its scope to expose the private writings, journals, and conversations that increasingly violated the right to be left alone. Removed from this window were journalistic violations of societal standards for propriety and “decency” for public discourse. It was widely believed that such “yellow journalism” does not contribute to an informed citizenry, but occupies the indolent. Protection of personal writings and any other productions of the intellect or the emotions, which according to an individual’s stated intention ought to remain inviolate from public exposure, constitutes the essence of a right to privacy.
If the writing covers a matter of public or general interest, the right to privacy cannot be invoked to prohibit its publication. But in matters concerning the private life, habits, acts, and relations of an individual, which have no legitimate connection with his fitness for a public office, and have no legitimate relation to or bearing upon any act done by him in a public capacity, a right to privacy may be carved out as privileged communication, not intended for public consumption.
What was initially suggested as a modest proposal for preventing officious scandalmongers from burdening the peaceable enjoyment of the lifestyles of the well-connected and well-heeled, soon begot a plethora of rights—both invented and discovered—by judges, legal scholars, and political activists. Although several unenumerated human “protections” are mentioned in the Bill of Rights, there exists no general right to privacy, expressed as such. Additional specific rights to privacy are already given substantial treatment in the seventeen amendments passed subsequently to the U.S. Constitution’s first ten Amendments. But beyond the text of the Constitution, the progressive movement would litigate into existence a body of law that found rights hidden in “penumbras and emanations,” creating “zones of privacy.” [2] Litigating rights to privacy would come into conflict with ordered liberty, especially on matters relating to the cornerstone little platoon [3] of American society—the family. Meanwhile, progressives began mining the constitution to uncover individual rights based on identity, grievance, and the binary Marxist cult of oppressor/victimhood.
[2] Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1965)
[3] see Burke, Edmund, Reflections on the Revolution in France, with his meditations on associations fundamental to human flourishing, such as the “little platoons”—family, church, and local community—that orient man toward virtues, such as temperance and fortitude, in order to live justly.
THE LITTLE PLATOONS
Rather than focusing on the long march of progressives capturing the institutions, I want to take you upstream to the sources of human flourishing, laying bare the early formation of human capital. From the little platoons of society – family, church, community – individuals learn to contribute to their respective platoon. They learn to cooperate in joint endeavors with other platoons, in which they are given greater roles and responsibilities for the larger whole. As the little platoons cooperate in community endeavors, they effloresce, that is, they flourish in ways that cannot be given by the generosity of the state but by the hands of helping neighbors. Through the practice of assisting neighbors in need, they are building important human infrastructure, that is, building up human capital.
HUMAN CAPITAL
Human capital is one of the key factors in what social historians refer to as human progress, whilst other thinkers, such as Christian philosophers and theologians, refer to as human development. Both are concepts, as human capital is a concept. All three concepts refer to and possess what are called intangibles – items that are not tangible, i.e., cannot be “touched,” or experienced, through the senses. A concept, by definition, is a description of a phenomenon that isolates and identifies some aspect of reality that cannot be observed, but nevertheless exists. The description of a phenomenon requires assigning names to phenomenal factors, which consists of a host of terms, each with distinct meanings, and not mingled with any other term. The terminology must be couched in language in which terms are expressly and clearly defined, in words with meanings commonly understood, without the aid of any inferences, and susceptible of no other interpretation.
An example to illustrate: a heretical breakaway section of adherents from the main of a religious body and exists in tension with its host society is known as a sect. Having described sect as indicated, the word sect itself is abstract. It exists only in the mind, therefore cannot be ‘observed’. We can only observe ‘instances’ when people gather for some reason, usually worship. In such instances, having identified a sect, it does not explain anything about what they believe in and why they are viewed with hostility. When journalists state that a religious group (sect) is hated because they are a sect, this is simply a form of circular reasoning, full of sound and fury, predicating nothing.
What are the factors that constitute human capital? It is not about financial wealth, ownership of property, nor positions wielding power. The foregoing, visible manifestations of prosperity and success are the results produced from the application of intangible, a priori circumstances. They are not self-generated; something else must cause, produce, and create added value to society. That “something else” is human capital. [4]
[4] Thomas Sowell’s contribution to political economy, Wealth, Poverty and Politics, discusses how the word “environment” is misunderstood and misused by economists and sociologists. It sometimes is understood to mean activities taking place around a group; or it may be applied to the internal social milieu within a group. Some define the environment as simply all non-genetic factors in society affecting a group.
The key intangible lies in attitudes towards work itself. For some, work is vocation; for others, drudgery; for still others, as a way to attain perfection, or as a means to provide for one’s family. But most important of all is the meaning and value they experience when contributing their labor towards human progress and a more civil society. These are inner values that are not subject to seizure, confiscation, and redistribution. The key intangible, in a manner of speaking, operates and grows in the dark. It is when individuals and groups cooperate in economic and social endeavors, outside the glare of public notice, in the shrubby understory of rustling whispers. They grow rhizomatically, that is, they put shoots out horizontally, and subterraneously [in the soil, underground], underneath the glare or notice of everything above the ground in the light.
The germ that enables individuals and groups to cooperate in economic and social endeavors for mutually beneficial cooperation is trust. Trust is neither an inborn trait nor environmentally determinative. It is a process of inculcation and practice. It is, at least initially, applicable to the smallest platoons of society. It begins with the family, then diffuses beyond the family to friends and peers in communities and their institutions. As trust develops, exemplified in hundreds of encounters in honest and fair dealing, one acquires a reputation for trustworthiness. Trust without trustworthiness leads to disaster. When the radius of trust in society shrinks, dishonesty becomes more prevalent in any given society.
TRUST AS HUMAN CAPITAL
To trust your neighbor is one thing. To be trustworthy is something else. Trust limited to the tribal platoons of the family and place is not enough. In a society of multiple platoons, those platoons that acquire a reputation for trustworthiness and its kindred virtues—reliability, dependability, thoroughness, and rectitude—effloresce and flourish because of a reputation for trustworthiness that fosters cooperation and common ground towards shared goals and ends beyond tribalism. Platoons that cultivate virtue derive their strength based on respect for persons, grounded in place and time. It is by identifying with a place that one acquires an identity. Societies that have a high level of social trust will be more flexible, taking action without undue formalities, nor being slavish to procedures. They will thrive in a ‘transactional’, multipolar world.
The inherent tendency of rights-based liberalism to expand and multiply those rights against the authority of virtually all existing communities has been pushed toward its logical conclusion—the withering decomposition of trust in American society through excessive civil litigation; the decline of intermediate social structures such as fraternal organizations, neighborhood watches, religious congregations, and local historical societies; and a lack of shared values with those around them.
Litigious lawyering and administrative rule by unresponsive bureaucracies are costs, rather than net gains, to a nation’s gross domestic product annually. These ‘products’ constitute a direct tax imposed by a breakdown of trust in the society.
But all is not lost by surrendering to the ‘rights’ crowd and leviathan bureaucracy. Little platoons have a role here—a leavening role that can raise the dough. These little platoons, suffused with the virtues arising from human capital practiced over and over again, give vitality to a complex welter of intermediate institutions, including businesses, voluntary associations, schools, unions, and charities. They all, in turn, build on the family, which socializes youth into a broader culture. A strong and stable family structure cannot be legislated into existence in the same way as a government can provide health and human services for a dependent class of recipients.
The concept of human capital, widely used and understood among economists, starts from the premise that capital today is embodied less in land, factories, tools, and machines than, increasingly, in the knowledge and skills of human beings. In addition to skills and knowledge, human capital has to do with people’s ability to cooperate, which is critical to both economic life and social welfare. Cooperation depends on and requires communities of shared norms and values. Out of such shared values comes trust, and trust, as we will see, has a large and measurable economic value.
SOCIAL CAPITAL
Social capital may be more important than physical capital. The absence of social capital is that when a proclivity for community is lacking in a populace, that factor can inhibit people from exploiting economic opportunities that are available to them. The problem is a deficit of “social capital”— the ability of people to work together for common purposes in groups and organizations.
Importing migrants as policy to provide young workers for aging populations, have not solved problems of labor productivity and comparative advantage. A more diverse workforce lowers trust and creates new barriers to cooperation. Here, societies not only come to ruin through depletion of its physical capital, i.e., a general and absolute decline in labor skills and biddability from imported workers, but also its ‘social capital,’ as explained below.
The accumulation of social capital is a mysterious, cultural process. Families and churches are the only capable actors. They furnish a type of cosmic significance that gives meaning to life, even in the most humdrum of circumstances. Governments are more likely to do more harm than good, enacting policies that deplete social capital, for they are not concerned with the most intimate and salient issues that matter in the race of life.
NATIONAL SOVEREIGNTY? INTERNATIONAL RULES?
Nations are recognizing that their national economies have lost sovereignty in an interlocking collection of nodes in flows of finance in a vast global economy. The increasingly interlocking economies have not hastened just the flow of money, but also the flow of information through social media. This is more of a revolution than capital flows. First-world nations, esp. in Europe, long the champion of liberal values of universal and equal rights, are experiencing an upsurge in dissension to those very values for civilizational values of tradition, sovereignty, and newfound human agency expressed in populist movements. Free expression, rather than free markets, is the new watchword for the age.
The world’s advanced countries are looking for an alternative model of political and economic organization other than democratic capitalism as the summit of human aspiration.
Sovereignty modeled on democracy and free trade consumerism does not necessarily equate to human happiness. Nor does the welfare state equate to happiness. Operating under such limitations, the highest ambition of most governments is to do no harm, by ensuring that national economic policy serves citizens with well-paying jobs through energetic administration of a state that has an economy serving Main Street, rather than the byzantine and often mystery rulemaking that constitutes the contemporary rules-based international order.
A nation’s economic strength depends on its social unity—and America is at risk for losing both—unless it goes Hamiltonian, anti-free trade, protectionism, tariffs for the entire nation, production over consumption, main street over wall street—and the ending of outsourcing critical industries, infrastructure, and supply chains.
National cultures have underlying values that foster social and economic prosperity. We cannot divorce economic life from cultural life. To foster a sense of national purpose, expressed in solidarity, a nation’s political and economic institutions depend on a healthy, functioning civil society. A thriving civil society depends on a people’s habits, customs, and ethics – attributes that can be shaped only indirectly through conscious political action. It must otherwise be nourished through an increased awareness and respect for culture. Not all cultures will follow the western model based on individuals and their “rights.” For example, Asians point to superior aspects of their own cultural inheritance, such as deference to authority, emphasis on education, and the centrality of family bonds in a hierarchy of values, as sources of social vitality.
Economic activity represents a crucial part of social life and by a wide variety of norms, moral obligations, and habits that together shape the society. Economic life is a nation’s well-being, conditioned by a single, pervasive cultural characteristic.
COMMUNITIES OF CULTURE
The economy is not a facet of life with its own laws, separate from the rest of society. Rather, the economy is a realm where people, in limited circumstances and time, meet to bargain and exchange, nothing more. People live their lives socially, not economically.
Workers feel connected with their work, not with peers. They are not farmers who till the soil; they are the soil. It is an existential question with what they do, not with social criteria such as fitting in.
Community is cultural in that it is commonly grounded on certain assumptions—stated and unstated—about what it means to be an American, a German, a Russian, etc. Finding common ground is necessary but not sufficient to a flourishing society. Out of common ground begins as assessment of interests that are hierarchical in nature, which need to be integrated based on belief in a common good and shared history. It is formed not on the basis of explicit rules and regulations, but out of a set of ethical habits and reciprocal moral obligations internalized by each of the community’s members.
Public institutions and the private economy must have as their basis cultural habits that ensure the proper functioning of law, contract, and economic rationality. These cultural habits provide for both stability and prosperity. Such habits consist of reciprocity, moral obligation, duty toward community, and trust, which are based on inculcation and the practice of virtue, rather than rational calculation. Virtue ethics, as exemplified in institutions that derive their legitimacy from the thousands of platoons entering the public arena, are not anachronisms in a modern society but absolutely necessary for success, prosperity, and human happiness.