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... ended to obtain education and to participate in community matters. Put differently, when one is hungry - one is less prone to read Mr. Lasch, less inclined to think about civil rights, let alone exercise them. Mr. Lasch is authoritarian and patronizing, even when he is strongly trying to convince us otherwise.
The use of the phrase: "far in excess of their needs" rings of destructive envy. Worse, it rings of a dictatorship, a negation of individualism, a restriction of civil liberties, an infringement on human rights, anti-liberalism at its worst. Who is to decide what is wealth, how much of it constitutes excess, how much is "far in excess" and, above all, what are the needs of the person deemed to be in excess? Which state commissariat will do the job? Would Mr. Lasch have volunteered to phrase the guidelines and if so, which criteria would he have applied?
Eighty percent (80 %) of the population of the world would have considered Mr. Lasch's wealth to be far in excess of his needs. Mr. Lasch is prone to inaccuracies. Read Alexis de Tocqueville (1835): "I know of no country where the love of money has taken stronger hold on the affections of men and where a profounder contempt is expressed for the theory of the permanent equality of property...
the passions that agitate the Americans most deeply are not their political but their commercial passions They prefer the good sense which amasses large fortunes to that enterprising genius which frequently dissipates them. " In his book: "The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy" (published posthumously in 1995) Lasch bemoans a divided society, a degraded public discourse, a social and political crisis, that is really a spiritual crisis. The book's title is modeled after Jose Ortega y Gasset's "Revolt of the Masses" in which he described the forthcoming political domination of the masses as a major cultural catastrophe. The old ruling elites were the storehouses of all that's good, including all civic virtues, he explained. The masses - warned Ortega y Gasset, prophetically - will act directly and even outside the law in what he called a hyper democracy. They will impose themselves on the other classes. The masses harbored a feeling of omnipotence: they had unlimited rights, history was on their side (they were "the spoiled child of human history" in his language), they were exempt from submission to superiors because they regarded themselves as the source of all authority.
They faced an unlimited horizon of possibilities and they were entitled to everything at any time. Their whims, wishes and desires constituted the new law of the earth. Lasch just ingeniously reversed the argument. The same characteristics, he said, are to be found in today's elites, "those who control the international flow of money and information, preside over philanthropic foundations and institutions of higher learning, manage the instruments of cultural production and thus set the terms of public debate." But they are self appointed, they represent none but themselves. The lower middle classes were much more conservative and stable than their "self appointed spokesmen and would-be liberators." They know the limits and that there are limits, they have sound political instincts: "favor limits on abortion, cling to the two-parent family as a source of stability in a turbulent world, resist experiments with 'alternative lifestyles', and harbor deep reservations about affirmative action and other ventures in large- scale social engineering. " And who purports to represent them? The mysterious "elite" which, as we find out, is nothing but a code word for the likes of Lasch.
In Lasch's world Armageddon is unleashed between the people and this specific elite. What about the political, military, industrial, business and other elites? You. What about conservative intellectuals who support what the middle classes do and "have deep reservations about affirmative action" (to quote him)?
Aren't they part of the elite? No answer. So why call it "elite" and not "liberal intellectuals"? A matter of (lack) of integrity.
The members of this fake elite are hypochondriacs, obsessed with death, narcissistic and weaklings. A scientific description based on thorough research, no doubt. Even if such a horror-movie elite did exist - what would have been its role? Did he suggest an elite-less pluralistic, modern, technology-driven, essentially (for better or for worse) capitalistic democratic society?
Others have dealt with this question seriously and sincerely: Arnold, T. S. Elliot ("Notes towards the Definition of Culture"). Reading Lasch is an absolute waste of time when compared to their studies.
The man is so devoid of self-awareness (no pun intended) that he calls himself "a stern critic of nostalgia." If there is one word with which it is possible to summarize his life's work it is nostalgia (to a world which never existed: a world of national and local loyalties, almost no materialism, savage nobleness, communal responsibility for the Other). In short, to an Utopia compared to the dystopia that is America. The pursuit of a career and of specialized, narrow, expertise, he called a "cult" and "the antithesis of democracy." Yet, he was a member of the "elite" which he so chastised and the publication of his tirades enlisted the work of hundreds of careerists and experts. He extolled self-reliance - but ignored the fact that it was often employed in the service of wealth formation and material accumulation. Were there two kinds of self-reliance - one to be condemned because of its results? Was there any human activity devoid of a dimension of wealth creation?
Therefore, are all human activities (except those required for survival) to cease? Lasch identified emerging elites of professionals and managers, a cognitive elite, manipulators of symbols, a threat to "real" democracy. Reich described them as trafficking in information, manipulating words and numbers for a living. They live in an abstract world in which information and expertise are valuable commodities in an international market. No wonder the privileged classes are more interested in the fate of the global system than in their neighborhood, country, or region. They are estranged, they "remove themselves from common life." They are heavily invested in social mobility.
The new meritocracy made professional advancement and the freedom to make money "the overriding goal of social policy." They are fixated on finding opportunities and they democratize competence. This, said Lasch, betrayed the American dream! ? : "The reign of specialized expertise is the antithesis of democracy as it was understood by those who saw this country as 'The last best hope of Earth'. " For Lasch citizenship did not mean equal access to economic competition. It meant a shared participation in a common political dialogue (in a common life). The goal of escaping the "laboring classes" was deplorable. The real aim should be to ground the values and institutions of democracy in the inventiveness, industry, self-reliance and self-respect of workers. The "talking classes" brought the public discourse into decline.
Instead of intelligently debating issues, they engaged in ideological battles, dogmatic quarrels, name-calling. The debate grew less public, more esoteric and insular. There are no "third places", civic institutions which "promote general conversation across class lines." So, social classes are forced to "speak to themselves in a dialect... inaccessible to outsiders." The media establishment is more committed to "a misguided ideal of objectivity" than to context and continuity, which underlie any meaningful public discourse.
The spiritual crisis was another matter altogether. This was simply the result of over-secularization. The secular worldview is devoid of doubts and insecurities, explained Lasch. Thus, single-handedly, he eliminated modern science, which is driven by constant doubts, insecurities and questioning and by an utter lack of respect for authority, transcendental as it may be. With amazing gall, Lasch says that it was religion which provided a home for spiritual uncertainties! ! ! Religion - writes Lasch - was a source of higher meaning, a repository of practical moral wisdom.
Minor matters such as the suspension of curiosity, doubt and disbelief entailed by religious practice and the blood-saturated history of all religions - these are not mentioned. Why spoil a good argument? The new elites disdain religion and are hostile to it: "The culture of criticism is understood to rule out religious commitments... (religion) was something useful for weddings and funerals but otherwise dispensable. " Without the benefit of a higher ethic provided by religion (for which the price of suppression of free thought is paid - SV) - the knowledge elites resort to cynicism and revert to irreverence. "The collapse of religion, its replacement by the remorselessly critical sensibility exemplified by psychoanalysis and the degeneration of the 'analytic attitude' into an all out assault on ideals of every kind have left our culture in a sorry state. " Lasch was a fanatic religious man. He would have rejected this title with vehemence.
But he was the worst type: unable to commit himself to the practice while advocating its employment by others. If you asked him why was religion good, he would have waxed on concerning its good RESULTS. He said nothing about the inherent nature of religion, its tenets, its view of Mankind's destiny, or anything else of substance. Lasch was a social engineer of the derided Marxist type: if it works, if it molds the masses, if it keeps them "in limits", subservient - use it. Religion worked wonders in this respect. But Lasch himself was above his own laws - he even made it a point not to write God with a capital "G", an act of outstanding "courage." Schiller wrote about the "disenchantment of the world", the disillusionment which accompanies secularism - a real sign of true courage, according to Nietzsche.
Religion is a powerful weapon in the arsenal of those who want to make people feel good about themselves, their lives and the world, in general. Not so Lasch: "the spiritual discipline against self-righteousness is the very essence of religion... (anyone with) a proper understanding of religion (would not regard it as) a source of intellectual and emotional security (but as)... a challenge to complacency and pride. " There is no hope or consolation even in religion. It is good only for the purposes of social engineering. In this particular respect, Lasch has undergone a major transformation. In "The New Radicalism in America" (1965), he decried religion as a source of obfuscation. "The religious roots of the progressive doctrine" - he wrote - were the source of "its main weakness." These roots fostered an anti-intellectual willingness to use education "as a means of social control" rather than as a basis for enlightenment.
The solution was to blend Marxism and the analytic method of Psychoanalysis (very much as Herbert Marcuse has done - q. v. "Eros and Civilization" and "One Dimensional Man"). In an earlier work ("American Liberals and the Russian Revolution", 1962) he criticized liberalism for seeking "painless progress towards the celestial city of consumerism." He questioned the assumption that "men and women wish only to enjoy life with minimum effort." The liberal illusions about the Revolution were based on a theological misconception. Communism remained irresistible for "as long as they clung to the dream of an earthly paradise from which doubt was forever banished." In 1973, a mere decade later, the tone is different ("The World of Nations", 1973). The assimilation of the Mormons, he says, was "achieved by sacrificing whatever features of their doctrine or ritual were demanding or difficult... (like) the conception of a secular community organized in accordance with religious principles." The wheel turned a full cycle in 1991 ("The True and Only Heaven: Progress and its Critics"). The petite bourgeois at least are "unlikely to mistake the promised land of progress for the true and only heaven." In "Heaven in a Heartless world" (1977) Lasch criticized the "substitution of medical and psychiatric authority for the authority of parents, priests and lawgivers." The Progressives, he complained, identify social control with freedom.
It is the traditional family - not the socialist revolution - which provides the best hope to arrest "new forms of domination." There is latent strength in the family and in its "old fashioned middle class morality." Thus, the decline of the family institution meant the decline of romantic love (! ? ) and of "transcendent ideas in general", a typical Laschian leap of logic. Even art and religion ("The Culture of Narcissism", 1979), "historically the great emancipators from the prison of the Self... even sex... (lost) the power to provide an imaginative release." It was Schopenhauer who wrote that art is a liberating force, delivering us from our miserable, decrepit, dilapidated Selves and transforming our conditions of existence. Lasch - forever a melancholy - adopted this view enthusiastically. He supported the suicidal pessimism of Schopenhauer. But he was also wrong.
Never before was there an art form more liberating than the cinema, THE art of illusion. The Internet introduced a transcendental dimension into the lives of all its users. Why is it that transcendental entities must be white-bearded, paternal and authoritarian? What is less transcendental in the Global Village, in the Information Highway or, for that matter, in Steven Spielberg? The Left, thundered Lasch, had "chosen the wrong side in the cultural warfare between 'Middle America' and the educated or half educated classes, which have absorbed avant-garde ideas only to put them at the service of consumer capitalism." In "The Minimal Self" (1984) the insights of traditional religion remained vital as opposed to the waning moral and intellectual authority of Marx, Freud and the like. The meaningfulness of mere survival is questioned: "Self affirmation remains a possibility precisely to the degree that an older conception of personality, rooted in Judeo-Christian traditions, has persisted alongside a behavioral or therapeutic conception."Democratic Renewal" will be made possible through this mode of self- affirmation.
The world was rendered meaningless by experiences such as Auschwitz, a "survival ethic" was the unwelcome result. But, to Lasch, Auschwitz offered "the need for a renewal of religious faith... for collective commitment to decent social conditions... (the survivors) found strength in the revealed word of an absolute, objective and omnipotent creator... not in personal 'values' meaningful only to themselves." One can't help being fascinated by the total disregard for facts displayed by Lasch, flying in the face of logo therapy and the writings of Victor Frankel, the Auschwitz survivor. "In the history of civilization...
vindictive gods give way to gods who show mercy as well and uphold the morality of loving your enemy. Such a morality has never achieved anything like general popularity, but it lives on, even in our own, enlightened age, as a reminder both of our fallen state and of our surprising capacity for gratitude, remorse and forgiveness by means of which we now and then transcend it. " He goes on to criticize the kind of "progress" whose culmination is a "vision of men and women released from outward constraints." Endorsing the legacies of Jonathan Edwards, Orestes Brownson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Thomas Carlyle, William James, Reinhold Niebuhr and, above all, Martin Luther King, he postulated an alternative tradition, "The Heroic Conception of Life" (an admixture of Brownson's Catholic Radicalism and early republican lore): .".. a suspicion that life was not worth living unless it was lived with ardour, energy and devotion." A truly democratic society will incorporate diversity and a shared commitment to it - but not as a goal unto itself. Rather as means to a "demanding, morally elevating standard of conduct." In sum: "Political pressure for a more equitable distribution of wealth can come only from movements fired with religious purpose and a lofty conception of life." The alternative, progressive optimism, cannot withstand adversity: "The disposition properly described as hope, trust or wonder...
three names for the same state of heart and mind - asserts the goodness of life in the face of its limits. It cannot be deflated by adversity." This disposition is brought about by religious ideas (which the Progressives discarded): "The power and majesty of the sovereign creator of life, the ines capability of evil in the form of natural limits on human freedom, the sinfulness of man's rebellion against those limits; the moral value of work which once signifies man's submission to necessity and enables him to transcend it... " Martin Luther King was a great man because " (He) also spoke the language of his own people (in addition to addressing the whole nation - SV), which incorporated their experience of hardship and exploitation, yet affirmed the rightness of a world full of unmerited hardship... (he drew strength from) a popular religious tradition whose mixture of hope and fatalism was quite alien to liberalism." Lasch said that this was the First deadly Sin of the civil rights movement. It insisted that racial issues be tackled "with arguments drawn from modern sociology and from the scientific refutation of social prejudice" - and not on moral (read: religious) grounds. So, what is left to provide us with guidance? Opinion polls. Lasch failed to explain to us why he demonized this particular phenomenon.
Polls are mirrors and the conduct of polls is an indication that the public (whose opinion is polled) is trying to get to know itself better. Polls are an attempt at quantified, statistical self-awareness (nor are they a modern phenomenon). Lasch should have been happy: at last proof that Americans adopted his views and decided to know themselves. To have criticized this particular instrument of "know thyself" implied that Lasch believed that he had privileged access to more information of superior quality or that he believed that his observations tower over the opinions of thousands of respondents and carry more weight. A trained observer would never have succumbed to such vanity.
There is a fine line between vanity and oppression, fanaticism and the grief that is inflicted upon those that are subjected to it. This is Lasch's greatest error: there is an abyss between narcissism and self love, being interested in oneself and being obsessively preoccupied with oneself. Lasch confuses the two. The price of progress is growing self-awareness and with it growing pains and the pains of growing up. It is not a loss of meaning and hope it is just that pain has a tendency to push everything to the background. Those are constructive pains, signs of adjustment and adaptation, of evolution.
America has no inflated, megalomaniac, grandiose ego. It never built an overseas empire, it is made of dozens of ethnic immigrant groups, it strives to learn, to emulate. Americans do not lack empathy - they are the foremost nation of volunteers and also professes the biggest number of (tax deductible) donation makers. Americans are not exploitative - they are hard workers, fair players, Adam Smith-ian egoists.
They believe in Live and Let Live. They are individualists and they believe that the individual is the source of all authority and the universal yardstick and benchmark. This is a positive philosophy. Granted, it led to inequalities in the distribution of income and wealth.
But then other ideologies had much worse outcomes. Luckily, they were defeated by the human spirit, the best manifestation of which is still democratic capitalism. The clinical term "Narcissism" was abused by Lasch in his books. It joined other words mistreated by this social preacher. The respect that this man gained in his lifetime (as a social scientist and historian of culture) makes one wonder whether he was right in criticizing the shallowness and lack of intellectual rigor of American society and of its elites.
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