Re: Sam Smith on Doug Henwood
On Feb 9, 2007, at 11:31 AM, Wojtek Sokolowski wrote:
ut Henwood shoots two well-aimed holes in the argument:
- “[Richard Hofstadter] made the now largely forgotten point that American Protestants have long had a deep sympathy for The Market. Since they see humans as fallen, corrupt creatures always in need of a good kick in the ass, they revere it as a wonderful mechanism of social discipline, punishing the lazy and rewarding the hard-working. If people are poor, it’s because they’re immoral, impatient, or wasteful.”. . .Henwood notes the acceptance of this fantasy explains “why there’s been so little political price paid for the economic march back to the 19th century.”
[WS:] I’d take exception to this argument. While the American
Protestant “Arbeit Macht Frei” may hold in some segments of society, it is far
from universal. At the same time, The Market is revered by people who,
by the AP standards are “immoral, impatient or wasteful,” or worse yet,
secular and hedonistic.
That’s not the point. The point is that The Market is popular among a
large section of white Protestant America. Most Americans believe
that hard work is rewarded, and that vice is punished. Antipathy to
the state and its “handouts” is embedded deep in American common sense.
I would make that argument rest on a different Hofstadter’s notion - “anti-intellectualism.”
That’s a not-unrelated affair. According to Hof (and I’m totally
persuaded), much of American anti-intellectualism can be traced to
the Protestant valorization of the individual - each of us has a
direct relation with god, so who needs credentials or mediating
institutions? The common person is at least the equal, and may
surpass, the educated in wisdom, which is more a moral than an
educational or experiential category.
In fact, the love of The Market is grounded in the antithesis of
hard work and diligence - it is the shortcut from rags to riches, the
quintessence of the American Dream that bypasses the drudgery of education, the
toil of hard work, the burden of moral obligations, and the pomposity of high
culture.
Though hard work is very often not rewarded, most rich people today
work hard. The rentier is mostly a thing of the past. The ideal for
the rich today is to work; even our socialites have a little handbag
business on the side.
Doug