The Political Mind

I’ve been enjoying listening to a reading of Murray Rothbart’s Economic Thought Before Adam Smith. I’m even finding the slow monotone of the the reader quite a pleasure. Rothbart is a contemporary adherent of the Austrian School of Economics; this book examines the development of economic thought in the context of philosophy, theology, and history from the Greeks down to Adam Smith (I’m about halfway, in the 13th to 16th centuries.)

The Austrian school proper was founded by Carl Menger, with Principles of Economics, published in 1871. His work resurrected the Scholastic-French approach to economics, an approach which can be traced back to fifteenth century Scholastic followers of St. Thomas Aquinas at the University of Salamanca in Spain.From these Scholastics came the recognition of the existence of economic law and many of the basic features of economic activity, including supply and demand, inflation, and the subjective nature of economic value. They were (relatively) pro-market, in favor on individual economic freedom to trade and make contracts and opposed to taxes, price controls, and regulations which inhibited enterprise.¹

There have been a few particular ideas which stand out in the course so far. Rothbart compares his Austrian school views on economy with those in the tradition of Adam Smith by noting that the school of economic thought he follows originated and established itself in Catholic countries. In Catholicism, he maintains, consumption is the goal of production, and consumer utility and enjoyment in moderation are valuable, all of which leads to a subjective utility theory of economics, that the value of an item is determined by its value to an individual consumer. Adam Smith, on the other hand, from a Calvinist country, with its stern emphasis that hard work is a great good in itself and consumer enjoyment merely a necessary evil, proposed the labor theory of value, wherein the value of an object is tied up in the amount of labor that went into its production. This insight into how the religious traditions can influence economic thought in fundamental ways, is quite engaging, and more so when we imagine applying it to other areas of thought.

Rothbart makes a second interesting point when he contrasts Scholasticism with Calvinism in the way they view God, and in the consequences of those views. For Scholastics, God can be approached and apprehended by all of man’s faculties, not only faith, but also reason and the senses. There is a natural law which governs our world, which can be discovered by reason and which we can use to guide our actions. Calvin, on the under hand, saw man as too depraved to have reason capable of approaching God in this same way. God was outside of man’s faculties; for men, then, God is unknowable and seemingly arbitrary. Nor can reason apprehend natural law, and this diminishes its value. Rothbart mentions a few consequences of this. Calvinists, unable to use reason to guide their lives, either had to rely on instructions, which they found in a strict adherence to the Bible; or had to rely on revelation. Rothbart details some of the almost humorous, if tragic, consequences which followed the revelations of certain individuals and their adherents. A second consequence is that the early Calvinists (and Lutherans) supported the absolutism of the state and the mingling of state and religion.

Rothbart also makes what I thought was a rather provocative critique of the scientific method. After decrying the split between reason and empiricism in later European thought, with Descartes and the continental rationalists practicing reason divorced from empiricism; and English empiricists concentrating on empirical facts without applying reason; Rothbart maintains that modern scientific method is hobbled by emphasizing empiricism without man’s reasoning faculties. I wonder what more a scientific method informed by reason might accomplish.

My understanding of Austrian (and classical, Adam Smithian) economics is thin, but I suspect that my political leanings lean away from the direction of the Austrian school. Nonetheless, Rothbart uses reason to interpret facts about economics, bringing in history, theology, and politics to bear on the investigation in a manner much as I hope to do in examining and thinking about the political mind.

¹ What is Austrian Economics?

Also, Austrian School of Economics, Austrian School of Economics, Austrian School, and The Austrian School of Economics

As I get to the end of Patrick Allitt’s lectures on The Conservative Tradition, he summarizes the different strands of conservatism. While our political discussion these days seems to take place in a two-dimensional world, more or less conservative, more or less liberal, I’m struck at the three dimensional world of conservatism that Professor Allitt lays out.

As a prologue, perhaps, Professor Allitt returns to the notion that conservatives believe in stability, and gradual change, a notion which traces its roots back to Edmund Burke. But Corey Robin, The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin, emphasizes the revolutionary spirit at the core of conservatism, as in the Reagan Revolution. The main difference between these two forces, one quiet, the other forceful, depends on whether conservatives feel they are in power and in control of their society. In Burke’s time, conservatives were in power, and his notion was to conserve; Reaganites, by contrast, and today’s Tea Partiers, sense a society out of their control, and want to take the nation back in a way that requires a bit of the revolutionary spirit.

Professor Allitt, a historian analyzing people and events empirically, categorizes conservatives into Paleoconservatives (Traditionalists), Neoconservatives, Theoconservatives, and Libertarians. They do not all get along! But it is the several poles that make conservatism three dimensional.

One pole is has the modesty of the Traditionalists at one end and the vigor of the Neoconservatives at the other. The Traditionalists want small, modest government; the Neoconservatives a government strong enough to project itself in the world. The concern of the Traditionalists is that a government forceful in foreign affairs will be so large and complex that it can’t help but be forceful in domestic affairs, as well.

But the Traditionalists and the Neoconservatives tend to share in a strong sense of group identity; for the Neoconservatives it is a more abstract notion of an America that needs to wield its power in foreign affairs in order to protect itself from its enemies, and extend its influence into the world. Traditionalists tend to see a relatively homogeneous society which must be kept so. This leads to opposition to immigration, and opposition to a secularism which believes in diversity. The other end of this pole might be the Libertarians, focusing on the freedom of individuals rather than the cohesiveness of the group.

Another, related pole has virtue at one end and individual liberty at the other. The Traditionalists, and particularly its religious conservative strand, believe that virtue should be the guiding principle of society, a virtue which should be enforced. The Libertarians believe very strongly in the other end of the pole, individual liberty. Another perspective on this pole has on one end a belief in hierarchy and some disdain for egalitarianism; the other end of the pole is, again, a strong sense of individual liberty and a government and society which do not intrude into individual’s lives.

The notion of virtue itself creates another pole, evident even in recent conservative thought. Many traditionalists have been historically and continue today to be repulsed by modernism and commercial society, retreating into an appreciation of agrarian society, or at least small-town society. The other end of this pole sees virtue in economic liberty, in rugged capitalism, and its heroes in capitalists, though often personified in small businesspersons.

This three-dimensionality of conservatism lends a richness to it, if at the cost of some clutter. As this investigation continues and we view conservatism from different perspectives, historical, psychological, evolutionary, it will be necessary to keep this diversity in mind.

Today’s lecture from Patrick Allitt’s course on The Conservative Tradition included information on Richard Weaver, a conservative American writer in the 1940′s and 1950′s. Weaver believed that western thought went wrong with William of Occam’s nominalism. In realism, or what we might call idealism, taking the common example of the chair, there is an ideal of a chair that physical chairs partake of. Nominalism, on the other hand, holds that there are real items that we sit on, and we create the word chair to describe these items. Plato was an idealist; philosophy is a striving to understand the ideals which underly the world of senses. (Aristotle, on the other hand, while not a nominalist, was an empiricist, believing that knowledge is gained by studying the world around you.)

Nominalism, in Weaver’s view, leads to relativism, to each man becoming his own priest, and to moral degradation. He rejected the dehumanization that is brought by materialism, science, and technology. There must be a center, a transcendant truth around which people can structure their beliefs and their lives. If there is no transcendant center, then we are just making it all up out of thin air, and what would be the point.

Professor Allitt notes that the concept of natural law underlies much of conservative thought. Natural law comes from nature, is universal, and can be discovered by reason. This gives it a standing which is outside of human invention; it is truth. When we are in accord with natural law, we are in accord with a truth beyond ourselves.

Much of today’s political commentary sounds as if the commentators are speaking from a foundation of natural law, that is, they have discovered the truth, and they can use that to defend or rebuff ideas and information. This certainly applies to our discourse on economic subjects, and is evident in the use of terms like liberty and fairness. But it also applies even to things we would think of as empirical, or scientific; evolution and climate change being two examples.

While I am a religious person, and do have some sense of grounding in natural law, I think of myself much more as an empiricist. I do believe that we can take a moral approach to subjects like economics; but before we bandy about terms like liberty or fairness, we need to investigate the real world and come to some conclusion about which policies lead to prosperity, since that is what economics is about, in the end. We do not want a “fair” economic system if it makes everyone poor; nor do we want to prioritize economic “liberty”, if it leads to economic desolation.

Approaching scientific subjects with this same a priori sense of truth seems discordant, since science is empirical by its nature. If we have evidence that the economic policy we espouse leads to prosperity, we can apply our moral values of liberty, or fairness, to persuade others to support our policies. While it is certainly proper to challenge the veracity of scientific findings, it seems incoherent to challenge them on the basis of a sense of right and wrong.

As we continue these investigations, it will be interesting to see how closely these notions of nominalism and idealism, empiricism and natural law, play out in our understanding of the conservative and liberal mind.

As I continue listening to the lecture series The Conservative Tradition¹ by Professor Allitt, I’m struck by the varieties of political belief as history has unfolded, which he considers conservative. In the previous post, I mentioned Professor Allitt’s distinction of state’s rights conservatives, who believe in small, decentralized government, and stability, or security, or strong government conservatives, who believe that a strong government is necessary to preserve security. In subsequent lectures, he has mentioned the agrarian, virtue conservatives both in Britain and America who believe that life on the land enhances virtue. Thomas Jefferson is an example, who waxed rhapsodic on the virtues of the yeoman and the agrarian life. These conservatives resisted the commercialization of society that was coming with the Industrial Revolution. At the same time, Alexander Hamilton, promoting a strong government and support for commerce, is also a conservative; likewise Adam Smith. Professor Allitt describes the Civil War as being fought by two camps of conservatives, the Southerners who emphasized the land and virtue, specifically the importance of honor; and the Northerners, who emphasized preserving the union, because what could be more politically conservative than that. Abraham Lincoln is described as a conservative for his beliefs and efforts in preserving the nation. Further, through his speeches, Lincoln made belief in democracy a traditional, and thus a conservative value, whereas previously other conservatives, for example Edmund Burke, were distrustful of democracy and equality and held that a trained ruling class was needed for good governing.

As I was considering the varieties of conservatism, I came across and read with interest the article Are religious Americans always conservative?²The author, Dr. Ariel Malka, explores the connection between religiosity and political conservatism, and concludes that the connection between the two is not very strong. The interesting point he makes is that those who are religious and are politically-engaged tend to be politically conservative, but that those who are religious but not that interested in politics are no more likely to hold politically conservative views than the non-religious on many political issues. He lists gun control, racial policy, and the death penalty as examples. It has been noted that we choose our group, then adopt that group’s beliefs; Dr. Malka’s studies seem to reinforce that view. As he notes, “Exposure to messages that point to a bond between religiosity and conservatism seems to be necessary to translate one’s religiosity into conservative positions on most issues.”

There are several points of interest in Professor Allitt’s and Dr. Malka’s insights into the varieties of conservatism. Views on particular issues which might define conservative belief vary by time and place. Issues which might define conservatism in America don’t necessarily define it in Britain; issues which might have defined conservatism in the past don’t define it in the present. Beyond issues, even what passes for a conservative outlook varies; in some outlooks, conservatism is about preserving and instilling virtue, in others it is about individual rights, or economic freedom, and the two outlooks do not necessarily lead to a similar set of beliefs on political issues. Dr. Malka makes the point that, “Perhaps there is no enduring feature of human psychological makeup that favors a link between religiosity and political conservatism.” Extending this notion means that it may be difficult to find an enduring feature of human psychological makeup that favors conservative or liberal belief. Since the point of my investigations in The Political Mind is precisely to identify what makes an individual hold conservative or liberal beliefs, based on history, psychology, and anthropology, the investigation, it seems, just got harder.

¹ Conservative Tradition
² Are religious Americans always conservative?

In the context of having just finished Thomas Pangle’s course on the Constitution, two columns in the New York Times caught my attention. One, Broccoli Mandates and the Commerce Clause from James B. Steward in Business Day, commenting on the commerce clause and recent argument regarding the health care reform issue in the Supreme Court, ends, “The commerce clause was a response to the chaotic and often conflicting state regulations that hobbled the nation under the Articles of Confederation.” The second, Pragmatism on the Prairie by Gretchen Dykstra, describes Republican, conservative, North Dakota’s venture into socialism and their continuing support of it.

The Anti-Federalist image of society, it seems, and not much unlike the image which today’s Tea Party reflects, is of an idyllic, small republic of like-minded citizens participating rather directly in governing themselves. It is a society which 1780′s Anti-Federalists could well imagine, and colored their antipathy toward strengthening the federal government. However, as James Steward notes, even in the days of the Constitutional Convention, with a nation suffering from a lack of cohesion created by the decentralizing Articles of Confederation, this idyllic republic was no longer sustainable.

Except, perhaps, in North Dakota, a state, which, after a population explosion, still has a small population of about 684,000 individuals, quite homogeneous ethnically and religiously (90% white, 80% of German or Scandinavian origin, 86% Christian), and economically (agriculture and food-processing are a large part of the economy, with energy playing an increasing role).

Gretchen Dykstra notes that North Dakota is the only state in the union with a state-owned bank; it also has a profitable state-owned grain elevator and flour mill. All state revenues are deposited in the Bank of North Dakota, and from this it supports programs like student loans, loans for new farmers, and for commercial and industrial enterprises. The grain elevator and mill compete with private grain elevators, and returns its annual profit to the North Dakota general fund. In addition, the state maintains the toughest laws in the country limiting corporate farming.

Ms. Dykstra asks the question, how does the Republican, conservative citizenry support such obvious socialism? She goes on to describe the difficult circumstances in the years 1915-1920, which led to the creation of some of these institution, and their relative success since then.

I think the key understanding is that conservatives are not really about “small” government per se, nor necessarily about all of the other issues which inform our current political debate. Rather, they want a government which supports them. But if the idyllic, small republic of like-minded citizens was already past in the 1780′s when the Articles of Confederation gave way to a more-centralizing Constitution, perhaps it still lives on successfully in places like North Dakota.