| "Conventional Wisdom" and "Countervailing Power"
Galbraith was an iconoclast, a prominent Keynsian economist, author and social critic who served as a high-level administration official in the FDR, Truman, Kennedy and Johnson administrations. He wrote two of the most important books of the 1950s, American Capitalism: The Concept of Countervailing Power (1952) and The Affluent Society (1958). Although they had much else to say, I want to focus on just a few key points. First, as wikipedia notes:
In American Capitalism: The concept of countervailing power published in 1952, Galbraith outlined how the American economy in the future would be managed by a triumvirate of big business, big labor, and an activist government. Galbraith termed the reaction of lobby groups and unions "countervailing power." He contrasted this arrangement with the previous pre-depression era where big business had relatively free rein over the economy.
Second, in The Affluent Society he critiqued the assumptions of economic theory as being based in 19th Century societies still dominated by pervasive poverty. In contrast to the reality of post-WWII America, such assumptions constitute "conventional wisdom" that blinds practitioners to what is right in front of them-an impoverishment of the public sphere, even as the private sphere is increasingly affluent, persistent poverty which need not be, and the potential emergence of a ''new class'' of citizens able to pursue work they find inherently enjoyable. The things Galbraith wrote about in the still-staid late-1950s emerged explosively in the 1960s, as persistent poverty moved center stage in the political areana, an entire generation of college students from working-class backgrounds looked not just for middle-class careers, but for meangingful middle-class careers, starting with a meaningful college education, and environmental degredation sparked the modern environmental movement.
Yet, if these events proved Galbraith prophetic in criticizng the conventional wisdom of traditional economics, they also helped fuel a rightwing backlash that severely undermined the structure of counterveiling power he had written about in the early 1950s. The result, from the 1970s onward, was an accelerated return to the big-business dominance of the pre-Depression era, but with increased sophistication in the deliberate shaping of conventional wisdom-not just in the field of political theory, but across the full range of social, political economic and cultural issues. "Conventional wisdom" in this much broader, more deliberate sense merges with Antonio Gramsci's concept of cultural hegemony
Gramsci's concept of Cultural Hegemony
Wikipedia provides a good capsule introduction to Gramsci's concept of cultural hegemony:
The analysis of hegemony (or "rule") was formulated by Antonio Gramsci to explain why predicted communist revolutions had not occurred where they were most expected, in industrialized Europe. Marx and his followers had advanced the theory that the rise of industrial capitalism would create a huge working class and cyclical economic recessions. These recessions and other contradictions of capitalism would lead the overwhelming masses of people, the workers, to develop organizations for self-defense, including labor unions and political parties. Further recessions and contradictions would then spark the working class to overthrow capitalism in a revolution, restructure the economic, political, and social institutions on rational socialist models, and begin the transition towards an eventual communist society. In Marxian terms, the dialectically changing economic base of society would determine the cultural and political superstructure. Although Marx and Engels had famously predicted this eschatological scenario in 1848, many decades later the workers of the industrialized core still had not carried out the mission.
Gramsci argued that the failure of the workers to make an anti-capitalist revolution was due to the successful capture of the workers' ideology, self-understanding, and organizations by the hegemonic (ruling) culture. In other words, the perspective of the ruling class had been absorbed by the masses of workers. In "advanced" industrial societies hegemonic cultural innovations such as compulsory schooling, mass media, and popular culture had indoctrinated workers to a false consciousness. Instead of working towards a revolution that would truly serve their collective needs, workers in "advanced" societies were listening to the rhetoric of nationalist leaders, seeking consumer opportunities and middle-class status, embracing an individualist ethos of success through competition, and/or accepting the guidance of bourgeois religious leaders.
Gramsci therefore argued for a strategic distinction between a "war of position" and a "war of movement". The war of position is a culture war in which anti-capitalist elements seek to gain a dominant voice in mass media, mass organizations, and educational institutions to heighten class consciousness, teach revolutionary analysis and theory, and inspire revolutionary organization. Following the success of the war of position, communist leaders would be empowered to begin the war of movement, the actual insurrection against capitalism, with mass support.
Now, one doesn't have to be Marxist to appreciate Gramsci's analysis. Even if one takes the position that not everything Gramsci points to is really all that "false" a consiousness, there is certainly a significant element of truth when you have poor whites voting to send their jobs overseas in order to keep the blacks off welfare, so that America can be great again.
I want to suggest a more pluralistic recasting of Gramsci's analysis. First, I think that the concept of hegemony can apply generally to a division between those who are fundamentally authoritarian and hierarchical in their orientaiton vs. those who are fundamentally egalitarian and heterarchical. Second, I think the concept can be applied specifically to the project of movement conservatism mounted since 1964 Goldwater campaign, with nothing comparable on the other side. (That's our job!) Third, I think it can be applied to differing divisions in other societies, which generally have an economic component to them, but that cannot be mechanistically pre-determined on the basis of simple class identity.
Hegemony and Health Care
In particular, one example of how hegemony works is highlighted by the recent Rockridge analysis on health care, which talks in terms of three different models: conservative (Strict Father), liberal/progressive (Nurturant Parent) and neo-liberal (nurturant values devaluated in favor of an efficient system, overly prone to compromise). I diared about it, quoting at length about all three here. Here, I just recall the quick-and-dirty essence of the "third way":
What we term "neoliberal" thought shares progressive values and the ethic of care. At the same time, it has an Enlightenment-based faith in universal rationality as logical, unemotional, and serving human interests. To argue on the basis of care would be emotional and hence irrational and weak. To argue on the basis of interests is seen as rational and strong. The neoliberal strategy is to serve the ethics of care by serving the economic and other material interests of demographic groups.
The problem with this approach, which, in the field of healthcare (as in many others) often leads primarily to "technocratic changes to existing markets" is what might be called "backwards mission creep":
The neoliberal emphasis on "systems" often causes a loss of focus upon the progressive morality that lies beneath their political and policy solutions. Specific references to progressive values disappear from their messages. So do references to the government functions of protection and empowerment. Neoliberals may begin with the morality of empathy and responsibility for oneself and others, but their faith and focus soon shifts to the abstract, to complicated systems and intricate public/private solutions. Empathy, the moral force that holds together our democracy and the engine of community, is reduced to sentimentality and shunted aside.
Thus, what Lakoff and co-authors Eric Haas, Glenn W. Smith [who posts here occassionally] and Scott Parkinson are pointing to is, in a very real sense, one of the mechanisms by which the hegemony of the market logic swallows up the progressive/egalitarian ethic of care.
Hegemony More Generally-And "Conventional Wisdom" More Narrowly
A more general example of hegemony along these same lines is the faith in markets and privatization, no matter how many times they fail-the Enron-engendered California energy crisis, Haliburton and Blackwater in Iraq, the failed post-Katrina recovery in New Orleans, etc., etc., etc. Likewise, the notion that terrorism must be fought in a war-as opposed, say, to being cured, like a disease-is a product of deep and broadly-held hegemonic thinking.
If we want to make progress in taking on these monolithic ideological behemoths, it helps to be able to break them down into smaller pieces, and I suggest that conceptually this makes it useful to preserve a distinction between "hegemony" and "conventional wisdom"-at least in how we use the terms. "Conventional wisdom" is a good term to use for a belief, assumption, perception, factoid or narrative construct that can readily be named and recognized, and therefore is ripe for being challenged, contradicted, undermined or refuted.
The conventional wisdom that America has "the best health care system in the world" clearly falls into this later category-although it didn't not so long ago. On the other hand, the larger notion of "private=good/public=bad" is more in the realm of hegemony. That's why it's so important to win fights by challenging conventional wisdom-because once people have the lived experience of how a public health care system can work so much better, then they have an expanded frame of reference that moves what was hegemonic much closer to the realm of merely being "conventional wisdom."
Or, in the terms I have used earlier in this series, it's part of the process of moving what was context or subject into the position of being content or object. Let's refer to a specific slice of Kegan's hierarchy of developmental levels:
| Kegan's Subject/Object Schema of Cognitive Development (Abbrevieated) | | Stage | We Are:
Subject
(structure of knowing) | We Have:
Object
(content of knowing) | Underlying Structure | 3
Traditionalism | Abstractions
MUTUALITY/
INTERPERSONALISM
Relationship
Inner states | Concrete
POINT OF VIEW
Enduring Dispositions
Needs, Peferences |  | 4
Modernism | Abstract Systems
INSTITUTION
Relationship-Regulating Forms
Self-authorship | Abstractions
MUTUALITY/
INTERPERSONALISM
Relationship
Inner states
Subjectivity
Self-consciousness |  |
Conventional wisdom can be thought of as the rationalization of specifc roles and relationsihps, while hegemony is the rationalization of the entire level three subject of realm-the totality of all roles and relationships. The way that one moves from Level 3 to Level 4 is not by one big jump, but by gradually becoming aware of of specific roles and relationships-at first, only in specific situations, then gradually more generally, and finally as part of a larger structure that eventually encompasses all of Level 3-at which time you have evolved to full Level 4 consciousenss.
Now, with this distinction in mind, let's consider the role of the punditocracy. They are, in general, reinforcers and gatekeepers of conventional wisdom. As such, they can either function at Level 3 or Level 4: Level 3 if they are utterly clueless about what they are doing, Level 4 if they are perfectly aware. At Level 3, they could not possibly do otherwise. But a Level 4 pundit could just as easily (cognitively, if not emotionally) challenge conventional wisdom as reiterate and reinforce it.
This brings us squarely to the issue of Democratic Party leadership-be it at the local, state or national level. The role of political leadership is not just to get things done, but to change the nature of the possible, so that new things can get done that were not possible before. In other words, the job of political leadership is to challenge hegemony by tactically and strategically altering conventional wisdom. All too often, however, we see political leadership doing exactly the opposite-reinforcing hegemony by reflexively (or worse yet, intentionally) repeating and rearticulating conventional wisdom. We see them either sucking up to the punditocracy, trying to blend in with them, or even trying to outdo them.
Now, sometimes it may be necessary to repeat conventional wisdom, altering its significance only slowly and gradually over time. So I don't mean to take a mechanistic position of rejecting accomodation outright in all situations. A racially enlightened white Southerner in the 1950s had to take things slow in trying to change the minds of others, or else jump wholeheartedly to the other side, and risk becoming a target of violence. I'm in far too privileged a position where I sit today to comfortably condemn such a person who chose the gradual route. But needless to say, that situation does not describe the vast majority of political struggles today-it describes only a tiny fraction of them.
I'll conclude this diary with a few examples and comments:
- Last week, Barack Obama reinforced the conventional wisdom that faith communities and homosexuals are hermetically sealed off from one another, thus demeaning them both. He could have simply owned the mistake his campaign made. He could have said, "I screwed up. I'm human. I wanted to bring people toghether, and instead, I've needlessly divided them. But because I can admit my mistake, I can move forward. It may not be easy, but it is possible. And that is what distinguishes the kind of politics I beleive in." That would have really challenged the conventional wisdom, simply by implicitly affirming a key aspect of genuine Christian faith-the role of repentence, forgiveness, and redemption.
- Yesterday, Russ Feingold, who is usually a shining counter-example, indicated that he might vote to confirm Michael Mukasey Attorney General . And at Dkos, Kargo X discussed it
in terms close to those I've been using here:
How completely through the looking glass is this "administration?" The nomination now pending before the Senate Judiciary Committee for Attorney General serves to crystallize the issue by shattering all meaning behind two comfortable platitudes that used to function to satisfy all onlookers that all was right in Heaven.
First, there was the assurance from the nominee and his supporters that he'd respect the "rule of law." That used to be a fine phrase to toss out there without having to worry about it meaning too much one way or the other, until we learned that everything we once thought was a "law" was now a "hypothetical."
And now Senator Russ Feingold is testing the limits of the remaining currency of another shopworn but previously serviceable platitude -- the old throwaway explanation for a bad vote on a nominee:
He may be the best nominee we can get from this administration in this respect.
Senator, I'm afraid I'm going to have to challenge you on that. This "administration" has taken us well past the point where stock phrasing will be sufficient.
You must explain to us what -- given the limitless view of executive power Judge Mukasey has endorsed -- his being "the best nominee we can get" even means, and why anyone, including you, should care about that.
Feingold's alternative here must be painfully obvious: He could have said, "Ordinarily I might argue that he may be the best nominee we can get from this administration in this respect. But clearly that is simply not good enough. The Attorney General must be someone who is unambiguously committed to the rule of law."
The result of Feingold-a known beacon of principle-wimping out like this was entirely predictable. Top weasles Feinstein and Schumer swiftly announced that they would vote to destroy the rule of law by approving Mukasey.
- Nancy Pelosi (via Matt):
"I know that Congress has low approval ratings," Pelosi, D-Calif., said at her weekly news conference. "I don't approve of Congress, because we haven't done anything that - we haven't been effective in ending the war in Iraq. And if you asked me in a phone call, as ardent a Democrat as I am, I would disapprove of Congress as well."
Need I say more??? Can I say more? Is there anything more to say?
Your turn!
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