Having written favorably on Wendell Berry, and having edited a collection of essays on his work, I would like to respond to Matt Franck’s critique of Berry’s Jefferson Lecture.
I share Matt’s disappointment with the lecture. I found it to be uncharacteristically long, at times redundant, and overall unbalanced in its treatment of corporations.
Berry’s listeners heard the angry Wendell Berry, defending the things he loves that have been lost, or are in danger of being lost. But like the speech of the angry and wounded Andy Catlett to an agricultural conference in Berry’s novel Remembering, this was not Berry’s finest moment.
As Berry acknowledges in his other writings, government has played its own role in the destruction of local economies and communities, small scale farming, and families. On the other hand, the free market (and this includes corporations) has done much to reduce the price of goods, improve health, and protect the environment. Impersonal market transactions are not a zero-sum game. They only occur when all parties to the transaction benefit.
In the case of James B. Duke, the benefit was cheaper cigarettes made possible by cigarette rolling machines. The fact that the product in question is tobacco itself raises interesting questions I cannot address here, but I would encourage readers to take a look at Tocqueville’s contrast of colonial American settlers in the South and North in Democracy in America, I.1.2. Tocqueville identified the problem of Boomers and Stickers well before Berry, and Berry’s first book The Unsettling of America is an impressive complement to Tocqueville’s analysis.
That being said, the corporate form does present serious problems for the responsible use of resources, and in practice often results in exploitative collusion between corporations and governments that is hostile to the interests of local communities and economies, individual proprietors, farmers, and small businesses. Crony capitalism is not the free market; it is the antithesis to the free market.
Moreover, as Berry’s writings have eloquently and elegantly argued, expense should not be the only consideration of consumers. Economic decisions are inevitably moral decisions, and should always be made with just attention to natural, moral and human ecologies. We should treat manipulative advertising, consumerism, individualism and greed as the evils they are.
But this does not mean government is the solution. Individual economic decisions involve complex and difficult tradeoffs in particular circumstances that cannot be dictated from the top without a serious loss of liberty and misuse of resources. The current administration’s failed policies provide ample evidence of this point.
Unfortunately, Berry’s almost complete silence about government in his lecture almost undoubtedly led many of his listeners to a conclusion he did not in fact make, that government is the solution. It is very difficult to believe that this was Berry’s intention, and it certainly cannot be deduced from his other writings, where governments are as guilty as corporations. Port William, his model of a community based on “membership,” has neither corporations nor a government.
In the end, I would strongly encourage people not to judge Berry based upon this one lecture. He fully deserved the honor of the lecture. His body of work in fiction, poetry, and essays constitutes the most impressive effort in our time to protect, preserve, and deepen the knowledge of the human person that lies at the heart of Western civilization, and to oppose the corrosive influences (utilitarianism, individualism, scientism, industrialism, etc.) that threaten to destroy that knowledge. His life itself is a testament of fidelity to that knowledge, worthy of acknowledgment, recognition, and celebration.
Nathan Schlueter is an associate professor of philosophy at Hillsdale College and a visiting fellow in the James Madison Program at Princeton University.
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Comments:
Author: "Impersonal market transactions are not a zero-sum game. They only occur when all parties to the transaction benefit. "
Gian: "No. They merely think that they benefit."
At best, Gian thinks he knows better than the participants. At worst, Gian wants to disregard the wishes of the participants and use the superior power of the polis to impose a different solution more to his liking.
Meddlesomeness or the corruption of power? I would only be guessing gian's intent and that I have found is a dangerous and unproductive thing to do...also unnecessary because, in either case, tyranny is the likely result. I would far more trust the participants looking out for their own interests than a meddlesome state, even if gian would be the best-intentioned tyrant.
You know what Gian thinks? Knowing better then the hypothetical persons in hypothetical exchanges is hardly more arrogant then political telepathy.
In any case that is not necessary. All Gian was saying was that logically it is only necessary that both participants to a transaction think they profit for a deal to be struck.
A Response to Patrick:
Let me preface by citing that old Latin phrase, " the abuse of something does not take away its use." Aristotle and Thomas both affirm the validity of governmental coercion for the sake of the common good which certainly includes the economic. This is a universal proscription. However, applying it to the particular takes a scrupulous prudence, especially in the field of economics. Let me anticipate an objection by saying that it is extremely dubious that our current regime can competently handle the economic sphere at this level. Politics, as conceived by the greatest philosophers, has always been envisioned on a much smaller scale. The monolithic, bureaucratic monstrosity in Washington has jettisoned almost every form of rationality. The legitimacy of its actions can and should be questioned, indeed the 'Machine' itself. But, we must be wary, when suffering at extreme, not to flee to other.... as fallen man is so wont to do.
As someone who has read a fairly decent amount of Berry's work -- fiction, non-fiction, and poetry -- Ms. Schlueter is not putting words in Berry's mouth. Berry absolutely does not think that government is the sole answer to corporate abuses (though he would be more open to it than many on the right). In fact, the whole first half of the book that made him famous -- The Unsettling of America -- is a polemic against the Nixon administration's meddling in agricultural markets in order to force farmers to "get big or get out." He rightly points out that big government is more often than not the friend of big corporations, to the detriment of the rest of us.
So, no, he is not putting words in Mr. Berry's mouth; Berry made this lecture about corporations, but that is not to say that he doesn't deal with government elsewhere.
I gave two examples. How would you analyze them except for common good?.
Consider too the problem of 'price-gouging'. While it is reasonable that prices increase after scarcity induced by a calamity, why it is bitterly resented?
Because it violates our moral intuition to see profiteering in the face of common misfortune.
A common misfortune should induce individuals to sacrifice. When they do not, it is immoral even though the economic consequences tend to be positive.
In any event, how anyone could come to the conclusion that Mr. Berry somehow believes "government is the solution" is beyond me. As you point out, reading his work couldn't possibly lead to that conclusion.
I see nothing in the lecture/essay (which, for what its worth, I consider outstanding) which could possibly cause one to conclude that Mr. Berry is presenting government as any sort of solution. To the contrary, he states specifically that no amount of "liberal" or "conservative" tweaking of corporate industrialism will fix what ails us. He also specifically note the futility and ultimately uselessness of "pointless rhetoric on the virtues of capitalism or socialism."
He suggests that the "possibility of authentic correction" will come from the responses we will all have to make to scarcity (something about which he has frequently written), at a local and community level, and he specifically singles out the local food movement as a means of rebuilding local economies.
He says "An economy genuinely local and neighborly offers to localities a measure of security that they cannot derive from a national or a global economy controlled by people who, by principle, have no local commitment." How could anyone conclude from that statement that Wendell Berry believes government is "the solution"?
"Two actors acting consensually to hurt the Common Good is not commendable e.g. City Unions getting cozy with City to get enhanced benefit
or an ex-Speaker getting cozy with a Public Corporation. "
As to the non-market transaction example: I have a hard time conceiving such a nebulous thing as "getting cozy with a City." Perhaps one can get cozy with the people running a city. Then the question becomes: in what way were the politician's obligations to the city qua fiduciary impacted by the coziness?
As to the "ex-Speaker's" getting cozy with a public corporation by being hired in the labor market after leaving governmental employment: I assume that refers to Gingrich's consulting services to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. How did he get hired? Was it an arm's-length transaction or a quid pro quo? I don't know enough to judge, but such potential revolving door transactions are exactly what I don't like about excessive government.
If our rulers have too much money, they find ways to get it to their supporters, friends, etc. And the terrible thing about that is that Government doesn't get its money by "impersonal market transactions" in which buyers and sellers agree on a price for a good/service but by fiat ("because I have the power to extract money from you by main force if necessary, you must pay....")
Then the money brought in gets ladled out; some to voters who have been "bought" and far larger amounts to contributors who have contributed. And then there are the other players in the government: whoever has a say in the doling gets to stick his/her hand out as the quo for the quid of saying "yea" instead of "nay." Of course, it can't be so direct and crass. So, politicians direct set-asides to their contributors and/or leave office but don't leave WDC. They become consultants, etc. One hand washes the other and there are revolving doors through which consultants become regulators, become consultants become congressmen, etc. That isn't Republican or Democrat. That is the permanent establishment. As Lord Acton said (not exact, but close): power corrupts and absolute power absolutely corrupts.
"I hope this isn't heretical, but isn't the "common good" speaking on its own behalf one way to view the Incarnation?"
I dare to say we agree, at least that far. My issue is with the temporal "authorities" (scorn quotes entirely intended, and if that's not enough I can footnote 'em too) who claim to define and speak for the common good, and typically follow with some "render unto Caesar" language. We are ever asked to take Caesar's word for what is Caesar's...or to contest the point with Caesar's armed goons.
"We are going to have to rebuild the substance and the integrity of private life in this country. We are going to have to gather up the fragments of knowledge and responsibility that we have parceled out to the bureaus and the corporations and the specialists, and put those fragments back together in our own minds and in our families and households and neighborhoods. We need better government, no doubt about it. But we also need better minds, better friendships, better marriages, better communities. We need persons and households that do not have to wait upon organizations, but can make necessary changes in themselves, on their own...
A man (or woman) who is willing to undertake the discipline and the difficulty of mending his (or her) own ways is worth more to the conservation movement than a hundred who are insisting merely that the government and the industries mend their ways.
If you are concerned about the proliferation of trash, then by all means start an organization in your community to do something about it. But before - and while - you organize, pick up some cans and bottles yourself...
If you talk a good line without being changed by what you say, then you are not just hypocritical and doomed; you have become an agent of the disease."
No. They merely think that they benefit.
In any case, Consent is not the sole determinant of the morality of an act.
The Economists have succeeded in persuading a lot of people that Economic Transactions are a special category of Acts to which traditional ethics does not apply but
other people are not obliged to believe them.
The morality of an act in a Polis depends also on to intention of the actor to the Common Good. Two actors acting consensually to hurt the Common Good is not commendable e.g.
City Unions getting cozy with City to get enhanced benefit
or an ex-Speaker getting cozy with a Public Corporation.