The Public Policy/Nothing for Everyone
Howe, Neil
"The Public Policy/Nothing for Everyone" go to the movie as a revolutionary act; rather, they go primarily to belong. They want to belong, in part, because Rocky Horror offers elements of religion, hedonism, and outright...
...Yet given Barnet's belief in "scarcity," both of these agendas cut w i t h a new edge...
...Here his theories are, in fact, pure mercantilism, transforming every economic declsmn into a question of raw politics and raw resources...
...l, (please pr'int) Name Address City State Z i p _ _ m i THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR I | P.O...
...Two c e n t u r i e s ago the West was shaken by such politically-charged adjectives as "primitive," "organic," " n a t u r a l , " " r u d e , " and even "gothic...
...He seems to believe, for instance, that capitalists both rob future consumers by exploiting resources too quickly, and at the same time rob p r e s e n t consumers by forming cartels and exploiting them too slowly...
...As for water resources, Sarnet cites so many exotic examples of parching and scorching that he is forced to conclude that "given the worldwide distribution of t h i r s t . . . there is something faintly obscene about the extravagant use of water in the American home...
...It depends on whether we b e l i e v e that a socialism for which "scarcity" is an explicit rather than an implicit premise can still lay claim to liberal goals...
...Our language, our orderly intellectual habits," he suggests, "all conspire to keep us from integrating, comprehending, and fitting in with the natural order...
...They want to belong, in part, because Rocky Horror offers elements of religion, hedonism, and outright immorality With a tinge of revolution to it...
...The planet is indeed finite," Barnet says...
...Had he considered them, he might have seen how markets do indeed induce resource preservation, resource substitution, and resource recycling...
...A key political question is whether the holders of the p r e s e n t resource system will control the next," Barnet says, and when he points out that " t h e accidental distribution of resources opens up possibilities of radically new alliances and axes in the world," he is not exactly predicting a happy f u t u r e for capitalist societies...
...Our real and perceived declining economic performance during the seventies, of course, made clear what the consequences would be: submitting, perhaps forever, to material dirth...
...Whoever controls resources controls the world...
...come to believe that it describes an essential and timeless relationship between man and Nature...
...The animus is directed not so much against the ways capitalism violates social justice or provokes class war as against the ways it violates certain quantitative boundaries of the material world...
...It consumes too much, grows too big, runs too fast, makes us travel too far, involves too much complexity, and gives us too much power...
...Individualism, according to Rousseau and his descendants, inculcates desires far too extravagant and innovations far too wasteful for civilized man ever to be satisfied within the limits of Nature...
...Redistribution is desirable, not so much to enrich the poor, but r a t h e r to impoverish the rich...
...The Czar was desperate to divert his own intelligentsia from the slogans of anti-modern Pan-Slavic radicals and to get them to think more about economic growth...
...This last option was in fact taken by our own New Left of the late sixties, and it abruptly changed socialism's official position...
...The key idea here originally found its most eloquent expression in Rousseau, and has been maintained by romantics and humanists (often outside the Left) ever since...
...Barnet's intention is to reinterpret politics and economics so that they " f i t " the natural order...
...That now, in America at least, so much of the Left's fervor seems to be pointed in the opposite-direction should prompt us to wonder what the real c,,gins of the new popularity of " s c a r c i t y " are and, more importantl where it will lead the Left from here...
...He tells the same story about food supply, but with a d i f f e r e n t twist...
...To answer the f i r s t question we have to step back a bit and recall that, t r a d i t i o n a l l y , t h e Left has always maintained a highly ambiguous attitude toward "scarcity...
...The competition between these two casts of mind--one denying scarcity and the other affirming it--parallels another old debate on the Left, over whether socialism's primary goal should be the "New World" or the "New Man...
...It must be said at the o u t s e t that Barnet, co-director of the Institute for Policy Studies, is not a talented or careful writer...
...If it were not, what else could the Left use to justify its need for esoteric forms of political authority...
...The symbol of the new world without options was t h e Energy C r i s i s . Burn g a s o l i n e , and cities choke in fumes...
...Why, for instance, proliferate the automobile, if all it does is pander to "our mania for motion" while consuming the last of our iron, bauxite, chromium, and hydrocarbon resources...
...NOTHING FOR EVERYONE There is no question that the concept of "scarcity" is now exerting a profound and unprecedented influence on the American Left, the best evidence being the Left's energetic association with almost any political issue involving an alleged "scarcity" of resources...
...Only a few years ago it was widely believed that, by taking up the idea of scarcity, the Left was simply being opportunistic, hoping to find in scarcity the basis for a new anti-establishment fervor (the causes of the sixties having passed) or, at the very least, an expeditious way of furthering the government's regulatory powers...
...The history of energy and minerals, needless to say, is a history of picaresque entrepreneurs, followed by shameless cartels, followed in turn by faceless, insatiable multinationals and t h e i r lackey governments...
...Nell Howe is a program officer with the Smith Richardson Foundation in New York...
...Because of its very unruliness, it inadvertently reveals themes which a more cautious t r e a t i s e would have kept hidden...
...For many of us, this ideological shift on the Left is baffling...
...T h i s new attitude is at the heart of Richard Barners new book, a massive gospel intended to initiate the r e a d e r into the " s c a r c i t y " world view...
...Man needs these resources: He organizes to acquire them, he arms to fight for them, and he founds civilizations to revere them...
...Apparently, he is fearful that useless multinational technology will so plunder the primitive societies of t h e i r traditional activities that " g l o b a l unemployment" will engulf us all...
...This is a book," Barnet declares on page t h r e e , " a b o u t physical resources and political power...
...The history of i m p e r i a l i s m , " he even declares at one point, "is the story of the domination of the rice and root eating cultures by wheat-eating carnivores from the North...
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...Box1960 | Bloomington, Indiana 47402 | ing glimpse at how the " s c a r c i t y " movement interprets world affairs...
...nations "bleed" from high import bills...
...for example, that in ten years it will make exactly 2.5 million shoes while suppressing the desire for any other quantity by deeming it illegitimate and unnatural...
...This point, recently restated at length in the newest works of Frank and Fritzie Manuel (Utopian Thought in the Western World) e, nd Robert Nisbet (History of the Idea of Progress), was well understood in the nineteenth century...
...The ethos of the b a z a a r " is, a f t e r all, just a n o t h e r term for "the law of the jungle" and "what we call progress is a mysterious marriage of plunder and creativity " According to Barnet, it is time for capitalism to realize that it too can lose in "the global struggle over resource d i s t r i b u t i o n " just as other civilizations have in the past...
...Should we not desist and accept some sort of socialized austerity regime, the penalty will be far worse than a proletarian revolution: Nature herself will strike back with tempests, famines, poisons, and conflagration--in short, with the Four Horsemen...
...Burn.coal...
...30 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR SEPTEMBER 1980 The details of Barnet's suggestions here a r e eye-opening...
...Take the nuclear route, and you c o u r t c a t a s t r o p h e . . . . There is a misfit between politics and the natural order...
...The "New Man" (or "new consciousness") became the primary goal, no matter what the consequences...
...As such, "scarcity" has now become for THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR SEPTEMBER 1980 29 the Left no longer an unpleasant fact to be vanquished, but rather an awesome truth to be welcomed, publicly at least, and propitiated...
...The answer is unclear...
...He is also convinced that "speculators" as a rule "magnify the cyclical effect of the market" (even if such behavior must logically force them all into bankruptcy...
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...But now, having looked more deeply into the matter, he has come to share "the growing belief that our civilization is out of control," that it is, in fact, on a collision course with the limits of Nature...
...Still, his book offers a fascinati Send for your favorite back issues I today...
...Indeed, those whose writings provided the origins of leftist ideology, especially utopian socialists such as Condorcet, William Godwin, and Robert Ower~, saw in man's destiny a world of Cornucopian plenty...
...Marx followed suit...
...So do Sovietpropagandists today...
...Barnet wants tomove us with his own modern t r a n s l a t i o n : " s c a r c e . " Left as our society moves into the eighties, the attack on capitalism will become increasingly parochial, entropic, and reactionary...
...Unofficially, however, the premise of enduring natural scarcity has always been a necessary cornerstone in the Left's social theory and practice...
...Barnet's explanation stands as a sort of "scarcity" credo: S c i e n t i s t s have promised to b r e a k t h e bonds of human f i n i t u d e , to open t h e s e c r e t s of t h e cell, and to u n v e i l t h e mystery of t h e p l a n e t s . I n s t e a d of t h e bmmdless horizons they had promised, limits popped up everywhere...
...One would have to amend his words today merely in light of the existence of The Rocky Horror Picture Show: "We are living now in an age of moral disease...
...But, one must distressingly conclude, it is just a movie, and a bad one at that, and that there is a kind of social madness in the air which has led these people down the street late at night to these theaters so they can humiliate and degrade themselves in the company of others who are doing the same...
...Because he understands all wars and regimes to be based on nothing but the mindless quest for resource gratification, he is driven to observe that (even today) " p o l i t i c a l power still comes out of guns...
...Barnet even relishes in the language of mercantilism...
...With or without markets, Barnet's economics often strain the barest rules of logical consistency...
...But when the principle of mobility is introduced into a society and envy is stimulated to induce people to work harder and to consume more, the pain of deprivation becomes more intense and gaps begin to matter . . . . It is the monumental social problem of the planet, the cause of mass starvation, repression, and crime, petty and cosmic...
...However, the revolutionary fervor seems to have died slightly...
...it is a compulsion and hence it is the problem...
...The Czar's plan backfired, of course, but at least we are beginning to understand what was on his mind...
...It may well be the issue on which a true 'converg e n c e ' of market economies and centrally-planned economies takes place...
...Accordingly, he suggests that the "organization of the planet" be thought of as comprising "five resource systems": energy, minerals, food, water, and labor...
...To be sure, Barnet says that he once accepted "the promise of the industrial age" along with the rest of us...
...His text meanders hopelessly, its flow clogged at every turn by heaps of irrelevant detail...
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...We remember a time not so very long ago when t h e L e f t ' s enthusiasm for technology, growth, and abundance knew no bounds...
...Labor, lastly, is the strangest scarcity of all, and Barnet r e q u i r e s a full 56 pages to explain how it works...
...and markets "suck in" their participants...
...Barnet's forecast may not be entirely fanciful...
...They include varying d e g r e e s of national " a u - tarchy...
...But for Barnet the market is, predictably, a mere "metaphysical abstraction...
...Unfortunately, as Barnet is forever pointing out, as time goes by man's needs become more p r e s s i n g , his organizations more powerful, his arms more deadly, and his civilizations more materialistic...
...Likewise, managed economies are desirable, not so much to create wealth, b u t r a t h e r to make us succumb to a ' 'rediscovery of limits...
...This sort of tirade against the unboundedness of modern civilization bears an eerie resemblance to an old school of radical reaction whose influence we have almost forgotten...
...the movie no longer commands the audience it did in its heyday a year or two ago...
...Explorers " r a p e " the land...
...For Barnet, modernity is not voluntary and hence problematic...
...Given Barnet's hatred of capitalism, his recommendations are familiar enough: the redistribution of global wealth and the management of the global economy...
...The growth-oriented institutions of capitalism are nothing less than the most recent engines of this destructive trend...
...depopulation of the cities...
...Should the concept of "scarcity" strengthen its grip on the THE AMERICAN SPI",("IATOR SEPTEMBER 1980 31...
...Land, air, water, fuel, food, or even (in the more sophisticated accounts) leisure, time, labor, and s p a c e - - a l l , we are told, are growing " s c a r c e " because of the irrationality of our capitalist institutions...
...These seem s t r a n g e p r o s p e c t s but it may soon become evident once again that the greatest threat to sound liberalism is not (as many believe) the overly ambitious pursuit of progress, but rather the denial of progress altogether...
...It is a seldomrecalled fact that the first translation of Kapitalinto Russian was published on Czar Alexander I I I ' s official presses...
...Even many liberals have found in this rather "progressive" strain in socialist aspirations little with which to disagree...
...Because he regards all human culture--knowledge, taste, and technology--as reducible to resource environments, he retailors sociology and history into crude deterministic dress...
...That the landlord should live in luxury and the tenant farmer in a hovel was as natural as the sunrise...
...It is a "symptom of social pathology" and the pathogen is the West's ceaseless desire for betterment...
...local "protectionism" and "self-sufficiency...
...Suffused as it must be witl4 a s e n s e of "religion" and "community," it is a vision that inspires Barnet to bucolic contemplation: In a traditional society where nothing changes, most people accept their place with a certain grace...
...Simply use this form, or a | | reasonable facsimile, and send with | | your check or money order...
...Officially, the Left has consistently heaped scorn on the notion t h a t " s c a r c i t y " is somehow inseparable from the human condition...
...And though the rhetoric of progress has done its best to deny this, our very success in pillaging the earth of its resources has now made the t r u t h inescapable...
...Chapter by chapter, resource by resource, Barnet builds his theme out of anecdotes and numbers...
...Scientific socialism makes this point also, albeit implicitly: Since man's needs and by Neil Howe powers are directly shaped by Nature, his only choice is to define objectively the relation between these needs and powers (i.e., natural scarcity), and then to remake himself in accordance with the definition...
...Yet a crucial option always remained open: What would happen if socialists came to despise liberalism...
...John Stuart Mill, John Maynard Keynes, and (most recently) John Kenneth Galbraith have all written of a forthcoming " e n d of economic s c a r c i t y " which will heraid the dawn of new forms of social organization...
...We are living now in an age of moral mediocrity," Emile Durkheim wrote in reference to the West's loss of religious passion over 60 years ago...
...Particular scarcities of this or that kind may persist for a while, they say, but our final challenge will be to cope with affluence...
...It is now clear, however, that, whatever their original intentions, many on the Left have come to embrace the concept of"scarcity" in a more fundamental sense, have *Simon & Schus,er, $11.95...
...The same hostility informs the best-known general books on the subject (The Costs o f Economic Growth, Limits to Growth, Small is Beautiful, The End of Affluence, among others) and the many political and economic tracts that h'ave followed from them, including, now, Richard Barnet's The Lean Years: Politics in the Age of Scardty...
...Capitalism is still held in as much contempt as it was during the sixties, but ~'or new reasons...
...businesses " p l u n d e r " their mines...
...From this he concludes: "The fundamental philosophical choice--can human beings dominate n a t u r e or are they limited by nature--now divides both capitalism and socialism...
...and s t r i c t local, even communal, control of "capital" and of all natural resources...
...Barnet pursues the " s c a r c i t y " theme so r e l e n t l e s s l y that he sees everything mankind has ever done in different shades of the same color...
...The "underconsumption" that follows this "scarcity" (it sounds more like a glut than a scarcity) portends chaos and mayhem, needless to say...
...As socialism's official position, the "New World" (with its denial of scarcity) has usually won out, because it melded more easily with the powerful, progressive spirit of western liberalism...
...Some of the errors are trivial ("a Princeton undergraduate . . . could build a nuclear weapon with materials available from the local hardware store") and some are not (the Department of Defense has an "ever-expanding military budget...
...Though "scarcity in one commodity or another" is a familiar problem, he remarks, "the notion of systemic limits is t h r e a t e n i n g to capitalists and socialists alike...
...Worse still, many of its details are simply wrong...
...Starvation is not simply a lack of food...
...Although here the U.S...
...Does B a r n e t ' s ideol0gy--which h e a r t i l y denies the p o s s i b i l i t y of human progress in the context of the material world--still merit the name "Left" at all...
...reversion to pre-_ modern "family farming...
...Should our economy continue to stagnate for many more years, the defense of capitalism will probably find itself in many ways allied with the rump of the progressive Old Left...
...Yet here too perhaps Barnet can find a way out...
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...A mere hint of ordinary supply-and-demand cons t r a i n t s would, of course, topple a great many of his arguments...
...Thus, Barnet can easily repudiate any objection to his thesis based on enlightened free w i l l - - f o r example, the suggestion that some Third World societies might choose to join the world market for a purpose and might have control over how they join it...
...In this sense the practice of socialism-whether the ritualized economy of the artists' commune or the input-output matrix of the Soviet ."Gosplan"--is predicated upon the anticipation of, and submission to, scarcity...
...Hostility toward private economic activity is of course manifest in nearly all the proposed solutions for scarcity as well: zoning and land-use statutes at the local level, legislation and resource boards at the s t a t e level, agencies, taxes, and subsidies at the federal level, and UN resolutions for the world...
...What if they no longer cared to direct their message to the poor, creative, and striving dispossessed...
...stranglehold on the world food market cannot be blamed for depleting food once-andfor-all (not even Barnet can say this), we are nonetheless responsible for world starvation (as responsible as ou~ last generation was for "Hitler's Holocaust") by corrupting impoverished societies with inefficient "agribusiness" methods and with wasteful tastes...
...So did his Party apostles...
...It has always been so...
...For example, socialists found Malthus's contention that food supply could not keep pace with burgeoning populations reactionary, since it tended to avert man's attention from solving his woes in This World rather than in Another...
...and the delicate ecological balance of the earth is jeopardized...
...We associated socialism with cybernetics, with Futurist painting, with endless rows of tractors and tanks, with vast bureaucracies figuring out GNP statistics to the tenth decimal place, with the hissing and thumping steam pistons of the battleship Kropatkin...
...Barnet is equally single-minded when he'turns to economics...
...And Barnet, to his credit, fully acknowledges his departure from traditional socialism...
...So what is to be done...
...Marx, to be sure, ridiculed the Barnets of his own day (there were many) as "feudal socialists...
...A socialist economy "succeeds" when the state has managed to institutionalize scarcity indefinitely, when it can decree...
Vol. 13 • September 1980 • No. 9
