Irving Babbitt: Representative Writings
Panichas, George A.
blame. For example, he contends accord the ,ar,!~;n lcgal status~ Thus, while readers of The Polish August may be awed by Mr. Ascherson's erudition and-the breadth of his knowledge of recent...
...Finally, they argued that if people were allowed to pursue their self-interest relatively unimpeded by governmental strictures or class rigidities, they would increase the wealth of the nation...
...Extent and nature of circulation A. Total no...
...Doubtless many activists and rank-and-file workers were becoming more militant...
...possibility of attaining real justice...
...of issues published annually: 12 B. Annual subscription price: $19.00, 4. Location of known office of publication: 102 West Sixth Street, Bloomington, Monroe, Indiana 47402...
...copies each Actual no copies of single issue during preceding issue pubhshed nearest to 12 months filing date 46,442 47,650 3,363 37,692 41,055 990 42,045 3,871 1,734 47,650 11...
...he lived on for them in their hatred even after his death-open any book by Edmund Wilson, Allen Tate, or R.P...
...The thinker who loathed self-interest most was of course Karl Marx...
...If this is the gist of his argument then who are we to quarrel wit] 32 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR NOVEMBER 198...
...Weschler senses the growing despair among ordinary Poles: "Fear, frustration and fatigue are setting in: the lines, the shortages, the anxieties about the ~oming winter...
...For how can Maital urge that more needs to be known about the way people really work--known about the inveterate complexities of human conduct and how they impinge upon economic behavior--and at the same time glibly dream of the way people ideally should be...
...x , Bemarao ~dusi~: tni~ls ~ ~ ~rMd on [[ , I J~ '~ brass hardware...
...he even thought he had "leisure to read, to reflect, and converse...
...He has therefore published a very well-chosen selection of chapters from Rousseau and.Romanticism, The Masters o f 30 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR NOVEMBER 1982 Modem French Criticism, Democracy and Leadership, and Spanish Character and Other Essays, and of hard-to-find fugitive pieces...
...American companies should be more aggressive in pursuing international markets...
...To Babbitt, he was the true modern, his enemies were romantics...
...Trade authorities estimate at least 20,000 more U.S...
...BERNARDQ 2400 Wastheklw, # 106W (T), H~JSinn, IX T/W6 T. John Jamieson As President, Richard Nixon found himself able "to draw the court and attention of the wise and learned, wherever they are to be found...
...manufacturing companies are directly involved in exports...
...Maital does not seem to be a socialist, yet he too drones on about the need in today's world for "cooperation, sacrifice, and altruism...
...Without hesitation, the last bonnet laird of the stump T. John Jamieson is a Richard Weaver Fellow at Northwestern University...
...In education he called for the study of the classics ,rather than vocationalism and mere dilettantism...
...Managing editor: Wladyslaw Pleszczynski, 142 West Sixth Street, Bloomington, IN 47402...
...street vendors and counter sales 1,984 2. Mail subscriptions 38,191 C. Total paid circulation 40,175 D. Free distribution by mail, carrier or other means, sample, complimentary, and other free copies 976 E. Total distribution 41,151 F. Copies not distributed 1. Office use, left over, unaccounted, spoiled after printing 3,969 2. Returns from news agents 1,322 G. Total 46,442 Average no...
...Despite a conspiracy of silence, a few men who refuse to accept the standard of their age have happily stumbled upon him...
...As Hamilton said in Federalist 14: "The prosperity of commerce is now perceived and acknowledged by all enlightened [emphasis mine] statesmen to be the most useful as well as the most productive source of national wealth . . . . " In short, the self-interest of commercial man was by and large good for the nation...
...Government has to do its part, too...
...Quotations were his thunderbolts...
...Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson were the wrong men...
...to foreign companies...
...Solidarity will persist in th6 underground and eventually will reemerge...
...nonetheless, it is open to question whether that little book held the key to the wisdom requisite to form a great statesman...
...restrictions on the exporting and re-exporting o f data and products made from data licensed by the U.S...
...Bullish on Braces?:'--~--" "t~at's nght--I~g cornel)ask to bracas/suspe~ For dtassliousir~s...
...Panichas very competently and engagingly presents the spirit of Babbitt in an introductory essay and in prefatory paragraphs to the selections...
...4. Location of the headquarters or general business offices of the publishers: Same...
...Through such inheritors as Eliot and Kirk, the origins of modern "intellectual conservatism" lie in the conservatism of Babbitt and his colleague andcoequal Paul Elmer More, with its comprehensive cultural critique, a philosophy with religious implications and depending ultimately on the support of religion...
...Professor Panichas, literary editor of the Right's foremost intellectual quarterly, Modern Age, and author of several books including The Reverent Discipline, is decidedly a disciple, and wishes to share with us the awesomeness of his master as well as the challenge...
...In 1947 the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) made exporting easier and helped create a global economy...
...A l l of which brings us to Maital's Minds, Markets and Money...
...Invoking Byron's definition of democracy as "an aristocracy of blackguards," Babbitt declared that such a system leads not to the equality it ostensibly seeks, but to an inverted aristocracy~suppression of the best by the worst...
...To get our economy moving in the right direction, we need to promote policies that will increase our e x p o r t s - - n o t limit our imports...
...Both Tories and radicals equated self-interest with selfishness and greed...
...I certify that the statements made by me above are correct and complete...
...no matter what the subject, each lectui~e of his was a lesson in the great books--all of them...
...In the nineteenth century, however, self-interest acquired a bad reputation...
...Since World War II t h e U.S...
...Both Ascherson's and Weschler's accounts, however flawed, nevertheless have the virtue of portraying Solidarity as a wide-ranging social movement whose revolution profoundly affected the lives of millions of Poles...
...His oriental studies and his stern demeanor led to his being known as the " w a r r i n g Buddha...
...Exports now generate one-sixth o f our manufacturing jobs and one-fifth o f our Gross National Product...
...mental humanitarianism," and direct democracy would give him a perfect society...
...International commerce enables all trading partners to enjoy bigger and bigger slices o f an expanding economic pie...
...If democracy were to be of any positive use to civilization, one would somehow have to "substitute the doctrine of the right man for the doctrine of the rights of man...
...Written and recorded in the months before martial taw, Solidarity reveals a keen and almost uncanny prescience...
...I Next Month THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR's 15th Anniversary Issue I I I THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR NOVEMBER 1982 29 Kirk's position, I should have recommended a somewhat more substantial tome (in size as in profundity) by the man whose ungrateful scholar T.S...
...9 Permit companies to pool research and share the results...
...And he decried the democratization of the American Constitution...
...STATE OF OWNERSHIP, MANAGEMENT, AND CIRCULATION 1. Title of publication: The American Spectator...
...h economic life," he says, "I have triec _9 to show that again and again, ii contexts ranging from schooling t( labor, spending, saving, and risl taking, one economic agent, acting legitimately in his own self-interest causes harm to others, and ultimatel...
...Wear J I g / J " ~ with slacks/spuds jacket Be tx~l/sllmv ~ham olfl A i~r...
...Babbitt diagnosed the problem as a change in the concept of human nature: Modern man had somehow become a creature capable of attaining perfection by following instinct...
...and our trading partners have enjoyed growth and prosperity...
...It was not socialist-minded workers and intellectuals, but this middle class~blocked from career advancement by the Communist Party's restrictive nomenklatura system of rewarding loyalists with top-level administrative and managerial positions~which gave impetus to Solidarity's movement for worker self-management...
...Whether the President ever read that little book or not, we do not know...
...Fortunately, one of these is Professor George Panichas of the University of Maryland...
...but, living a t t h e dawn of the twentieth century, he hoped that the West was about to right itself, and that his philosophy of Humanism would prevail as the spirit of the coming age...
...There i,~ a further difficulty: At times Maita implies that we must look beyonc self-interest toward altruism...
...In their quest to make literature completely irrelevant to life, the New Critics declared Babbitt defunct and retreated into the seventh heaven of aestheticism...
...He Opening Up World Trade U nder the strain o f hard times, voices o f fear once again are crying out for barriers against imports...
...Or is it that Maital thinks economists can begin to gc about changing human behavior-"altering," as he says, "how people perceive, and act toward, one another"--once they understand how people behave...
...3. Frequency of issue: Monthly...
...Pubhsher THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR NOVEMBER 1982 31 The mentality of the American electorate was represented "by t h e fact that the Hearst publications have twenty-five niillion readers...
...Listening to common sense, and examining the bellwethers of modern philosophy-and literature, Babbitt knew that the doctrines of the demagogues of liberation, vulgarized for popular consumption, would devour the roots of civilization...
...9 Provide adequate lending authority to the Export-Import Bank so U.S...
...But exports also dropped, and the loss o f sales worsened the Great Depression...
...Weschler is successful in capturing ~oland's alternating moods of euphoria and foreboding in the period of Solidarity's heyday...
...Lawrence Weschler's Solidarity: Poland in the Season Of its Passion is a narrative full of closely observed d e t a i l , the work of an enterprising and facile journalist...
...The self-interest of people in Stephen Miller is a Resident Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute...
...sources...
...American exports of goods and services grew from $14 billion in 1950 to $367 billion in 1981, creating millions o f jobs and raising our standard o f living...
...Ronald E. Burr...
...Tawney-=-continue to dream wistfully of a society in which self-interest will be a thing of the past...
...America will be making a serious mistake, however, if we allow our present economic problems to obscure the clear lessons o f the past...
...Eventually the demagogue would guide the mob's a p p e t i t e s and passions toward the unleashing of the Nietzschean Will to Power, ending in "decadent imperialism...
...copies printed B. Paid circulation: 1. Sales through dealers and carriers...
...exporters can compete on equal footing with foreign companies...
...Social justice" he considered a cant phrase in which the politics of envy were given a humanitarian disguise...
...9. For completion of nonprofit organizations authorized to mail at special rates: The purpose, function, and nonprofit status of this organization and the exempt status for Federal income tax purposes have not changed during preceding 12 months...
...As for the awesomeness, let it be remembered that Babbitt was Harv a r d ' s most powerful and most popular lecturer, despite an unappreciative, "progressive" college administration...
...The union's persistence will continue toinspire new works on the Polish struggle for freedom...
...and finds that unionists' answers to this and other thorny questions are frequently glib or evasive...
...He therefore fulfilled Burke's prescription for a natural aristocrat by summonipg Dr...
...If I were in Dr...
...Inpolitics Babbitt demanded the submission of all to genuine leadership rather than to the debauch of demagogy...
...should take the lead in negotiating the reduction o f these restrictions...
...Eliot was--Democracy and Leadership by Irving Babbitt of Harvard (1865-1933...
...companies have as much access to overseas markets as foreign producers have to the U.S...
...Recently, however, as foreign competition has hurt some U.S...
...American politics tended, he t h o u g h t , toward a solution of the h u m a n i t a r i a n / e g o i s t i c paradox of romanticism through class warfare legitimated by humanitarian rhetoric...
...I'm not sure what Maitai means...
...Editor: R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr., 102 West Sixth Street, Bloomington, IN 47402...
...Ascherson's erudition and-the breadth of his knowledge of recent Polish history, they will no doubt be confused by his consistent effort to exonerate the guilty...
...Austin Warren has said that " t h e library was not his asylum but his arsenal . . . . For him, books were not shrines, not Objects of art and skill, but guides or menaces...
...A pseudoreligious belief in numerical majorities ("the divine average," a Species of " q u a n t i t a t i v e i m p r e s : sionism") threatened to destroy the...
...and that man would amount to nothing unless he subjected his lower nature to the control of his higher nature...
...International competition encourages industries to invest in research and development to improve productivity and create b e t t e r products at lower cost...
...A. Publication no.: 01488414 2. Date of filing: Octbber 1, 1982...
...Through this book, the awesomeness of Babbitt will be known, and the challenge will have to be met...
...industries, some people have suggested turning back the clock to the era o f restricted trade...
...material progress, "senti...
...Maital's poin here seems to be that people shouh have a more enlightened sense o their own self-interest...
...Babbitt called the pathological state of the West "romanticism" because he saw modern relativism and the paradoxical contest between humanitarianism and amoral egotism as the final result of Rousseau's original emotionalist heresy...
...Only 10 percent o f U.S...
...It is these educated workers who were and remain Poland's only hope for true economic development and stability...
...they have...
...As for the challenge, it manifested itself for Babbitt in politics as well as literature, and it is well represented under both heads in Professor Panichas's book...
...Specifically, it can: _9 Reflect the reality o f what's available in international markets by revising U.S...
...Most people, they said, were driven by the engine of self-interest, by which they meant that most people want to improve their material condition...
...8. Known bondholders, mortgages, and other security holders owning or holding 1 percent or more of total amount of bonds, mortgages, or other sercurities: None...
...In the eighteenth century, self-interest (or sometimes simply interest) was invoked by a wide variety of thinkers who considered themselves progressives insofar as they were in favor of commerce, technological progress, and economic growth...
...Babbitt believed in the Burkean natural aristocracy, which could be realized through education designed to breed leaders, not equals...
...Kirk, the incarnation of political and cultural traditionalism, owes a great deal to his early reading of Babbitt, whom he has described as his " m e n t o r . " For Babbitt, as for Kirk, the problems of modern politics, morals, literature, and education are essentially the same problem...
...When we buy their goods, they obtaindollars to buy our goods...
...The virile challenge which Babbitt presents as a relentless polemicist makes the reader either a disciple or an enemy...
...In literature he desired the nurturing of the ethical sense and the moral imagination...
...dotes that compose the.book...
...The 17 months in which the movement was ascendant was a remarkable period of free speech and public participation, a period of freedom that cannot be eradicated even by the severe repressions under martial law...
...for it consists of a few powerful leaders, a certain number of accommodating scoundrels and subservient weaklings, and a mass of men who trudge after them without in the least knowing their own minds...
...Everybody is jumpy...
...In order to escape modernism's hell of ataxia, he counseled the individual to discover the frein vital, the faculty of the "inner check," the will to refrain...
...there is no middle path...
...In his view, the impasse between the union and the government and the deterioration of the economy were clearly testing the patience of all Poles...
...Yet many contemporary intellectuals--heirs less to Marx, perhaps, than to the English socialist, R.H...
...These writers, who include Mandeville, Samuel Johnson, Adam Smith, David Hume, and the authors of The Federalist, did not so much champion self-interest as argue that self-interest must be acknowledged as a fact of life--and not a bad fact at that...
...Frankly, I suspect that today the author would retract this ludicrous assertion...
...Russell Kirk to the White House and asking him, "What one book should I read...
...that was the one big truth of this Archilocian hedgehog...
...to himself as well...
...A. No...
...A poll appearing in a Warsaw j o u r n a l . . , reveals that fully forty percent of those interviewed expect a bloody resolution to the crisis sometime in the near future...
...By the way, Jeffrey Hart was wrong...
...But precisely for this reason the union could have played an important stabilizing role had the government shown a modicum of true masterpieces~ And it is simply absurd to suggest that "from reading them one comes away with the suspicion that this man really felt he had to act the way he did in order to save the nation...
...Yet I believe Weschler errs when he argues in the epilogue that Poland "was lapsing into a state of near anarchy...
...Weschler from examining Solidarity's revolution in all its variety and complexity...
...One can only hope that the next generation of books will be free of the ideological fetters that prevent both Mr...
...It was said that the only difference between him and Jehovah was grammatical: the great IAM and the g r e a t I.B...
...The young men of literature hated him furiously...
...data often available from other nonzU.S...
...The U~S...
...We have an enlightened self-interest to promote their prosperity...
...Even Eliot had to admit that once one had been a pupil of Babbitt, "he remains permanently an active influence...
...Much o f this progress has been achieved because o f an international commitment to free trade...
...6. Names and complete addresses of publisher, editor, and managing editor: Publisher: Ronald E. Burr, 102 West Sixth Street, Bloomington, IN 47402...
...Eliot reassured them by his curious ambivalence toward his old teacher...
...Not only is this abysmal cant, but it also undercuts Maital's main argument, which is that economists should pay more attention to the psychological foundations of economic behavior...
...Blackmur...
...2 country replied, "Eliot's Notes Toward the Definition of Culture...
...He includes the final chapter of Democracy and Leadership, "Democracy and Standards," the point of the title being that radical democracy does not tolerate standards...
...UNITED TECHNOLOGIES reminded us that man is a dual being, composed of spirit and matter...
...Our government should work to ensure that U.S...
...his ideas are permanently with one, as a measurement and test of one's own...
...Irving Babbitt is ~ght, [] MINDS, MARKETS ANDMONEY: PSYCHOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONS OF ECONOMIC BEHAVIOR Shlomo Maital / Basic Books / $14.95 Stephen Miller The notion of self-interest has had a peculiar history...
...This excellent anthology is simply called Irving Babbitt: Representative Writings...
...They were successfulmimports fell...
...To do otherwise would be to deny one's own humanity...
...In the face of this temptation, we should recall the disastrous policies o f the early 1930s when nations tried to shore up their faltering industries by limiting imports...
...Many non-tariff barriers remain, impeding a greater flow o f goods and services across borders...
...since it is hard to rescue his centra argument from the welter of anec...
...If American conservatism is to make itself philosophically intelligible, and become an effective cultural force, it must reidentify itself with its roots in the thought of Babbitt and More...
...His account !ays bare much of the piety and fuzzy thinking that seemed to afflict even some of Solidarity's ablest leaders...
...Consequently, Weschler ignores an alternative, though far more persuasive, view of Solidarity as a movement representing the aspirations not only of Poland's working class and intelligentsia, but also of Poland's middle class of middle-level managers and technical intelligentsia...
...In response he issued a call to discipline that was not at all to the taste of modern man...
...Because Weschler carries the ideological baggage of the Left, he is incapable of viewing Solidarity as anything other than a movement of increasingly radical proletarians...
...7. Owner: The Alternative Educational Foundation, Inc.,'.102 West Sixth Street, Bloomington, Indiana 47402...
...And perhaps he did...
...When the ministers o f GATT meet in November, the international trading community should reaffirm its commitment to free trade by deeds as well as words...
...Christopher Lasch wants to construct "a new form of society, in which collective needs rather than private profit determine the form and content of production," and Irving Howe holds on to "a vision of society that has men acting for motives finer than accumulation, values better than manipulation, an ethic beyond the appetites of the self...
...But such a desire did not mean that they were obsessed with wealth--did not mean that they were inordinately greedy or madly acquisitive...
...also ~oday's ~ INn0...
...Own wardrobe/glflsf Write for I . ] _9 on~ pr=en~ ~ 8ema~'s ~ons~e ~ l.:Jl' .IF-~ of smashing British braces/exciting American A'~ f_,h, suspenders...
...He had read all the great books in their original tongues, and had them all at his f i n g e r t i p s , literally...
...He was right...
...improving their condition, they argued, was generally a moderate passion--very different from the immoderate passions of many landowning_ aristocrats...
...Weschler asks: "Isn't Solidarity's own experience of democratic process~the convoluted movement and the agonizingly slow pace of the process--cause for concern when Solidarity is advocating its transposition into the economic realm, where decisions have to be made within the context of a world market that is constantly changing at the speed of a computer printout...
...Jobs are preserved and created here at home when U.S.-built products are sold abroad...
...at othel times he implies that he is not s( much against self-interest as agains narrow or short-run self-interest...
...Ascherson and Mr...
...Perhaps he would confuse fewer people today if he had called it "modernism...
...As Weschler observes, two months before the clampdown, "The government issues statement after statement, each more shrill than the one before...
...Marx's dream of a society animated by a disinterested concern for the common good has become the nightmare of modern totalitarianism, where people are forced to appear disinterested and children are encouraged to inform disinterestedly on their parents...
...B a b b i t t cites Goethe: "There is nothing more odious than the majority...
...firms could easily tap export markets...
...Not standardization, but standards...
...It is genuine conservatism because it comprehends the whole of life, unlike the partial conservatism of various economic conservatives, libertarians, and ex-Communists, who are anarchic individualists and therefore the spawn of the romantic heresy...
...In an interdependent world, we benefit when our trading partners do well...
Vol. 15 • November 1982 • No. 11
