Tales of a New America
Clark, Jack
326: CORNERS OF THE AMERICAN MIND TALES OF A NEW AMERICA Robert B. Reich Times Books, $19.95, 278 pp. Jack Clark The coming election marks a "critical choice." How Congress votes on this...
...Social Security...
...The last big liberal surge came in the 1960s...
...In confronting real threats in the world (The Mob at the Gates) or in dealing with the disadvantaged at home (The Benevolent Community), conservatives have favored a tough approach...
...Two quick examples will suffice...
...and other advanced economies was sustained by high wages, achieved through ferocious struggle...
...The system of stable mass production which is fading in the U.S...
...That would certainly seem to mean that liberals tried and failed to organize a response to our confusing world, were repudiated, and then succeeded by conservatives...
...There, but for the grace of God, go I. Liberals advocated a politics of solidarity with the poor...
...Here, as in his provocative discussions of the "boomerang principle" affecting the U.S...
...and tell stories of the rot at the top that had to do with specific abuses of power by both corporate and public officials without condemning either in broad strokes...
...Following up on that, Reich falls for a Great American Hustle: The Virtuous New Center...
...Here's hoping that a few of his tales will somehow .work their way into the 1988 presidential campaign...
...His analysis points to the deeper failure: liberalism itself has been reactive, unconvincing, and lacking in any coherent version of the national myths...
...Both have been excessive, Reich says repeatedly...
...That's a neat little image of a bad cycle, but it simply doesn't correspond to the reality of recent American politics...
...One in three Americans fell below the poverty line sometime between 1975 and 1985...
...Gary Hart's inane "New Ideas" campaign in 1984 represented a recent nadir in this con game...
...foster creative groups of workers by spurring new forms like worker ownership...
...In the 1980s, liberalism treats the poor as objects of charity, out there, "them" not "us...
...328...
...As Thomas Edsall demonstrated in The New Politics of Inequality, the Democrats who gained from this popular revulsion are largely economic conservatives who would fit well into a broader Republican party...
...Reich attempts to express his even-handed dismay at failures of liberals and conservatives alike...
...How Congress votes on this or that bill will determine the course of American history...
...These tales shape the stories we tell each other, and our understandings of the myths shape the most fundamental questions behind our political debates...
...In his discussion of the military build-up, Reich acknowledges that by 1978 Jimmy Carter had set out the basic direction Ronald Reagan was to follow with much greater enthusiasm...
...On whatever issue you choose, America is at a turning point...
...We share moral assumptions, cultural norms, and a common sense of how the world works — all of which define the problems we consider for debate and how we consider them...
...Deeply imbedded in our culture, the four myths define the unstated assumptions we share...
...He argues against universal entitlements, yet the politics of solidarity which keep Social Security untouchable derive directly from that sense of entitlement...
...He chooses four — The Mob at the Gates, The Triumphant Individual, the Benevolent Community, and the Rot at the Top — and organizes the book around them...
...No popular upsurge against an excess of conciliation confounded LBJ or Hubert Humphrey...
...That failure reflects not bold excesses but a decay from within...
...A military adventure in Indochina, which certainly represented an attempt at assertiveness, did contribute to their undoing...
...Liberalism has failed...
...Treating the poor as objects of charity is not only politically ineffective, it is irrational, in Reich's view...
...Conservatives see the Rot at the Top in the stifling hand of government bureaucracy...
...Reich suggests at one point that well- functioning labor markets led to those wages...
...The poor were like us, were part of us...
...In the attempt to strike a balance, Reich keeps building up and tearing down liberal straw men...
...More fundamentally, Reich reminds us our future prosperity (and not so incidentally, our future Social Security checks) depends on the productivity of those who are now young...
...The everyday hyperbole of democratic politics tells us that interest groups and ideologies are battling it out for competing visions of what our society is and should be...
...A large majority of the poor are like us...
...Neither set of reactions, argues Reich, will suffice...
...Discussing The Benevolent Community, Reich demonstrates the point powerfully...
...Picking this particular nit points toward one of the book's major weaknesses in both conception and style...
...He seeks nothing less than a redefinition of our national myths in ways which make sense in the current world...
...The difference between charity and solidarity can be measured in the political bases of AFDC vs...
...Reich argues that both liberals and conservatives have current understandings of the four myths which are not only badly outdated but dangerously dysfunctional...
...Reich chooses to define this shared sense of the world as a realm of myth and morality tales...
...arms build-up and in his proposal for a "collective entrepreneurialism," Reich displays his talents as an original thinker and creative analyst...
...Liberals in the 1930s viewed the poor as part of a larger community...
...In a world economy where brain power will be our competitive edge, we can not afford to lose the potential contributions of poor youngsters...
...Too much of this, too much of that, we'll come up with something in between and name it new...
...For liberals, the Rot at the Top is the abuse of power by the plundering corporate rich...
...In the discussion of how production is and should be organized, Reich simply ignores the role of organized labor...
...He goes on to argue, though, that our recent history can be understood as "a series of reactions, first to the failures of conciliation, then to the failures of assertiveness...
...The conservatives, in their turn, failed, making way for another failed attempt by liberals...
...Yet, as Robert Reich reminds us in this ambitious and fascinating book, in our political system, in almost any political system, the areas of agreement overshadow the areas of debate...
...Robert Reich's agenda remains, though, a vigorous and welcome redefinition of modern liberalism...
...Reich knows better, and his book in its stronger moments presents a much more convincing case...
...Reich's work sets out a usable liberal version of the myths...
...The reigning myths of the Reagan era lie in shambles after his searching probe...
...To this point, Reich's generalization is fair, adequate, and as accurate as such generalizations can be...
...Some of Reich's specifics will (and should) irritate the left...
...America, adopting Reich's version of its morality tales, would: engage the world without excessive confrontation, promoting thirdworld development and negotiated settlements to superpower disputes...
...reorganize welfare programs to remove the stigma attached to so many recipients...
...The revulsion against conservatives, on the other hand, has had more to do with scandals and less to do with repudiation of aggressiveness...
...Some form of distributive struggle will take place within the new system of flexible production, but no instructive hint of that exists in this book...
...Liberals have preferred conciliation and generosity...
Vol. 114 • May 1987 • No. 10
