Since 1776, we have had unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and our government has been empowered to secure those rights. Thus, instigating the never-ending debate of what those rights are, which rights the individual is responsible for protecting, and which rights the government is responsible for securing. This debate, along with countless others, have been argued throughout American history and would be too cumbersome to cover in one paper, therefore, I will focus on a single line of confrontational thought, political economics. In the words of Milton and Rose Friedman, “Much of the history of the United States revolves about the attempt to translate the principles of the Declaration of Independence into practice – from the struggle over slavery, finally settled by a bloody civil war, to the subsequent attempt to promote equality of opportunity, to the more recent attempt to achieve equality of results.” (Kramnick, 2009 Pg. 1412) This short statement, made in 1980, summarizes hundreds of years of economic thought in America. Our first efforts toward a national economic agenda had to be deciphered from the intentions of our forefathers. Was it their intention to promote and encourage economic growth, to consider equality in economic decisions, or for economic equality to be based on opportunity or outcome? Voices of the present add more levels of complexity to the questions raised by the significant thinkers of the past, yet the blueprint of the discussion is the same.
Benjamin Franklin begins this discussion by describing Americans as having a general happy mediocrity. Anyone coming to America expecting anymore have succumb to wild imaginations. (Kramnick, 2009 Pg. 67) There are no handouts in America, “As every Freeman, to preserve his independence, (if he has not a sufficient estate) ought to have some profession, calling, trade or farm, whereby he may honestly subsist, there can be no necessity for, nor use in, establishing offices of profit; the usual effects of which are dependence and servility, unbecoming freemen, in the possessors and expectants; faction, contention, corruption, and disorder among the people.” (Kramnick, 2009 Pg. 68) Franklin is quite clear when he enumerates the negative consequences that occur when freemen become dependent. He goes on to say that government should only be attractive due to the good laws and liberties it provides and that any type of encouragement from the government is folly, “…if the country is ripe for manufacture, it may be carried on by private persons to advantage; and if not, it is a folly to think of forcing nature.” (Kramnick, 2009 Pg. 71) Freedom and protection with minimal intervention and encouragement from the government, summates Franklin’s perspective.
Ben’s, stick-to-the-basics character, was challenged by Alexander Hamilton’s, “…manifest design and scope of the constitution” argument. (Kramnick, 2009 Pg. 309) Hamilton states, “In countries where there is great private wealth, much may be effected by the voluntary contributions of patriotic individuals; but in a community situated like that of the United States, the public purse must supply the deficiency of private resource. In what can it be so useful, as in prompting and improving the efforts of industry?” (Kramnick, 2009 Pg. 319) Convincing the colonies to make the public purse responsible for the deficiency of private resource was the first step in creating an economic agenda. Within two years of ratifying the Constitution, the ‘necessary and proper’ clause of Article 1 Section 8 was manipulated to fund enumerated powers that would encourage American industry as providing for general welfare. In Hamilton’s words, “It is therefore of necessity left to the discretion of the National Legislature, to pronounce upon the objects, which concern the general welfare, and for which under the description, an appropriation of money is requisite and proper.” (Kramnick, 2009 Pg. 318)
When joining Franklin and Hamilton’s works, the voice of each represents a voice of the people. Franklin is speaking of the common man, an American man who is self-reliant, and Hamilton is speaking for a future American, one who needs tools to compete with the world. There is no real difference between happy mediocrity and resource deficient, both are describing the same country. Where the two diverge is in their view of the future, economic status quo versus growth, tie together American dialogue.
Jefferson epitomizes the status quo when he speaks in 1801 of the role of government. “…a wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. (Kramnick, 2009 Pg. 354) He is describing a government used solely for physical protection and yet a hint of protection of labor is squeezed in to this statement and restated, just as blurred in 1785, “The property of this country is absolutely concentrated in a very few hands, having revenues of from half a million of guineas a year downwards…. I am conscious that an equal division of property is impracticable, but the consequences of this enormous inequality producing so much misery to the bulk of mankind, legislators cannot invent too many devises for subdividing property, only taking care to let their subdivision go hand in hand with the natural affections of the human mind.” (Kramnick, 2009 Pg. 359)
Both Jefferson and Hamilton encouraged legislators to do whatever was necessary to move forward their specific economic agendas. After Ben Franklin, one method or another of governmental intervention was regarded as necessary. Although Hamilton made us consider a new interpretation of the constitution as his contribution, Jefferson’s minimalist intrusion encouraged division of property and a specific tax exemption for, “another means of silently lessening the inequality of property.” (Kramnick, 2009 Pg. 359) Jefferson drew the line with the constitutionality of a national bank. He argued, “Congress is not to lay taxes ad libitum for any purpose they please; but only to pay the debts or provide for the welfare of the Union. In like manner, they are not to do anything they please to provide for the general welfare, but only to lay taxes for that purpose.” (Kramnick, 2009 Pg. 350)
Just six years earlier, he told James Madison that legislators could not invent too many devises for subdividing property. Nonetheless, within a generation, the Supreme Court, headed by Chief Justice John Marshall legally settled that Congress could act for the welfare of the nation. “The subject is the execution of those great powers on which the welfare of a nation essentially depends. It must have been the intention of those who gave these powers, to insure, as far as human prudence could insure, their beneficial execution. This could not be done by confiding the choice of means of such narrow limits as not to leave it in the power of Congress to adopt any which might be appropriate, and which were conducive to the end.” (Kramnick, 2009 Pg. 332) Accommodating legislation to circumstance, although now written into precedent, has not stopped the debate over what if any accommodations should occur.
As we move further into the 19th century, we find a similar feud dealing with the Second National Bank. Andrew Jackson attempted to navigate the government toward equal protection, “If it would confine itself (the government) to equal protection, and, as Heaven does its rains, shower its favors alike on the high and the low, the rich and the poor, it would be an unqualified blessing. In the act before me there seems to be a wide and unnecessary departure from these just principles.” (Kramnick, 2009 Pg. 430) Jefferson’s protection of labor is echoed in Jackson’s protection of the poor, although weakening the rich was the true focus. “Many of our rich men have not been content with equal protection and equal benefits, but have besought us to make them richer by act of Congress. By attempting to gratify their desires we have in the results of our legislation arrayed section against section, interest against interest, and man against man, in a fearful commotion which threatens to shake the foundation of our Union.” (Kramnick, 2009 Pg. 430) Using the backdrop of the impending deadline for the Second National Bank charter, Jackson declared abuse in the system and that the promotion of economic growth in America had become, “…prostitution of our Government to the advancement of the few at the expense of the many.” (Kramnick, 2009 Pg. 430)
During Jackson’s time, the few, had hearty voices and put pen to paper. Daniel Webster responded to his claims by stating, “Congress passed the bill, not as a bounty or a favor to the present stockholders, nor to comply with any demand of right on their part; but to promote great public interests, for great public objects.” (Kramnick, 2009 Pg. 445) Webster argues that the powers conferred on this bank are the same as any other similar institution and no abuses can occur due to that fact. (Kramnick, 2009 Pg. 444) Webster verbally attacks Jackson for playing the class warfare card, “It manifestly seeks to inflame the poor against the rich; it wantonly attacks whole classes of people, for the purpose of turning against them the prejudices and the resentments of other classes.” (Kramnick, 2009 Pg. 447)This spat between making economic decisions based on economic growth versus making those same decisions based on wealth distribution, sounds familiar.
John C. Calhoun chimes into this disagreement by bringing a layer of political wrangling in regional economics into the picture. While Jackson argues for a fairer distribution of wealth, Calhoun argues for a fairer distribution of economic regional favor. “The duties were so arranged as to be, in fact, bounties on one side, and taxation on the other; and thus placing the two great sections of the country in direct conflict in reference to this fiscal action, and thereby letting in that flood of political corruption which threatens to sweep away our constitution and our liberty.” (Calhoun, 1952 Pg. 154)
When one side of an economic debate dominates the other, as in Calhoun’s case of the North versus South, or Jackson’s case of rich versus poor, the discussion moves from whether economic growth should be encouraged by government, to whether economic fairness should be enforced by government. This is a large leap, and the political theorists involved in this discussion had much to say on the topic. To begin, William Graham Sumner brings us back to our Franklin roots when he states, “…there is anything but a fallacy and a superstition in the notion that ‘the State’ owes anything to anybody except peace, order, and the guarantees of rights.” (Kramnick, 2009 Pg. 705) Exactly one hundred years passed between Franklin’s and Sumner’s words and yet the ideas are the same, Sumner just adds the complexity from which Franklin had no interest. Sumner states, “…there are yet mixed in our institutions mediaeval theories of protection, regulation, and authority, and modern theories of independence and individual liberty and responsibility. The consequence of this mixed state of things is that those who are clever enough to get into control use the paternal theory by which to measure their own rights. That is, they assume privileges; and they use the theory of liberty to measure their own duties – that is, when it comes to the duties, they want to be let alone.” (Kramnick, 2009 Pg. 717)
Analyzing this statement, you can see Sumner is acknowledging the current desire for economic fairness from multiple angles. He depicts groups as well as individuals that assume privileges for themselves while declaring others must be free of access to privileges because all must be self-reliant and independent. Sumner advocates for more power to voluntary cooperation and combination and for our representative system to discontinue surrendering public to private interests, (Kramnick, 2009 Pg. 713) and yet he acknowledges the state of corporate and public welfare in the United States. Lester Ward adds to his line of thought by saying, “Those who denounce state interference are the ones who most frequently and successfully invoke it. The cry of laissez-faire mainly goes up from the ones who, if really ‘let alone,’ would instantly lose their wealth-absorbing power… Still all these things must be regarded as perfectly natural, that is, inherent in the nature of man, and not as peculiar to any class.” (Kramnick, 2009 Pg. 784) I believe the Declaration of Independence and our Constitution were written with such ambiguity to allow ever-developing and changing ideologies to reconcile themselves with human nature and democratic principles. Both Sumner and Ward have their own personal viewpoints and yet are such great political scientists that they can step back and see what is truly happening in America in their lifetimes, putting to words the effects of the ongoing economic debate.
Charles A. Beard brings the debate in clear focus in the year 1922, “The grand conclusion, therefore, seems to be exactly that advanced by our own James Madison in the Tenth Number of the Federalist. To express his thought in modern terms: a landed interest, a transport interest, a railway interest, a shipping interest, an engineering interest, a manufacturing interest, a public-official interest, with many lesser interests, grow up of necessity in all great societies and divide them into different classes actuated by different sentiments and views. The regulation of these various and interfering interest, whatever may be the formula for the ownership of property, constitutes the principal task of modern statesmen and involves the spirit of party in the necessary and ordinary operations of government. In other words, there is no rest for mankind, no final solution of eternal contradictions. Such is the design of the universe. The recognition of this fact is the beginning of wisdom, and of statesmanship.” (Kramnick, 2009 Pg. 1023) Regulating development with no hope of ever reaching a final or true way of acting or implementing policy is the understanding of a wise statesman, and yet always referring back to our founding documents is what keeps us from floundering.
Although we progressed economically through the 18th and 19th century by creating agendas and questioning equality, it took the 20th century to progress American debate to economic unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The debate begins as it did originally with, what is the American system. Herbert Hoover states, “After the war, when the Republican Party assumed administration of the country, we were faced with the problem of determination of the very nature of our national life. During 150 years we have built up a form of self-government and a social system which is peculiarly our own. It differs essentially from all other in the world. It is the American system. It is just as definite and positive a political and social system as has ever been developed on earth. It is founded upon a particular conception of self-government in which decentralized local responsibility is the very base. Further than this, it is founded upon the conception that only through ordered liberty, freedom and equal opportunity to the individual will his initiative and enterprise spur on the march of progress. And in our insistence upon equality of opportunity has our system advanced beyond all the world.” (Kramnick, 2009 Pg. 1137)
This was a campaign speech in 1928, in which Hoover did not question whether government should be involved in the economy, for he believed government should be an umpire in the economic game. (Kramnick, 2009 Pg. 1138) He did not question whether government should promote and encourage economic growth for he proposed that government should do all it can but should never undermine the very instincts which carry our people forward to progress. (Kramnick, 2009 Pg. 1140)Where I believe Hoover directed the debate is in these words, “I do not wish to be misinterpreted as believing that the United States is free-for-all and devil-take-the-hindmost. The very essence of equality of opportunity and of American individualism is that there shall be no domination by any group or combination in this Republic, whether it be business or political. On the contrary, it demands economic justice as well as political and social justice. It is no system of laissez faire.” (Kramnick, 2009 Pg. 1140)
Here is a substantial move in American political thought from a debate over economic fairness to a debate over economic, political, and social justice. Hoover wanted to give the American people a truer taste of the unalienable rights that were guaranteed them but he idealistically could not do it in a socialist manner. The right-of-life guarantee and the right-of-liberty guarantee were finally federally enforced for all by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and President Johnson’s Executive, affirmative action, order of 1968. Nevertheless, the right-to-pursue happiness guarantee is so ambiguous that no law or proclamation can enforce it; it must become part of the American system. Since Hoover was not able to reach his economic goals for the American people with his liberal ideology in his era, the American people offered the job of economic savior to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and thus, the American system moved forward.
FDR believed that to guarantee an unfettered path to a pursuit of happiness, the American government needed to provide four essential human freedoms. “The first is the freedom of speech and expression… The second is the freedom of every person to worship God in his own way… The third is freedom from want, which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings, which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants, everywhere in the world. The fourth is freedom from fear…” (Kramnick, 2009 Pg. 1189) He creates a picture in words of what that ‘economic understanding’ must be, “I feel that we are coming to a view through the drift of our legislation and our public thinking in the past quarter century that private economic power is, to enlarge an old phrase, a public trust as well. I hold that continued enjoyment of that power by any individual or group must depend upon the fulfillment of that trust. The men who have reached the summit of American business life know this best; happily, many of these urge the binding quality of this greater social contract.” (Kramnick, 2009 Pg. 1177) Curtailing the economic liberty of private economic power in order to guarantee the pursuit of happiness for all, was the manner in which Roosevelt was going to reach his economic goals for America.
This economic move forward was a large economic step back in the realm of liberty. The economic destruction of the Great Depression created obvious winners and losers in this debate. Absolute freedom of the market and absolute liberty in economic decisions destroyed millions of Americans and placed liberal methodology in the loser bracket. In the winner’s bracket, collectivist ideology ramps up and becomes the crisis-mode anthem. According to Roosevelt, “We have to come to a dear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. ‘Necessitous men are not free.’ People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.” (Kramnick, 2009 Pg. 1140) As Hamilton wrote in his Report on Manufactures, government intervention should stimulate and uphold new enterprises, infant manufacture; (Kramnick, 2009 Pg. 317) Roosevelt’s economic decisions would have been seen in the same light as temporary fixes that would dissolve once the economy got its foot-hold once more. When this dissolution did not occur, wealth distribution and social entitlements dominated the economic debate.
In the 1970’s we hear similar themes with an added twist that defines the time. Irving Kristol wrote, “…if you believe that man’s spiritual life is infinitely more important than his trivial and transient adventures in the marketplace, then you, may tolerate a free market for practical reasons, within narrow limits, but you certainly will have no compunctions about overriding it if you think the free market is interfering with more important things.” (Kramnick, 2009 Pg. 1384) ‘To tolerate the free market for practical reasons but to override it if it interferes with more important things’, shows the flexibility over time of how we perceive the government’s guarantee of our right of the pursuit of happiness.
No longer is ‘life’ just your body but your economic life, no longer is ‘liberty’ your freedom but your economic freedom, and no longer is the pursuit of happiness just your right to be unobstructed but your economic right to a positive outcome. John Rawls in his Theory of Justice, “Once we decide to look for a conception of justice that nullifies the accidents of natural endowment and the contingencies of social circumstance as counters in quest for political and economic advantage, we are led to these principles. They express the result of leaving aside those aspects of the social world that seem arbitrary from a moral point of view.” (Kramnick, 2009 Pg. 1373) Rawls’ principles of justice, the liberal egalitarian notion of ‘justice as fairness’, flies in the face of his contemporary Robert Nozick.
The torch of economic individualism was passed from Franklin in 1784, to Sumner in 1884, back to Nozick/Friedman in 1974/1980. To Nozick, Rawls’ ‘justice is fairness’ is an entitlement theory. In Nozick’s words, “The general outlines of the entitlement theory illuminate the nature and defects of other conceptions of distributive justice. The entitlement theory of justice in distribution is historical; whether a distribution is just depends upon how it came about.” (Kramnick, 2009 Pg. 1396) Thus, in this theory, if it came about by assisting a truly needy group of people then it was just. Whether an act of distributive justice violated another’s rights is not an aspect of fairness that would be considered in this theory. Nozick proclaims, “The minimal state is the most extensive state that can be justified. Any state more extensive violates people’s rights.” (Kramnick, 2009 Pg. 1392) As the entitlement argument became more and more central to American thought, its extreme notions reinvigorated the individualistic base.
In Milton Friedman’s Free to Choose, “The story of the United States is the story of an economic miracle and a political miracle that was made possible by the translation into practice of two sets of ideas… One set of ideas was embodied in The Wealth of Nations… It analyzed the way in which a market system would combine the freedom of individuals to pursue their own objectives with the extensive cooperation and collaboration needed in the economic field to produce our food, our clothing, our housing. Adam Smith’s key insight was that both parties to an exchange can benefit and that, so long as cooperation is strictly voluntary, no exchange will take place unless both parties do benefit… The second set of ideas was embodied in the Declaration of Independence… It proclaimed a new nation, the first in history established on the principle that every person is entitled to pursue his own values.” (Kramnick, 2009 Pg. 1411-12)Here Friedman takes from these two great men’s words to emphasize the foundation of the American liberal dynamic, balancing individual freedom with collective collaboration and a nation’s mission statement of entitling its citizens the right to pursue their own values. Words from two hundred years in the past were being resounded to pay tribute to their relevance to today and to counterbalance the entitlement theory.
These constant echoes, demonstrate the ongoing debate that has remained the same throughout our history and yet, if you look closely, you can see that on one side, the debate gains in complexity over the years, while the other does not. I will back pedal for a moment to the fiscal policy theories of the Great Depression, and cross the pond. John Maynard Keynes, the most famous British economist, influenced America in a way that was truly un-American. “He believed that the forces of supply and demand operated too slowly on their own in such a serious recession. Unemployment meant people had less to spend, and because they could not buy things, more businesses failed, creating additional unemployment. It was a vicious cycle. Keynes’ idea was simple: in such circumstances, the government should step in and engineer the spending that is needed to return the economy to a more normal state.” (Schmidt, 2011 Pg. 317)
The debate between the American way, Hoover’s way, and the British way, Roosevelt’s way, permanently changed the economic environment in this country. Having the government step in and take the reins away from the American people was truly un-American. Yet, as Hamilton said, temporary government interventions for fledgling business spurs future economic growth, therefore, intervening while America is in a fledgling state, sounds forefather supported. Coincidentally, Hamilton was raised in the British West Indies.
The adoption of Keynesian economics, even temporarily, added the complexity to the government-intervention side of the economic debate due to the notion of government spending and taxation is subjective, and affects millions of people, in countless ways. While, the liberal dynamic has a constant pattern of private powers orchestrating their own economic destiny with the state only providing peace, order, and the guarantees of rights. In Michael Walzer’s, What Does it Mean to be an American, he writes, “…American nationalism or communitarianism is not a plausible option; it doesn’t reach to our complexity… Indeed, American politics, itself pluralist in character, needs a certain sort of incoherence.” (Kramnick, 2009 Pg. 1463-64) The complexity of the people themselves as well as the far varying economic booms and busts, do give substance to the argument that we must remain in a state of constant discussion and debate in order to remain as close to the definition of being an American as possible.
Cornel West believes a vibrant society constitutes government intervention for the public good, combined with new leadership, will sustain America in a global economy. West thinks we must have, “…some form of large-scale public intervention to ensure access to basic social goods: housing, food, health care, education, child care, and jobs. We must invigorate the common good with a mixture of government, business, and labor that does not follow any existing blueprint…. We need leaders, neither saints nor sparkling television personalities, who can situate themselves within a larger historical narrative of this country and our world, who can grasp the complex dynamics of our peoplehood and imagine a future grounded in the best of our past, yet who are attuned to the frightening obstacles that now perplex us. Our ideals of freedom, democracy, and equality must be invoked to invigorate all of us, especially the landless, property-less, and luckless. Only a visionary leadership that can motivate “the better angels of our nature,” as Lincoln said, and motivate possibilities for a freer, more efficient, and stable America, only that leadership deserves cultivation and support.” (Kramnick, 2009 Pg. 1476) How refreshing it is to hear a political philosopher who joins together the past with the present, the rich with the poor, freedom with equality, and efficiency with stability, how utopian! Conceiving of a new way to deal with these issues, creating a better blueprint from the details of the diagram we have had for centuries, would require a revolution, and would still never meet these goals.
I contend that our existing blueprint is pliable enough to brush the edges of utopia. The economic, as well as social and political debates in this country intermingled with the firm foundations of liberty and equality is the American blueprint. We have the utopian dreamers and the liberal pragmatists, and those two warring parties have sustained, and will continue to sustain our diverse nature. Bill McKibben in his End of Nature declares, “Without the American Left, we might still have been strong and brave (an economic and military giant), but nobody would have suggested that we were good. As long as we have a functioning political Left, we still have a chance to achieve our country, to make it the country of Whitman’s and Dewey’s dreams.” (Kramnick, 2009 Pg. 1503)
Richard Rorty in A Cultural Left, agrees with McKibben, but clarifies the government’s role, “the nation-state has ceased to be the elemental unit of capitalism, but it remains the entity which makes decisions about social benefits, and thus about social justice.” (Kramnick, 2009 Pg. 1498) Without rugged individualism and government intervention, would we have become an economic and military giant? Without rugged individualism and government intervention, would we have become a nation renowned for its social justice? As the 21st century unfolds, and globalization limits our nation-state status, rugged individualism with government intervention will guarantee our place in the world.
The debate we are left with today, remains in one hand exactly the same, individual responsibility with minimal government support and on the other, compounded, a government that guarantees outcomes by redefining unalienable rights. Langston Hughes poetically wrote, “O, let America be America again, the land that never has been yet…” (Kramnick, 2009 Pg. 987) The process of deciphering the intentions of our forefathers, honoring our founding documents, and adjusting to our ever changing needs and desires, has brought us considerably closer to the utopian ideal for which both sides of the debate struggle and for which no final solution to these eternal contradictions should be expected.
Work Cited
- Kramnick, Isaac. Lowi, Theodore J. (2009) American Political Thought. (First Edition) United States: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.
- Calhoun, John C. (1952) Calhoun: Basic Documents. Edited by John M. Anderson. State College, PA. Bald Eagle Press.
- Schmidt, Steffen W. Shelley, Mack C. Bardes, Barbara A. (2011) American Government and Politics Today. (2010-2011 Edition) United States: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning.
An Existing Blueprint
by
Betty J. Craipo
Government 317
Dr. Kevin Pirch
Spring Quarter 2012
Honors Paper
Betty J. Craipo 