Outline
I. Introduction: Two types of critique
II. Value critiques of capitalism
A. Value and its place in capitalist critiques
1. Marx
2. Veblen
3. Pope John Paul II and Religious critiques
of Capitalism
4. Pat Buchanan and American critiques
of Capitalism
III. Conclusions: The countercapitalist enemy and its
discontents
A. The Capitalist as Jew
B. Toward a non-integrationist critique of capitalism?
C. Postscript: Modernity and Capitalism
(thanks to James Wetterau for html suggestions & inspiration)
Critiques of capitalism tend to fit this structure. Marx, for example, develops at length his theory of how the capitalist system exploits and oppresses workers, leads to suffering on the part of those workers, and may even lead to its own demise.1 Such a critique resonates most strongly in the child labor factories of colonial and post colonial developing nations, in times of depression, or in the face of manifest exploitation of the disadvantaged by the advantaged, to name only a few examples. Yet Marx also develops another critique of capitalism, which applies as much when times are "good" as when they are not: the criticism that capitalism leads to alienation on the part of the worker and a disassociation from work-product that is somehow inherently negative.2 Whether the worker is starving or not, this value disjuncture comes about. Just as the critique is twofold, the found evils are twofold: exploitation in the first critique, alienation in the second.
Moreover, these two critiques in Marx are more or less independent. Obviously the issues Marx identifies spring from a single system, but one can imagine an oppressive system without alienation (Maoism, possibly) and an alienating system without oppression (law school, perhaps). Both of Marx's critiques -- distinguished from isolated criticisms by their attempt at a rigorous, systematized analysis of a pathology -- stand on their own.
Thorstein Veblen likewise has two primary attacks on the capitalist-consumerist system. In the Theory of Business Enterprise, Veblen attempts to describe the so-called "bubble" effects of markets, which are not tied to any production values, and which inevitably seem to burst, with disastrous consequences for the general economy.3 Veblen's theories became extremely popular during the American Depression of the 1930s, when many felt that their predictions had been borne out by subsequent events. The economic "injustices," if we may attach such an emotive term to the cynical Veblen (imbalances would probably be a better term), appeared to have come home to roost.
Yet Veblen also develops in Business Enterprise a value-critique of the capitalist system: that it leads to the "mechanization" of the businessman4 and of society in general, turning humanity into a machine like the ones it creates. In this, Veblen is echoed in contemporary works on the service economy and its dehumanizing, mechanizing influence by Robin Leidner5 and Arlie Russell Hochschild.6 And in The Theory of the Leisure Class, Veblen articulates a theory of consumption as predation, as competitive and non-productive vying for status among the elites in society,7 the terminology and satire of which has become commonly adopted today. While Veblen does not appear to offer alternatives to these degenerate states, as Marx did, these latter critiques are of the values embodied in capitalism, not the economic or equitable results of it.
As with Marx, Veblen's justice-based and value-based critiques exist independent of one another. Whether Veblen's economic theories in Business Enterprise are on the mark or not, his psychological critique stands or falls on its own merits. And while the values of the consuming class(es) may help inflate the economic bubble, movements in wealth and capital may be discussed (as they are by classical economists) without delving into the motives behind "demand."
Two other, less-defined critiques of capitalism also fit the two-tiered model proposed here. First, what I will term in this paper the "naive American" criticism of capitalism -- the counter-consumptive tendency within the most voluminously consumptive economy in human history -- argues that capitalism is both unfair (to the populist "little man" who does not have Ivy League degrees and fancy titles) and un-right (unproductive, parasitic, disconnected from "reality").8 Second, what I will discuss as the "religious" critique of capitalism -- as espoused in a variety of Western and Eastern religious sources -- decries both the injustices of a system that and the denigration by a capitalist-consumerist sociological system of "true," religious values.9
In all of these examples, the problems of injustice are more or less economic ones. If one could change the economic system - - either in a modest, regulatory way or a drastic, revolutionary one -- these problems would mostly disappear, without any need to change the "consciousness" of the people involved.10 The problems of value, however, are more properly philosophical-sociological ones. Perhaps if the economic system were radically changed, as in Marx, a change in mindset would come about, but only because the changed economic system removed barriers to "authentic" thinking and being; it is not a matter of dollars.
In Part II of this paper, I will attempt to analyze (critique?) the second strand of critiques. True, the first set of criticisms has arguably been the dominant discourse in American public life in the twentieth century, from the muckrakers of the 1900s to the New Deal to the Great Society to present-day efforts to unmake social programs such as Medicaid and Social Security. "How can we make life better for the poorest among us?" has been an obsession -- rightly, in my view - - of many in our "wealthiest society on Earth." But once the terms of these critiques are agreed upon, the question of their accuracy becomes less philosophical than empirical. It turns into a debate about the numbers: whether growth rates can be tied to increases in marginal incomes among the most impoverished, whether "false markets" like Veblen's view of securities trading tend to collapse or not, etc. These are not questions about a critique: they are debates about individual criticisms.
Value critiques, on the other hand, tend to be more complex, dealing as they do with the feared "black box" of classical economics: human beings. And whatever the continued appeal of justice-based criticisms, value critiques are making a comeback. Contemporary attacks on the Welfare state, for example, are sometimes economically based, but lately, they are increasingly based on the sense of some that Welfare programs create dependency which is negative independent of its economic effects. "Getting a handout" is seen as something intrinsically offensive to 'basic American values,' i.e., the Protestant ethos- cliche of hard, honest, productive work. The Welfare State, its critics say, create bad people, not just bad workers, much as Veblen or Marx or Habermas would say that high capitalism does.
This paper seeks to understand some basic trends in critiques of capitalism, and suggest that critics as divergent as Marx, Veblen and his progeny, Pope John Paul II and even Pat Buchanan11 (a motley crew) may be remarkably similar in their valuational criticisms of capitalism. The critiques all stem from the sense that there is some "real" value that is subverted by capitalism, that capitalism disengages people from this reality, and that a reintegration would be desirable (even if, as in Veblen's case, unavailable).
Of course, concomitant with the praise of some "real" value is the denigration of those who embody its absence: greedy and unproductive parasites on society without "grounding" in real labor, who make money but do not make things. Metaphorically or literally, these people are the Jews, from Marx's hatred of "hucksterers" to contemporary contempt for New York lawyers. This paper thus concludes both with a brief analysis of the intellectual and historical characteristics of anti-capitalist anti-Semitism, and a sketch of what a non-integrationist-based critiques of capitalism might look like.
Given the superficial dissimilarities between capitalism's critics, it is all the more surprising to find deep structural analogies among them. In the somewhat attenuated discussion that follows, I will argue that each critic of capitalism finds at the heart of their value-critique an "unrealness" of capitalism's effects, a dehumanizing, anti-organic tendency within the economic system and its social consequences. Proposed remedies, in each of the divergent cases, address this dehumanization by some form of reintegration of what is "really important" with economic activity, supplanting the capitalism we now have with something that would be "meaningful" in accord with the "real values" which capitalism either misses or actively suppresses.
So we must begin the analysis of value by noting at the outset that the quality is constructed. Even if we can offer anthropological or historical accounts of why some values exist (e.g. since the time of cavemen, humans have been 'attached' to real material objects and not abstract ones), we must at least recognize that these are explanations, not justifications. None of the "real" values discussed here are intrinsically any more real than any others.
Beginning, then, we may ask first, what negative effects on human value capitalism has, and second, what primary values are implicated by the critiques of those effects.
But Marx has much to say about the dehumanizing effect of the capitalist cycle even in the public rallying cries of the Communist Manifesto. He writes, "[i]n bourgeois society, capital is independent and has individuality, while the living person is dependent and has no individuality."15 Capitalist culture "is, for the enormous majority, a mere training to act as a machine."16 Justifying the Communist opposition to the family as social construct,17 Marx writes that "[t]he bourgeois sees in his wife a mere instrument of production"18 to be exploited.
Capitalism, for Marx, is not only socio-economic oppression; it is a basic oppression of the human, who is rendered a 'dependent' and 'non-individual' 'machine,' who is treated and treats others as 'mere instruments.' Apparently, there is some non-machinated ideal which Marx, anticipating Veblen, finds subverted by the nature and process of capitalism.
The question of humanity is more fully developed in Marx's theory of alienation, which finds one exposition in the early essay Wage Labour and Capital.19 Selling one's labor originally looks fairly straightforward: "Labour power is, therefore, a commodity which its possessor, the wage-worker, sells to capital. Why does he sell it? In order to live."20
"But the exercise of labour-power, labour, is the worker's own life-activity, the manifestation of his own life. And this life-activity he sells to another person in order to secure the necessary means of subsistence. Thus his life- activity is for him only a means to enable him to exist. He works in order to live."21
In this short paragraph is abbreviated much of Marx's critique. Selling one's labor makes one's life a means, rather than an end, which is -- following Kant and, to an extent, Hegel -- violative of basic human morality. Though the contracting of one's labor seems innocent, and may be innocuous on a small scale, when it is how one defines oneself (as a truck driver, assembly-line worker, or perhaps even professor, if the end-goal is seen as making money rather than teaching itself) it is a profoundly dehumanizing enterprise. Consequently, in a Marxist world, each of us would give according to our ability to a life- project with which we identify. Work would not be a dehumanizing selling of oneself to another; it would be a way to tie one's deepest goals -- which, with Marxist education, would be the good of the community -- to one's deepest economic activity.
Thus the primary human value trampled by capitalism is humanity-as-ends-in-itself. This violation is bound up with the dehumanizations discussed in the Manifesto: the machinization and instrumentalization of the human being.22 And the Marxist solution: "Freedom . . . can only consist in socialized man, the associated producers, rationally regulating their interchange with Nature, bringing it under their common control, instead of being ruled by it as by the blind forces of Nature; and achieving this with the least expenditure of energy and under conditions most favourable to, and worthy of, their human nature."23
It is important to bear in mind that freedom is not freedom- from-work: Marx is not advocating "more slack" for everyone. Rather, the Marxist solution is to reintegrate life-activity with humanity. Actualization remains for Marx primarily in the realm of work. Yet only work which produces; work which does not produce, or which creates only fetishistic commodities24 or more money, is not "real," based as it is on something other than labour- or use-value.25 The often-overlooked "least expenditure of energy" clause above conjoins with the "most favorable to human nature" clause to produce a theory of ideal work in which no extra capital is produced by those who bring 'brain-power' only to an enterprise. The labor of the factory worker is real; the labor of the inventor of the gizmo being produced is not. Nor are the efforts of bankers to arrange for the goods needed to produce the factory and the gizmo alike. For Marx, ideal labor is intimately bound up with his theory of the human and what it must mean to integrate one's life-activity with a non-alienated sense of self. Only through a reengagement of the worker with his or her work, a non-mechanized connectedness with one's labor and its fruits, and a conjunction of the worker's life-activity and his noninstrumentalized labor can humanity itself be fully actualized.
In The Theory of Business Enterprise, Veblen paints a picture of mechanized man remarkably similar to Marx's: with the machine as the dominant metaphor and driver of contemporary economic life, he who succeeds does so by mechanizing himself.26 Yet Veblen has pity (or is it contempt?) for some of the very capitalists Marx sought to overthrow. His automatons are not only the men pulling levers in a factory but also include "businessmen," who leverage credit and capital in the bubble-like cycle of crises and reinvestments that take up much of Veblen's analytical space. In fact, all of us in the modern world are affected; "The machine process pervades the modern life and dominates it in a mechanical sense."27
Veblen does state that mechanical "discipline falls more immediately in the workmen engaged in the mechanical industries,"28 and gives an account of their functioning in a factory that is directly reminiscent of Marx's "appendage" image.29 These people, according to Veblen, have their very thought processes mechanized by the way they are forced to work, suggesting a deadening of both intellectual and emotional capabilities.30 Veblen is echoed here by contemporary critics of "emotion work" performed by ever-smiling servicepeople in today's economy who must as a matter of routine suppress their own emotions to the mechanistic and false demands of being kind to customers.31 The consequences of such mechanization are severe: a de-anthropomorphication of thought itself,32 a treating of everything as machine, not life; a devaluation of human qualities such as "dexterity, diligence, or personal force;"33 and of course an ignorance of qualities of "good and evil, merit and demerit."34
As for the businessmen not directly involved in mechanical work, they are forced to be "practical, . . . to turn facts to account for the purposes of the accepted conventions."35 This leads to intense conservatism, a spiritual deadness that Veblen does not explicitly condemn, but which facially seems so undesirable as to make such remarks redundant.36 Rights and dignities are viewed as mechanisms only.37 Consequently, "domestic institutions" and religious traditions lose their "spiritual foundations," leaving only "vulgar" practical, actuarial, mechanistic worldviews in their place.38
Though a full catalog of the evils of mechanization according to Veblen could go on for pages, we may be satisfied with the basic understanding that the mechanization of modernity, beyond its potential for economic collapse,39 mechanizes humanity as well, which is dehumanizing insofar as it deadens those non-mechanistic aspects of our lives and personalities which we consider important. As stated earlier, Veblen does not offer "solutions" or even characterize business enterprise is a problem that may have been avoided. Yet his value critique is fairly clear and well developed; capitalism leads to mechanization (even Smith would agree), and mechanization leads to dehumanization.
There is another side to the story as well, which deserves at least brief comment. The Theory of the Business Class deals only with the producers in a capitalist economy; there are also the consumers, the subjects of The Theory of the Leisure Class. Like Marx's commodity fetishists, Veblen's leisure class seems to be using goods for bizarre purposes not connected to the utility for which the goods theoretically exist. The leisure class uses goods to compete and show dominance40 and accumulate trophies much as Veblen images primitive man to have done in accord with his predatory instincts.41
The question of Leisure Class is whether this is critique -- in which case some pathology is responsible for the disjuncture between what is and what should be -- or cultural anthropology, in which case the book is less seen as critique than as study, or perhaps satire. It might be possible to offer a meta-theory to fit Leisure Class into my general argument, and suggest that instead of investing energy in competition through goods, the implied ideal is for people to enjoy the goods that they have and actualize themselves in more meaningful, deep ways, be they art or religion or legitimate family relations or something else. This seems a fair response of the reader to the text of Leisure Class; I am not sure that it is Veblen's. So comprehensive is Veblen's critique (including as it does all the suggested 'alternative goods' I have just proposed) that it seems futile to sift out an ideal or even an alternative in contrast to the situation Veblen describes. Thus, while I am prepared to integrate a realist response to Veblen in my larger argument, I am not convinced that it is Veblen himself who articulates that response.
Leisure Class thus bracketed, or at least asterisked, Veblen's value critique may be limited to the mechanization of humanity which separates persons from their true(r), creative, intellectual, emotional, and ethical selves. Much as Marx deplored the instrumentalization of workers via alienation and mechanization, Veblen apparently deplores the instrumentalization and alienation of all persons via mechanization.
Marx, of course, would shudder at the thought of his being likened to religious critiques of capitalism. Yet we may appease his memory by noting the distinction that Marx's values may be said to emerge from economic transaction -- which for him is metaphysically prior to any intellectual or ethical idea -- rather than inhere in some trans-economic quality of the human. Veblen is perhaps closer to a religious critique in this respect, inasmuch as he seems to posit a non-mechanistic ideal of humanity which precedes an economic condition. But regardless of these distinctions, the basic argument pattern is common to Marx, Veblen, and to religious critiques such as John Paul's: capitalism is a dehumanizing, misvaluing enterprise, which through its mechanistic and dis-integrating tendencies separates people from the Real.
As an aside, I should note that although I have chosen to focus on John Paul II and Centesimus Annus because of its inclusion in the course readings, his is but one of many religious value and justice critiques of capitalism. Other twentieth-century examples include Reinhold Niebuhr's efforts to construct a "Christian capitalism" by institutionalizing Christian norms of charity and frugality within the work world (practical consequences included revenue-sharing and shorter work days); Michael Lerner's recent efforts to reinvigorate the "world of work" with a religious-based sense of transeconomic value (practical consequences have included articulating a Jewsh liberal ideology mirroring Christian fundamentalism's rejection of this-worldly success as paramount goal); and Robert Thurman's forthcoming The Politics of Enlightenment, which seeks to define a Buddhist theory of engagement with the political system to counter capitalism's pursuit of illusory wealth and goals. These and other critiques range widely, of course, but all seek to reintegrate some notion of real value into a capitalist/ consumerist world which has lost it.
By this point in the paper, the themes I seek to bring out in John Paul II's critique should not be surprising. In contrast to his predecessor, Pope Leo, who in Rerum Novarum gave a somewhat shallow approval of capitalism as in line with Natural Law,42 albeit sometimes with adverse justice effects on workers,43 John Paul gives a subtle, nuanced treatment of capitalism and its spiritual effects. Leo had ignored entirely capitalism's secondary effects; he seemed to treat capitalism as a value- neutral mode of living, with only occasional mention of the Biblically-rooted sentiments opposed to moneymaking as a form of spiritual life. But John Paul, while upholding (with some conditions) Leo's endorsement of capitalism from a justice perspective, articulates in the latter portions of Centesimus Annus a "quintessentially religious" critique of capitalism.
John Paul, though not endorsing socialism, equivocates in his support of capitalism to a greater extent than did Leo. He notes problems that had not appeared in his predecessor's time, such as the "ecological question which accompanies the problem of consumerism."44 And John Paul discusses the needs of "human ecology" which are also ill met in capitalist societies.45 Most important here, however, is John Paul's attention to the problem of alienation, which he defines as "the loss of the authentic meaning of life,"46 within consumerism, "when people are ensnared in a web of false and superficial gratifications rather than being helped to experience their personhood in an authentic and concrete way."47 In addition to this dehumanizing value on the part of consumers, the Pope observes dehumanizing value on the part of producers who work in contexts "with no concern whether the worker, through his own labor, grows or diminishes as a person."48
For John Paul, the properly human value orientation is more clearly spelled out that it was for Marx or Veblen. The Pope explicitly adopts Marxist language and adopts it to his own value structure. "The concept of alienation needs to be led back to the Christian vision of reality by recognizing in alienation a reversal of means and ends."49 He continues that when people do not recognize in themselves and others "the grandeur of the human person," the lose "the possibility of benefiting from [their] humanity and of entering into that relationship of solidarity and communion with others for which God created him."50 Marx, as discussed above, said almost the exact same thing: that through instrumentalization and alienation, true 'communion' (as between man and wife, for example) is impossible, because people are automatons. The Pope's ultimate aims, of course, are different: "A man is alienated if he refuses to transcend himself and to [pursue] his final destiny, which is God."51 But the mechanism is exactly Marx's.
Interestingly, John Paul also projects a Marxian critique of capitalism back onto Rerum Novarum's attack on Marxism. Drawing on a century of pseudo-Socialist52 experience, John Paul claims that "Rerum Novarum is opposed to state control of the means of production, which would reduce every citizen to being a 'cog' in the state machine."53 Both consumerist capitalism and Socialist statism fall prey to the Pope's Marxist critique.
The Pope continues by developing the bifurcation of justice and value critiques which I have attempted here. "Exploitation, at least in the forms analyzed and described by Karl Marx, has been overcome in Western Society.54 Alienation, however, has not been overcome . . ."55 As to continued exploitation, Centesimus Annus, like Rerum Novarum, offers both some tangible assistance and a promise that the church "strongly raises her voice."56 As to alienation, however, the Pope's proposed remedies are fascinating in their ambivalence. Faced with a century of top-down totalitarian control, the Pope explicitly refuses to offer any systemic models for fixing the problem of alienation.57 Instead, he proposes that "the answer" may lie not in a specific economic system but in a trans-economic religious orientation, which not surprisingly is the Catholic Church.58
Before we leave Centesimus Annus on this note of self-promotion, it is worth taking the religious critique John Paul suggests more seriously. The theory the Pope articulates is that, while ownership of property for "useful work" can itself be a means of human actualization,59 capitalism and Soviet statism both threaten to turn this means into an end, and thus block the real ends of human life, which are religious ones (here, communion with others, serving God, salvation, etc.). The Pope also strikes a Veblenian/Leisure Class chord in his discussion of consumerism, to which Marx had only alluded: even if one is not a capitalist baron, one is still surrounded by despiritualizing McDonalds, shopping malls, and television commercials. One may be caught up in the fray, and leading a false life as a result.
The picture I have just painted is consistent both with the theological background of the Pope and the economic theories of basic classical economics. Unlike Marx and Veblen, who just have to postulate an ideal of non-mechanistic humanity, John Paul has a clearer source: "The church receives 'the meaning of man' from divine revelation."60 "Christian anthropology therefore is really a chapter of theology."61 Yet this true meaning is eclipsed for John Paul by selfishness and greed -- not just in consumerism, but everywhere. In other words, truth is subverted by the very engines that drive classical economics: self-interested actors with more or less unlimited demand. The "black box" of demand is the engine of capitalist growth, and the market's triumph is inevitable, given "human nature." The Pope would agree completely with this as a descriptive claim, but dares to do what economists fear: state that it is normatively evil. Greed leads to alienation and dehumanization. The answer for John Paul is not to change the system by which it does so, as it was for Marx. The answer is to change greed.
It may still be possible for the economist to reply that what the Pope really wants is not to change demand itself but change its target: we should be greedy for spiritual rewards, and "pay high prices" to live a spiritual life.62 This may indeed be the case, although it strikes me as stretching the definition of "greed" past the point of any usefulness, and also wades into the murky waters of Meister Eckhart's desiring not to desire God so that he could be free of ego-driven desire. In any case, the Pope's theory seems unassailable once one grants the basic religious premise that there is a spiritual value higher than that of any market. The question then becomes the accuracy of the 'consumerism leads to alienation' claim, which is thankfully beyond the scope of this paper.63
For our purposes, we may conclude by observing that Pope John Paul II explicitly separates his value and justice critiques of capitalism (and state socialism), adopting Marxist terminology for the former, while (re)defining the ultimate, subverted human goal to an extent Marx was unable to achieve.
Although it is not possible to have recourse to textual material such as a Communist Manifesto or a Theory of the Leisure Class, the structure of Buchanan's critique of capitalism should not be too difficult to discern. Capitalism insofar as it is individual entrepreneurialism is a good thing, because it fosters individual identity and responsibility. Here, Buchanan is not far afield from more mainstream Republican critiques of the welfare state for thwarting the foundational human activity of hard work. But capitalism insofar as it is controlled by rich elites is a bad thing, because it hurts "the working man." Here, Buchanan's critique is not so dissimilar from Marx's justice-based critiques of the capitalist in his writings. Free trade and supply-side growth, which benefit the rich more (at least immediately) are thus not to be desired, regardless of the arguments made by those elites that rising tides lift all boats.
This would be the end of the story if it were all Buchanan had to say. But, perplexingly to many on the left and the right, Buchanan joins his economic/justice critique to a value-oriented critique against the counterculture and its values, which appear to include minority rights, rights to privacy, strict separation of church and state, and an independent judiciary.66 Can these two strands of Buchananism be reconciled in any other way than by judging them to be a cynical appeal to the worst fears shared by white workers? Were it not for populism's long lineage, one might be tempted not to give Buchanan much more credit than that. But populism does have a lineage, and it has its respectable counterparts.
American transcendentalists Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau articulated and refined the common American sentiment of self-reliance and hard work by developing a fairly rigorous way of life grounded in the "real," which usually involved a rugged individualist and his natural surroundings.67 Whether this ethic has its own roots, in Protestantism for example, is a question that draws us far afield, as does the larger, controversial issue of whether the Protestant ethic is itself responsible for the capitalism it later comes to criticize.68 But that individualism, self-reliance, hard work, and engagement with the fruits of one's labor all play central roles in American mythology -- whatever their place in the real development of American history -- can hardly be doubted. Apotheosized by the Puritans, philosophized by the transcendentalists, vainly preached by Herbert Hoover, recovered by Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich, these values are not so much economic as humanistic: they define a person.
Thus in America is the self-sufficient man an ideal not only of economic activity but a general moral ideal as well. "Old fashioned values" are both economic and ethical, and they include in their matrix all of Buchanan's supposedly disparate ideals: valuing workers who produce something with their own hands over those who make only money, trusting in "old time religion" and loathing atheistic urbanites, anti-establishment fervor, attaching pride and other values to what one produces ("taking pride in one's work").
Or was that Marx? Valuing workers who produce something with their own hands over those who make only money, anti- establishment fervor, attaching pride and other values to what one produces. Only Buchanan's religiosity is absent in Marx, replaced there with a revolutionary utopianism. Buchanan is perhaps more suspicious of outsiders than even Marx (although, as discussed below, Marx was, ironically, no universalist). And Marx is much more skeptical of traditional value claims than Buchanan, whatever the claims' actual similarity. But the essential ingredient is this: both share the same nexus between their similar value critiques and their justice critiques.
In Marx, alienation/exploitation dehumanizes workers and separates them from real integration; it breaks down real human relations and instead renders capital the central quantity in human interaction. In Buchanan, false values/exploitation dehumanizes workers and separates them from real integration; it breaks down real human relations and instead renders capital the central quantity in human interaction. For both, workers must reassert their primacy -- rooted in Buchanan in foundational American ideals and in Marx in economic fact -- as against rich, urban capitalists.
Quickly, it becomes difficult to postpone for much longer the question of how critiques of capitalism reify their abstract oppositions into tangible enemies, but let us put the "rich, urban capitalists" off just long enough to conclude the positive treatment of Buchanan's Americanism. Populists have never fit into the mold of two-party American politics. If Democrats today stand for government favoring the disempowered (the workers, but also racial, religious, and ideological minorities) against the empowered (the rich, corporations), they include within their parentalistically protected shadow bedfellows that are too strange for one another. The protection the traditional Democrat offers a blue collar worker, or a family farmer for that matter, is not protection enough: it may guard their justice interests, but it does not address their value concerns. At the same time, Republicans by being reluctant to "favor" anyone by means of government intervention, allow majoritarian values to dictate social norms (at the expense of minorities69), and thus address concerns about society's decaying values, but they have only addressed workers' justice-concerns by various sleights-of-hand, trickle-down economics being the most recent. Even if trickle-down economics were true, it delivers the justice-based goods by a slick sort of "voodoo," to use President Bush's phrase. If the voodoo's power seems weakened, as it does in today's time of simultaneous rising profit margins and corporate downsizing, a Buchanan can hammer home the disjuncture between promise and method.
In short, Democrats as social libertarians but economic statists enforce the justice codes that seem most immediately to benefit workers. Republicans as social statists but economic libertarians enforce the value codes that seem most immediately to benefit workers. The question then becomes, do "Values Matter Most," as Ben Wattenberg says, or is it "the economy, stupid?"
Pat Buchanan and Karl Marx, and to an extent Thorstein Veblen and Pope John Paul II, do not have to choose. Buchanan as a populist presents workers with both the value-conservatism and the economic-redistributionism that satisfy their immediate needs.70 Marx's value-conservatism is convoluted, but still present: he seeks a re-Real-izing of human activity, a getting back to the real, organic, integrated meaning of human work and identity, just as does Buchanan. (Of Marx's redistributionism little need be said, of course.)
Buchanan is a non-revolutionary Marxist, who draws his "real" values from the proletariat, rather than teaching class consciousness to them. But he is a Marxist nonetheless, blending a value-critique of capitalism targeted at alienation from real work and real human identity with a justice-critique of capitalism targeted at the rich, nonintegrated, urban New York German Jewish capitalists, to whom we now, at last, turn.
Or, as Woody Allen put it, it's a city of Jews. Woody complained in Annie Hall that "the whole country thinks we're a bunch of Jewish, homosexual communists,"72 and he seems, if the 104th Congress is any indicator, to be correct.73 New York is the arch capitalist and the arch liberal; the greedy Jewish banker and the snivelling Jewish lawyer. Obviously, it is difficult to discuss "anti-Semitism" without the term being called an 'accusation.' But accusations of bigotry are ploys of the political realm; this brief investigation hopes to provide a more dispassionate treatment of the ideological facts. In any case, the question is utterly removed from the political stage by the simple fact that while one may ideologically hate an archetypal Jew,74 one's feelings towards "actual" ews may be quite benevolent.75
The enemy of capitalism's critics, before we ethnicize him, should be clear from what has gone before. In Marx, the enemy is the man who makes money from money, and exploits workers while doing so. In fact, this capitalist is trapped by his own actions, as Veblen discusses, becoming no more than a capital- producing cog himself. But he is utterly disconnected from the real means of production, even as he controls them. As Hegel first discussed, the master is dependent on the slave in a way the slave is not dependent on the master.
In Veblen, there seems to be no real 'enemy.' We all are trapped by the mechanizing cycle of business enterprise and/or the competitive culture of conspicuous consumption -- at least if we have enough money to play. Veblen's conspicuous consumers are un-real, but beyond that we know nothing other than that they are rich. Veblen's businessmen likewise display no real traits or drives other than being caught in a dehumanizing cycle which they have little control over. Likewise, Pope John Paul II's enemies are exploiters anywhere, not so much the Jewish bankers, hucksterers, and capitalists of conspiracy theorists and Marx alike. In any case, to include the Pope in a discussion about anti-Semitism is a far larger subject than I can address here, and so he, like Veblen, will rest on the sidelines.
Pat Buchanan, on the other hand, is at center stage, with his endless remarks against Goldman Sachs--not to mention Ruth Ba-der Gins-burg (as he pronounces it), the Israeli-occupied Congress, and so on.76 Jewish investment bankers are for Buchanan the same capitalist leeches they are for Marx, people who make nothing but receive usurious rewards. Indeed, this observation has historical roots. Jews are not stereotyped as moneylenders without reason: in the Medieval period, barred from owning land, Jews were forced to earn their livelihood from non-real77 capital such as reserves of money. Since Christians were barred at the time from usury, moneylending naturally became an ideal market niche for Jewish entrepreneurs. Jewish moneylenders were despised probably most of all because everyone hates his moneylender, but also because it seemed as though they were getting something for nothing.78 The association of this usurious capitalist activity with the Jews has since endured.
It is present in Karl Marx's On the Jewish Question,79 where Marx writes that "the empirical essence of Judaism" is "huckstering and its conditions."80 It is present in Ezra Pound's anti-Semitic rants against usura destroying the work of the farmer's own hands,81 and in Pat Buchanan's thinly-veiled Coughlinesque attacks on greedy bankers.
It is also present, I would argue, in contemporary criticisms of lawyers. Lawyers in the public consciousness are the quintessential usurists: they produce nothing but discord, and siphon off corporate profits and individual savings a tidy payment for their parasitism. If bankers and investment firms appear to make nothing but money, lawyers appear to make nothing at all; in the public consciousness, they are unethical, greedy leeches. Of course, it is a fact that a disproportionate numbers of lawyers, including those who seem to engage in such practices, are actually Jewish, or at least have Jewish names. But the connection is typological as well. The archetypal Jew of the anti-Semite is one obsessed with money, unproductive, unethical, greedy... the type is utterly the same.
Of course, if we set aside the greed and ethical misconduct elements of this portrayal, it is possible to deconstruct the image of the Jew somewhat more usefully -- in other words, show that the Jew's Otherness is in relation to a hierarchy of values. Why is making money from money any different from making money from "hard work" or from "real" assets? Intrinsically it seems ludicrous to suggest that one is qualitatively different from the other. Even if we were to make some sort of social-Darwinist argument that productivity is to be selected over nonproductivity, wealth generation from real assets creates as many costs (e.g. ecological degradation) as wealth generation from un-real assets. But the antinomy between real work and engagement on the one hand and false work and alienation on the other does not typically rely on arguments. As we have seen above, it is simply posited in the value critiques of Marx, Veblen, John Paul II, and Buchanan. There simply exists some form of work which is more human, more organic, more engaged, and therefore more real, than others. Whatever the historical sources of this antinomy (perhaps, reversing the chicken and the egg, anti-Semitism came before the devaluing of moneylending, although given the latter's biblical roots, the argument seems difficult to make), the fact that it exists cannot be doubted.
Thus the valuing of "real" work in all the sources cited above contains within itself the Other-izing of "non-real" work, and that non-real is embodied in the typology of the capitalist Jew. Of course, that critiques of capitalism seek to devalue and criticize capitalism is a tautology. But the argument here is that they do more. The argument is that in positing a desirable alternative form of work to the capitalist model, critiques of capitalism are involved in a value-constructing project, which privileges some forms of human-work object relations over another. This value theory (again, separate from whatever justice concerns are voiced by the respective authors) contains fairly strong consequences -- and, as the Buchanan candidacy shows, they are not mere intellectual abstractions, but may result in actual offenses perpetrated on the "bad guys" -- which may vary across sources but which is, ultimately, unjustified. It seems appealing to say that the mechanizing, oppressive work of the factory or brokerage house is anti-human, but mostly without foundation as well.
What I wish to briefly propose here is that a critique such as Marx's or Buchanan's (or even the Pope's) may be recoverable if it is coupled with an independent ethic of skepticism of totalizing discourse generally, which we may cautiously label "postmodern." Indeed, much of the impetus for what is generally referred to as postmodern criticism is the sort of crisis I have tried to develop in the foregoing portions of this paper: the inability of totalizing modern discourses--be they of a conservative, liberal, or radical bent--to avoid positing an "Other" to whatever privileged quality is put forth. Deconstruction itself, if we may look at the term free from its contemporary ideological baggage, is a methodological technique designed to expose, and to some degree remedy, this very problem.82 Summarizing the last forty years of this movement in philosophy, we may say that deconstruction is concerned with the way in which arguments exercise power claims by positing, often in subtext alone, dualisms which establish a hierarchy between categories.
Deconstructing Marx in this way, as I have done above, reveals the Other to the organic portrait of work which Marx sets up in Capital and elsewhere: the dis-integrated, parasitic Jew. Deconstructing Veblen reveals the unjustified preference of some sort of "real" value attaching to de-mechanized humanity, in contrast to Business Enterprise's glorified automatons. Of course, we need not deconstruct Buchanan to pinpoint his enemies; the candidate does so without any help.83
We may enact the same procedure with the Pope's critique. We can locate the Pope's "enemy" as we had for Marx and Buchanan, and say that that enemy is an unspiritual human being who sees work and material gain as the aim of her existence. This prioritizing of the spiritual flows, obviously, from the commitment that a spiritual life is intrinsically better than a non-spiritual life, not too dissimilar from Veblen's unstated commitment that an "organic" life is better than a mechanistic one.
One of the greater challenges of postmodernism, though, is taking the next step. If we were to end the paper on this deconstructive note, there would be no grounds for arguing against capitalism's value structure at all. But of course, that value structure is even easier deconstructed than those proposed by its critics. Capitalism's value system prefers that which (allegedly) produces wealth over that which does not; it selects for self-perpetuating profit-creating enterprises; it favors, as a consequence, the material over the spiritual, the "useful" over the aesthetic, and so on. Yet ending with deconstruction nevertheless seems to me to prefer capitalism over anti- capitalism.84 At least insofar as the market is "free," the argument runs, it does not represent an overt power system being imposed by the collective over individual liberties. Even if vast distributional inequities create gross inequalities in basic rights, at least there is some nominal zone of "freedom" for those who can afford it, where individuals are supposedly free from constraint.
But this is only so if Marx's and other critiques must be totalizing, if their postulates are taken as primary. If we were to be ironic or skeptical of their power claims, as Richard Rorty discusses at some length,85 we could subject them to an array of "other values" which we derive from common-sense, general sensitivity, and so on. Rorty argues that liberalism, the belief that cruelty is the worst thing that we can do, can survive the postmodern challenge simply by recognizing its own contingency, and then, basically, getting on with it. Though this may seem like a nifty trick, on closer reflection it may yield enough conditions on the Marxist -- and Buchananist -- agendas to protect them from the problems of demonization which I have tried to raise. Applying Rorty to Marx, the first enterprise is to deconstruct Marx's categories and recognize that they are contingent, that they could just as easily go the other way. We become skeptical of Marx's claims, which rest entirely on an unjustified privileging of certain qualities over others. But if we find Marx's picture of the world appealing, we may still buy into his critique with the caveat that his claims are not to be taken prior to basic beliefs about human autonomy. A rigorous pluralism thus informs a postmodern Marxist perspective; a denial of any intrinsic merit attaching to Marx's various categories, together with an approval of Marx's theory, subjected to whatever other norms we bring to the table. Yes, Marx, the "liberal ironist"86 would say, I agree with your theory and, insofar as your program does not interfere with the life- plans of other sincere people with whom I can stand in solidarity, I will effect whatever change is appropriate to bring it about.
If this seems like a soft and weaselly attempt to have a Marxist cake and eat it too, perhaps we should sink our teeth into the less malleable gristle of Buchananism. Obviously, much of Buchanan's social agenda is simply unacceptable from a pluralistic postmodern viewpoint that honestly recognizes the contingency of all values. Buchanan asserts that some things are absolutely right or wrong: matters of sexuality, for instance, or even certain types of speech. And Buchanan has stated that there are intrinsic, noncontingent, qualitative differences among the sexes and the races. If we are to be thorough Rortians, these baseless claims must be discarded; all humans are to be treated as ends only, with their "autonomy" respected, and it is certainly inappropriate to be so cocksure of one's value system -- in a postmodern epistemological context or anywhere else -- as to force it upon everyone else.
But (knowing he would hate it) we can water down Buchanan just as we watered down Marx. The American ideal of self- reliance and independence may be carried forward for a variety of reasons, pragmatic and otherwise. Surely its pedigree (which includes Thoreau) resists any postmodern effort to claim that the ideal itself necessarily leads to oppression.87 And much of Buchanan's attachment to the value of work may be continued -- provided that the postmodernist recognizes that there is no inherent reason to link value and work, that the linkage is being done because it has pragmatic value, or contributes to other goods, and that the linkage is to be subordinated to our primary goals of avoiding cruelty and promoting liberty. Obviously, this Buchananism looks less and less like Buchanan, but in many ways that has its own appeal.
Veblen and John Paul are perhaps more amenable to the postmodern critique, and survive with more intact. Though Veblen's quintessentially modern effort to trace contemporary society's problems back (literally) to the caveman is likely to fall to any claim of culture-specificity, The Theory of the Leisure Class is itself something of a postmodern anticipator: it sought to, and did, undermine (deconstruct?) the values of the bourgeois society it critiqued.88 Likewise, the Pope's critique of capitalism rigorously avoids totalizing "models," and explicitly recognizes that true reforms "can only arise within the framework of different historical situations,"89 a consummately Rortian recognition of the contingency of ideals upon historical and cultural circumstance. Of course, the Pope is axiomatic regarding the Church's religious claims, but is able to circumscribe those claims (in a uniquely post-second Vatican council way) and limit their reach. Indeed, of all the sources discussed above, the Pope (perhaps surprisingly, perhaps not) provides the most postmodernity-amenable critique of capitalism. It recognizes that one solution, however perfect, cannot cross historical boundaries, and that just as capitalism confuses means and ends, so too can capitalism's critics.
Once again, it is worth reiterating that the apparently flaccid platitudes of Rorty still demand rigorous change of the status quo -- and this is with the justice critiques of capitalism still bracketed. A Rortian liberalism demands a sort of trans-economic engagement that is simply incompatible with a focus on efficiency alone; there can still be some concerns -- dehumanization not the least of them -- that seem fundamentally opposed to classical-economic capitalism. And if Rorty may be combined Marx or Buchanan, the result is (still) a ringing condemnation of the free market, even if it is more self-aware of its own contingency. Just because two value systems are both contingent does not mean that they are equally invalid; some are more heinous than others.
In sum, a Rortianized critique of capitalism does not seek the thorough integration of life-value and work. It may even argue that work itself cannot be redeemed, that we are best off continuing our pursuit of growth and actualizing ourselves in our "spare time," which perhaps should grow together with the economy (instead of the reverse, which has been occurring). It will depend on the circumstances. That simple hedge, against a programmatic and potentially despotic system of modern critiques of capitalism, is among the tools postmodernism brings to the table, and quietly but effectively dispenses with much of modernity's lingering obsessions.
At some point, the value and justice critiques of capitalism will thus meet up once again, as justice becomes perhaps the only value that can cut across historical contingencies--and the game is not yet up. Perhaps justice claims, too, may be critiqued in the postmodern manner I have attempted here. Skepticism about any value claims is a powerful deconstructive force. Were it not for the brute reality of injustice, and the brute tragedy when it affects us, postmodern skepticism might well extend to the justice idea as well -- already, the idea has fallen out of favor in many economics-based "analyses" of law. But immediately real values of human worth, felt no more clearly than when they are transgressed, endure postmodern skepticism and antinomian economic analysis alike by their sheer immediacy; among these, justice just asserts itself. The value of justice is just there, transcending its own contingency, and arguing for its value out of lived experience, out of the pain caused by its absence. Writing in this blood-drenched week in particular, I know the force of these claims to be quite convincing indeed.
1. Karl Marx, Wage Labour and Capital, in The Marx- Engels Reader 203 (Robert C. Tucker Ed. 1978)
2. Karl Marx, Alienation and Social Classes, in The Marx-Engels Reader, supra, at 133.
3. Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of Business Enterprise 20- 66, 374-400 (1904).
4. Veblen, Business Enterprise, supra, at 25-49.
5. Robin Leidner, Fast Food Fast Talk: Service Work and the Routinization of Everyday Life (1993).
6. Arlie Russell Hochschild, The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling (1983) (Case study of "emotion work" done by airline flight attendants).
7. Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899).
8. The coexistence of such critiques with the American capitalist success story will be discussed below.
9. See, e.g., Pope John Paul II, Centesimus Annus 452 (1991) (citing need for Church to aid those who are marginalized and suffering); Id. at 463-65 (discussion of alienation creating barriers to Christian life).
10. Marx's demand for "class consciousness" is here seen as a necessary means to an end, not the end itself. Workers must realize that they are oppressed in order that they might fight against the oppressor, not because the realization is itself valuable.
11. I have selected Pat Buchanan to represent what I would call a naive American populist critique of capitalism, primarily because his particular critique is one which has political relevance in the present year. Two remarks should be made. First, by 'naive', I do not mean to suggest that Buchanan's criticisms of capitalism are unsophisticated, though they may indeed be recipes for economic disaster. Rather, the meaning of 'naive' here is that the critique offered is almost intuitive; it does not offer a penetrating revisioning of capitalism, instead speaking to what we all immediately see to be the case. Secondly, I do not suggest that Buchanan in 1996 adequately represents two hundred years of American populism. Perhaps William Jennings Bryan would have made a better case study. But insofar as undertaking such a study would require careful efforts to understand Bryan's historical context and how it differed from our own, using Buchanan seemed a much more economical, and topical, choice.
12. See Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity 44- 95 (1989); George Herbert Mead, Social Consciousness and the Consciousness of Meaning in Pragmatism: the Classic Writings 341 (Thayer ed. 1982).
13. See, e.g., Marx and Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party, in The Marx-Engels Reader, supra, at 469, 478 [hereinafter Communist Manifesto] (analogizing bourgeoisie to sorcerers who have lost control of the "nether world" they have conjured up).
14. Id. at 485.
15. Id.
16. Id. at 487.
17. Perhaps an ironic critique because, as discussed generally supra and with reference to Marx infra, Marx himself subtly posits ahistorical values of humanity and work.
18. Id. at 488.
19. Karl Marx, Wage Labour and Capital, in The Marx-
Engels Reader, supra, at 203.
20. Id. at 204.
21. Id. (emphasis in original).
22. See also Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. 1, Section IV in The
Marx-Engels Reader, supra, at 294, 408 ("To work at a machine,
the workman should be taught from childhood . . . [the] unceasing
motion of an automaton."); id. at 409 (Worker is a "mere
appendage" of the factory).
23. Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. 3., in The Marx-Engels Reader,
supra, at 439, 441.
24. See Marx, Capital, Vol. 1, supra, at 319.
25. See Marx, Capital, Vol. 1, at 302-318.
26. Veblen, Business Enterprise, supra, at 18-19, 23-35.
27. Id. at 306.
28. Id. at 307.
29. Id.
30. Id. at 308-10.
31. Leidner, supra; Hochschild, supra.
32. Veblen, Business Class, supra, at 310.
33. Id.
34. Id., at 311.
35. Id. at 320.
36. Id. at 322-24.
37. Id. at 336. I have elsewhere discussed the remarkable
accuracy with which Veblen seems to have anticipated recent legal
theory, in particular certain schools of law economics, and thus
I will not elaborate on it further here, though it is remarkable
that much of what Veblen rails about is now fairly
uncontroversial academic orthodoxy.
38. Id. at 358-61. See also Jackson Lears, Fables of
Abundance 196-235 (1994). Lears, in constructing a cultural
history of advertising in America, develops an interesting para-
Veblenian theory of advertising as simultaneously displacing and
containing the organic "carnival" aspect which goods have
possessed since antiquity. Lears certainly offers a more nuanced
treatment of the subject than does Veblen, and allows for more
variation in motive on the part of consumers than Veblen does in
Leisure Class, despairing as he may be of advertising's
ability to neutralize positive non-rationalistic forces in human
existence.
39. Veblen, Business Class, supra, at 374.
40. Veblen, Leisure Class, supra, at 18-24.
41. Id. at 11-13.
42. Pope Leo XII, Rerum Novarum (1891) at paragraphs 6-7.
43. Id. at para 41ff.
44. Pope John Paul II, Centesimus Annus (1991) at para 37.
45. Id. at para 39.
46. Id. at para 41.1.
47. Id.
48. Id.
49. Id. at para 41.2.
50. Id.
51. Id.
52. Although it is somewhat off topic, I would reinforce the
point made by the prefix "pseudo" here. In discussing the
critiques of Marx and others, it is pointless to "test" their
critiques by the "empirical" evidence of Soviets and other
Stalinist nations. One may as well "test" Nietzsche by Nazi
Germany; that ideologues adopted slogans and ideology for the
purpose of gaining and maintaining power offers no insight
whatsoever into the ideology itself, except insofar as it may be
criticized for being too easily coopted by power-hungry leaders.
Only with a rigorous comparison of the society Marx envisioned
and the one later put into practice in the Soviet Union, China,
and elsewhere, can meaningful theoretical conclusions be drawn,
and even then only in a tentative manner. That John Paul here
observes the same thing about Soviet Socialism as Marx had about
German capitalism perhaps best proves this point.
53. Centesimus Annus, supra, at paragraph 15.
54. The Pope notes later on that "the realities of
marginalization and exploitation remain in . . . the Third
World," however. Id. at para 42.2.
55. Id. at para 41.3.
56. Id. at para 42.2.
57. See id. at para 43.
58. Id. at para 46.
59. Id. at para 43.
60. Id. at para 55.
61. Id. at para 55.1.
62. Of course, the language would undermine the effort if it
were so conceptualized by the believer.
63. The reader may recall my objections to the
"congregational giving" measurement of capitalism's effect on
religion: primarily, that such giving can be seen more as a form
of conspicuous consumption than actual religious devotion.
Measuring the relationship between markets and spirit would
require case studies of newly consumerist areas, such as those in
the developing world, in which the choice between a fully
religious/ traditional lifestyle and a consumerist one is a live
question, and investigating how people in such situations react.
Of course, it is nearly impossible to measure the 'depth of
religious feeling' in any context, and it may even be the case
that the crassness of the market leads to increased
religious affiliation as a means of compensating for the loss of
religious meaning in the majority of one's life.
64. Supra, note 11.
65. As Buchanan's Presidential campaign gathers steam (at the
time of this writing he had just won the New Hampshire primary),
the analogy has begun to be noticed by some commentators. See
Mark Levinson, The Buchanan Manifesto, N.Y. Times, Jan. 8,
1996, at A-27 (and the accompanying graphic of Buchanan and Marx
preaching together).
66. Buchanan has called for referenda on controversial
Supreme Court decisions, term limits for federal judges, and
limitations on federal court jurisdiction.
67. See, e.g., H.D. Thoreau, Walden; Ralph W. Emerson,
Self Reliance in Essays: The First and Second Series;
Emerson, The Yankee Sage.
68. See Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of
Capitalism (1930); R.H. Tawney, Religion and the Rise of
Capitalism (1926).
69. I use the term broadly, to include those who hold
unpopular opinions, or perform unpopular actions like having an
abortion.
70. Again, setting aside the descriptive question of whether
in the long term, either policy benefits workers (or anyone
else).
71. See Why America Hates New York, New York Magazine
(special issue), May, 1995.
72. The line continued, "Of course, I'm from New York, and so
do I." Annie Hall (1977).
73. It is interesting, to note one tangible consequence of
the anti-New York sentiment, that New York and cities generally
are thought of as swallowing up vast sums of governmental money
in wasteful bureaucracies and shiftless welfare recipients, when
in fact cities (and New York in particular) give more in federal
tax dollars than they receive.
74. Indeed, it is this move which allowed Jewish Socialists
to turn Marx's "On the Jewish Question," discussed below, into an
analysis of an economic type rather than an actual ethnic group.
Jewish Socialists agreed with Marx that Jews-as-bourgeois-
hucksterers were a type worthy of criticism, but dissociated that
type from Judaism itself.
75. Of course, Buchanan has earned himself the 'accusation'
through such actions as denying the Holocaust and having a
shmoozer with the Aryan Nation on his campaign committee. Marx,
though of Jewish "extraction," whatever that means, seems to have
adopted a sort of academic anti-Semitism, as discussed below. In
any case, these observations are tangential at best to the
argument here.
76. See Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR), Pat
Buchanan: In His Own Words, available on FAIR web site (extensive
documentation of Buchanan's racist, sexist, and anti-Semitic
remarks from major media sources).
77. The use of the term "real" to describe assets in land, as
opposed to "liquid" assets, is itself quite telling.
78. The theme percolated into Jewish literature as well. The
quintessentially Jewish anthology of stories about the "wise men
of Chelm," (the Jewish equivalent of Polish jokes) contains one
episode in which the naive Chelmites discover that all one has to
do in business is buy something he doesn't need and sell it at a
higher price to someone who does. Amazed that the rest of the
world is so stupid, they enter the market and become excessively
79. Karl Marx, On the Jewish Question, in The Marx-
Engels Reader, supra.
80. Marx, On the Jewish Question, supra, at 52.
81. Ezra Pound, Canto XLV, in Selected Poems (1956).
82. See Richard Rorty, Deconstruction and
Circumvention, in Essays on Heidegger and Others (1992);
Jacques Derrida, Differance, in Margins of Philosophy
(Alan Bass trans. 1980 ed.).
83. And would certainly see the effort as un-American and
subversive. (In fact, given that deconstruction's favorite game
is to subvert the value claims of philosophical systems, Buchanan
and many other of deconstruction's conservative critics are
correct in using the label. The question then becomes,
ironically, what the postmodern has wanted it to be in the first
place: why subverting a given system of values is good or bad.)
84. The "seems to me" clause is particularly important here,
as many postmodernists are at the same time committed Marxists,
believing, contrary to my argument here, that capitalism is an
85. Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (1991).
86. Id. at 110.
87. Although this claim has been made -- Thoreau and Emerson
notwithstanding -- by many environmental ethicists, who argue
that Americanism is a form of ecological imperialism.
Thankfully, these claims fall outside the bounds of this paper.
88. At the very least, it spawned a favorite subject of
postmodernity, cultural criticism, and cannot be discarded on
canonical grounds alone.
89. Centesimus Annus, supra, at 43.
90. See generally David Harvey, The Condition of
Postmodernity 1989); Rorty, supra, at 110-130. As earlier, I will
refrain from etering into a critique of postmodernism s more
specific claims on this front (e.g. the gendered nature of the
asserted forms of power, its relation to colonialism, etc.),
which would carry usbeyond the bounds both of this paper and,
probably, our patience.
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