Politicians who deny the dignity of dependence are out of touch
Richard Sennett Wednesday May 29, 2002 The Guardian
A nearly-elderly friend of mine lost it last week. Her boss announced the company would not be funding the pension they had promised her. As she thundered "How could you?", he ducked by countering: "We're adults, we have to provide for ourselves." Sarah didn't find this much help. Perhaps she'd be a little more comforted to know her real problem is not the insurance industry, but John Locke.
Against Sir Robert Filmer, the jubilee-philosopher of the day who asserted that the rule of kings over men parallels the reign of a father over his children, Locke argued that adults can reason for themselves, and so can and should provide for themselves. Submissive dependency on other adults is demeaning and shaming.
This liberal conviction is something Tony Blair and other reformers of the modern welfare state truly believe in. On the eve of his first electoral triumph, Blair declared that "the new welfare state must encourage work, not dependency". Echoing Locke, the great American welfare reformer Daniel Patrick Moynihan has asserted that dependency is "normal in the child, abnormal in the adult".
These articles of reforming faith aren't quite self-evident. In her Reith lectures this year, Onora O'Neill argued the necessity of trust in social relations. Dependence upon others is even more necessary.
A child who could not depend on adults for guidance would be a profoundly damaged human being, unable to learn, deeply insecure. As adults, if we avoided people sicker, older, or weaker than ourselves who needed help, we would at best have a circle of acquaintances, not friends. By arguing that adult dependency is shameful, Lockean liberals and welfare-state reformers have separated private experience from public values: what we learn in love, the family, or from friendship is not the ideal which animates public policy.
Reformers today view welfare clients somewhat as Locke treated courtiers. Both clients and courtiers appear to have lost the will, the very desire, to take care of themselves. The government will therefore force them to be independent - in welfare reform by compelling the able-bodied to work. The imperative of self-sufficiency appears again in education, by obliging students to finance their own education.
There may be good arguments in favour of forcing people to take care of themselves, or for separating private and public values, but this liberal ideology creates a terrible paradox. The politician says: "Give me power but don't expect me to take care of you." This paradox frequently trips New Labour, just as it derailed American liberals. Their relations with the American poor have soured because for a decade they preached the virtues of flexibility and self-reliance among the poor, while doing little to repair the safety net of health care and unemployment protection.
But the problem lies at the very heart of liberal ideals. Denying the dignity of dependence puts the political class out of touch with everyday life, where survival depends on help. The fear of acknowledging that people need constant support seems adolescent.
My friend Sarah is suffering from an economic version of liberalism. The shame of dependency became a mantra for business reformers. Employees were urged to treat work as a kind of dance in which the worker is constantly changing partners, avoiding being caught in any one position, any one place, for long. Correspondingly, businesses like the one Sarah works for are shedding responsibilities to their employees, using self- management and self-sufficiency as a justification.
Her boss happens not to be a cunning monster. He too is caught. It's hard for him to reward service to the corporation when his business has become ever more chameleon-like in ownership and operation, and employees whisk in and out of jobs. She depends on him but, even with the best will in the world, he cannot respond. Numerous studies show that situations like this produce a similar result among employees to that of citizens vis-a-vis politicians: those on top appear disconnected, out of touch, ducking responsibility to the employees who depend on them.
What liberalism meant to remedy was passivity - the supine victim, the parasite who feeds off the activities of others. But Locke and his heirs fired a blunderbuss at this evil, attacking adult dependency itself. They thereby estranged politics from ordinary life and, I think, deformed the very meaning of "democracy". It becomes hard to engage people actively in the institutions on which they depend. "I need you" seems a shameful admission of personal failure; whereas in the polity, in business, as in private life, it should be the beginning of an honourable connection.
Richard Sennett is a sociologist who teaches in London and New York.