[lbo-talk] American Religion (Was Irrationality of the Masses)

[Michael Pugliese]

http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/l/lipset-here.html?oref=login
It Didn't Happen Here
Why Socialism Failed in the United States
By SEYMOUR MARTIN LIPSET and GARY MARKS
> ...Americanism, however, is an "ism" or ideology in the same way that communism or fascism or liberalism are isms. The American ideology, stemming from the Revolution, can be subsumed in five words: antistatism, laissez-faire, individualism, populism, and egalitarianism. The implications of the latter two for socialism were spelled out by Hermann Keyserling and Leon Samson, writing in the late 1920s and early 1930s. They argued that the movement had little appeal because the social content of socialism, with the big exception of property relations, is similar to what Americans think they already have, namely, a democratic, socially classless, anti-elitist society.

   As Samson, a radical socialist, put it:

When we examine the meaning of Americanism, we discover that
Americanism is to the American not a tradition or a territory, not
what France is to a Frenchman or England to an Englishman, but a
doctrine—what socialism is to a socialist. Like socialism, Americanism
is looked upon ... as a highly attenuated, conceptualized, platonic,
impersonal attraction toward a system of ideas, a solemn assent to a
handful of final notions—democracy, liberty, opportunity, to all of
which the American adheres rationalistically much as a socialist
adheres to his socialism—because it does him good, because it gives
him work, because, so he thinks, it guarantees him happiness.
Americanism has thus served as a substitute for socialism.

   Samson noted that conservatives, Republicans, and businessmen,
whom he preferred to quote to illustrate his own observations, adopted
language, concepts, and goals for American society which in Europe
were voiced only by socialists. Writing in the early 1930s, he pointed
out that Herbert Hoover took Europe as a negative model, saying that
in America, "we resent class distinction because there can be no rise
for the individual through the frozen strata of classes." Hoover and
other conservatives emphasized meritocracy and equal opportunity as
goals of the American system.

   It is of interest to note that Gramsci also stressed that
America's unique history resulted in a general value system, a
conception of life, which he, too, dubbed "Americanism." The essence
of Americanism is rationalism uninhibited by the existence of social
classes and values derived from a feudal past. "Americanism" is not
simply a way of life, it is an "ideology." Unlike other nations,
America is characterized by the complete ideological "hegemony" of
bourgeois values, unaffected by feudalism.

Americanism, in its most developed form, requires a preliminary
condition ... that there do not exist numerous [postfeudal] classes
with no essential function in the world of production. European
"tradition," European "civilization," is, conversely, characterized
precisely by the existence of such classes, created by the "richness"
and "complexity" of past history. One could even say that the more
historic a nation the more numerous and burdensome are those
sedimentations of idle and useless masses living on "their ancestral
patrimony," pensioners of economic history.... America does not have
"great historical and cultural traditions"; but neither does it have
this leaden burden to support..

-- 
Michael Pugliese