On Feb 9, 2007, at 11:31 AM, Wojtek Sokolowski wrote:
> ut Henwood shoots two well-aimed holes in the argument:
>
> - "[Richard Hofstadter] made the now largely forgotten point that
> American Protestants have long had a deep sympathy for The Market.
> Since they see humans as fallen, corrupt creatures always in need of a
> good kick in the ass, they revere it as a wonderful mechanism of
> social discipline, punishing the lazy and rewarding the hard-working.
> If people are poor, it's because they're immoral, impatient, or
> wasteful.". . .Henwood notes the acceptance of this fantasy explains
> "why there's been so little political price paid for the economic
> march back to the 19th century."
>
>
> [WS:] I'd take exception to this argument. While the American
> Protestant
> "Arbeit Macht Frei" may hold in some segments of society, it is far
> from
> universal. At the same time, The Market is revered by people who,
> by the AP
> standards are "immoral, impatient or wasteful," or worse yet,
> secular and
> hedonistic.
That's not the point. The point is that The Market is popular among a large section of white Protestant America. Most Americans believe that hard work is rewarded, and that vice is punished. Antipathy to the state and its "handouts" is embedded deep in American common sense.
> I would make that argument rest on a different Hofstadter's notion -
> "anti-intellectualism."
That's a not-unrelated affair. According to Hof (and I'm totally persuaded), much of American anti-intellectualism can be traced to the Protestant valorization of the individual - each of us has a direct relation with god, so who needs credentials or mediating institutions? The common person is at least the equal, and may surpass, the educated in wisdom, which is more a moral than an educational or experiential category.
> In fact, the love of The Market is grounded in the antithesis of
> hard work
> and diligence - it is the shortcut from rags to riches, the
> quintessence of
> the American Dream that bypasses the drudgery of education, the
> toil of hard
> work, the burden of moral obligations, and the pomposity of high
> culture.
Though hard work is very often not rewarded, most rich people today work hard. The rentier is mostly a thing of the past. The ideal for the rich today is to work; even our socialites have a little handbag business on the side.
Doug