ONLY IDEAS MATTER, BUT THEY MATTER UTTERLY:

An odd bunch: Seymour Martin Lipset devoted his life to explaining why America is different (Lexington, 1/11/07, The Economist)

His youthful socialism provided [Seymour Martin Lipset] with his first problem of "American exceptionalism": why is America the only industrial country that has never produced a major socialist party? [...]

He flirted with another explanation--that America has much higher degrees of social mobility than the socialist-breeding countries of Europe. But the data told a different story. Rates of social mobility were much the same in America and Europe. The big difference was in values. Americans believed strongly in equality of opportunity and equality of status. Europeans were still hung up on status differences--sometimes even using different words to address people of different ranks.

The question of America's unique values became increasingly central to his work. He also broadened his inquiry to American exceptionalism in general. Why does the United States have sky-high levels of religiosity? Why do Americans hate turning out to vote but love forming voluntary associations?

He emphasised America's hostility to the state--a hostility so strong that it even affected the left. The American Federation of Labour was significantly more militant than most European unions. But it had little truck with statism: its leader for almost four decades, Samuel Gompers, claimed that his politics were "two-thirds anarchist". Today's defining left-wing issue is "choice"--that is, preventing the government from interfering with women's control over their own bodies.

He also emphasised America's tradition of assimilation. Mr Lipset argued that the tone of the country was set by George Washington, who once wrote to a synagogue stating that Jews were not "tolerated" in America: they were Americans. Mr Lipset noted that America had relatively high rates of marriage between Jews and gentiles and between other religious groups. "The melting pot is melting as never before," he remarked in 1996, when other intellectuals were fixated on divisions.

Mr Lipset traced much of this American exceptionalism to 1776. The revolution not only got rid of feudalism. It also shattered the "confessional state", creating a free market in religion. He loved to analyse the way in which the monarchist counter-revolution in Canada produced a very different society--much more deferential, communitarian and statist. The American and Canadian governments tried to introduce the metric system at almost the same time. Today the Canadians slavishly follow the metric system--and the Americans cheerfully continue in their old ways.

You wouldn't think it would be so hard for intellectuals to figure out why Americans are hostile to statism when the Founding proceeds from the understanding that the state is subservient to ordained ends: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the consent of the governed, -- That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."

MORE:
Exceptionalist: MARTY LIPSET, RIP. (Nathan Glazer, 01.12.07, New Republic)

Seymour Martin Lipset, the distinguished political sociologist who died on December 31, 2006, tells the story in a memoir of how he shifted in City College (ccny) from science--as a prelude to dentistry--to sociology. During the Depression, the only member of his family who prospered was a dentist uncle, and that seemed the road to security. But Pete Rossi, a fellow student and member of the Trotskyist Young People's Socialist League, told him that sociology was the way to go--it could lead to a career in social work, and, because there would always be people in trouble in capitalist societies, there would always be jobs for social workers. I was a classmate of Lipset's, thinking much the same way. After trying various majors, I too shifted to sociology, with my eye on the federal exam for junior professional assistant, which, if one passed it, led to a job that paid $17 a week. Clearly, none of us young advocates for socialist revolution--which might have obviated the need to make a living under capitalism--were taking its near-possibility very seriously.

Still, we all migrated to the anti-Stalinist Alcove One in the ccny cafeteria. (We never bought anything, instead bringing sandwiches from home.) Trotskyists, social democrats of various persuasions, and leftist Zionists (as I was) all hung out there. We learned from one another--not that I have any complaint about the formal education ccny provided. In his memoir, Lipset recalls the day Philip Selznick (also to become a distinguished sociologist) brought to the Alcove's attention Robert Michels's Political Parties. Michels was a revelation. He explained why socialist parties did not bring socialism; why and how they turned into bureaucracies; why, despite a commitment to democracy, they were not democratic; and, by extension, why the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia resulted in a totalitarian dictatorship. Michels set Lipset's agenda for a good part of his scholarly career. This was bracketed, at its beginning and at its end, by his inquiries into one particular question: Why was there no major socialist party in the United States? But Lipset also steadily considered, in many books, the question of how democracy is established and maintained, and how it can be lost, in organizations and in societies.

Posted by Orrin Judd at January 11, 2007 5:09 PM