The Materialist Fallacy
Edited February
16, 2012
DB: David Brooks
DV: Me
DV: David, I’m a
bit worried about you. You’re one of the
most enlightened conservative columnists in the general media today. Recently, you’ve been enraptured with a kind
of social psychology mindset. Your
recent book and this column are recent examples. That in itself is not a problem. When you use it, however, to swat at large
problems, you come up short.
Your title is the ‘Materialist Fallacy,’
however, nowhere in the column do you use the word ‘materialist.’ From my previous
readings over the years, I know what you mean by the term, yet the linking of
the word with economic determinism is at best a stretch, at worse a display of
analytical rigidity. I can imagine that certain materialist philosophies or
worldviews could be deterministic, but to label them all ‘deterministic’ and
ergo a failure is sloppy thinking.
But let’s get to your column.
DB: The half-century between 1912 and 1962
was a period of great wars and economic tumult but also of impressive social
cohesion. Marriage rates were high. Community groups connected people across
class.
In the half-century between 1962 and the
present, America
has become more prosperous, peaceful and fair, but the social fabric has
deteriorated. Social trust has plummeted. Society has segmented. The share of
Americans born out of wedlock is now at 40 percent and rising.
DV: In 1912, the beginning of your socially cohesive period, the
country had come through a previous period of significant social change. Major changes occurred through immigration,
the abusive racial practices of Jim Crow laws in the South, and the populist
movement within our rural regions. Additionally, a significant change had
occurred by your start date—the development of the capitalist corporation, and
by that time, the form was already having an effect on people’s lives. That
trend not only would continue but also significantly transform our lives during
the next 100 years.
Although you do not fully define what you
mean by the ‘social fabric,’ we get an idea. Social relations which include
trust, cohesion, etc. A greater problem,
however, is you do not explain why the social fabric deteriorated during the
latter half of the 20th century. You describe three theories that
try to explain this social weakening, but those theories, as you present them,
serve only as straw men. This is
especially true for the one you attribute to Liberals, ‘economic determinist
theory,’ for this relates to your materialist fallacy title. Consequently, I’ll focus on that notion.
DB: As early as the 1970s, three large theories had emerged to explain
the weakening of the social fabric. Liberals congregated around an economically
determinist theory. The loss of good working-class jobs undermined communities
and led to the social deterioration.
DV: Whoa.... Any thoughtful analysis of this column must pause
here. If one reads that last sentence, it
is reasonable to assume a rational creature might say, ‘well, that sounds
reasonable.’ The loss of a good paying,
working-class job could reasonably tear the family’s social fabric. If the job
loss was due to the closing of a factory (with jobs moving to another country)
in a medium-sized community, then the pressures on that family would be
significant.
The important point here is this in fact
happened to thousands of families during the period. Yes, there were neither
world wars nor a Great Depression, but there was a watershed change in the way
the U.S.
economy functioned. The impact of global
economic relations reached Mainstreet USA. U.S. corporations shipped, and are
shipping, thousands of jobs overseas as ‘good capitalists’ would do to lower
production costs and increase profits. Corporate chains came to both small and
large towns causing thousands of locally-owned businesses to close. Corporations began to move workers around at
will—we are familiar with the IBM term of ‘I’ve been moved.’
During the 20th century, corporate
capitalism became the dominant economic mode in the U.S.. Since the end of WWII, however, the change
has been more dramatic. The U.S.
corporate structure has morphed into a global animal whose interests transcend
national boundaries. To suggest, as you do, David, that these changes had no
effect on our social fabric is hard to overlook, especially for one writing in
the year 2012 almost five years after the Great Recession began.
And speaking of that recent economic
debacle, the change in our economy has not been limited to the effects of
global market forces. The very nature of what qualifies as a commodity has
shifted. Businesses, small and large,
produce a product or a service and sell it to make a profit. To grow, the companies need capital and for
larger businesses, that capital is raised through the sale of stock in the
company. The nature of investment began to shift in the 1980s when companies as
companies became commodities in the financial markets. Hedge funds attracted investors to buy a
company, make changes in its operation and then seel it for a profit. We’re now familiar with Romney’s workk at the
hedge fund Bain Capital.
With the loosening of regulations at the
end of the last century, investment entities shifted to bundles of contracts
such as mortgages and insurance policies.
These derivative packages were not based on the potential success of the
sale of a product or service or of an entire company itself. They were based on promises to pay. We know
what happened when such promises were secured by unsecured or devious
means. Millions of individuals suffered:
shredded retirement funds, significant unemployment, massive infusion of
federal tax dollars to save the system itself and a continuing negative ripple
effect around the world.
So, David, you see why I struggle to
understand how you dismiss the effects of economic factors as a cause, not to
mention a primary cause, of the deterioration of our social fabric.
DB:
Libertarians congregated around a
government-centric theory. Great Society programs enabled people to avoid work
and gave young women an incentive to have children without marrying.
DV: At least among the few Libertarians I
know, I can’t imagine any of them believing that young women were craving to
have children without marrying.
DB: Neo-conservatives
had a more culturally deterministic theory. Many of them had been poor during
the Depression. Economic stress had not undermined the family then. Moreover,
social breakdown began in the 1960s, a time of unprecedented prosperity. They
argued that the abandonment of traditional bourgeois norms led to social
disruption, especially for those in fragile circumstances.
DV: As
I’ve written, the nature of the economy during the first half of the 20th
century was markedly different from the mature corporate capitalism gone
globally wild as well as the shift to
volatile investment instruments which developed during the last half of that
century. As for this neo-conservative view, what do they say caused this
breakdown of traditional bourgeois norms?
At this point, David, you bring in the new
research which focuses on social psychology. You’ve just presented three
theories which you easily shoot down because you don’t do justice in explaining
their analyses. Especially the Liberal
economic one. But let’s see if you’ve
got the rabbit in the hat with this new research.
DB: Over
the past 25 years, though, a new body of research has emerged, which should
lead to new theories. This research tends to support a few common themes.
First, no matter how social disorganization got started, once it starts, it
takes on a momentum of its own. People who grow up in disrupted communities are
more likely to lead disrupted lives as adults, magnifying disorder from one
generation to the next.
DV: If I read you correctly, I could not see how proponents of any of
the three theories above could disagree with that observation. Once the dam breaks it’s difficult to stop
the flow of the water. But I’m more
interested in why the dam breaks; why the disorganization gets started.
DB: Second,
it’s not true that people in disorganized neighborhoods have bad values. Their
goals are not different from everybody else’s. It’s that they lack the social
capital to enact those values.
DV:
Some fundamental conservatives might believe that the people in such
neighborhoods have bad values, but not many others. But you know, David, Liberals have stated
this for decades. Remember the FDR and
the New Deal?
DB: Third,
while individuals are to be held responsible for their behavior, social context
is more powerful than we thought. If any of us grew up in a neighborhood where
a third of the men dropped out of school, we’d be much worse off, too.
DV:
Again, it is hard to disagree that a neighborhood in which 30% of the
men drop out of high school is not going to be a good environment for the
others living there. But one could say, as I do, a neighborhood that has seen
businesses close or leave the area becomes a troubled neighborhood whose social
fabric begins to weaken. It’s not simply that an area has a disrupted social
fabric but why it does. David, you avoid
explaining why an area can come to such a condition, so the new research you
cite comes across as simple, common sense descriptions without solutions. My point is you have no solutions, because
you won’t look at the causal factors for the tears in the social fabric.
Your following examples show interesting
research in and of itself, but they hardly cast any light on the point
reflected in your title, “The Fallacy of Materialism.” You imply that materialism is economic
determinism, but that is all you do.
Your new research, as you describe it here, says nothing about causes of
social disruption.
DB: The
recent research details how disruption breeds disruption. This research
includes the thousands of studies on attachment theory, which show that
children who can’t form secure attachments by 18 months face a much worse set
of chances for the rest of their lives because they find it harder to build
stable relationships.
It includes the diverse work on
self-control by Walter Mischel, Angela Duckworth, Roy Baumeister and others,
which shows, among other things, that people raised in disrupted circumstances
find it harder to control their impulses throughout their lives.
It includes the work of Annette Lareau,
whose classic book, “Unequal Childhoods,” was just updated last year. She shows
that different social classes have radically different child-rearing
techniques, producing different outcomes.
Over the past two weeks, Charles Murray’s
book, “Coming Apart,” has restarted the social disruption debate. But, judging
by the firestorm, you would have no idea that the sociological and
psychological research of the past 25 years even existed.
Murray neglects this research in his book.
Meanwhile, his left-wing critics in the blogosphere have reverted to crude
1970s economic determinism: It’s all the fault of lost jobs. People who talk
about behavior are blaming the victim. Anybody who talks about social norms is
really saying that the poor are lazy.
Liberal economists haven’t silenced
conservatives, but they have completely eclipsed liberal sociologists and
liberal psychologists. Even noneconomist commentators reduce the rich texture
of how disadvantage is actually lived to a crude materialism that has little to
do with reality.
DV:
So you’re really going after those ‘liberal
economists’ who are hogging the popular media.
Why don’t you identify them. Do
you mean folks like Paul Krugman or Simon Johnson? I cannot imagine either one being so one dimensional
as to not appreciate ‘the rich texture of how disadvantage is actually
lived.’ So I don’t know with whom you
are so angry.
DB: I
don’t care how many factory jobs have been lost, it still doesn’t make sense to
drop out of high school. The influences that lead so many to do so are much
deeper and more complicated than anything that can be grasped in an economic
model or populist slogan.
DV:
Oops...You’re crying foul against the lack of appreciation of the human
pain of social disruption, admirable, but you make a statement like it doesn’t
make sense to drop out of high school.
Well, that’s certainly true for an individual’s future well-being, but
if that 16 year-old girl’s mother just lost her job, then the decision to leave
school may make plenty of short-term sense. And, if that family is living in a
disruptive, down-trodden neighborhood, their perspective is likely to be very,
very short-term, such as tomorrow only.
DB: This
economic determinism would be bad enough if it was just making public debate
dumber. But the amputation of sociologic, psychological and cognitive
considerations makes good policy impossible.
The American social fabric is now so
depleted that even if manufacturing jobs miraculously came back we still would
not be producing enough stable, skilled workers to fill them. It’s not enough
just to have economic growth policies. The country also needs to rebuild
orderly communities.
This requires bourgeois paternalism:
Building organizations and structures that induce people to behave responsibly
rather than irresponsibly and, yes, sometimes using government to do so.
Social repair requires sociological
thinking. The depressing lesson of the last few weeks is that the public debate
is dominated by people who stopped thinking in 1975.
DV: I’ll end by noting your suggested solution of
a return to ‘bourgeois paternalism.’ I haven’t read the comments which followed
your column in the Times, but this part probably brought out the most
vociferous response to your piece. As
for me, I’ll simply let it lie.
