15 IV 2008
Howard Brick describes in his chapter on contradictions of the “affluent society” the origin of a new sociopolitical debate in the 1960s: the problem of “affluence”. Brick suggests that the publication of Galbraith’s book the Affluent Society in 1958 steered American politics towards a new direction: based on an observation of economic condition that “the problem of economics []conquered” with a reliable production of good given sufficient demand, Galbraith calls for a closer examination into the composition of the economy in its social components (Brick, 2). In order to sustain the internal wellbeing of the structure, attention is called to distributive justice to push towards the limit of classical bourgeois economics (23). Hence, the implication of Galbraith’s work serves as an ideological foundation and explanation of civil rights, student movement, and social programs against poverty in 1960s. Brick suggests that perhaps this ideology itself was out of tune with “the standard of a capitalist society” through the various social programs that it invoked calling for redistribution of economic resources; however, the result of the decade demonstrate that “in the end, the established forms of wealth and power went largely undisturbed” (23). This contradiction seems to suggest something unique of liberal thought in America. At once it needs to establish a faith “in the gradual victory of social principles over private prerogatives”, but because the tradition is rooted and dependent on a capitalist, “affluent” society, it can never accomplish the faith that it holds. Perhaps this is the very irony of American liberalism itself: its economic foundation is based on a bourgeois society deeply rooted in the capitalist tradition, but its political aspiration calls for it to reach for something that is foreign to its roots. It is stuck in a limbo that can neither venture too far ahead to declare itself communist to abolish its own economic roots nor fall too much behind its ideological faith. To this effect, then, although programs were initiated and understanding expanded with liberal institutions, the actual socioeconomic structure remains the same, while the power-elites, conservative or liberal, still maintain control.
A case study of the liberal aspiration inspired by Galbraith’s work is America’s struggle against poverty in 1960s. Michael Harrington writes in the Other America in 1962 to bring into light the invisible part of America under poverty, supposedly covering 40-50 million people. Following Galbraith’s analysis, Harrington acknowledges that in an affluent society, the problem of production ceases with American life changing along with it: the city is transformed, people’s clothing improved (4-5). Harrington argues, however, that this appearance of affluence is exactly the problem: it hides the poor from been seen—they are now invisible, living in different apartments and with new clothes, but still economically, psychologically, and socially beaten by poverty. However, Harrington argues against Galbraith’s point to characterize those suffering from “insular poverty”: large segment of American population lacking training and unable to receive the benefits of social welfare (12). These people are left behind; while the society they live in transforms, they are left without even the comfort of their old jobs. Harrington sees poverty as a culture that forms a sense of “wholeness” that haunts the psychological wellbeing and social condition of the poor (168). Social welfare system, overlooking this problem as a whole, fails to reach out to the impoverished and becomes, at worst, “socialism for the rich and free enterprise for the poor” (170). Therefore, Harrington believes that the only solution is direct action from the federal government; free from the political peculiarity of local governments, Washington alone can create a program of national scale and centralized planning to abolish poverty as a whole (181). However, the liberal aspiration of Harrington only meets the political reality of Sargent Shriver’s (and LBJ’s) failure in the War on Poverty. Despite initial goodwill and scope of ambition, the program failed because it could not escape the structural foundation of American sociopolitical enterprise. Party politics and emphasis on the Vietnam War for reasons economic or ideological meant that the program on poverty was at best a token gesture of the American liberals. The fundamental characteristics of the American sociopolitical structure—that it was capitalist rather than communist (hence the war on Vietnam for containment), bourgeois-parliamentarian rather than proletariat-authoritarian—suggest that the war on poverty by the federal government could only carry thus far. For better or worse America stayed true to its capitalist basis—and, out of its liberal faith it initiated worthy programs that left the “the established forms of wealth and power [] largely undisturbed”.
