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AUTUMN 1990 THE ~N ILSON QUART~RLY

Published by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars

COVER STORY

EVERYDAY LII;E IN JAPAN 19 8- What to make of the Japanese? In the Western mind, the samurai of b~·ka yore has been replaced by the efficient "sa2aryman" and the obedient worker. But perhaps the most important figures in Japanese society are d its shop owners, its venerated rice farmers, and its devoted housewives. These people have been in many ways responsible for the nation's re- mcilkable success since World War II. David W PIath, Theodove C, Besfou, William W Kelly, and 1Margavet Lock evoke the worlds of these Japanese and describe the problems that now face them.

O ISAMERICA DECLINING? 67 "Declinists" warn that America is going the way of ancient Rome and 19th-century England. "Tritlmphalists" insist that America's role as world leader is not in jeopardy. Richard Rosecrance finds both argtl- ments inadegunte and suggests that it is misleading to compare Ameri- ca's position to those of the great powers of the past.

IDEAS

IN PRAISE OF THE ESSAY 54 Every age has its favorite literary form. 0, B. Havdison, Jv., explains why the essay is popular in troubled times-such as our own.

REFLECTIONS D E P A R T M E N T S

LINCOLNAND DOUGLASS 102 Editor's Comment 4 A president and an ex-slave together changed the course of race relations in America. Douo- Periodicals 7 fhy Wickenden recalls a little-known episode Current Books 86 in history. Research Reports 136 AN EXILE'S DILEMMA 114 Commentary 138 Can you go home again if you are one of RLIS- sia's greatest dissident novelists? Vladimiv Index 142 Voinovich describes the Russia of the recent i~over: Diary, ALcgusr22, 1968, by Tetsuya Noda. Lent by Felix past and contrastsit to the countryhe would ..d HelenJuda, the Contemporary Japanese Art Collection, return To. Los Angeles, California.

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The Wilson Quarterly (ISSN-0363-3276) is published in Innuary (Winter), Apn'l (Spr`ng), July (Summer), and October (AutumnJ by the Woodrow Wilson Intemational Center for Scholars at 370 L'Enfant Promenade S.W., Suite 704, Washington, D.C. 20024. Indexed biennially. Subscrip~ionr one year. 824 two years, 843. outside U.S.: one year, 830.50; two years, 856. Air mail outside U.S.: one year, 839; two years, 873. Single copies ,nailed upon request: 86; : selected back issues 86, including postage and handling; outside LI.S. and possessions, 87. Second-class postage paid at Washington, D.C., and additional ~nniling offices. All unsolicited rnanuscripts should be accompanied by a self-addressed stamped envelope. Members: Send changes of address and all subscription correspondence with Wilson Quarterly mailing label to Subscriber Service, The Wilson Quarterly, I)o. Box 56161, Boulder, Cole. 80322-616/. (Suhscriber hot Une: 1-800-876-8828) Posrmastec Send all address changes to The Wilson Quarterly, P.O. Box 56161, Boulder, Cole. 80301. MicroFlm copies are available from Ilniversity Microfilmr Inlmafionnl. 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106. O.SA, newsstand distribution by Easrem News Distributors, Inc., 1130 Cleveland Road, Sandusky, Ohio 44870. We plan to lose money PriorityReading Deterrence and the Revolution on this offer in Soviet Military Doctrine ~-- Raymond L. Garthoff Illuminatingthe Soviet militarymind and radical "new thinking!' of the Gorbachev era. cloth $29.95/ paper $11.95 Europe 1992 ,d u An American Perspective P"o GaryClyde Hufbauer, Editor I SJ · ~if~ I I I Going global? Some corporations will F~; win and some will lose. What businesses cJ', r andpolicy experts need to know now to plan for the future. cloth $31.951paper$12.95 ··~`4:1~~~,3 An American Trade Srategy Options for the 1990s Robert Z. Lawrence and America's Firsl Silver Dollar Charles L. Schultze, Editors Reallegal lender of the 13 Findinga viablestrategy for the U.S.in a Colonies and early USA changing international trade environment. cloth 628.95/ paper $10.95 ----- The Free Trade Debate Onlr$49 Reg.$75 Report of the Task Force on the Future of American Trade Policy We're slashing the price on our national Backgroundpaper by GaryClyde Hufbauer bestseller to get you to try us - and we'll Assessingthe costs and benefitsof even pay the postage! Struck in New current and proposed policy on trade. Spain from 1772 to 1825, these magnifi- A PriorityPress Publication centsilver dollars were the most popular ofthe Twentieth Century Fund. in the 13 Coloniesand remainedlegal cloth$l8.95/paper$8.95 tenderin the USAuntil 1857. Denomi- The R~ad to Economic Recovery nated8 Reales,occasionally some were Reportof the Task Force on cutinto quarter-dollar pieces ("two bits"). InternationalDebt TheU.S. dollar sign is believedto derive BackgroundPaper by Rudiger Dornbusch fromthe scroll-effectpillars ofthe reverse. Findingnew initiatives forresolving the international debt crisis. Some were carried byclipper ships to APN~ority PressPublication China, where our supply was found, of the Twentieth Century Fund. bearing authentic "chopmarks"of Chi- cloth$18.95 1paper 9.95 nese merchants. Each big 39mm silver dollar contains 27 grams of.903 silver and comes with a Soviet National Security CertificateofAuthenticity BtteStingto ill Radicalrethinking oipM~I:C~P~ tMh~SGOY~ scarce Fine quality and genuine status. Union precipitated the rush of democratic While current supplies last, our reduced changes we are witnessing. MccGwireis the price for new customers is just $49 first to offer a satisfactory explanation that postpaid(limit 5). Order W7144A, To helpstake America beyond the Cold War. order by credit card, call toll-free 1- AvailableDecember 1990 800-451-4463anytime. Or senda check cloth$38.95 / paper 1 6.95 or money order to: International Coins & At boo8stores and from Currency, Inc., 11 E. State St., Box 218, n Dlpt.Money-back1186,Mongclia.vennon105601. guarantee - 30-day B~OOk~~S1775M usettsBOOkS Ave. NW home examination. Washington, DC 20036 (202)797-s~ssFAX(zoa)797-6004 TAKE ANY 3 FOR $i EA~H Plus a 4th at the low Members' Price. NO RISK, NO COMMITMENT.

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WOODROW WILSON INTERNATIONAL CENTER FOR SCHOLARS Smithsonian Institution Building Washington, D.C. Charles Blitzer, Director Samuel E Wells, Jr., Deputy Director Dean W Anderson, Deputy Director for Planning and Management

BOARD OF TRUSTEES William J. Baroody, Jr., Chairman Dwayne O. Andreas, I/ice Chaimzan RobertMcC.Adams JamesA.BakerIII TheodereC.Barreawt JamesH.Billington LauroECavazos LynneV.Cheney BruceS.Gelb GertrudeHimmelfarb MaxM.Kampelman JohnS.Reed LouisW.Sullivan Gov.JohnH.Sununu RobertH.Tuttle DonW.Wilson

THE WILSON COUNCIL Stanley R. Klion, ChaiwMan Charles E Barber Conrad Cafritz Edward W Carter Peter B. Clark William T. Coleman, Jr. KennethW.Dam MichaelDiCiacomo RobertR.Harlin WilliamA.Hewitt James H. Higgins Eric Hotung Denald M. Kendall ChristopherKennan Franklin A. Lindsay Sol M. Linowitz Minoru Makihara Plate Malozemoff Edwin S. Marks C. Peter McColough Martha T. Muse DavidPackard L. Richardsen Preyer Robert L. Raclin RajaW. Sidawi Robert R. Slaughter S. Bruce Smart, Jr.

The Wilson Center has published the Quarterly since 1976. It also publishes Wilson Center Press books, special reports, and a series of "scholars' guides" designedto help researchers in specific fields,from Sovietstudies to film and video, find their way through the vast archival riches of the nation's capital. All this is part of the Wilson Center's special mission as the nation's unusual "living memorial" to the 28th president of the United States. Congressestablished the Center in 1968as an internationalinstitute for advancedstudy, "sym- bolizingand strengtheningthe fruitful relation between the world of learning and the world of public affairs."The Centeropened in 1970under its own presidentiallyappointed board of trustees, headed by former vice president Hubert H. Humphrey. Chosen in open annual worldwidecompetitions, some 50 Fellowsat the Center carry out advanced research, write books, and join in discussionswith other scholars,public officials,journalists, business and labor leaders. The Center is housed in the original Smithsonian"castle" on the Mall.Financing comes from both private sources and an annual congressionalappropriation. "An evenhanded and revebtorybio~aphyof the a~ ~Lnbucca~enng rl Plbr ~J IIIUDLkl~

The astonishing career of William J. Casey--World War II Intelligence expert, CASEY~ lawyer, author, venture From the OSS to the CIA capitalist, chairman of the SEC--reached its pinnacle when Ronald Reagan made JOSEPH E, him director of the CIA. This authoritative biography PERSICO explores the life and times of the po~ierful, contradictory figure, and defines his place in history as the man who made--and unmade-- Reagan's foreign policy. ;b;; Written with full and exclusive access to ''I Casey's private papers andberaoprraSonolhis family and associates, jill ~a Caseyis "an absorbing. unsentimental evaluation of a complex and (by his own lights) pragmatic patriot." --Kirkus Reuiews* _j ;"· Illustrated with photographs

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Reviews of articles from periodicals and specialized ioumals here and abroad

POLITICS & GOVERNMENT 7 RELIGION & PHILOSOPHY 122

FOREIGN POLICY & DEFENSE 9 SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY 124

ECONOMICS, LABOR & BUSINESS 12 RESOURCES & ENVIRONMENT 126

SOCIETY 14 ARTS & LETTERS 129

PRESS & TELEVISION 1;' OTHERNATIONS 132

POLITICS & GOV%RNMENT

Does Congress Payne,"The Congressional "The PermanentBrainwashing Democratic Machine"Congress" byby James NormanL. Need to Be Fi3iecZ? Omstein,and "Public Opinion and the 'Congress Problem'" by Everett Carll Ladd, in The Pttblic Interest (Summer 1990), 1112 16th St. N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036.

Who is to blame for Washington's long suddenly become tightwads. "Brainwash- deadlock over the federal budget deficit ing produces genuine attitude changes," and other national issues? Congress has he writes. He believes that only a six term emerged as the favorite culprit of many limitation on congressional service will fix critics. They tend to think that only struc- the problem. tural changes--limitations on congres- But Omstein notes that Republicans sional terms, campaign finance reform, have lived to regret their last experiment line-item veto authority for the presi- with fixed terms--the 22nd amendment of dent--will get the federal government 1951, which made Ronald Reagan a lame moving again. duck for his entire second term. More- Payne, director of Lytton Research & over, says the American Enterprise Insti- Analysis, is one of those critics. Contrary to tute researcher, such a limitation would be much popular supposition, congressmen, superfluous. The high (98 percent) reelec- he finds, do not, become big spenders be- tion rate of congressional incumbents has cause they are corrupt or cynical. Rather, obscured steady turnover due to retire- in the inbred political world of Washing- ment and other causes; 55 percent of cur- ton, virtually nobody tells them to tighten rent members of the House of Represen- the purse strings. Payne surveyed 1,060 tatives were sworn in during the 1980s. witnesses who testified at 14 congressional Omstein also gives short shrift to GOP hearings dealing with spending programs: claims that the advantages of incumbency Only seven people opposed the spending. are responsible for a "permanent Demo- Which is hardly surprising considering cratic Congress." Even in elections with that 53 percent of the witnesses were fed- no Democratic incumbent, Republicans eral bureaucrats and congressmen and 10 run poorly. Since 1954, they have won percent were state or local officials. only 77 open House seats vacated by Dem- Payne regards such practices as part of a ocrats, while Democrats have won 101 "culture of spending" that eventually en- open Republican seats. The real problem, snares most congressmen. One recent Omstein says, is that the GOP has failed to study, for example, shows that new con- recruit good candidates. If it wants to win gressmen with no prior government ex- control of Congress, he says, it should plan perience are more likely to oppose spend- to do so the old fashioned way--by earning programs than are their elders. But ing it. after 12 years in office they become very Polls show that Americans actually are generous with the taxpayers' money. Re- quite content with the current "divided" election pressures are not responsible, government, with a Republican executive Payne says. Retiring congressmen do not and a Democratic legislature. Ladd, of the

wa AUTUMN 1990 PERIODICALS

University of Connecticut, argues that this vors limits on congressional terms. Ameri- reflects an ambivalence about activist gov- cans think that "Congress is a problem," ernment. The public holds Congress in Ladd says, "but they don't know why, or very low esteem, and a solid majority fa- where to turn for answers."

A KincZ Wo"/CZFor "WhyBenedict Amold Did It" by WillardSterne Randall, in Benedicf AmoZd ANmye~Cgagnl~riinge(Sepl.Oct.1990). 60 Fifth Ave.. New York,

In grade school, every child learns about Amoldls rivals would call for his court the treacherous Benedict Arnold, who martial at least three more times, accusing coldly sold out his country for 6320,000. him, among other things, of looting in But Randall, a historian at the University Canada and lining his pockets as military of Vermont, writes that Amold's treason governor of Philadelphiain 1778.His past can be explained, if not excused, by a as a smuggler in New Haven, Connecticut, "long fuse of bitterness." did not help his credibility.And because Amold's vanity and brashness made him many of his personal records had been an outsider throughout his militarycareer. burned or lost, Amold was hard pressed to His brilliance as a commander was un- defend himself. "Now found," Randall questioned. He led the stunning 1775 raid writes, the papers include "documents on the British fort at Ticonderoga, which that could have saved Amold endless trou- supplied cannon for the siege of Boston, ble and that might even have prevented his and he headed the bold but ill-fated Ameri- treason." can advance on Quebec in 1776.When a The indignities continued to pile up. British force threatened to sail down Lake Congress repeatedly denied Amold pro- Champlain and split the colonies, Amold motion, refused to reimburse his consider- built a small fleet and turned it back. able out-of-pocketexpenses, and officially But many of his colleagues resented reprimanded him for two trifling offenses him. Ethan Alien, leader of Vermont's hecommitted as governor. Twice Green Mountain Boys, was the most per wounded in battle, Amold complained in sistent enemy. The two men squabbled bit- a 1779 letter to Washington that he had terly at Ticonderoga,and in 1776the envi- "become a cripple in the service of my ous Alien tried to get Arnold court country," and "little expected to meet the martialed for misconduct and misappro- ungrateful returns I have received from priation of funds at Ticonderoga. my countrymen."

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A contemporary print suggests the violence of popular revulsion at Benedict Amold's treason.

WQ AUTUMN 1990 PERIODICALS

That year, Amold sent word to the Brit- United States until 1781, leading a series of ish that he wanted to defect. After betray- bloody Loyalist raids in Virginia and ing his men at the American stronghold at Connecticut. He lived out his remaining West Point, New York, to the enemy, and 20 years in England, Canada, and the West nearly delivering Washington into British Indies. Amold died a poor man, Randall hands, Amold fled to a British ship waiting writes, but "never ceased to see himself as on the Hudson River. He remained in the a hero."

The Nez/v Politics "Solvingthe Riddle of Tax Reform: Party Competition and the Politics of Ideas" by David R. Beam, Timothy J. Conlan, and of Refo·un Margaret T. Wrightson, in Polilical Science Quavterly (Summer 1990). 475 Riverside Dr., Ste. 1274, New York, N.Y. 10115- 0012.

There used to be only one way to enact incomes would pay comparable taxes; it radical reforms in Washington: Elect a should not distort investment decisions new president who sweeps into office and and it ought to be efficient to administer. rallies Congress to his cause during his fig- But it was their proposal to create only urative first 100 days. two income-tax rates--along with a sharp Recently, a second style of reform has nudge from President Ronald Reagan-- emerged. Because of the explosive growth that caught the attention of Rostenkowski of congressional staffs, think tanks, and and others. other institutions, media-savvy "experts" The public never enthusiastically and "policy entrepreneurs" (including backed the 1986 reform, which eliminated academics and legislative staffers) have or curtailed many popular tax breaks. Be- gained power. As an example of the new cause it raised corporate taxes by $120 bil- "politics of ideas" that they practice, au- lion over five years, much of the business thors Beam, Conlan, and Wrightson cite community was opposed. But the policy the 1986 Tax Reform Act. entrepreneurs prevailed. In the words of Representative Dan Ros- It was not the first time that they had tenkowski (D-III.), chairman of the House done so. Environmental protection, wel Ways and Means Committee, it was "the fare reform, and the deregulation of air bill no one wanted." Except tax experts. lines and other industries are also achieve- They were virtually the sole authors of the ments of the "politics of ideas." The U.S. Treasury Department's model tax bill authors are somewhat ambivalent about of 1984, which became the ideal against the new politics. On the one hand, it is pos- which subsequent efforts were measured. sible only because of the "fragmentation" They agreed on a few key features. The of the nation's traditional governing insti- ideal tax code should be "horizontally eq- tutions. But it also shows that the system uitable" so that people with comparable still has some life in it.

- : : - - FOREIGN POLICY & DEFENSE

After "DefiningOurNational Interest" byINing Kristol, inThe Na- tional Interest (Fall 1990), 1112 16th St. N.W., Washington, D.C. Anticommunism 20036.

As the victors in the Cold War, writes inclined to think that our principles have Kristol, a Fellow at the American Enter- been vindicated. But if one asks what these prise Institute, Americans "are naturally principles are, one gets a cacophony of re-

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~~~ ~ang ~~e NPt everyoneis cheering the endof the Cold ~e dem~eof:tlze~old Waro~r-is Zikely ~r· ~ing: in ~tematio~~lSe~~ (Sum- ~:tnc~~e the chances:tha~ ~ar and ~~r mer 1990),:58~ _J.Mearshei~ B~~e· Many pbsewe~ si~of Chicago:politicfl new age ofPepce ~-dawn- We m~ s~n:mi~~e East-West rival~ :': :~ ing; in facf the ~~~ is~e· of my anhlrsts are There is no. dotlbt that pavadoxical. The West:has War have been subst maintaining peace-in EMrope·lt presst~ ~~liricalregimes interest~- maintainingthe Eastern Europe · .1 . ~ cOMstlm~ nbtio~al : %oId War o~r, and he~ce has an interest in wealth, by givi~ rise the Cold War confron~- fense estab2ishmentsin that threaien to end it a~ spawned bloody confi'icts:,iM the Third dange~trsl The Cold War antagonism cOL1~ World.... I Neverthelessthe net-human and be-continuedatlower levelsof East-West ten- economic cost of the::Cb~:~r O~r has sionthat have prevailed in the past:.:, but 8 been far less than the cost ofi the Etr~ean completeend to the: Cbld War wotlld create - order:of f900-45....:: _ : - - -: - - : move:p;sb:lemsthan it w~tlM:solve..

sponses. It isn't that we didn't know what lieves that policies defined in such "moral- we were doing this past half-century. It's istic-idealistic terms" are bound to be self- just that we had so many good reasons for defeating. For example, Washington doing it." endured a huge public embarassment Since 1917, he writes, U.S, foreign pol- when, for good reason, it refused to recog- icy has been informed by four principles nize the elected government of Lithuania. that now seem about to unravel. Such failures of ideological foreign pol- WilsoniaM liberal internationalism was icy have helped revive isolationism. Why, based on the utopian notion that nations many Americans ask, must we maintain would subordinate their interests to inter- hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops in national law and institutions. After World Europe now that the Soviet threat is rap- War II, Washington found it impossible to idly dissipating? A good question, in defend U.S. policy with anything but Wil- Kristol's view. But a total U.S. withdrawal sonian abstractions about the defense of from the world is impossible. the "free world." Americans, Kristol says, That leaves the national interest as the knew that in fact they were defending U.S.- only possible guiding principle of U.S. for- interests. Their tolerance for Wilsonianism eign policy. How is it to be defined? ended when Washington justified U.S. in- Kristol says that it changes as the world-- tervention in Vietnam with another ab- and we--change. The national interest straction, the need to counter "unjust" ag- cannot be merely the pursuit of realpolitik, gression. because Americans will always insist on a Revised liberal internationalism was a re- moral component in their foreign policy. action to Vietnam and other new reali- The national interest clearly lies in pre- ties--as suggested by the fact that Daniel venting the emergence of a hostile new su- Patrick Moynihan and Jeanne Kirkpatrick perpower and in protecting nations that became national heroes by denouncing share our basic values. But human rights the UnitedNations, the great monument of must be weighedpragmatically. Pursuit of postwar Wilsonianism. It emphasizes the national interest, Kristol concludes, America's role as the promoter of democ- will leave "plenty of room for failures as racy abroad, and it remains the dominant well as successes. But both.., would flow motif of U.S. foreign policy. Kristol points from errors of judgment, not from illu- out that the United States is the only de- sions about the world and the people (in- mocracy that takes this view, and he be- eluding Americans) who inhabit it." wa AUTUMN 1990 PERIODICALS

Searching for "Latin America and the End of the Cold War" by Jorge Castai~eda, in World Policy Journal (Summer 1990), 777 United A Latin PoZicy Nations Plaza, New York, N.Y. 10017, and "Rediscovering Latin America" by Abraham E Lowenthal, in Foreign Affairs (Fall 1990), 58 E. 68th St., New York, N.Y. 10021. Will the end of the Cold War finally free promise a new U.S, attitude. He sketched a the United States of its last inhibitions tantalizing vision of a regional free-trade against wholesale military intervention in zone. He also promised $100 million to Latin America? That, apparently, is what promote privatization and other reforms some Latin Americans fear. by Latin America's new market-oriented CastaAeda and Lowenthal both cite this leaders, such as Carlos Salinas de Gotari of minority view to show how low Latin- Mexico and Fernando Collor de Mello of Americans' trust in the United States has Brazil. And he made what Lowenthal con- sunk. In fact, they agree, the future is likely siders the first step toward a realistic ap- to be quite different. What the end of the proach to the region's $400 billion foreign superpower conflict really means, writes debt by promising to seek legislation in ef- CastaAeda, a political scientist at Mexico's feet forgiving $7 billion of it. National Autonomous University, is that "The U.S. government now recognizes, "Washington's accustomed ideologicaljus- after nearly a decade of tacit denial," tification for involving itself militarily in writes Lowenthal, "that Latin America's Latin American affairs is simply no longer economic downturn is the fundamental available or credible." But there the two problem that needs to be addressed." part company. More and more issues are "'intermestic'-- Last December's U.S. invasion of Pan- based on the international spillover of do- ama suggests to Casta~eda that Washing- mestic concerns." When the United States ton may temporarily replace the specter of worried only about such matters as obtain- an "evil (Soviet/communist) empire to the ing military bases and access to raw ma- east [with] the evil (drug-producing/immi- terials in Latin America, it could afford to gration-generating) slum to the south." ignore internal conditions. But today's But over the long term, he predicts, Latin Latin American problems (economic stag- America will find itself in the unaccus- nation and poverty, the drug trade, politi- tomed position of worrying about U.S. in- cal instability) rapidly become the United difference to its fate, especially as Eastern States's problems. The renewed U.S. em- Europe's appetite for U.S. trade, invest- phasis on trade likewise is bound to put ment, and (particularly) aid grows. Latin America in the spotlight. During the Lowenthal, a political scientist at the late 1970s, before the debt crisis, it was the University of Southern California, is more fastest growing market for U.S. exports. optimistic. At first, he says, the Bush ad- But Lowenthal warns that the ball is ministration seemed happy merely to get now in Latin America's court. If the re- Latin America--especially the sticky situa- gion's leaders want a true partnership with tions in Nicaragua and El Salvador--off the United States during the 1990s, they the front pages. But last June, the presi- cannot afford to stand around and wait for dent delivered a speech that seemed to Washington alone to create it. hlissile Envy "ThirdWorld Ballistic Missiles" byJanne E. Nolan and Albert D. Wheelon, in Scieniific American (August 1990), 415 Madison Ave., New York, N.Y. 10017. By now the world is painfully aware of countries have also built large arsenals. Saddam Hussein's stockpile of ballistic Nolan, a Fellow at the Brookings Institu- missiles. It is not generally recognized, tion, and Wheelon, a former U.S. Central however, that many other Third World Intelligence Agency analyst, point out that

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the number of countries armed with mis- Iraq War. siles more than doubled during the past Recently, some smaller countries have decade, to 18. The United States and the launched their own missile development Soviet Union began developing ballistic programs. Israel's nuclear-tipped Jericho missiles in 1953, and until recently they II can fly 900 miles, far enough to reach shared the missilemanufacturing monoply Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Iran, the Gulf only with France and China. All four be- States and parts of the Soviet Union. With came active missile merchants. And now a range of 1,500 miles, India's Agni mis- new missile makers are emerging. sile, based on French and Soviet technol- The list of Soviet customers is daunting. ogy, can easily reach Pakistan, India's Libya, Syria, Iran, North Korea, Algeria, long-time antagonist. Egypt, and Iraq are among those who have Pakistan's less powerful Haft I missile obtainedthe SovietScud B. The North Ko- can destroya target 62 miles away,and the reans made an enhanced version of the Haft II, which is under development, re- missile, with Chinese help, and now they portedly can fly 180 miles. And India and are peddling it in the world arms market. Pakistan are both believed to be capable of Iraq also modified the Scud B, doubling its manufacturing nuclear weapons. Mean- range to 375 miles, and is working on while, building on technology from their three other missiles based largely on Scud own space programs, Argentina and Brazil technology,including the three-stageAbid, are developingmissiles intended primarily which was successfully tested last Decem- for export. Argentina's Condor I has a 60- ber Iraq, of course, is also working on nu- mile range, while Brazil's forthcoming clear weapons. Avibrahas a range of 180 miles. Libyaand In 1972, the United States provided Is- Iraq are interested in buying it. rael with 160 Lance missiles, which can Unfortunately, the authors say, it is travel up to 70 miles. In 1988, China sold much too late to put the genie back in the Saudi ArabiapowerfUl CSS-2 ballistic mis- bottle. The U.S. strategy of trying to pre- siles, putting parts of Europe, the Soviet vent missile proliferation is obsolete. Union, and much of the Middle East Rather, they conclude, the major powers within the Saudi's range. And while the must work harder to prevent regional con- French have so far refusedto export ballis- flicts from erupting into war. And they tic missiles, Argentina used a French-built ought to try to reduce military uncer- Exocet cruise missile to sink a British tainty--perhaps by making satellite sur- cruiser during the 1982 Falklands War, veillance data available to all--that might and an Iraqi Exocet badly damaged a U.S. encourage Third World leaders to launch destroyer five years later, during the Iran- their deadly new weapons.

ECONOMICS, LGBOR, & BUSINESS

A Century of "Is Deposit Insurance Necessary? A Historical Perspective" by Scandal Charles1990), FolsomW.Calomiris, Library,in RensselaerThe Jotlmal PolytechnicofEconomic Inst.,History Troy. (June N.Y. 12180-3590. Greedy bankers, sleepy regulators, and Such insurance encourages high-risk sleazy politicians are the usual villains of ventures, especially by banks with little America's savings-and-loan debacle. capital left to lose. Calomiris, an econo- Maybeso, many economistssay, but the mist at NorthwesternUniversity, writes real root of all evil is far more banal: gov- that it also allows "unscrupulous, or sim- ernment deposit insurance, ply inexperienced, entrepreneurs to enter wa AUTUMN 1990 PERIODICALS

banking as a means to finance their risky eight deposit insurance systems collapsed. enterprises." Insured depositors have little Calomiris hopes that the lessons of the incentive to move their money elsewhere; past won't be forgotten this time. Self- bankers have little reason to crack down regulation and co-insurance would work on their colleagues. as well for banks today as they did in the All of this has been known for more than past. (In fact, today's futures clearing- a century. In 1829, the state of New York houses operate successfully in this way.) created a Safety Fund for its banks; it col- Washington would need only to regulate lapsed only 13 years later under the weight the private insurance groups, not thou- of accumulated bank failures. Vermont sands of individual banks. But Calomiris and Michigan established similar systems, does say that it ought to step in to prevent which suffered the same fate. Indiana, a systemic collapse if more than a few however, established a private co-insur- banks in a group fail. For as the Great De- ance scheme in 1834. (Iowa and Ohio later pression shows, no insurance scheme will set up successful private systems.) Instead work if the government itself is reckless. of making limited contributions to a state- run fund, all member banks were liable for the losses of any one bank in the sys tem; the banks set up their own regulatory authority. "Unlimitedmutual liabilitypro- EFIPBLEmESCoPEVSTD~E WILL ~'SIDoK! R vided bankers the incentive to regulate TUINGS\NE'VE. SCLVEII~ NNERS~E~e~dnr. ~8L~ and enforce properly," Calomiris observes. During the panics of 1854-1857, not a single member bank failed, but 69 of the remaining 126 Indiana banks did. History repeated itself during the early 20th century, when eight states followed ~~2~' the New Ydrk example. Banks in these states were smaller but grew faster than those in other states, and they maintained A cartoonsuggests that the cost of the nation's lower capital ratios--both danger signs. savings and loan disaster has reached outer During the farm crisis of the 1920s, all space. The latest estimate: up to ~500 billion.

Fortress EuYOpe? "E~ope1992: Opportunities andChallenges" byOary Clyde Hufbauer, in The Brookings Review (Summer 1990), 1775 Mass. Ave. N.W, Washington, D.C. 20036. Judging by the headlines, you would think markets. And if that integration is success- that Japan is this nation's only major trad- ful, Europe soon could pose as great a ing partner and competitor. It is easy to challenge to U.S. economic leadership as forget that the 12 nations of the European Japan does now. Community (EC) purchase a quarter of all The short-term threat to U.S. markets is U.S. exports, more than any single nation. posed by the formulation of EC policy in And nearly half of the $76 billion that the five areas: reciprocity, national quotas, EC spends in the United States buys high technical standards, rules of origin and lo- technology products. cal content, and government procure- While fears of a Fortress Europe have ment. Some EC protectionist measures are subsided, notes ~ufbauer, an economist at aimed at Japan but hurt the United States. Georgetown University, new rules formu- For example, the EC recently revised so- lated by the EC as it moves toward politi- called rules of origin so that manufactur- cal and economic integration in 1992 and ers must actually lay semiconductor cir- beyond threaten to erode these valuable cults on the chip in Europe (rather than

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Kids And Capital A surprising remedy for Americans' notori- have increased from 49 percent to 53 percent ously low rate of personal savings is per- of children's total income. , , . ceived by James McNeal, writing in Ameri- The overall saving rate of 30.5 percent is can Demographics (Sept. 1990). the highest recorded for children in two decades. Between 1968 and 1984, the saving Today, children are viewed by business as in- rate was fairly steady, at around 15 percent, dependent customers. But just how much so the doubling of the rate in five years is clout do children actually have? Almost $9 remarkable. It could be that parents are pro- billion worth, according to a nationally repre- viding children with more money, and chil- sentative sample of children ages 4 to 12 sur- dren are spending more and saving more. Or veyed in 1989. This figure is up from $4.7 children might be learning the virtue of sav- billion in 1984, an 83 percent gain. . . . ings. As more parents work, they may be en- Children's income averaged $4.42 a week, couraging their children to become more self- or $229.84 a year in 1989. . . . Allowances reliant by managing money at an earlier age.

just assembling them there) to win a pre- Indeed, says Hufbauer, one of the larger cious "made in the EC" label. Japanese questions raised by European integration products that don't have at least 60 per- is whether certain U.S. policies are out- cent European content are subject to anti- moded. Do tough U.S. antitrust laws make dumping duties. The result: Computer sense if they merely hamper U.S. corpora- makers have stopped buying US.-made tions, and if corporations are dividing up chips for computers sold in Europe; U.S. markets on a global rather than a national and Japanese chip-makers are now build- scale? Do Depression-era laws restricting ing factories in Europe rather than the the commercial activities and geographi- United States. Thus, concludes Hufbauer, cal scope of major U.S. banks still make the new technical rules "will very likely sense now that European banks are op- shift the balance of the world's trade in erating freely throughout Europe and are semiconductors." growing larger than their U.S. rivals? In the new world-trade environment, Hufbauer says that the United States has Hufbauer continues, the flag a corporation already lost its monopoly on leadership in flies does not necessarily mean much. world economic policy. The largest ques- Thus, the EC seems likely to impose quo- tion now is whether Washington will find tas on imports of Japanese cars. Ford's Eu: the wisdom to share power with Tokyo ropean division is a strong backer of such and Brussels, or whether the United States a measure; the US. plants (and workers) of ultimately will be left with none of the Honda and Nissan are likely victims. marbles.

SOCIETY

"The Changing Fortunes of American Families in the 1980s" by Women and Wealth Katharine L. Bradbury, in New England Economic Review (July-Aug. 1990), Research Library-D, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, 600 Atlantic Ave., Boston, Mass. 02106. The poor got poorer and everybody else charged question is, why? got richer. There is no longer much ques- One answer is provided by Bradbury, an tion that that is what happened in America economist at the U.S. Federal Reserve during the 1980s. Now the politically Bank of Boston. She begins by making two

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points. First, the poor got poorer because ner; by 1988, 60 percent of all families in of losses they suffered between 1979 and the bottom income quintile (average in- 1984; they actually began gaining ground come: $9,150) were female-headed. But again in 1985. Second, thanks largely to that is not the whole story. Unemployment increases in social security payments, the among men in poor families also grew. elderly did spectacularly well during the Even more alarming, however, is the fact decade. In 1979, 42 percent of the elderly that poor men who did work earned less. were in the poorest "quintile" of the popu- Their annual incomes dropped from lation; by 1988, only 30 percent were. $8,600 in 1979 to $7,550 in 1988. One rea- Most of the losses by poor nonelderly son may be the disappearance of many fac- families are explained by reductions in the tory jobs during the 1980s. contributions of men to family income. As In fact, men in every quintile but the is well known, more and more families are wealthiest experienced a drop in earnings poor because they lack a male breadwin- during the 1980s. But even men in the top group (average 1988 income: $83,400) increased their earnings by only a relatively The Change in Family Incomes, 1979-88 meager seven percent. (Nonelderly Families) The gains of the most affluent families were chiefly due to the fact that more women in these families went to work, and that employed women in general brought home bigger paychecks than they had before. In the top quintile, the proportion of women with jobs grew by 11 percent. By 1988, 80 percent of all women from these "wealthy" families were working, more than in any other income class. The earnings of these women also grew appreciably, jumping from $17,650 in 1979 to $23,300 in 1988. In short, Bradbury says, most of the fam-

Poorest Second TTiIrd Fourth Richest ilies that got ahead during the 1980s did so QuinHle Quintile Qulnnle QulnHle QuInHle because of "increased family work effort." The stark portrait of inequality above changes if Whether that translates into increased the elderly are included: Then, only the poorest family well-being, however, is another de- quintile loses ground (five percent). bate entirely.

"The Village Enlightenment in New England, 1760-1820" by Enlightening David Jaffee, in The William and Mary Quarterly (July 1990), New England P.O.BOX 220, Williamsburg, Va. 23187. In 18th-century France, embittered intel- and culture, kindling what Jaffee calls the lectuals who were excluded from the Village Enlightenment. higher circles of the literati stayed in Paris One of these new entrepreneurs was and helped incite a revolution. In Amer- Robert Thomas, a Sterling, Massachusetts, ica, writes Jaffee, a historian at City Col- farm-boy-turned-merchant who founded lege, many of their frustrated counterparts the Farmer's Almanack in 1793. Thomas became rural cultural entrepreneurs, went beyond the astrological and weather "adopting and enlarging for mass con- predictions that were almanac staples, fill- sumption the democratic impulses of the ing his Almanack with advice about such American Revolution." They achieved matters as child-rearing and farming. "The nothing less than a marriage of commerce knowledge he promoted was preeminently

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practical," writes Jaffee, "and the practical Massachusetts shopkeeper Silas Felton intent of that knowledge, for heedful and was a typical consumer of the new republi- literate young farmers, was economic em- can culture. In 1802, he formed the Soci- powerment in the emerging world of the ety of Social Enquirers, which met weekly market." to discuss science, new farm methods, and The new republican popular culture was foreign lands. "Doct. Franklin relates, in literally carried to the hinterlands by the his life, that he received a considerable likes of Amos Taylor, a former New Hamp- part of his information in this way," Felton shire schoolteacher wrote, citing the who took to peddling hero of these men. books and pamphlets "Will not every true during the 1780s. Republican encour- Taylor traveled the age all sincere social back roads of the enquirers, who form Northeast selling themselves into soci- such items as 17th- eties like this?" From century English 1790 to 1815, some chapbooks, Indian 500 New England captivity narratives, towns created local and even some of his libraries. own literary efforts. Ultimately, writes Taylor thought of his Jaffe, cultural entre- own role in heroic preneurs spread the terms. Such "men of Village Enlighten- an excellent charac- ment throughout ter," he wrote in The New England, and, Bookseller's Legacy more peaceably than (1803), "may do The "business of Enlightenment" was a growth their counterparts in much good in the enterprise. In 1760, Massachusetts had only France, swept away a christian world." nine print shops; by 1820, it had 120. world of traditions.

Learning by Race "Multiculturalism" by Diane Ravitch, in The American Scholar (Summer 1990), 1811 Q St. N.W., Washington, D.C. 20009.

America's public schools have long been mon culture. the stage for conflicts over race, ethnicity, But "almost any idea, carried to its ex- and religion. By the late 1960s, writes treme, can be made pernicious," she Ravitch, a historian of education at Colum- writes, "and this is what is happening now bia, the curriculum's old evasions (elite to multiculturalism." In order to combat political history and the melting pot myth) the so-called Eurocentrism of the schools, no longer worked and a new "multicul- activists now advocate an approach to edu- tural" perspective was introduced. In new cation which rejects any notion of a com- textbooks, the experiences of blacks, im- mon culture. At the heart of what Ravitch migrants, Indians, women, and other calls "particularistic multiculturalism" is groups were written into American social the unsupported assertion that minority and political history. Racism was acknowl- students will have higher self-esteem and edged; the melting pot was discarded in learn best when they are immersed in an favor of a new pluralistic view suggesting ethnocentric curriculum that emphasizes that variety is the spice of life. Ravitch sees the achievements of their own racial or it as a change for the better, providing a ethnic groups. Thus, black students should much richer portrait of America's com- be taught Afrocentric history rather than

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Western history; Mexican- Debating the Canon American students, it has Allan Bloom, the author of The Closing of the American even been suggested, ought Mind, from an essay on "Western Civ-and Me" in Com- to study Mayan math, the mentary (Aug. 1990): Mayan calendar, and Mayan The fact that I am doubtful about the non-Western craze astronomy. suggests automatically, even to sympathetic critics, that I am What is being advocated, promoting Western Civ or the like. Yet the very language Ravitch continues, is not used reveals how enslaved we have become to the historicist merely an extension of such assertion that all thought is decisively culture-bound. When things as Black History Averroes and Thomas Aquinas read Aristotle they did not Month, which teach that think of him as Greek and put him into his historical context. dignity and success can be They had no interest in Greek Civ but treated him as a wise achieved by all. The idea is man, hence a contemporary at all times. to teach children that "their We smile at this naivete, but they understood Aristotle better than do our scholars, as one can see simply by perusing identity is determined by their commentaries. Pluto and Kant claim that they speak to 'cultural genes.' " More per- all men everywhere and forever, and I see no reason to re- nicious still, the particular- ject those claims a priori. But that is precisely what is done ist vision implies that when they are taken to be parts of Western Civ. To the extent "American culture belongs they are merely that, the appeals against them are justified, only to those who are white for Western Civ is clearly partial, demanding the supplement and European," ,and that all of all the other Civs . . . . others can belong only to The serious scholars in non-Western thought should bring the culture of their ances- us the powerful texts they know of to help us. For the true tors. Aiming to foster self- canon aggregates around the most urgent questions we face. That is the only ground for the study of books. . . . Nietzsche esteem among minority reflected on Buddha when he wanted to test the principle of youth, the particularists contradiction. That is a model of the way things should be. wind up telling them in- The last thing we need is a sort of philosophic UN run by stead that their choices and bureaucrats for the sake of representation for all peoples. prospects are limited by birth. Aiming to stir racial or ethnic p'de, they fan ancient animos- in part on a report that lambasted the ities by reducing everyone to a victim or three-year-old pluralist curriculum as a an oppressor. legacy of centuries of "intellectual and Ravitch warns that the particularists are educational oppression" of minorities. no mere fringe group. The school districts Unfortunately, Ravitch concludes, par- of Atlanta, Detroit, and Washington, D.C., ticularism appeals to many in the educa- are already developing an Afrocentric tion establishment precisely because it curriculum. Last February, New York's promises a simple solution-inflating the Board of Regents endorsed a proposal to racial pride of children-to the crisis of revise the state history curriculum, based American education.

of "Journalism, Publicity, and the ~ostArt OF Argument" by Chris- The End Debate? topher Lasch, in Gannett Center Journal (Spring 1990), 2950 Broadway, New York, N.Y. 10027. The ignorance of the American people has what the Bill of Rights contains. A majority reached astonishing proportions. Millions recently assured pollsters that Israel is an of Americans would be stumped if asked Arab state.

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Lasch, a historian at the University of arguing that public debate was not democ- Rochester, is one of the few authorities racy's great virtue but its great defect, a who refus'e to blame the schools for this disagreeable necessity to be allowed only depressing state of affairs. The fault, he as- when "exact knowledge" did not allow for serts, lies squarely with the American scientific resolution of public questions. press. Once the great inciter of public de- Arguments, Lasch notes, "were what took bate, it has settled into the role of mere place in the absence of reliable informa- purveyor of information. "When we get tion." The role of the press, in Lippmann's into arguments that focus and fully engage view, was to circulate neutral information our attention," Lasch writes, "we become in order to preclude argument. avid seekers of relevant information. Oth- The rise of a disinterested press, Lasch erwise we take in information passively- says, was encouraged by the emergence of if we take it in at all." the advertising and public relations indus- Lasch identifies 1830- 1900 as the golden tries. They put their money where the well- age of the press, the period when famed heeled readers were, in the "responsible" editors such as Horace Greelev and E. L. newspapers. Ever since, Lasch adds, in- Godkin launched newspapers that were formation and publicity have become unabashedly opinionated without, like harder and harder to distinguish. their predecessors, following a party line. Increasingly, he writes, "information is Politics during this era was high drama, generated by those who wish to promote with public debates, torchlight parades, something or someone. . . without arguing and massive voter turnouts (80 percent) their case on its merits or explicitly ad- for presidential elections. vertising it as self-interested material ei- After the turn of the century, however, ther. Much of the press, in its eagerness to press and politics alike succumbed to the inform the public, has become a conduit Progressive impulse, with its emphasis on of the equivalent of junk mail. [I]t now de- "scientific management" in public affairs. livers an abundance of useless, indigest- During the 1920s, journalist Walter Lipp- ible information that nobody wants, most mann published several important books of which ends up as unread waste."

"Teleology and News: The Religious Roots of American Jour- Puritan nalism, 1630-1730" by David Paul Nord, in The Journal of Journalism? American History (June 1990), 112 N. Bryan St., Bloomington, Ind. 47408. It was big news in Boston when Mary Dyer one "report"? What is a newsworthy "oc- delivered a hideously deformed stillborn currence"? What is "public"? The Puritans child on October 17, 1637. John Winthrop, were the first Americans to confront such the governor of Massachusetts, conducted questions, and some of their answers are an investigation. The Dyers were followers still with us, Nord believes. of the heretical Anne Hutchinson, recalls To Winthrop and his Puritan contempo- Nord, who teaches journalism at Indiana raries, all of the defining elements of the University, and Winthrop was certain that news "were shaped by the belief that ev- he saw in this strange birth "the designing erything happened according to God's per- hand of God and a message for the com- fect plan." News was teleological, so that monwealth of Massachusetts." with proper reporting and minimal inter- The event may now seem only like fod- pretation its meaning ought to be accessi- der for the National Enquirer, Nord says, ble to all. Thus, says Nord, "New England but it contains a clue to the nature of con- generated a kind of news that was oriented temporary mainstream journalism. News, to current events, yet conventional, pat- he notes, is simply "the reporting of cur- terned, and recurrent in subject matter." rent public occurrences." But how does There was an emphasis on getting the facts Periodicals continues on page 122 WQ AUTUMN 1990 18 Behind the Miracle Everyday Life in Japan

The success of Japan's postwar economy has caused many in the west- to form a somewhat distorted picture of the Japanese and their society. We envision a land populated almost exclusively by docile industrial workers and driven white-collar "salaryrnen," bound together by their unstinting loyalty to Japan, Inc. What this picture ignores is the variety within Japa- nese society, a society that both sustains and is sustained by ancient cultural traditions. Anthropologist David Plath here discusses the difficulty Westerners have long had in separating images from a more complicated reality. His colleagues look at the various worlds that constitute contemporary Japan. Theodore Bestor examines the workings of the urban family firm. William Kelly explains how the highly venerated rice farmers are adapting to a changing rural economy. And Margaret Lock analyzes Japan's current debate over the health of the family. As management specialist Peter Drucker recently observed, Japan for the past 35 years has been guided by a social, not an economic, policy. Its aim was, above all, "to protect domestic society, especially domestic employment," and, secondarily, to promote a few export-oriented industries. But economic success, demographic change, and demand from abroad for fair treatment in Japan's domestic market now force Tokyo's leaders to reconsider their policy of social protection. These articles show what is at stake.

WQ AUTUMN 1990 19 'Samurai Jogger," a contemporary watercolor by Masami Teraoka.

WQ AUTUMN 1990 20 by David W. Plath

ines of neat script fill the China will add points to Japan's tally on the New Year's postcard that international scoresheet of aid-program al- came last January from a truism, even though he is aware that the Japanese colleague. He re- Western media tend to view Japan's over- ports travelling in China seas aid projects as driven more by eco- four times in 1989 to lec- nomic self-interest than by good will. ture about economic policy. "In the devel- What matters most to my friend, how- oping country of China," he goes on to ex- ever, is not that he be seen as a nationalist plain, "I am repaying the help I received or an internationalist. What he wants most years ago as a graduate student in the is to be recognized as a maturely responsi- United States. I would be grateful for your ble individual, which in Japan means a per- guidance." son who never fails to repay favors that Like Christmas in Europe and America, have been bestowed upon him. only more so, New Year's in Japan is a time The debt he incurred as a graduate stu- to rejuvenate culture, society, and self. dent has nothing to do with me personally: Such renewal calls for an exchange of mes- I was not his mentor. We are about the sages among friends and acquaintances. same age and became acquainted only in Beneath the printed cliches of a commer- recent years. But as an American, I am an cial greeting card, one jots down a few especially appropriate witness to his deter- words about personal activities, a micro-in- mination to repay, after 30 years, help re- stallment towards an autobiography. And ceived from Americans. Notice that he so- like autobiographical writing anywhere, licits my advice-though advice about these words amount to a treatise on one's what he doesn't say. The sentence is an invi- place amid the larger movements of soci- tation to rejuvenate our relationship, with ety-at once a report on things that hap- my colleague on the receiving side. He will pened and a plea for things to go on hap- accept further favors, go deeper into debt. pening. In other words, he intends to expand his My colleague's message is open to many capacity for mature obligations. If one interpretations. Perhaps-to take one pos- wants to understand Japanese character, sibility-he is hoping that his efforts in said Ruth Benedict in The Chrysanthemum

WQ AUTUMN 1990 2 1 EVERYDAY LIFE IN JAPAN

and The Sword, writing at the end of World In his recent study of Japan in the Vic- War 11, one has to begin with the idea that torian Mind (1987), Toshio Yokoyama the truly mature individual knows his place traces the curve of change in popular Brit- within the great web of mutual human in- ish writings about his homeland from 1850 debtedness. through the 1880s. During the 1850s, citi- All of this robust attention to the inter- zens of the most powerful empire of the personal, this Japanese concern for civility 19th century looked out figuratively from in an energetically entrepreneurial society, the Crystal Palace and saw Japan as "singu- has been rankling the Western mind for lar." They found the Japanese to be more decades-indeed, for more than a century. likable than other Asians they had met. By the middle of the 19th century in Eu- True, the samurai seemed prickly, but the rope and the United States, most apostles of common people were "amiable," bour- Progress took for granted that "ritualistic" geois, actually rather familiar. Japan might human bonding only delayed the evolution be antipodal, but English writers found par- of industrialism. It was wasteful (so much allels-New Year's there is like Christmas money spent on gifts) and inefficient (so here, and so on-in order to render much time spent using go-betweens merely "quaint" customs and mores less exotic. to save face). Thanks to science and tech- Thirty years later the grip of British im- nology, the West was rapidly shaking off perium had weakened under competition such "tyrannies of custom," as they were from new industrial powers on the Euro- called. In parts of the Old World and in pean continent as well as from the United most of the "timeless" Orient, however, States. Japan itself would not become a ri- people apparently would need our help in val for another 30 years. But as Yokoyama order to extricate themselves from such en- notes, "The increase in anxiety about Brit- tangling human alliances. ish civilization in the minds of British writ- Since the Japanese were farthest east in ers on Japan was linked to the develop- the Far East, it was easy to cast them in the ment of their sense of remoteness from

role of the West's logical opposite. British Japan." writers referred to Japan as Topsy-Turvy Land. (Except that they don't walk on their o put this in my terms, the closer heads, said one, they do everything the re-- actual Japan drew to Britain in the verse from our way.) And yet within a gen- T shape of its modem institutions, the eration the Japanese had outdistanced all less edifying it became to the British mind. other Asian nations and had scrambled sev- Even though first-hand reports on Japanese eral rungs up on the ladder of Progress. To life had become plentiful by the 1880s, Brit- the Western mind this was reassuring his- ish writers seemed less interested in them torically but confusing geographically. Ja- and less inclined to cite European ana- pan's experience was evidence that the logues. The British grew increasingly nos- route to modernity was not accidentally talgic about the traditional (antipodal) Ja- Western but universal. However, did this pan that had been left behind and began to mean that Topsy-Turvy Land was antipo- use it as a hammer of satire against modem dal-or not? British society. The year 1885 saw the pre-

David W. Plath is professor of anthropology and Asian studies at the University of Illinois. Born in Elgin, Illinois, he received a B.A. (1952) from Northwestern University and a Ph.D. (1962) from Har- vard. He is the author of The After ours: Modern Japan and the search for ~njo~ment(1962), Long Engagements: Maturity in Modern Japan (1980), and numerous essays on Japanese society.

WQ AUTUMN 1990 22 EVERYDAY LIFE IN JAPAN

miere of what has become the most popu- task would involve eliminating whatever lar English operetta of all time, Gilbert and tyrannies of custom still remained. Indus- Sullivan's Mikado. Set in the Oriental pomp trial experts such as James Abegglen dis- and circumstance of the ancient Japanese covered a reason for early postwar Japan's royal court, The Mikado parodies the ritual- slow growth in productivity. Japanese fac- ism that lingers, inefficient and outmoded, tories had too many tenured workers, and in industrial England. British writers of the everybody knows that giving a man job se- 1880s still spoke of Japan as "singular," curity turns him into a time-server. The Yokoyama concludes, but the emphasis had Americans coined a term for it-the Life- shifted to the unfamiliar, the antipodal, the time Employment System-there being no "unreal." label for the phenomenon in the Japanese lexicon. In fact, at the time, Japan's own industrial experts were more troubled by what they perceived as a rate of labor mo- bility that was too high, not too low. American research by David McClel- land and others in the field of motivational

". "- psychology helped reinforce / the diagnosis. Americans scored high on a scale that was said to measure Need for Achieve- ment, but low on a scale of Need for Affiliation. Our heroes had always been cowboys-and still were, it seemed. Japanese scores turned out almost the opposite. This indicated a problem for Japan, investigators said, because modem- A performer in an early ization is driven by a population that values staging of Gilbert and achievement. Affiliation motives are "or- Sullivan's Mikado. thogonal," which in researcher jargon means that they run at cross purposes with achievement. Thirty years later the argument against affiliation motives had lost its teeth. Instead of retarding Japan's economic growth, it appeared by the 1980s as though those in- One hundred years later, the citizens of tricate nets of human relations had been the most powerful empire of the 20th cen- sustaining it. Perhaps affiliation was less a tury took their turn. Now it was up to need, a primal urge, than a well-shaped hu- Americans to reconcile antipodal and ac- man achievement all its own. American tual Japan. business schools suddenly discovered vir- Confident that the postwar Allied occu- tues in Japanese styles of management. And pation had "demilitarized and democra- Japanese capitalism, unhyphenated up till tized" the Japanese, Americans of the 1950s then, was renamed Confucian capitalism, were ready to help their erstwhile foes up even though throughout the previous cen- the next rung of the ladder of Progress. This tury the Confucian heritage had been de-

WQ AUTUMN 23 EVERYDAY LIFE IN JAPAN

nounced as a drag on Progress. The coun- hums once more only after the managers try that our journalists of the 1950s hailed stand aside and let the workers return to as The New Far West had begun to look Far their American style of country-boy team- Eastern after all by the 1980s. work, which Detroit's managers had earlier suppressed in their own misguided search for excellence. The point of Gung Ho is that today's tyr- anny of custom has less to do with culture than with social class. Japanese or Ameri- can, the yuppie managers have lost touch with the laid-back, localized world of ordinary men, who need to achieve and affiliate mericans of the 1980s had to wres- on their own terms. The title of the movie tle with a more complicated reper- says it all: "Gung-ho" is a Chinese phrase .toire of images than the one the for enthusiastic teamwork-a phrase im- British had grappled with a century earlier. ported into the American vernacular by Americans, for one, came to see actual Ja- U.S. Marines who fought alongside Chinese pan as a threat to their economic domi- troops against the Japanese enemy in nance, something the British had never World War 11. seen in the actual Japan of the 19th cen- The film skewers Japanese managers tury. To Americans, furthermore, antipodal for misjudging the American gung-ho spirit, Japan had fragmented into a collage of im- a mistake their fathers made during the ages, some suggesting a feudal past full of war. But it indirectly makes the same samurai and shoguns, others evoking a charge against U.S. executives. The bosses postmodern future filled with robots and in Gung Ho wear company uniforms, not military ones, and the setting is peacetime. workaholics. All of these images appeared- - in social commentary on American life, but The scenario, nevertheless, is familiar to there was little Mikado-like spoofing. anyone who has sampled one major genre In American popular culture, for exam- of Hollywood films about the U.S. military. ple, the centennial of the Mikado saw the I am thinking of movies in which uptight, release of the slapstick film Gung Ho, di- rank-proud officers (especially careerists rected by Ron Howard and starring Mi- from the military academies) personify a chael Keaton. On the surface, the goats of ruling caste whose privileges and powers the story are Japanese auto executives, but are not easy to justify in a classless America. they seem to be little more than stand-ins G.I. Joe-Bill Bendix, Gary Cooper-shuf- for managers from anywhere, as seen fles and drawls and works in unorthodox through the eyes of men on the shop floor. ways, but he accomplishes the mission Gung Ho takes place not in the ancient while the officers around him blunder. Japanese royal court but in the modem Less than flattered by the way it has American rust belt, in an antiquated cathe- been depicted in popular productions such dral of once-proud U.S. engineering, an as Gung Ho, the American managerial class automobile assembly plant. The Japanese has tended to present another story. It is a managers have come to make the plant effi- story that thrusts actual Japan out towards cient once again by imposing their brand of the antipodes. Emphasis is put on pre- teamwork upon the natives. The managers sumed Japanese differences, as evidence of win-but only by losing. The assembly line how far Japan deviates from the orthodox

WQ AUTUMN 1990 24 EVERYDAY LIFE IN JAPAN

way of running an industrial society. Ja- ous piece of wisdom: "In economics and in pan's "low" rates of job turnover are often politics, we would all be better off if Japan cited by way of example. In fact, labor mo- became more like the United States, and bility in Japan during recent decades has not vice-versa." been about the same as in virtually all other It is difficult to gauge how widely the industrial nations-the exception being the American populace shares the revisionist United States. The "high" American rate, stance. It blurs into a broader current of not the "low" Japanese one, is singular. image-work that has been underway for a Intellectual authority for this new ver- generation, creating a new antipodal Japan sion of antipodal Japan is currently being that I call Jawpen. Fabricated by the wag- drawn from the works of "revisionist" Ja- ging of American jaws and the scratching of pan-watchers such as James Fallows in the American pens, Jawpen is a chilling high- United States and Karel van Wolferen in tech society of the future, a society that Europe. Their premise is that Japan has sharply contrasts with the folksy warmth of evolved into a species of industrial nation- America's imagined Lake Wobegon past. state fundamentally unlike any other. Jawpen looks like Japan, with the same effi- Hence we must revise the nice-guy assump- cient factories and schools, the same safe tion that Japan can be dealt with like other streets. But it is made in America, assem- countries that play by "our" rules. bled from imported Japanese parts, and While this revisionism does not repre- styled for our domestic market of ideas. sent a crude return to racist thinking (the Above all, it is a rhetorical device that differences are said to be cultural, not ra- interest groups in the United States employ cial), it does offer ammunition to Japan- in their battles not just over trade policy but bashers, and it is being widely parroted by over the very nature of American domestic op-ed cartoonists and sensation-seeking re- life and social institutions-and over who porters. Worse yet, it encourages among shall define what they are to be. Jawpen Americans an undeserved complacency becomes what we variously need Japan to and smugness about their own society. A be at the moment: a model to emulate review of van Wolferen's recent book, The when we lament the state of our schools, Enigma of Japanese Power, in the Christian an unfair player to castigate when we la- Science Monitor concluded with this dubi- ment the loss of jobs.

East meets West uneasily in Ron Howard's Gung Ho, a comic film about a Japanese take-over of an American auto firm. Here the character played by Michael Keaton argues with his new Japanese boss.

WQ AUTUMN 1990 25 EVERYDAY LIFE IN JAPAN

During the 1970s, for example, U.S. triumphed. It is a world where alternative management blamed declining productiv- ways of living barely survive (homogeneous ity on its employees: people deficient in the Jawpen) or, if they do, need not be taken kind of loyalty and dedication evident in seriously (harmonious Jawpen). In Jawpen Jawpen. U.S. labor responded in kind, not- everybody either is on the yuppie fast-track ing that Jawpenese executives had no seg- or is scrambling to get on it. And there is no regated lunchrooms or toilets, and enjoyed widening gap of unequal opportunity. only a fraction of the pay and perks of their American counterparts. Both sides were hat, of course, is no more the reality happy to shift the blame during the 1980s of most people in actual Japan-the to American teachers and students and T kinds of people you will meet in the their lagging productivity. Not being politi- essays that follow-than it is of most people cally mobilized, fifth-graders are now tak- in the actual United States. Ordinary Japa- ing the rap. nese would like to believe that the distance The trade-war atmosphere that has pre- between rich and poor, between fast-track vailed for 20 years has encouraged Ameri- and laid-back, is not so great in their society cans to make the same error about actual as it is in America. But they know that the Japan that an earlier generation of Ameri- gap exists in their own society, and they cans made during the war. In War Without fear it may be widening. Mercy (1986), his study of the images Japa- The ordinary Japanese in the essays that nese and Americans formed of each other follow are less enthralled by the fable of during the Pacific conflict, John Dower ex- Jawpen than Americans seem to be. These plains the dual misconceptions: "It was not merchants, farmers, and housewives do not that the Japanese people were, in actuality, need the sophisticated critics of post- homogeneous and harmonious, devoid of modernism to tell them that a high-tech, individuality and thoroughly subordinated commodified atmosphere is constricting to the group, but rather that the Japanese the potential for human diversity every- ruling groups were constantly exhorting where. In their little daily engagements them to become so. Indeed, the govern- with the large institutions that dominate ment deemed it necessary to draft and their world, they are working to preserve propagate a rigid orthodoxy of this sort pre-- niches of variety and civility-to sustain a cisely because the ruling classes were con- refuge where they can, like my economist vinced that a great many Japanese did not colleague, renew autobiographical confi- cherish the more traditional virtues of loy- dence at New Year's and reach past paro- alty. . . . What the vast majority of Westem- chialism into the more intimidating global ers believed the Japanese to be coincided arena. We would do well to curb revisionist with what the Japanese ruling elites hoped impulses to erect new intellectual trade they would become." barriers. By listening carefully to actual Perhaps the most self-deceiving feature Japanese as they conduct their own domes- in our fable of Jawpen is the vision of a tic discourse on the meanings of moder- society in which the corporate-career life- nity, we may come to a better understand- style not only holds the high ground but has ing of our own.

WQ AUTUMN 1990 26 EVERYDAY LIFE IN JAPAN

by Theodore C. Bestor

he American bestiary iden- To most Americans, the company-em- tifies two sub-species of the ployee variant of the economic animal Japanese economic ani- seems familiar in broad outline, if puzzling mal. The more familiar is in behavioral detail. Our society, too, has its the company employee, large organizations, and the organization recognizable by its collar man (now joined by woman) is a fixture in (whiteT or blue) connected by a short leash to our image of modem society. While it may its employer, Japan, Inc. The second sub- be hard for most Americans to compre- species, only recently discovered, is the hend the docile diligence of the Japanese small shopkeeper. Its haunts are marked by employee, we still broadly understand what the little non-tariff trade barriers that these the company employee is about. creatures erect around their abodes, the The shopkeeper, the proprietor of a fam- hundreds of thousands of mom-and-pop ily business, is another story. Gone are the stores that dot the Japanese landscape. The days when the family enterprise was a reli- first species is predatory and most fearsome able part of the American scene. To most when, in herds, it stampedes through foreign American consumers, particularly those liv- marketplaces or burrows under otherwise ing in or around cities, small shops are in- level playing fields; the second is protection- creasingly marginal to the business of daily istic and most dangerous when confronted life. They are convenience stores for the oc- by large stores or foreign products. casional last-minute purchase, or they are

Painting of an Edo marketplace at the Rpguku bridge, by Utagawa Toyoharu (1735-1814). EVERYDAY LIFE IN JAPAN

quaintly ethnic or highly specialized. Most tain small businesses are deeply woven into serious retailing takes place in national or the fabric of Japanese life. Indeed a Japan regional chains, where consumers deal without such firms would be a radically dif- with branch managers and employees, al- ferent society. most never with proprietors or their kin. But in Japan, this is not the case. More Finn as Family than in any other advanced industrial society, consumers are likely to do their shop- Scholarly studies and even popular-cul- ping in tiny, family-run stores, and the pro- ture imports such as Yoshimitsu Morita's prietors and family workers who operate film, The Family'Game, have provided West- those businesses constitute a large segment erners with the outlines of the stereotypical of society. According to one recent analysis, Japanese family. It is, first of all, a middle- self-employed entrepreneurs and family class professional household. The father, a members who work with them make up al- white-collar managerial type, is generally most 20 percent of Japan's urban, private- absent; the mother, attentive to the point of sector labor force. In 1988, Tokyo had monomania on issues of education and do- some 178,000 retail and wholesale estab- mestic management, is always present; the lishments, of which 117,000-a shade un- children, well-behaved and obedient, are der two-thirds-were tiny shops with four always in school. or fewer employees, almost all of them But this compartmentalized life does family members. Tokyo, moreover, aver- not characterize the entrepreneurial family. ages 767 shops per square mile (without The Onuma household, pseudonymous but counting bars and restaurants), or one shop real, is a case in point. The Onumas run a for every 47 residents of the city. small Tokyo textile company that special- But Japan's small businesses are signifi- izes in preparing fabrics for formal kimono. cant not simply because there are so many As kimono have become less and less a part of them. Americans may view small shops of daily life for most Japanese, their busi- as further evidence that Japan is a society ness has prospered by handling the bro- organized against consumption. After all, cades that go into the most expensive wed- we quickly surmise, the hold that small ding kimono, some of which rent for businesses have on the Japanese economy- thousands of dollars a day. forces most consumers to forego the con- Their business employs about a dozen veniences and economies of scale provided people, five of them Onumas. These five by large retail chains and shopping centers. represent three of the four generations of But the Japanese don't see things this Onumas who live together a few steps from way. Shopkeepers, for one, perceive them- the workshop. As with most such house- selves as upholders of a traditional way of hold firms, it is difficult to separate family life. At the same time, their existence pro- and business, home and workplace. Masao foundly affects the quality of life of all Japa- and Chieko Onuma, husband and wife both nese, particularly those living in cities. The in their fifties, work together most of the social patterns and cultural values that sus- day alongside their 30-year-oldson and his

Theodore C. Bestor is associate professor of anthropology at Columbia University. Born in Urbana, Illinois, he received a B.A. (1973) from Western Washington University and a Ph.D. (1983) from Stanford University. His first book,'~ei~hborhoodTokyo (l?989), won thefirst Hiromi ~risawaMemo- rial Award given by the American Association of University Presses for scholarly contributions to the understanding of Japanese culture and society.

WQ AUTUMN 1990 28 EVERYDAY LIFE IN JAPAN

wife. Grandmother Onuma, in her eighties, packs boxes, answers telephones, cooks meals, and keeps an eye on her two great-granddaugh- ters, the younger Onuma's toddlers who scamper around the bolts of exquisite, expensive silk. The younger Mr. Onuma's day seldom ends before nine or 10 o'clock, when he finally finishes making deliveries in his expensive 4-wheel drive RV. The elder Mr. Onuma's In a Tokyo kimono shop, a customer casts an appraising eye. days often last longer, end- ing with extended drinking bouts with the tional families, whether the urban mercan- many suppliers and clients whom he must tile family of today or the peasant family of entertain almost daily. pre-modern Japan, the business of the fam- Theirs is a volatile business. The long ily is the family business. Fundamental is- period of public restraint that preceded the sues of kinship-marriage, inheritance, death of the ShGwa Emperor in January succession-are inextricably linked to eco- 1989 was a bleak time for the Onumas. nomic issues of property, capital, and labor. Weddings, festivals, and other celebrations The matter of inheritance is particu- were canceled or curtailed. Fortunately, the larly important because the heir sees to it Imperial wedding in June 1990 set off a mi- that thefamily, its enterprise, and its prop- nor boom in the kimono business, and the erty are transmitted intact to later genera- Onumas found themselves busier than ever. tions. Japanese kinship provides several But despite their long hours and the uncer- means of ensuring an heir besides the obvi- tainties of their business, the Onumas are ous one. For example, the present Onuma almost smug in their feeling of superiority line was secured by adoption. Masao, the toward the salaried middle classes. They re- patriarch of the family, is a mukoyzshi, an gard company employees as drudges and adopted son-in-law. The eighth of nine chil- prize the flexibility and autonomy that dren from a poor farm family far to the comes with running their own business. north of Tokyo, he met Chieko, herself an They smile over the tax breaks self-employ- only child, when he came to Tokyo for col- ment offers. And they take quiet pride in lege (remarkably enough, on a basketball their knowledge of themselves as a special scholarship). They fell in love and Chieko's kind of family. parents, recognizing the need for an heir to The family of the family firm doesn't fig- carry on the family and its business, ure very prominently in Western images of adopted him. Thus, old grandmother Japanese life, but it comes closest to fulfill- Onuma is, to an American way of thinking, ing the ideal of the traditional Japanese his mother-in-law;in Japanese terms, she is family. According to this ideal, young and his adoptive mother. old live and work together, caring for one The practice of adopting a son-in-law, another across generations. And for tradi- old-fashioned but by no means moribund,

WQ AUTUMN EVERYDAY LIFE IN JAPAN

is most common today (at least in urban that functioned largely-. without wheels. areas) among entrepreneurial households Most pre-industrial Japanese walked; only like that of the Onumas. Conventional wis- an elite few rode horseback or were carried dom is divided on the subject of mukoyzshi. in palanquins. The distances covered in Proverbial advice to young men contem- daily life were necessarily short. The nar- plating an adoptive marriage tells them, "If row, disjointed, suddenly twisting and turn- you have even a cup of rice to your name, ing remnants of the Edo street plan give don't become a mukoyzshi." On the bene- ample evidence of a city based on pedes- fits to a family, however, the proverb is posi- trian life, and as Tokyo developed in the tive: "Three generations of mukoyzshi en- 20th century, cars never fully demolished sure a family's fortune." The case of the this orientation. Streetcars, then trains and Onumas would seem to confirm this part of subways, became the favored means of the proverb. public transportation. As a result, Tokyo remains focused on its 500-odd stations and Community as Market the pedestrian corridors-the shopping arcades-that lead to them. Neighborhoods organized as discrete so- Even now, with Tokyo's streets clogged cial and economic units date back to pre- to near paralysis with cars, the automobile industrial Edo (as Tokyo was called before and the culture of commerce have not 1868) and to the feudal regulations that merged as they have in much of American kept samurai and craftspeople separate and life. Car culture exists for the young who segregated in distinct areas. A few mercan- consider a trip to Denny's, or to one of its tile districts still retain an identity from Japanese imitators, a naoii ("now-y") ex- Edo: Kiba, the old lumber district, or Tsu- perience; for the James Dean look-alikes kudajima, where delicacies of salted, who cruise in souped-up Mazdas sporting smoked, and pickled fish have been made window decals with slogans like "Lone- for centuries. Other areas, whether vener- some Car-Boy"; for the professional truck- able or not, are known for their contempo- ers who festoon their gleaming chrome rigs rary commercial specialities: Jimbo-ch6, with colored lights and hang their cabs full of bookshops; Inari-ch6, known for with brocade drapes; or for yuppies who Buddhist altars; Akihabara, with its wall-to- buy BMWs and Mercedes with savings that wall electronics stores. a family of an earlier generation would But even where a particular occupa- have spent on buying a house. But for daily tional or commercial coloration does not life in Tokyo, the car is practically useless. exist, Tokyo neighborhoods are economic Housewives and other shoppers rely on the zones of considerable importance. Unlike neighborhood stores and the local shoten- most American cities, Tokyo has few exclu- gai, or shopping arcade. Market research- sively residential areas. Most neighbor- ers report that the average housewife goes hoods mix housing with commerce, and shopping at least once a day, on foot or bi- what largely distinguishes richer and cycle, and it is a rare neighborhood that poorer neighborhoods is the intensity of lo- cannot provide all daily necessities. cal industrial activity. This intermingling of The cluster of shops and arcades around commerce and community, however, is major stations-anchored by one or two less a legacy of pre-industrial guild mercan- large department stores or major discount tilism than a reflection of the fact that To- supermarkets, surrounded by swirls of bou- kyo is built on top of a pre-industrial city tiques, bars, and charge-by-the-hour love

WQ AUTUMN 1990 30 EVERYDAY LIFE IN JAPAN

hotels-taper off into tendril-like shopping the neighborhood shopkeeper is the bul- streets that stretch across the residential wark of tradition and the sustainer of cul- landscape of the city. Brightly lit streets and tural identity. His or her presence assures alleys beckon with ornate neon arches, gar- that the communal traditions of the past ish cubist street lights, plastic decorations will continue to give some order and mean- keyed to seasonal motifs, or loudspeakers ing to what often seems a chaotic urban booming out popular songs and shopping existence. And while there may be some jingles. Sunday excursions to major depart- nostalgic myth-making at work here, the ment stores and trendy boutiques notwith- myth is still a real force affecting the lives of standing, these shopping arcades are where all local residents, shopkeepers or not. Japanese consumers consume. One shopping street runs into the next, the only dis- Market as Community tinction between neighborhoods being the styles of lampposts or arches erected by lo- Throughout Japan, Tsukiji-Tokyo's cal merchants. vast wholesale fish market-conjures up Subtle though the boundaries are, they the same images: frenetic morning auc- are still significant. Within them, local mer- tions where the price of a single gigantic chants act decisively to protect both their tuna may exceed $10,000; endless sheds own interests and those of the community. housing hundreds of tiny wholesale stalls They may oppose or force modifications of hawking every conceivable kind of seafood; plans for a nearby supermarket or discount bustling crowds of fishmongers and sushi store. They may assist a neighborhood noo- chefs carrying off a day's supply of fish. dle manufacturer who has fallen on hard Each year, the market's seven large broker- times (and count on being repaid in years age houses sell almost 450 varieties of fresh and years of free noodles). They may match and processed marine products worth over up a local businessman who has been $5 billion. But despite the scale of the mar- forced out by a jiageya (a real-estate specu- ket as a whole, it is a bastion of small family lator) with another family firm located a firms. The engines of the market are its doz- few blocks away. ens of morning auctions, where throngs of In addition to tending to business mat- wholesalers bid intensely against one an- ters, merchants form the backbone of local other. In turn, the wholesalers-1 ,100 community activities, participating in ev- strong, operators of tiny, family-run stalls in erything from political clubs to volunteer the marketplace-compete fiercely for the fire brigades, from shrine parish boards to patronage of some 14,000 restaurateurs, Little League teams. The self-employed en- sushi chefs, and retail fishmongers who trepreneurs, working according to their purchase their day's supplies at one or an- own schedules, are always present in their other of Tsukiji's 1,677 stalls. communities-something factory or office The transactions that make the mar- workers can never be. Merchants clearly ket-from the bluntly competitive bidding

have ulterior motives behind their good of the auctions to the more subtle haggling-- - works, but as Adam Smith suggested, it is that keeps customers returning to the same not the butcher's benevolence but his self- stalls year after year-are part of the com- interest that makes the world go around, in plex social fabric of the marketplace: elabo- Tokyo as elsewhere. rate rules governing auctions, systems of With their claims to represent the lega- stall rotations, minutely wrought agree- cy of Japan's pre-industrial merchant class, ments on credit and settlement, carefully

WQ AUTUMN 1990 EVERYDAY LIFE IN JAPAN

tended patterns of long-term reciprocation commodities, buyers are expected to top a among trading partners, and hundreds of stated asking price; for others, the auction- other understandings and agreements. eer lowers the price every second or so un- At Tsukiji, the buying and selling does til a willing buyer is found. Some auctions not pit all 1,100 wholesalers against one an- involve open bidding, verbal or hand sig- other. More limited trading communities nals, while others use secret written bids. exist among the wholesalers and buyers of The varying forms of auction clearly create particular kinds of seafood, whether tuna different kinds of competitive relationships or shrimp or salted fish or sushi no tune, among rival buyers and different kinds of the highest quality products destined for relationships between auctioneers and buyers. Through adjustment and calibration of the auction rules over time, buyers and sellers are able to maintain stable long-term ties with preferred trade partners and to minimize the tensions that result from competition among buyers to purchase at the lowest prices. And, indeed, this careful concern to dampen the negative consequences of competition is one hallmark of the market's operations. Almost all wholesalers come away from the day's auctions with something. Few are driven out of the market. Like New York City taxi medallions or seats on the stock exchange, the wholesale licenses required for trading in the market are limited in number and intrinsically valuable. No new slots have been created since the late 1940s. Yet there is little demand for them outside the marketplace. And within the market there has been little competitive pressure leading to concentra- tion; the 1,677 licenses issued to 1,677 firms in the late 1940s still remain in the Selling squid in Tokyo's busy seafood market. hands of 1,101 firms, only a handful of which control more than three licenses sushi bars. Within these specialized groups (and hence three stalls). of traders, the character of social ties be- The survival of all traders is ensured comes most visible. through a number of mechanisms. For ex- For example, the trading communities ample, at four-year intervals, all 1,677 stall are organized around the auction arena for locations are reassigned through a complex a particular commodity-fresh salmon or system of lotteries. This eventually corrects kamaboko fish pit6 or live eels-and the inequalities resulting from a stall's location rules and techniques for each auction have in the huge fan-shaped sheds that house the over time been delicately hammered out by wholesalers. Even to a casual observer, the parties to those auctions. For some there are clear differences among the stalls.

WQ AUTUMN 1990 32 EVERYDAY LIFE IN JAPAN

Those on the narrow front edge of the fan ery four days. attract buyers making daily visits for small The exquisite care with which the rules, quantities of high-quality, sushi-grade fish. alliances, and institutions of the market- But wholesalers whose business is based on place seek to protect all participants must bulk sales to supermarkets find that the of course be seen against the fact that the back edge of the sheds-farthest from the market is a closed system. Insiders are en- market entrance for walk-in customers but sured survival; outsiders are denied access. most convenient to loading docks-is the Within the closed system of the Tsukiji mar- ideal location. Regardless of specialty, a lo- ketplace, business is never a zero-sum cation at the intersection of two aisles in game. All players go away with something; the market is preferable to a mid-block lo- no one is forced to leave the game. cation, which can be reached only by passing many other stalls. merican trade officials who have The quadrennial stall lotteries correct been pressing the Japanese to cor- long-term locational inequities, but they A rect "structural impediments" to also create shorter-term inequalities. To free trade point to the distribution system, limit those effects, the wholesalers' guild with its multifarious layers of small family has devised a system of rents and rebates firms, as the prime offender. Not only does apart from the flat rents charged by the such a system effectively impede the sale of municipal government. The wholesalers' foreign goods on the Japanese market, it federation grades each stall on its location also limits the choice of goods to Japanese and assigns each stall-holder a monthly as- consumers and thus keeps prices need- sessment or credit. This amount is paid to lessly high. To date, however, most Japa- (or received from) the association as tax nese consumers have been more willing to upon (or compensation for) a stall's loca- put up with higher costs of goods and ser- tion. Against a base rent of about $100 a vices than to threaten the institutional and month, a wholesaler with a good location social patterns that sustain the present sys- may pay a surcharge of around $100 per tem. What and how much this social com- month for his stall, while the worst situated pact gives them in return may at times be stall-holder may receive $600 a month in unclear, but apparently it is enough. compensation. It is apparent, too, that despite the fero- What holds for the wholesalers also cious competitive strengths of the Japanese holds for the auctioneers. To ensure that economy and its ability to exploit minute monopolies will not accrue to particular increments of efficiency, economics to auctioneers, the sites and sequencing of the most Japanese is not ultimately the mea- various auctions are also rotated. For exam- sure of all things. Rather, as is the case with ple, the stretches of quayside where frozen the survival of the small family business, tuna are auctioned each morning are ro- economic behavior can be understood only tated every few months among the seven within a larger framework of social rela- auction houses, and the sequence of auc- tionships and obligations, and patterns of tions changes on a daily basis, so that of reciprocity whose demands are just as tell- four auction houses offering the same prod- ing and just as intractable as the cold logic ucts for sale, each will sell first once in ev- of economic calculation.

WQ AUTUMN 1990 33 EVERYDAY LIFE IN JAPAN

Bt by William W. Kelly

ne of the several split im- day in the mid-1960s to about three bowls ages we Americans have per day in the late '80s. of Japan is that of city-Ja- The trade friction arises from the re- pan, country-Japan. Mil- peated and thus far unsuccessful efforts of lions of zealous factory U.S. rice millers to gain access to the closed and office workers are Japanese markets. Farmers in the United packed%to sprawling cities, while beyond States and the European Community also them lie fields of glistening rice, diligently enjoy generous government subvention tended by declining numbers of aging and so are not immune from criticism. But farmers, Appreciating such contrasts, many the Japanese case, many Americans feel, is Americans also feel that city and country in egregious. Current efforts by Japan to limit Japan have one thing in common: the vigi- rice acreage and reduce its price subsidies lant protection of the state. Even as it pro- are judged woefully inadequate. Undersized motes efficient industrial corporations in and overmechanized, the Japanese farms the international marketplace,the paternal still produce huge surpluses of extremely Japanese state shields the highly inefficient expensive rice, They are further encour- farmers from the challenges of the same aged to hold on to their plots by laws that global market. prevent consolidation and by a tax code Indeed, for over a decade, the principal that greatly undertaxes farmland and dis- irritant in US.-Japanese economic rela-' courages its conversion to badly needed tions has been Japan's protection of agri- residential land. Not only would imports of culture, particularly its lavish support of their cheap rice benefit the beleaguered ur- rice farmers. Throughout the postwar dec- ban consumer, the American millers argue, ades, the government has guaranteed the but the collapse of price supports and re- purchase of all rice produced in the coun- form of the land tax would encourage farm- try. Operating through the national agricul- ers to sell some of their land. This would tural cooperative network, it sets a price drive down astronomical land prices in and that guarantees a profit to farmers. The rice around the cities and help many young ur- is then marketed to consumers at a some- ban couples to realize the now-impossible what lower price, which is nonetheless dream of home ownership. many times the world market price. This What stands in the way of this market gap has produced major government defi- sanity? Ardent defenders of the status quo cits and growing reserves of rice. Mean- claim that the obstacle is cultural. Rice is while, the average Japanese's appetite for central to Japanese values and Japanese rice has declined from about six bowls per lifeways, and the destruction of Japan's rice

WQ AUTUMN 1990 EVERYDAY LIFE IN JAPAN

farming would mean the loss of its national for 2,000 years, wet-rice has been the main- identity. The emperor transplanting seed- stay of Japanese farming. However, this is lings each spring in his ceremonial plot not because of Japan's environment; in within the Tokyo palace grounds is a peren- fact, in much of the country neither topog- nial photo-opportunity for the media. But raphy nor climate naturally favors rice. Nor there is also a skeptical view. According to is there anything special about the Japanese many critics, the real obstacle is crass poli- constitution that makes rice the national tics-namely, the special relationship be- staple, despite an argument made several tween the farmers and the governing Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). For 35 years, they argue, the LDP has traded expensive rice prices for the farm vote, vastly overrepre- sented by postwar districts that have never been redrawn to reflect rural-to-urban migration. To an American anthropologist with a number of years of experience in rural Japan, both apologists and skeptics seem long on polem- ics and short on understanding. Their central character, the rice farmer, is generally a stock figure drawn to conve- A scene of village life, in ink and colors, attributed to Kusurni Morikage (c. nience. And while 1620-90), an artist from Kaga in northern Japan. there is some truth to what the polemicists say about the role of years ago by the Japanese agricultural min- rice both in culture and in domestic poli- ister in his effort to discourage Australian tics, the truth is more complicated than beef imports. (He maintained that the intes- they would suggest. tines of the Japanese were shorter than It is certainly easy for any visitor to Ja- those of Westerners and therefore ill-suited pan to elicit a litany of banalities about rice, to digesting beef and other staples of the monsoon society, and Japanese national Western diet.) taste-about rice as the sustenance of the Political will, rather than geography or Japanese soul. And it is certainly true that physiology, has put rice at the center of Jap-

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anese society. The rice paddy is an efficient, countryside of tenants into one of propri- albeit labor-intensive, calorie machine. etors. In effect, the farmers' life work was Rice also transports and stores well. For enfranchised, and very few Westerners rec- these and other reasons, political elites ognize the extent to which this has set farm- have for centuries promoted rice cultiva- ing apart from other postwar occupations. tion through their tax demands and their Simply put, most of the latter have been allocations of prestige. In the early modem effectively depoliticized. Shorn of fascist pa- Tokugawa period, for example, taxes for all triotism, the incentives of public service crops and even for fishing and forest prod- and corporate employment are now eco- ucts were calculated and levied in rice. The nomic growth, job security, and organiza- relative social status of the 250 domain tional loyalty. Even the Confucian familial lords was determined by the official rice metaphor of the workplace has been yields of their lands. Thus postwar agricul- pruned of its imperial aspects. The farmer, tural policies promoting rice monoculture however, stands as a striking exception. Ag- reflect a longstanding elite bias. But this ricultural work was, in subtle but enduring bias has always gone against rural wisdom. ways, politicized. The land-reform program The cultivators themselves have usually itself linked it prominently to democratic preferred a more diversified agriculture, principles; the associated Agricultural Co- with rice as only one part of a broader re- operative Law of 1947 emphasized a demo- gime of crops and animals. cratic association of independent smallholders; and political party reorga- n fact, the cultural significance of rice nization linked it to a party machine, the to most middle-aged and older people LDP. Even if the realities have changed, I in rural Japan lies elsewhere. Rice for these associations remain strong, and they them evokes both pain and pride in their explain much of the farmer's reluctance to personal memories of the 1930s and '40s, yield his identity. the 15 years of the Pacific War and the By its voting habits, the rural population American occupation in its aftermath. shows its appreciation of the government's Their memories are of the often-severe agricultural munificence. Indeed, this syrn- food shortages during those 20 years, the biosis is the basis of critics' charges that col- requisitions of farm horses and cooking- lusion between farmers and politicians has pots, the drafting of all able-bodied men, perpetuated a system of subsidized ineffi- and the farming burdens borne by the ciency. However, the size and power of this women and elderly who were left behind. voting bloc is exaggerated, as census fig- To have survived, to have kept the paddies ures show. In 1950, one in three Japanese producing, has created a tenacious will and households was a "farm family,"* but that a healthy skepticism about their present proportion dropped rapidly in the 1960s, good fortune. To this day, most Japanese will never leave a single grain of rice in *The Japanese term, "farm family" (nzka),is the linguistic reverse of our "family farm." Census figures attempt to dis- their bowls. tinguish between full-time farm families, those part-time farm families whose farm income exceeds their nonfarm in- The occupation's land reform had an come, and those part-time farm families whose nonfarm in- equally powerful impact, transforming a come exceeds their farm income.

William W Kelly is professor of anthropology at Yale University. Born in Washington, D.C., he received a B.A. (1968) from Amherst and a Ph.D. (1980) from Brandeis. He is the author of Deference and Defiance in 19th-Century Japan (1985) and other books and essays on historical and contemporary Japan.

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and by 1985 it had fallen to one in eight. media, and educational capital of Japan. It Moreover, in 1985, only 610,000 of the attracts-perhaps one should say com- 4,300,000 farm families were full-time- pels-the best and brightest from all pre- which is to say, 1.6 percent of all Japanese fectures. However, by a number of indi- households. These numbers hardly indicate cators-house ownership, car ownership, a potent voting bloc. air quality, per household disposable in- Karel van Wolferen comes closer to the come, per capita domestic space-rural remark in The Enigma of Japanese Power gions offer better living conditions than do (1989). He observes that the real power lies urban areas. The LDP's electoral success in the national federation of agricultural co- and political action derive less from what operatives, the Zenkoku N6ky6 Chiikai, or the LDP has done for Japan's farmers than Zenchii. This federation handles most of from what it has done for Japan's regions. the rice marketing, and retails farm and It is not, then, a special Japanese affinity consumer products to its members-virtu- for rice or the LDP's embrace of the farmer ally all 4.3 million farm households. that has perpetuated the peculiar pattern of Through its associated banking network, it postwar farming. Cultural memory and po- provides credit, insurance, and other ser- litical calculations are at work in different vices to its membership. Indeed, it is by far ways. Yet even this overstates both the the largest insurance company in the distinctiveness and importance of rice in world. Zenchfi is thus a powerful voting rural Japan. It also overlooks the richer tex- machine and lobbying organization. What- ture of regional lifeways. For the last 15 ever ambivalence ordinary farmers may years, I have been returning periodically to feel about agricultural policies, Zenchii's the northern coastal plain of ShGnai, one of very existence depends on the govern- the few areas where large-scale rice farrn- ment's rice programs. For its own survival, ing remains viable. For the Itos, one of the van Wolferen argues, Zenchii mobilizes and families with whom I live during my rewards a large "tribe" of LDP politicians. Sh6nai visits, rice farming is still central, But even this view of rural support for but a short profile of their lives and circum- the LDP is too cynical. The party's support stances may serve to illustrate the new outside the major cities is much more shape of the changing countryside. broadly based and has to do more with public works than with rice prices. Since at least the late 1960s, agricultural mechanization and improvement programs have provided the opportunity for a far wider modernization of regional infrastructure. Directly and indirectly, 25 years of farm aid have permitted a vast program of public he It6s have lived for five genera- works construction: roads, railroads, com- tions in the 100-family settlement of munications, schools, medical clinics, town T Watamae, now part of Fujishima offices, and a host of other public facilities. Town in the fertile center of ShGnai Plain. While it was not their architects' intent, Fujishima lies between Sh6naiJs two rival postwar agricultural policies have contrib- cities-the old castle town of Tsuruoka, uted to a major redistribution of tax reve- nestled at the southern edge of the plain, nues from metropolitan Japan to regional and the commercial port of Sakata, an im- Japan. Tokyo remains the political, market, portant harbor in the pre-modern sea trade.

WQ AUTUMN 1990 37 EVERYDAY LIFE IN JAPAN

Administratively, Fujishima is a small town corporation. Some 15 years ago, the com- center surrounded by 3,500 hectares of rice pany bought up rice fields on the edge of paddyland and about 50 nucleated villages Watamae village and has since been gradu- like Watamae. Some 5,000 persons live in ally expanding the plant. The total output of the town center, and another 8,500 in the the plant's 800 employees now exceeds the perimeter villages. total value of Fujishima's rice production. In the early 1980s, a fad for renaming What was rural Japan 40 years ago is now swept through the Japanese corporate more properly regional Japan. world. (Americans experienced this as the The ItGs are one of those few full-time replacement of the Datsun name with farm families. Their three-generation Nissan.) Municipalities across the country household includes an older couple, their joined this "CI (for corporate image) son Noboru, his wife Keiko, and the young boom" in a rush to gain a slight public-rela- couple's three school-aged children. No- tions advantage over neighboring towns. born is himself the oldest of three siblings.

Thanks to mechanization, the rice farmers of modern Japan produce more rice than the nation can consume. Government protection and subsidies help keep the highly venerated farmers in business.

Fujishima adopted the slogan "Home of He was born in 1949, a member of Japan's Rice and the Lion Dance," an ironic choice baby-boom generation. His birth coincided considering that both rice-growing and the with the postwar land reform that gave his traditional ritual Lion Dance are greatly en- grandfather clear title to the two hectares dangered even in this rice bowl. Shonai- of rice paddy the household had tenanted. mai, or ShGnai rice, is one of Japan's favor- Noboru's grandfather and his parents ite brands, and 1,500 of Fujishima's 2,800 farmed this land through the 1950s and households still identify themselves as early 1960s, while encouraging the three nzka, or farm families. However, only 110 children to finish high school. of these claim to be full-time farm families. Noboru's younger brother, ShGji, born Residents prefer to softpedal the fact that in 1950, graduated from the regional tech- since the mid-1980s the largest contributor nical high school and went to work in a to the town's economy has been a factory Yokohama auto-parts factory. After a series belonging to a Tokyo-based electrical parts of machine-shop jobs in the Tokyo area, he

WQ AUTUMN 1990 3 8 EVERYDAY LIFE IN JAPAN

settled into long-term employment with a kyo-area consumer cooperative. For his small pollution control company in Yoko- business, Noboru seasonally hires several hama. He now lives in a public rental apart- older men and women of the village, in- ment with his wife, who works part-time, cluding his mother. and their two middle-school children. Like Noboru and Keiko, a year younger, most renters in metropolitan Tokyo, they were married in 1973, after introductions have all but given up hope of buying a through mutual friends of their parents and home, although they still enter the periodic a very brief courtship. She agreed to the lotteries for state-subsidized housing. marriage on the condition that she be able Noboru's sister, Yumiko, was born in to continue as a full-time salesperson at 1953, and graduated from ShGnai's com- what was then the only department store mercial high school. She left immediately on the plain. The ItGs readily accepted. Ma- for Tokyo to find work as a buyer for a To- chines made her labor unnecessary, and kyo department store. In 1982, after an her job brought the household a regular elaborate Tokyo marriage, she joined her cash income. Today, with much of husband in his family's small clothing busi- Noboru's farm income going directly to the ness. Together they purchased a modest household account at the Agricultural condominium in eastern Tokyo and had a Coop, Keiko's is the largest cash contribu- child. In the mid-1980s, however, the busi- tion to the family budget. ness went bankrupt and the couple moved After nearly 20 years with the depart- into a small apartment with Yumiko's ment store, she remains on the sales floor. mother-in-law (who cares for their child She was offered advancement to the mana- during the day). The couple now manages a gerial staff but declined because it would small pet shop and plan one day to open have required taking assignments away their own. from the region. Now heading one of the Noboru's own decision in the 1960s to floor sales units, she is required to work go to the agricultural high school was a dif- ten, sometimes 12, hours a day, and often ficult one, but he has stuck with farming more hours at home scheduling her unit's long after most other young men of the set- overtime. tlement have given up. With a full comple- Both of Noboru's parents (Grandpa ment of machines, Noboru now handles Tokuz6 and Grandma Fusae) turn 60 this four hectares of paddyland by himself, an year. They are members of the "Sh6wa sin- acreage that would have required at least gle-digit generation", as those born in the four adults of his parents' generation. first part of Emperor ShGwa's era (1926- Throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, he 1934) are called. This is Japan's equivalent had to work half of the year making deliver- of what sociologist Glen Elder has called ies for a city bookstore, but he was always our "Children of the Depression," and in trying to come up with ways to make a liv- the Japanese imagination, it embodies the ing by year-round agriculture in a northern spirit of postwar Japan-committed, hard- climate whose snowy winters allow only a working, both proud and wary of the afflu- single rice crop. After several experiments, ence it has produced. The two older 16s he hit upon a scheme for growing and pick- finished elementary school and worked as ling organic vegetables. Bypassing the agri- adolescent field hands during the war cultural cooperative, he joined with two ac- years. Grandma's fondest childhood mem- quaintances from nearby villages to ory, which she retells over and over, is of negotiate a long-term contract with a To- receiving the certificate of perfect fourth-

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grade attendance, earned despite the long of money doing piece work at home. For walk to school from her upland home. Mu- several years, she did small-wire soldering tual in-laws brokered their young marriage for the electric parts company; recently she just after the war ended, and Grandma en- has been doing finish work for girls' cloth- tered her husband's household as bride, ing at 200 yen per piece. At 6:30, she daughter-in-law, and older sister to several stretches her sore back with the radio exer- of her husband's six siblings who were still cise program, and then she and Keiko pre- in school and at home. pare breakfast. While the children are at Grandpa TokuzG never was enthusiastic school, she tends the family's large vege- about farming-he had a bad back and table garden and continues her piece work. weak stomach-and his wife still com- Grandma Fusae has been generally happy plains that he left much of the field work to to assume much of the burden of raising her and his father. As soon as Noboru's her three grandchildren. As a young bride, marriage was arranged and he seemed set she had to return to the fields immediately on fanning, Grandpa turned to his real pas- after giving birth to her own three children, sion, which is dedication to local "good who were looked after by her mother-in- causes", particularly school programs and law. So now she enjoys this long-delayed senior-citizen activities. In 1990, he finishes chance to be a mother. his fourth four-year term as a Fujishima Keiko and Nobom's three children all town councilman. Such longevity is a con- moved up the educational ladder this year. siderable achievement, especially because The oldest, a daughter, passed a highly he has consistently refused to engage in the competitive exam to enter Tsuruoka South, usual practice of vote-buying. He is an inde- the region's preeminent high school; the fatigable and thus widely liked small-town second, a son and putative household suc- politician. cessor, entered Fujishima's junior high His family, it must be said, is more am- school, while the youngest, a second son, bivalent about his public activities. They ap- began elementary school in Watamae. (Re- preciate the status such involvement gional public works programs have rebuilt brings, but Grandma still suspects her hus- all three schools within the last five years.) band is malingering, and the younger ItGs The ItGs' present educational concerns see his generosity as a drain on family fi-. focus on the older two. Unlike the gradu- nances. More seriously, it has meant delay- ates of other ShGnai high schools, those of ing for a decade or so their hopes of sub- Tsuruoka South are expected to go on to stantially remodeling their house. Twenty college, but ShGnai's best school is still far years ago, they were among the first to from the top of the national pyramid. Per- modernize and enlarge their thatched-roof sonal ambitions and adult expectations farm house, but now Noboru and Keiko push the students to achievement that even look enviously at the more contemporary Tsuruoka South's regular, fast-paced curric- living arrangements and amenities in their ulum cannot prepare them for. This year, neighbors' homes. Not surprisingly, they fully 120 of the 220 graduating seniors were delighted when Grandpa announced chose to take an extra year for intensive his decision to retire in the fall of 1990, exam preparation, either by themselves (as In the years since her own contribu- so-called rGnin) or at special academies. As tions to the paddy fields became unnec- high-school graduates, Keiko and Noboru essary, Noboru's mother Fusae has risen improved upon their parents' elementary most mornings at five o'clock to earn a bit education, and they would be proud-

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though also saddened-to see their daugh- choices, the plans for remodeling the ter earn a college degree. While the di- house-all are conditioned by, and ex- ploma will be a great honor, it will almost pressed in, the terms of mainstream Japa- certainly lead to their daughter's leaving nese life. This is true even for Noboru's the region for work or marriage. farming and food processing. For eco- This heightens their anxieties about nomic advantage and ideological satisfac- their older son. Given the three-year junior tion, his personal occupation remains the high system, they have 18 months before family's image. His case demonstrates, they must decide which high school en- however, the anachronism of the notion of trance exam he will sit for. Is there a future a full-time farm family, even for those few in the family's farming? Is he interested? who still claim such an identity. Should he be encouraged? Noboru has a It would be a mistake to conclude from new-found enthusiasm for farming and the the ItG's lifeways that there is no future for experience to develop a farming business farming in rural Japan. Farmers like No- partially independent of the cooperative boru now believe that national overproduc- network. This still does not give him the tion and international demands for rice im- confidence to imagine a long-term future ports make eventual liberalization of the for Fujishima agriculture. Like virtually ev- rice market inevitable. With that will come ery other parent in Watamae, he will proba- the collapse of rice-based policies and rice- bly urge his son to consider other work. centered farming. To these farmers, however, the issue is not the stark opposition of cultural sentimentalism or economic ratio- nality posed by urban commentators and foreign critics. The farmers recognize that in postwar Japan, agriculture has been a catalyst in regional development, while rice has carried a heavy symbolic load in defin- or the moment, though, rice, and ing that agriculture. "Home of Rice and the rice farming, remain central to the Lion Dance" is as effective-and mislead- Ffortunes and feelings of the It&. ing-a tug on urban heart-strings as were There are many ways in which Noboru's American news reports of bankruptcy auc- life has diverged from that of his younger tions of family farms in the Midwest. The brother and sister in metropolitan Tokyo. future the farmers now expect only height- However, even to members of this "full- ens the contradiction they must resolve. If time" farming household, the satisfactions any farming is to remain viable in regional and concerns of daily life are far more Japan, rice will have to be much less im- broadly defined by their place in regional, portant economically, even while continu- not rural, Japan. Grandpa Tokuzo's local ing to enjoy cultural preeminence. Both good works, Grandma Fusae's efforts to the profits and prestige that farmers need to keep working, Keiko's current overtime survive will depend on their ability to man- pressures, the children's educational age this paradox.

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by Margaret Lock

n a study conducted six years ago, Punishment"; "The Dying Family"; "More a team of Japanese researchers Family Suicides"; "More Middle-Aged Men asked children in Korea, Taiwan, Killing Themselves"; "Housewife Anxiety and Japan to draw a picture of a Rate Rises to 98%." In one article that ap- typical evening meal. Although peared in a 1984 edition of the influential most of the children depicted a Asahi newspaper, "Japanese Youth Unhap- familyI sitting together around a dinner ta- piest, Despite Economic Growth," the au- ble, a significant number of the Japanese thor worried that young people were part children drew a single child holding a bowl of "a floating generation, without any sense of noodles while seated in front of the tele- of purpose. And the real problem lies in the vision set. These results reinforced a con- family." cern already voiced by influential commen- Yasuhiko Yuzawa, a sociologist of the tators in Japan, including government family at Tokyo's Ochanomizu University, officials, that the modern family was in cautions that the media frequently take sta- trouble, its individual members too occu-- tistics out of context, creating the mistaken pied with their own activities to find time impression that the family is developing for each other. along pathological lines. He claims that the Not everyone shares this concern, of incidence of serious family disorders, in- course. Nor does it conform with what cluding infanticide, parricide, family sui- many Japanese, from farmers to small busi- cide, illegitimacy, and divorce, has not in- ness owners, see in their own daily lives. creased in absolute terms. In his view, the Nevertheless, the sentiment that Japan may modem Japanese family is not in crisis. be paying too high a human price for its But such voices of moderation are in- economic "miracle" is certainly in the air. creasingly drowned out by a chorus of If, for example, one scans the headlines high-placed worriers-government bureau- of newspapers and popular magazines pub- crats, leaders of the long-reigning Liberal lished during the past 15 years or so, one is Democratic Party (LDP), commentators left with a distinct impression of unease: from various academic disciplines and pro- 'More Girls, Housewives Becoming Drug fessions known collectively as hyzronka Addicts"; "Schools Reverting to Corporal (social critics). In official documents and

WQ AUTUMN 1990 42 Painting of a traditional family scene by Miyagawa ChGshun (1682-1752). the media, these commentators, mostly ous "ideologues" had encouraged people conservative, tend to advance a common to think that women who devote their lives critique. They charge that the social and to raising children are victims of a "feu- psychological maladies that accompany dalistic, slavish, and humiliating" patriar- modernization-alienation, depression, as- chal system. If too many women come to sorted neuroses, anti-social and even crimi- accept this ideology, he warned, Japanese nal behavior-have been aggravated, if not children would inevitably suffer. caused, by the disappearance of the tradi- Critics of the reactionaries, including tional "extended" family and its replace- Yasuhiko Yuzawa, say that the contempo- ment by the modem "nuclear" family: a rary family deserves praise not blame. In household restricted to parents and chil- addition to playing a crucial role in Japan's dren. According to the hyzronka, the mod- postwar recovery, it reduced the exploita- ern family, by failing to cultivate traditional tion and abuse of women and children. Yet values, has allowed selfish individualism to other commentators, particularly women erode concern for the well-being of the critics such as Keiko Higuchi, believe that family group. And without strong group while the structure of the family has loyalties, the commentators caution, the changed, the old gender inequities persist. health of the nation is itself at risk. They endure, they say, because traditional Not surprisingly, Japanese mothers re- values, particularly notions about women's ceive much of the blame for the family cri- "natural" inferiority and subordination, sis. Social critic Jun Et6 offered what may have not significantly changed. be described as the typical conservative di- Debate over the family-and women's agnosis in his widely discussed 1979 article, role in it-has intensified during the last "The Breakdown of Motherhood is Wreck- decade, but it is not new. In some respects, ing Our Children." Et6 argued that danger- the most recent round began as early as

WQ AUTUMN 1990 43 EVERYDAY LIFE IN JAPAN

1868, at the beginning of the Meiji Restora- rights, but their efforts soon came up tion. Setting out to create a modem nation- against a rising tide of criticism directed state, a process already set in motion by the against liberalism and the "unsettling" in- preceding Tokugawa regime, the Meiji lead- fluences of the West. Conservatives, par- ers at first appeared to commit themselves - - ticularly discontented samurai, gained to certain liberal reforms. The inferior posi- greater influence within the Meiji leader- tion of women immediately became a bone ship, and when the Meiji Civil Code was in- of contention, and a number of influential stituted in 1898, it stripped women of al- Meiji politicians such as Yukichi Fukuzawa most all of their gains. Despite liberal- and Arinori Mori called for fairer treatment sounding language and certain concessions of women and the abandonment of such to the ryssai kenbo ideal, the code effec- practices as the keeping of concubines. tively denied women any legal standing, Masanao Nakamura, another prominent relegating them to the same category as the Meiji statesmen and a Christian convert deformed and mentally incompetent. Fur- who traveled extensively in the West, thermore, the code imposed on all of Japa- helped popularize in Japan the contempo- nese society the family order of the warrior rary European notion of "the affectionate samurai class, an arrangement that gave wife, wise mother." Translated as ryosai the male head of the household all power kenbo, the phrase was used by Nakamura and left women with virtually no control much as it was used in 19th-century Eu- over their lives, property, or families. rope: to promote the idea that education Above all, the Meiji Civil Code reflected would make women better able to nurture the regime's growing concern for stand- and educate their children at home. ardization and social control. Before its Nakamura made his position more palat- adoption, family arrangements had been able to conservatives by arguing that such quite flexible in Japan. Inheritance prac- education would emphasize moral values tices were loose enough to provide for the and domestic science. Partly in response to needs of individual families, and marriage foreign pressure, the Meiji government and courtship customs were subject to lo- took steps to implement some of Naka- cal variations. People living in some rural murals suggestions. areas were allowed to choose their own Modest though it may seem, the status- marriage partners, for example. accorded the ryosai kenbo represented a vast improvement over that of women in ut various as Japanese family ar- most pre-Meiji samurai and merchant rangements had been, all of them households, a status crudely summed up in could be broadly subsumed under the epithet "borrowed womb." At the very the concept of the ie (pronounced ee-ay), least, the good wife and wise mother was which roughly translates as "household." able to exercise authority in her own Referring both to the house and its resi- household. She did not exist simply to pro- dents, the ie emphasized the ties of the liv- duce offspring for the paternal line. ing family, a property-owning corporate Encouraged by such progress, women group, both to its ancestors and to the gen- themselves began to campaign for their erations to come. The ie did not extend lat-

Margaret Lock is professor of medical anthropology at McGill University. Born in Bromley, England, she received a B.Sc. (1959) from Leeds University and a Ph.D. (1976)from the University of California, Berkeley. She is the authorof East Asian Medicine in Urban ~apan':varieties of ~edical~x~erience (1979) and many articles on Japanese society.

WQ AUTUMN 1990 44 EVERYDAY LIFE IN JAPAN

erally. Only the married couple, their chil- vived up until the end of World War 11. Not dren (biological and adopted), and all Japanese families conformed to the sam- grandparents lived under one roof. All chil- urai ie, despite the wide influence of the dren except the one designated as heir Meiji bureaucracy, but it is this arrange- were expected to marry out of the ie and ment that most people have in mind when become incorporated into other house- they talk about the traditional family. holds, often at some distance from their The end of World War I1 was the begin- birthplaces. (Modern Japanese cities are ning of the end of the Meiji ie. Among the largely populated by descendants of sons many reforms the Allied Occupation forced who could not expect to inherit property.) the Japanese to adopt were laws and codes Unlike the peasant families of China, in affecting the family order and women's which the division of patrimony gave rise to rights. The Revised Voting Law of 1945 large, extended clans, Japanese families gave women the right to vote and run for tended to be small, self-contained eco- electoral office, and subsequent legislation nomic units. But, again, the make-up of the established the principle (if not the reality) ie varied considerably according to region of equal education and equal pay for equal and class. work. The Revised Civil Code of 1947 dealt To eliminate such variety, the Meiji lead- directly with family matters. It dismantled ers imposed the rigid discipline and formal- the legal foundation of the Meiji ie by assur- ity of the samurai class on the families of ing women the right to marry whom they farmers, artisans, and merchants. Inheri- chose, to sue for divorce, and to inherit, tance was formally restricted to the eldest own, and control property. son, who, unless he was mentally incompe- It would be naive to assume that the tra- tent, assumed complete responsibility for ditional family disappeared overnight, but the stewardship of the family fortune and change was under way. In certain respects, for the well-being, behavior, and marriages however, the nuclear family was nothing of other family members. Women were no new. Households had begun to shrink well longer allowed any say in choosing a before World War 11. During the 1920s, spouse, and were not even secure within a only about 30 percent of all families had marriage until they had successfully pro- three or more generations living under one duced a male heir. The Confucian tenets of roof, compared with 20 percent today. The filial piety and unquestioning loyalty gov- mean size of households went from five in erned family relationships, and the primary 1930 to three by the early 1980s, in part obligation of all family members was to because of the growing number of single- preserve the continuity of the ie. family households. As such figures suggest, Thus organized, the ie served as a highly the transformation of the prewar extended effective tool for the promotion of loyalty family into the postwar nuclear family was and patriotism. By fusing the ethos of em- far less dramatic, at least demographically, peror worship with the new household than conservative rhetoric would lead one ideal, the Meiji rulers fostered the concept to believe. of a family-state (kazoku kokka). Each ie be- The "nuclearization" of the family dur- came a microcosm of the nation, the all- ing the postwar years was accompanied by encompassing family unit of which the Em- a related phenomenon: the rise of the New peror was the parent figure. Middle Class. Indeed, in the usage of many The Meiji strategy of state-building, with Japanese social analysts, the modem nu- the highly formalized ie at its center, sur- clear family and the New Middle Class have

WQ AUTUMN 1990 45 EVERYDAY LIFE IN JAPAN

become almost synonymous. This often and Westernized behavioral patterns-all makes it difficult to determine what the la- of these, claim the conservative hyzronka, bel refers to-class, family arrangements, have disrupted the traditional forms of con- values, or all three. Reality and rhetoric are trol formerly exercised by the powerful further confused by the fact that, in polls, head of the ie. They point to the fact that 90 percent of all Japanese respondents the ie of old was not only an economic unit identify themselves as thoroughly middle but the locus of spiritual values, prominent class. (And while there is much less of an among which was veneration of the ances- income spread in Japan than in the United tors. The felt presence of the ancestors le- States, the gap between the salaries of, say, gitimized the authority of parents and made business executives and factory workers is the fulfillment of parental obligations a sa- wide enough to make such survey re- cred duty. The moral and spiritual training sponses almost meaningless.) of children was considered the most impor- Despite its imprecision, the term New tant task not only for parents but also for

The typical nuclear family of Japan's New Middle Class: father, mother, and two children.

Middle Class appears frequently in the me- grandparents. dia, where, like the ie of prewar days, it is Not so in the modem household, say the taken to mean the living arrangements and hyzronka. The elderly have been aban- the ethos of the majority of the population doned, condemned to "dying alone and un- today. The average New Middle Class wanted." And without the watchful gaze of household-inevitably suburban-includes the ancestors, young couples, especially a white-collar salaried husband (the wives, are inadequate to the task of raising "salaryrnan"), a homemaker wife (an up- the future citizens of Japan. dated good wife and wise mother), and two Some Westerners may be surprised to studious children. And it is this family that learn that the modem Japanese housewife commentators point to when they discuss has been judged so deficient. After all, in Japan's declining spiritual health. our press and even in scholarly studies, the Gender equality, liberalization of parent- Japanese housewife appears to be the child relations, egalitarian inheritance laws, model parent, the real secret behind Ja-

WQ AUTUMN 1990 46 EVERYDAY LIFE IN JAPAN

-- pan's postwar success. In a recent National ers are excessively controlling and compul- Geographic article, for example, journalist sively fastidious. As a result, they are Deborah Fallows reports that "it is a com- particularly vulnerable to a host of new monplace statement in Japan that the na- bunmeibyij (diseases of civilization), includ- tion's hardworking housewives are its se- ing "high-rise apartment neurosis," "mov- cret weapon. . . the backbone of the nation ing-day depression," the "kitchen syn- that enables its men to perform their eco- drome," and "menopausal syndrome." But, nomic miracle, and the insurance that the to most hyijronka, women's liberation is next generation of Japanese will behave in not the solution. One Tokyo physician ex- the same hardworking way." Many in the plained to me that even though women had West have read that the Japanese mother is become neurotically obsessed with "trying impeccable in her housekeeping, tireless in to create a good child," they had also lost the care and education of her children, and their ability to persevere. "They've lost all stoical in her acceptance of the fact that she that since women's lib," he concluded. must do all of this on her own. While her "They have poor self-control now." husband is gone all day, she scrupulously attends to the family budget, works for the hat, then, is a suburban Japa- PTA, or drills her children so they can pass nese mother to do? Damned if the stiff school entrance examinations. she stays at home, she is While this image, and the praise that at- damnedw if she ventures out. Seeking ern- tends it, may still be "commonplace" ployrnent outside the home, most conserva- among some Japanese, the conservative po- tive hyzronka say, is both unseemly and un- litical establishment and a growing number necessary. It leads to the "masculinization" of social critics present the housewife in a of women. Fortunately, one respectable op- far less flattering light. One stereotype that tion now exists: that of the "New Mother." frequently appears in the media is that of According to professor and author Masa- the new housewife in her fully automated toshi Takada, the "New Mother" skillfully household, a creature of luxury and ease balances part-time work, hobbies, and fam- who enjoys sun shoku hiru ne tsuki (imply- ily life. The "New Mother" is deemed suc- ing an easy, permanent job with three cessful if she can negotiate the narrows be- meals and a nap thrown in). Conservative tween selfishness on one side and commentators blame these "professional" obsession and loneliness on the other. It re- housewives for what is called the "feminiza- mains to be seen whether the "New tion" of the family. Modem mothers, they Mother" will become a workable model of say, are preoccupied with their children motherhood for future generations of and enter into a "symbiotic" relationships women, but at least it offers a possible es- with them. Several writers, including the cape from the present double-bind. physician Shigemori Kyitoku, author of the In some ways, fathers receive even best-selling Illnesses Caused by Mother harsher blame for the perceived family pa- (1979), have suggested that young women thology. Their greatest fault is absenteeism. have lost their "natural child-rearing in- Casting what critics call "a thin shadow," stincts" and begun to treat their children modem fathers are seldom at home. When like "pets." they are, they serve as weak role models, By many accounts, suburban mothers failing to apply discipline when it's needed. themselves are suffering. Prominent Japa- Recently, a widely circulated Health and nese psychologists claim that young moth- Welfare Ministry document called on men

WQ AUTUMN 1990 47 EVERYDAY LIFE IN JAPAN

to demonstrate more masculinity in what it rampant, I suspect that its incidence is such implied were mother-centered families. that a similar rate would cause little con- The question, of course, is how they will cern in North America. do this. It is difficult, if not impossible, for However widespread, the "school-re- most salaried employees to spend more fusal syndrome" is one of those maladies, time with their families. Their normal days so beloved by the media, that crystallize a are long, and evening drinking bouts are society's anxieties about itself and its considered part of an executive's respon- health. The typical school-refusal child sibilities. Salarymen are also required by comes from a nuclear family; he (for it is their companies to be away from their nearly always a boy) has an Absent Father homes for extended periods, often for and either a Selfish or an Obsessive Mother. months and, in the case of foreign assign- He may well be fed pre-packaged food by ments, for years at a time. (It is widely be- his mother, and his brain functions poorly lieved that refusing such assignments jeop- as a result of countless hours spent in front ardizes one's chances for promotion.) To of a television. He is bad at playing with make matters worse, families are seldom other children, does not get on well in given a relocation allowance, and even if groups, "sticks out" inappropriately, and they were, most parents would be reluctant may even be physically weak. His personal- to disrupt their children's schooling. As a ity is dangerously deficient. He may be result, temporary single-parent families are stubborn, timid, withdrawn, or egotistical, quite common in Japan. But while many and he sometimes becomes violent. He suf- critics lament the problem, few closely fers from stomach problems, headaches, scrutinize its connections with the demand- and even kidney or heart disease. ing corporate culture that governs the lives It is easy to see how the school-refusal of so many Japanese men. child reflects all that is thought to be wrong The media are also quick to point to the with the New Middle Class. It is also obvi- various "stress-related ailments" afflicting ous why the school-refusal syndrome businessmen, including heart problems, serves as an ideal rhetorical device in the loss of appetite, impotence, and insomnia. conservative critique of Japan's social ills. Again, however, hyzronka lay the blame on Not everybody believes the rhetoric, of overwork and "weak personalities." Ridi-- course, but very few Japanese dismiss it out culed even in the comics, the "worker bee" of hand, for at least two reasons. First, the of today is cast as an incompetent husband rhetoric is used by people in positions of and father. Gone, critics suggest, is the con- authority, and respect for authority, politi- trolled samurai masculinity that character- cal as well as professional, is still strong. ized fathers of earlier generations. Second, there is a kernel of truth to it. Mod- Given their views of modem mothers ern "professional" housewives do lead lives and fathers, it is hardly surprising that proof comparative ease, certainly more com- fessional critics think that Japanese chil- fortable lives than were led by most women dren are also in trouble. One topic lately who went before them (with the possible receiving wide media attention is the exception of the aristocracy). While most 'school-refusal syndrome." A child suffer- people in Japan-men, employed women, ing from this affliction typically remains in and children-are worked to the limit of bed all day, listless, depressed, and unable their endurance, the housewife has time to to face the challenge of school. While some play tennis or decorate sugar cubes for her commentators claim that this syndrome is afternoon cup of tea. Even suburban house-

WQ AUTUMN 1990 48 EVERYDAY LIFE IN JAPAN

wives confess to some guilt about their con- often hold down jobs in addition. Studies dition. When surveyed, such women report indicate that married couples quite often that they believe that running the house- take in their elderly relatives, usually after hold and raising children is crucial; never- their children have married and left the theless, most of the women I interviewed household. Nor does one have to look very characterize themselves as being (at times) far to find a middle-aged woman who has weak-willed, lacking in self-control,and in- spent years of her life nursing an inconti- ferior to their own mothers. nent parent-in-law. But there is also a third reason why so There is no question, though, that Japan many people are listening to the worried faces the same decision all other modem hyconka. By the year 2025, people 65 and societies face: It must determine how the over will make up a remarkable 23.4 per- burden of caring for dependents such as cent of the Japanese populace. Govern- children, the sick, and the elderly should be ment officials view this "graying of Japan" divided between the family and the state. with something close to panic. What, they Japanese social and economic policy, as wonder, will be done with all of these old promoted for most of the postwar era by people if the nuclear family of the New the ruling LDP, extracts a large amount of Middle Class makes no place for them? labor from its workers, keeps taxes reasonably low, and carefully limits social services n recent media discussions of the issue, on the assumption that the family should be government and conservative com- willing to take up the slack. mentators have called for a return to But in any postmodern society, particu- the traditional extended household-the larly one that is rapidly "graying," such a ie-with one rather important modifica- system leaves many people uncared for. If tion. Instead of the authoritarian father, the present trends continue, it is estimated that good wife and wise mother will be the cen- by the year 2008, the number of full-time ter of the revived ie. Rather than making housewives will equal the number of el- plastic flowers or decorating sugar cubes, derly suffering from senile dementia or she will become the primary provider of other serious infirmities. This doesn't services to her extended family. She will sound like the harmonious extended ie that look after her aged parents-in-law and take the idealogues invoke when they call for a care of any family members who have return to the "good" old days. Nor does the chronic illnesses or disabilities. She will rhetoric square with the fact that at present continue to invest much of her time caring the majority of women work out of eco- for and educating her children. And she nomic necessity and that many men are de- will practice frugal home economics to ac- prived of a family life altogether. It is little cumulate savings that can be used to sup- wonder that a growing number of people plement meager old-age pensions. are beginning to wonder what economic What goes generally unacknowledged growth and development are really all in the official literature is the fact that many about, and for whose benefit they race women already do all of these things-and blindly on.

WQ AUTUMN 1990 49 BACKGROUND BOOKS

EVERYDAY LIFE IN JAPAN

apanese culture may ultimately thwart West- War 11, Benedict set out to interpret the contra- J ern efforts to comprehend it, but the West- dictions suggested by her book's title: How ern urge to "read" Japanese society has be- could a people of such sensitivity and aesthetic come, if anything, even keener during recent refinement also sustain a cult of the sword? To years. The reason is obvious. Americans and find answers, she explored Japan's hierarchical Europeans want to understand the engine that social system, the importance of reciprocal ob- has powered Japan's economic ascent during ligations in relationships, the power of shame, the postwar era. and the related necessity of clearing one's Anyone curious about the workings of this name through revenge or suicide. Self-disci- complex social machine would do well to start pline, Benedict discovered, was the true with the late Edwin 0. Reischauer's Japanese "sword" of Japanese character: "Japanese of all Today: Change and Continuity (Harvard classes judge themselves and others in terms of Univ., 1988). Reischauer, who was a Harvard a whole set of concepts which depend upon professor of history and served as U.S. ambassa- their notion of -generalized technical self-condor to Tokyo, was born in Japan, the son of a trol and self-governance." Protestant missionary. His knowledge of his Scholars generally agree that the strength of subject is intimate, almost familial. But while Benedict's book is her interoretation of tradi- his view of Japanese "otherness" is more sym- tional society, but many fault her efforts to pathetic than that of the current "revisionist" show how traditional notions continued to scholars, he pulls no punches when he treats shape modem Japan. Here, clearly, her lack of Japanese foibles and follies: "It is not easy for direct contact proved to be a handicap. Fortu- them to give up their past cozy life, safely insu- nately, it is not one that has afflicted most post- lated by their language barrier and thriving war Western students of Japanese life and cul- economy, for a more adventurous life dealing ture. Perhaps the best single introduction to with the problems of world peace and the their work is Robert J. Smith's Japanese Soci- global economy. To put it in dramatic terms, ety: Tradition, Self, and the Social Order they find it hard to join the human race. For (Cambridge Univ., 1983). In four masterful lec- one thing, they still have inadequate skills of tures, Smith, a Come11 anthropologist, explains communication. More seriously, they have a how modern Japan became a mass industrial strong sense of separateness." This extensive society significantly different from its Western revision of his earlier book, The Japanese* counterparts. Traditional values, including the (Harvard, 1977), provides a survey of Japanese urge to create a "perfect society," are decisive, history from the third century A.D. through the he argues. The great difference between Japan late 1970s and a shrewd discussion of contem- and the West "lies less in its organization and L2 porary political and economic life. Reischauer institutions than in the way all of its history is at his best, however, when decoding the in- shows how the Japanese think about man and tangible qualities of Japanese society-inter- society and the relationship between the two." personal relationships and values. The people who have come to typify the Unlike Reischauer, the anthropologist Ruth postwar Japanese are, of course, the members Benedict never lived in Japan. Her knowledge of the New Middle Class. During the 1950s, of the culture was based on extensive reading Harvard sociologist Ezra Vogel studied five and on interviews with Japanese-Americans. families in suburban Tokyo, and though his But though she treated her subject from afar, work is now somewhat dated, Japan's New her book, Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Middle Class: The Salary Man and his Family Patterns of Japanese Culture (Houghton Miff- in a Tokyo Suburb (Univ. of Calif., 1963; 1971) lin, 1946; 1989), has become an indispensable remains a valuable portrait of white-collar em- introduction to the complexities of the Japa- ployees (government and corporate) and their nese people. Writing around the end of World 'nuclear" families. Vogel's dissection of chang-

WQ AUTUMN 1990 EVERYDAY LIFE IN JAPAN

ing family relationships is particularly astute: to a similar variety within Japanese society, a "It may seem paradoxical that even though the diversity stemming from regional as well as salaried family represents the most radical de- occupational differences. To understand the parture from tradition in many ways, the changes in rural Japan during the last 60 years, opportunity of the wife of the salary man to be one should begin with John Embree's Suye home and devoted to the children has made the Mura: A Japanese Village (Univ. of Chicago, mutual dependency of the mother and child 1939; 1964). Embree, the only Western an- even stronger in the salary-man families than in thropologist to conduct fieldwork in prewar Ja- other occupational pan, produced this groups." For a more ex- study after spending a tensive (and recent) year in a southern Kyti- look at these middle- shii farming village class housewives, one with his wife, Ella Lury may turn to Anne E. Wiswell. During that Imamura's Urban Jap- year, Wiswell kept an anese Housewives: At extensive journal, rich Home and in the in details about wom- Community (Univ. of en's lives. More than 40 Hawaii, 1987). years later, Robert J. A book that suc- Smith organized these ceeds brilliantly in trac- notes into The Women ing the lifeways of indi- of Suye Mura (Chi- viduals who were born cago 1982). One finds and raised in prewar no delicate flowers and wartime Japan but here. The hard-drink- came to maturity during, independent farm ing the postwar years is women of Suye Mura David W. Plath's Long long resisted Meiji-in- Engagements: Matu- spired efforts to make rity in Modem Japan Japanese women into (Stanford Univ., 1980). submissive housekeep- Plath, an anthropolo- ers. Two other note- gist at the University of worthy studies of rural Illinois, mixes oral Japan are Ronald P. Do- autobiographies of four re's Shinohata: Por- middle-aged men and trait of a Japanese Vil- women residing in the lage (Pantheon, 1978), Osaka-Kobe area with a wittily drawn portrait stories from four con- of the central HonshCi temporary novels and farming village that the short essays bearing on author, a British sociol- Japanese society. For ogist, visited several each of his subjects, in- times between 1955 eluding a former "sui- and 1975, and Haru- cide cadet," he shows the sustaining power of ko's World: A Japanese Farm Woman and "long engagementsH-relationships with Her Community (Stanford, 1983) by Gail Lee friends, co-workers, and relatives. Plath's book Bernstein, a professor of anthropology at the is most instructive about the ways in which University of Arizona. Both show how mechani- people preserve meaning and individuality as zation, modernization, and growing prosperity they age, even in a culture so often perceived as have altered the work habits and outlooks of group-dominated and conformist. the nation's highly respected farmers. Other excellent ethnographic studies point When one thinks of Japan's postwar boom,

WQ AUTUMN 1990 EVERYDAY LIFE IN JAPAN

one thinks primarily of the cities. Today, 3 1 mil- whether arranged or elected, take place in lion people, or roughly one quarter of all Japa- "wedding palaces," complete with Shinto or nese, live in metropolitan Tokyo alone. The even Christian trappings. Walter Edwards, an- growth of the suburbs has been steady, but so other Japanese- American ethnographer, far this centrifugal pressure has not killed the worked for a time in one of these palaces. His inner cities. A resilient urban culture still Modem Japan Through Its Weddings: Gen- shapes the lives of many Japanese, providing a der, Person, and Society in Ritual Portrayal sense of order and tradition amid the commer- (Stanford, 1989) shows how commercialization cialism and congestion. Theodore C. Bestor, a affects, and reflects, the changing symbolic Columbia University anthropologist, details the content of the Japanese wedding. His analysis daily workings of a middle-class residential and of ceremony leads Edwards to conclusions commercial district in Neighborhood Tokyo about the meaning of marriage to contempo- (Stanford, 1989) to show just how vital neigh- rary Japanese: "Thus while the legal form of borhood life remains. His book nicely comple- the ie [the traditional Family extending across ments Ronald Dore's earlier study of the life in generations] has been abolished, its underlying a lower-middle-class neighborhood, City Life principles of hierarchy and harmonious inter- in Japan: A Study of a Tokyo Ward (Calif., dependence-principles that inevitably deny 1958). the autonomy of the individual-survive in its Bestor's book shows how the family firm successor as basic [husband-wife] unit." merges work and family life in ways reminis- Before work or marriage comes schooling, cent of the traditional home. But for most other and a vast literature on Japanese education Japanese, work takes place in spheres com- now exists. One book that probes beyond the pletely separate from the household. In Japa- cliches and generalizations about the nation's nese Blue Collar: The Changing Tradition postwar educational triumphs is Japan's High (Calif., 1971), based partly on his own experi- Schools by Thomas P. Rohlen (Calif., 1983). ence as an employee in two Japanese factories, The author, a Stanford anthropologist, investi- sociologist Robert E. Cole deals with every- gated five different high schools in the indus- thing from wage-scales and promotion to the trial port city of Kobe. As well as describing paternalistic style of company-worker relations. school organization, classroom instruction, A worker's-eye view of life within a public cor- teacher and union politics, textbooks, and ex- poration can be found in Paul H. Noguchi's De- tracurricular activities, Rohlen reveals the layed Departures, Overdue Arrivals (Hawaii, chasm separating a Fast-track prep school at the 1990). Noguchi, a Japanese-American, hired on top of Kobe system from a technical school at with the Japanese National Railways shortly be- the bottom. One leaves this book with a keen fore it was broken up into several private cor-- appreciation of the extent to which examina- porations. His novel approach to Japanese cor- tions are fate in modem Japan. porate life explains what daily reality is like for The competitiveness bred in Japanese someone whose greatest ambition is to rise to schools translates well into economic competi- the position of stationmaster. To succeed re- tiveness in the global marketplace. But as many quires not only high examination scores but of these books suggest, competitiveness can fos- prodigious stamina: Assistant stationmasters ter individualism, and a too-powerful individ- routinely work the 24-hour tetsuya shift, which ualism threatens the very core of Japanese val- includes only four hours of sleep. ues: the group loyalties expressed through The Japanese work hard, but they do occa- powerful connections with family, neighbor- sionally break for other rituals of everyday life, hood, region, and nation. For all of Japan's dif- including marriage. In premodern Japan, wed- ferences, then, its fate is not so different from dings were modest household ceremonies that that of other nations that have achieved pros- sealed what were often arranged marriages. perity and global influence. It must avoid be- But today more than 90 percent of all unions, coming the victim of its own success.

EDITOR'S NOTE: This bibliography was put together with the assistance of Frank Joseph Shulman, author of Japan, Vol. 103, World Bibliographical Series (ABC Clio, 1989).

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Philosophy begins in response to the Delphic injunction, "Know Thyself." The essay begins more modestly, with Montaigne's question, "What do I know?" The tentative, questioning nature of the essay permits it to explore the doubts, terrors, and hopes that arise during periods of great change. According to 0. B. Hardison, this explains why the essay-along with the office memo-is the most widely read form of writing today.

by 0. B. Hardison, Jr.

he ancient god Proteus knew Let me put one card on the table imme- the secrets of the past and the diately. There is a rumor going about that future. Those who would the essay is an endangered species. There learn them were required to have even been calls to "save the essay," as bind him with chains before if it were a sensitive species on the point of asking their questions. When extinction. Nothing could be more absurd. bound,T Proteus would change into all man- - The essay is tough, infinitely adaptable, and ner of shapes to escape. Menelaus visited ubiquitous. It has more in common with Proteus when becalmed at Pharos and the German cockroach than with the Ten- forced him to reveal the fates of Agamem- nessee snail darter. The analogy has hidden non and Odysseus. Aristaeus, a shepherd of relevance. The cockroach is a primitive Tempe, was told by his mother Cyrene to creature. It appears very early on the evolu- visit Proteus when Aristaeus's bees were dy- tionary chain. The essay is also primitive. ing. As Vergil announces in the Georgics, Roland Barthes suggests that, in the evolu- she advised: "The more he turns himself tion of projections of the imagination, it into different shapes, the more you, my son, may precede the formation of all concepts must hold on to those strong chains." of genre. Writing an essay on the essay is appro- I recall that the newspapers of my child- priate in an age that delights in strange hood, in addition to printing letters to the loops and Godelian recursions and that has editor, regularly paid homage to "litera- announced, more often perhaps than it ture" by including poems. The poems were really needs to, that every art form is first often maudlin and sometimes egregious, and foremost a comment on itself. More but they were recognizably poems. than any other literary form, the essay, like Today, how many poems do you find in Proteus, resists all efforts to contain it. the newspaper? Unless you read a paper

WQ AUTUMN 1990 THE ESSAY

that comes out once a week in a remote The word also comes into English via the rural county and has a name something Norman French assaier, "to assay," mean- like the Culpeper Eagle, you do not find a ing to try or test, as in testing the quality of single one. Instead, in any up-to-date news- a mineral ore. paper, you find essays. They are called op- German has two words for essay, ed pieces, and their authors are nationally Abhandlung, a "dealing with" something, syndicated. These authors do not need sup- and Aufsatz, a "setting forth." Herder's "Es- port from foundations. Some earn more in say on the Origin of Speech" is an Abhand- an hour than many Americans do in six lung; Martin Heidegger's essay on months. People read these essays. Today, thinglinessÃ‘UTh ThingH-is an Aufsatz. the essay is one of only two literary genres Abhandlungen tend to be ponderous and, of which this can be said, the other being you might say, Germanic. Aufsatze have an the memo. altogether lighter I return, now, to touch-a touch, one the myth I have in- imagines, like that of voked. The chief Goethe tapping out characteristic of Pro- the rhythms of the teus is elusiveness. If hexameter on the there is no genre back of his Roman more widespread in mistress. modern letters than As far as I have the essay, there is also been able to learn, no genre that takes so the first use of "es- many shapes and that say" to mean a liter- refuses so success- ary composition oc- fully to resolve itself, curred in the title of finally, into its own the most famous col- shape. lection of such com- Francis Bacon positions ever pub- concludes in The lished, Montaigne's Wisdom of the An- Essais. If you look for cients that Proteus the first English use symbolizes matter. of the term in this He adds, "If any skill- sense in the Oxford ful servant of Nature English Dictionary, shall bring force to you may be surprised bear on matter, and at what you find. In- shall vex it and drive stead of a majestic se- it to extremities as if ries of entries march- with the purpose of ing forward from the reducing it to noth- Middle Ages, you en- ing," it "will assume counter the following allshapes but return "at last to itself." statement: "Essay. A composition of mode; I take heart from Bacon's Wisdom. In ate length on any particular subject, or spite of the danger that the essay may fight branch of a subject; originally implying back, I propose in the following pages to want of finish. . .but now said of a comuo- vex it and drive it to extremities in the hope sition more or less elaborate in style though that by the end it will return to itself and limited in range. The use in this sense is reveal something of its true nature. apparently taken from Montaigne, whose The word "essay" comes from the Old Essais were first published in 1580." French essai, defined by Partridge as "a In other words, Montaigne invented the trial, an attempt." From this meaning term, and the English took it directly from comes the English "to essay" in the sense of him. Another surprise: In English the term "to make a trial or an attempt," as in Emer- was first used on the title page of the son's statement, "I also will essay to be." Essayes that Francis Bacon published in

WQ AUTUMN 1990 THE ESSAY

1597. It made its second appearance on the "As for your beginning, I no longer remem- title page of John Florio's translation of- ber it; nor consequently, the middle; as for you guessed it-Montaigne's Essayes; or, the conclusion, I do not desire to do any- Morall, Politike, and Militairie Discourses, thing about it." In "On the Resemblance of published in 1603. Thereafter, the term was Children," he asserts, "I do not correct my applied more and more broadly to any first ideas by later ones. . . . I wish to repre- composition that did not fall obviously into sent the progress of my moods, and that some other, better-defined category. It plays each part shall be seen at its birth." In an- the same role in literary criticism that the other context he adds, "I have no other term "miscellaneous" does in budgeting. drill-master than chance to arrange my Three historical facts supplement these writings. As my thoughts present them- lexicographical observations. First, the es- selves to my mind, I bring them together." say did not appear out of nowhere. Mon- So much for dispositio. taigne's principal guide in the art of the es- As Sir Philip Sidney's Defence of Poesie say was the Greek writer Plutarch, whose shows, orations can be impressive and in- Opera Moralia consist of short compo- formative. They can even, on occasion, be sitions on topics of general interest, such as persuasive. There is little room in them, the cessation of oracles, whether fish or however, for spontaneity. They move ahead land animals are more crafty, whether wa- with the elephantine thump of the ter or fire is more useful, the reasons for Abhandlung rather than the butterfly tango not running into debt, and the man in the of the Aufsatz. The point of orations is not moon. According to Montaigne, "of all the to reveal private feelings but to make things authors I know, [Plutarch] most success- happen. fully commingled art with nature and in- In fact, the essay is the opposite of an sight with knowledge." Another writer oration. It is a literary trial balloon, an in- much admired by Montaigne and more so formal stringing together of ideas to see by Bacon is Seneca, whose unfailingly up- what happens. Let's be frank. From the lifting letters often come close to being es- standpoint of the oration, the essay is feck- says. less. It does not seek to do anything, and it has no standard method even for doing econd, in spite of this and other prece- nothing. Montaigne calls essay writing s dents, the essay is something new. In "that stupid enterprise" ("cette sotre the 16th century, the standard prose form entrepris"), and when Roland Barthes deliv- was the oration. Orations are utilitarian; ered an oration indicating his acceptance they seek to accomplish something. As the of a chair at the College de France, he apol- rhetoric books say, their object is to per- ogized for his literary philandering. "I must suade. Montaigne calls this characteristic admit," he said, "that I have produced only the Hoc age-the "Do this!"-impulse. To essays." persuade efficiently, orators developed a Third fact. Even in its infancy, the essay standard kind of organization called shows its Protean heritage. Montaigne's es- dispositio. Dispositio is the literary equiva- says are associative, discursive, informal, lent of the foregone conclusion. meandering, and slovenly. Being the first of Montaigne carefully disavows all such their kind, they ought at least to have be- advance planning. In the essay "On Educa- come models for what followed, in the tion," he quotes with obvious relish the same way that even disreputable people- comment of the king of Sparta on a long muggers, prostitutes, con men, and so speech by the ambassadors from Samos: forth-will become models if they are

0.B. Hardison, Jr., was University Professor at Georgetown University before his death on August 5, 1990. Born in San Diego, Calif., he received a B.A. (1949) from the University of North Carolina and an M.A.(1950) and a Ph.D. (1956) from the University of Wisconsin. He served as director of the Folger Shakespeare Library from 1969 until 1983. His many books include Entering the Maze: Identity and Change in Modern Culture (1981) and Disappearing Through the Skylight: Technology and Culture in the 20th Century (1989). A version of this essay appeared in Essays on the Essay; Redefining the Genre (1989). Copyright @ 1990 by 0. B. Hardison, Jr.

WQ AUTUMN 1990 5 6 THE ESSAY

really good at what they do. They did not. matter, worth of subject, soundnesse of ar- Bacon's essays were inspired by Mon- gument, life of invention, or depth of judge- taigne's but are, if anything, anti- ment." Montaignian. Especially in their 1597 form, His style enacts this rejection of human- they are aphoristic, staccato, assertive, hor- ism. Its harshness is a way of announcing tatory, abrasive. his contempt for Ciceronian flatulence- This brings us to style. his commitment to weight of matter rather Morris Croll wrote the classic study of than to choiceness of phrase. 16th-century prose style. He calls Mon- taigne's style "libertine" and Bacon's "Taci- oes this mean that the early essay tean." Libertine sentences slither along D abandons rhetoric? Absolutely not. It from phrase to phrase with no proper end- means, first, that the early essay substitutes ing. They are just what you would expect one kind of rhetoric for another. Since the from writing that uses quotations promis- new kind of rhetoric is unconventional and cuously and refuses to organize itself. "Taci- thus unfamiliar, it means, second, that the tean" comes from the name of the Roman early essay seeks to give the impression of historian Tacitus. Tacitus was curt to the novelty. And since the impression of nov- point of obscurity, and his name has the elty depends on the use of formulas that are same root as English "taciturn." That too is unfamiliar and therefore not obvious to the appropriate. In their first edition, Bacon's reader, it means, third, that the early essay Essayes are curt and businesslike. Not a seems to create the illusion of being un- word wasted. Time is money. studied and spontaneous. It pretends to In fact both Montaigne and Bacon were spring either from the freely associating reacting not only against the oration but imagination of the author or from the rigid also against the rhetorical exhibition of the grammar of the world of things. periodic sentence. In the earlier Renais- There is a formula for such a style: "ors sance, Cicero was the preeminent model celare artem," art that conceals art. Mon- for such writing. His sentences make lan- taigne announces: "The way of speaking guage into a kind of sound sculpture, that I like is a simple and natural speech, whose closest English equivalent is found the same on paper as on the lips. . . far re- in the elegantly figured prose of John Mil- moved from affectation, free, loose, and ton's Areopagitica. bold." The statement is charming, but it is Montaigne and Bacon, however, were demonstrably false. Both Montaigne and anti-Ciceronian. In "Of the Education of Bacon revised their essays over and over Children," Montaigne recalls, "At the again. The lack of artifice is an illusion cre- height of Cicero's eloquence many were ated by years of effort. moved to admiration; but Cato merely I think we have some chains around laughed at it. . . . I would have the subject Proteus. Now let us begin to vex him. predominate, and so fill the imagination of The first edition of Montaigne's Essais him who listens that he shall have no re- appeared in 1580. It lacked the present membrance of the words." And again, in Book 111. Another, moderately augmented "Of Books": "To confess the truth edition appeared in 1582. A third version, boldly. . . [Cicero's] manner of writing with a new book (incorrectly labeled seems to me irksome.. . . If I spend an "Book V") and with major revisions and hour reading him. . . , I find oftenest only additions, appeared in 1588. Finally, Mon- wind." taigne's famous "fille d'alliance," Marie de Bacon put the same idea in terms of res Goumay, issued a posthumous edition in and verba, in terms, that is, of meaning and 1595, which with further major changes hot air. In the Advancement of Learning he was the basis of standard editions of the observes that the Ciceronian humanists Essais until the 20th century. searched "more after wordes than matter, The record shows that Montaigne was a and more after the choisenesse of the familiar type, the literary neurotic who can Phrase, and the round and cleane compo- never let his works alone, even after they sition of the sentence, and the sweet falling are published. In general, as he revised, the of the clauses. . . than after the weight of self-revelation of the essays became more

WQ AUTUMN 1990 THE ESSAY

overt. That is, the more clothes he put on, praved agnostic of the truth of the Christian the more he dressed up, the more he ex- religion. At his father's request, Montaigne posed himself as a man of conflicts. translated it from Latin into French. Bacon's first 10 essays may be said to Sebond's work is the culmination of a initiate literary minimalism. They seem to long tradition of pious fatuity about the consist chiefly of sayings from his common- Book of Nature, and once his father was place book. The Renaissance would have safely in the ground, Montaigne decon- called the sayings "flowers" or "sentences." structed it. The deconstruction was so dev- Bacon's strategy may owe something to the astating that by the end, very little basis re- hugely successful collection of aphorisms mained for believing in God, or design in made by Erasmus-the Adagia-but Eras- Nature, or in anything else. Shakespeare's mus could never resist the temptation to Hamlet seems to have read the Apology, gild every aphorism with a commentary. In since he quotes from it when he observes the first edition of the Essayes, Bacon offers that the earth is a pestilent congregation of his flowers plain. vapors and man a quintessence of dust. When you think about them, Hamlet's ike Montaigne, Bacon revised compul- quotations are appropriate. Long before L sively. By 1625, the 10 original essays Hamlet began questioning the state of Den- had grown to 58 plus an incomplete 59th. mark, Montaigne's world had been made The essays also grew obese over the years. problematic by the religious controversies "Of Studies," for example, roughly doubled of the Reformation and the collapse of train size between 1597 and 1625. ditional verities. This is what the Apology Montaigne's revisions made his essays for Raimond Sebond is all about. The St. richer. Bacon's revisions seem to me to Bartholomew's Day Massacre, which oc- have been less happy. As his essays enlarge, curred just eight years before the first edi- they lose the taciturnity-the aggressive tion of the Essais, magnified the shock. If minimalism-that is the principal source of Christians who proclaim themselves mod- their power. The sentences become more els of piety can establish their position only sequential, more official, more pontifical, by slaughtering those Christians who dis- more-shall I say it?-like sentences in an agree with them, what evidence is there oration. that reason has any place at all in religion? In addition to making the essays more In short, a world that seemed solid, reason- official, Bacon tried to give them philo- able, and self-evident had shown itself to be sophical status by suggesting that they were none of the above. There were times when part of the grand philosophical scheme out- it seemed to Montaigne like a pestilent con- lined in the Novum Organum. By calling his tagion of vapors. John Donne makes the essays "civil and moral," Bacon was pro-- same point in familiar lines from his first posing them as contributions to the social Anniversary on the death of Elizabeth sciences-specifically, to politics and eth- Drury: ics. In my own opinion, which conflicts with conventional wisdom in this case, the And new philosophy calls all in doubt, connection of the essays to the program of The element of fire is quite put out. . . the Novum Organum was an afterthought Tis all in pieces, all coherence gone, intended to enhance their dignity. All just supply, and all relation. Whatever the case, philosophy is directly relevant to the early history of the Historians argue about whether Montaigne essay. In Representative Men Emerson was a fideist or a skeptic. The terms are so properly calls Montaigne "the skeptic." The close that we need not quibble. The fideist first essay that Montaigne wrote is also the believes that God and His ways are utterly longest, most ponderous essay of the lot- beyond human comprehension and that Montaigne's Apology for Raimond Sebond, therefore we must accept whatever law or which is essay 12 in Book 11. Sebond was a custom the local tyrant tells us to believe. late medieval theologian who wrote a The skeptic systematically demonstrates Theologia Naturalis showing how design in that man is deceived both by sense-evi- Nature will convince even the most de- dence and by reason.

WQ AUTUMN 1990 THE ESSAY

If the skeptics are correct, the proper certainty. The basic question of the Essais is stance for the philosopher is to doubt ev- "What do I know" -"Que scais-je?"This is erything. This is not nihilism but a reserv- Montaigne's motto, and as we learn in the ing of judgment, a determination to be a Apology, he inscribed it under a picture of a detached observer rather than a partisan. pair of scales symbolizing ataraxy-the bal- The Greek term for such detachment is ancing of alternatives. ataraxia, which means "calmness" and, by Montaigne's innumerable quotations extension, a refusal to become involved. are intended as part of the answer to the Montaigne explains in the Apology: "This at- question of what we know. Andre Gide re- titude of [the skeptics] . . . accepting all ob- marks in an often-quoted essay that they iects without inclina- are there "to show tion and consent, that man is always leads them to their and everywhere the Ataraxy, which is a same." Unfortunately, settled condition of the quotations do not life, exempt from the show this. As Michael emotions that we ex- Hall observes, they perience . . . . They are inconsistent. Evi- are even exempted dently, when you col- thereby from zeal lect several centuries' about their own doc- worth of wisdom on trine." At its coolest, a topic, you do not ataraxy produces the get a philosophy, you spectator who views get a chain of contra- life ironically and dictory platitudes refuses to become in- reminiscent of Polo- volved. However, nius's advice to his spectators are also son Laertes. outsiders, and for Turning inward outsiders, detach- was no more helpful ment sometimes be- than consulting the comes a perverse age. When he form of engagement. turned inward, Mon- Hamlet's detachment taigne discovered not is announced by his universality but infi- black suit and his re- nite variety. He was fusal to be drawn into forced to conclude the Gemutlichkeit of that the self is as vari- the Danish court. It is ous, as elusive, and as closer to despair than many-shaped as the to freedom from pas- world. sion, and its result is Without fully un- not a series of essavs derstanding what he enacting the process was doing. Mon- of self-realization but soliloquies in which taigne was searching for a central "I"- the speaker alternates between the what Descartes would later call the cogito, thoughts of murder and suicide. and as a matter of fact, Montaigne power- This takes us to the dark outer edge of fully influenced the Cartesian project. Des- the early essay. It is a darkness that was ac- cartes admitted that we may be dreaming knowledged by Montaigne but one that lies, the world, but he insisted that the cogito is for the most part, beyond the emotional beyond doubt-so solid, in fact, as to be the boundaries he set for himself. rock on which everything else can be built. Having been led by his own analysis to But Montaigne was more radical than Des- doubt the world as he had conceived of it, cartes. He concluded from his inquiry that Montaigne turned inward in the quest for there is no rock. There is only an endless

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series of illusions. Early in the Essais, he well-defined shape, namely that of an ora- announces, "We must remove the mask tion. The initiative method is, by contrast, from things as from persons." He adds that suggestive. As Bacon explains: "The initia- 'being truthful is the beginning of virtue," tive intimates. The magisterial requires that but his great discovery is that man is as Pro- what is told should be believed; the initia- tean as the world: "Every man has within tive that it should be examined." Like Mon- himself the entire human condition." Later taigne, Bacon was strongly attracted to still, Montaigne uses metaphors of the skepticism. He admitted: "The doctrine of arational to describe his discovery of him- those who have denied that certainty could self: "I have seen no monster or miracle on be attained at all has some agreement with earth more evident than myself. . . the bet- my way of proceeding." Although he arter I know myself, the more my gued that empiricism offers an escape from misshapenness astonishes me, and the less uncertainty, he believed that most of the re- do I comprehend myself." ceived knowledge of his age was false-the In the famous introduction to "Of Re- result of "errors and vanities," which he penting," the second essay in Book 111, we categorized using the metaphor of Idols: read: Idols of the tribe, Idols of the cave, Idols of the marketplace, Idols of the theater. Others shape the man; I narrate him, and Bacon did not spend much time on reli- offer to view a special one, very ill-made, gion; perhaps he found it beyond-or be- and whom, could I fashion him over, I neath-the reach of reason. He never at- should certainly make very different from what he is; but there is no doing that. The tacked religion, but his heavy-handed world is but perpetual motion; all things condescension resembles thinly disguised in it move incessantly.. . . I can not an- contempt. On the other hand, the collapse chor my subject; he is always restless and during the 16th century of doctrines that staggering with an unsteadiness natural to had been accepted as verities for thousands him. I catch him in the state that he is in at of years fascinated him. The prime example the moment when I turn my attention to was the toppling of Ptolemaic astronomy him. I do not paint his being, I paint his by Copernican, but astronomy was only passing-not the passing from one age to one of many areas in which received another. . . but from day to day, from mo- knowledge crumbled when it was put to ment to moment. . . . Writers commune with the world with some special and pe- the test. Each failure of a traditional theory culiar badge; I am the first to do this with was a demonstration of the validity of the my general being, as Michel de Mon- theory of Idols. taigne. his kind of skepticism looks forward to Here, I think, we have the authentic note of. T a fully developed scientific method. It the Essais and of the essay as a genre. The underlies Sir Thomas Browne's Pseudodox- essay is the enactment of a process by ia Epidemics, better known as Vulgar Er- which the soul realizes itself even as it is rors, which systematically exposes many su- passing from day to day and from moment perstitions of the sort deconstructed in to moment. It is the literary response to a Montaigne's Apology. The Pseudodoxia world that has become problematic. In its went through six editions in Browne's life- complexity Montaigne's text works to dis- time. In matters of religion, Browne was a guise this fact, but it has always been an fideist. Montaigne ends the Apology with open secret. the remark that man "will be lifted up if Now let us return to Bacon. If Mon- God by special favor lends him his hand; he taigne's essays suggest how the mind feels will be lifted up when, abandoning and re- as it seeks by constant adjustments to find a nouncing his own means, he lets himself be path through a labyrinth, Bacon's method upheld by purely heavenly means." is to assert the existence of a path whether Browne writes in Religio Medici: "Me one is there or not. In the De Agumentis thinkes there be not impossibilities enough Scientiarum Bacon calls his method "initia- in Religion for an active faith. . . . I love to tive'' in contrast to "magisterial." The mag- lose myself in a mystery, to pursue my rea- isterial method is used for teaching. It has a son to an Oh Altitude. . . . I learned of Ter-

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tullian, Certum est quia impossible est." is a winding stair; those who many give Bacon's dedication of the 10 essays of hostages to fortune; the stage is more be- 1597 claims only that they are "medici- holden to Love than the life of man; nable." The dominant meaning is simply wounds cannot be cured without search- that they are useful-they expose various ing; a mixture of lie doth ever add pleasure. errors and vanities and provide bearings for Is this Realpolitik or despair? Whatever a world in flux. But the term "medicinable" it is, the message of the Essayes is, "So be is a metaphor, and its implications invite it." That's how things are in the real world, comment. According to the metaphor, the and that's how they always will be. reader needs to be cured. In other words, Let us recall one other legacy from there is some kind of metaphysical plague Montaigne and Bacon. Both men were au- going around. It is a plague of doubt. thors. Therefore, it follows that, having in- Jimmy Carter felt the same thing about vented a form, both proceeded to muck it 20th-century America and, in one of his up. As we have seen, neither could let an more disastrous orations, called it a mal- essay alone once it had been written. This aise. If Bacon had been around, he would habit is arguably a virtue in Montaigne and have called it a failure of nerve and would not fatal in Bacon, but its implications are have voted for Ronald Reagan. Bacon's es- ominous. The constant revision implies a says are intended to be a cure for social change in the conception of the essay from malaise. They are medicinable because the enactment of a process to something they distill wisdom gained from life in what that suspiciously resembles literature-per- Bacon's heirs persist in calling "the real haps an oration propped up like a scare- world." crow on the scaffolding of its dispositio. For the same reason, the essays often To turn the essay into literature is to do- have the quality of a pep talk by the coach mesticate it-to make it not very different of a losing team. The strategy is to create from a letter by Seneca or one of Plutarch's what might be called a "rhetoric of assur- moralia. Recall Florio's use of the word ance." Accordingly, in the first edition, the "discourse" as a rough synonym for "es- sentences are chiefly commands and asser- say"; The usage is pregnant with future con- tions. Omission of understood words (zeug- fusion. John Locke's Essay Concerning Hu- ma) gives the sentences a telegraphic qual- man Understanding is splendid philosophy. ity reinforced by the paring away of It might even be called an "essay" on the modifiers, modifying phrases, and subordi- basis of its being an exploration of its sub- nate clauses. Further economy is achieved ject, but if it is so called, any work of philos- by parallelism and balance. The word order ophy short of Nietzsche's Thus Spake Zara- is standard. The speaker knows what he thustra can be called an essay. Its proper wants to say and says it directly. The main title is obviously "discourse," maybe units are set off by paragraph marks- Abhandlung. which Bacon uses as we would use "bul- To turn the essay into literature is also to lets" today. The modem term is appropri- encourage authors to display beautiful-or ate. Bacon wants each sentence to have the delicately anguished, or nostalgic, or force of a pistol shot: "0 Reade not to con- ironic, or outraged, or extroverted, or mis- tradict, not to believe, but to waigh and anthropic-souls, or, alternatively, to create consider. Some books are to bee tasted, prose confections, oxyrnorons of languid others to bee swallowed, and some few to rhythms and fevered images. bee chewed and digested. . . . Reading Yet despite all such temptations, the es- maketh a full man, conference a readye say has tended to remain true to its heri- man, and writing an exacte man.. . . His- tage. I mean not that essays are products of tories make men wise, Poets wittie: the what you might call "troubled times" but Mathematickes subtle, natural1 Phylosophie that the essay was born from a moment of deepe: Moral grave, Logicke and profound, even terrifying, doubt, and that Rhetoricke able to contend." its rhetoric has often been adopted by au- The sentences often have an edge of thors who have sensed the power of the cynicism, of Realpolitik, reminding us that forces of dissolution. Matthew Arnold enti- Bacon had read his Machiavelli: Ambition tled his most famous collection of essays

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Culture and Anarchy, tor number 420, is directly traceable to the and Joan Didion tangling of human motive with the world named her first col- that science has revealed. It is all the more lection from the striking because it is not what you would apocalyptic image in expect from an 18th-century spectator: Yeats's poem "The Second Coming": If. . . we contemplate those wide Fields of Slouching Towards Ether, that reach in height as far from Sat- Bethlehem. urn as to the fixt stars, and run abroad Essays are written almost to an infinitude, our Imagination finds its Capacity filled with so immense a on an infinite variety of subjects from infi- Prospect. . . [it] puts itself upon the nitely various poin~-ofview.-However, time Stretch to comprehend it. But if we yet and time again, the essay reverts to its origi- rise higher, and consider the fixt Stars as nal forms-on the one hand to the Mon- so many Oceans of Flame and still dis- taignian enactment of the process of self- cover new Finnaments and new Lights, realization in a world without order: "I do that are sunk further in those unfathom- not paint [my subject's] being, I paint his able Depths of Ether, so as not to be seen passing. . . from day to day, from moment by the strongest of our Telescopes, we are to moment." And on the other hand, to Ba- lost in . . . a Labyrinth of Suns and Worlds, conian assertiveness in a world that threat- and confounded with the Immensity and magnificence of Nature. . . . Let a Man try ens to reduce assertions to black comedy: to conceive the different bulk of an Ani- ''I will do such things. . . what they are, I mal, which is twenty, from another which know not, but they shall be the terrors of is a hundred times less than a Mite, or to the earth." compare, in his Thoughts, a length of a The 18th century approved the idea of thousand Diameters of the hrth, with that cool detachment from the malaise of the of a Million, and he will quickly discover times. Addison and Steele are seemingly that he has no . . . Measure in his Mind, ad- "men of sentiment" in The Tatler. Under justed to such extraordinary Degrees of the surface, however, lies the old motif of Grandeur or Minuteness. The Understand- ing, indeed, opens an infinite Space on ev- the search for the self. Steele concludes The ery side of us, but the Imagination, after a Tatler with the image of the world as laby- few faint efforts, is immediately at a stand, rinth: ''I must confess, it has been a most and finds her self swallowed up in the im- exquisite pleasure to me.. . to enquire into mensity of the Void that sm-rounds it. the Seeds of Vanity and Mectation, to lay before my Readers the Emptiness of Ambi- At the beginning of the 19th century, the tion: In a Word) to trace Humane Life spectator becomes a refugee. Charles through all its Mazes and Recesses." The- Lamb's Elia solves his problems by infantile Spectator has even more obvious relations regression. He is no more ashamed of this to its ancestry. A spectator is someone who habit than Montaigne was of revealing in- withholds assent-a skeptic, an observer) ner monstrosities. Regression is the secret an outsider. This is exactly the point made of his modest success. Lamb explains: "The by Addison in the introduction to the new impressions of inhncy had burnt into him, journal: "I live in the World rather as a and he resented the impertinence of man- Spectator of Mankind, than as one of the hood. These were weaknesses; but such as species. , . . I have acted in all the Parts of they were, they are a key to explicate some my Life as a looker-on, which is the Charac- of his writings." ter I intend to preserve in this Paper." The addiction of Elia to medicinable For the most part, The Spectator pre- fantasies undoubtedly objectifies feelings of serves its detachment, but occasionally his creator. Charles Lamb went through a there is a powerful updraft of emotion. The bout of madness himself and lived with a terror-or the malaise-of the world sister who had murdered their mother in a makes people want to be spectators, but as fit of insanity. But the fantasies don't quite Werner Heisenberg has shown, spectators work. Reality is always breaking in. In get tangled up in the things they are observ- "Dream Children: A Reverie," Elia recalls ing. The following comment, from Specta- an interview with two imaginary children

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named Alice and John. The children ask in the immensity of the void that surrounds about their dead mother, also named Alice it." It also anticipates the infinite library of and also imaginary: Babel imagined in the 20th century by Jorge Luis Borges. . . . suddenly, turning to Alice, the soul of In the later 19th century, the essay un- the first Alice looked out at her eyes with derwent a mutation. The prose poem can such a reality of re-presentment, that I be- be defined as literature's revenge on the es- came in doubt which of them stood there say-an essay in which style has become before me, or whose that bright hair was; substance. You can see the beginning of the and while I stood gazing, both of the chil- prose poem as early as Sir Thomas dren gradually grew fainter to my view, receding, and still receding, till nothing at Browne's Urn Burial. The body of the ani- last but two mournful features were seen mal begins to push through the chrysalis in the uttermost distance, which, without with De Quincey's Confessions, and it un- speech, strangely impressed upon me the furls its iridescent wings and flaps them in effects of speech: "We are not of Alice, nor Walter Pater's Renaissance. But the prose of thee, nor are we children at all. . . . We poem appears first in full lepidopteran are only what might have been. . . ." glory in France: in Baudelaire's Le spleen de Paris and Rimbaud's Les illuminations. "Dream Children" is affecting, but it is From there it migrates back to the English- almost literature. Emerson comes closer, I speaking world. We are reminded by Wil- think, than Lamb does to the scope and liam Gass's On Being Blue of its flight brilliance-and the breezy solipsism-of across the vastness of the Atlantic Ocean to Montaigne. Speaking of the achievements the New World. of Plato, Shakespeare, and Milton, Emerson One other modern development of the creates one of the great literary puns: "I genre must be recognized. It is the topical dare; I also will essay essay-brief, pointed, often amusing, and to be." Writing an es- closely related to a theme, event, or person- say is an exercise in ality of current interest. Bacon's essay "Of self-fashioning. Friendship" is a prototype for the form, It The sentiment is did not begin by being topical, but in its pure Montaigne. In final, much-augmented form it commemo- Nature, Emerson ex- rates his lifelong attachment to Sir Tobie pands the image: "Ev- Matthew. "Of Plantations" is explicitly topi- ery man's condition cal, being a consideration of issues raised is. a .solution in hiero- by the Virginia colony. The topical essay glyphic to those en- also owes much to Addison and Steele, quiries he would ptit That is not surprising, because its native on. He acts it as life, habitat is the newspaper. The Homeric cat- before he apprehends it as truth." "Experi- alogue of its modern practitioners includes ence" recreates the terror of a problematic Art Buchwald, Mary McGrory, Ralph Kil- world: "Where do we find ourselves? In a patrick, David Broder, Russell Baker, Carl series of which we do not know the ex- Rowan, James Reston, William Raspbemy, tremes, and believe that it has none. We Ellen Goodman, and George Will. This cat- wake and find ourselves on a stair; there alogue moves us to the present, which is, are stairs below us, which we seem to have after all, the main interest of any essay, in- ascended; there are stairs above us, many a cluding an essay on one, which go upward and out of sight. . . . the essay. I suppose All things swim and glitter. Our life is not so most modern essays much threatened as our perception. Ghost- are Baconian and like, we glide through nature, and should Addisonian, but the not know our place again." Montaignian essay is Emerson's title-"Experience"-in- still impressively vokes Baconian empiricism only to reject alive. it. The metaphor of the infinite stair recalls Much scholarship Addison's image of the self "swallowed up appears in the form

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of-you are correct-the critical essay. fiction is possible in societies that change his, of course, raises the question of what slowly. Maybe that is why the novel was the word "article" refers to. William Gas popular in the 18th and 19th centuries. But has solved the problem: "The essay," he who, today, knows the difference between wntes, "is obv~ouslythe opposite of that the real, and what was real, and what is awful object, 'the article' . . . [whose] ap- not-or not yet-real? pearance is proof of the presence, nearby, If you think about the novel, you will of the Professor, the way one might, per- see that it has taken paths in the 20th cen- ceiving a certain sort of speckled egg, infer tury that lead in the direction of the essay. that its mother was a certain sort of speck- One kind of novel moves toward a record led bird." of hallucinations-I think of Joyce's Finne- Speckled birds aside, many of the clas- guns Wake, William Gaddis's The Recogni- sic works of our age are essays. I am think- tions, John Barth's Giles Goat-Boy, Another ing, for example, of Wallace Stevens's "The type of novel records a special type of hallu- Noble Rder and the Sound of Words," LES- cination-a vision of a future presumed to lie Fiedler's "Come Back to the Raft Again, be real-Erewhon, Brave New World, 1984. Huck, Honey," Roland Barthes's "Eiffel Yet another type aspires to the condition of Tower," Tom Wolfe's "Kandy-Kolored Tan- news, for example, In Cold Blood. There is genne-Flake Streamline Baby," Martin Hei- also the tendency, apparently irresistible degger's "The Thing," R. Buckminster since Joyce's Portrait of the Artist, for novel- Fuller's "Grunch of Giants," Werner Hei- ists to pack their work with essays spoken senberg's "Abstraction in Modern Sci- by characters or by a figure whom, in deference," and Robert Nozick's "Fiction," ence to the fondness of the present age for which is a non-fictional essay written by a critical terms, I will label "the intrusive au- fict~onalcharacter thor." Some novels, in fact, seem to consist who is still asking the of almost nothing but essays. Given these / s\kllr A j ,+ Emersonian ques- tendencies in the novel, why not write es- tion: "Must there be a says from the beginning? top floor somewhere, But I would like to end with some more a world that is itself, challenging notion. I do not think we live not created in some- in a solid, empirical world of the sort Ba- one else's fiction? Or con dangled tantalizingly in front of readers can the hierarchy go of The Advancement of Learning even as he + * on infinitely?'' demonstrated that it was an illusion. We Nozick's question live in a world of changes and shadows, a seems to me to capture the fascination of world where the real dissolves as we reach the essay for our time. An essay is not an. for it and meets us as we turn away. It is a oration or an Abhandlung or a prose poem. world of mazes and illusions and meta: It is "essaying to be," in Emerson's conceit, phors and idols and stairways that proceed and "thought thinking about itself' in Hei- upward and downward to infinity. degger's. It is the enactment of the process We live at a time much like the 16th of accommodation between the world and century. It is a time of immense destructive the "I," and thus it is consciousness realiz- and constructive change, and there is no ing itself. way of knowing whether the destructive or A few years ago I wrote a book of essays the constructive forces are more powerful. called Entering the Maze: Identity and It is a time when the Change in Modern Culture. The title and world looks like an subtitle did not take much thought; they unweeded garden seemed inevitable. I might have written a and doubt is a condi- novel. I was never even tempted to do so. tion of conscious- TO choose fiction is to assert that you know ness, The essay is as the difference between fiction and fact, uniquely suited to ex- while I wanted to dramatize the constant pressing this contem- redrawing of the line between the two that porary mode of be- is taking place in modern culture. Maybe ing-in-culture as it

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was when Montaigne began writing the does not exist, then you might legitimately Apology for Raimond Sebond. ask whether that which the essay enacts But what is the essay? If there is such a can be said to exist. The epigraph of the last thing as an essential essay-a real Pro- Spectator is from Persius: "Respue quod teus-it changes into so many shapes so non es," "Throw away what you are not." It unlike the real one that it requires an act of is good advice, but it assumes that, after faith to believe the you throw everything superfluous away, shapes merely vana- something is left. tions on a single un- If you have bound Proteus and all the derlying identity. For changes have occurred, and if he returns to this reason, of course, his own shape, he will have already an- Proteus adopted the swered your first question: Something is strategy of change in there. But is it? Maybe you are seeing only the first place. People another counterfeit, another Idol. who lack faith will That's the way things are, and the essay turn away convinced is the most expressive lit era^ form of our that nothing is there. age because it-comes closest to being what We, however, will remember the advice of all literature is supposed to be-an imita- Cyrene: "The more he turns himself into tion of the real. You can vex the essay and different shapes, the more you, my son, drive it to extremities. Maybe the result will must hold on to those strong chains." be nothing. Your action will be doubtful, Holding on may be important. If the es- but in the real world, to get a piece of the say is an enactment of the creation of the action, you, however doubtful, must follow self-if we must essay to be-and the essay the advice: "Hold on."

Going Global? Bargain Books, Publisher's Overdocks Over 3,000 Titles at up to 8070 Off in our Fkee Catalog Choose from recent overstocks, remainders, imports and reprints from all major publishers-over 3,000 titles including about 600 new arrivals each month, most at savings of 50% to 80%! Here you'll find Politics, Biography, History, Fic- tlon, Art, L~terature, I ,- Health, Mov~es,Nature, Some companies will be I Cooking and Garden~ng 1 winners, some losers. I and much more. Eve~y- 1 th~ngfrom yesterday's best Europe 1992: An American I sellers to t~tlesyou never Perspective tells U.S. businesses ; ------. what they need to know now to ; plan for a successful future. I 1 $31.95 cloth I $12.95 paper I I I at bookstores or from I BROOKINGS 1 PO. Box 270, Washington, DC 20055 ; (202) 797-6258 I Authors.. . - LOOKING THE MYTH OF MA AMERICA'S DECLINE Legding the World Economy -!"to the 19905 Henry R. Nau Learn how to have The Myth of your book published. America's Decline Leading the World Economy into the 1990s You are invited to send for a free illus- HENRY R. NAU, The George Washington trated guidebook which explains how University your book can be published, promoted "Henry Nau applied ideas to policy with and marketed. Whether your subiect is effectiveness while in office and he does fiction, non-fiction, poetry, scientific so again in this important book. The scholarly, specialized (even controver- theorists of American decline need to sial), this handsome 40,page guidebook be challenged, and he does so. But the advocates of American engagement WIII show you how to arrange for prompt need to see that they have their work publication. Unp~tblished authors, espe- cut out for them and what the work is. cially, will find this booklet valuable and He does this too-well and clearly.'' ~nformative.For your free copy, or more -George P. Shultz. information, fill In and mail the coupon "A learned and important contribution to Vantage Press, lnc., Dept. RD-6 to the scholarly debate on the conduct 516 W. 34th St., New York, N.Y. 10001. of United States and international economic policies over the past half century."-Paul Kennedy, New York Review of Books. "Henry Nau's arguments about purposes, choice, and the role of markets in policy coordination deserve wide \ Valuable - attention. No one else has articulated so well a pur osive and market-oriented critique OLtructuralist perspectives on the world political economy." uidebook -Robert 0.Keohane, Harvard University This pathbreaking book challenges the pessimists who focus on the decline bf American power by arguing that America's position in the world economy depends on how America defines its ----m--m------m political identity and what specific 1 VANTAGE PRESS, In=. Dept. RD-6 1 economic policies it chooses. 1 516 West 34th Street, New York, N.Y. 10001 1 1990 448 pp. $29.95 1 please send me a tree copy 01 your gu~debook Price and publication date is sub'ect to chunge 1 called "To the Author ~n Search of a Publ~sher'.1 and good on1 in the d.~. I To order, send checior money order to: Department MG To order by phone usin ma.or credit cards, please call (212) 678-73d0 ext. 7106 ADDRESS I I Oxford University Press 200 Madison Avenue New York, NY 10016 AMERICA

America's mus- " cular response to the Iraqi in- DECLINE? vasion of Kuwait has temporarily stilled all talk of American by Richard Rosecrance decline. Yet the national alarm over the expense of Operation Desert Shield, the urgent demands for more help from U.S. allies, and the extraordinary enlist- ii ment of Soviet support at Helsinki are all reminders of how much the world has changed. While Ameri- ca's military strength remains much greater than that of its allies, its economic strength does not. No longer is the United States willing-or, many would say, able-to shoulder the world's burdens. Does this mean that it is on the same long, downward slope of history that earlier great powers have traveled? Is its decline only relative? Or has it actually emerged vic- , % torious from the trials of the postwar period? These are the questions that scholars, politicians, and others have been debating during the past few years. As the turn-of-the-century cartoon on this page suggests, the debate is not entirely new. Published after the Spanish-American War, just as the United States was taking its place on the world stage, the cartoon warned against assuming the burdens of empire. Today, the costs of U.S. commitments abroad are still the chief issue. Here, Richard Rosecrance reviews the recent debate. He fears that the United States is indeed slipping. But unlike the great powers of the past, Rosecrance believes, the United States has an opportunity to renew itself.

here are today three funda- tion has experienced its ups and downs, its mental views of the Ameri- position has not appreciably changed. The can future. One is that the third view, which I share, is that the United United States, like 19th- States has demonstrably declined but that it century Britain before it, can and will come back. has lapsed into a terminal The "dec1inists"-a group which in- conditionT of economic lethargy and de- cludes academicians such as David Calleo cline. A second view is that while the na- and politicians such as Colorado's former

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governor Richard D. Lamm-point out produced 82 percent of the nation's televi- that while shortly after World War I1 the sion sets, 88 percent of its cars and 90 per- United States accounted for 45 to 50 percent of its machine tools, [in 19881 they cent of world gross national product made hardly any TVs, and gave up half the (GNP), it now claims only 21 percent, and domestic machine-tool market and 30 per- its share could soon shrink below 16 percent of the auto market. Even in a new in- cent. Part of this decline was to be expected dustry like semiconductors, this country's as Western Europe, Japan, and East Asia re- world market share has shrunk to 15 per- covered after World War 11. But the declin- cent from 85 percent in 1980." ists argue that the reversal of American for- When America lost its lead in cars, con- tunes is greater than these figures indicate. sumer electronics, and advanced machine From being the leading industrial exporting tools, people consoled themselves with the country, the United States has fallen to third thought that the United States was tops in place behind Germany and Japan. It has finance and services. But in each realm Ja- run a trade deficit every year since 1975. pan and other nations have caught up. (Today's current account deficit is about Now, there is not a single American bank $109 billion.) To satisfy Americans' hunger among the world's top 10; all of them are for imports of everything from autos and Japanese. In biotechnology, civilian air- mineral water to machine tools and com- craft, and advanced semiconductors and puters, the country has become the world's computers, Japan is beating at the U.S. largest debtor. U.S. foreign debt now ex- door. Even the American farmer's once un- ceeds $600 billion and at current rates will assailable boast that he was the world's reach $1 trillion during the early 1990s. All most efficient producer of food is being told, the national debt-which the Reagan challenged. Wheat growers in Argentina administration ran up to unprecedented are already more efficient than their Ameri- heights-and the private debt accumulated can counterparts, and farmers in Australia by U.S. companies and consumers has and Thailand are rapidly improving. soared to some $7 trillion. That represents The prophets of American decline be- nearly 140 percent of the nation's total an- lieve that Yale historian Paul Kennedy's nual output, or more than one-third of somber study, The Rise and Fall of the Great world GNP. Thus, even if America regains- Powers (1987), foretells the American fu- its equilibrium in trade in five years, which ture. They point out that intelligent Dutch- it may be able to do if it is moderately men of the 17th century and prescient lucky, ballooning interest and dividend pay- 19th-century Britons were well aware of ments to foreigners could wipe out much the plight of their nations yet were unable of its progress. to halt the decline. What awaits the United In industry after industry, U.S. compa- States in the 21st century? Kennedy writes: nies have lost their lead. The Wall Street "The only answer to the question increas- Journal recently put the matter with stark ingly debated by the public of whether the clarity: "While U.S. manufacturers in 1969 United States can preserve its existing posi-

Richard Rosecrance, a former Wilson Center Fellow, is professor of political science and associate director of the Center for International and Strategic Affairs at the University of California, Los Angeles. Born in Milwaukee, he received a B.A. (1952) from Swarthmore College and a Ph.D. (1957) from Harvard. He is the author of several books, including The Rise of the Trading State (1986). This essay is adapted from his America's Economic Resurgence: A Bold New Strategy (1990). Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.

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tion is 'no'-for it simply has not been world. The latent, given to any one society to remain perma- unmobilized popula- nently ahead of all the others, because that tions that passively would imply a freezing of the differentiated yielded to British imperi pattern of growth rates, technological ad- alism during the 19th cen- vance, and military developments which tury have been trans- has existed since time immemorial." formed into prickly and tough new nations. Small, he second school of thought on formerly weak powers are American decline offers a much now quite influential- T more reassuring view. The thinkers or even, as in the case of in this camp maintain either that the United Iraq, threatening-as States has not declined or that any decline are such new "players" is temporary and explicable, harmless, or on the international easily remedied. [See box, p. 72.1 scene as multina- Some conclude that America has suf- tional corporations fered only minor reverses and that there is and multilateral insti- no project it cannot accomplish if citizens tutions. Even the stron- are willing to pay for it through new taxes. gest power cannot al- In Can America Compete? (1984), Robert Z. ways expect to get its Lawrence of the Brookings Institution way in such an interde- speaks for a group that maintains that the pendent world. What mat- manufacturing sector is as vibrant as ever. And even if manufacturing has declined, others argue, the United States can compete as effectively as ever in services. Still others observe that there is nothing dra- matically new in America's relative economic situation. During the mid-1960s the United States produced about 24 percent of world GNP; today the figure is about 22 percent. In fact, the U.S. share of world GNP is not much smaller than it was in 1938. To the degree that America has measur- ably declined, defenders of the status quo argue, this is because of, not despite, Ameri- can policy. Thus, Harvard's Joseph Nye 3898.John Bull meets Uncle Sam. notes that, during the late 1940s, "rather than seeking hegemony over its allies, the ters now, in this view, is not military and United States opted to stimulate their eco- economic power but the power to per- nomic revival and create a strategic part- suade. nership balancing Soviet power." Furthermore, the argument goes, if the Still another explanation advanced for United States has declined, so has Japan. waning American influence is that we now During the 1960s Japan grew by more than live in a more complicated and obdurate 10 percent per year. Since then it has been

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averaging around four percent annual imum of 6 percent of GNP in 1983 to only !growth. The result is a comfortable sort of 3.5 percent today-less than that sustained "convergence." Harvard's Samuel Hun- easily by Japan during the mid-1970s. In tington writes: "There is little reason why any event, the argument goes, the deficit the Japanese economy as a whole should will continue to decline for the next few grow much faster than the U.S. economy, years. Robert Eisner, a prominent econo- and there is little reason why an individual mist from Northwestern University, insists U.S. worker should be significantly more that the deficit is actually a plus, a stimulus productive than a Japanese worker. On that we cannot do without. such indices of economic performance, Not surprisingly, those who deny that one should expect long-term convergence America has declined believe it can con- among countries at similar levels of eco- tinue to shoulder substantial military and nomic development and with economies of diplomatic commitments. Since the United comparable complexity." States could afford to devote 10 percent of Converging rates of growth, however, its GNP to national security during the mean that the United States can maintain 1950s and 9 percent during the Kennedy its lead. Discriminate Deterrence (1988), a administration, it can certainly spend 6.5 major study by a panel of experts (includ- percent or perhaps a bit less now that the ing Huntington) convened by the U.S. De- Cold War is over. If the deficit eventually partment of Defense, plots U.S. economic must be cut, a one-third reduction might be growth for the next two decades at 2.6 per- effected simply by imposing, say, a higher cent annually and Japanese growth at 2.8 tax on gasoline. And as Valkry Giscard d'Es- percent. By the year 2010, U.S. GNP will taing, the former president of France, com- reach nearly $8 trillion (in 1986 dollars); mented to the Wall Street Journal, "It's China and Japan will be next at nearly $4 hard to take seriously that a nation has trillion each; the Soviet Union will follow at deep problems if they can be fixed with a $2.9 trillion.* 50-cent-a-gallongasoline tax." Still other writers who are content with A subgroup within the second school American economic performance take a accepts part of the "decline" thesis but be- "so what?" attitude toward decline. In the lieves that the argument has been carried new "one world" economy, U.S. trade defi- too far. Princeton's Aaron Friedberg, for ex- cits with Japan and South Korea don't mat- ample, contends that military spending was ter any more than Maine's trade deficit with not responsible for the decline of the great California. Capital travels freely across na- powers of the past. At worst, defense bur- tional frontiers, and the fortunes of one en- dens accentuated the problems of coun- tity do not mean much so long as the sys- tries already facing economic weakness. tem as a whole works. Friedberg believes that increases in con- Federal budget deficits? As a percentage sumption or in social-welfare spending are of GNP the deficit has declined from a max- at the bottom of most stories of decline, in-

- - 'However, these estimates are unduly favorable to the United cluding that of the United States today. [See States. The assumed Japanese growth rate of 2.8 percent may box, p. 78.1 understate the actual by as much as 1.5 percentage points. The Chinese growth rate starts from a current base of $1.2 trillion, instead of the $600 billion usually employed. And the he third possible perspective on de- Chinese estimates were made before Tiananmen Sauare and the leadership's retreat from reform. More realistic estimates cline, and the one I hold, is that the put Japan at $5.8 trillion in the year 2010, second to the United States has demonstrably de- United States at $7.4 trillion, with China at $3.2 trillion and T the Soviet Union at $3.0 trillion. clined but that it can and will come back.

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The evidence of American decline is ir- allies in Western Europe cannot agree on refutable. In 1929, well before it reaped the many important measures of economic artificial advantage of victory in World War and trade policy. Will a triumphant Japan 11, the United States claimed more than 43 and a resurgent China feel any greater com- percent of world manufacturing produc- pulsion to reach an accommodation with tion. Today, it claims only 22 percent. As- the United States 20 years from now? suming no change in current trends, one In the future, it will take a higher U.S. can foresee a much less comfortable future growth rate-an eminently attainable 3 for the United States than the one outlined percent or more per year-and a dynamic by the Pentagon's experts in Discriminate American marketplace to convince others Deterrence. Twenty years from now, Japan that they need to respond to U.S. policies will be a close second to the United States, and open their economies to foreign trade. with the momentum to pull ahead during To achieve faster growth, however, there the decade of the 2020s. China will have must be a massive change in American pri- ousted the Soviet Union from third place orities. National security must be redefined and will be growing rapidly. And if the Eu- to include the strength and productivity of ropean Community achieves its goal of the economy, which is after all the base on thorough political and economic integra- which military capability rests. Some bud- tion after 1992, it could challenge U.S. lead- get savings from reduced U.S. commit- ership. The resulting multipolar world will ments overseas-plus, perhaps, domestic be a much more uncertain place than to- budget cuts and tax increases-will be day's relatively simple world order. The re- needed to promote an economic resur- sult easily could be a return to the condi- gence that will eventually allow the United tions of the 1930s: not necessarily war but States to return to its leading role on the momentous conflicts over trade and the world stage. creation of hostile tariff blocs. Only a con- If American fortunes are to be revived, tinuously growing American and world the nation's leaders will have to challenge market will prevent such economic con- Americans to renounce the ethic of "bor- flicts. row and spend." Special incentives ought A vast literature exists on what happens to be extended to Americans who save for when a previously dominant economic retirement or for the education of their power declines. Many scholars conclude children. Rampant inflation during the that without a single leader, the interna- 1970s schooled a generation of Americans tional order founders. Rising challengers to buy rather than save, to borrow rather refuse to pay the costs-such as providing than invest. History suggests that great civi- loans or markets to nations in distress-of lizations have been fatally weakened keeping the international economic system through such self-indulgence. David open. The three or four successor nations Landes, the great historian of the Industrial tend to implement high-tariff policies, Revolution, rendered the pattern in stunting world trade, as happened in the generational terms: Great Depression. History is conclusive on this score: It is far better to have one large Thus the Britain of the late 19th century power at the helm of the international basked complacently in the sunset of eco- economy. The United States, however, may nomic hegemony. In many firms, the grandfather who started the business and not be able to continue its leadership role. built it by unremitting application and by Even today, the United States and its closest thrift bordering on miserliness had long

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AMERICA TRIUMPHANT: A DISSENTING VIEW

~f power is the ability of one country to per- surance policies against trouble, but these suade others to pursue its purposes, the United should not cost much (since the risks are low) States has used its power with extraordinary and should not be a cause for conflict. success during the postwar period. Yet those who focus on America's relative After World War 11, America created a decline and ignore today's more benign politi- world community in which it deliberately cal environment advocate policies that would shared its economic and industrial power in or- produce greater conflict with America's friends der to encourage other countries to adopt its and allies. They see Japan as the new enemy purposes: more open political systems and (replacing the Soviet Union) and call for na- more competitive economic markets. Today, tionalist policies to protect and subsidize Amer- all of the world's industrial countries, many ican industry. Not only would such policies de- developing ones, and even the socialist coun- stroy political community; they would fail tries are democratic and market-oriented or economically. Without an industrial policy, struggling to become so. America now has less America came back during the 1980s and be- relative economic power, to be sure, but it also gan growing almost as quickly as Japan. It did needs less to promote its most basic political so by returning, at least partially, 1 a the eco- and economic purposes. nomic policies of the earlier postivai- period, Does that suggest that America has declined when America laid the foundation for the pros- or that it has used its power successfully? perous and close political community that ex- Those who argue that America is in decline ists today. focus only on narrow measures of industrial From 1947 to 1967, the United States pur- and economic power. They ignore completely sued efficient economic policies-what I call the political environment in which material the triad of postwar economic rearmament- power is exercised. Yet the political context is involving moderate budget deficits (equal to an what distinguishes America's position today average of .2 percent of GNP annually), disci- from that of Great Britain a century ago. Great plined monetary policies (keeping inflation be- Britain lost relative power in a world that was low one percent), and restrained regulation of polarizing between the autocratic purposes of a industry. Under U.S. leadership, allied coun- Prussian-dominated Germany and the republi- tries pursued similar policies, albeit with higher can purposes of France and Great Britain. inflation in Europe and more interventionism America has lost relative power in a world that in Japan. The resulting prosperity allowed for is coalescing around the very democratic and an unprecedented reduction of trade barriers market standards it has long championed. and a Quantum increase in world trade. In a neighborhood of friendly states, the im- ~urb~eand Japan grew faster than the portance of material power is diminished, just United States, both because they started from as it is reduced when a marriage of two part- further behind and because, as followers, they ners is strong. One may wish tocarry some in- - enjoyed the "advantages of backwardnessu-

died; the father who took over and, start- before World War I. The United States ap- ing with larger ambitions, raised it to un- dreamed-of heights, had passed on the pears to have entered a similar phase today. reins; now it was the turn of the third gen- Financial strategies maximizing short-term eration, the children of affluence.. . . profits replace the long-term goals of in- Many of them retired and forced the conversion of their firms into joint-stock com- creasing industrial competitiveness and panies. Others stayed on and went market share. The industrial pioneers' ethic through the motions of entrepreneurship of hard work and team effort degenerates between the long weekends; they worked at play and played at work. into the selfishness and conspicuous consumption of the grandsons and grand- The pattern Landes describes sounds eerily daughters. In sum, if critics of the contem- familiar. Great Britain went through its dec- porary American situation are correct, the adent phase during the Edwardian period, United States has now entered a well-nigh

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the ability to borrow technology and knowl- developing world, just as earlier U.S. policies to edge cheaply from the United States. But the promote free societies, stable prices, and open United States did not stand still. It grew faster markets worked so powerfully to build today's during this period than it had before, and as community of open and prosperous industrial other countries caught up, their rates of growth societies. America would trade further material began to slow. power, at no loss to its own economic well-be- During the 1970s, America abandoned pru- ing, to bring other countries of the East and dent economic policies and paid dearly for it. South into the Western political community of But its fortunes revived again during the 1980s open societies and competitive markets. when it returned partially to the successful The United States has a unique role to play. monetary and regulatory policies of the 1950s American democracy is a powerful example of and 1960s. During the Reagan years, American how to blend diversity with tolerance, how to manufacturing productivity grew at a 3.5 per- pursue openness, not as a way to combat na- cent annual rate, faster than it did during the tionalism but as an integral part of national "golden era" of 1948-1973 and only a little identity itself. And other nations would also fol- slower than Japan's recent growth rate. The low its example if the United States were to re- U.S. share of the manufacturing output and em- turn to prudent policies of fiscal and economic ployment of the industrialized countries actu- management. ally increased, offering no evidence whatsoever Japan and Germany have become powerful of the "deindustrialization" so often invoked by competitors of the United States. But they are advocates of industrial policy. also politically more friendly and more open to Why have these achievements been ob- this country than they have ever been in their scured? Largely because America failed to re- histories. Japan is becoming more open, verse the disastrous fiscal policies of the 1970s. slowly, to be sure, but steadily. Newly reunited Budget deficits continued to grow during the Germany is electing to remain in the North At- 1980s, raising interest rates, sucking in capital lantic Treaty Organization, under U.S. nuclear and imports, increasing 'rational and interna- protection, and is not only the most powerful tional debt, and leaving '-.1eimpression of a economy in the European Community but also country in decline. the one most inclined to keep European mar- What would happen if America finally re- kets open to Japan and the United States. duced its budget deficit? The record of the It is far more important to preserve and 1950s and 1960s suggests that, with the "triad" broaden this political community than to be- back in place, the United States would flourish moan America's loss of relative material once again (and, unlike in the 1980s, on a sus- power-a loss which has been well spent to tainable basis), helping to pull along the de- create a more democratic and peaceful world. mocratizing nations of Eastern Europe and the -Henry R. Nau Henry R. Nau, a former Wilson Center Fellow, is associate dean of the Elliott School of International Affairs, The George Washington University. He is the author of the recent The Myth of America's Decline (Oxford Univ. Press). Professor Nau served in the State Department from 1975-1977 and in the White House from 1981-1983.

irreversible decline. and 1930s. True, Russia had to experience a revolution and Japan and Germany had to ut pessimists, even historically be defeated in war to trigger the economic trained ones, are not always right. transformation. And it also seems to be true Nations can decline and rise again. that no declining power of hegemonic rank Both Germany and Japan appeared to have has ever made a real comeback. Spain, reached their economic summits during Holland, and England never came close to the 1930s. Yet, after sharp declines, both ex- regaining their former status. perienced a remarkable renaissance after But with the possible exception of Rus- World War 11. Tsarist Russia reached a ma- sia, none of these nations was a continent- jor economic peak in 1913, but Stalinist sized power endowed with enormous re- Russia grew rapidly through the late 1920s sources and a large, well-educated

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population. None, including Russia, pos- prohibitive tariffs during the mid-17th cen- sessed, as the United States does today, a tury. The United States, however, in tough vast and sophisticated industry and the abil- trade negotiations with the Japanese and ity to create technology of the highest or- others, has shown that it is not willing to der. Despite certain parallels with the past, offer an unlimited market to nations that the United States remains in a distinctive are closed to American goods. position. No hegemonic state in other peri- In history, it is traditional to chart rise ods of history remained far ahead of its and then decline. Historians have assumed competitors in the total production of that nations, like biological organisms, rise goods and services. None of the to power and then age and wither. But de- imperial predecessors had al- cline can be the prelude to rebirth. Indeed, for important countries (though not yet for the greatest powers) decline and loss have frequently preceded economic revival. In The Rise and Decline of Nations (1982), economist Mancur Olson argues persua- sively that countries need a jarring shock to free themselves from old habits and institutions and to regenerate growth. Countries that have not declined enough, that have not been subjected to the national shock of - defeat and despair, have had more ~Tfl&> d~fficultymaintaining economic -growth than those that have. Ja- -- pan, West Germany, France, the -4 "little dragons" of East Asia, and the small democracies of Western and Central Europe- these gained a powerful eco- nomicimpetus from defeat and ty^y occuoation in war. Bv contrast. ~ritai Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the

were not prodded to strive contributions of other nations. No other for economic resurgence and revival. state was dominant in research in pure sci- Rather, the victors chugged along on a ence. curve of moderate military and tepid eco- Furthermore, the United States, unlike nomic success, spending (in the British and its hegemonic counterparts of yesteryear, is American cases) large amounts on arms bargaining to maintain its position. Britain and ultimately enfeebling themselves. The failed to negotiate an opening of German or worst outcome of a challenge, therefore, is American markets at the end of the 19th an expensive but narrow triumph. century, when economic decay had begun Victory in two world wars sanctioned a to undermine British industry. Holland history of indolent economic efforts and could not persuade Britain to reduce its impaired social progress in Britain. In the

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COMPARING PRODUCTIVITY GROWTH RATES, 1870- 1979 (Growth Rates of GDP Per Work Hour)

France 2.32 0.90 2.02 1.82 2.34 2.83 0.75 4.39 5.38 4.09 Japan 1.87 1.72 2.11 1.88 3.42 3.41 -3.20 5.57 9.96 5.03 U.K. 1.16 1.20 1.24 0.90 1.44 0.87 2.21 2.19 3.56 2.77 U.S. 2.28 1.86 1.96 1.98 2.39 0.74 4.03 2.41 2.51 1.92

Source: Productivity and American Leadership (1989), by William J. Baumol, Sue Anne Batey Blackman. and Edward N. Wolff.

THE GLOBAL HIGH TECHNOLOGY MARKETPLACE Statistics provide a mixed picture of U.S. economic performance. Despite a lagging productivity growth rate (above), the U.S. 30 T economy remains the world's most productive. Its gross domestic product (GDP) per work hour reached $8.28 in 1979, while that of Japan was $4.39. Because of that enormous lead. U.S. growth rates can lag behind those of competitors with- Percent out immediately threatening US. leader- of Mrld 15 ship. As the table above shows, that is what has happened since the Great De- 10 pression. New data suggest that U.S. pro- **...... ====...... ductivity growth picked up during the ...... -9-'" France 1980s. but a three percent growth rate may be needed to prevent the United States from falling behind by the year 2020. The global high technology market- 1965 1970 1975 1980 1986 place (left)offers more discouragement: Year The United States is losing ground rapidly. Finally, the graphs below show how elu- Source: National Science Foundation sive are the sources of national distress. For example, only France devotes a larger share of its GDP to education. Yet few SOME ECONOMIC INDICATORS would argue that the U.S. education sys- (As O/o of GDP) tem is superior to those of its rivals.

R&D Outlays Public Education

Gross Government Capital Spending Formation

Defense

W. Germany France Japan U.K. U.S.

Source: Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

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United States, the Cold War failed to pro- end of the 19th century (with the Boer War duce the needed reevaluation of economic and the beginning ofthe naval race with strategies. (The loss in Vietnam was not a Germany) England did not need to re-arm. sufficientsocial shock; in fact, Vietnam was Its navy was antiquated but still much a reverse shock that caused Americans to larger than that of any possible foe, and its become alienated from their government overseas empire was quiet, needing little and to distrust authority.) The superpower policing. Even after 1897, there was no ini- arms race inhibited needed reinvestment in tial disadvantage because England had ex- the civilian economy of both adversaries. cess capacity remaining from the depres- In Paul Kennedy's words, military "over- sion of 1873-96. It was not really until dis- stretch" and heavy defense spending cap- World War I that military- spending- tured the very investment capital that was placed civilian investment. And it was not needed to regenerate economic growth. until the 1920s, and particularly the 1930s, Yet the matter is not so simple, for mili- that British governments began to worry tary spending may not disable an economy about the tradeoff between military pre- if domestic consumption is held in check. paredness and industrial rejuvenation. This was undoubtedly the case in Britain's All imperial powers have had to balance costly wars with Napoleonic France be- consumption, investment, and the costs of tween 1795 and 1812, which did not short- empire. During the early 17th century, the circuit the Industrial Revolution in Great Spanish indulged in an orgy of consump- Britain. Military spending may even spur tion which raised prices and wages. Mili- industrial growth if there is a great deal of tary demands pushed inflation up more, idle industrial capacity. It was chiefly but the remaining price increases stemmed through rearmament outlays, not New Deal from the inflationary effects of the vast in- social spending, that President Franklin D. flow of bullion from Peru and Mexico. As a Roosevelt finally got America out of the result, Madrid lagged behind in productive Great Depression. The surge of defense investment in new products. Spain's tradi- spending during the Korean War did not tional wares-silk, textiles, leather, wood, create inflation or divert civilian invest- wool, and iron-were priced out of their ment; it reversed the recession of 1949 and customary markets in Europe. stimulated a boom. Likewise, there appears A century later, Holland imposed confis- to be little question that military spending catory taxes to finance its wars against under the Reagan administration helped lift Louis XIV of France. Prices surged, reduc- the nation out of the recession of 198 1-82. ing the competitiveness of Dutch goods. In Excess capacity and civilian consump- the later stage of the Dutch Empire, inflation, then, have to be included in any action encouraged lavish spending by the count of the effect of military spending once somber burghers. Dutch merchants upon economic growth. In Britain during failed to reinvest sufficiently in the now less the first half of the 19th century, investment profitable foreign trade, preferring to send and savings remained very significant, their money to London, where the return while consumption was modest. After mid- was higher. Meanwhile, the streets of Hol- century, however, investment began to de- land's towns and cities were filled with the cline and the British economy was propped destitute. In this phase, short-term eco- up by increased consumption. Military nomic profits for the upper and middle spending was not destructive because from classes took precedence over building a the Crimean War (1854-56) until the very strong national economy at home.

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Thus economic growth appears to re- ever, Britain had to fall back on merchan- quire both heavy savings and investment, dise exports at just the time when its past with consumption remaining at a relatively comparative advantages were disappearing. fixed share of GNP, and low military and The first indications of decline showed foreign-policy outlays, except during eco- up in productivity. At the peak of its economic downturns. Rising powers typically nomic power during the third quarter of find these conditions easier to meet than the century, Britain's labor and capital pro- mature ones. The rising power, however, ductivity grew at the solid rate of 1.2 per- eventually confronts either rival military cent per year. For the next 40 years, how- powers or the necessity to provide consum- ever, it fell to only 0.4 percent. During the ers with rewards for their past sacrifices. If same period productivity rose by 0.9 per- both occur at the same time, the nation is cent in Germany annually and by 1.2 per- forced to deplete its productive assets. cent in America. Some economic histori- When Great Britain was on the rise, its ans have explained the dynamics of

-people - invested and saved national decline by claiming- that the "ad- and aimed for long-term <^M vantages of backwardness" however, they began to yield to the temptation to relax and enjoy their position. Short-term returns ers. This is no doubt became important true. But Britain during this period slowed down relative and to minimize risk. Fac- not only to its rising com- tory owners hung- on to aging- - petitors but to its own past equipment and frequently ne- 1967 performance. elected to make new investments unless The failure to invest was complicated by they were justified by immediate profits. conflicts between labor and management. Thus, after 1870, British manufacturers Increasing unionization led to worker de- spent less to create new products than did mands for higher wages and shorter hours. their counterparts in Germany and the If these had been offset by higher pro- United States. They did less to improve ductivity, there would have been no disad- worker productivity, and they acquiesced in vantage, but they were not. Unlike some of a less educated and less technically profi- its rivals, Britain did not offer enough in- cient labor force than that of their rivals. centives to improve the performance of la- When they found fewer profitable invest- bor. Under pressure to reduce costs, British ment opportunities at home they increas- managers were likely to trim wages rather ingly chose to send their money overseas. than install labor-saving machinery. But This worked so long as foreign invest- wage reductions alienated workers and fur- ments and the British money market pro- ther reduced productivity. vided for a balance-of-payments surplus. The result was that the British worker When those overseas investments were was neither as well trained nor as moti- sold off to finance two world wars, how- vated as his opposite numbers in Germany

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The day of reckoning is fast approaching for the best, questionable. critics who have persistently linked America's What will determine the destination of the declining "con~petitiveness" to its large mili- one, two, or even three percent of GDP that tary burdens. They have made much of the fact may be freed by defense cuts? In large mea- that, compared to such economic rivals as Ja- sure, decisions about taxes and spending that pan, the United States has been devoting a far are made in Washington. If the aim is to en- bigger share of its gross domestic product hance American competitiveness, the best ap- (GDP) to the military since 1945 and a far proach would be to apply most of the savings to smaller portion to private investment. [See lowering the federal budget deficit. This would chart, p. 75.1 To these observers, Japan's rela- reduce the demand for capital, permitting in- tive economic ascendancy is no mystery. Ac- terest rates to fall and encouraging private in- cording to MIT's Lester Thurow, since the end vestment. A smaller defense budget should also of World War 11 the United States has "essen- make it easier selectively to expand public in- tially taken defense out of investment [and] the vestment in education, research, and infra- consequences have now caught up with us to structure. Given the multitude of claims al- produce an uncompetitive economy." ready staked on the "peace dividend" and the Thurow's diagnosis of the "American dis- vagaries of the federal budget process, a perfect ease" points to a simple and obvious cure: Cut mix of these two policies will not be achieved. defense spending. Investment, productivity, It remains to be seen whether or not one can and international competitiveness should all even be approximated. rise automatically. There is a second way in which big defense The problem with this analysis, both as an budgets may have harmed the U.S. economy. explanation and as a prescription, is that it The postwar effort to maintain a decisive tech- overlooks the other uses to which national in- nological lead in weaponry over the Soviets re- come has been, and could be, put. If the United quired huge government outlays for research States has devoted a smaller share of its GDP to and development (R&D) and the employment private investment than has Japan, it is not only of large numbers of scientists and engineers by because it has been spending more on defense. both government laboratories and private de- Throughout the postwar period, the U.S. gov- fense contractors. This may have bid up re- ernment has also spent considerably more on searchers' wages (and employers' costs), drawn non-defense programs, and it has encouraged scarce skilled manpower away from commer- much higher levels of private consumption by cial R&D, and held back American industry's its citizens. technological progress. The end of the Cold To speak of a simple, inverse relationship War should throw this process into reverse. between defense and investment is to ignore But it is not obvious that this will happen or, the larger and more complex four-way trade-off if it does, that the impact will be dramatic. among defense, private investment, private There are powerful strategic arguments for consumption, and the various forms of non-de- maintaining a vigorous defense research effort, fense government spending. As we enter the even as spending on military personnel and post-Cold War era, every dollar cut from de- arms procurement is reduced. This is not to fense will not inevitably be invested by Ameri- mention the powerful political arguments that can business in the new technology, equip- surely will be advanced by self-interested de- ment, and factories that the nation needs so fense contractors. badly. Some of the savings could be channeled Even if research on new weapons were to into various worthwhile forms of "public in- be sharply scaled back, the effects might not be vestment," such as education, research, and as great as many people expect. If, as some physical infrastructure (e.g., roads, harbors, air- have alleged, close to half of the nation's scien- ports) that would enhance U.S. competitive- tific and engineering work force is now en- ness. But a large chunk of the "peace dividend" gaged in defense-related projects, a 50 percent could just as easily wind up as still more private drop in military R&D might free a quarter of consumption, or it could be diverted into fed- the nation's researchers for employment on eral entitlements and other programs that may purely commercial projects. Recent surveys be politically popular but that make a contribu- suggest, however, that the defense "brain tion to the nation's future well-being that is, at drain" is much smaller. According to the Na-

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tional Science Foundation, at the peak of the that are important both for military and com- Reagan build-up during the mid-1980s, defense mercial reasons, American firms no longer projects employed 15.5 percent of all engineers hold a clear technological edge over their for- and scientists with bachelor's degrees, 19.9 per- eign counterparts. cent of those with master's degrees, and only As a result, there has been growing support 8.5 percent of those holding Ph.D.'s. Thus, even in Congress, industry, and some parts of the ex- a very large R&D cutback would have relatively ecutive branch for the idea that Washington modest effects. And, unfortunately for them ought to fund research on so-called "dual use" and for their country, the people most immedi- technologies-things like high-definition televi- ately "freed" by the coming build-down (nu- sion and next-generation semiconductors, clear physicists, for example) will not necessar- which could be useful both to the military and ily be those best suited for civilian research to industry. Some have gone one step further projects. and urged direct federal support for purely Even if defense cutbacks do reduce the commercial R&D. costs of private sector research, other forces The ideological and practical objections to may continue to inhibit American corporate any scheme that asks government bureaucrats R&D. Economists cite everything from the in effect to pick winning technologies are obvi- structure of the federal tax code, Wall Street's ous enough. Whether there may be some cir- emphasis on short-term profits, the disruptive cumstances in which intervention is neverthe- effects of mergers and acquisitions, and the less desirable remains a subject of heated functioning of the dispute. For now, country's anti-trust however, the ques- laws. Some of these tion is moot. The may be within the Bush administration reach of govern- has made its posi- ment action, but tion clear by refus- none will be ing to be drawn changed simply by more deeply into reducing federal supporting even spending on military dual-use (let alone R&D. By itself, purely commercial) plainly, a defense research and by cutback cannot be reigning in govern- expected to stimu- ment officials who late a corporate re- disagree with its pol- search renaissance. icies. (One of these, But there is a third possibility. If the Defense Craig Fields, was recently dismissed from his Department spends less on weapons research, job as chief of the Pentagon's Defense Ad- more money could conceivably become avail- vanced Research Projects Agency.) At least for able for federally financed efforts aimed di- the time being, federal support for commercial rectly at stimulating commercial innovation. In research is not going to increase no matter the past the government has deliberately what happens to defense R&D. avoided such programs, preferring to rely on By freeing scarce human and financial re- the market and the "spinoff" from defense resources, the end of the Cold War creates oppor- search to maintain America's lead in commer- tunities for the future, but it does not provide cial technology. But many analysts now believe any guarantees. What happens next depends on that defense research has become so special- the uses to which those resources are put, and ized that it yields far fewer "spinoffs" than be- that depends not only on immutable economic fore. Reversing an earlier pattern, advances in principles but on the untidy world of politics, civilian technology-e.g., microelectronics- on debates that have yet to be resolved and on are now finding their way into new weapons decisions that have yet to be made. systems. But in this and a variety of other areas -Aaron Friedberg

Aaron Friedberg, a former Wilson Center Fellow, is assistant professor of politics at Princeton. He is the author of The Weary Titan: Britain and the Experience of Relative Decline, 1895-1905 (1988).

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and the United States. Britain did not even bought 42 percent of British exports, but by introduce compulsory primary education 1910 the figure had declined to 35 percent. until 1880. In steel and engineering, Britain Meanwhile, the total purchased by Africa, tended to rely on the talented "tinkerer" Asia, and Australasia rose from 29 percent rather than the trained engineer or scien- to 43 percent. But this palliative would tist. The British generally confined their re- work only until Britain's competitors search activities to areas that would return turned their sights on the same markets. an immediate profit, while German manag- A fourth tack might have led Britain to ers made painstaking efforts to discover innovate and introduce new industrial and create new products in chemicals and products. America and Germany were rap- other lines. Finally, British scientists and idly turning their attention to electrical ap- engineers were paid less than their Ameri- pliances, automobiles, and chemicals. Like can or German counterparts. At the Wool- the United States today, Britain had initial wich Arsenal, for example, chemists earned advantages in many of the new technologi- Â£10 a year, the same as workers. cal fields of the day. The British made the Perhaps Britain could have compen- essential discoveries in steelmaking, but sated for deficient labor productivity with they often found that their designs were put more investment. But after 1900 it sent an into service by others. Britain built the even greater proportion of its capital world's first functioning electric power sta- abroad. By the last decade before World tion, but America and Germany spread ur- War I, domestic investment had declined to ban electrification more quickly and then 8.7 percent of GNP and more than 5 per- applied electric motors to industry. cent was invested abroad. At a time when Ultimately, however, it was the cost of the United States was devoting more than two world wars that destroyed British eco- 21 percent and Germany 23 percent of nomic illusions. In the first great encoun- GNP to investment at home, the British fail- ter, Britain was forced to borrow nearly ure to reinvest was fatal. two-thirds of war costs from its citizens and How could this have occured? Eco- from the United States. This might have nomic historian Arthur Lewis contends that posed no problem had British exports re- the productivity of the British working man mained competitive, but they did not. Dur- was already so much lower than that of his- ing World War I, Britain lost its primacy in American counterpart that businessmen shipping and textiles and had to sell off half could not even make automatic looms, me- its foreign investments. John Maynard chanical coal cutters, and other labor-sav- Keynes managed the Treasury portfolio ing machinery pay for themselves, at least during the war with remarkable dexterity, in the short term. but on February 22, 1917, he calculated Britain's inability to make headway in that Britain's gold stock would not last "for the markets of its principal rivals-Ger- more than four weeks from today." Only many and the United States-confronted it America's entry into the war saved Britain with several possible responses. It could from bankruptcy. It was true, as Paul Ken- have moved to higher-quality products (en- nedy wrote, that "The harder the British hancing profits); it could have tried to re- fought, the more they bankrupted them- duce costs (through labor-saving devices); selves.'' or it could have directed traditional prod- What does the British example tell us ucts to new markets. Largely, it adopted the about economic ossification and decline? third alternative. As late as 1870 Europe From 1860 to 1913, Britain invested too lit-

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tie in its home industry and consumed too for post-Napoleonic Great Britain, because much. The record does not demonstrate the country maintained a solid surplus in that military spending was the cause of its balance of payments. By contrast, dur- British decline. Britain was failing to invest ing the 1980s American exports were al- at German and American rates long before lowed to fall well beneath imports, and it was forced to divert funds from the civil- there was no immediate way to repay the ian economy to rearmament. The war nation's growing foreign debts. merely completed the process. The timing of big increases in military outlays can be just as important as their ot surprisingly, the Dutch Empire, amount. During the Napoleonic Wars, Brit- Britain, and the United States all ain restrained domestic consumption by N confronted the twin problems of raising taxes, while borrowing heavily to fi- high consumption and large military out- nance its military effort. By World War I, lays, though the sequence differed in each however, consumption was already too case. Holland had to fight Louis XIV on great. Civilian investment had to be sacri- land and, for a time, Britain at sea. During ficed to pay for guns and soldiers. By the World War I, England had the burden of time the war was over, Britain had already maintaining its dominance at sea at pre- lost many markets; it was nearly too late to cisely the same time that it had to raise an redeem its industrial future. expeditionary force to resist the German The yet unanswered question for the challenge on the continent. It did this care- United States is whether it can increase na- fully, always husbanding its forces and hop- tional savings and investment in time to ing to keep France at the forefront of the achieve higher rates of productivity growth. continental military effort. But the role left Can America surmount the limitations that for Britain was still too much for it. history seeks to impose upon great powers? By comparison, the United States today We have already seen that no truly hege- not only seeks to maintain superiority at monic power of the past has ever been able sea but also seems likely to try to keep a to bring itself back. The powers that have substantial force on the land in Europe de- made a return (such as Japan and Ger- spite the dissipation of the Soviet threat. many) did so under the beneficent protec- The Iraqi challenge could even elicit a new tion of others. But history does not lend us long-term commitment of forces in the enough perspective to predict the conse- Middle East. Even with the reduced priority quences of America's current condition. In given to the Strategic Defense Initiative, certain respects our situation is unparal- America continues to aim at military domi- leled. The military load on the great powers nance in space. Although the United States of the past was never lightened. For the spent heavily on defense after World War United States today, a reduced military bur- 11, U.S. decline did not reach exaggerated den seems possible if we can avoid a costly proportions until the defense-spending permanent commitment in the Middle binge of the Reagan administration. That East. Every earlier hegemonic power had was because, even more than in the Viet- to keep looking over its shoulder to see nam War buildup, defense expenditure was who might be gaining on it. Spain had to not allowed to reduce civilian consumption worry about France and the Netherlands; but was financed by domestic and intema- Holland had to contend with France and tional borrowing. England; and Britain could not neglect the That strategy created no great difficulty German challenge.

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because there is no combined military and economic challenger. History shows that a shock usually is needed to bestir the complacent social and economic system of a great power. But there are several reasons to believe that a shock short of total war will suffice to arouse the United States. First, a major economic challenge in the form of a sharp recession is sure to confront the nation in the near future. Second, there is the challenge of foreign trade. In the past, other world leaders, particularly Holland and Britain, were major trading powers, but military preoccupations prevented them from fully pursuing their trading vocation. For too long, they limped along, attempting to combine their great-power role with a flourishing export sector. By the time they realized that they could not do both, they had lost their trading advantage. The Dutch 1990. A British view. even missed the first installment of the In- dustrial Revolution, thereby postponing in- During the 1990s, however, the world dustrialization until the late 19th century. will confront an entirely new situation. Britain still has not regained the markets There is and will likely be no hegemonic and market share that it lost in World War successor to the United States. Though I. The end of the Cold War spares the there will be military threats to guard United States a similar fate. Unlike its against, as the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait re- predecessors, it will increasingly be able to minds us, no single military challenger will concentrate on foreign trade. be capable of wresting leadership from the At the same time, the international eco- United States. As America looks over its nomic and financial system is now shoulder, the country gaining on it is not a uniquely favorable to an American revival. great military power but rather a "trading Support for foreign trade has risen not only state," Japan. There is no great and sus- in the United States but around the world. tained territorial threat to the existing or- Always before, there were major conflicts der. Thus the choices that world leaders between countries in which capital was faced in the past were different from those scarce and those in which capital was confronting the United States. In the past, abundant. Broadly speaking, capital-abun- the choice was to continue to struggle for dant countries wanted low tariffs and bene- primacy, with disastrous economic conse- fited from expanding trade. By contrast, quences, or to drop out of the great-power capital-scarce and land-scarce countries fa- race. Every other great power has been vored protectionism. As nation after nation forced to give up. The United States does (most recently South Korea) has entered not confront such a dilemma. It can con- the phase of capital abundance since World tinue, though in a slightly diminished role, War 11, dominant economic interests

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within these countries have also acquired be done: Layers of bureaucracy must be an interest in low tariffs. This may well be stripped away from the public and private the reason why there has been no general sectors; tax policies that encourage corpo- move to higher tariffs in the United States, rate indebtedness must be reversed; gov- despite the nation's vexing trade deficits. ernment deficits and other policies that Certain sectors of industry have asked for raise the cost of investment capital must be and received relief, but Japan continues to erased; and it may be necessary for govern- sell 36 percent of its exports in the Ameri- ment to channel capital directly to industry. can marketplace. During the 1930s, the Above all, improvements are needed in United States retreated behind high tariff American schools to keep U.S. workers walls; today, it remains in the international competitive internationally. marketplace. And there are few greater in- There are two major reasons to be con- centives to modernize industry than the fident that the United States will regain its challenge of foreign trade. equilibrium. For perhaps the first time in modern history, international relations-in n summary, given a major shock or this case, international economics-is the stimulus and a favorable international stimulus to domestic change. In the past, I environment, nations can alter a trajec- international relations was governed by ep- tory of decline. Resurgence becomes possi- och-shaping events in individual coun- ble when the fact of failure can no longer tries-the French Revolution, the Bolshe- be denied, and when new resources be- vik Revolution. Now the central realities come available to finance an alternative are the rise of Japan, the archetypical trad- strategy. Then the challenge to the national ing state, and the paramount importance of psyche shatters past assumptions and international economic competition. As the breaks conventional patterns of behavior. Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and China The chastened state can retrench and re- liberalize their economies, these new chal- group, cut military spending and consump- lenges are certain to spark a resurgence of tion, and dedicate itself to a new strategy American industry. combining industrial modernization and The new emphasis on economic com- the expansion of exports. petition will also create a more favorable To be sure, too great a delay in retum- environment for an American renaissance. ing to such a strategy can do irreparable Because the growth of one nation does not harm to domestic economic institutions, impede that of another (and may even aid making it impossible to catch up. American it), the pursuit of economic growth will re- scientific and technical research still sets duce international conflict, providing the the standard for the world. Major U.S. in- United States with the opportunity to re- dustries, such as civil aviation, chemicals, duce its costly foreign burdens. The chal- pharmaceuticals, computers, and software, lenge of international politics becomes eco- retain their leading edge. But if there is to nomics and foreign trade, not warfare. be an American renaissance, our national Under these new conditions, the decline of neglect of these assets must end soon. nations is no longer final. Great powers can There are no mysteries about what needs to recover and ascend.

WQ AUTUMN 1990 83 BACKGROUND BOOKS MUST AMERICA DECLINE?

he decline and fall of nations is one of the clical theory of civilizations. (The other major T great themes of history. It is a natural sub- cyclical theorist of the century was Arnold ject, as Thucydides said of history generally, for Toynbee, who was more interested in the rise of 'those inquirers who desire an exact knowl- civilizations than in their fall.) Spengler argued edge of the past as an aid to the interpretation that the West had reached the point of moral of the future, which in the course of human and spiritual exhaustion. "Let it be realized, things must resemble if it does not reflect it." then: That the 19th and 20th centuries, hitherto Over the years, the theme of decline has looked on as the highest point of an ascending also proved to be a useful tool for those with an straight line of world-history, are in reality a axe to grind or an agenda to promote-or, to stage of life which may be observed in every put it more generously, those who believe that Culture that has ripened to its limit," he wrote. they possess profound insight into the prob- Academics dismissed Spengler's book, but lems of the world. A useful corrective is The the Western public, surprisingly, liked it. And it Ages of Man: From Sav-age to Sew-age (Am. was in America, Klaus P. Fischer writes in His- Heritage, 1971), by historian Marcus Cunliffe. tory and Prophecy: Oswald Spengler and the The first great modern study of decline was Decline of the West (Moore, 1977), that the Giambattista Vice's New Science (1725), but it book received its warmest reception. An im- did not achieve wide recognition until the 20th pressive 20,000 copies were sold. "Spengler century. Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of seems to have stirred the Puritan conscience in the Roman Empire (1776-88) was immedi- America," Fisher writes, "bringing out all the ately recognized as a masterpiece. It neither re- latent guilt of decadence and riotous living." flected any large public anxiety about the fate The decline of the West had already been of Gibbon's England nor contained many us- taken up as a theme by a number of conserva- able prescriptions for the future, although Gib- tive critics, including Brooks and Henry Ad- bon did warn that barbarians in every age ams, two brothers descended from two Ameri- "have oppressed the polite and peaceful can presidents. Brooks, the younger of the two, nations. . . who neglected, and still neglect, to concluded in The Law of Civilization and De- counterbalance these natural powers by the re- cay (1 895) that Western Europe had passed its sources of military art." But unlike the scores peak and that Russia and the United States of writers who would later find dire lessons for were the only potential great powers left. It was their own societies in the fall of Rome, Gibbon not a development that filled him with joy, for was an optimist about the future. "Every age of he believed that the world was moving from a the world," he wrote, "has increased, and still- glorious religious-artistic age to a dreary era increases, the real wealth, the happiness, the dominated by economics and science. In The knowledge, and perhaps the virtue, of the hu- Education of Henry Adams (1907), Henry de- man race." veloped his famous metaphor of the dynamo to Not until the 20th century did decline be- describe the sterile energy that he saw as the come a major preoccupation of Western think- driving force of American society. He believed ers. In part due to the influential historical the- that the United States was the first country in ories of Hegel and Marx, writers discovered history to pass directly from barbarism to deca- many permutations of decline and inaugurated dence, skipping the intermediate stage of civi- what has turned into a century-long discussion lization. of the phenomenon in its various guises and While the Adams brothers were riding up- quarters. How many books, for example, have ward on the American industrial elevator and been written about the "decline" or "twilight" fretting over America's moral decline, other of democracy during the last 50 years? thinkers riding downward on the British eleva- Prominent among the century's early think- tor had more immediate problems on their ers was Germany's Oswald Spengler, whose minds. Their writings, along with much that The Decline of the West (1 9 18-22) spelled out has since been written on the British experi- in dense and sometimes mystical prose his cy- ence, are thoroughly assayed in Aaron L.

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Friedberg's Weary Titan: Britain and the Ex- ies of the body politic. Unfortunately, Olson's perience of Relative Decline, 1895-1905 book also serves as an example of how (Princeton, 1988). declinists are perennially undone by attributing Even when Britain was at its height, during cosmic significance to problems of the day. He the 1870s, Friedberg writes, some Britons real- cites the now-forgotten peril of "stagflation" as ized that competitors were rapidly catching up. a key symptom of U.S. decline. The alarm was spread by such books as Ernest Oddly, it has been liberals who have been E. Williams's bestselling Made in Germany left to sound most of the alarms about cultural, (1896) and F. A. McKenzie's somewhat less suc- political, and moral decay in recent times. Con- cessful American Invaders: Their Plans, Tac- servatives (with a few notable exceptions) seem tics, and Progress (190 1). As in America today, to feel obliged to defend the individualist, con- a profusion of studies and statistics appeared- sumerist culture that their supposed forebears, most of them confusing, contradictory, or sim- the Adams brothers, so despised. The conserva- ply wrong. Britain's national debate over its fu- tive diagnosis of decline has focused on mili- ture did yield the makings of an "industrial pol- tary and economic power, and it is summed up icy" that might, in Friedberg's view, have kept best not by any book-although Jack Kemp's Britain afloat. But all hope for a concerted re- An American Renaissance (Harper & Row, sponse vanished after Joseph Chamberlain, the 1979) captured the spirit-but by the tax and Conservative colonial secretary, delivered a defense programs of Ronald Reagan. Free mar- radical protectionist speech in 1903. Hoping to kets and a strong defense are the main conser- galvanize debate, says Friedberg, he instead po- vative themes of renewal. larized it between free traders who "simply re- Paul Kennedy's scholarly, even turgid, Rise fused to admit that any problems existed," and and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic protectionists who "blamed foreign govern- Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to ments for all of Britain's woes." Debates over 2000 (Random House, 1987) may not have the nation's domestic spending and imperial been meant as a response to the Reagan pro- military commitments were no more decisively gram, but it certainly has been read that way. resolved. Britain tried "to play the part of a Kennedy argues that the shifting balance of world power without being willing to pay for economic power in the world, along with "im- the privilege." perial overstretch" caused by excessive U.S. If there is a contemporary counterpart to commitments overseas, threaten American Williams's Made in Germany, it is Ezra Vogel's world leadership. Japan As Number One: Lessons for America His book has touched off a far-reaching de- (Harvard, 1979), an admiring study of Japan's bate about the American future. (Among the postwar success which crystallized anxieties notable replies to Kennedy is Joseph S. Nye, about the American position in the world that Jr.'s Bound to Lead: The Changing Nature of were in the air during the 1970s. Vogel en- American Power [Basic, 19901.) History does dorses "industrial policy" and other familiar not offer very much encouragement that this liberal economic prescriptions for U.S. re- debate will resolve the American predicament. newal, but the main thrust of his analysis is cul- "It is remarkable to see how relatively numer- tural. "In the guise of pursuing freedoms," he ous in declining empires are the people capa- warns, Americans "have supported egoism and ble of making the right diagnosis and preaching self-interest and have damaged group or com- some sensible cures," writes economist Carlo mon interests." M. Cipolla in The Economic Decline of Em- A strong political critique was advanced by pires (Methuen, 1970). "It is no less remark- economist Mancur Olson in The Rise and De- able, however, that wise utterances remain gen- cline of Nations: Economic Growth, Stag- erally sterile, because, as Gonzales de Cellorigo flation, and Social Rigidities (Yale, 1982). forcefully put it while watching impotently the Olson argues that special-interest groups are decline of Spain, 'those who can will not and the equivalent of cholesterol clogging the arter- those who will cannot.'"

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SCHOLARS' CHOICE Recent titles selected and reviewed by Fellows and staff of the Wilson Center

Before Death Do Us Part

ROAD TO DIVORCE: England 1530-1987. By Although a Protestant nation, England Lawrence Stone. Oxford. 485 pp. $27.95 long retained the Catholic rule that only death could terminate a marriage. Even amuel Johnson once remarked to that blustering tyrant, Henry VIII, did not sJames Boswell that it was far from nat- go so far as to divorce his first wife Cather- ural for men and women to live together ine of Aragon. Instead he had the marriage in the state of holy matrimony. Incurable annulled. And this kind of desperate eva- rake that he was, Boswell doubtless nod- sion of a too rigid marital law was typical. ded his head in weary agreement. Yet until Before the Marriage Act of 1753, some the 20th century, the vast majority of wed- couples avoided being married in church ded couples did remain happily-or un- by a clergyman and simply exchanged spo- happily-united until death did them part. ken vows and ritual gifts before sleeping Even in 1900, only five percent of mar- together. A silver coin snapped in two be- riages in England ended in the divorce fore an eager (or nervous) bride was a par- courts. Now, one in every three marriages ticularly popular alternative to the ecclesi- ends this way. In the United States, one in astical ceremony. It was easy enough in two does so. How are we to account for theory to walk out of this kind of informal this massive and rapid transformation in marriage, but very hard in fact for poor human behavior? Why has divorce, in the people to survive without the labor of their West at least, become almost as popular spouses and the shelter of the marital and quite as acceptable as marriage itself? home. So middling- and lower-status cou- These are some of the questions that ples stayed grimly together, whether they Lawrence Stone, the Dodge Professor of were miserable or not. Those few who did History at Princeton, addresses in this, his split up might try to lend an appearance of 11th book. Like his Crisis of the Aristocracy legitimacy to their actions by participating (1965) and Family, Sex, and Marriage in in a wife sale. The woman would be led England (1980), Road to Divorce is vivid, from her home in a halter and sold in the intelligent, rich in quantification, and village marketplace by her husband to an- short on brevity. Indeed, readers with lim- other man, usually her lover. Once money ited time or attention spans should be changed hands, the marriage ended in the warned that this is only the first part of a eyes of their neighbors. projected trilogy. Two companion vol- But not in the disapproving eyes of the umes, Uncertain Unions and Broken Lives, English state. As Stone demonstrates, Par- will in due course provide case studies of liament had cracked down on informal unhappy English marriages in the past, to- marriages by the end of the 18th century, gether with the sort of compulsively pruri- and it had become almost impossible for ent details that are only hinted at in this anyone except the very rich and the very volume's illustrations-"Adultery in the influential to obtain a legal separation or marital bed," "Adultery in the dining divorce. Prosperous men and women room," and "Adultery on the carpet." might cross the border into Scotland (En- What is offered here is not the evocation of gland's Reno) where divorces, like rapid human pain and emotional drama, how- marriages, were much easier to obtain. Or ever, so much as a lucid and expert guide a couple might separate privately to avoid through the intricacies and idiocies of scandal, the wife receiving maintenance English marriage law over five centuries. from her former husband. But if a man

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wanted to divorce his wife for adultery and marry again, he had to be prepared for massive expense and a total loss of privacy. First, the husband had to bring a legal action against his wife's lover for what the courts politely termed "criminal conversation." This meant bribing servants to tell tales of stained bed linen, stolen embraces, and rapid exits down the back stairs. Or he might have re- course to a coachman, since making illicit love in a rapidly moving closed Divorcers and Divorcees. coach was a common Henry VIII created a new erotic fancy in the 18th and church-the Church of 19th centuries: "The pretty England-to have his first little occasional jolts," as marriage annulled in 1533. A twice-divorced one magazine put it, "con- woman, Mrs. Wallis War- tribute greatly to enhance field Sirnpson, caused Ed- the pleasure of the critical ward VIII's abdication in moment." Only if he won 1936. The co-stars of his action for "criminal Brother Rat, Ronald Rea- conversation," could a gan and Jane Wyman, wronged husband go on to married in 1940 and di- petition Parliament and the vorced eight years later. church courts for a divorce. Between 1700 and 1857, 338 of these left an arranged marriage with a man she petitions for divorce were brought before hated for a handsome and aristocratic Parliament. A mere eight of them were young lover in the 1790s, she pretended from women. Women suffered as much that her youngest baby had died so as to then from divorce being difficult to obtain keep at least one child safe from her furi- as they suffer now from it being so easy. ous husband's clutches. Until a new divorce law was passed in Eng- Changing attitudes to the rights of land in 1857, it was virtually impossible for women were one reason why England's di- a woman to instigate divorce proceedings vorce laws were remodeled in the mid- for cruelty or for any other cause. Not un- 19th century. Another was the growing til 1923 could she divorce her husband if conviction in Parliament that the middle he committed adultery, because the courts classes would explode in anger unless held by the double standard that a man's they, as well as the upper classes, could adultery was no more than an unfortunate have some access to legal divorce. Yet, as peccadillo, whereas a woman's adultery Stone points out, the paradox is that for was a sin that threatened the security of more than 50 vears after the 1857 reforms. property and inheritance lines. Any very few men and women took advantage woman found guilty of adultery ran the of them. This, indeed, is the wider value of risk of losing financial maintenance as this book: It challenges the very common well as her standing in society and all ac- notion that it is the relaxation of divorce cess to her children. When Lady Holland law in itself that lowers standards of sexual

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morality and marital security. Rather, as all after the conflicts in Korea and Vietnam. the evidence suggests, it has been social, And in the last decades, with the declining religious, and demographic changes that influence of organized religion, the disinte- have made divorce such a common event gration of a marriage has become sepa- in our private lives. rated in most people's minds from notions of guilt and shame. This, perhaps, is the o a considerable extent, marriage has greatest innovation of them all. T been the casualty of both longer lives In England, Edward VIII was forced to and wider opportunities. Until the 1800s, abdicate in 1936 because he wanted to mortality rates were so high that compara- marry Mrs. Simpson, an American divor- tively few couples could expect to live to- cee. After the Second World War, Princess gether for more than 20 years. Now that Margaret, the present Queen's sister, had men and women live longer, they have to give up her romance with a royal more time to become bored and disillu- equerry because he too had been di- sioned with each other. And more alterna- vorced. Later, ironically, it was Princess tives await them beyond the domestic Margaret who helped set the trend by di- hearth. This was why divorce increased so vorcing from her husband Lord Snowdon much more rapidly in 19th-century Amer- in 1978. Today even the most conservative ica than in Europe, particularly in the West Britons do not seem to care that Margaret and Midwest. The more men and women Thatcher is Denis Thatcher's second wife. travelled in search of employment pros- Nor apparently did Americans care when pects, the more access they had to differ- they made Ronald Reagan the first di- ent kinds of jobs, different kinds of friends, vorced president of the United States in and different kinds of lives, the more will- 1980. For us not to care in this way has ing they became to sacrifice existing part- entailed, in Lawrence Stone's words, "a gi- nerships for the chance of new beginnings. gantic moral, religious, and legal revolu- War also caused strains on marriages tion." And as is the case with most revolu- by disrupting families and by exposing tions, the verdict on this one is still out. husbands and wives to loneliness, change, and new temptations. In the United States, -Linda Colley is professor of history at the divorce rate rocketed upward after the Yale University and the author of, Civil War, after both world wars, and again most recently, Lewis Namier (1989).

A Modem Hamlet?

COLERIDGE: Early Visions. By Richard the case of an artist, they conceal the deci- Holmes. Viking. 409 pp. $22.95 sive acts and sufferings that go on in the artist's mind. Biographers, even the good omething will have to be done about ones, like to assume that what happens in- sbiographies. Not about their popular- side one's mind is merely a transcript of ity, or the fact that biographies and novels what has happened outside. The artist is are the only things the common reader shown suffering but not imagining. If you continues to read. But about the notion of write a love poem, you are expressing your a life they purvey. "A shilling life will give love-probably unrequited-and your you all the facts," as W. H. Auden wrote in heart, best if broken. We still speak about the poem "Who's Who," but the facts the creative imagination, but we don't available for a shilling are such as these: think it creates anything. We think it takes 'how Father beat him and he ran away." dictation from the shilling facts. Even a bi- Such facts are important, certainly, but in ography as fine in other respects as Rich-

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healthy & reverie-like vividness of Thoughts, & (pardon the pedantry of the phrase) a diminished Impressibility from Things, my ideas, wishes & feelings are to a diseased degree disconnected from motion & action. In plain and natural English, I am a dreaming & therefore an indolent man. I am a starling self- incaged, & always in the moult, & my whole note is, Tomorrow, & tomorrow, & tomorrow. When he thought of Hamlet, he envisioned himself: Hamlet's character is the prevalence of the abstracting and generalizing habit over the practical. He does not want courage, skill, will, or opportunity; but every incident sets him thinking; and it is curious, and at the same time, strictly natural, that Hamlet, who all the play seems reason itself, should be impelled, at last, by mere accident to effect his ob- ard Ellmann's life of Joyce assumes that ject. I have a smack of Hamlet myself, if I Joyce could imagine nothing but could may say so. only lift from his memory of what had ac- He continued to say so, and his biogra- tually occurred. phers and critics have played the same Coleridge: Early Visions is a vivid, styl- note for him. Even T. S. Eliot spoke of ish biography of Samuel Taylor Coleridge Coleridge as "a ruined man," though he (poet, critic, metaphysician, political jour- had the grace to add, darkly, that "some- nalist, lecturer, born October 21, 1772, times, however, to be a 'ruined man' is it- died July 25, 1834), but it is afflicted with self a vocation." the notion that a poem merely documents Holmes evidently accepts the associa- the circumstances that prompted its com- tion of Coleridge with failure, indolence, position. It is hard to understand how this defeat, the rigmarole of "Tomorrow and notion can be maintained, the poems in tomorrow and tomorrow," but he differs Coleridge's case being as weird as "The from many of Coleridge's biographers and Rime of the Ancient Mariner," "Christa- critics in continuing to like the man. Cole- bel," and "Kubla Khan." Nevertheless, ridge has been called a breaker of prom- Richard Holmes, the author of Shelley: ises, a sponger, a turncoat, a plagiarist, a The Pursuit and Footsteps: Adventures of a show-off, a bad husband, a worse father. Romantic Biographer, adheres to it. Admit- Holmes knows these accusations, and if he tedly, he has Coleridge's authority for do- were on the jury he would probably vote ing so. Coleridge turned himself into a his subject guilty, but he would hope for a case by telling everybody that he was one. suspended sentence, probation, or some He made the mistake of telling people other form of mercy. what to think of him, rather than urging This first of a projected two-volume life them to read his work. He stereotyped of Coleridge gives the facts and tells some himself as the doomed artist, a failure, a (not all, indeed) of the story behind them, procrastinator. As he told William Godwin, from Coleridge's birth to his departure, at age 3 1, for a long stay in Malta. The book You appear to rr;: not to have understood thus covers the years during which Cole- the nature of my body & mind. Partly ridge wrote most of the poetry for which from ill-health, & partly from an un- he is remembered. Since John Livingston

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Lowes's The Road to Xanadu (1927), the making excuses to run off to the Words- tendency in scholarship has been to see worths, leaving Sara to mind the house Coleridge as "a library cormorant" (to use and, when they started arriving, the chil- Coleridge's own mocking phrase), to inter- dren. He was decent about money, when pret his life as one gigantic booklist. Born he had it, but negligent to Sara otherwise, the son of a vicar and headmaster in Dev- finding more consolation in drink and onshire, Coleridge voraciously read his opium. These are the facts, in the shilling way through childhood and kept reading sense: unhappy marriage, money-troubles, throughout his stay at Cambridge Univer- dissipation. sity, where he immersed himself in works Of all the shilling facts, Coleridge of imagination and visionary philosophy. prized none more than his friendship with His subsequent attempts at earning a liveli- the Wordsworths. Although Coleridge ac- hood, like his intellectual aspirations, shot knowledged Wordsworth the greater man, off in various lines that never seemed to it has always been clear that Coleridge complete themselves, as he strove to bal- gave to Wordsworth more than he re- ance, alternate, or unify the imaginative ceived from him. The "Advertisement" to and the practical. In 1794, using the alias the Lyrical Ballads (1798) shows that Silas Tomkyn Comberache, he enlisted in Wordsworth was mainly interested in the cavalry, from which several months discovering "how far the language of con- later his friends had to buy him out. Two versation in the middle and lower classes years later, he started a liberal political of society is adapted to the purposes of po- journal, The Watchman, which ran for ten etic pleasure." In the poems, Wordsworth issues. In 1798, he was on the point of be- ascribed to rustics and shepherds emo- coming a Unitarian minister at Shrews- tions and exaltations which few of them bury when the Wedgewood brothers, rec- would have laid claim to. Coleridge was ognizing his promise, provided him with far more interested in discovering what an annuity of 150 pounds, allowing him to the human mind as such could do, re- pursue his intellectual concerns. leased from any consideration of social Coleridge's most famous attempt to class. It was Coleridge who pushed Words- unite the ideal and the real was his worth into the difficult questions of ap- scheme, with the poet Robert Southey, to pearance and reality, perception, fancy, form a commune, Pantisocracy ("the rule and imagination-questions which make of all"), of 12 men and 12 women along the Preface to the 18 15 edition of the Bal- the banks of the Susquehanna in America. lads one of the great poetic statements in Southey even persuaded Coleridge to literature. Together they fashioned as the marry the unsympathetic Sara Fricker in true impulse of Romanticism the one by order to ensure generations of future which the individual self constitutes itself Pantisocratians. A few months later, when as the center of every circle of its experi- finances failed and Southey defected from ence and takes the consequences of doing the scheme, Coleridge's Pantisocracy con- so. But it was Coleridge who pushed the sisted of two members, himself and a wife domestic Wordsworth into becoming a he didn't love. "deep poet," while Wordsworth-who continued to imply that he, not Coleridge, oleridge attempted to console himself understood "the primary laws of our na- c for his marriage (a disaster for her ture''-provided Coleridge with little even more than for him) through his more than companionship. friendship with William and Dorothy Technically, their work on the Lyrical Wordsworth, and by falling in love with Ballads was collaboration, but there is no Sara Hutchinson, Wordsworth's future sis- doubt that Wordsworth was the boss. ter-in-law. (What his passion for Sara When there was call for a second edition, Hutchinson came to is still hard to say, he took charge and relegated Coleridge to even with Holmes's help.) Coleridge kept the back of the book. Coleridge could have

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made a fuss, but he didn't; he respected in ways the two Saras and the two Words- Wordsworth's primacy. Indeed, he ac- worths did not. Like Hamlet, who kept his cepted Wordsworth's rejection of him as secret by telling everybody he had one, an objective sentence passed on him and Coleridge wrote a few of the greatest po- his talents. He wrote in a letter to William ems in the language by confessing in them Godwin, "The Poet in me is dead." that he couldn't lift a finger. It is my prejudice that the association n Coleridge's achieved work, as dis- of Coleridge with failure and weakness of 0tinct from his projects, Holmes is ju- will is nonsense. I agree with William dicious and appreciative. His book is not, Empson, the only critic to recognize that, alas, a critical biography; hence it regards far from having no will power, Coleridge the work as a set of footnotes to the life, brought most of his disasters upon himself the official text. He can't make much of by pigheadedness. Some of his work is the weird poems, because they are bound higgledy-piggledy, but the scale and range to look like distractions from the life. So of it is extraordinary: poems, lectures, es- he is happier with the "conversation po- says, letters, notebooks, interventions ems," such as "Frost at Midnight," "This upon social and political issues, specula- Lime-Tree Bower My Prison," and the tions in metaphysics and religion. I see no great "Dejection" ode. They can be shown evidence of debility. As a personality, Cole- to issue (at least in circumstantial part) ridge is far more interesting than Words- from domestic malice or, more rarely, worth, more interrogative and daring. from felicity. Holmes makes the point, well Again, Empson is right about him: "He has worth making, that Coleridge took some of always the fascination of the most extreme the harm out of his 'failure' by making fail- case of something." ure, loss of creative power, and persistent debility his theme. He succeeded in lan- -Denis Donoghue, '89, holds the Henry guage by claiming to fail in every consider- James Chair of Letters at New York ation. The English language sustained him University.

NEW TITLES

History seminal work, one that ventures beyond the conventional categories of national economic SCALE AND SCOPE: The Dynamics of history. Tracing the evolution of big business in Industrial Capitalism. By Alfred D. Chandler, Jr. Britain, Germany, and America from roughly Harvard. 860 pp. $35 1880 to 1940, Chandler discovers those characteristics that made enterprises successful re- Alfred Chandler of the Harvard Business gardless of nationality. School is considered the dean of American Neoclassical economics has never shown business historians, and Scale and Scope caps much interest in individual businesses, consid- his 30-year quest to develop a historical theory ering them only within the production func- of big business. A complete history of modern tions of the economy as a whole. Chandler, by industrial enterprise would demand a compan- contrast, examines the history and character of ion volume that does for labor what Chandler some 200 firms, including Du Pont and Good- does here for business. Nonetheless, Scale is a year in America, Lever and Courtalds in Eng-

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competitiveness but to speculate, to finance debts, or to manipulate stocks. The fact that such shuffling of assets remains practically nonexistent in Germany and Japan (a more recent practitioner of successful managerial capitalism) is all the more sobering. Scale and Scope puts the weight of history on the side of those who argue against betting the business.

MICHELET, HISTORIAN: Rebirth and Romanticism in Nineteenth Century France. By Arthur Mitzman. Yale. 339 pp. $35

land, and Bayer and Siemens in Germany. This It is rare indeed for a contemporary historian enables him to propose why one company suc- to rate a biography. But 19th-century historians ceeds while another fails. were a different breed. They wrote history on a Chandler's key concept, developed in his ear- grand scale, often to propagate national myths lier Strategy and Structure (1962) and The Visi- or to build or unite nations. And no historian of ble Hand (1977), is managerial capitalism. He the 19th century was more widely read than explains here how massive investment was Jules Michelet in France. "brought the separation of ownership from Michelet (1798-1874) virtually defined the management. The enlarged enterprises came genre of romantic history: "History," he said, is to be operated by teams of salaried managers a "violent moral chemistry in which my indi- who had little or no equity in the firm." Finally, vidual passions become generalities." Mitzman, says Chandler, "The new institution and the the author of an earlier "psychobiography" of new type of economic man provided a central Max Weber, thus has ample reason for saying dynamic for continuing economic growth and that "the frontier between the political and the transformation." personal was as unguarded in his [Michelet's] These elite managers are a far cry from the case as that between past and present." Faustian business-villains of Theodore Dreiser Michelet's story is that of a working-class or Sinclair Lewis. Managerial capitalism made printer's son who by his own efforts and intel- Germany Europe's most powerful nation be- lect swiftly rose to head the historical section of fore World War I, and it made America the the national records office. His position gave world's most productive economy during the. him easy access to the numerous sources he interwar years. But in Britain the descendants used in his 24-volume Histoire de France. His of the original founders tended to remain in own successful career gave him the almost control, often augmenting the fortunes of fam- messianic faith in the democratic process that ily owners at the expense of the enterprise. As a animates his monumental work. Mitzman ob- result, the world's first industrial nation rapidly serves that Michelet "combined plebeian ori- declined. gins with bourgeois status" and thus personi- If Britain is an object lesson in what to avoid, fied the goal of the romantic radicals who one cannot read this book without pondering wished to renew "the revolutionary alliance of the current "market for corporate control" in plebs and elite that had made 1789 possible." America. Only in his conclusion does Chandler What distinguished Michelet's pro-Revolution- bring his study up to the present-a present in ary history was his ability to transform his emo- which too many executives in the United States tional experiences into analytic categories: His seem to be lacking the patience, knowledge, adolescent love for Paul Poinsot. a school and drive that once made half the world's giant friend, became the model for revolutionary fra- corporations American in origin. The corpo- ternity; his romantic liaison with a younger rate and financial elite in America buv busi- woman, Madame Dumesnil, the model for nesses today intending not to increase their communal solidarity with le peuple. This half-

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conscious identification of himself with la claims have grossly distorted the way social life patrie made Michelet enormously popular. has operated in the United States. A study of After his death, however, it made him passe. manners, of the forms of civility and rudeness, Michelet was consigned to "literature," as- reveals that personal behavior in America has signed to schoolchildren for his poetic power, always been circumscribed by convention. while two generations of "scientific" historians Kasson concentrates on the 19th-century ignored him. Yet, more recently, the trend has American urban-dwellers who tended implic- reversed: Historians following Lucian Febvre, itly to accept "the boundless market as the Marc Bloch, and Jean Guehenno are again model for all exchange, social as well as eco- championing Michelet. nomic." Here, in the new economic and social The literary critic Roland Barthes explained order of the metropolis, egalitarian ideals and Michelet's current appeal when he observed marketplace realities came into serious con- A & that his subjectivity "was only the earliest form flict. The problem was how to allocate defin- of that insistence on totality. . . . It is because itive rank without seeming to curb personal lib- Michelet was a discredited historian fin the sci- erty. Americans, Tocqueville observed, had no entist sense of the term) that he turns out to use for restraints imposed by others, but have been at once a sociologist, an ethnologist, needed such social distinctions if acquisitive a psychoanalyst, a social historian." What behavior were to have meaning. seemed almost the accidents of Michelet's sub- One instrument which reconciled "the re- jective, romantic method-his interest in popu- quirements of a democratic polity and the de- lar mentalities, his use of oral testimony, his mands for social distinction" was the 19th-cen- scrutiny of the historian's relationship to his tury guidebooks on manners, which started subject-have become standard approaches in appearing in the 1830s and came streaming off the last decades. Recently, the important jour- the presses after 1870. Kasson sees these eti- nal Annales, once known for dismissing the sig- quette guides both as instruction manuals for nificance of individuals in history, published an the insecure and as sources of authority in a editorial statement that called for "new meth- land where every citizen can claim the correct- ods" that would carry ness of his own opinion and way of life. Specifi- on Michelet's concern cally, these manuals attempted to prevent "the for relating "the indi- agony of uncertainty" in a social order where vidual to the group and role-playing had displaced feudal role-alloca- the society." Thus, tion. In his Autobiography (1771), Benjamin Mitzman comments, Franklin had earlier demonstrated how to "the circle completes, adapt one's observable behavior to one's inter- and the grandfather!^ est. Kasson argues that Franklin thus antici- soul appears indeed to pates 19th-century etiquette, according to be reborn in his grand- which appearances matter more than reality. ^\ children." Here, indeed, is a paradox: By instructing a person not to trust his innate impulses but to copy outward models, "the very rituals intended to RUDENESS AND CIVILITY: Manners in fortify individual character undermined a sense Nineteenth-Century Urban America. By John F. of personal coherence." The guides gradually Kasson. Hill and Wane,. 305 pp. $22.95 fostered a sense of inadequacy that could be compensated for only by consumption-by In the late 1960s rebellious youth demanded to buying one's way into approved taste and pro- "do their own thing," little realizing that most pnety. Americans have long claimed some variant of As for the etiquette itself, Kasson uncovers that right. The 19th-century transcendentalists the lost arts of hat-tipping and of cutting and nurtured an individualism that many took as snubbing; of what constituted a proper smile license to construct their own unique "social" and a proper walk, of how to dine instead of selves. Kasson, a historian at the University of merely eating. These minute-and often comi- North Carolina, finds that these individualistic cal-strictures on everyday conduct de-

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experience," Chapman writes, caused individuals to look "inside themselves for answers: hence Descartes's cogito ergo sum." Other developments encouraged this individualism. In the marketplace, guilds were increasingly displaced by privately owned enterprises. In the political realm, the idea of government by consent was gaining wider credence. In literature, autobiography was becoming a more popular form. It is no great surprise, then, that the preoccupation with the self should find its way into the art world. "Especially in the Netherlands," says Chapman, "there was hardly an artist who did not paint his own features." What makes Rem- manded, as the century wore on, even greater brandt unique is not only the number of self- control of one's emotions. In effect, they set portraits but the way he used them "to label careful limits upon the possibilities of social in- himself as an outcast or an outsiderH-a true teraction, and, by doing so, led to a more spe- 17th-century individual. cialized and segmented civic order in America. His earliest self-portraits depict a "solitary Far from being quaint sources of arcane rituals, melancholic," a fitting image at a time when those 19th-century etiquette manuals, Kasson people considered melancholia the "manda- concludes, "powerfully reinforced class distinc- tory condition for creative genius." This guise tions while transposing them to the plane of soon gave way to more exotic, romantic poses, refinement." such as in The Artist in Oriental Costume, with a Poodle at His Feet (1631) or Self-portrait with Gorget and Helmet (1634). These roles, outland- Arts & Letters ish though they seem to modern eyes, enhanced Rembrandt's reputation as a historical REMBRANDT'S SELF PORTRAITS: A painter. They also aided him in his lifelong Study in Seventeenth-Century Identity. By H. quest for an identity that would separate him Perry Chapman. Princeton. 189 pp. $39.50 from his fellow artists, most of whom portrayed themselves as wealthy gentlemen. The Dutch artist Rembrandt van Rijn (1606- Following his Self-portrait at the Age of 34 1669) painted, etched, and drew his own like-- (1640), which showed a confident-looking ness no fewer than 75 times, portraying himself Rembrandt in elegant tunic, he ceased making as everything from a common beggar to the self-portraits for nearly a decade. Chapman lik- Apostle Paul. Why did he so often turn his can- ens this period to a "conversion experience," vas into a mirror? Most art critics agree that in during which Rembrandt directly confronted grander images Rembrandt, the miller's son, the question of his identity as an artist. When was robing himself in the status to which he Rembrandt returned to self-portraiture in 1648, aspired or, in the later self-portraits, asserting he had resolved to go his own way: "He dis- the dignity of his profession. Critics have usu- carded his Renaissance virtuosity for a more ally scoffed at the modern psychological notion honest, more independent identity as an artist that he was concerned with his inner life. Chap- working with his tools." In his Self-Portrait man, an art historian at the University of Dela- Drawing at a Window (1648), Rembrandt de- ware, differs. She argues that the self-portraits picted himself not in fancy garb but as a plain represented nothing less than "a necessary pro- artist at work, without pretensions, staring cess of identity formation." straight at the viewer. Rembrandt's obsession with self-portraiture This independent impulse was not without its makes him a true son of the 17th-century. Dur- financial consequences, however, for Rem- ing that century, a "growing faith in reason and brandt refused to bow to his clients' wishes. In-

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stead of satisfying the vogue for classical ditions. But if the Yahweh of J is not the God of themes done in classical style, Rembrandt the Jews, the Christians, and the Muslims-or chose biblical subjects that appealed to his own even of secular critics-who is he? According moral preoccupations, and these he painted in to Bloom, he is a literary creation, an impish a style that his contemporaries found "unfin- character "who behaves sometimes as though ished" and much too he is rebelling against his Jewish mother, J." realistic. His commis- Yahweh, as the Tower of Babel episode shows, sions dwindled, and is the representation of the irony of mankind's payments were fre- longing to be godlike: "We are godlike or quently withheld. He theomorphic, or can be," writes Bloom, "but supposedly retorted, "If we cannot be Yahweh, even if we are Da- I want to give my mind vid.. . . We are children always, and so we diversion, it is not build the Tower of Babel. J's Yahweh is a child honor I seek, but free- also, a powerful and uncanny male child, and dom." Rembrandt thus he throws down what we build up." faced a choice that few The question that this provocative reading of Self-portrait (1659) artists had known be- the oldest part of the Bible raises is obvious: fore but that many What do we make of Yahweh's demotion-or were to experience af- promotion-from divinity to literature? It is ter him: whether to paint for one's wallet or for clearly Bloom's project, developed in his many one's soul. Almost inadvertently, Chapman books, to subsume the sacred within the high- concludes, Rembrandt had invented a new est order of poetry, the poetry of the sublime. idea: "the artist as an independent, self-govern- His project descends from the great poet Wil- ing individual." liam Blake, who saw the sacred as the imagination's supreme creation. Bloom is not a biblical scholar who has un- THE BOOK OF J. Translated by David covered new source material; he is a critic giv- Rosenberg. Interpreted by Harold Bloom. Grove ing the J text the interpretation that is most res- Weidenfeld. 340 pp. $21.95 onant and meaningful for him. And just as Bloom can read religion out of the Bible, so Harold Bloom acknowledges that there are may future scholars learn to read Bloom's "profound reasons for not regarding the Bible Blakean romanticism out as well. Whether they as a literary text comparable to Hamlet and succeed, however, does not diminish the play- Lear." But his commentary on poet David Ro- ful vigor of the interpretation. It is an alto- senberg's translation of the oldest strand of the gether fitting accompaniment to Rosenberg's Pentateuch-what scholars call the J text- startling translation of the poem that describes makes a powerful case that it is just that, a sub- the primordial spiritual relationship: "Yahweh lime work of literature. The Yale critic pro- shaped an earthling from clay of this earth, ceeds to claim that the author of the "Book of blew into its nostrils the wind of life. Now look: J" was neither Moses nor a scribe but a man becomes a creature of flesh." woman, a "sophisticated, highly placed member of the Solomonic elite" (c. 950-900 B.c.E.) who wrote in "friendly competition with her LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN: The Duty of only strong rival among those contemporaries, Genius. By Ray Monk. Free Press. 672 pp. the male author of the court history narrative $29.95 in 2 Samuel." On these bold premises, Bloom constructs a The interest in Ludwig Wittgenstein is almost scholarly tour de force, not only detailing the as mysterious as the man was himself. In addi- various revisions of the text (beginning with the tion to countless memoirs by friends and ac- E revision, c. 850-800), but also challenging quaintances, there have been poems, paintings, the misreadings of the Bible that have been be- musical arrangements, five television specials, queathed to us by the Jewish and Christian tra- and, most recently, a hefty fictionalized biogra-

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phy-all devoted to a philosopher who during nettlesome protege even after their friendship his lifetime published the total of one book, the exhausted itself. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922). This, World War I interrupted Wittgenstein's work moreover, was a philosopher who scorned the on his book, but service in the Austrian army business of philosophy and saw it as his mission was a deepening experience. It strengthened to free mankind from philosophy's pernicious his conviction that the most important things in grip. (Philosophers have seemingly borne no life-goodness, honesty, the soul-were the grudge in return. Biographer Monk counts no least susceptible to discussion. They were be- fewer than 5,868 books and articles dealing yond language. And that was what his Tractatus with Wittgenstein's work.) came disturbingly to announce when he fin- Part of Wittgenstein's fascination was his ished it after the war. The best that language background, which Monk carefully details. He could do, wrote the war-weary veteran, was to was born in 1889, the eighth and last child of a provide accurate "pictures" of the world, ver- successful Viennese industrial family, Chris- bal representations of what science has shown tianized Jews whose assimilation into Hapsburg to be "the case." society was almost assured by their great Although published with considerable diffi- wealth. The Wittgenstein household was a hot- culty, the book could have immediately paved house within the larger hothouse of fin de sikcle the way for an academic career. But Wittgen- Vienna: a family that venerated the arts, par- stein seemed to run from so obvious a fate, ticularly music, and that assumed nothing less sequestering himself for several years as an ele- than excellence of all its members. The stakes mentary schoolteacher in rural Austria, gaining of such breeding were high-three of Ludwig's the reputation as a brilliant but eccentric mis- four brothers committed suicide-but Ludwig, fit. His mind all the while turned, revising ear- by all appearences the least gifted, plodded lier conclusions, groping toward at least a par- through his early years, a tinkerer with a gift for tial revision of the Tractatus's conclusions. The manual arts. village years ended badly, with allegations of The fascination quickens with the unfolding cruelty toward his students, and Wittgenstein, of this "normal" child into the man whom after an interlude in Vienna, made his way back many of the best minds of his day would recog- to Cambridge in early 1929. "Well, God has ar- nize as a genius. To some extent, Monk shows, rived. I met him on the 5:15 train," the econo- Vienna's best thinkers set the terms of Wittgen- mist John Maynard Keynes noted. stein's future intellectual struggle: From the The next 12 years were those during which satirist Karl Kraus, Ludwig acquired his sensi- the "reluctant professor" argued most pro- tivity to the dishonest use of language. From foundly with himself. He believed no true phi- Otto Weininger, author of Sex and Character- losophy could come out of academia, and (1906), he came to believe that the acquisition thought the best he could do for his students of genius was "not merely a noble ambition" was to turn them toward more truly useful ca- but a "Categorical Imperative." Wittgenstein's reers-as doctors, or mechanics, or machin- philosophical style, its analytical rigor, was fur- ists. (His success in this endeavor earned him ther shaped by the study of aeronautics which the wrath of more than one set of parents.) It he entered upon at Manchester University, at was during these years, nevertheless, that Witt- the age of 19. His growing interest in the logical genstein's reputation settled upon him like a foundations of mathematics led him eventually mantle. His students worshipped him; some to Cambridge and Bertrand Russell and the be- even loved him. But Wittgenstein never felt he ginning of a fruitful but stormy relationship: could love them sufficiently or wisely in return. Wittgenstein's commitment to total honesty Monk makes clear that Wittgenstein struggled compelled him to criticize his mentor on those as much with his passion as with ideas, and it occasions when he found his work less than was this struggle that marked him as a philoso- first-rate. The mentor could become exasper- pher and not merely a professor of philosophy. ated ("He felt I had been a traitor to the gospel Most of the work of this time was collected in of exactness," Russell complained in a letter to students' notes, later arranged in various his mistress), but he continued to support his books; meanwhile, Wittgenstein endlessly re-

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vised the opus that would be published only af- 10 percent for 68 percent, while 21 percent of ter his death, Philosophical Investigations all children lived in poverty. Moreover, argues (1953)-a work that would develop his notion Phillips, "that accelerating economic inequality of "language games" while challenging the ade- under the Republicans was more often a policy quacy of the scientific method as the founda- objective than a coincidence." Tax laws were tion of knowledge. changed to eliminate their progressivity; gov- After working as a hospital orderly during ernment exvenditures moved toward defense World War I1 Wittgenstein could not bring and away from domestic programs; interest himself to return to Cambridge. What followed rates were deregulated; and the government, were largely solitary peregrinations in England instead of taxing adequately, borrowed lavishly, and Ireland, Wittgenstein dreading his loneli- so that the United States passed from being a ness but feeling that it was his fate to embrace creditor to a debtor nation. All this was caviar it. His death from prostate cancer, three days on the plates of the rich. By 1987 there were a after his 62nd birthday, was marked by a Catho- million millionaires; more Americans had be- lic burial. Although Wittgenstein was not a come millionaires in the 1980s than in the na- practicing believer, Monk deems it an appro- tion's entire history. priate mistake: "For in a way that is centrally But the day of judgment is at hand, Phillips important but difficult to define, Wittgenstein says. "The great corrective mechanism of U.S. had lived a devoutly religious life." national politics is the chastisement of elites at the ballot box." The Reagan and Bush administrations have lost "touch with the public, exces- Contemporary Affairs sively empower[ed] their own elites, and become a target for a new round of populist THE POLITICS OF RICH AND POOR: outsidership and reform." It has all happened Wealth and the American Electorate in the before, according to Phillips. He draws elabo- Reagan Aftermath. By Kevin Phillips. Random rate analogies to the Gilded Age of the 1880s House. 262 pp. $19.95 and the Roaring Twenties, both of whose spec-

The Politics of Rich and Poor is this year's most talked about book: In it, before the reader's eyes, a leopard changes his spots. In the 1960s, Kevin Phil- lips predicted a new Republi- can majority, and in the 1968 election he helped to achieve it by building Richard Nixon's populist strategy on white working- and middle-class dis- content. Now Phillips is pre- dicting the Republicans' down- fall, if only, he says, politicians will start treating real issues and the Democrats start acting like an opposition party. Phillips's argument about the Reagan years sounds a familiar refrain: The rich got richer and the poor got poorer, and, mean- ulative excesses ended in an economic panic while, the GOP had tun. By the end of the and a subsequent populist outcry and a redistri- 1980s, the top 420,000 households accounted bution of wealth. for 26.9 percent of the nation's wealth, the top Yet, so far the Democrats have failed to chal-

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lenge the ~e~ublicanssuccessfully because, with its third parties, socialized medicine, and Phillips thinks, they have been too busy imitat- strong trade unionism. In the United States, ing them. The Democrats collaborated on both union allegiance is declining, third parties are the Gramm-Rudman budget act and the 1986 ineffectual, and socialized medicine is largely tax reform, and thus could not take advantage, untried. What do such differences, when added in 1988, of public dislike of a tax policy that up, amount to? And given the similarity of the both favored the wealthy and created unprece- two countries' backgrounds, how did the differ- dented deficits. Even so, Bush's 53 percent was ences arise in the first place? the weakest Republican presidential victory in Borrowing from Max Weber, Lipset sets up a a two-way election since 1908; a switch of a chain of causality: Certain historical events hap- half-million votes in 11 states "could have pen, they establish social values, and those val- elected even Dukakis." Although Phillips finds ues in turn cause distinctive national behaviors. Jesse Jackson "limited by both race and Third The event that culturally divided the upper World rhetoric," he believes that if the Demo- North American landmass, Lipset argues, was cratic candidates appropriate Jackson's thun- the American Revolution. Canada, never ex- der in 1992, the way Nixon stole George Wal- periencing a revolution, remained "Tory"- lace's in 1968, the White House is theirs. conservative, monarchical, ecclesiastical- Exactly how plausible are Phillips's prophe- while the United States embarked on its popu- cies? So far, there's been little sign of any new list "Whiggish" adventure in individualism and populist majority emerging. Phillips's statistics egalitarianism. The mottoes of the two counties on income inequality may be correct, but encapsulate their differences: Americans are Americans in the middle ranges are not signifi- dedicated to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of cantly worse off. And while those in the bottom happiness," while Canadians want "peace, or- third are, they are not heavy voters. In 1968, der, and good government." Phillips drew up a strategy that let Nixon cap- Peace, order, and good government enumer- ture white voters hostile to race-fraught issues ate fairly practical goals, whereas liberty and such as busing and welfare. Yet the same ten- happiness represent transcendent ideals. In sions still polarize American politics. It will re- pursuing them, one almost enters the realm of quire more than populist rhetoric to unite the religion. Indeed, Lipset's main thesis is "that majority that Phillips proposes-blacks, whites, becoming an AmeHcan was a religious-that liberals, workers, the homeless, and the middle is, ideological-act." He quotes Richard class-behind a single cause. Even the wizard Hofstadter: "It has been our fate as a nation not Phillips has yet to locate such a unifying pro- to have ideologies but to be one." During gram in his famous crystal ball. World War 11, Winston Churchill opposed the outlawing of the English Communist Party because it was made up of Englishmen, and he CONTINENTAL DIVIDE: The Values and did not fear an Englishman. In Canada, as in Institutions of the United States and Canada. England, nationality is related to community, By Seymour Martin Lipset. Routledge. 337 pp. to common history. One cannot become un- $29.95 English or un-Canadian. But "being an Ameri- can," Lipset says, "is an ideological commit- To the casual observer, the United States and ment. It is not a matter of birth. Those who Canada pass for fraternal twins: a little hard to reject American valuesu-communists, for ex- tell apart. But take a second look, says Lipset, a ample-"are un-American." Harvard sociologist and political scientist, and The timing of Continental Divide is fortu- striking differences emerge. America has twice itous, coming as the Cold War ends and when as many policemen (per capita) as Canada- many journalists and politicians are speculating which may not be a bad idea, since four times about America's role in the world. Lipset holds as many Americans are murdered annually. A up Canada as a sort of fun house mirror to greater percentage of Americans go to church. America: It shows what America might look A greater percentage of Canadians vote in elec- like with one distinctive element removed from tions. Canada resembles a European country, the image-our ideological mission.

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Science & Technology appointed under the post-World War I1 Bonn governments). HEALTH, RACE AND GERMAN POLITICS Karl Von Frisch, the lovable discoverer of BETWEEN NATIONAL UNIFICATION AND the "language" of the bees, and Konrad Lorenz, NAZISM, 1870-1945. By Paul Weindling. who wrote the bestselling King Solomon's Ring Cambridge. 641 pp. $69.50 (1952), both taught in America after World War 11. They charmed American students and won Most accounts of Nazi medicine and biology Nobel Prizes. Earlier, however, Lorenz had read like demented Wagnerian librettos. By joined the Nazi party when Austria was swal- contrast, Weindling, a historian of science at lowed up by Germany, and Frisch had dedi- Oxford, serves up a thorough, even dry analysis cated the profits from his popular biology text of those aspects of a biomedical system that to the benefit of the Goebbel's Military Fund. may seem acceptable to many upwardly mo- Most of the scientists discussed by Weindling bile, middle-level medical administrators today. were, like Frisch and Lorenz, ostensibly moti- Weindling tells how German scientists modi- vated by a strong ethical urge, often derived fied their language or research to meet official from their skewed readings of Darwin, and by requirements. In their behavior, they appear their own personal ambition. And, quietly, hor- quite similar to the agents of universities who ror became acceptable: "What is wrong with now haunt the corridors of funding agencies to taking blood samples from people [concentra- determine what sorts of proposals will receive tion camp inmates] who are already con- support. It is not the methods or morality that demned to death?" asked one professor in all appear strange in Germany's case. But the sci- sincerity. ence was. During the late 19th century, many German scientists misread Darwin and developed what MULTIPLE EXPOSURES: Chronicles of the seemed a legitimate program for improving the Radiation Age. By Catherine Caulfield. Harper fitness of the German race. Where Darwin stud- & Row. 304 pp. $19.95 ied natural selection among individual organisms and biological species, they focused in- In 1895, the German physicist, Wilhelm Roent- stead on classes, races, and nations, as if they gen, discovered "a new kind of Ray" that were species too. After the unification of Ger- passed through wood and flesh but not through many in 1870, both scientists and government certain metals or bones. Roentgen named it an officials promoted eugenics to prevent the de- x-ray, the x standing for mystery. Within generation of the Germans: Alcoholism, crimi- months, reported the Electrical Review, the nality, tuberculosis, and falling birth rates were public was in the grips of a "Roentgen mania." all assumed to be due to heredity. This assump- Farmers even mixed radium with chicken feed tion compelled health authorities to take as to try to make hens lay hard-boiled eggs. their primary patient the state and the Volk. Thomas Edison jumped on the bandwagon, but Anti-Semitism, distaste for dark people, and his assistant, Clarence Dally, who did the actual even dislike of East European Slavs were work on the x-ray light bulb, had to have both viewed not as prejudices but as sound science. hands amputated before dying at age 39, the Weindling shows that "German science" was first "martyr to science" in the field of ionizing fully in place before the Nazis took power. The radiation. Weimar government (19 19- 1933) ordered the Caulfield, a science journalist, argues that the sterilization of all German children of the scientific establishment has been careless in French-African soldiery who had occupied the protecting workers (and others) from the dev- Rhineland after World War I. Hitler only sec- astating side effects of the "peaceful atom." onded this mandate. Although the Nazis ap- During the 1930s, scientists tried to establish pointed eugenicists to university and govern- safety standards. With the outbreak of World mental posts, these specialists had earlier been War 11, however, the pursuit of the atom bomb favored under the Weimar government (and overshadowed health concerns. The U.S. gov- many of them, Weindling shows, would be re- ernment conducted atomic tests in remote

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U.S. Department of Energy had to shut down its nuclear reactor in Hanford, Washington (which, like the reactor at Chernobyl, lacked thick containment walls) in early 1988. This cycle, repeated over and over, has made the public deeply suspicious about all radiation use. Ironically, Caulfield points out, the regulations governing the use of radiation "are far beyond those achieved by any other industry. Ionizing radiation is the best-understood and most tightly controlled toxic substance known to man." Today radiation poses less of a danger to individual workers exposed to high doses than to the population in general. This is because of what Caulfield describes as "radiation's ever-increasing popularity as a medical and industrial tool." But exactly how serious is that threat? Most people don't know, and part of the reason they don't, Caulfield says, is that scientists and officials obfuscate. In 1977, the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) concluded that the existing exposure limit for workers was much too high. But rather than set parts of the country, but when the cattle near a specific limit, the ICRP issued only a vague test sites suffered severe radiation bums, gov- guideline that "all exposures shall be kept as ernment scientists kept the information secret. low as reasonably achievable, economic and Their justification was that people would be social factors being taken into account." protected by ordinary clothing and routine Hardly an exacting requirement. bathing. In 1959, instead of enacting strict pro- If business, scientists, and governments have tection laws, Congress passed the Price-Ander- all failed to institute proper radiation protec- son Act (renewed in 1988), which prohibited tion, who can? In 1987, 800 scientists from 16 citizens from suing for damages resulting from countries petitioned the ICRP to admit "worker nuclear accidents. and public representation on the commission." Caulfield characterizes the history of radia-, The rationale for including laymen on a scien- tion protection as a cycle of "lulls and spurts." tific board is strong, in Caulfield's view: While The spurts come only after some radiation- radiation is a scientific matter, radiation protec- caused disaster, when public indignation is tion should involve philosophy, morality, and roused. Thus the Chernobyl accident caused communal decision. "No radiation," she con- such a public outcry even in America that the cludes, "without representation."

WQ AUTUMN 1990 100 Individuals do make the difference! Sorman's book illustrates the value of the entrepreneur to Third World economies.

THE NEW WEALTH OF NATIONS Guy Sorman Guy Sorman, journalist, professor of economics, and humanitarian, spent two years gathering material for this volume in eighteen Third World countries. This extraordinary account of his travels provides surprising answers to the economic woes besetting the people and nations of the Third World. "Without doubt Guy Sorman is about to become the French John Gunther, following in the footsteps of the famous American journalist-author who, during the 1950s and 1960s [brought] us Inside America and Inside Asia." Le Figaro $20.00 (cloth) $14.00 (paper) 215 pp. More than 365,000 copies in print throughout the world.

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Dismantling the Peculiar Institution

A bestselling author of the 1990s is, surprisingly, Abraham Lincoln. The Library of America has reissued his speeches and writings; in Ehstern Europe, translations of Lincoln now serve as classroom texts on democracy. But few how about the evolution of Lincoln's thinking on the race question, or how he was influenced by the ex-slave and brilliant orator Frederick Douglass. Dorothy Wickenden describes the relationship between the two men-a relationship that would alter the history of race in America.

by Dorothy Wickenden

n late July, 1863, in the middle of told me about you."' the Civil War, an imposing man The president's visitor was, of course, with stern features arrived at the Frederick Douglass, the editor of a re- White House hoping to meet Abra- spected abolitionist newspaper, a man in- ham Lincoln. Describing their internationally famous for his oratorical terview later, he declared that, powers and anti-slavery activities. A self- thoughI he was the "only dark spot" in the- taught former slave who had fled to free- throng of supplicants lining the stairway, dom 25 years before, Douglass was the he was received a few minutes after pre- first black man in America to receive a pri- senting his card. Elbowing his way to the vate audience with the president. There front, he heard another visitor grousing, was every reason to expect, however, that "Yes, damn it, I knew they would let the the meeting would not go well. Douglass n----r through." Lincoln, surrounded by was a pitiless critic of Lincoln's hare- documents and hovering secretaries, sat in brained 'lcolonization" schemes, which a low armchair, with his feet "in different would have dispatched freed slaves to Af- parts of the room." The president's guest rica or Central America to establish their observed that "long lines of care were al- own republic. What's more, Lincoln could ready deeply written on Mr. Lincoln's hardly have relished Douglass's reason for brow; and his strong face, full of earnest- coming to the White House-to press him ness, lighted up as soon as my name was to pay black and white soldiers equally, a mextioned." He approached Lincoln, who highly sensitive political issue. The two "began to rise, and he continued rising un- men had very different goals: The presi- til he stood over me; and, reaching out his dent's mission in the war was to save the hand, he said, 'Mr. Douglass, I know you; I Union; Douglass's was to free the slaves have read about you, and Mr. Seward has and transform them into citizens. Doug-

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lass's demands were not met that day, but separatist creeds of extremist politicians- he was evidently delighted by his recep- white and black-are again making them- tion. ("I tell you I felt big there!" he selves heard. With current schisms con- boasted.) And the meeting launched an ex- firming some of Lincoln's worst fears, it is change between Lincoln and Douglass that worth reconsidering how he and Douglass eventually did more than alter each of came to terms over the hture of blacks in their views about the proper conduct of America. the war. It helped to rewrite the history of race in America. uring the 1950s and '60~~revisionist If Frederick Douglass had the courage D historians went back to reexamine of Abraham Lincoln's convictions on ra: Lincoln's views on racial equality and cia1 equality, Lincoln perhaps more accu- emerged with disturbing news. Kenneth rately gauged both the depth of prejudice M. Stampp asserted, I'. . . if it was Lin- permeating American society and the stag- coln's destiny to go down in history as the gering complexity of replacing the institu- Great Emancipator, rarely has a man em- tion of slavery with all of the safeguards of braced his destiny with greater reluctance true democracy. Douglass's dream of a than he." A black journalist, Lerone Ben- color-blind, integrated society in which nett, Jr., wrote a provocative article for the blacks would share the privileges of educa- February 1968 issue of Ebony magazine tion, voting, public accommodations, and entitled, "Was Abe Lincoln a White Su- political office seemed on the point of be- premacist?" The very question, asked in a ing realized a century later, in the Su- black magazine during the racial strife of preme Court's Brown v. Board of Educa- the 1960s, hinted at its answer. tion decision (1954) and the 1964 Civil Both those who defend Lincoln's racial Rights Act. Today, Lincoln's tortured views politics and those who deplore them prop about equal rights seem sadly prescient, up their arguments with the speeches and Segregation can still be seen in schools, writings of Frederick Douglass. Douglass's neighborhoods, and workplaces; and the commitment to emancipation, black en-

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listment in the army, and universal suf- slaves as "property." He also supported the frage was as clear and consistent as Lin- southern demand for a tough hgitive slave coln's was equivocal and changing. law and opposed Negro voting and office- Douglass found himself maddened by Lin- holding. During the ruthless political cam- coln's faltering progress toward emancipa- paign of 1858, Lincoln sounded deeply tion and by his seemingly inexhaustible pessimistic about the prospects for racial solicitude toward the border states and equality. In the now infamous Charleston northern conservatives. Yet by the end of speech he baldly declared that the war, Douglass had come to admire Lin- coln's tactical genius, and with consider- there is a physical difference between the able pride he also saw him as an ally and a white and the black races which I believe friend. Douglass's changing opinions will for ever forbid the two races living about the president reveal as much about together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so his own political evolution as they do live, while they do remain together there about Lincoln's. must be the position of superior and infe- Race was the issue that launched Lin- rior, and I as much as any other man am coln's career in national politics. In the in favor of having the superior position famous debates of 1858, the other Doug- assigned to the white race. las-Stephen A. Douglas, Lincoln's oppo- nent for the U.S. Senate in Illinois that The best he could do was to invoke the year and again for the presidency in views of two slaveholders-Thomas Jeffer- 1860-dwelled incessantly on the theme son and Henry Clay-advocating gradual of racial inferiority. Douglas charged that emancipation and voluntaq emigration of the Negro race was inferior and thus not freed slaves as the only viable solutions to entitled to the inalienable rights accorded slavery and racism. to whites, Conservative voters responded Frederick Douglass, who was not run- enthusiastically when Douglas referred to ning for office in 1858, had a different Lincoln as a "black Republican" and an agenda. While Lincoln was trying to win extreme abolitionist (like "Fred. Douglass, over antislavery voters without unduly the Negro") who was advocating intermar- alarming conservatives in the state, Doug- riage and Negro suffrage and lass was speaking out for abolition and dis- officeholding. Lincoln tried to rise above missing colonization as a delusion that Douglas's distortions and racial slurs, in- "serves to deaden the national conscience sisting that he was fighting for the nation's when it needs quickening to the great and moral foundations. The crucial issue, Lin- dreadful sin of slavery." coln said, was that of human rights, not Yet Douglass campaigned hard for Lin- race. And he warned-as the abolitionists coln both in his Senate race in 1858 and in did-that the nation could not survive- his 1860 run for the presidency. He, too, "permanently half slave and half free." was a political pragmatist. He was sad- Yet Lincoln's liberal philosophy was dened, he wrote in the June 1860 issue of countered by his pragmatism and his Frederick Douglass's Paper, that the Re- strong political conservatism. He realized publicans would not "inscribe upon their that any attempt to secure all rights for banners, 'Death to Slavery,' instead of 'No blacks at once would scare the skittish More Slave States,"' but he was willing to white community and thus defeat the pre- "work and wait for a brighter day, when carious enterprise of building a more eq- the masses shall be educated up to a uitable society. His goal during the 1850s higher standard of human rights and politi- was to stop the spread of slavery, not to cal morality." He described Lincoln ap- liberate the slaves-hence the seeming provingly as a "radical Republican," call- contradictions in his views on race. He de- ing him "a man of will and nerve.. . . He plored the extension of slavery but de- is not a compromise candidate by any fended southern states' rights to their means." Douglass was willing to overlook

Dorothy Wickenden is the managing editor of The New Republic. Born in Norwalk, Connecticut, she received her B.A. froin Williain Smith College (1976). Copyright 0 I990 by Dorothy Wickenden.

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Lincoln's statements about racial superior- fears, in the North and the South, by ad- ity and his schemes for colonization. After vocating the colonization of freedmen. all, Lincoln had pledged to stop the spread For months after the Civil War broke of slavery and to work toward "its ultimate out, public opinion in the North tended to extinction," and he had a good chance to endorse Lincoln's view of his mission. In win the presidential election. November 1861, the three major New But disillusionment quickly followed York papers, the Tribune, the Times, and his endorsement. By December 1860 the World, all denied that the war's pur- Douglass was describing Lincoln not as an pose was to abolish slavery. Even Senator abolitionist (which Lincoln had never re- Charles Sumner, a fnend of Douglass and a motely professed to be), but as a protector longtime supporter of the abolitionists, of slavery. "Mr. Lincoln proposes no mea- wrote: "You will observe that I propose no sure which can bring him into antagonis- crusade. . . making it a war of abolition in- tic collision with the traffickers in human stead of a war for preservation of the flesh," he declared. Douglass's worries union." Emancipation was "to be pre- were exacerbated by the country's unsta- sented strictly as a measure of military ne- ble political condition. In the wake of the cessity, and the argument is to be thus sup- election, southern states were threatening ported rather than on grounds of to secede. Northerners were urging com- philanthropy." Though the abolitionists promise, not confrontation, and Douglass found this a cold-blooded approach, they and other abolitionists expected the Re- too argued that the war could be won only publican Party to back down on slavery. if the slaves were freed. "The very stomach "The feeling everywhere," he wrote later, of this rebellion is the Negro in the condi- "seemed to be that something must be tion of a slave,'' Douglass wrote. "Arrest done to convince the South that the- elec-~--- that hoe in the hands of the Negro, and tion of Mr. Lincoln meant no harm to slav- you smite the rebellion in the very seat of ery or the slave power." Douglass no its life.'' longer advised against disunion. He sought Lincoln was an astute politician who "any upheaval that would bring about an moved only when the time seemed right. end to the existing condition of things.'' As He was as concerned about the limits of Lincoln desperately sought ways to restore federal power as he was about the evils of national harmony, Douglass looked for- slavery. As president he did not express his ward to war as the beginning of the end of abhorrence of slavery with the passion he slavery. had in the debates with Stephen Douglas. Frederick Douglass was astonished when he new president did not intend to Lincoln revoked General John C. Frk- T turn the war into an abolitionist cru- mont's order freeing Missouri's slaves in sade. He said in his first Inaugural Address August 186 1. He could not understand in March 1861, "I have no purpose, di- Lincoln's refusal to make use of Negro sol- rectly or indirectly, to interfere with the in- diers: stitution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do The national edifice is on fire. Every man so, and I have no inclination to do so. . . ." who can carry a bucket of water, or re- Douglass described the address as "dou- move a brick, is wanted; but those who ble-tongued1'-a shrewd description of have the care of the building, having a profound respect for the feeling of the na- Lincoln at the time. Caught between abo- tional burglars who set the building on litionists and their Republican sympathiz- fire, are determined that the flames shall ers on one side and Northern Democrats only be extinguished by Indo-Caucasian and the volatile border states on the other, hands. . . . Lincoln struggled to arrange a compromise. He hoped that he could move the After a series of devastating Union defeats remaining slave states still in the Union in 186 1, however, the public moved closer slowly toward emancipation by offering fi- to the abolitionist view that the war could nancial compensation for freed slaves. At be won only by destroying slavery. So did the same time, he sought to soothe racial the president. Although he still declared

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FREDERICK DOUGLASS: HIS BONDAGE AND HIS FREEDOM The life of Frederick Douglass (18 17- 1895) years he supported himself by shoveling has the shape of an American myth-even coal, sawing wood, and sweeping chimneys, more, perhaps, than that of Honest Abe, rail- until, as he put it, ''I became known to the splitter. Douglass's autobiographies (he anti-slavery world." wrote three) show a man who not only de- Soon after his arrival in New Bedford, manded that the nation accept the black Douglass became a subscriber to the abo- dream of freedom and equality, but who em- litionist paper The Liberator and a prothgk of bodied the dream in his own life. its founder, William Lloyd Garrison. His first Born to a black slave and a white father opportunity to speak before a white audi- he never knew, Douglass's early childhood ence can-.e in August 1841, when he ad- on a Maryland plantation was marked by dressed an anti-slavery convention in Nan- paralyzing hunger and cold. He recalled his tucket. His gift for oratory was immediately feet being "so cracked with the frost, that apparent, and the Massachusetts Anti-Slav- the pen with which I am writing might be ery Society hired him as a lecturer. Using no laid in the gashes.'' At age six or seven, he notes, Douglass could speak for hours at a was sent to a family in Baltimore, where the time, possessing, as one observer said, "wit, mistress of the house broke state laws by argument, sarcasm, pathos'' and a voice teaching him the rudiments of reading. This "highly melodious and rich." Hecklers and interlude came to an end when the master skeptics claimed that so articulate a man found out, admonishing his wife that if she could never have been a slave. To refute taught "that nigger , . . how to read, there them, Douglass wrote an autobiography in would be no keeping him. He would at once 1845, which he rewrote 10 years later as My become unmanageable, and of no value to Bondage and My Freedom. Fearing recap- his master.'' Few warnings have proved so ture because of what he revealed in the auto- prophetic. biography, Douglass went on a two-year lec- With the help of local schoolboys, Doug- ture tour in the British Isles, promoting his lass taught himself to read and write. Now book and raising funds for the Massachu- literate, he became even more eager for re- setts reformers. Douglass was soon an inter- lease from the "peculiar institution.'' In Sep- national celebrity. tember 1838, at the age of 2 1, he escaped In December 1846 friends purchased his from slavery by fleeing to New York City, freedom, and he returned home with a new there marrying a freed woman, Anna Mur- ambition: to start his own abolitionist news- ray, whom he had known in Baltimore. They paper. After moving to Rochester, he began then moved to New Bedford, Massachusetts, publishing the North Star (later renamed where he changed his name from Bailey to Frederick Douglass's Paper), which he de- Douglass to elude slaveholders. For three scribed as "a terror to evil-doers.''

that the purpose of the war was to restore arming the Negro would turn the border the Union and urged the border states to states against him, in August Secretary of accept gradual, compensated emancipa- War Stanton authorized Brigadier General tion, he simu1taneously initiated a number Rufus Saxton at Beaufort, South Carolina, of tactical changes. In August, the month to recruit black volunteers. Most telling of he revoked Fr6mont1s order, he also all, that summer Lincoln privately dis- signed the first Confiscation Act, which cussed emancipation with his cabinet. freed all slaves who had participated Lincoln had made each of these deci- against the Confederate war effort. In April sions reluctantly. That is unsurprising, 1862 he signed a bill abolishing slavery in given his cautious political disposition. the District of Columbia, and in May he More troubling to some historians is that acceded to General Benjamin Butler's Lincoln continued his tenacious support "contraband" policy toward fugitive for the voluntary emigration of freed slaves, virtually granting them freedom. In slaves, an idea Douglass described, accu- July he signed the Second Confiscation rately enough, as "an old Whig and border Act. And, despite Lincoln's worries that state prepossession.''

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In 185 1, Douglass made a crucial decision. At the convention of the American Anti-Slavery Society he opposed Garrison's assertion that the Constitution was a pro- slavery document, citing the "noble purposes avowed in its preamble." He made it clear that he no longer supported Garrison's call for the dissolution of the republic. Soon Douglass's work as an agitator and Lincoln's as a campaigner intersected. The passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854, sponsored by Stephen A. Douglas, marked a turning point for the two men, as it did for the country. The opening of the territories to slavery unleashed Northern sentiment against the South, sending many voters to the new Republican Party. Impressed by Lincoln's eloquent attacks on slavery and by the promise of the new party, Douglass joined, too, in August 1856. The victories of emancipation and black enlistment that Douglass helped to achieve during the Civil War never seemed to him sufficient. During the 1860s and '70s, when racial animosity appeared more pervasive than ever, he pushed for black suffrage and integrated schools. (He was also one of the few influential men of his time, black or white, to agitate for women's rights.) Douglass became stubbornly more assimila- Douglass's work on behalf of the Republi- tionist. In 1884 he remarried, this time a cans was rewarded with government posts: white woman, Helen Pitts. Many blacks In 1877 he was appointed Marshal of the were appalled, but Douglass denounced District of Columbia, in 1881 Recorder of their reaction as a dangerous eruption of Deeds for the District, and in 1889 he be- "race pride." In a message that sounds par- came American ambassador to Haiti. ticularly pointed today, he insisted that "a During the 1880s and '90s, while many of nation within a nation is an anomaly. There his disillusioned contemporaries were can be but one American nation.. . and we preaching self-help and racial solidarity, are Americans."

On August 14, 1862, Lincoln received perceived as a case of blaming the victim, at the White House a small group of free Douglass wrote a withering account of the black men who had been carefully se- inconsistencies in Lincoln's argument, lected by the Commissioner of Emigra- concluding that he was "a genuine repre- tion, the Rev. James Mitchell, an avid pro- sentative of American prejudice and Negro ponent of colonization. Lincoln thought he hatred and far more concerned for the could convince them that racial prejudice preservation of slavery, and the favor of was immutable and emigration inevitable, the Border Slave States, than for any senti- and he asked them to lead a movement for ment of magnanimity or principle of jus- voluntary colonization. "You and we are tice and humanity." different races," he said. "[Tlhis physical difference is a great disadvantage to us ew realized that as Lincoln was mak- both. . . ." Furthermore, he told them, the F ing one final push for his tired old Negro was the source of the current trou- Whig solutions to slavery, he was also lay- bles: "But for your race among us there ing the groundwork for a social revolu- could not be war." Incensed at what he tion. One month before receiving the

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black delegation, Lincoln had privately ica-which they discussed with mutual represented the "preliminary" Emancipa- spect at the White House. The three con- tion Proclamation to his cabinet, and one versations between the "ex-slave, month later he released it. In December identified with a despised race" and "the 1862, he proposed amendments to the most exalted person in this great Repub- Constitution that would provide for grad- lic," as Douglass put it in his 1892 auto- ual, compensated emancipation and colo- biography, vividly capture how the two nization. But by January 1, 1863, when the leaders practiced the arts of politics and final proclamation took effect, Lincoln no persuasion. The talks also reveal how far longer considered colonization an active each had gone toward accepting the oth- political option. Many scholars have er's views on how best to achieve a more claimed that Lincoln supported coloniza- just society. tion mainly as a political tool to chip away Douglass intended to demand nothing at conservative worries about black free- less than "the most perfect civil and politi- dom. Certainly, once the slaves were freed cal equality." That included, of course, Ne- and allowed to fight in the war, Lincoln gro suffrage. He was convinced that enlist- recognized that the obvious next step was ment of blacks in the Union army was the citizenship, not banishment. first step toward citizenship, and on Febru- Douglass wished that the proclamation ary 26, 1863, he published a widely distrib- had gone further. It was, after all, only a uted broadside, "Men of Color, to Arms!" war measure that excluded the loyal bor- urging blacks to fight for their own free- der states and those areas of the South un- dom. Undeterred by complaints of pay in- der occupation by Union troops. It justi- equity, he told an audience of young black fied emancipation as a "military necessity" men in Philadelphia: "Once let the black and did not condemn slavery. Neverthe- man get upon his person the brass letters less, as he later wrote, he "saw in its spirit U.S. . . . and there is no power on the a life and power far beyond its letter." The earth.. . which can deny that he has final document made no mention of colo- earned the right to citizenship in the nization (as the preliminary one had) or United States." He even defended the ad- compensation, and it had a provision for ministration: "I hold that the Federal Gov- incorporating blacks into the Union army. ernment was never, in its essence, any- On New Year's Eve in 1862, Douglass thing but an anti-slavery government." waited with crowds of expectant blacks at Six months later, after the bloody de- Boston's Tremont Temple for the momen- feat of the Massachusetts 54th regiment at tous announcement from Washington and Fort Wagner, South Carolina (a battle in joined in hours of rejoicing when it came. which his two sons fought), Douglass grew He set off on an extended lecture tour to disheartened. Faced with growing evi- explain the proclamation's significance to dence of the Confederates' brutal mistreat- the public and to press for Negro enlistment of captured black soldiers, he wrote ment. He agreed immediately to Major to Major Stearns that he intended to stop George L. Stearns's request to help recruit recruiting. "How many 54th~must be cut Negro troops. Douglass had begun to work to pieces, its mutilated prisoners killed and within the political establishment. its living sold into Slavery, to be tortured to death by inches before Mr. Lincoln shall or decades, historians have argued say: 'Hold, Enough!"' F about whether Lincoln ever foresaw At Stearns's suggestion, Douglass went genuine civil rights for liberated blacks. to the president himself with his com- Frederick Douglass, of course, had much plaints. In late July, 1863, accompanied by to say on the subject. Although he contin- Senator Samuel C. Pomeroy of Kansas, ued his attacks on the administration after Douglass entered the White House. During the Emancipation Proclamation, the tone that first meeting, the president recalled of his remarks changed. Both men faced Douglass's criticism of his "tardy, hesitat- two pressing questions during the last ing, vacillating policy" toward the war ("I years of the war-the role of blacks in the think he did me more honor than I de- army and the future of blacks in Amer- serve," Douglass said somewhat disingenu-

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ously), and Lincoln told him that this was, in his judgment, one of the most mer- charge of vacillating was unfair. "I think it itorious men in America." cannot be shown that when I have once This encounter was even more reveal- taken a position, I have ever retreated ing than the first. On August 19, 1864, from it." Douglass was more impressed while waiting in the reception room, with this statement than with anything else Douglass was mistaken for the president. Lincoln said during the interview. Joseph T. Mills, another visitor that day, Douglass proceeded bluntly to make told Lincoln: his demands: equal pay for black soldiers, equal protection for black prisoners of It was dark. I supposed that clouds & war, retaliation for Confederate killings, darkness necessarily surround the secrets and promotions of blacks for distinguished of state. There in a corner I saw a man service in battle. Lincoln replied that even- quietly reading who possessed a remark- tually black soldiers would receive the able physiognomy. I was rivetted to the spot. I stood & stared at him. He raised same pay as whites, but that the current his flashing eyes & caught me in the act. I inequity "seemed a necessary concession was compelled to speak. Said I, Are you to smooth the way to their employment at the President? No replied the stranger, I all as soldiers." Lincoln resisted the sug- am Frederick Douglass. gestion of retaliation, arguing that it would encourage further Confederate atrocities, The meeting itself perpetuated this eerie but he said he would "sign any commis- confusion of identities, with Douglass as- sion to colored soldiers" recommended by suming the role of wise statesman and Lin- Secretary of War Stanton. Douglass left the coln proposing a radical scheme to ensure interview finally convinced of the presi- black freedom. dent's concern for blacks as a people, not The Union troops were foundering, and just as a military tool. Lincoln (in the midst of his reelection At the War Department, Douglass said, campaign) was afraid he would be forced Stanton not only "assured me that justice into a premature peace agreement. He would ultimately be done my race"; he told Douglass he would like his advice on promised Douglass a commission as assis- two matters, doubtless fully calculating the tant adjutant. The pledge prompted Doug- disarming effect the request would have. lass to cease publishing his paper, and in Horace Greeley, the editor of the New York his valedictory he proudly told his readers, Tribune, and others had been pressing for 'I am going south to assist Adjutant Gen- peace. In his reply to Greeley, Lincoln had eral Thomas in the organization of colored made the abolition of slavery an explicit troops, who shall win the millions in bond- condition for the restoration of the Union. age the inestimable blessings of liberty and This "To whom it may concern" letter in- country." Although he was informed of his flamed moderate Republicans and Cop- salary, the order for a commission never perheads (Democrats who pressed for re- came. Douglass was displeased, but he union through negotiations), and Lincoln later wrote with resignation, rather than showed Douglass a response he had resentment, that Stanton must have de- drafted, in which he said, in his usual cir- cided "the time had not then come for a cumspect manner, that even if he wanted step so radical and aggressive." to wage the war for the abolition of slav- Lincoln called Douglass back to Wash- ery, the country would not go along. Doug- ington the following August. The Rev. lass emphatically urged the President not John Eaton, who helped run the govern- to send the letter, warning that it would be ment's program for freedmen in the Mis- interpreted as a "complete surrender of sissippi Valley, had reported to the presi- your anti-slavery policy." In the end, Lin- dent Douglass's continuing dissatisfaction coln did not send it. with the treatment of black soldiers. Lin- Lincoln told Douglass that, if peace coln asked Eaton to set up another inter- were forced upon them now, he must find view, telling him that, "considering the a way to get as many blacks as possible conditions from which Douglass rose, and behind Union lines. He proposed a kind of the position to which he had attained, he underground railroad that curiously re-

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sembled John Brown's early plan of attack Proclamation toward the 13th Amend- on slavery: a small band of black scouts ment, which the President would describe would infiltrate rebel states and accom- as "the King's cure for all the evils." He pany their charges to the North. Douglass had already moved from an acceptance of worried that Lincoln was implicitly con- black soldiers to enthusiasm for their per- ceding that the Emancipation Proclama- formance. In August 1863 he had written a tion could be suspended after the war, but letter to his old friend James C. Conkling, he agreed to cooperate. He wrote the pres- stating: ident a letter several weeks later suggesting the number of agents to be assigned, I know, as fully as one can know the opin- their salaries, and how to assure their ions of others, that some of the com- safety. He also proposed some temporary manders of our armies in the field who government support for the freed slaves. have given us our most important successes believe the emancipation policy, In his autobiography, Douglass re- and the use of colored troops, constitute corded his impressions of the meeting: the heaviest blow yet dealt to the rebel- "What he said on this day showed a deeper lion; and that, at least one of those impor- moral conviction against slavery than I tant successes, could not have been have ever seen before in anything spoken achieved when it was, but for the aid of or written by him. . . . I think that, on Mr. black soldiers. Lincoln's part, it is evidence conclusive that the proclamation, so far at least as he Furthermore, Lincoln had made the was concerned, was not effected merely as crucial connection between arming the a 'necessity.'" Moreover, Douglass added, Negro and allowing him the privilege of "In his company, I was never in any way voting. Louisiana, where Reconstruction reminded of my humble origin, or of my had begun before the end of the war, was a unpopular color." test case. In March 1864, Lincoln wrote a At the time Douglass had only a partial letter to the newly elected Union governor, picture of the president's intentions. He Michael Hahn, saying that the elective did not know that Lincoln was deliberately franchise might be offered to some blacks, making his way from the Emancipation 'as, for instance, the very intelligent, and

The largely black Massachusetts 55th Regiment marches into Charleston on February 21, 1865. Douglass had championed the idea of blacks serving as soldiers as a step toward citizenship.

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especially those who have fought gallantly murred, afraid of detaining the president. in our ranks." He closed on a timid note: "'No, no,' he said. 'You must stop a little, "But this is only a suggestion, not to the Douglass; there is no man in the country public, but to you alone." Nevertheless, on whose opinion I value more than yours.'" April 11, 1865, in his last public address a Douglass, an equally adept flatterer, told few days before his assassination, he re- him that the speech was "a sacred effort," turned to the idea, advocating limited suf- and Lincoln replied, "I am glad you liked frage and public education for blacks in it!" His black friend "moved on, feeling reconstructed Louisiana. that any man, however distinguished, Douglass disliked Lincoln's approach might well regard himself honored by to Reconstruction, which allowed each such expressions, from such a man." state to decide for itself whether to confer On April 14, 1876, the eleventh anni- the vote upon blacks. Like Senator Sum- versary of Lincoln's assassination, Freder- ner, Douglass argued that Congress should ick Douglass gave a speech at the unveil- demand universal suffrage as a condition ing of the Freedmen's Monument in for a state's readmission into the Union. Washington. It was a ceremonious occa- Still, he did finally support Lincoln's re- sion attended by senators, Supreme Court election effort, agreeing with him "that it justices, and President Ulysses S. Grant was not wise to 'swap horses while cross- and his cabinet. The oration is a favorite ing a stream,'" and he attended the in- both with historians who cast Lincoln as a auguration. white supremacist and with those who see him as the Great Emancipator. In it, Doug- incoln's transcendent second Inaugu- lass began with what sounded like sharp L ral Address thrilled Douglass as much criticism: "Abraham Lincoln was not, in as the first had disappointed him. He was the fullest sense of the word, either our particularly struck by the president's con- man or our model. In his interests, in his viction that slavery was "one of the of- associations, in his habits of thought, and fenses which.. . [God] now wills to re- in his prejudices, he was a white man. He move," and that "this terrible war" was was preeminently the white man's presi- the "woe due to those by whom the of- dent, entirely devoted to the welfare of fenses came." In Lincoln's words about white men." Black Americans, continued the bond-man's 250 years of unrequited Douglass, "are only his step-chil- toil and suffering under the lash, Douglass dren . . . children by force of circum- could not have asked for a more stirring stances and necessity." Yet later in the tribute to his people and the righteousness speech, Douglass's praise for the President of the war against slavery. was unstinting: The evening of the Inauguration Doug- lass went to the White House for the third time, to pay tribute to the president. He His great mission was to accomplish two was turned away at the door, an affront things, first to save his country from dis- memberment and ruin; and second, to that was quickly atoned for when an ac- free his country from the great crime of quaintance of Douglass's let the president slavery. To do one or the other, or both, know he was there. Douglass entered the he needed the earnest sympathy and the elegant East Room, and there, as he re- powerful cooperation of his loyal fellow marked in his autobiography, "Like a countrymen. . . . Had he put the abolition mountain pine high above all others, Mr. of slavery before the salvation of the Lincoln stood, in his grand simplicity and union, he would have inevitably driven homely beauty. Recognizing me, even be- from him a powerful class of the Ameri- fore I reached him, he exclaimed, so that can people and rendered resistance to rebellion impossible. From the genuine ab- all around could hear him, 'Here comes olition view, Mr. Lincoln seemed tardy, my friend Douglass.'" Lincoln, ever the cold, dull, and indifferent, but measuring politician, took Douglass's hand and said: him by the sentiment of his country-a '"I am glad to see you. I saw you in the sentiment he was bound as a statesman crowd today, listening to my inaugural ad- to consult-he was swift, zealous, radical, dress; how did you like it?'" Douglass de- and determined.

WQ AUTUMN 1990 LINCOLN AND DOUGLASS

Douglass was far from immune to the yet made a clear commitment to full citi- sentimental view of Lincoln that so many zenship for blacks. But in the Gettysburg Americans acquired after his death. And Address in November 1863, he described a the president's apparent fondness for him nation that, "conceived in liberty and dedi- was reciprocated. He was deeply touched cated to the proposition that all men are that Lincoln had left his walking stick to created equal," would be given "a new him. According to his biographer Benja- birth of freedom." This was not the old Jef- min Quarles, Douglass cherished this fersonian social order he had set out to de- more than any other gift he received-in- fend. It was, in fact, very close to the "new eluding those from Charles Sumner and Union" Douglass talked about the next Queen Victoria. month: "We are fighting for something in- Nevertheless, Douglass was not one to comparably better than the old Union." In let sentiment override truth, and in his the new union there would be "no black, oration he was groping toward a painful no white, but a solidarity of the nation, recognition that the president's ultimate making every slave free, and every free triumph was due in part to those distaste- man a voter." In strikingly similar terms, ful concessions he made to white preju- Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass dice. As Richard Hofstadter acknowledged thus described a more perfect union, one in The American Political Tradition (1948), they together helped to construct. Lincoln "knew that formal freedom for the Negro, coming suddenly and without oday, amid the politics of self-interest preparation, would not be real freedom, T and racial resentment, this sense of and in this respect he understood the slav- shared purpose is ever more fragile. Doug- ery question better than most of the Radi- lass saw that the country would be suscep- cals, just as they had understood better tible to such fragmentation, and he fought than he the revolutionary dynamics of the against it throughout his political life. war." The abolitionists and the radical Re- "Nothing seems more evident," he repeat- publicans could not have won their war edly insisted to blacks who despaired of against slavery. Nor would Lincoln's early finding common ground with whites, support for black rights have prevailed "than that our destiny is sealed up with without the determination of extreme ide- that of the white people of this country, alists like Douglass. and we believe that we must fall or flour- At the time of his death Lincoln had not ish with them."

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An Exile's Dilemma

To return to the Soviet Union or not to return? That is the question now facing one of Russia's most popular novelists. On August 15, 1990, the citizenship of Vladimir Voinovich-as well as that of Alexander Solzhe- nitsyn, Joseph Brodsky, and other Soviet artists-in-exile-was restored. But going home poses problems. Voinovich describes his dilemma.

by Vladimir Voinovich

f you want something good to hap- country twice, though both times as a for- pen in Russia, said the Russian eigner. A Soviet newspaper suggested that writer Kornei Chukovsky, you have I stayed only long enough to turn up my to live a long life. Chukovsky took nose and stomp off. American newspapers his own advice-he lived 87 years also carried accounts of writers who had (from 1882 to 1969)-but the good returned to Russia to give talks and read- thingI never happened. My generation had ings and then decided not to stay. But most better luck. Without even reaching old accounts neglected to mention one point: age, we have seen changes that our prede- The writers in question were not given the cessors could not have imagined. choice of staying, Normal Westerners cannot understand And then on August 15, 1990, that the heady excitement of buying a ticket to changed, After a decade of exile, I am now visit the place where you were born and permitted to live in the Soviet Union again. raised, where the people closest to you live Something I have dreamed of ever since I and the people related to you are buried. boarded the plane that took me from Mos- We Easterners, anything but normal, think cow to Munich in December 1980 is now a it the very pinnacle of happiness. Until re- real possibility. cently, we who were born and raised in the Even back in 1980,I was all but certain Soviet Union were divided into two cate- that in five years the Soviet Union would gories: those who could not be let out, and undergo major changes, When in June those who could not be let in. The privi- 198 1 Leonid Brezhnev signed a decree de- lege of two-way traffic was granted only to priving me of my citizenship, I wrote an those few people who had won the re- open letter: "Being moderately optimistic gime's confidence by demonstrating the by nature, I have no doubt that your de- ability to deviate from all accepted stand- crees depriving our poor country of its cul- ards of morality. tural dignity will eventually be revoked." Since my service to society had always With Brezhnev's death (November received negative ratings, I belonged to 1982), I wondered whether the changes the first category for the first 48 years of wouldn't come sooner than I expected; my life and to the second category for the with Yuri Andropov's (February 1984), I next eight. Then came perestroika, and in decided, no, not yet. But when Konstantin time the Soviet border became more per- Chernenko was buried (March 1985), I re- meable, even to types such as me. turned to my original prognosis. Five years In the last two years I have visited my after I left the country a new man came to

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power, a man I immediately trusted as minister has issued his order, the Soviet much as Margaret Thatcher did. (Al- ambassador has carried out his instruc- though, in truth, I trusted the situation tions, the cultural attache has phoned to more than I trusted the man: The Soviet say I can come to the embassy to pick up Union had come to an impasse, and the my Soviet passport. This seems the oppor- only way forward was radical reform.) tune moment to put on a dark suit and a Before long, political prisoners were black tie and to retrieve that precious doc- released, although not in the way I would ument with its red cover. have liked. Instead of being legally rehabil- But I'm in no hurry. Before taking ad- itated, they were simply pardoned, just as vantage of a Decree from the Almighty, I'd common criminals might have been. At like to ask its author a few questions. I least it was a step in the right direction, I would like to ask the president what sort of thought.- Gorbachev- had enemies galore; conditions for my return he has in mind. he needed to move Will all mv books be carefully. Rehabilita- published, or only tion would be the certain ones? What next step and not size will the editions only of "politicals" be? Only big enough but of all those writ- to give to Party dele- ers, artists, and musi- gates in the Kremlin cians who had been and to sell to tourists deprived of citizen- in the dollar shops, ship. or enough to satisfy How it would demand? And, while happen I didn't I'm asking, I'd like to know. Perhaps at know whether I get some stage of pere- an apartment, and, if stroika someone so, where and what high up in the hierar- size? (I'd like a big chy-the Soviet am- one, please, in the bassador to Ger- center of town.) many, the minister of Such questions foreign affairs, even may strike the West- Gorbachev himself ern reader as odd, if (why not?)-would not impertinent. Af- invite me to Bonn, ter all, in the West Moscow, the em- the housing problem bassy, the Kremlin, a The Exile's Dilemma. Voinovich inspects the is a money problem. restaurant, and there cityscape of New York-one of many cities he If you have the he would say, "Well has visited since 1980 but not called home. money, you live now, Vladimir Niko- where you please; if laevich, we've been not, you revise your thinking, pondering, debating, wrang- expectations. But in MOSCOW money is not ling.. . and, well, to come to the point, yet the main factor. True, a few apartments we've concluded that you have been done have come on the market lately. But most an injustice. Of course, Brezhnev and com- are still allotted according to age, health, panyare to blame, but we are sorry it hap- occupation, number of years employed, pened, and we feel it's time for you to length of residence in Moscow, military come home." At this point, he would read record, professional accomplishments, a decree restoring my Soviet citizenship. distinguished service to the State, Party So I sat waiting and ready for more affiliation, or membership in prestigious than five years-sat, as we say in Russia, organizations. with my neck already washed. And now, a And that poses some problems. For little tardily, it has happened: The presi- one, I never joined the Party. I was once a dent has signed his decree, the foreign member of the Union of Soviet Writers.

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Once, but never again. It has committed joke. One day the shtetl matchmaker pays too many crimes against literature, writ- a visit to Rabinowitz and offers to marry ers, and me personally. To set foot in the his daughter Sarah to Count Potocki. same old offices with the same old men Rabinowitz is indignant: "Marry my Sarah who made my life miserable and drove me to a goy? Nothing doing!" The match- from my country-no, not on pain of maker pulls out all the stops. He describes death. the Count's riches, the life Sarah will lead, But why, the Westerner may wonder, is the carriages, the jewels and fine clothes, this a problem now? It is because every the balls with magnates and princes. Fi- Soviet citizen is required not only to work, nally Rabinowitz gives in. "All right, so let but also to have a "certificate" proving her marry your goy." The matchmaker that he does. If I refuse to return to the runs out of the house, wiping the sweat off Writers' Union, who will give me that cer- his forehead. "Phew!" he says. "Now all I tificate? No one. And every citizen without have to do is persuade the Count!" a certificate is a "parasite," subject to criminal proceedings. I was considered a y case is more or less the same. Let's parasite for nearly seven years after my ex- M say someone persuaded me to go pulsion from the Writers' Union, that is, back; let's say I persuaded myself. That still from March 1974 until my forced depar- leaves two other people: my wife and my ture in December 1980. During that period daughter. My wife and I could probably a policeman by the name of Ivan Sergee- come to an agreement, but with my daugh- vich Strelnikov would come regularly to ter things are a bit more complicated. my door. Scraping and bowing, he would She had just turned seven when we ar- say with an idiotic smile, "Can you tell me rived in Germany. In the Soviet Union she where you work, Vladimir Nikolaevich?" hadn't even started school. Her formal I'd say I worked right where he saw me, at education began in a foreign country in my desk. And he would ask, "Tell me, what the middle of the year. We were very wor- do you do for a living, Vladimir Nikolae- ried. Needlessly. The teacher took her by vich?" And I'd answer, "I'm a writer." the hand, walked her to the classroom, 'Can you show me the 'certificate' that and said to the class, "This little girl's proves you're a writer?" name is Olya, children. She comes from "I can show you the books that prove Russia and she doesn't know a word of I'm a writer." German." The children were so taken by After leafing through the books with the introduction that contact between great curiosity and respect, he would sigh them and Olya was established on the spot. and tell me that books were insufficient Within three years little Olya was at the documentation. He needed a document top of her class in German. Now she that said that such and such a citizen- speaks perfect German, excellent English, worked at such and such an enterprise. and decent but accented Russian. You can Times have changed. I may be able to tell at once she's a foreigner. Where would come up with a certificate declaring that it I be taking her, then? To her "mother- took a certain amount of work to write my land?" Why? To wait in endless lines for books. Or to apply for one of those new bananas, pantyhose, laundry detergent, licenses, just as taxi drivers or tailors do, batteries, and just about everything else? and go into business for myself. Then I To join the Komsomol and study Marxism- could live there on my own-except that I Leninism, or refuse and turn dissident? In wouldn't be on my own. any case, things will be different when Which reminds me of an old Jewish she's older. She'll go off on her own, no

Vladimir Voinovich, a former Wilson Center Fellow, is considered by many to be Russia's greatest living satirist. Voinovich was born in Dushanbe, the capital of Soviet Tadjikistan, and his formal education-interrupted by war and the need to work-consisted of the first, fourth, sixth, seventh, and tenth grades. Since his first novel, We Live Here (1961), he has earned his livelihood as a writer, publishing among other works The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin (1975), Moscow 2042 (1986), and The Fur Hat (1988).He lives in Stockdorf, West Germany.

WQ AUTUMN 1990 116 VOINOVICH

matter what. Then my wife and I will de- tarily either out of weakness or for cide where to live. And Moscow is a dis- economic gain, for the gin and jeans of la tinct possibility. dolce vita. Now that we have perestroika, But for 10 years there was no hurry to they regret having left and fear becoming make a decision. The cultural attache useless, so they hate us more than ever. didn't call; no telegram arrived. Until Au- In the early days of perestroika, in 1986 gust 15 of this year, there was nothing but and 1987, Soviet newspapers condemned official silence. But silence has a history, us as a group. Later they switched to indi- too, and at different periods that silence viduals. First on the docket was the old- took different forms. timer Victor Nekrasov, author of In the During the years of stagnation, it con- Trenches of Stalingrad (1946), the most sisted of the Soviet press leaving us unwill- famous Soviet war novel. One article ing emigres alone-indeed, making us be- gloated over how the "unscrupulous trai- lieve that we had ceased to exist. I grew tor" was completely ignored in the West used to it. I had been ignored long before I and at the age of 75 was living off "the was forced to emigrate. At one time there refuse of Paris high life" under a bridge on was an unwritten rule that any expulsion the Seine. Next to be attacked were Vassily from the Writers' Union merited at least a Aksyonov, Vladimir Maximov, and Georgy brief mention in the Union's newspaper, Vladimov. Finally my turn came as well. Literaturnaya Gazeta. I believe I was the Literaturnaya Gazeta broke its usual si- first writer whose expulsion went com- lence on the subject of exiled writers to say pletely unmentioned. The authorities did that virulent anti-Soviets like me had never everything in their power to make my believed in anything before perestroika name sink into oblivion. Not only did they and so could not be expected to believe in say nothing positive about me-the usual perestroika itself. What is more, I had pub- treatment-they said nothing negative. My licly denounced perestroika. (Completely books were removed from libraries, indi- untrue: I had come out in favor of it.) Even vidual pieces cut out of back issues of perestroika's vanguard organ, Moscow newspapers and magazines; even refer- News, depicted me as an enemy of change. By referring to "those Voinovich types," it ences to my name in reviews or surveys - - were carefully crossed out. promoted me to a category. Once a foreign critic in Moscow asked If all this had been written by Party a Writers' Union boss what he thought of hacks and the KGB journalism depart- me. "What was that name again?" the boss ment, I wouldn't have minded so much. inquired. "Voinovich? A writer, you say? But my return to Russia and to literature, Just a minute." The boss reached for a di- like that of other exiled writers, was op- rectory of Soviet writers. He found the posed even by fellow authors. They had right page and ran his ringer down it. their reasons. The first was fear of compe- "Give me the name once more, will you? tition. Too many writers had gotten used to Let's see-Vinogradov-Volkov. Look, an artificial world in which the most inter- there's even a Voinov. But Voinovich?" He esting books went unpublished, and what looked up. "Sorry, there is no such writer." was published was chosen not by supply And when I left the Soviet Union, I van- and demand, but according to who was in ished into thin air. favor with the higher-ups. With the coming of perestroika and the In the Soviet Union, you must under- first bold efforts to tell the truth about So- stand, there is something that might be viet life, you would think there would have called "bigwig literature," written by the been a kind word for those who had ear- Writers' Union bigwigs, who until recently lier told the truth and paid for it with their enjoyed extremely privileged positions. freedom or with exile. But no. Instead They received enormous royalties and came vicious attacks. The press version of prizes. They lived in apartments and da- the recent past ran more or less like this: chas luxurious by Soviet (and sometimes We have just come through a terrible pe- not only Soviet) standards. They traveled riod of great trial; some unable to with- abroad as they pleased and were chauf- stand it left the country; they left volun- feured about Moscow in official limou-

WQ AUTUMN 1990 VOINOVICH I g

praised them less unstintingly than it did the bigwigs, the reading public, deprived of other living models, raised them to the heights of the Soviet Parnassus. And like the queen in the Sleep- ing Beauty legend, they want to make certain they remain "the fairest of them all." Finally there are Writers' Union stalwarts who, though perfect conformists before perestroika, now claim to be heroes of anti-socialist, anti-Soviet labor. Needless to say, they too are eager to avoid the ironic, reproach- ful looks of the returnee writer. In short, nearly all Soviet writers had a stake in keeping us out, and they did everything they could (con- sciously or unconsciously) to prevent our return. Fortunately, our books were able to return, and with the market now playing an important role in things, our books made money. Soon, the press grew embarrassed about repeating the standard lies. It began to write about emigres in warmer terms. The first less-than-hostile references to us appeared in the press only three years ago and consisted of one-line throwaways, oblique remarks, conciliatory but always Private Ivan Chonkin has become a folk figure qualified. They (we) had done certain bad in Russia. In the novel Chonkin is haunted by a things (left our country, spoken on enemy nightmare of Stalin as a woman in a dress. radio stations), but before that we hadn't been so bad, we were even good at times, sines. All Soviet newspapers reviewed- and in these days of glasnost, perestroika, their works in the most glowing terms, and the filling in of the blanks of history, comparing them to Shakespeare's trage- they (we) might be partially forgiven-the dies and Tolstoy's novels. Then, suddenly, good things remembered, the bad things with the dawning of glasnost, their books forgotten. The first recipients of this plus/ stopped being published, their royalties minus treatment were Andrei Tarkovsky, dropped, invitations from abroad fell off the film director, shortly after his death, and critics began passing them by or dis- and Victor Nekrasov, of whom I spoke missing them with a few pejorative re- above, only days before his. I couldn't help marks. The resentment of such "writers" recalling Pushkin's line, "The only ones thus makes a sort of sense. they love are those who've died." Sadder, perhaps, is the fact that even The first to break the ice among the liv- the talented writers-a much smaller ing was the well-known Soviet filmmaker group, to be sure-have misgivings about Eldar Ryazanov. For years, he had wanted our return. During the period of stagna- to make a film of my novel The Life and tion they were published less frequently Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan than were their bigwig colleagues, and Chonkin (1975), and he decided the time their perks were more modest. But they had come to try. The journal Youth also did enjoy a certain prestige. If the press expressed an interest in publishing the

WQ AUTUMN 1990 118 VOINOVICH

novel. I was skeptical, but things did seem that I did not consider membership in the to be moving in the right direction. Writers' Union anything to be proud of. I They came to a standstill in June 1988, needn't have worried: I was no longer ex- when I landed in the hospital and my doc- cluded from the Writers' Union, but as a tors announced that I was on the verge of foreign citizen with a German passport, I a serious heart attack. I nearly dropped could not be included in it. dead on the spot: Was it possible that I A meeting with the head of Mosfilm would fail to see my books published in Studios was particularly memorable. I ar- Russia, in Russian? Would I be like rived on the dot, but the secretary told me Tarkovsky or Nekrasov and fail to hold that I had to wait: "We're expecting a for- out? eign delegation." I was annoyed at being Luckily I was saved by a by-pass opera- brushed aside; then I realized I was the for- tion. Soon thereafter, while I was con- eign delegation. I was immediately led valescing, a reporter from Radio Liberty into a room dominated by a long table of brought me a copy of Moscow News with the type made for important deliberations. an article by Ryazanov entitled "Magna- As the representative of Western capital (to nimity." Ryazanov used the article to beg which I in fact had only the most limited the authorities for a generous, open- access), I had a whole side to myself. The minded approach to emigres in general Mosfilm representatives sent me broad and to me in particular. But to echo one of smiles of peace and friendship across the Pasternak's heroes, I neither expected nor table, but their eyes said, "You won't put wanted magnanimity from anyone. Based anything over on us.'' on a false premise, the article had a false Mosfilm's higher-ups were as high as I ring to it. Yet it was the first time in at least got while I was in Moscow. Pretty high, but 20 years that my life and work had been not enough to affect my situation. assessed in a positive light. The Radio Lib- Most of my other encounters with Rus- erty reporter put his microphone to my sians took place in quite different settings. pale lips and asked me what I thought of I gave at least 20 readings to packed halls the article. "I'm a bit disconcerted," I said. with an average seating capacity of a thou- "I'm told by my doctors that I'm doing sand. There was no reading at which I well, but the only ones they love are those wasn't asked whether I planned to return who've died. The only exception I know of to the Soviet Union. A man who had heard is Nekrasov, and the minute they professed me on Radio Liberty praised me for the their love for him he died. In other words, love I bore my country and said he was they are never wrong." certain that, given the opportunity to return for good, I would crawl back on my ut time has passed, I have (more or stomach. I responded that the country B less) recovered, and my books have worthy of such a return did not exist. been published in Russia and read by mil- On August 15 of this year, the authori- lions. One has been filmed (The Fur Hat, ties in effect admitted that forcing its writ- not Chonkin) and a number of them ers and musicians and artists to leave their staged. And I've been to the Soviet Union country was a criminal and barbarous act. twice. Been twice and left twice. Even earlier, Gorbachev had made occa- Before my first trip I more or less as- sional promises to prevent another such sumed there would be some official inter- "brain drain." If he dragged his feet about est in my returning for good. I wouldn't reversing the one his predecessors had have been surprised if Gorbachev had caused, I was not surprised. What sur- taken advantage of the occasion to annul prised me was the seemingly utter indiffer- Brezhnev's decree and return my citizen- ence within Soviet society. A minor af- ship. In fact, something of the sort did hap- front, such as the demotion of one or pen, but on a sublimely ridiculous level. another hero of perestroika-Yeltsin, Just after I landed, a reporter from Gdlyan, or Ivanov-created a furor and Moscow television congratulated me on sent thousands of people into the street. the annulment of my exclusion from the But that certain famous writers had not Writers' Union. I hastened to point out had their citizenship reinstated and that

WQ AUTUMN 1990 VOINOVICH

others were not allowed to return even for Eastern European empire it held in its a visit-this seemed to leave them totally thrall. To my mind, this is the most impor- indifferent. tant event of this 20th century, and its epi- I've read in Mayakovsky, "I'd like to be center is Moscow. understood by my country, and if I'm not, Each individual has his own answer to well, I'll go through my country sideways, the question, What makes you go on liv- like rain in the wind." Will I be under- ing? My answer is curiosity, mostly. I have stood by my country? We'll see. always wanted to see things with my own I've also read about penguins and foxes eyes and be as much a part of them as pos- in the Antarctic. As long as a penguin is sible. I used to dream of giving everything with its herd, its fellow penguins will de- up and rushing back, back into the fray. fend it to the death. But the fox is in no But then I would think, What for? hurry; it tags along after the herd until a History is like an earthquake or a live straggling penguin lags behind. Then it volcano: It is easier and safer to observe pounces and tears its victim limb from from a distance-on television, say. My limb. For all the victim's wailing, the herd life's work is writing books, a profession fails to react: The penguin that left the that requires a certain amount of peace herd is a loner. Like me. and quiet, comfort, and stability. And the Soviet Union provides none of the above: ow different would it be today if I re- Life is always seething, nerves are on edge; H turned to the Soviet Union-or, bet- tension, even hatred, among various ter, Russia? And why, anyway, do I think of groups, classes, and peoples is on the rise. returning? Because it is the country where You still can't move from one place to an- I was born and where people think, speak, other without a residence permit. You drink, write, read, and dream in my lan- have to ask permission to go abroad. And guage. Because it is the country where my just about everything is in short supply. To- adult children live, my relatives and day the country appears to be moving to- friends, the country where my parents and ward democracy; tomorrow there could my sister are buried. It is the country be a coup, a return to dictatorship. where my books come out in enormous I used to sit and wonder, Would I be editions and are gobbled up by millions of sorry if I went back? Would I want to bolt people. (When I see the chaotic, the alarm- immediately? Would I be able to? I ing conditions under which people live, I couldn't sleep at night thinking about am amazed that they still devour books- these questions. Sometimes I very much and in such quantities.) It is a country wanted to go back, sometimes I very much where I have enough money to forget wanted not to. And now it's a real possibil- about money. And there is another impor- ity. During my ten years of exile, not even tant factor: Literature has always been the the millions of people who read my books center of my life, but it has never taken seemed to understand my desire to go over completely. To live my life fully, I back to them. Perhaps it's because so need to take part in my country's life. many of them dream of moving in the op- The Soviet Union is now undergoing posite direction. "Are you crazy?" many changes I have waited for all my conscious said to me during my visits. "If you miss us life: the collapse of what was perhaps the so much, just send an invitation. We'll be most inhumane regime on earth, one that glad to come and visit." until recently seemed eternal, and, along with this collapse, the dismantling of the -Translated by Michael Henry Heim

WQ AUTUMN 1990 120 Tools for Serious Readers A DIFFERENT BOOK CLUB!

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Continued from page 18

right so that the divine meaning would be- pers were started in Boston during the come clear. Interpretation was almost un- early 18th century, the teleological import necessary: Almanacs, histories, and collec- of the news had all but vanished. Even so, tions of "providences" often contained Nord argues, journalism continued to feel only lists of occurrences, and even many the Puritan influence. "The news would published sermons contained long recita- remain event-oriented, devoted to unusual tions of "the facts." (but conventional) occurrences, and de- Of course, it was not long before varying pendent on reportorial empiricism." The interpretations of events did begin to ap- chief difference is that, today, "no one pear, and by the time the first real newspa- knows what the stories mean."

RELIGION & PHILOSOPHY

"Three Approaches to Locke and the Slave Trade" by Wayne Locke's Lapses Glausser, in Journal of the History of Ideas (April-June 1990), Univ. of Rochester, Rochester, N.Y. 14627 It is one of the more unsettling puzzles of Land, than the Inhabitants possess, and political philosophy that John Locke make use of, any one has liberty to make (1632- 1704), the premier theorist of liber- use of the waste." By this logic, Africans alism, was an active participant in the resisting use of their "waste land" by slave trade. Among other things, he in- whites could be considered aggressors in vested the substantial sum of 600 pounds war-and thus candidates for slavery. in the Royal African Company, a slave- The third group of scholars sees slavery trading venture. as part and parcel of Lockean theory. A Over the years, notes Glausser, of conservative critic, Leo Strauss, maintains DePauw University, scholars who have tried to explain Locke's lapse have fallen into three distinct camps. One group dis- misses it as "embarrassing but insignifi- cant." Scrutinizing Two Treatises on Gov- eminent (1690) and other writings, these scholars find a virtually airtight case- against slavery. Everyone is naturally free "from any Superior Power on Earth," Locke wrote, and anyone who attempts to enslave a person "puts himself into a State of War" with that person. Locke seemed to admit only one exception: captives taken in a just war can be held as slaves. A second group of scholars, led by M. Seliger, detects signs of tortured logic jus- tifying slavery in Locke's writings. From Sir Thomas More's Utopia (1516), Locke borrowed the theory of "waste land," the notion that idle land may sometimes be seized by people prepared to put it to good 9, use. Thus Locke wrote that victors in war Locke probqbly coauthored colo.iia1 Carolina's may not seize the land of the vanquished, constitution', granting "every freeman. . . abso- except that "where there being more lute power and authority ovei ..is negro slave."

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that an acceptance of slavery was a natural to be fully human, and thus entitled to hu- outgrowth of Locke's defense of capital- man rights. In An Essay Concerning Hu- ism: "To say that public happiness requires man Understanding (1690), for example, the emancipation and the protection of the he denied that nature had drawn the acquisitive faculties amounts to saying that boundaries of the human species: "The to accumulate as much money and other boundaries of the Species, whereby Men wealth as one pleases is right or just." sort them, are made by Men." Leon Poliakov and H. M. Bracken are Where does Glausser stand? He thinks among those who argue that Lockean the- that slavery is integral to Locke's thought, ory is fundamentally racist. Locke, they ar- but only as part of an ambiguous "destabi- gue, did not consider blacks and Indians lizing competition of values."

"The Roots of Muslim Rage" by Bernard Lewis, in The Atlantic The Muslim Mind Monthly (Sept. 1990), 745 Boylston St., Boston, Mass. 02116.

The Cold War may be over but the clash of given, but Lewis does not find them credi- civilizations is not. Even if the inhabitants ble. The Ayatollah Khomeini, for example, of what was once called Christendom still clearly loathed the United States even cannot quite believe it, they are locked in a more than he did Israel; he was not, after holy war with much of the Muslim world. all, above secret dealings with Jerusalem. Some of the "roots of Muslim rage," Indeed, Muslims never seemed to hold it writes Lewis, a Princeton historian, grow against the Soviet Union that it was re- in certain profound differences between sponsible, through its satellite Czechoslo- the two faiths. Christians always recog- vakia, for keeping Israel alive during its nized a distinction between Church and first weeks of existence in 1948. As for im- State, and since the great religious wars of perialism, Lewis says, the United States the 17th century they have come to accept was never a power in the Muslim world, the separation of the two. Muslims never and it even forced the French, British, and made such distinctions, Lewis observes. Israelis to withdraw from Egypt in 1956. "Muhammad, it will be recalled, was not Meanwhile, Muslims are virtually silent only a prophet and a teacher, like the about the fact that some 50 million of their founders of other religions; he was also the fellow believers live under Soviet rule. head of a polity and of a community, a There are several reasons for this selec- ruler and a soldier." Thus, "the struggle of tive hatred, Lewis speculates, but none so good and evil very soon acquired political powerful as the fact that the Soviet way of and even military dimensions." life poses no challenge to Islam. "After all, Many Muslims feel that Islam has been the great social and intellectual and eco- locked for 14 centuries in a struggle with nomic changes that have transformed Christendom; only since the Turks were most of the Islamic world, and given rise repulsed at the second siege of Vienna in to such commonly denounced Western 1683 have the infidels enjoyed the upper evils as consumerism and secularism, hand. The Muslims were pushed out of Eu- emerged from the West, not from the So- rope. Then came European and Russian viet Union." colonialism, followed during the 20th cen- Unfortunately, Lewis continues, the tury by the invasion even of the Muslim West can do nothing to remove the source household by alien ideas about the roles of of conflict with the Islamic world; nor can women and children. it do much to mollify Muslim funda- Why has the United States become the mentalists. At best, it can step aside and focus of Muslim rage? wait for this cycle of Muslim fury to end American "imperialism" and support and for the more tolerant forces that have for Israel are the answers most often always existed within Islam to reemerge.

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SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

"Do We Know the Cause(s) of AIDS?" by Robert S. Root-Bern- What Causes AIDS? stein, in Perspectives in Bioloev and Medicine (Summer 1990), Culver Hall 403, 1025 E. 57 ST, Chicago, 111. 60'637, and "Is the AIDS Virus a Science Fiction?" by Peter H. Duesberg and Bryan J. Ellison, in Policy Review (Summer 1990), 214 Mass. Ave. N.E., Washington, D.C. 20002.

The whole world is waiting for a cure for other diseases; antibiotics; amyl nitrites acquired immunodeficiency syndrome and some other "recreational" drugs (not (AIDS). Yet medical researchers may have just dirty needles); semen components; made a fundamental mistake. They may be blood; anesthetics; and malnutrition. Does wrong about its cause. it not seem logical, he asks, that since The generally accepted view in the med- AIDS has more than one manifestation ical community is that AIDS is caused by (e.g., pneumonia or wasting syndrome) it human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). would also have more than one cause? But Duesberg and Ellison, Berkeley biolo- The occurrence of AIDS among infants gist and doctoral student, respectively, say seems to suggest that risky behavior is not that dissent is growing. Along with Root- a factor. But in fact, says Root-Bernstein, Bernstein, a physiologist at Michigan these unfortunate children are also subject State, they observe that HIV does not sat- to multiple risk factors through their isfy Koch's Postulates, the standard set of mothers, and their immune systems are criteria for testing the causes of disease. further undermined by premature birth First, HIV cannot be found in the blood of and low birth weight. at least five percent of all AIDS patients There are several possible alternatives to tested (and less than half have been the current wisdom. Among them: HIV tested). Second, HIV is present only in may not cause AIDS at all; it may be one of minute quantities. Third, HIV has not been several independent causes; or it may be shown to cause disease by itself. It does necessary but not sufficient to cause AIDS. not cause AIDS when injected into chim- Root-Bernstein seems to lean toward the panzees; of several thousand medical per- middle explanation. Duesberg and Ellison sonnel accidentally exposed to HIV, only believe that HIV plays no role at all in five percent have developed HIV and only AIDS. In their view, AIDS is in reality one person not known to have other risk- more than one disease with more than one factors has developed AIDS. cause, "most of which have in common 'Other risk factors" is the critical only that they involve risk behavior." If so, phrase, for as Root-Bernstein writes, HIV AIDS is not transmissible. is not the only possible cause of immuno- All three authors seem to agree on one suppression. He identifies seven agents thing. Basing the entire $3 billion U.S. that suppress the human immune system, budget for AIDS research, treatment, and some of them associated in this country education on the proposition that HIV is with homosexual behavior: venereal and the only possible cause is a tragic mistake.

Biotech Mining "Mining with Microbes" by Keith H. Debus, in Technology Re- view (Aug.-Sept. 1990), Building W59, MIT, Cambridge, Mass. 02139.

Mining has not changed much since gold, and other metals some 6,500 years humans first began digging rocks from the ago. But biotechnology may soon bring earth and smelting them to obtain iron, about a revolution in mining, reports De-

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bus, an economist at Montana College of gether. Bacteria engineered to remove Mineral Science and Technology. specific kinds of minerals may be pumped Traditional mining methods sufficed so into the ground and then extracted and long as high-quality ores and energy were placed in ponds on the surface, where the abundant and concerns about the environ- minerals would be processed. The prob- ment minimal. The fact that they no lem, according to Debus, is that while such longer are has spurred advances in the methods would be cheap, they would take new field of biohydrometallurgy. So far, a long time, perhaps decades, to work. the U.S. copper industry can claim the And nobody has yet found a way to bring most successful application of biohydro- microbes and minerals together beneath metallurgy. Threatened with extinction the surface effectively. during the mid-1980s, the once-dominant Already in existence, however, are sev- industry finally capitalized on a technology eral genetically engineered microor- that was accidentally discovered at Spain's ganisms that can clean up conventional famous Rio Tinto copper mine in 1752, mining by removing sulfuric acid and met- and which has been in scattered use since als from mine run-off. Similar methods the turn of the century. The technology ex- have been applied to the treatment of in- ploits the ability of the naturally occurring dustrial waste water. And researchers are bacteria Thiobacillus ferrooxidans to free working on microbes that will remove sul- copper from ore. By spraying a solution of fur from coal, thereby reducing sulfur di- manufactured bacteria over mine wastes oxide emissions by power plants that burn and processing the liquid, workers can re- coal and the acid rain that results. cover huge amounts of copper. "Bioleach- Biohydrometallurgy, Debus says, is that ing," which produced about 30 percent of rare technology that serves two often con- the U.S. copper industry's output by 1989, flicting goals simultaneously: more effi- literally saved American copper compa- cient production and a cleaner environ- nies from extinction. ment. Unfortunately, he concludes, Some day, Debus says, it may be possi- neither industry nor government is paying ble to eliminate conventional mining alto- enough attention to it.

"Borderline Cases: HOW Medical Practice Reflects National Medicine Goes Native Culture" by Lynn Payer, in The Sciences (July-Aug. 1990), 2 East 63rd St., New York, N.Y. 10021.

Science is supposed to be the bearer of the patients, the Americans in only five universal truths, but at least in the case of percent. medical science, that is not always the Until recently, French doctors also had a case. Even in the West, observes Payer, a favorite internal organ. Not surprisingly freelance writer, there are distinct na- for a people known for their fondness for tional styles of medicine. good food, they blamed a "fragile liver" Thus, West German physicians have for problems as various as headaches, long been preoccupied with the heart as coughs, impotence, acne, and dandruff- the key to all disease, perhaps a legacy of at least until a conference of French hepa- German literary romanticism. That ori- tologists largely absolved the organ during entation is so strong that Herynsuffiyenz, the mid 1970s. French attitudes toward or "weak heart," is the single most com- medical research are strongly influenced mon ailment treated in West Germany. by the legacy of Descartes. The Cartesian When West German and American doc- emphasis on elegant intellectual reasoning tors were asked in one study to analyze a is evident in the habit among French re- group of electrocardiograms, the Germans searchers of announcing great break- identified abnormalities in 40 percent of throughs without adequately testing them.

WQ AUTUMN 1990 PERIODICALS

French researchers recently publicized a new treatment for AIDS after trying it on only six patients for just one week. By contrast, physicians in England, home of the empirical tradition of Bacon, Hume, and Locke, are the most cautious. They even dispute the efficacy of the drug AZT as a treatment for AIDS. Neither the West Ger- mans nor the French have ever fully accepted Louis Pasteur's discovery that germs cause many diseases; they share the tendency to view disease as a "failure of internal defenses rather than an invasion from without," notes Payer. Thus, German doctors rarely prescribe antibiotics. And their French counterparts refer rather vaguely to the terrain, or "constitu- world." English empiricism and the con- tion," as the most important factor in straints of the English health-care system one's health. As a result, Payer reports, one account for some of this stinginess, but out of every 200 medical visits in France even the English minimum daily allow- leads to the prescription of a three-week ance of vitamin C is skimpy. cure at a spa in order to "shore up the What about American medicine? By Eu- terrain," courtesy of the national health in- ropean standards, Payer writes, it is very surance program. aggressive. American doctors prescribe By contrast, British doctors are consid- more medication and perform more sur- ered so stingy about ordering tests or- gery than their European counterparts, ap- medication of any kind that the French parently in the belief that the important call them "the accountants of the medical thing is to do something.

RESOURCES & ENVIRONMENT

Science Meets "Debating Gaia" by Stephen H. Schneider, in Environment Mother Earth (May 1990), 4000 Albemarle St. N.W., Washington, D.C. 20016. For over a century, scientists have at least environment. During the 1960s, British tacitly recognized that Earth's plant and scientist James E. Lovelock and microbiol- animal life is not just the passive subject of ogist Lynn Margulis went a giant step fur- environmental influences. It's a two-way ther. They argued that the biota actually street. The planet's "biota" also influences manipulates the environment for its own the climate and other aspects of the global purposes, that it "optimizes" environmen-

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tal conditions to suit itself. At the sugges- is not the same as to sav that life somehow tion of Lovelock's neighbor, the novelist optimizes its own environment to suit it- William Golding, they called their idea the self." Gaia hypothesis, after the Greek word for Consider, Schneider says, the last ice Mother Earth. "It is a more convenient age, which ended some 15,000 years ago. term than biological cybernetic system The carbon dioxide content of the atmo- with homeostatic tendencies," Lovelock sphere at the time was much lower than explained. normal; apparently ocean phytoplankton At first, writes Schneider, a climatologist were "hoarding" carbon dioxide. Because at the U.S. National Center for Atmo- carbon dioxide helps to warm the planet spheric Research, the Gaia hypothesis was (as an essential element of the "green- embraced only by mystics and certain house effect"), this abnormality made the apologists for industry who saw the Gaian ice age colder than it otherwise would vision of a self-policing global environ- have been. And a colder ice age meant ment as a license to pollute. But now, be- much less biomass-about 10-20 nercent cause of increased appreciation of feed- less than the planet has today. soit does back mechanisms, scientists are beginning not look to Schneider as if Gaia optimized to pay serious attention to the idea. the environment during the ice age. The problem, Schneider suggests, is that He salutes Lovelock and ~argulisfor re- there is more than one Gaia hypothesis. minding scientists of the importance of "The realization that climate and life mu- feedback mechanisms between earthly life tually influence each other is pro- and the environment, but he warns that it found. . . . Nonetheless, to say that climate is a grave error to conclude that all of and life 'grew up together,' or co-evolved, them are positive.

"The Pathology of Symbolic Legislation" by John P. Dwyer, in Going for Broke Ecology Law Quarterly (No. 2, 1990), 2120 Berkeley Way, Berkeley, Calif. 94720. Every few years the U.S. Congress passes within little more than a year of the law's an ambitious package of laws intended to passage. Needless to say, that never hap- end by fiat some threat to health or the pened, and the reason, apart from scien- environment; cancer-causing substances tific and other obstacles, is that the costs of in food, toxic pollutants in the water, haz- eliminating all risks to health would be ardous substances in the air. Dwyer, an 'staggering." For example, in 1983, after acting professor of law at Berkeley, cannot the EPA finally came out with a regulation think of a better recipe for failure, for just one pollutant, arsenic, a govern- By enacting such statutes, he writes, ment analysis showed that it would pre- "legislators reap the political benefits of vent 4.05 fatal cancer cases annually at a voting for 'health and the environment' cost of $27.1 million to industry. But if and against 'trading lives for dollars,' and Congress had allowed the EPA to weigh successfully sidestep the difficult policy costs, the agency could have set a standard choices that must be made." As a result, that saved 3.92 lives at a cost of only $7.4 regulators at the U.S. Environmental Pro- million. In other words, $19.7 million was tection Agency (EPA) and other agencies to be spent to prevent 0.13 cases of cancer, are stuck with an impossible mission. the equivalent of $150 million for one life. Dwyer points to the Clean Air Act of Faced with such irrationalities, EPA reg- 1970, which required the EPA to eliminate ulators have only two choices: drag their all risks to human health from hazardous feet or change the rules. Delay they have, air pollutants, regardless of costs or tech- through both Democratic and Republican nological feasibility. The hazardous air pol- administrations. By late 1984, regulations lutants were to be identified and regulated had been written for only seven hazardous

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Conservative Environmentalism? A Survey of Recent Articles

A "kinder, gentler" envirorimerttal policy Montana, chime in with a strong second. may be a long time coming if George Bush They argue in the Public Interest (Fall 1989) relies on conservative intellectuals for inspi- that privately owned resources are seldom ration. Two clusters of articles in conserva- abused, because owners pay a financial tive journals recently suggest that they are price for neglect. They point to the famous still struggling to come to terms with envi- Love Canal case. In 1950, they say, the ronmental politics. school board of Niagara Falls, New York, In Chronicles (August 1990), Harvard's took possession of a safe chemical dump Edward 0. Wilson, the father of "socio- built by the Hooker Chemical Company and, biology," expresses dismay that "green" is- despite repeated company warnings, pro- sues still make many conservatives see red. ceeded to develop the site, penetrating the "If the heart of the conservation agenda is dump's protective shell. In 1979, the Love the preservation of the best in the world in Canal area had to be evacuated. "When Hooker owned the site, company managers

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air pollutants. Dozens more remain to be Congress for passing laws that are impossi- dealt with. The other option is to reformu- ble to enforce, but Dwyer considers him- late the rules, either by persuading Con- self too much of a realist to believe that gress to allow the EPA to weigh costs and that will do much good. He suggests that feasibility or by doing so covertly. Con- regulators work behind the scenes to win gress has not gone along, and the courts, informal concessions with congressional naturally enough, have rejected the EPA's oversight committees, and that the courts covert efforts to do so. stop holding regulators to the letter of the Other commentators wag their fingers at cynical laws that Congress passes.

ARTS & LETTERS

Our Fin de Siecle "The Decline of the City of Mahagonny" by Robert Hughes, in The New Republic (June 25, 1990), 1220 19th St. N.W., Wash- And Theirs ington, D.C.20036. Art critics of the future will inevitably refer damental difference is that art carried to the era we live in as the fin de sikcle. much more weight in the earlier era, "the Just as inevitably, they will compare our weight of tradition, dreams, and social fin de sikcle to the one that went before, commemoration." Our era is dominated and Hughes, of Time magazine, declares by the mass media, and art has sought to that we ought to be embarrassed by what compete by lightening its load of meaning, they will see. For who among the current by abandoning its "elitist" traditions. But it crop of Manhattan artistic "giants," he has sunk rather than sailed. asks, can reasonably be compared to Ce- Hughes believes that art's decline was zanne, Monet, Seurat, Degas, Matisse, van further exacerbated by the explosion of Gogh, Gauguin, Munch, Rodin? wealth in New York City during the 1980s, New York seized the title of art capital of a development which greatly inflated the the world from Paris after World War 11, price of paintings and created a celebrity and for the first quarter of a century all culture. "The great city has gone on with was well. The city nurtured such great tal- frantic energy not as an art center but as a ents as Jackson Pollock, Willem De Koo- market center, an immense bourse on ning, Mark Rothko, and Robert Mother- which every kind of art is traded for ever- well. Then, in Hughes's view, everything escalating prices. But amid the growing went sour. swarm of new galleries, the premature The fault, he concedes, is not entirely canonizations and record bids, and the New York's. The last fin de sikcle was a conversion of much of its museum system positive era; "the presiding metaphors into a promotional machine, the city's cul- were of conquest and development: of tural vitality-its ability to inspire signifi- oceans, air, mineral strata, jungles, and cant new art and foster it sanely-has foreign peoples." Political radicalism had been greatly reduced." not yet been betrayed by Lenin and Stalin. In fact, he says, few artists of any kind- "Radicality" today, Hughes avers, is noth- and no great ones-live in Manhattan any ing more than "flippant, reamed-out cyni- longer. Few can afford to. Still, no other cism." Moreover, the artists of that earlier city is stepping forward to claim the title of era were thoroughly schooled in such ba- art capital of the world. Hughes doubts sic skills as drawing; they also felt free to that any will: The title has been rendered "consult and to use the past of [their] own obsolete by New York's self-destruction. culture, freely and without prophylactic The artists who will eventually revitalize irony." the art world, he predicts, will inhabit the But at bottom, Hughes believes, the fun- world, not just one city.

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Poetry's Empire "Burdens and Songs: The Anglo-American Rudyard Kipling" by Christopher Kitchens, in Grand Street (Spring 1990), 50 River- side Dr., New York, N.Y. 10024. Take up the White Man's burden- wrote his famous poem for an American Send forth the best ye breed- audience, and it was well received. As Go bind your sons to exile soon as the poem was finished he rushed it To serve your captives' need, off to his friend, Governor Theodore Roo- sevelt of New York, with the hope that it These opening lines from Rudyard Kip- might help sway the US. Senate in favor of ling's "The White Man's Burden" invari- a treaty taking over the governance of the ably make Americans think in superior Philippines from Spain. (Roosevelt passed terms of the hubris of 19th-century British the poem along to Senator Henry Cabot imperialism. But Kipling (1865-1936) Lodge with the remark that it was "rather poor poetry, but good sense from the expansionist view- point.") It appeared in the New York Sun on February 5, 1899, the day before the treaty was approved. In fact, writes Hitchens, a British-born journalist, through his poetry and his continuing correspondence with Roosevelt and others, Kipling became a kind of "John the Baptist to the age of American empire." He was an ambivalent evange- list, however, for while an American wife and several years' residence in the United States during the 1890s had warmed him to the country, it was, after all, still a democracy and a republic. He hoped that "the growing strength of the United States could be har- nessed to the existing Brit- ish Empire." It is no accident that "The White Man's Burden" was his first major

Mi \ of different trades and sizes work after his great, world- Ht-rr you see before your eyeses: weary "Recessional," in which he wrote: "Far- called, our navies melt away/On dune and head- land sinks the fire. . . ." When World War I broke A turn-of-the-century cartoonist wryly linked Kipling to Herbert out in 19 14, Kipling pressed Kitchener (1850-1915), a hero of the English empire whose mili- Roosevelt and other Ameri- tary exploits took him to Egypt, South Africa, and India. cans to come to Britain's

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aid, and he wrote poems intended to prick Winston Churchill to free India from Brit- the American conscience. In "The Ques- ish rule, Churchill should send his Ameri- tion" (19 l6), he asked: can counterpart two previously unpublished Kipling poems, as if to ask whether Brethren, how shall it fare with me the Americans were ready to assume the When the war is laid aside, burdens of empire. If it be proven that I am he By then, however, the game was up for For whom a world has died? Britain. That very autumn, Harold MacMil- lan, the future prime minister, made his During the 1920s and '30s, when the famous remark suggesting that Britain's British government labored in vain to re- role in the future would be to play Greece verse the isolationist tide of public opinion to America's Rome. That was not how Kip- in America, such Kipling hymns to the im- ling had hoped things would turn out. But perial spirit as Gunga Din, Elephant Boy, Hitchens suggests that "given the transmis- and Captains Courageous were made into sion of British imperial notions to the Hollywood films. It was perhaps inevitable Legates of the new Rome, he was not so that in the autumn of 1943, when Presi- quixotic a figure as Churchill's gesture dent Franklin D. Roosevelt was urging makes him seem."

"Subsidies to the Arts: Cultivating Mediocrity" by Bill Subsidizing Kauffman, in Policy Analysis (No. 137), 224 Second St. S.E., The Muses Washington, D.C. 20003, and "The Dutch Dole" by Susan Tallman, in Art in America (July 1990), 575 Broadway, New York, N.Y. 10012. Amid all the controversy over the congres- artists; that it favors artists in New York and sional effort to prevent the National En- Los Angeles and ignores regional talents; dowment for the Arts from underwriting that the arts flourished long before there obscene works, says novelist Bill was an NEA. His basic argument, however, Kauffman, the real issue has been over- is summed up by something William Faulk- looked. Should the $17 1 million NEA con- ner once said: "The writer doesn't need tinue to exist? economic freedom. All he needs is a pencil He thinks not. The Endowment was cre- and paper. I've never known anything good ated in 1965 after decades of lobbying by a in writing to come from having accepted curious alliance of liberals and Cold War- any free gift of money." riors. Each group hoped to enlist artists in That point of view would not find many its own crusade. "The Soviet drive in the backers in the Netherlands, notes Tallman, fine arts field finds the U.S. at present with- a New York writer, but even there some out a counteroffensive," warned a govern- subsidies have provoked controversy. In ment commission in 1952. Many artists of 1987, the Dutch government pulled the the Beat era opposed subsidies. Painter plug on its highly publicized Visual Artists Larry Rivers said, "The government taking Arrangement, a de facto welfare program a role in art is like a gorilla threading a for virtually anybody who could put paint needle. It is at first cute, then clumsy, and on canvas. Through the Arrangement, the most of all impossible." As the poet Robert Ministry of Culture purchased artists' Lowell explained in turning down an invi- works for sums based on the artists' needs tation to read at the White House in 1965, (determined by marital status, number of "Every serious artist knows that he cannot children, etc.) rather than on the works' enjoy public celebration without making merits. By the time of the program's de- subtle public commitments." mise, the Dutch government had pur- Kauffman has other objections to the chased 220,000 works of art, most of NEA: that it encourages cronyism among which were stored in warehouses. Even

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many artists were glad to see the Arrange- port-commissions, direct grants, and ment go. Among other things, they com- purchases for the national collection. In- plained that it supported traditional modes deed, public subsidies for the arts remain of painting and sculpture. By the 1980s, far more generous than they are in the Tallman reports, "it had become a mark of United States: $33 per capita annually, ver- self-respect in the serious art world to get sus 7 1 cents. Dutch art-often criticized as by without [Arrangement] subsidies. . . . boring and repetitious-may not have im- Rather than a safety net, the [Arrange- proved since the abolition of the Arrange- ment] was seen as an all-too-comfortable ment, Tallman allows, but, in what seems bed from which it became increasingly dif- a dubious defense, she says that the great- ficult to arise." est defect of the Arrangement has been Tallman hastens to add that Dutch art- remedied: Art is no longer stored away in ists gladly accept other government sup- warehouses but is exhibited for all to see.

OTHER NATIONS

"The Longest Run: Public Engineers and Planning in France" The 'Higher Lights' by Cecil 0. Smith, Jr., in American Historical Review (June Of France 1990), 400 A st. s.E., Washington, D.C. 20003. France has not always been the bastion of ignorant of theory." benign statism and central planning that it The Corp's distinctively French belief in is today, but it has for centuries harbored the superiority of theory and logic to ex- an institution that quietly kept such ideas perience led predictably to some serious alive. The Corps des Ponts et Chausskes, blunders. During the 1820s, on the eve of created during the 18th century to design the railroad age, the Corps committed a national system of highways, is an elite France to a costly new system of canals. group of state engineers that claims as its And Smith wryly notes that when Navier legacy the nation's railroads and canals, as was appointed to run the Corps' railroad well as such modern achievements as the operations during the 1830s, his plan of at- supersonic Concorde and France's un- tack was based on fairly abstract reason- paralleled nuclear power system. ing: The railroad's "self-evident advantage The Corps, writes Smith, a historian at over existing means of transportation was Drexel University, is itself without parallel. speed; therefore, the railroad's natural It embodies "public administration in the function was to carry passengers and light general interest and planning on a na- goods long distances at high speed." It tional scale," an ideal fostered during the would help unite the nation. Most freight 17th century by Jean-Baptiste Colbert, would travel by canal barge. Following who was King" Louis XIV's finance minis- this logic, the railroads were laid out on a ter. Its members were dubbed lumieres pattern called, after the head of the Corps, superieures (higher lights) more than a the Legrand Star, with all lines radiating century ago by Louis Navier, a professor of from Paris. The engineers scorned consid- Transcendental Analysis at the nation's erations of short-term profits, convinced leading school of engineering, the Ecole that the public good would best be served Polytechnique. As Navier's exalted title by gold-plated construction. suggests, France's "national engineers" The Corps sneered at the helter-skelter did not think of themselves as mere tinker- railroad development in Germany and ers. "Our predecessors," one self-assured other countries, often carried out by pri- student of Navier's dav wrote, "were like vate entrepreneurs who used gimcrack the English engineers of today: completely construction techniques. But the weak-

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nesses of the French way were calami- prevail in France, but the Corps kept the tously revealed during the Franco-Prussian dirigiste tradition alive. After the war, the War of 1870, when France's overly central- engineers reemerged and their influence ized system could not get troops to the spread throughout the government and front in time to stop the Prussians. into the new para-public sector of electric At various times during its history-no- power, gas, coal, banks, airlines, telecom- tably during the revolutions of 1789, 1830, munications, Renault, and other units that and 1848-the Corps and all it stood for they did so much to create. True, says were endangered by the brief ascendancy Smith, they continued to commit prideful of politicians and ideas in the classical lib- blunders, but "it is no less true that for 250 eral mode of Adam Smith. Between the years they sustained an ethos of public ser- 1880s and World War 11, these ideas did vice rarely found elsewhere." *

"Form and the Beast: The English Mystique" by Nina Witoszek Goodbye to and Patrick Sheeran, in The Virginia Quarterly Review (Sum- All That? mer 1990), One West Range, Charlottesville, Va. 22903, England is the last place on earth one the authors believe that the problem is En- would expect to find a national identity gland's loss of a sense of civilizing mission crisis, yet, like the Third World people in the world. As the journalist Henry they once ruled, write Witoszek and Fairlie put it in 1976, "Britain is mission- Sheeran, who teach at University College ary or it is nothing. It is an exemplar or it in Galway, the English are now asking, is nothing." "What is my nation?" Unlike many other nations, which define The causes are various: Britain's post- themselves in terms of a lost past, Eng- war decline, the prospect of European land, Witoszek and Sheeran write, has de- integration, and the growing population in fined itself in terms of opposition, as the England of Third World immigrants who embodiment of adulthood, maturity, or "insist on respect for and promotion of what they call Form, in opposition to "the their own cultural values." But at bottom Beast." As evidence, the authors point to

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some great struggles in English literature: To a much greater degree than the Span- between Beowulf and Grendl, Dr. Jekyll ish, Dutch, or other "immature" imperial and Mr. Hyde, Marlow and Kurtz, Piggy peoples, the English persuaded their sub- and Jack. "By the 19th century the heri- jects that they were a superior breed. To tage of Form could seem a biological en- the English, the absence of Form in a soci- dowment rather than a cultural ety was, simply put, shameful. At home, artifact. . . such acquired Anglo-Saxon the English maintained a "cult of adult- characteristics as self-control and respect hood," exemplified by their system of for law, reason, restraint, and distrust of "public" schools and "Oxbridge," de- enthusiasm [seemed] heritable." The Gen- signed to speed the young along to matu- tleman became the English cultural ideal. rity as quickly as possible. Form showed

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itself most obviously in the use of lan- bor Party, Neil Kinnock. In England, the guage: "In no other Western country has authors say, such liberation from the con- one's accent such power to elevate or de- straints of Form is not just a breach of de- grade socially." corum, "it implies a crisis of identity." Yet Today, however, the empire that ex- they do not underestimate Form's ability pressed the English mission is gone and to survive. "By its very nature Form proves Form itself is under attack from within. Its its superiority when under attack. . . . To critics include foreign-born novelist the very end it does the right thing at the Salman Rushdie (who is as hard on Eng- right time, thereby morally embarrassing land as he is on Islam) and the "unre- the rebelupas it did by coming to the de- strained, overimpulsive" leader of the La- fense of Rushdie.

WQ AUTUMN 1990 135 RESEARCH REPORTS

Reviews of new research at public agencies and private institutions

"Who Reads Literature?" Seven Locks Press, P.O. Box 27, Cabin John, Md. 20818. 106 pp. $9.95. Authors: Nicholas Zill and Marianne Winglee

In the Age of Nintendo, do percent of them had read a Even among people who people still read "serious" lit- work of "literary distinction." read, the authors add, litera- erature? Zill, a social psycholo- Just seven percent had read a ture does not sell as well as gist, and Winglee, an analyst at serious work of contemporary pulp fiction, business books, Decision Resource Corpora- literature. That translates into and self-help manuals. One tion, knew that someone had about 16 million people. book industry analyst estimates to be reciting from the 1,000 The typical American reader that 3.2 million volumes of volumes of poetry and drama, is a white, middle-class, col- contemporary literary fiction pondering the 2,000 works of lege-educated female living in and poetry and 9.1 million literary criticism, and absorb- the suburbs of a Western or works of classic literature were ing the 5,100 novels that are Midwestern city. Contrary to sold in 1985. But that was only published each year. the popular notion that people slightly more than one percent They pieced together a por- who read are social recluses, of all books sold that year. trait of the American reader two-thirds of literature readers The authors line up the usual from the findings of three na- jog or do some other exercise, suspects to explain the small tionwide reading surveys con- while only a quarter of non- number of serious readers: the ducted in the 1980s. readers do. Fifty-seven percent declining quality of education, The results are both hearten- of readers visit an amusement television, and even the inac- ing and disheartening, the au- park during a typical year, cessibility of writers. What can thors say. Although 56 percent while only 17 percent of non- be done to reverse the tide? To of American adults claimed in readers do. Surprisingly, liter- start, the authors rather per- one survey that they had ary sorts are also more than versely suggest, the publishing opened at least some fiction, twice as likely as non-readers industry ought to promote poetry, or drama within the to perform their own home books in newspapers, maga- previous year, only about 11 and car repairs. zines, and on television.

"The Money Chase: Congressional Campaign Finance Reform." The Brookings Institution, 1775 Mass. Ave. N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036. 227 pp. $29.95. Authors: David B. Magleby and Candice 3. Nelson

Campaign contributions have The leap congressional cam- $4.8 million, respectively. long greased the wheels of paign spending has taken dur- Where is all of this money American politics. And in con- ing the last 18 years is remark- coming from? Most of it- cept they are a healthy part of able. During the 1972 U.S. about three-fifths in the House political life: Giving money to a Senate and House of Represen- and three-quarters in the Sen- candidate is a way for citizens tatives elections, candidates ate-is given by individuals. to participate in politics. A spent a total of $66 million dol- Political action committees politician's need for support lars. By 1988, the amount (PACs) and political parties keeps him or her responsible jumped to $407 million-an contribute the rest. Federal to the electorate. increase of 456 percent in the election laws allow individuals In practice, however, the in- House and 600 percent in the to contribute $2,000 to a candi- fluence of money often is not Senate. date. PACs may give $10,000. so benign. Magleby, a political In 1988, winning candidates What concerns the authors scientist at Brigham Young for the House spent an average most is the absence of overall University, and Nelson, a for- of $374,000 each on their cam- campaign spending limits. mer Fellow at the Brookings paigns, while their counter- Candidates are allowed to heap Institution, argue that the ris- parts in the Senate shelled out up as much money as they can. ing costs of campaigns have $3,745,500. If the trend contin- This spurs heated fundraising turned the legislative branch ues, this year those amounts wars, in which perks such as into a fundraising circus. will climb to $500,000 and free mail and media exposure

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- give incumbents a great advan- cluding, oddly enough, raising In today's typical congres- tage over challengers. The in- the ceiling on individual con- sional election, only 22 per- cumbency advantage has made tributions to $4,800. They rea- cent of the voters can name many races less than competi- son that this will allow candi- the candidates. tive. In 1988, 89 percent of dates to solicit the same Even if it were true that House incumbents who sought amount of money from fewer money had little effect on elec- reelection won by near-land- contributors, reducing the tion results, they add, its influ- slides, with more than 60 per- amount of time they must ence is pernicious in other cent of the vote. spend pleading for money on ways. One survey of U.S. sena- In the Senate, where party the rubber-chicken circuit. The tors found that 52 percent control shifted twice during authors also favor partial pub- thought that the demands of the 1980s, contests tend to be lic campaign financing, re- fundraising "cut significantly more competitive. Some fear- stricting PAC contributions to into the time available for leg- ful incumbents have cleverly a small percentage of individ- islative work"; 12 percent built huge "war chests" just to ual contributions, and placing agreed that fundraising had scare off potential challengers. lids on the amount of money a other "deleterious effects" on By the middle of 1988, more candidate may spend on an the political process, such as than two years before they election. influencing legislators' votes. would face the voters, Senator To arguments that money Still, despite a lot of rum- Phil Gramm (R.-Tex.) had isn't the problem and that any bling about campaign reform raised $2.7 million, and Sena- limits merely discourage citi- in Congress lately, not many tor Bill Bradley (D.-N.J.) $2.8 zen participation in politics, members of Congress are ea- million. the authors reply that voter ger to surrender the advan- The authors favor several turnout has been dropping as tages that return so many of widely discussed reforms, in- campaign outlays have soared. them to Capitol Hill each term.

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We welcome timely letters from readers, especially those who wish to amplify or correct information published in the Quarterly and/or react to the views expressed in our essays. The writer's telephone number and address should be included. For reasons of space, letters are usually edited for publication. Some letters are received in response to the editors' requests for comment.

The Other Story The Call of the West

Peter E Klaren ["Peru's Great Divide," WQ, Sum- Brian Dippie's article ["The Winning of the West mer '901 paints a vivid and accurate picture of Reconsidered," WQ, Summer '901 is a knowledge- modem Peru. However, the role of the Indian able summmation of the frontier experience in question in the current human rights crisis in Peru terms of myth and antimyth, but it seems to ignore deserves further reflection. The traditional treat- a primary ingredient in the perpetuation of the ment of peasants as inferior citizens has encour- myth at the turn of the century, the time when the aged one of the most brutal counterinsurgency frontier was supposed to have died. campaigns in the hemisphere. Nowhere is this dis- The myth was real fabric to the people who dain more evident than in Vargas Llosa's report on lived within its spell and participated in the ongo- the Uchuraccay massacre, excerpted in Maren's ar- ing endeavor to make it manifest on a personal ticle. Throughout the description of what may have level. By the turn of the century, most people who happened at Uchuraccay, where eight journalists responded to the call of the West were not cow- were killed in 1983, Vargas Llosa depicts the local boys, gold prospectors, or railroad gandy dancers, peasants as exotic, savage, and untamed. Yet de- and they did not necessarily see themselves as part spite the isolation of many Andean villages, the Pe- of the myth of the wild and woolly West. ruvian peasantry has been integrated into the mar- My parents were born when the frontier sup- ket economy and has many ties with the "modem posedly closed (1890), but its rhyme and song world." Perhaps that is why the prevailing belief in formed the background of their lives. They finished Peru is not that frightened and confused peasants high school and eloped on a train from Missouri to killed the journalists, as Vargas Llosa claims, but California. They worked hard, educated them- rather that they were ordered to kill them by secu- selves, and filled their lives with love, accomplish- rity forces present in Uchuraccay at the time of the ments, and knowledge. They were never really af- massacre. fluent, they were never famous, yet they lived the The military and police officials in charge of "Go West" storv as much as anv rancher or rail- counterinsurgency operations come largely from road baron-and made it work. And it is in such coastal areas. More often than not they do not stories that the myth lives on in modern America, speak Quechua, the language of the Andes, and not in turn-of-the-century Deadwood Dick dime have no trust in the local population they are sent novels. to protect. Nor do peasants trust and share in: My parents were saddened over time as they formation with them. Thus, all peasants are sus- learned of the government's bunglings, corruption, pected of being guerrillas and are subject to tor- and inhumanity to the native Americans. But those ture, illegal detentions, disappearance, and extra- things did not alter their convictions about oppor- judicial executions. According to Amnesty tunity in America and the part that opening the International, more than 3,000 Peruvians-the vast West had played. Going west meant starting a new majority peasants-have "disappeared" since Janu- life, leaving behind unwanted baggage, taking ad- ary 1983. In fact, for three years in a row the United vantage of natural expansion in a country that was Nations recorded more disappearances in Peru not only free, but welcomed people from all over than in any other country in the world. As Maren the world to help build it. Buffalo Bill Cody? Come points out, thousands more have died. Massacres of on, they saw him at the circus. entire villages by Peruvian security forces occur Don E. Smith with disturbing frequency. West Linn, Oregon Thus, the exploitation and violence directed against the Peruvian peasantry for centuries continues today. Peru is indeed in the midst of a profound Down for the Count? social upheaval, but the road to a new social identity is paved in blood. Brian Dippie has given the traditional western Coletta Youngers myth a thorough and richly deserved trouncing. The Washington Officeon Latin America That myth was, in many ways, a commercially de-

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signed product, engineered to sell dime novels, A New Starting Point movies, clothes, and cigarettes. With roots leading more directly to New York and Hollywood than to Brian W. Dippie's suggestion that we study the the collective soul of America, the Wild West has landlord as well as the homesteader, the railroad always had a quality of tinniness and shallowness, operator rather than the builder, and entrepre- and Dippie effectively unveils it. neurs and corporations as well as cowboys and With the old myth down for the count, what miners, while continuing the now intensive study happens next? Do we leave a vacancy in the place of women in the West, is well-taken. where the Wild West once stood? It is, I think, now What is needed, however, is a different perspec- our opportunity to show that the real stories of the tive, a different starting point. Western history, for American West are, in a word, better-more mov- example, seems to stop at the West Coast. But as ing, more instructive, more charged with meaning. John Whitehead has recently noted, from the late While Dippie's article captures recent changes in 18th century onward, the American whaling and the writing of western history, history is only one of sea otter trade in the Pacific was more economi- the fields of regional expression involved in this cally valuable than the Rocky Mountain fur trade. change. In fiction, poetry, art, and photography, California's relation to Alaska, Hawaii, China, and the West seems at long last to be growing up, ceas- Mexico deserve fuller coverage." In short. the con- ing to be a cute, young, forgivable Beaver Cleaver cept of what is western or western-related needs to of a region, and emerging as a place both haunted be enlarged. The well-known early conservation and enriched by its past. debates centering on John Muir, Gifford Pinchot, Patricia Nelson Limerick and Theodore Roosevelt, need to be supplemented Univ. of Colorado, Boulder if not replaced by accounts of what Harold Ickes and a host of New Deal agencies actually did for conservation during the 1930s. Shot in the Foot Howard R. Lamar Yale University Brian Dippie appears to have fallen victim to the predictable greenhorn disaster: shooting himself in the foot as he tries to draw on his adversary. This is Remaining Committed at Home a result of the classic premise of the historian's art-that contemporary appraisals of events are in- I read with trepidation Shelby Steele's opinions evitably in error and that time and distance, ["Thinking Beyond Race," WQ, Summer '901 re- equally inevitably, correct this. What Dippie fails to garding the socioeconomic stagnation suffered by recognize is that cultural myths are articulations of the majority of the people in my ethnic group. cultural aspirations. The myth of the West came What Steele (who, by the way, is not representative into being and was adopted by our culture because of the average "middle class" black in terms of his it embodied values to which we aspired. It is his- sociopolitical outlook, his choice of a mate, or the torically self-serving, however, to presume that it neighborhood in which he chooses to live) fails to was seen as literal fact even in its heyday. accept is that racism does prevent us from being Dippie's curious statement that a good histori- accepted as equal human beings in this nation. His cal explanation accounts for the past and the fu- attitude is welcomed by most whites because it ab- ture, and his equally unsupported caveat that a ro- solves them of responsibility for acquiescing in mantic myth which is untrue for the present is practices that perpetuate racial dissension even as probably untrue for the past, leaves me wondering they publicly preach social virtue. This is what whether his objective is to correct historical inac- President Bush does when he calls for a "kinder, curacies or just to debunk a cultural aspiration gentler" nation while at the same time opposing which he dislikes. Dippie seems more concerned civil rights legislation. with making the past conform to contemporary Steele's attitude shows that he, not those of us values than with examining how the past produced who work to build our neighborhoods instead of the values of his own time. Historical research abandoning them when we achieve some measure would be better served if he and his sort examined of financial stability, is the type of black who has how and why the cultural aspirations reflected in "self-doubt" about his ethnicity. We are not the self- the myth of the West have been supplanted by doubting whiners that Steele portrays in his article. those of insider traders, rock stars with fried brains We are simply trying to make it in a system in and foul mouths, and sociopathic killers. which the color of a person's skin can limit oppor- Edgar W. Neville tunity. Nor are we guilty of trying to "internalize a Keno, Oregon message of inferiority" received from "school and

WQ AUTUMN 1990 COMMENTARY

the larger society" by continuing to speak out the eyes of their publics, and that without such le- against racism. gitimacy adequate economic and "alliance" perfor- Freedom to act involves facing challenges and mances (and even "socialist" survival) could not be working to overcome them. If Mr. Steele is so in- expected, the public pressures might once again tent upon fulfilling his potential as a black Ameri- have been aborted, as in earlier postwar decades. can, why does he reject those of us who choose to Indeed, by 1989 the dissidents, dissenters, and remain committed to principles of social progress youths of East Central Europe had escalated the instead of collective ignorance? He chooses to live pressures on their countries' communist rulers in in a comfortable, predominately white neighbor- Gorbachev's name. hood and tries to suppress his own inferiority com- It is interesting that Gorbachev's realistic assess- plex by questioning why other blacks don't wish to ment of the situation was the product of an admira- lead the same hypocritical existence. ble learning process. Upon coming into office in Sherman T Hinton March 1985. Gorbachev was initially under the illu- Vandenberg A.F.B., Calif. sion that he faced only a difficult but manageable "crisis of performance" rather than, as has proven to be the case, a terminal "crisis of the system" in The Lure of Nationalism East Central Europe-and probably in the Soviet Union itself as well. (The terms are Seweryn Your cluster of articles on East Central Europe Bider's.) By the end of the decade, he knew better. ["Eastern Europe," WQ, Spring '901 reminded me While Gorbachev has made serious mistakes- of a comment I heard while standing in a dairy line some of them gratuitous-and while he may yet in Prague, just after the 1968 Soviet invasion: "Why fail, his rapid and productive learning process on ever did we let Franz Josef so?" The woman who East Central Europe has been quite impressive. L7 made it looked old enough to have spent a happy Joseph Rothschild childhood under the Dual Monarchy, and doubt- Columbia University less the fond memories she harbored were more personal than political. Politically, the monarchy was no utopia, and wishing it had been one, wish- THE WQ WANTS YOU! ing it back into existence, will not help its former For a First Step in Journalism, constituents to solve their current problems. Consider the WQ One of the main problems in the region is resurgent nationalism. It provides deceptively easy The Wilson Quarterly is now accepting answers for hard problems and tends to divert applications for its internship program. large segments of the population from the highly We are looking for bright, versatile un- unattractive prospect of simultaneously tightening dergraduates and recent graduates who both the work ethic and their belts. No one can have an interest in journalism or other blame the nation-states of the area for voting in writing professions. Applicants may have nationalist-oriented parties after being forced for any liberal arts major, but they should nearly half a century to suppress national feelings have strong writing skills, and some ex- in favor of Communist internationalism. Once the perience working on professional or uni- furor dies down, however, a sober reassessment of versity newspapers or magazines. the situation may well lead back to a variety of Cen- There are three internship sessions tral European political unity. each year: January-May, June-August, Michael Henry Heim and September-December. Interns serve Univ. of Calif.,Los Angeles full-time on a monthly stipend and get practical experience in research, fact- checking, reporting, and writing. Gorbachev's Role If you are interested in becoming a WQ intern, send a cover letter, resume, To write about East Central Europe in the late clips, and at least three references to: 1980s without acknowledging the catalytic role of Internship Coordinator, Wilson Quarterly Gorbachev is like performing Hamlet without the 370 L'Enfant Promenade, S.W., Suite 704 Prince. Of course, the peoples of the region would Washington, D.C. 20024 in any event have continued to press their governments for greater freedom, justice, autonomy, and Applications are reviewed and accepted sovereignty. But without Gorbachev's eventual rec- on a rolling admission basis. ognition that those regimes lacked legitimacy in

WQ AUTUMN 1990 CLASSIFIED ADVERTISING

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If you are a serious reader who Credits: Cover, "Diary, ~&ust22, 1968" by Tetsuya Noda, courtesy of Felix and Helen wants to stay informed, subscribe to Juda Contemporary Japanese Art Collection; pp. 13, 79, 135, Reprinted by permission: THE WILSON QUARTERLY today. Tribune Media Services; pp. 16, 87, 103, 122, 130, The Bettmann Archive; pp. 20, 29, One year/$20, two years/36. Use "Samurai Jogger" by Masami Teraoka. Photo: Laurie Hines, courtesy OF the Pamela Au- the postage paid card in this issue chincloss Gallery; pp. 23, 92, Culver Pictures, Inc.; p. 25, Paramount Pictures Corporation. or write to THE WILSON CENTER, Photo: Adger W. Cowans/Culver Pictures; pp. 27, 32, Dave Bartruff;p. 35, Kyoto National Membership Department, P.O. Box Museum; p. 38, Henebry Photography; p. 43, "Festivals,of the Twelve Months" by 5221 1. Boulder, Colo. 80321. . Miyagawa Chosun, Japanese painting from the Edo period, Ukiyo-e school, ink, colors, and - gold on paper, Courtesy of the Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C.; p. 46, Stuart Franklin/Culver Pictures, Inc.; pp. 55, 59, Courtesy the Folger Shake- ARISTOS champions traditional val- speare Library; pp. 62, 63 right, 64, 65, Engraving by T. Bonar-Reproduced from the ues in the arts. "A scholarly but Collections of the Library of Congress; pp. 63 left, 107, 110, Reproduced from the Collec- gutsy little periodical" that "vigor- tions of the Library of congress; p. 67, The British Library; p. 69, The British Library, ously challenges modernist scholars London; p. 74, New York World-Telegram, taken from Uncle Saw: The Man and /he Leg- and critics."-Magazines for Librar- end, by Alton Kethum, Hill and Wang, 1959; p. 77, Oliphant, Copyright 0 1967, Universal ies. Sample issue plus annotated ta- Press Syndicate, reprinted with permission, all rights reserved; p. 82, Copyright 0 1990, ble of contents: $2.00. ARISTOS, The Economist Newspaper, Ltd. Reprinted with permission.; p. 89, P. Vandyke, The Na- P.O. Box 1105-W, Radio City Sta- tional Portrait Gallery, London; p. 94, from Punch, June 1856; p. 95, Self-portrait (1659) by Rembrandt van Rijn, Andrew W. Mellon Collection, National Gallery oE Art, Washington tion, New York, N.Y. 10101. D.C.; p. 97, AP/Wide World Photos; p. 100, TophamJImage Works/UK; p. 115, Photo: Lyubov Fyodorova Makowska, courtesy of Mrs. L. Fyodorova Ford. Reprinted with permis- FREE TO PUN LOVERS: New Pun sion from Vladimir Voinovich; p. 118, from Youth, December 1988, cartoon by G. American Newsletter. Send Novozhilova. stamped, self-addressed #10 enve- THE WILSON QUARTERLY BIENNIAL INDEX Volumes XI11 and XIV (New Year's 1989 through Autumn 1990)

Listed in alphabetical order below are the following: separate articles by title and, where appropriate, by subject; clusters of essays and lead essays on given topics (set out by capital letters); and all authors appearing in the Quarterly in 1989-1990. Corrections of factual errors are indicated. In 1990, the WQ eliminated the New Year's issue, reverting to its original four-issue schedule.

A D Adams, Richard N., The Conquest Tradition of Central Damton, Robert, TOWARD A HISTORY OF READING, America, Summer '90, 43 Autumn '89, 86 MUST AMERICA DECLINE? Autumn '90: Richard Deane, Stephen E., After the Bloc Party, Spring '90, 48 Rosecrance, 67 Will Deconstruction Be the Death of Literature?, Frank D. McConnell, Winter '90, 99 B Diggins, John Patrick, John Dewey: Philosopher in the Bakhash, Shad, The Islamic Republic of Iran, 1979- Schoolroom, Autumn '89, 76 1989, Autumn '89, 54 Diner, Steven J., From Jim Crow to Home Rule, New Baker, Keith Michael, A World Transformed, Summer Year's '89, 90 '89, 37 Dippie, Brian W., THE WINNING OF THE WEST RE- Baranczak, Stanislaw, Goodbye, Samizdat, Spring '90,59 CONSIDERED, Summer '90, 70 P. T. Barnum and the American Museum, A. H. Donoghue, Denis, An Irish Memoir: Portrait of the Saxon, Autumn '89, 130 Critic as a Young Man, Summer '90, 106 Battle, Thomas C., Behind the Marble Mask, New Lincoln and Douglass: Dismantling the Peculiar In- Year's '89, 84 stitution, Dorothy Wickenden, Autumn '90, 102 Surviving Beirut, Thomas L. Friedman, Summer '89, E 104 EASTERN EUROPE, Spring '90: The Quest for Cen- Bestor, Theodore C., Tokyo Mom-and-pop, Autumn '90, tral Europe, Ivan Sanders, 27; Budapest 1945: The 27 Year Zero, John Lukacs, 37; After the Bloc Party, Bettelheim, Bruno, The Birthplace of Psychoanalysis, Stephen E. Deane, 48; Goodbye, Samizdat, Stanislaw Spring '90, 68 Baranczak, 59 Elizabeth Bishop, Marianne Moore and, Susan (Eisenhower) A President for Certain Seasons, Alan Schdtz, Summer '89, 128 Brinkley, Spring '90, 110 Boorstin, Daniel J., Lawyer Sam Boorstin, Winter '90,- In Praise of the Essay, 0. B. Hardison, Jr., Autumn '90, 118 54 Bouwsma, William J., Explaining John Calvin, New EUROPE 1992, 'winter '90: Europhoria, Steven Year's '89, 68 Lagerfeld, 57; Too Little, Too Late?, Josef Joffe, 70 Brinkley, Alan, A President for Certain Seasons, Evans-Pritchard, Ambrose, The Reconquest, Summer Spring '90, 110 '90, 54 Brownlee, W. Elliot, The American Way, Spring '89, 86 F Fishman, Robert, AMERICA'S NEW CITY, Winter '90, 24 c Orson Squire Fowler: To Form a More Perfect Hu- Explaining John Calvin, William J. Bouwsma, New man, Dwight L. Young, Spring '90, 120 Year's '89, 68 (French Revolution) 1789, Summer '89: A World Trans- Chemistry Lessons, Primo Levi, Summer '89,120 formed, Keith Michael Baker, 37; The French Revo- (China) Memory, Commemoration, and the Plight of lution in the Minds of Men, Maurice Cranston, 46 China's Intellectuals, Vera Schwarcz, Autumn '89, Friedman, Thomas L., Surviving Beirut, Summer '89, 120 104 AMERICA'S NEW CITY, Winter '90: Robert Fishman, 24 G America's First Cocaine Epidemic, David F. Musto, Gaddis, John Lewis, Looking Back: The Long Peace, Summer '89, 59 New Year's '89, 42 Cranston, Maurice. The French Revolution in the Gitlin, Todd, The Postmodern Predicament, Summer Minds of Men, Summer '89, 46 '89, 67 WQ AUTUMN 1990 INDEX

H Death of Literature?, Winter '90, 99 Hardison, 0. B., Jr., In Praise of the Essay, Autumn '90, Maybury-Lewis, David, Brazil's Significant Minority, 54 Summer '90, 33 Husock, Howard, FIGHTING POVERTY THE OLD- Meldpr, Keith, Slaves and Freedmen, New Year's '89, FASHIONED WAY, Spring '90, 78 77: I H. L. Mencken: Ambivalent Victorian, T. J. Jackson Le~s,Spring '89, 112 (Correction: Summer '89, 144) THE INDIAN QUESTION IN LATIN AMERICA, Sum- mer '90: Peru's Great Divide, Peter F. Klarkn, 23; Marianne Moore and Elizabeth Bishop, Susan Schultz, Brazil's Significant Minority, David Maybury-Lewis, Summer '89, 128 33; The Conquest Tradition of Central America, Murphy, Cullen, The Way the World Ends, Winter '90, Richard N. Adams, 43; The Reconquest, Arnbrose Ev- 50 ans-Pritchard, 54 Musto, David F., America's First Cocaine Epidemic, An Irish Memoir: Portrait of the Critic as a Young Summer '89, 59 Man, Denis Donoghue, Summer '90, 106 ISLAMIC WORLD, Autumn '89: State and Society Un- P der Islam, Bernard Lewis, 39; The Islamic Republic Percy, Walker, The Divided Creature, Summer '89, 77 of Iran, 1979-1989, Shad Bakhash, 54; Varieties of (Correction: Autumn '89, 144) Muslim Experience, Mahnaz Ispahani, 63 (Correction: Petro, Nicolai N., Russian Nationalism: Toward a New Winter '90, 142) Russian Federation, Summer '90, 114 Ispahani, Mahnaz, Varieties of Muslim Experience, Au- Plath, David W., From The Mikado to Gung Ha Imag- '89, 63 tumn ining the Japanese, Autumn '90, 21 J FIGHTING POVERTY THE OLD-FASHIONED WAY, BEHIND THE MIRACLE: EVERYDAY LIFE IN JAPAN, Spring '90: Howard Husock, 78 Autumn '90: From The Mikado to Gung Ho: Imag- ining the Japanese. David W. Plath, 21; Tokyo Mom- R and-Pop, Theodore C. Bestor, 27; Japanese Farmers, Thinking Beyond Race, Shelby Steele, Summer '90, 62 William W. Kelly, 34; Restoring Order to the House of Japan, Margaret Lock, 42 Rand, Robert, Perestroika Up Close, Spring '89, 51 The Japanese Idea of Beauty, Donald Keene, New TOWARD A HISTORY OF READING, Autumn '89: Rob Year's '89, 128 ert Darnton, 86 Joffe, Josef, Too Little, Too Late?, Winter '90, 70 Summing Up the Reagan Era, Karl Zinsmeister, Win- ter '90, 110 Johnson, Paul, Jean-Paul Sartre: 'A Little Ball of Fur and Ink', Spring '89, 62 Rodrnan, Peter W., Is the Cold War Over?, New Year's '89 39 K Rodriguez, Richard, Oh, Ireland, New Year's '89, 136 Keene, Donald, The Japanese Idea of Beauty, New Rosecrance, Richard, MUST AMERICA DECLINE?, Au- Year's '89, 128 tumn '90, 67 Kelly, William W., Japanese Farmers, Autumn '90, 34' REFORM IN RUSSIA, Spring '89: A Peculiar Pattern, Klarkn, Peter F., Peru's Great Divide, Summer '90, 23 S. Frederick Starr, 37; Perestroika Up Close, Robert Rand, 51 L Russian Nationalism: Toward a New Russian Fed- Lagerfeld, Steven, Europhoria, Winter '90, 57 eration, Nicolai N. Petro, Summer '90, 114 Lears, T. J. Jackson, H. L. Mencken: Ambivalent Vic- torian, Spring '89, 112 (Correction: Summer '89, 144) Levi, Prirno, Chemistry Lessons, Summer '89, 120 Sanders, Ivan, The Quest for Central Europe, Spring '90, 27 Lewis, Bernard, State and Society Under Islam, Au- tumn '89, 39 (Correction: Winter '90, 142) Jean-Paul Sartre: 'A Little Ball of Fur and Ink', Paul Lincoln and Douglass: Dismantling the Peculiar In- Johnson, Spring '89, 62 stitution, Dorothy Wickenden, Autumn '90, 102 Saxon, A. H., P. T. Barnum and the American Mu- seum, Autumn '89, 130 Lock, Margaret, Restoring Order to the House of Ja- pan, Autumn '90, 42 Schultz, Susan, Marianne Moore and Elizabeth Bishop, Summer '89, 128 Lukacs, John, Budapest 1945: The Year Zero, Spring '90, 37 Schwarcz, Vera, Memory, Commemoration, and the Plight of China's Intellectuals, Autumn '89, 120 M Shirts, Matthew, Playing Soccer in Brazil: Socrates, McConnell, Frank D., Will Deconstruction Be the Corinthians, and Democracy, Spring '89, 119

WQ AUTUMN 1990 143 INDEX

SOVIETS AND AMERICANS, New Year's '89: Is The THE WINNING OF THE WEST RECONSIDERED, Sum- Cold War Over?, Peter W. Rodrnan, 39; Looking mer '%: Brian W. Dippie, 70 Back: The Long Peace, John Lewis Gaddis, 42 Wickenden, Dorothy, Lincoln and Douglass: Disman- Spitzer, Neil, A Secret City, New Year's '89. 102 tling the Peculiar Institution, Autumn '90, 102 Starr, S. Frederick, A Peculiar Pattern, Sprzng '89, 37 Y Steele, Shelby, Thinking Beyond Race, Summer '90, 62 Young, Dwight L., Orson Squire Fowler: To Form a T More Perfect Human, Spring '90, 120 THE POLITICS OF TAXATION, Spring '89: Plucking the Goose, Carolyn Webber, 75; The American Way, z W. Elhot Brownlee, 86 Zinsrneister, Karl, Summing Up the Reagan Era, Win- '90, 110 Tenner, Edward, High-Tech Tantalus, Summer '90, 102 ter v (Vienna) The Birthplace of Psychoanalysis, Bruno BACKGROUNDBOOKS Bettelheirn, Spring '90, 68 Voinovich, Vladimir, An Exile's Dilemma, Autumn '90, Must America Decline?, Autumn '90, 67 114 America's New City, Winter '90, 46 w Europe 1992, Winter '90, 81 THE OTHER WASHINGTON, New Year's '89: Slaves 1789, Summer '89, 56 and Freedmen, Keith Melder, 77; Behind the Mar- ble Mask, Thomas C. Battle, 84; From Jim Crow to Latin America's Indian Question, Summer '90, 58 Home Rule, Steven J. Dmer, 90; A Secret City, Neil Islamic World, Autumn '89, 73 Spitzer, 102 Everyday Life in Japan, Autumn '90,21 Webber, Carolyn, Plucking the Goose, Spring '89, 75 Reform in Russia, Spring 89, 59 THE TROUBLE WITH THE WEST-TWO VIEWS, Soviets and Americans, New Year's '89, 66 Summer '89: The Postmodern Predicament, Todd Gitlin, 67; The Divided Creature, Walker Percy, 77 The Politics of Taxation, Spring '89, 99 (Correction: Autumn '89, 144) The Other Washington, New Year's '89, 118

In Memoriam Neil Spitzer We report with great sadness that Neil Spitzer, a longtime friend and colleague, died of a brain tumor on August 5. Neil was a mainstay of the Wilson Quarterly for one-third of its existence, and all of us are grateful for the talent, commitment, wit, and high spirits that he brought to the magazine. He was a man who made the most of everything, even, finally, adversity. Born in New Jersey in 1956, the eighth of the nine children of Richard and Dorothy Spitzer, Neil grew up in Doylestown, Pennsylvania. After receiving a bachelor's degree from Michigan State University and a master's degree in international affairs from Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies, he came to the Wilson Quarterly as a research assistant in 1982. He worked briefly as an editorial writer at the Cape Cod Times before returning the next year to the Wilson Quarterly, where he soon rose to become associate editor. When he left in 1988 and became managing editor of the Washington Quarterly, he retained a connection to the Wilson Quarterly as a contributing editor. Neil believed that a journalist's highest duty is to educate the public. With a strongly inquisitive mind, and by dint of much hard work, he made himself into an accomplished and prolific writer. In addition to his many unsigned contributions to the Wilson Quarterly, he wrote essays on two of his favorite cities, Berlin (Summer 1988) and Washington, D.C. (New Year's 1989). He contributed several essays to the Atlantic Monthly and wrote an occasional column on political history that he syndicated to major newspapers across the country. And as Neil's professional accomplishments grew, so did his private satisfactions. In 1988, he married Nancy Szabo. One of Neil's passions was basketball, and he was known for his uncanny ability to get free for old-fashioned set shots, which he delivered gleefully and with unfailing accuracy. That combination of patented talent and pure zest was typical of him in all his endeavors. He was a fine and decent man and a good friend. He will be missed, and he will be remembered.

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