Herbert Croly, Progressivism, and the Decline of Civic Engagement

No. 27

Extended Republic or Centralized Nation-State? Herbert Croly, Progressivism, and the Decline of Civic Engagement

Brian Brown

It has often been observed that the 20th century A Hundred Years’ War was the most violent in world history. Wars domi- The year 2009 marks the centennial of the publica- nated world affairs on an unprecedented scale. What tion of The Promise of American Life by Herbert Croly. In has been less often noted, particularly in the American this book, Croly, later the founder of The New Republic, experience, is the number of wars declared by nation- warned that the war would be necessary. Inequality al governments on social problems like poverty and and individualism were rampant, and America’s social drugs—and the appallingly low victory rate in those fabric was fraying. America’s Founders had made key wars. mistakes in designing its political system, mistakes In a very real sense, the 20th century on the domes- that were coming to light under the pressures of the tic front was an extended cold war between the Ameri- new industrialized world. The only way to save Amer- can federal government and social problems inherited ica’s promise was to mobilize its people through a new, from the 19th century. In foreign wars, failure tends to more centralized government that could coordinate make the citizens angry. In domestic wars, it tends to their efforts and provide new national unity. make them bored. This civic apathy is often a central The premise and purpose of Croly’s thought was ingredient in the failure of social wars, because social a paradigm that would define the Progressive move- change requires the active involvement of the citizen- ment philosophically and dominate much of 20th cen- ry; in this case, the apathy was unavoidable because of tury politics. Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, the way the war was fought. and other contemporaries sought to lead their nation By transforming domestic policy into a climactic with ideas based on that paradigm. struggle between the national government and every President after President since then has sought to conceivable social ill, the early Progressives raised the fight American individualism by new offensives in the scale of the solution along with that of the problem. war. Many different public service programs have been This eliminated civil society from the picture, made introduced, each billed as the final push that would social problems too big for little people, and thus guar- simultaneously meet the national needs and unleash anteed that the war would be impossible to win. the energies of the American people in national ser-

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vice: Bill Clinton called them “nothing less than the in Europe) were not the American way, and with all American way to change America.”1 the other major players in the American Founding, he Yet it seems that new iterations of the war are need- spoke out strongly against them. ed on a regular basis. One hundred years after Croly’s Far from considering centralized service more call, the social problems remain, and each new Presi- compassionate or even more efficient, Wilson and the dent’s promise to waken a sleeping giant against the other leading American Founders considered it petty, common foe goes unfulfilled. Progressives continue to unsophisticated, and totally inadequate to the needs criticize inequality, they are joined by conservatives of American society. The Founders foresaw the kind of in criticizing increased individualism, and the social citizen apathy and passivity that would be created by fabric continues to fray. With each new public service centralized national service programs, and they knew program, Congress pats itself on the back at having that these programs would undercut the very thing finally empowered Americans to serve their country they seek to achieve: an engaged citizenry that identi- as if such a thing had not been tried a dozen times fies problems and then works to solve those problems before. The centennial of Croly’s work saw yet another in its communities. such program, the Serve America Act, taken straight After examining Herbert Croly’s paradigm and the out of Croly and the Progressives’ paradigm. European public service programs that inspired Croly, James Wilson, Pennsylvania delegate to the consti- it will be helpful to look at the traditional American tutional convention in 1787, wrote: conception of public service and see why contempo- rary public service programs have failed to produce The more accurately and the more ingeniously the widespread public service they were expected to men reason, and the farther they pursue their produce. reasonings, from false principles, the more numerous and the more inveterate will their Herbert Croly and the Progressive inconsistencies, nay, their absurdities be. One Vision of Public Service advantage, however, will result—those absurdi- Croly’s ideas were so sprawlingly comprehensive, ties and those inconsistencies will be more easi- and his paradigm so far-reaching, that it is inherently ly traced to their proper source. When the string unfair to reduce them to a series of maxims. However, of a musical instrument has a fault only in one the course of his thought incorporated a three-part place, you know immediately how and where to paradigm that has shaped the conversation on public find and correct it.2 service ever since, and it is on these three parts that we will focus our attention: a problem, a goal, and a If indeed national service programs are the “Ameri- solution. can way to change America,” then it would seem the First, Croly drew a hard line between private inter- American way is an abysmal failure, insofar as Pro- ests and public and prioritized almost totally the pub- gressives like Barack Obama criticize America on lic over the private. As he saw it, the two primary inter- precisely the same grounds as did Croly. In fact, Wil- ests of American life, the warring factions that defined son believed that such programs (which he had seen American society, were the individual and the body politic.3 The pursuit of private interest was an inher- ently selfish endeavor. 1 Mark Pitsch, “Clinton Launches Sales Campaign for Service Plan,” Education Week, Vol. 12, No. 24 (March 10, 1993), p. 1. 2 James Wilson, “Lectures on Law,” in Collected Works of James 3 Herbert Croly, The Promise of American Life (Filiquarian Pub- Wilson (Indianapolis, Ind.: Liberty Fund, 2007), p. 467. lishing, 2007), p. 132. No. 27 3

By “private” interest he meant anything short of the change with the times so as to better equip itself for national good. A person who put his own good before further progress. the good of the country was selfish, but so was a per- This need for change existed also because the old son who put first his family, business, club, city, or state. American way was responsible for many of the cur- The point was not that “selfishness” was wrong—Cro- rent problems. Americans could never be truly united ly admitted the value of competition—but that putting to face the modern crisis on the basis of the traditional small-scale interests ahead of the national good was American creed, “because that creed itself is overflow- harmful to everyone. Thus, what was right and virtu- ing with inconsistencies and ambiguities.”6 In such a ous had to be what was in the national interest, for time, especially in a nation that Croly believed was reasons of sheer efficiency if nothing else. future-oriented by nature, the understanding of the Croly believed this attitude was a natural response American promise had to evolve past outdated 18th to the increasing scale of the problems America faced. century principles to something that could unite an When large corporations and huge labor unions fought entire nation. for power across an interstate battlefield, the only hope for the victory of the many over the few was in nation- “Redemption of the National Promise” al unity: It was this concept of national unity that provided the vision for Croly’s plan. To be truly American, an No voluntary association of individuals, re- idea had to be national. Croly’s public–private distinc- sourceful and disinterested though they be, is tion meant that to be patriotic, an American had to competent to assume the responsibility. The commit himself totally to the interest of the nation as problem belongs to the American national de- a whole. This meant subordinating one’s own needs to mocracy, and its solution must be attempted the nation, denying all other causes and even people if chiefly by means of official national action.4 they came into conflict with the national interest.7 True public service was entirely altruistic. Modern stakes were, in fact, so high that the only Americans, Croly said, had not engaged enough two options were official national action and nation- in national service because they did not realize their al collapse. State and local governments had proven responsibility to serve the nation in such a way; but themselves utterly ineffective in dealing with 20th cen- in the modern world, “the redemption of the national tury problems, crisis loomed, and any further attempt Promise has become a cause for which the good Amer- to fight for local interest over the interest of the whole ican must fight, and the cause for which a man fights was corrupt and foolhardy. is a cause which he more than ever values.”8 This fight These developments were natural given the evo- would create a new solidarity between the warring lution of American society. America from its begin- classes of American society, and individualistic peo- ning, Croly argued, had been “committed to the ple and groups that stood in its way must fall beneath realization of the democratic ideal; and if its Prom- the blade of national fraternity.9 ise is to be fulfilled, it must be prepared to follow As Croly’s ideas later began to gain ground in post- whithersoever that ideal may lead.”5 The promise of Wilsonian politics, Irving Babbitt wryly observed that American life—namely, the collective vision of a bet- ter future—meant that the national system had to 6 Ibid., p. 164. 7 Ibid., p. 28. 4 Ibid., p. 30. 8 Ibid., p. 27. 5 Ibid., p. 10. 9 Ibid., p. 156. 4 No. 27

such hard-nosed nationalism “has been summed up helping the widow down the street was manageable, in the phrase: ‘Be my brother or I’ll kill you.’”10 But but helping “the country” was a little abstract, and a for Croly, Americans and their leaders could no lon- cacophony of interest groups running the government ger assume that the American promise was something could not make the idea any more real to him. But if that was achieved in the working out of their social, enlightened elites ran the government—people who political, and economic relationships. It required con- knew the American promise and how to pursue it— scious direction. they could create national programs to meet national For Croly, this was not direction toward a stated goals. Then the citizen could participate in those pro- end, but direction toward a state of progress. “The grams and know that he was helping the country. He future,” of course, is never reached, for as soon as still would not see most of the fruits of his labor, since tomorrow becomes today, there is a new tomorrow to what he did might not help his immediate environ- be sought. “For better or worse,” he added, “democra- ment, but the experts would see the fruits of the collec- cy cannot be disentangled from an aspiration toward tive labor and could pick the fruits for the public good. human perfectibility, and hence from the adoption of Then the large-scale economic and social problems measures looking in the direction of realizing such could be beaten at a national level. an aspiration.”11 For Americans to engage in national Real patriots, Croly said, understood that such a service was for them to work selflessly toward the fol- triumph of the public over the private interest would lowing of a dream—not a dream merely of individual require a conscious assertion, and that required con- prosperity, but of national success. scious direction. Real reformers “behave as if the Such national success would require a new politi- American ship of state will hereafter require careful cal apparatus that reflected the needs of the 20th cen- steering; and a turn or two at the wheel has given tury, not the 18th century. The powerful forces seek- them some idea of the course they must set.”13 ing selfish gain in America had created a condition the This centralized, professional leadership would Founders had never anticipated, and such a condition actually be more democratic, Croly insisted, than the “demands as a counterpoise a more effective body of way America had been run to date. It would allow national opinion, and a more powerful organization “men of special ability, training, and eminence a better of the national interest.”12 If big business and big labor opportunity to serve the public” and would “supply could bully individuals, the political system needed them with an administrative machinery which would to be even bigger in order to counteract them. Croly enable them to use their abilities to the best public therefore proposed to overhaul the system in light of advantage.”14 maximum modern efficiency, centralizing control in In the 18th century, maximum power was given to the hands of those who could best use it. the people in their local circumstances (township and state governments); but in a true democratic vision, “Redemption of the Collective Responsibility” maximum power would be given to those with the In this third concept, the means to progress, Croly most skill and public spirit, who could act not merely envisioned no longer a bickering pile of political inter- on behalf of their neighbors or special interests but ests representing the people, but instead a “disinter- on behalf of the whole nation. These administrators, ested” collection of experts. For the ordinary citizen, free from the petty fickleness of partisan politics and motivated only by national interests, could coordinate 10 Irving Babbitt, Democracy and Leadership (Indianapolis, Ind.: Liberty Fund, 1979), p. 151. 11 Croly, The Promise of American Life, p. 496. 13 Ibid., p. 170. 12 Ibid., p. 146. 14 Ibid., p. 189. No. 27 5

the public service efforts of the nation. They would be striking example” of what leaders could accomplish if judged not based on their faithfulness to party lines, they were willing to take on the full load of national but on the naked efficiency of their results. responsibility and use every available means to accom- The merit of such a plan would be “simply that plish national goals.16 of putting the collective power of the group at the By “national responsibility,” Croly meant nation- service of its ablest members,” who “will never al administration. Bismarck had used military and attain to an individual responsibility commensurate social conditions in Germany to mobilize the Ger- with their powers, until they are enabled to work man peoples, subordinating their local concerns to efficiently towards the redemption of the collective their “particular place in a comprehensive scheme responsibility.”15 With the nation’s expert leadership of national economy” and dividing them among the guiding it toward the American promise, the com- leadership of hand-picked experts.17 Rather than the mon citizens could achieve their own promise col- old conglomeration of rival interests, German domes- lectively in coordinated public service. tic affairs under Bismarck’s leadership were a picture For Croly, then, the problem was that America had of order and direction. In fact, Croly said admiringly, it not yet adopted national government action to get to was “the most completely responsible and representa- his broader goal of national unity. The solution would tive monarchy in Europe.”18 be achieved through the creation of a body of admin- Bismarck’s domestic achievements, however, were istrative experts who would lead the way to national notable only when considered in the context of his unity by establishing national programs in which the foreign policy. A centralized state, by itself, gives the people could participate, thereby devoting themselves average citizen nothing to see, nothing to cling to, to national goals. nothing to do. Bismarck knew from the French that centralization without a cause leaves the people pur- National Service and poseless and apathetic. the Equivalent of War After years of having the affairs of their communi- The “American promise” that Croly had in mind ties directed from Paris, Frenchmen had realized that may have been uniquely American in its ends, but their efforts were no longer needed and simply stopped it was heavily European in its means. Europe had trying. Only when the French Revolution broke out known such national oversight since the early 18th did they stir into action, and when the revolution was century. Cardinal Richelieu in France had spearhead- over, they quickly slipped back into oblivion. Croly ed such a centralization of administrative power in described them as “partial economic parasites with the 17th century, and 18th century French kings had very little personal initiative and energy.”19 At the time, followed his example. But the best example the world this left Robespierre with a difficult question: If revo- had seen, in Croly’s view, was the Prussian Otto von lution was the only thing that kept the people involved, Bismarck’s centralization of the German states in the how could he allow the revolution to stop?20 So the mid-19th century. Reign of Terror began, and the French leaders, cul- Unlike the French kingdom, which had seen minating in Napoleon, learned from experience that administrative centralization lead to anarchy, chaos, and finally empire, Prussia had transformed Germa- 16 Ibid., p. 275. ny into a veritable factory of social unity and military 17 Ibid., p. 275. 18 Ibid., p. 271. might. The Iron Chancellor’s leadership was “a very 19 Ibid., p. 269. 20 Hannah Arendt, On Revolution (New York: Penguin Classics, 15 Ibid., p. 447. 1963), p. 125. 6 No. 27

a centralized nation-state holds together best when France. He wanted them mobilized as they were in united in a cause against a great enemy. Germany: mobilized for war. In America’s situation, But the difficulty of centralization is two-edged, in a pre–Great War era of isolationism, the war could because a cause great enough to arouse one nation is hardly be military. great enough to lay waste to others. Bismarck avoided Croly recognized the value of war, even going so France’s mistake and successfully aroused and unit- far as to suggest that regular war is the best recipe ed the German states by giving the Germans an Iron for domestic peace, but the cause for which he really Chancellor and a warlike nationalism. wanted to mobilize the American people was the kind Peter Viereck records the German demagogue William James called in 1906 “the moral equivalent of Friedrich Ludwig Jahn thundering at the time that war.” Like Bismarck, he saw a crucial link between “Germany needs a war of her own in order to feel her foreign and domestic policy and knew that the right power; she needs a feud with Frenchdom to develop common enemy could excite the patriotic passions of her national way of life in all its fullness.”21 Rather than Americans, perhaps better even than the Germans. But engage in the intramural jealousies that had kept the since America (practically speaking) could not have German states in a condition of uneasy peace since the constant wars, Croly wanted to make a peacetime Protestant Reformation, Bismarck turned their focus effort to replicate war’s effect on the social order. This, outward by pitting them against an external foe. This of course, would achieve the effect not only of arous- enabled him to draw the passions of the Germans out ing the people, but also of mobilizing them to confront of their local concerns, awakening their old aggression the larger crisis he believed was occurring. and unleashing it against a common enemy (much as The common enemy for America was a challenge would be done again in 1914 and 1939). War was the to its own soul—not to its material interests, but to food of the nation-state, centralizing power and churn- the promise of American life itself. Americans were ing up a sense of national community. always enthusiastic about wars when the wars were perceived as threats to their way of life. They saw that “By War and War Only” way of life as definitive of their existence. To them, “the Croly knew this. The unification of Germany could pursuit of happiness” was itself the American prom- have been achieved “by war and war only,”22 and with ise, something real because it was worked out daily such advantages offered by the situation, “it is no won- in their own self-government. “Liberty” or “equality” der that she remains the chief possible disturber of the might be abstract by itself, but when the farmer could European peace.”23 It could not have been just any war, participate in political debate and discourse with a of course. Had Bismarck tried to orchestrate a war rich merchant in a town meeting, it was concrete and against Japan, little would have been accomplished: essential. In this way, local self-government provided The war had to be against a great rival or threat. The a constant outlet for their patriotic passions that did kind of war that provides the glue for a nation-state is not require war or cause instability. a war for its soul: a war that provides a field on which If administration was to be centralized and the it can plant its flag. American promise redefined as something that It was such a war that Croly proposed. Croly did required centralized direction, this advantage would not want citizens shut out of politics as they were in be negated. With local governments rendered large- ly obsolete by the centralization of power under the 21 Peter Viereck, Conservatism Revisited: The Revolt Against Ideology experts, Americans would need a new outlet for their (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 2009), p. 97. passion for defending the American promise. 22 Croly, The Promise of American Life, p. 273. 23 Ibid., p. 278. No. 27 7

What Croly proposed, therefore, was to turn that Progressive centralization was rapid and common passion inward. The new vehicle: wars against the during these years, and the Depression and two world social problems that threatened the American prom- wars provided emotional ammunition enough to keep ise. These wars, spurred by the exhortations of central the people’s focus. The notion of “We pulled together planning agencies, would provide the motivation for and won” spoke to the national mood throughout this Americans to participate in the Bismarckian mobiliza- period, both as a response to America’s situation and tion. No longer could Americans lie idle in their selfish as skillful national propaganda. local interests; the nation called them to action. The Thankfully, the Progressives did not follow Bis- economy of scale would be applied to politics, and war marck’s blueprint in all of this. Only reluctantly did would be the capital. Wilson enter the Great War, and only reluctantly did This constant “state of war” was a great boon to cen- Roosevelt become the wartime President instead of tralization of power in the national government. Like the New Deal President. Fundamentally, they want- an ideal itself, a Progressive government must define ed the mobilization Bismarck achieved without the itself by its opposition to something. Since its identity physical violence. is tied to the fighting of a foe, its success is judged by The quandary this created for the public service the scale and incessancy of its actions, and the need for question came from the difference between two things constant and aggressive action leads to more and more Croly had chosen to conflate: being aroused for a cause centralization, particularly in the administrative parts and being aroused for a country. Croly wanted to of government. The early Progressive Presidents took make the country itself a cause; but as Robespierre had full advantage of these facts. discovered, no cause can live long as a substitute for political relevance. No centralized power had previ- “Seeing Crises Where Others Saw Only Problems” ously achieved long-term social mobilization without Like the efforts to arouse America to war against a war, and this remained true in the American experi- Spain in Cuba, the efforts to arouse her to social wars ence: A cause that operated on a larger-than-human saw early success. Woodrow Wilson was the per- scale did not arouse the kind of permanent interest fect candidate to fire the first shot. Robert Nisbet has that American local politics had previously known. observed that “Wilson burned and burned as mor- After a while, the postwar Presidents were forced alist, seeing crises where others saw only problems,” to acknowledge the effects of this truth, though not even sending an army to invade Mexico in response the root problem. At its most successful, Crolyite Pro- to Pancho Villa’s banditry at the border.24 Franklin gressivism aroused some amount of sudden interest, Delano Roosevelt, who faced a true social crisis in the but it was inevitably followed by just as sudden a rise Great Depression, was similarly clear in his framing in apathy as public service was further divorced from of issues. He declared in his first inaugural address, normal everyday life. More commonly, the inherently “I assume unhesitatingly the leadership of this great less dynamic power of a peacetime call to service met army of our people dedicated to a disciplined attack with feeble response from the populace. In both cases, upon our common problems.”25 the intense, cause-specific enthusiasm of war could not be translated permanently into stable, general 24 Robert Nisbet, The Present Age (Indianapolis, Ind.: Liberty public-spiritedness. Fund, 1988), p. 31. This meant in practice that 20th century Presi- 25 Franklin Delano Roosevelt, “First Inaugural Address,” in dents frequently charged into office with calls to new Inaugural Addresses of the Presidents of the United States (Wash- ington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1989), at wars, hoping to arouse an increasingly disconnected http://www.bartleby.com/124/pres49.html (May 14, 2009). populace into real public-spirited participation. From 8 No. 27

the Community Conservation Corps to VISTA (Vol- provided the central planners with the political impe- unteers in Service to America) to the Serve America tus needed to do their work where, in another context, Act, American leaders proved to each generation on a it would be harmful. In a very real way, Croly’s envi- national stage that Americans, while privately gener- sioned order depended on disorder itself. ous, did not feel a common call to the kind of national Croly claimed that such a course would be what service that Croly said would define the newly remod- some, at least, of the Founders would have wished: eled nation. The emergence of each new program “The attempt to unite the Hamiltonian principle of underlined the fact that the previous one had not done national political responsibility and efficiency with a the trick, and each one had to be replaced or reinvent- frank democratic purpose will give a new meaning to ed within a generation. the Hamiltonian system of political ideas and a new For Croly, perhaps this would not have been entire- power to democracy.”27 If that meant riding the crash- ly disappointing: The promise of American life was ing waves of war, then so be it. something to be constantly sought, not found.26 But Yet the very system Hamilton had a hand in creat- his faith in the value of the seeking was not validat- ing did not seem to react readily to Croly’s ideas; at ed with either the selflessness or the stability that he any rate, “the great army of our people” never showed expected. The combination of centralization and war up to fight for long. Part of the reason may have been did not replicate, let alone surpass, the kind of civic that the design for the society on which Croly sought participation common to early America. The nation to try his plan was radically different from what Croly did not face the lows of chaos and war experienced by claimed. Croly’s attempt to co-opt Hamilton in sup- France and Germany, but neither did it see the kind port of his view was disingenuous, but this was not of central mobilization Croly wanted. Widespread unusual: The history he narrated often bore little public service, in the Crolyite sense of constant, altru- resemblance to actual events. Hamilton, who feared istic devotion to “the public” via centralized coordi- the kind of disorder that Croly proposed, was a vir- nation—really a reshaping of society in the national ulent critic of revolutionary France and its headlong image—never materialized. effort to abandon traditional order in favor of central- ized administration: The Old American Order The reasons for this failure began with Croly’s desire The practical development of this pernicious to refound American society. By replacing local orders system has been seen in France. It has served with a national order, Croly was aware that he was as an engine to subvert all her ancient institu- tinkering with what had been the foundations of the tions, civil and religious, with all the checks nation. Those foundations, he believed, had become a that served to mitigate the rigor of authority; it shackle, both by their inadequacy and by their promo- has hurried her headlong through a rapid series tion of local self-interest. A revolution was necessary of dreadful revolutions, which have laid waste to shake those chains, and revolutions are inherently property, made havoc among the arts, over- unstable. thrown cities, desolated provinces, unpeopled But Croly’s system did not rest, as the Founders’ had, regions, crimsoned her soil with blood, and on the bottom of the social order. Its stability was not deluged it in crime, poverty, and wretchedness; derived from local roots at all, but rather from the cen- and all this as yet for no better purpose than to tral planners. Thus, a revolution at the bottom actually erect on the ruins of former things a despotism

26 Croly, The Promise of American Life, p. 11. 27 Ibid., p. 171. No. 27 9

unlimited and uncontrolled; leaving to a delud- affairs that Alexis de Tocqueville wrote that “the ‘com- ed, an abused, a plundered, a scourged, and an mon people’ ceased to take any active part in local oppressed people, not even the shadow of liber- government and lost all interest in it.”30 Tocqueville ty to console them for a long train of substantial described peasants who depended upon “a powerful misfortunes, of bitter suffering.28 foreigner called the government” so totally that they no longer took efforts to maintain even their own streets While Hamilton’s prose might have been more and communities.31 France unintentionally achieved evocative than that of Washington or Adams, he was the kind of bottom-up instability that Croly advocated, not alone in his view of the instability caused by but unlike in America, “the people” in France did not France’s course of action. Madison wrote that it was exist as a political force before their revolution. the reason, not the passions, of a people that should The result was that by the time of the Revolution, regulate the government.29 The Alien and Sedition Acts the French social order had little or no tangible mean- of Adams’s Administration bear witness to the wide- ing and depended entirely upon Paris. The king even spread fear by more conservative American leaders tried instituting local assemblies, but the results were that France’s excesses would be echoed in the United catastrophic because the locals had forgotten genera- States. Even Jefferson, sympathizing more than most tions ago how to govern themselves. The French peas- with France’s ideals, was eventually forced to regard ants had so little control over their own lives that when France as the dangerous and unstable power it became. the government tottered, they felt their last source of Yet while the American Revolution had often been stability vanish. France would be in a constant state threatened by disunity, it had never been threatened of revolution for decades, swaying constantly between by the kind of widespread social implosion that was anarchy and dictatorship. experienced by France. Nor did America respond Croly acknowledged both the social anarchy and readily or radically to Croly’s ideas, gradually absorb- the individualism but said that the problem was not ing many of them at the federal level without the kind in the revolution at the bottom, but rather the lack of of revolutionary changes seen by France at the local power at the top. In keeping with his philosophy, he level. The American order was built upon local stabil- praised the instability of the French Revolution, calling ity and consequently did not react to ideology nearly it “the route whereby a people, inexperienced in self- as quickly or radically as France did. government, have been gradually traveling towards the kind of self-government best fitted to their needs.”32 “The Kind of Self-Government The guillotine and the oceans of blood that were shed Best Fitted to Their Needs” were simply part of the scientific equation. What the As we have noted, the political power of the king- French really needed, he suggested, was more central dom of France was increasingly centralized over the power rather than less: Had the kings and dictators course of the 17th and 18th centuries. Where the French had more administrative power, perhaps the violence village had once operated much as the American town- of the revolutions could have been guided in a con- ship did in terms of local control, the king eventually structive direction. put so many Parisian bureaucrats in charge of local 30 Alexis de Tocqueville, The Old Regime and the French Revolution, 28 Henry Cabot Lodge, ed., The Works of Alexander Hamilton, trans. Stuart Gilbert (New York: Doubleday, 1983), p. 45. Vol. VIII (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1904), pp. 284–285. 31 Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, trans. and ed. 29 James Madison, Federalist No. 49, in Alexander Hamilton, Harvey Mansfield and Delba Winthrop (Chicago: University James Madison, and John Jay, The Federalist, ed. Terence Ball of Chicago Press, 2000), p. 88. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 248. 32 Croly, The Promise of American Life, p. 265. 10 No. 27

In contrast, the Americans in 1787 had a long histo- in the unchanging cause of liberty, and change was ry of governing themselves that predated their consti- in the revolution of leaders. They saw in the French tution by hundreds of years. “What was a passion and dynamic no dependable social structure in which a ‘taste’ in France,” Hannah Arendt observed, “clearly Frenchmen could live their lives as public servants. was an experience in America.”33 The government was the only permanent force in The Americans thought it inconceivable that a their lives. In contrast, the American order was not an people that had existed as France had—living in what abstract one or a revolution (real or constructed). Their Tocqueville called “quasi-paternal tutelage” with its leaders might (and must) change with each election, national identity defined only by a government— but the political apparatus of their self-government— would want to return to such a state. But that is essen- civil society—was real, tangible, and permanent. tially what Croly proposed: centralized administra- Thus, when the French revolted against Louis XVI, tion supported by constant war (or “revolution,” to use society collapsed because the most important thing Robespierre’s word). His solution to the French prob- holding it together—the central government—was lem was increased centralization with scientific effi- gone. When the Americans revolted against George ciency, not the local freedom the 18th century Ameri- III, only the least relevant part of their government—a cans so prized. formerly lenient landlord 3,000 miles away—had dis- appeared. Their social order, the townships and colo- Balancing Change with Order nies in which they lived their lives, both private and The disconnect between Croly and his ancestors, public, remained. however, went deeper than freedom. It was freedom Because the roots of the American order were the French revolutionaries sought (however wildly) to many and deep, the motivation for public spirit did obtain. The reason they could not obtain it was that not depend on national events or central planning. they had no remaining social order on which to base This is not to say that local institutions let the Ameri- it. Where “the people” to the French could mean noth- can citizen do as he pleased. “On the contrary,” Toc- ing more than the aggregate of individuals living in queville observed, the Americans “imposed on him France, “We the People” in the American Constitution more varied social obligations than elsewhere.”34 The had a far more complex meaning that encompassed difference was in the source and nature of the obli- the political associations of every township and state. gations. In a situation that Croly would have found Where Croly sought to base a national regime on con- surprising in 1909, Tocqueville saw local communi- stant revolution, the American leaders, in founding ties functioning with strong civic participation and their new national regime, sought to preserve a pre- little or no poverty—without the aid of a single cen- existing, stable order that they hoped need never know tral planner. revolution. Some scholars have observed that national election In other words, both Croly and the Founders sought turnout has been consistently low in America and that to balance change with order. In Croly’s mind, the Pro- this was no different in Tocqueville’s day. What this gressive society would find its vitality in the constant critique demonstrates, however, is that in Tocqueville’s revolution of causes, and that vitality would be stabi- day the citizens considered the federal government lized by a permanent bureaucracy. largely irrelevant to their daily lives; it reveals nothing The Framers of the Constitution wanted precisely about public spirit, because Americans’ civic participa- the reverse of this dichotomy. For them, stability was tion was, in practice, local.

33 Arendt, On Revolution, p. 110. 34 Tocqueville, Democracy in America, p. 67. No. 27 11

Whatever might be occurring at the national level, that saw part of human fulfillment in social involve- whatever might be true or false in the abstract world ment. This was why they spoke of civic virtue in the of philosophies and great causes, the citizens’ families, same breath as civil liberty. Pursuing happiness in the neighborhoods, and towns would always need them. public sense meant contributing to the health of one’s War and social causes might interest them for a while, own community—as Arendt later put it, “having a but always present was the immediacy of duty to one’s share in the public business.”36 neighbors: what Cicero described as “the conservation It was this concept that shaped the Founders’ under- of organized society…rendering to every man his due, standing of public service. For them, public service was and…the faithful discharge of obligations assumed.”35 inherently political, based on responsibilities and not altru- In the early 19th century America that Tocqueville saw, ism, and anathema to the kind of bureaucracy Croly envi- public service was for the average citizen an endeavor sioned. It was these distinctions that made them reject tied to permanence and place—not fleeting causes and the contemporary European bureaucracies, and it was a far-off “foreigner called the government.” these distinctions that made Tocqueville, who believed that bureaucracies were often more efficient, prefer the From Extended Republic to Founders’ approach to public service. Centralized Nation-State Croly’s basic political paradigm was based on a Historically, as Tocqueville’s observation about rigid opposition between the individual and society. obligations implies, American society had not been Post-Enlightenment thinkers like John Stuart Mill had a place where selfishness predominated. Croly, how- held up the individual as the greatest good and soci- ever, believed it was too individualistic and had to be ety as the great evil enslaving him. Croly saw history replaced. The question was whether this could be done as having shifted in the opposite direction: Society, as without leading to the apathy of the French or the wars Rousseau said, was (or could be) good, but only if the of the Germans. Could the European systems be fixed selfish individual learned that his value “consis[ted] and superimposed on an American society that had in [his] relation to the whole, which is the social a very different political and social makeup? Would organization.”37 Americans engage in public service for a nation-state What was new about Croly was that not only was to greater effect than for a community? Fundamental- the atomistic individual to be abhorred, but so also ly, what was it about the old order that worked so well were the intermediate institutions of civil society and in fostering public service, and was Croly right that local government that prompted him to veer away centralized administration could do it better? from acting in the higher collective good. Instead of For Croly, the central flaw in the old way of pub- classing those institutions with society as other think- lic service was its inherent selfishness. He questioned ers had done, Croly classed them with the individual the moral validity of a political system founded on the and condemned them together for their resistance to individual pursuit of happiness and urged its rejection nationalism. in favor of a new nationalistic system. But for Wash- It was this paradigm that led him to draw such ington, Adams, and their philosophically diverse a hard line between the private and the public good compatriots, public service was part of the pursuit of and to criticize Americans so harshly for being self- happiness. The term “pursuit of happiness” had both a ish individualists. In his line of thought, peacetime private and a public meaning in an Aristotelian sense 36 Arendt, On Revolution, p. 110. 35 Marcus Tullius Cicero, On Duties (Cambridge: Harvard Uni- 37 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile, or On Education, trans. William versity Press, 2005), p. 17. H. Payne (New York: Prometheus Books, 2003), p. 5. 12 No. 27

Americans had always been individualists because Consequently, there could be no such thing as “private” good meant anything short of the national apolitical or “disinterested” public service. For Wilson good. Whether he spoke of the national good as an and the other Founders, public service was inherently expedient response to troubled times or as the ideal- political because interpersonal rights and duties could istic fulfillment of the American promise, he believed exist only in the context of a community of souls. To that it was morally wrong for a citizen to squabble in speak of the individual and society, the private and petty partisan politics or put local affairs first in such the public, as if they were mutually exclusive was troubled national circumstances. That citizen should absurd—and to speak of them as if they were mutu- be seeking the “public” good, engaging in an apolitical ally opposed was destructive to human society itself. breed of “public” service that would help the nation. It was certainly possible to conceive of a blacksmith who never did anything to help the federal govern- “A Society with Other Beings” ment; the two were so far from each other that their The old way of public service was inherently unac- relationship must by necessity be understood in the ceptable to Croly because it rejected his individual- abstract. But it was difficult to conceive of the same against-society paradigm entirely—not only in the blacksmith as an individual whose interest was entire- form which said that the nation was the greatest good, ly inconsistent with that of his local community. To but also in the form which said that the individual was be so, he would have to shun the town meetings, his the greatest good. Thoughtful Americans did not con- neighbors, his family, the cleanliness of his shop and sider the private and the public to be things that could his street, and for that matter his occupation itself. be totally separated. The rights and duties of a citizen This is why it was so important for civil society could not be conceived of in the abstract—whether the and local government to be politically relevant: They abstract of private rationality or the abstract of a far empowered citizens to act as social beings instead of off “foreigner called the government.” Even actions of as selfish individuals. As Brook Manville and Josiah the intellect are typically exercised in community, as Ober contend, “engagement ensures that each citizen James Wilson observed: has a genuine and action-based sense of ownership in the organization.”39 If the blacksmith, having such a Some operations of the mind may take place in stake in his environment, did not contribute to it, then a solitary state: others, from their very nature, he could truly be considered a selfish individualist, and are social; and necessarily suppose a commu- Americans typically held such recluses in contempt. nication with some other intelligent being. In a state of absolute solitude, one may apprehend, “A Concern for the Common Well-Being” and judge and reason. But when he bears or Such people, however, were rare. Tocqueville noted hears testimony; when he gives or receives a that exercises of local liberties “make many citizens command; when he enters into an engagement put value on the affection of their neighbors and those by a promise or a contract; these acts imply nec- close to them” and therefore “constantly bring men essarily something more than apprehension, closer to one another, despite the instincts that sepa- judgment, and reasoning; they imply necessar- rate them, and force them to aid each other.”40 This was ily a society with other beings, social as well as intelligent.38 39 Brook Manville and Josiah Ober, A Company of Citizens: What the World’s First Democracy Teaches Leaders About Creating Great Organizations (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2003), 38 Wilson, “Lectures on Law,” in Collected Works of James Wilson, p. 124. p. 624. 40 Tocqueville, Democracy in America, p. 487. No. 27 13

possible only in the small-scale arena. “[S]mall-scale that people would voluntarily temper their demands politics,” writes Joshua Mitchell in his analysis of Toc- and pursuits enough so that liberty could flourish.”43 queville, “combats the disposition of the Augustinian It was this phenomenon that Locke sought to ratio- soul to withdraw into itself.… Only local politics can nalize when he wrote of the relinquishing of certain revitalize human life in the interplay of the face-to-face.”41 “natural” liberties so that the community (including This interplay therefore had to occur. Early Americans, the individual) might succeed. American public ser- contrary to popular opinion, were not laissez-faire in vice found its origin not in the creation of a new self- their economics or their politics, but they believed that less man, but in the voluntary fulfillment of responsi- the politics of scale could not match local politics in bilities to people with whom one had real political and drawing the individual to serve his neighbor. social relationships. For the average citizen, the pursuit of happiness Tocqueville did not emphasize those relationships in the public sense could not be made in a national in an effort to downplay patriotism or loyalty to coun- context. It was the pursuit of a meaningful contribu- try. Rather, he sharply criticized the kind of militant tion to a local community, the desire to be rightfully nationalism practiced by France and later advocated respected, as Adams said, “by the people about him, by Croly, which dissolved local institutions, interests, and within his knowledge.”42 How could there be such and loyalties to the benefit of that “unqualified acqui- a hard line between private and public, between the escence” to the nation-state. individual and society, that either could be held up as James Madison also warned that such acquiescence “good” and the other as “bad?” How could “public ser- led to the kind of intentional instability that Croly later vice” be apolitical if it took place in a community in advocated. In the large, decentralized republic that he which citizens had invested “our lives, our fortunes, desired, “a rage for paper money, for an abolition of and our sacred honor?” debts, for an equal division of property, for any other The paradigm later adapted by Croly had appealed improper or wicked project, will be less apt to pervade to the French because they had no civil society by the the whole body of the Union.”44 This claim in Federalist time of the Revolution—nothing between them as indi- No. 10 is most often referenced because of its argument viduals and the national government. The paradigm for the viability of a large republic, but it is equally gave them something to grasp. But it meant nothing significant for the case it makes for decentralization. to the American colonists, for whom civil society—the Madison maintained that divorcing Americans from bridging of individual and nation—was the means of their localities, as France had done, only opened them public service itself. up to the same kind of apathy and anarchy that France Public service in their context could not be based on had seen. “public spiritedness,” either in the sense of an abstract selflessness or in the sense of an abstract nationalism. “The First Principle…of Public Affections” Richard Vetterli and Gary Bryner record that in Amer- Edmund Burke, in his critique of the French Revo- ica, public service “was seen as a concern for the com- lution, wrote disapprovingly of its totalizing national- mon well-being, not an all-consuming and unqualified ism. “[T]o love the little platoon we belong to in soci- acquiescence to the political regime. It was expected ety,” he maintained, “is the first principle (the germ as

41 Joshua Mitchell, The Fragility of Freedom: Tocqueville on Religion, 43 Richard Vetterli and Gary Bryner, In Search of the Republic: Democracy, and the American Future (Chicago: University of Chi- Public Virtue and the Roots of American Government (Lanham, cago Press, 1995), p. 109. Emphasis in original. Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1996), p. 3. 42 John Adams, Discourses on Davila, in The Works of John Adams, 44 James Madison, Federalist No. 10, in Hamilton, Madison, and Vol. 6 (Boston: Little & Brown, 1851), p. 233. Jay, The Federalist, p. 46. 14 No. 27

it were) of public affections.”45 America, as an extend- and it owed its origin, its continued motivation, and its ed republic, depended even more—not less—on that purpose to that community. first principle. The reason American social order survived its so- The Diminished Spirit of the City called revolution when France’s did not was that in It is this understanding that makes plain why the America, “public” loyalty was something real that was Founders so unanimously feared administrative cen- exercised every day in the process of local self-gov- tralization. Croly praised the American pioneer spirit ernment. In the land that Tocqueville saw, “the native and proposed to turn that spirit inward in his social country makes itself felt everywhere,” not because crusades. But even the pioneers traveled in small each town was a piece of a larger constructed state, but groups and started towns wherever they settled: In because the larger constructed state was a reflection of keeping with Madison’s picture of the decentralized the organically developed townships and states that republic, they always had a small scale from which to comprised it. Thus, when an American saw his nation relate to the large scale. succeed, he rejoiced in that success because “he believes Croly wanted to eradicate this small scale as the he recognizes his own work.”46 Unlike the French sys- base of American political operations: He wanted to tem, which led to social and political problems because free the individual from such “selfish” responsibili- it had no human-scaled foundation, American society ties. But if that were to happen, Jefferson insisted, the was based on the permanent, the small, and the local— American’s ability to pioneer would itself be eradicated. on the things that bred responsibilities. With his ownership in a human-scaled political unit It was this belief that led Jefferson to reject central- rendered obsolete, he would be dependent on central ization as a method of promoting public service. The elites for his (artificially created) rights and responsi- American town was a “ward republic,” without which bilities—and would have lost anything that made the no public spirit could be fostered. He argued that “it term “public service” meaningful. is by division and subdivision of duties alone, that all The irony is that as Progressivism has evolved, matters, great and small, can be managed to perfection. public service programs have been increasingly sold And the whole is cemented by giving to every citizen, as exercises in national compassion. Regardless of personally, a part in the administration of the public whether it is efficient in alleviating suffering, mass affairs.”47 Foreshadowing Tocqueville’s later observa- organization cannot be compassionate. Compassion— tions, he said that citizens involved in their own local sharing the suffering of another—can be given only self-government were precisely the people who would to a person, not a generalization or an idea. To turn it be motivated to patriotism and public service, because into a mass product cheapens it beyond recognition they knew from experience that their stake of owner- as the human value to which modern Progressives ship in the society was real.48 “Public service” was the appeal; Arendt notes that “it depersonalizes the suf- daily operation of a functioning community of citizens, ferers, lump[ing] them together into an aggregate.”49

45 Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France National Efficiency vs. Relationships (Indianapolis, Ind.: Liberty Fund, 1999), p. 136. Unlike his later adherents, Croly seems to have 46 Tocqueville, Democracy in America, p. 90. 47 Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Samuel Kercheval, 12 July 1816, known this, for he never argued for his system based in The Works of Thomas Jefferson, Federal Edition,” Vol. 12 (New on grounds of compassion, but rather on the more York and London: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1905), p. 3. intellectually honest grounds of national efficien- 48 Paul Rahe, Soft Despotism, Democracy’s Drift: Montesquieu, Rousseau, Tocqueville, and the Modern Prospect (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2009), p. 201. 49 Arendt, On Revolution, p. 75. No. 27 15

cy. Public service for Croly was a matter of meeting mer, making public service more common and hence national needs and obligations, not the matter James more effective. Wilson saw of meeting obligations to friends, neigh- bors, or constituents—to those with whom one had a “An Active Sentiment of Attachment” relationship that allowed for actual compassion. Croly Alexander Hamilton believed in a strong national was aware of what he was rejecting and that his pro- government, but he nonetheless expected that the posal was alien to it. federal government would be “less likely to inspire a Croly failed to foresee the consequences of elimi- habitual sense of obligation and an active sentiment of nating that political relationship. The modern world attachment”51 than local government, and rightly so. is familiar with the Apathetic Citizen, or the extreme A person’s family, neighborhood, and city—the things individualist (Tocqueville in fact coined the latter that are most visible and shape his immediate inter- term). This person may be compassionate at the per- ests and responsibilities—naturally go first on his pri- sonal level but is “not really into politics.” It was this ority list. As a matter of consistent interest, people are person, taken to the extreme, who developed in France far more drawn to the matters that affect their every- during the centralization of the 18th century. day lives. Thus, public service, because it should be It is easy to make the argument that centralized concerned with everyday life, could not be done in (or public service sends the wrong message to citizens, but coordinated by) an office building thousands of miles for Wilson and Jefferson and others, the problem went away. It had to have local meaning, not as a national deeper than that. The more important point to them deed done in a satellite location, but as a deed rooted was that in a real, conscious, purposeful sense, central- in a place and its people. ized service strips citizens of the link between the rea- An attempt to shift individual responsibility for son for service (responsibilities to those served) and service from local relationships to the national iden- the service itself. Drawing from Tocqueville, Mitchell tity was, Hamilton believed, a doomed effort. It might warns that “the consequence is not simply the reloca- lead to apathy as it had initially in France, it might lead tion of the locus of political power from the local to to chaos as it later did, or it might lead to a fluctuation the national level, but also the destruction of the site between the two (dependent on the theatrics of war) as where practical experience may be nurtured.”50 it had in Germany, but it could not lead to stable, con- Thus, far from combating individualism, the Found- sistent service. Even if such a system were more effi- ers believed that centralized administration fomented cient in meeting short-term material goals, the dam- it by rendering useless the incubator of the political age done to the true foundations of public spirit would relationships that allowed for both strong public ser- be far too high a price to pay. Each new generation’s vice and effective self-government. Instead of Croly’s national “war on poverty” would only ensure that the paradigm of individualists and civil society versus the following generation, even more apathetic, found its nation, they saw a paradigm in which local self-gov- own war more difficult. ernment was the guard against both individualism It was perfectly consistent with Croly’s paradigm and nationalism. Disconnected individuals had noth- that his ideas should reach the conclusion they did, ing to unite them but the state and nothing to motivate but the consistent failure of Crolyite policies to achieve them to service but coercion or theatrics. Local self- their goals of national mobilization is testament to the government united the individual with the nation in a flaws in the paradigm itself. The old American way of way that benefited the latter and empowered the for- 51 Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 17, in Hamilton, Madison, 50 Mitchell, The Fragility of Freedom, p. 113. and Jay, The Federalist, p. 77. 16 No. 27

public service was based on human realities for which to the passing greatness of one man, not to the Croly’s quest for centralization did not account. In the lasting prosperity of a people.52 end, as Tocqueville wrote: —Brian Brown is a former Research Associate in the Administrative centralization is fit only to ener- B. Kenneth Simon Center for American Studies at The vate the peoples who submit to it, because it con- Heritage Foundation. stantly tends to diminish the spirit of the city in them.… It makes the nation triumph on the This essay was published August 20, 2009. day of combat and diminishes its power in the long term. It can therefore contribute admirably 52 Tocqueville, Democracy in America, p. 83.