Through modern communication, Negro leaders have become national celebrities, enhancing the power and possibilities of leadership. Similarly, the poverty program owes a great deal to books and articles: a series in the New York Times on Kentucky, Michael Harrington’s book [Socialism in America], and a piece by Dwight Macdonald in the New Yorker—all of which helped to stimulate conscience and political action by introducing thoughtful citizens and national leaders to the agonies of the previously unnoticed millions trapped beneath the surface of affluence.
These varied forces contributing to central power have a unifying theme: the mutually reinforcing concurrence of national demand and expectation with the assertion of power and the capacity to exercise it. There is, however, a more subtle, pervasive, and probably more significant factor. It is the gradual dissolution of alternative outlets for grievances, demands, ambitions, and inner needs. It is as if many small magnets and a single large one were scattered on a floor. If the smaller magnets steadily lost their force, particles would break away and take their place in the stronger held of force. Something like that has happened to American political life.
There are after all many ways for a man to change the conditions of his life or modify his environment. He can act through local government, social institutions, and private organizations. Or he can gain access to opportunities which do not rest on official action—by, for example, “going
West” to an unsettled frontier.
All these possibilities have been dissolving. Large-scale opportunity outside settled institutions began to disappear when the West was dosed. After that, migrants and minorities sought a path into society through unskilled labor. Its virtual elimination in modern times may prove as momentous an event as the end of the frontier. Certainly the distress of northern Negroes, and their struggle, would have taken a different shape if this same opportunity had been open to them. Today it is no longer possible to avoid conflict with society while gathering strength to force an entrance. The confrontation must be direct and
immediate, and the unequal odds in such a clash require the intervention of the federal government, now the necessary agent of social change—and thus more powerful still.
More important to the growth of central power than the destruction of frontiers is the dwindling
influence of local government and private associations. This erosion has been produced by two major social changes. The first, and most obvious, is the enormous resistance and complexity of many modern problems, requiring an antagonist of great force and resources. The second is a loss of connection: the fraying of human, civic, and territorial bonds between the individual and the disembodied structures which surround him. In consequence, the individual loses confidence in the capacity of local structures to modify the political conditions of existence, a self-fulfilling distrust which accelerates the weakening process. Diminishing faith turns people, not away from authority, but toward a more powerful center. This is certainly one of the reasons that totalitarianism finds its moment of opportunity at times of relative chaos.
Added to the many social and psychological conditions which have assaulted these historic structures are the growth in population (diluting participation in local government) and our fantastic mobility (making it hard to retain local allegiances). Therefore, individuals again turn toward the central government where, it seems, grievances and hopes can be effectively aired, and to which citizens in all parts of the country, even the rootless and displaced, feel some connection.
These weakened structures confront a social order whose growing rigidity closes off many
traditional nongovernmental outlets for change and for those personal ambitions which depend on
social justice. The power of large corporations, the sanctity of the search for profits, the desirability of swift economic growth (we measure our success by our Gross National Product), and the exaltation of technology, are all virtually beyond serious challenge. Private citizens, communities, and even states feel helpless to deal with abuses resulting from an unchallengeable ideology and, being small, they are most vulnerable to the interests which benefit from this ideology. Thus our suburbs become horrors of ugliness, discomfort, and spiritual devastation because the right to buy land and build on it is sacred. The blurred advance of technology makes it impossible for any but the most sophisticated and endowed to weigh
the advantage of change against the social ills it may bring. Since so much of our system is fixed, it is necessary to turn to the one authority still capable of channeling our institutions, through coercion or guidance, toward desired change: the central government.
Rising wealth also adds to central power. Although new affluence encourages conservatism,
The “new conservatives” are usually far more concerned with the content of authority than the fact of its exercise. They find it possible to oppose welfare programs on the ground that they are against big government while supporting larger police powers and a range of new coercive authority for the state. In addition, many modern conservatives favor an interventionist and aggressive foreign policy which would inevitably lead to more formidable and sweeping powers for the federal government.
This is far less principled than the conservatism of Jefferson or even Taft. It is rooted in economic self-interest, but whereas the dominant emotion of classical New England conservatives was confidence in themselves and in local institutions coupled with resentment at intrusion, the dominant feeling behind much of the new conservatism is fear (reinforced by a temperamental preference for abstraction over compassion). Behind the paradoxical conservative contribution to growing central power is the desire for protection of the newly affluent against unpleasant, troubling, and threatening social forces. Much of the root of today’s liberal-conservative tension is the clash between fear and confidence, which is why conservatism tends to rise in times of felt danger and crisis. Certainly some of the most successful reactionary and conservative movements have rested on uncertainty and apprehension, while liberalism has generally tried to fuse popular desires with elitist confidence. (This gives us some hope that the second and later generations of the newly affluent—even in California—will be less conservative.)
Central power is not in itself contemptible or hazardous, but must be judged by the extent to which it enlarges or constricts the possibilities of individual existence. Difficult as it is to untangle relationships and sources, we can be certain that rising central power has been accompanied by the diminishing significance of political man. In part this human lessening flows from the increase in central power itself; in part from the changes contributing to that increase; and, in incalculable part, from the general nature of the modern world.
The individual’s confidence in his own significance rests on the share of mastery he possesses
over his life and environment. An internal ability to come to terms with the world, to seek a place in the drama, is imperative. Still, even the most intense and controlled awareness of self will not suffice for the person who is constantly denied, rejected, and ignored by his world, unless he possesses those rare inner resources which allow him to create his own. But that is not politics. As political affairs become more centralized and as personal, group, and local responsibilities are absorbed, this vital sense of mastery is eroded. For, in fact, the individual’s ability to control circumstances is diminished.
This is not simply a political phenomenon. It saturates our philosophical, technological, and social environment; and even as politics, it cannot be discussed apart from the commanding values of the time. These values differ radically from those which in one form or another have been dominant since the Renaissance—a historical moment, Michelet explained, that was characterized by “man’s discovering of the world and of man.” Before this, Burkhardt says, man had seen himself as a part of a series of categories – a member of his people, party, or family. Now “man became a spiritual individual.” As this locus shifted, there was an effort to comprehend the essence of man, along with a search for a fresh synthesis of the new “spiritual individual” with the world around him. There was a growing faith that incomplete human understanding resulted from an imperfect knowledge we could labor to complete.
One of the last glories of the Renaissance, and one of its destroyers, Albert Einstein, when faced
with theories that assumed the essential role of chance in describing the existence of basic units of the material world, asked: “Do you really believe God resorts to dice playing?” He spoke in the tradition which encouraged the conviction that the free play of the inquiring mind would lead to a complete and harmonious account of reality. In that tradition philosophers and artists alike had struggled to grasp man’s nature as incorporated into systematic statements of faith and organic representations of reality. Now the belief in the possibility of such unity and wholeness is fading. We live, instead, at a time of fragmentation and dissection, in search of the components of our sensible world. The concept of God as a source of moral authority dissolves into mystical generalizations or disappears. Efforts at systematic philosophy are scorned, ignored, or become the province of esoteric technicians. Saint Augustine and Spinoza become Norman O. Brown and Marshall McLuhan.
Art continues and reflects the process of fragmentation, reducing objects to light and form and regarding constituent elements as ultimate realities rather than as parts of a large reconstruction. In literature and films we dissect emotions and actions alike, casting them as isolated fragments in order to evoke confused sadness at absurdity. Our hunger is more for experience than for meaning, for expanded sensation rather than coherent understanding. Even the insistent quest for the nature and meaning of man begins to yield, as psychology and biochemistry break us up into instincts, drives, creations of other beings, molecules, chemical codes, and electrical patterns, until the question “What is man?” begins to lose meaning in its historic sense. Man becomes a physical phenomenon, different from other forms of
life only in degree and power, all his complexities ultimately describable and predictable. We look for the truth in the pieces of the puzzle and not in the picture they make. For that picture is largely the random, purposeless assembly of myriad components in a single unit of living flesh.
This drive away from system and toward fragmentation has the force of a primitive religion. No one denies that it must go on, or that science and technology are to be pursued regardless of the values they imperil. They are the values. At one time it was possible to ask whether the fact that the earth revolved around the sun was worth knowing, if knowing it might deprive us of God. But it is Galileo who is our hero, not his foes.
Our American culture, more intensely than any other, reflects the process of fragmentation. A man as perceptive as André Malraux can claim that the United States lacks a national culture, since he looks for that culture in its classical sense—a structure of values and meaning embodying itself in certain forms. Our culture is of a different kind, rooted in our history as a nation. It is a culture of restlessness. Its principal values are change and movement, all continuously feeding the hunger for experience. This culture is sweeping the world, in painting, in theater, in the changing beat of music, in the adoration of technology. It is the culture of an age of fragmentation. at once reflecting and feeding that process. For it does not demand or provide the resting-place that unity and wholeness require. It transforms values into psychology, drives, hungers, and actions; it replaces belief with “authenticity.”
Whatever this process of fragmentation may yield us in scientific knowledge or artistic accomplishment, it is charged with danger for political and social man. In these arenas of human activity there is no possible unit smaller than the individual. And the most vital and passionate need of the individual is for mastery: both over himself, and through some shaping share in the world around him. It becomes enormously difficult to achieve such mastery in the midst of dissolution and constant movement. Yet those who are deprived of mastery for themselves are often driven to cede it to others, perhaps ultimately forfeiting their freedom.
Whether or not the foregoing description has psychological anti philosophical validity, it provides an analytic lens through which we can view our political and social institutions. More conservative than science or thought, they still reflect—as already suggested in the above account of the forces behind rising central power—the more profound contemporary currents of fragmentation and dissolution. Family ties stretch and break as the gap between the experience of the generations widens, and as more spacious possibilities of geographical and occupational mobility remove the pressure to reconcile natural hostilities and make it easier to indulge them. The community disappears, as the comprehensible unit of living blends into the huge, accidental monstrosities our cities have become. Science describes our world in terms beyond all but the most specialized understanding, dissolving control in mystery. Most of us know little more about the working of our world than did the ancients who ascribed natural phenomena to spirits. They, however, had the advantage of believing in their explanation, while we are only aware of our ignorance. Cities and technology, production and population, grow and change, powered by forces
which seem beyond the control, and even the desire of the individual person. A handful of men in remote capitals hold our existence hostage to their wisdom or impulse or sanity. The small groups where we could once achieve a sense of belonging and of being needed, because we could encompass them with our knowledge and presence, are disappearing, while the activities they once guided—the life of the town and of its citizens—now seem hopelessly beyond their competence.
As these myriad enemies assault the private stronghold of influence and importance, alienation, rage, desperation, and a growing sense of futility increasingly scar our political life. Two principal forms of reaction emerge. Violent protests and extreme convictions reflect the frustration of many at their inability to assert their significance and to share in the enterprise of society. Men of vitality and passion matched against indifference and encumbered by futility have virtually no recourse but rage. The history of the civil-rights movement reveals how helplessness can drive the pursuit of unexceptionable goals toward violent rhetoric. “Black power” is more a cry of despair and a plea for attention than a signal for
battle. Among larger numbers, less endowed with vitality and conviction, there is a rising determination to protect and conserve. They seek security for their present position in the face of receding confidence in their own ability to shape the future.
We see these basic impulses in manifold, sometimes terrifying, forms: more reasonably in the
New Right and the New Left, irrationally violent among Minutemen and John Birchers, Black Muslims and Southern Secessionists. They are reflected in the compulsive search for a hero or an enemy, and in a deepening disgust with political life itself. (Nothing more ironically illuminates this point than the contrasting attitudes toward power in MacBird and in the Shakespearean plays of which it is a pastiche.) All these conflicting movements help serve the single purpose of giving the individuals who belong to them the inner sense of significance that comes from being a part of some larger purpose. They reveal how a feeling of impotence is charged with danger, polarizing groups and individuals and creating a nation of strangers, until even those with whom we sympathize glare at us across an impassable barrier of
hostility. The gradual decline of the Vietnam debate into competing slogans and invective is our most recent example of this process in action. The result is not merely extremism, but resignation and lassitude embodied in an unwillingness to face problems, make personal commitments, or to act until difficulties have all but overwhelmed us.
Thus, whatever our particular political positions, the one overriding goal of political, life must be to help restore and strengthen that faith of the individual in himself which is the source of national direction and generosity of deed.
This may be an illusory goal. Perhaps the machine is already out of control, hurling us toward a future where we will all blend into some grotesque organism, our sensations absorbed by discordant sound and flashing light—where life is an endless “trip.” Yet no one who pursues the profession of politics can permit himself to regard the goal as illusory, any more than a novelist can permit himself to believe that the form in which he works is obsolete. Politics alone cannot remedy a condition whose causes are so manifold. But it is at least partly a political task.
American history and culture – a sense of American mission – upon which we can draw. Certainly we cannot presume to dictate how the nations of the world should organize their societies. But we do
have something to offer and to teach. We know that it is better for people to eat than to starve and that increasing individual prosperity is better than hopeless misery. We know that human well-being is increased by liberty of expression and belief, and damaged by repression and persecution. Peace is better than war, and the growth of effective international restraints is a necessary condition of peace.
Propositions of this type (and many more are possible) seem self-evident, even banal. So they
Are—until they are coupled with the assertion that the United States has a responsibility to realize
them on a global scale. To the extent that we act on them now, it is in a token and fragmentary
way; therefore, for all the rhetoric, they are not an important part of our foreign policy.
A foreign policy grounded on this ideology would look far different from much of our present conduct. We would devote large resources to the economic development of the poorer countries. We would alter the patterns of trade to encourage worldwide industrialization. We would direct our support and friendship to those nations trying to create such conditions, regardless of their shifting political attitudes, unless they were to rise to the status of a real and physically menacing enemy. We would take the lead in mobilizing serious international opposition to large-scale persecution and oppression, and not be content to regard an occasional vote for a diluted United Nations resolution against apartheid as at triumph of idealistic liberalism. We would recognize that revolutionary violence may sometimes be necessary to eliminate deeply embedded institutions and values which obstruct both justice and progress.
None of these policies, or the turbulence they might often help create, would—except in very
special and unusual circumstances—endanger either our security or our economy. On the contrary, they would contribute to the emergence of a community of shared values and expectations within which we would undoubtedly be safer and more prosperous than ever. It would be our kind of world. The forceful pursuit of such policies would have an impact on the spiritual welfare of American society which would radiate into every aspect of our domestic affairs. We would stand for something, not just rhetorically but in engagement, and that soil of ideology would generate its own consequences in action.
A foreign policy of this kind would represent realism in its clearest and noblest form. To sacrifice basic beliefs and goals to the apparent demands and interests of every passing problem and conflict reflects both timidity and lack of imagination. In the long run such a course can only lead to a world environment in which even our narrowest material and physical interests are unsafe, to say nothing of its inevitably erosive effect on the idea of American civilization itself. We are fond of historical parallels. They should convince us that in the conditions of the modern world a policy founded on generosity and idealism is the only policy that is pragmatic and realistic, conducive to national grandeur and, ultimately, to national survival.
III
As important as the content and direction of public policies are the methods and structures used to carry them out. Initially, the elaborate structure of American federalism mirrored the judgment that a great deal should be left to local authority. For decades we have been moving in the other direction. Not only is this a dangerous and, as I believe, a mistaken course, but it is becoming clearer that certain substantive objectives utterly depend upon fashioning fresh techniques. Modern poverty, for example, cannot be abolished by friendly edicts from remote officials, and even if it could, the result would be sterile, vacuous, and purely material.
The blended goal of structure and policy alike must be to meet specific ills through methods which can in themselves enlarge the sense and real in of individual relevance and participation. The way to accomplish this, at least on the political front, is through decentralization—by assisting and compelling states, communities, and private groups to assume a greater share of responsibility for collective action. In other words, both burden and enterprise must be shifted into units of action small enough to allow for more intimate personal contact and numerous enough to widen the outlets for direct participation and control.
Such a shift, although it faces many problems, is both the most practical and politically realistic of all the ideas discussed here. From the community action program of the war against poverty to the private organizing efforts of Students for a Democratic Society, we are being given tangible proof of the viability of the decentralized approach. If these programs have been inadequate, it is only because they have so far been unable to overcome the ingrown and embedded obstacles to popular participation: the men and interests threatened by a transfer of power.
Notwithstanding this resistance, the idea of decentralization is making its first timid and tentative appearance in political rhetoric. It is possible to predict that the first party to carry this banner (if buttressed by a solid program) will find itself on the right side of the decisive issue of the 1970s. At the moment the idea hovers elusively between liberal Democrats and liberal Republicans. Both face built-in political barriers. For the Democrats it is the difficulty of overcoming ideological altitudes which place the burden of salvation on Washington. For Republicans it is the more obstructive necessity to mollify those conservative elements which oppose any social action by government, whatever the techniques.
Yet the issues involved in decentralization are remote from the old struggles over states’ rights
and big government. Those struggles centered on the question of whether any effort at all should be
made to solve social problems through collective action and public resources. Decentralization, however, assumes that this question is resolved affirmatively, and sees the issue as one of structure and organization (and power). Even modern conservatism is moving closer to a benign view of decentralization. In his campaign for Mayor of New York, Mr. William Buckley argued for city action against problems ranging from air pollution to the scarcity of bicycle paths. He opposed federal intervention because it was “none of their business,” making his objections to government action more geographical than ideological.
Although decentralization is designed to help combat the social and spiritual ills of fragmentation, it also responds to the fact that centralized bureaucracies tend to become increasingly ineffective and coercive in direct proportion to the scope and intricacy of the problem they are established to solve. This was less apparent when much of government action consisted of grants, subsidies, or insurance for individuals. It is not difficult to write checks. Now, however, we must apply complete technical and planning skills to wide-ranging difficulties. One need only look at the fantastic labyrinth of welfare programs, the monstrous incapacities of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare—operated by one of the best teams of executives in government—as well as the foreseeable futilities of the new Departments of Housing and Urban Development and Transportation, to realize that something is wrong with the old approach.
Decentralization would not only shift responsibility to state and local government. Private groups would also be involved, either by government (as in the community action program of the
war against poverty) or through their own self-generated efforts. By thus directly engaging individuals and giving them a sense of participation and commitment, we could stimulate the desire for goals toward which many remain indifferent or even hostile while they are the province of a removed and abstract central government. If, for example, we could involve large numbers of Americans in programs of help to underdeveloped countries, they would become increasingly convinced, and even passionate, about the moral and political necessity for such programs.
Responsibility is the breeder of ability, and by assigning responsibility—real responsibility for important matters—decentralization would help improve the talent engaged in local government. Hours are spent in town councils arguing about the placement of new traffic lights, while the great issues are debated in Washington. It is little wonder that men of vitality and ability are reluctant to serve or else quickly lose their enthusiasm. Even so, the importance of political life is already attracting more able men into local public service, and the ability to solve problems is becoming a requirement of election to state houses and city halls.
Decentralization is not abdication. It is possible, as I will outline, to set the standards for local action and by enforcing these standards to raise the level of performance. Different problems will call for different structures, requiring a great deal of political creativity and experiment. But there are common obstacles and methods of approach.
In a moment I will discuss some specific examples, but the guiding principle should be the transfer to local government or private groups of the needed resources, and the responsibility for decision, action, and policy in accordance with national standards of varying degrees of specificity. We are already doing this, to some extent, in programs ranging from the war against poverty to the construction of waste treatment plants on our rivers. (Standards, incidentally, can be educational rather than coercive. Often local groups are unaware of the dimensions of a problem, nor can they command the technical and intellectual resources necessary to devise solutions. A small but fascinating model of the educational approach is the President’s Committee on Physical Fitness. That committee drew up model programs of
physical training for schools, community organizations and individuals. Though it had no regulatory power and hardly any money, the result has been a flourishing of physical-fitness programs across the country. The same technique might well be applied to the formulation of model school curricula, child-care renters, traffic-control programs, etc.)
The fact that local government lacks the resources—financial and human—to cope with even its present difficulties is a powerful barrier to decentralization. Walter Heller has proposed that the federal government simply turn over, presumably on a per capita basis, some of its revenue to the states. I am a great admirer of Mr. Heller and respect the liberal impulse behind his idea. It is, however, a counsel of defeat. It anticipates that Congress will react to rising revenues by cutting taxes rather than by helping the poor or rebuilding our cities, and it hopes to forestall this by transferring revenue out of congressional
hands and out of the national budget (an objective which some conservatives have not fully understood). Thus the Heller Plan assumes that the politics of inertia—where programs are neither eliminated nor substantially increased—will dominate the federal structure. It also subsumes the praiseworthy faith that state governments will use this money for critical public needs. Actually, however, some will use it well and some will not. Depending on what the states do with the money, the Heller Plan may or may not increase the resources available for social problems, and could even lessen them. I expect that a higher level of local ability and public purpose will be set by the mounting responsibilities which come with decentralization. This does not mean, however, that the necessary ability and integrity are already sitting in every state house, crippled only by lack of money. It is a notorious fact that many state legislatures are more responsive to private interests, from loan companies to home builders, than is the Congress. Under the Heller Plan, it is quite possible that New York residents may end up paying federal taxes to reduce the tax burden on property owners in Indiana. Moreover, some assurance is needed that revenue collected across the nation is not sent to areas where its benefits are denied to Negroes.
Many of these problems can be avoided, and state competence raised, by turning resources over to the states for concrete purposes and with specific standards of performance, rather than by lump-sum payments. In addition, we may find that it is not the state but the city or smaller communities and private groups which are the appropriate units of action. Decentralization should go further and deeper than the state house. The Heller Plan might be worth trying if there were no alternatives, but there are many alternatives. They vary in the extent to which they restrict and direct state and local use of nationally collected resources. They provide a great deal more flexibility and a strengthened assurance that critical needs will be met. Since I am not an economist, I only speak in general terms about matters which are highly technical in detail.
First, we can establish federal standards and guidelines in specific areas—e.g., housing or pollution control—and allocate funds to the local units which meet the requirements. This is the structure of the anti-pollution program for rivers and the new Demonstration Cities Act.
Second, there is the possibility of credits against federal income taxes for additional state taxes that would be earmarked for particular purposes like education. There would have to be some safeguards against the transfer of state revenues to other purposes in order to reduce local taxes, and perhaps also a rising base line could be established which would take growing state population and wealth into consideration.
Third is a variant of the Heller Plan: general appropriations to local authorities for a variety of specified purposes, such as health, education housing, training, etc., allowing the state or locality to set its own priorities. Of course, tax credits can be used in the same way.
I am sure there are other fiscal devices (for example, allowing states to require tolls on the interstate highway system if the revenues are devoted to certain public purposes) which might also serve to increase the resources available to states as an instrument of decentralization.
Money and programs are useless without competent people to administer them. Although imaginative political leadership will sometimes recruit men of unusual ability (as Richard Lee has proved in New Haven), human skill is harder to find than cash, both because able men are not often attracted to local government and because we lack trained people. As greater responsibility flows outward from Washington, and as the work of states and communities becomes more important, public life will become more and more attractive. We will, however, have to make a generous national effort to train people for public service—something we have been slipshod about even at the federal level, where the defect has become more serious as problems have become more technical.
Again the viable techniques are numerous. Let me mention a few possibilities: federal grants to universities to establish training programs, perhaps even a foundation similar to the National Science Foundation; federally-financed training institutes, for young men or established civil servants, either under national auspices or under the control of regions or states; subsidies for the salaries and expenses of highly skilled people; model codes for government workers, embracing incentive, tenure, recognition, etc. Perhaps a Governors’ Conference could set such projects in motion. Many similar things are already done in other fields. For example, federal effort—seed money as well as full support—has enormously increased the number and quality of men and women engaged in scientific research. Certainly public service is no less important. Of course, even this effort will not coerce able men into public service, although it may help multiply their numbers and develop their talents. However, the Peace Corps and poverty program, the civil-rights movement, and my own observations across the country have convinced me that large numbers of our citizens are seeking some effective way to serve society, and they are often willing to give up the attractions of private life for such an opportunity. If we do not provide them with the chance, our most valuable national resource will be dissipated.