This, to my mind, was getting things obviously backward. It was axiomatic that political virtue consisted in voting against one's self-interest. I voted (or planned to vote) for the Democrats precisely because I assumed they would eventually disadvantage me. They would raise taxes, including the ones our family paid. And therein lay the nobility of the gesture of supporting them.
In his novel Roger's Version, John Updike depicts one (presumptively Cantabrigian) suburban Massachusetts woman as "a fighting liberal, fighting to have her money taken from her." The narrator follows up this line with the following observation: "For all her exertions, it never was."
This is clearly a case of affectionate mockery. But my teenage self (and, really, my current self, if I'm being honest) would see nothing laughable, and everything laudable, in the woman's attitude. Morality is a matter of abnegation and self-sacrifice, right? If one has the courage to vote for a policy that will deprive oneself and benefit another, one is all the more admirable for that fact.
Of course, with age, my view of these matters has gained in nuance. Tax bills (such as the one I received this morning) are harder to love at an emotional level when one is a conscious participant in paying them, rather than seeing them as an abstraction that is handled by one's parents (even if one still believes they are important as public policy).
Meanwhile, I am somewhat more inclined these days to try to defend progressive policies on a theory of mutual benefit, rather than of collective sacrifice. If for no other reason, because the latter rhetorical strategy seems to lack widespread appeal.
More importantly, my understanding of self-interest and the subtle ways it wraps its tendrils around the human heart has become more complex. I am aware, these days, that pride does not show itself only in one's commitment to maintaining the size of one's pocketbook. It can manifest in countless other forms of self-aggrandizement that may not have a financial component.
Moreover, even if the policies Democrats are likely to favor might lead to me eventually paying a larger share of the tax burden, there are other ways in which my career and material comfort are advanced by these same policies. The fields in which I work or that I particularly value, for instance—policymaking, advocacy, higher education, etc.—all tend to gain in scope and power under left-wing governments.
Many of my aspirations for my professional life depend in some way on the maintenance, wellbeing, and expansion of the administrative state. If nothing else, a regulatory regime creates jobs for policy analysts.
Of course, I believe that robust health, safety, workplace and environmental regulations are good things in themselves, regardless of whether they create more space for me to have a policy career. We are in the presence, therefore, of merely another happy coincidence, in which my own self-interest and the interests of the public happen to serve one another.
But that, of course, is what everyone finds it convenient to believe about their own self-interest. To repeat a point made long ago by sociologist Peter Berger in his writings on the "New Class," the belief on the part of modern "knowledge workers" and "helping professions" that their careers serve the public welfare is no different from the belief among postwar businessmen that "what's good for General Motors is good for the country, and vice verse."
Even if we conceive of self-interest in a narrow material sense, meanwhile, many on the right claim that here as well, the liberal agenda is anything but self-abnegating. One recalls a recent-ish interview with Newt Gingrich in which he attributed the entire progressive policy agenda to a conspiracy to raise D.C. property values. (More employees in the federal government, you see, means more price competition for housing in the area).
Along similar lines, it was contended that the opposition of many blue states to the 2018 GOP tax bill did not really have to do with any concerns about its merits; rather, it was alleged, Democrats in wealthy northeastern suburbs just detested the impact the bill would have on their ability to deduct state and local taxes from the federal total, and therefore they pressured their members of Congress to try and kill it.
How are these tiresome arguments from hypocrisy supposed to absolve Republicans of guilt for the shamelessly self-promoting policies that they routinely introduce and support? No matter, they don't need to. The point of these arguments is simply to say to Democrats: see, you do it too. Deep down, you're just as corrupt as us.
Let us leave Republicans to wallow in their own filth for a moment, into which they are seeking to drag all others down. Let us turn instead to the deeper question that their arguments from hypocrisy gesture toward:
Namely, is anyone out there actually arguing for policies that would cut against their self-interest? Or is everyone seeking to advance themselves through measures over which they have draped a veil of public-spirited idealism?
Hard to say, right? I think I support policies that would result in me paying a higher portion of the tax burden—and in absolute terms, not just in exchange for some other deduction elsewhere. Of course, I'm a little iffier on the Warren wealth tax proposal than I might once have been. I tell myself that this is just because of the boondoggle it would take to administer it; because of the constitutional challenges it would face; etc.
Plus, I'd never pay any of it, even if it became law, because last I checked, I do not have $50 million dollars. Nor am I ever likely to, on my current trajectory. So it can't be any direct fear of financial loss that has led to my inner wavering on this matter.
But perhaps this is the costume in which self-interest always presents itself to the mind: disguised as disinterested concern for the public good. As "reasons" that are objectively defensible, regardless of one's personal position and stakes in the matter.
Is there any way one can be sure, therefore? Is it possible to be truly self-abnegating in one's politics?
I come at last to the same conclusion that Vachel Lindsay reached, in his poem "Why I Voted the Socialist Ticket." His point was that one may in fact not be able to transform one's innate tendency toward pride and self-interest. One cannot, through one's sole efforts, eliminate the will to power within oneself. But one can vote for policies that cut against these instincts:
I am unjust, but I can strive for justice.
My life’s unkind, but I can vote for kindness.
It is possible, that is to say, to make conscious choices that undercut our own interests and advance those of another, even if such choices go against the grain of our instincts. The human will to power -- the drive to advance one's self-interest --may be strong in all of us -- but it is not the sum total of our inner lives. It is therefore not the only imperative we are capable of obeying.
Durkheim, in his classic The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, provides a compelling explanation of why this is not the case:
The fact is that man is not merely an animal with certain additional qualities: he is something else. [...] The reason for this is that men are not only in relations with the physical environment, but also with a social environment infinitely more extended, more stable and more active than the one whose influence animals undergo. To live, they must adapt themselves to this. Now in order to maintain itself, society frequently finds it necessary that we should see things from a certain angle and feel them in a certain way; consequently it modifies the ideas which we would ordinarily make of them for ourselves and the sentiments to which we would be inclined if we listened only to our animal nature; it alters them, even going so far as to put the contrary sentiments in their place. Does it not even go so far as to make us regard our own individual lives as something of little value, while for the animal this is the greatest of things? (Swain trans.)
Social and moral impulses, in other words, are strong enough to supplant the will toward self-preservation that would otherwise be paramount. If Durkheim is to be believed, it is possible for a person to vote for policies that will result in a higher tax bill, and not just because they will benefit them by some other means. One could vote for a wealth tax, even if it were one's own wealth that were at stake, in just the same way that one can throw oneself in front of a moving vehicle to save a child.
And this is precisely the course Lindsay recommends in his poem. As he concludes:
Come, let us vote against our human nature,
Crying to God in all the polling places
To heal our everlasting sinfulness
And make us sages with transfigured faces.
No comments:
Post a Comment