Having Our Cake and Eating It, Too; C. Carson

HA VING OUR CAKE AND EA TING IT, TOO NATIONAL PLANNERS have a penchant for relieving us of the difficult task of making hard choices. Indeed, they make it appear frequently that there is no need for such choices. We shall be able to have all that we want with out giving up anything significant. We can have social security without losing individual liberty, government aid without government control, receive help from groups to provide the intimate necessities of life and retain our independence. This penchant is clearly and amply demonstrated in The Report of the President's (Eisenhower) Commis sion on National Goals. It is available to us in both clothbound and paperback editions as Goals for A meri cans. (My references will be to the paperback edition published by Prentice-Hall as A Spectrum Book.) The Report has two parts: a statement by the whole Com mission which purports to represent their collective judgments, and chapters by individual authors, some commission members and some not. The Commission, chaired by Dr. Henry M. Wriston, had eleven members ranging from former college presidents to a labor leader.

Dr. Carson is Associate Professor of History at Jacksonville State College in Alabama. 159 160 CLARENCE B. CARSON The undertaking was administered by The American Assembly, Columbia University. One of the most interesting and confusing aspects of the Report is its many professions of devotion to the in dividual, his freedom, fulfillment, and protection. This is made remarkable, of course, by the fact that virtually every concrete proposal is for some kind of collectivistic action. This is a constant theme in the work, both in the Report of the Commission and in many of the individual chapters. I want, then, to examine this apparent contra diction and try to determine whether they have resolved it or not. The Report contains numerous references to the pri mary importance of the individual. To wit: The status of the individual must remain our primary con cern. All our institutions-political, social, and economic must further enhance the dignity of the citizen, promote the maximum development of his capabilities, stimulate their re sponsible exercise, and widen the range and effectiveness of opportunities for individual choice. (p. 3.) Respect for the individual means respect for every individ ual. (p. 4.) The degree of effective liberty available to its people should be the ultimate test for any nation. (p. 4.) Individuals should have maximum freedom in their choice of jobs, goods, and services. (p. 9.) The authors of the individual chapters are just as pro fuse in their concern for the individual. Here are a few excerpts: Dr. Henry M. Wriston, in the chapter on "The In dividual," says: One luan's freedom should involye no trespass upon other's HAVING OUR CAKE AND EATING IT, TOO 161 rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. (p. 50.) The acid test of successful democratic government is the degree of effective liberty it makes available to the individual.

(p. 48.) Mr. Clinton Rossiter, in the selection called "The Democratic Process," declares: The price of liberty, today as through all history, is self~ reliance and self-discipline. (p. 76.) Dr. John W. Gardner, "National Goals in Education," maintains: Our deepest convictions impel us to foster individual ful fillment. We wish each one to achieve the promise that is in him. (p. 81.) Dr. Warren Weaver, "A Great Age for Science," as serts his belief in "the transcendant importance of the imaginative individual worker; free to think about any scientific problem that arouses his curiosity and attracts his mind." (p. 106.) There are kind words in the re port for free enterprise, individual initiative, and in dividual responsibility. If we knew no more than this about the book on Goals for Americans; we might conclude that it is a new declaration of independence cast in the mold of roman tic individualism. There is little, if any, in what I have quoted to which Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, George Mason, Richard Henry Lee, or Ralph Waldo Emerson might have objected. One might expect that the concrete proposals of the Commission would be along the lines of the reduction of governmental operations, limitations of the powers of regulatory commissions, cur tailment of the taxing powers of government, restoration 162 CLARENCE B. CARSON of the responsibility of parents for their children, and an increase of privately initiated, financed, and managed activities. Such expectations would be badly dis appointed.

Intervention Recommended By what means does the Report seek to implement its professed concern for individual liberty, free enter prise, the fulfillment of the individual, and the like? The COlnmission recommends increased government spending, government manipulation of thought, mainte nance of regulation, and, in general, extensions of the collective effort. Some excerpts from the Report of the Commission will indicate this: One role of government is to stimulate changes of attitude. (p. 4.) Greater resources-private, corporate, municipal, state, and federal-must be mobilized. A higher proportion of the gross national product must be devoted to educational purposes. (p.6.) The economy should grow at the maximum rate consistent with primary dependence upon free enterprise and the avoid ance of marked inflation. Increased investment in the public sector is compatible with this goal. (p. 10.) Government programs of help for farmers, including price supports and other means to prevent collapse of incomes, will continue to be necessary for some time; they must be so man aged that they cushion the shock of the transition, without unduly slowing the pace of necessary fundamental adjust ments. (p. 13.) We must remedy slum conditions, reverse the process of decay in the large cities, and relieve the necessity for low income and minority groups to concentrate there.

We should also seek solutions for haphazard suburban HAVING OUR CAKE AND EATING IT, TOO 163 growth, and provide an equitable sharing of the cost of pub· lic services between central cities and suburbs. (p. 13.) Federal grants for the construction of hospitals should be continued and extended to other medical facilities. Increased private, state, and federal support is necessary for training doctors. (p. 14.) In addition, there should be established a federal reinsur· ance program for states with temporary acute employment problems. Public and private arrangements for maintaining income during sickness should be improved. (p. 15.) LiP Service to Liberty The character of the report begins to manifest itself. It pays lip service to such traditional American ideals as freedom for the individual, individual fulfillment, free enterprise, and individual responsibility. It makes concrete proposals, however, for collective responsibility, government stimulation and planning for the economy, urban renewal with the aid of the national purse, and national more often than individual fulfillment.

The reconciliation of opposites is possible by the manipulation of words, so long as the words are vague and undefined. The Commission demonstrated this prin ciple adeptly. For example: The federal government supports more than half of the re search and development in the United States. It is of urgent importance that the administration of its scientific and techni cal programs be strengthened, but without resort to bureau cratic overcentralization and planning. (p. 8.) Is this to be an unplanned strengthening of the ad ministration of the programs? When does bureaucratic centralization become "bureaucratic overcentralization"? It appears to me that the Commission is saying SOlne164 CLARENCE B. CARSON thing like this: "Tighten the nut on the bolt, but leave it as loose as it now is." The Commission must have had in mind the example of the Defense Department, uni fied but separate, coordinated but each service acting in its own way!

Or consider this example of proposals to go in both directions at once. At one point, the Report of the Com mission advocates the enlargement of "local discretion, as for example in the handling of matching federal grants .... " (p. 6.) Elsewhere they say, "The federal government should enforce the principle that federal funds shall not be disbursed to employers who discrim inate on the basis of race. Similar policies should pro gressively be applied to federal grants for universities, hospitals, and airports, and to federal housing pro· grams." (p. 4.) To state it abstractly, the Commission favors enlarging local discretion by increasing federal intervention. It is no wonder that men who reason thusly can believe that individual liberty can be pro moted by governmental intervention, or that collective responsibility can be assumed for the well-being of each of us without any loss of individual initiative. The con fusion of these men is more apparent than real, how ever. Without questioning motives, I would suggest that these men are not informed by the ideas of individual ism, whatever the appearance to the contrary. Their tribute to the individual is only a pious pilgrimage to the grave of an ancestor. Their very willingness to draw up such comprehensive goals for the nation attests to the enfeeblement of their individualism. Their concrete HAVING OUR CAKE AND EATING IT, TOO 165 proposals involve the increased activity of some collec tive, corporate, community, city, state, and/or national organization. Judging by what they recommend, no single activity can be left solely to the individual; not unemployment insurance, nor the arts, nor the develop ment of resources, nor housing. There are no concrete proposals for protecting the individual from govern ments, despite the vast increases in governmental ac tivity which the Commission advocates. To the contrary, there are subtle suggestions for removing such limitations as now exist in the congressional power of appropria tions, and in the virtually unlimited debate in the Senate.

rrSocial Necessities" The very manner in which Dr. Henry M. Wriston, in his chapter on "The Individual," defines the conflict be tween individual and social realms shows that his in dividualism is only vestigial. He says, "In a society so completely, and complexly, organized as ours, in a world so interdependent and so disturbed, the choice between individual desires and social necessities becomes diffi cult." (p. 49, italics mine.) Who would care to defend individual desires when social necessities are in conflict with them? I had not supposed that an individual's de sires mattered to anyone except himself. Those who es tablished the Republic thought in terms of the natural rights of the individual, not his desires. It is plain in another instance that Dr. Wriston does 166 CLARENCE B. CARSON not think in terms of individual rights. He declares, "Property and business exist for the benefit of individ uals and have no inherent rights." (p. 52.) This is a truism and a circumlocution of the question it purports to raise. The question is not, nor should it ever have been, whether property has rights· but whether individ uals have rights to the use of the proceeds from the prop erty which they own or rent. This is the central ques tion about property with which individualism is con cerned.

The Commission concludes its report by urging in dividuals to assume their responsibilities. One might suppose that the Commission would avow the primary responsibility of the individual for his own well-being. It should follow, then, that they would recommend such things as private savings against misfortune, the avoid ance of indebtedness which limits independence, the securing of private property by which the individual might provide for his needs, and the restoration of pri mary responsibilities to the home. Personal Responsibility Called ff A Purely Selfish:Attitude" I am dreaming, of course. No perceptive person who had read as far as "A Concluding Word" in the report would have expected any such denouement. There is an oblique reference to the American's responsibility "for his own life and livelihood," but the concrete proposals which follow deal with our responsibilities to others.

HAVING OUR CAKE AND EATING IT, TOO 167 An individual who did devote himself primarily to his personal responsibilities is no doubt condemned by the Commission's edict against "the fallacy of a purely self ish attitude-the materialistic ethic. Indifference to pov erty and disease is inexcusabl~ in a society dedicated to the dignity of the individual; so also is indifference to values other than material comfort and national power." (p. 23.) We are, instead, to assume responsibility for everyone else. "A basic goal. for each American is to achieve a sense of responsibility as broad as his world wide concerns and as compelling as the dangers and opportunities he confronts." (p. 23.) Apparently it does not trouble the Commission that individuals who can not provide for their own private medical needs should assume the responsibilities of the whole world. Language, when not used in .full consciousness of its portent, can betray the true orientation of the writer.

So it is with Dr. Wriston when he says, "The basic nat ural resource of the United States is its people. It fol lows inescapably that the first national goal to be pur sued.....,..at all levels, federal, state, local, and private should be the development of each individual to his full est potential." (p. 53.) There are some "nice" words in the quotation which give the whole a soothing quality, but what is he saying? He is saying that the individual is a "natural resource,'" a resource of the nation, a sub ject for "national goals," something that is to be fully developed so that he can benefit us all. Fair words ob scure the radical character of such thought. Does the individual exist for the nation, or does the nation exist 168 CLARENCE B. CARSON for individuals? If I am a "natural resource of the United States," I must conclude that I exist for the state. Man a Natural Resource How far are the United States from their foundations when national leaders refer to human beings as natural resources, when individual fulfillment has as its end the meeting of national needs, when individual responsi bility is defined as responsibility for all mankind, when private property is subtly attacked in the name of the individual, when the extension of collective activity is urged in the name of individual liberty? Toward what kind of society would the "goals" of the Commission take us (whether wittingly or not)? What rights would remain for the individual in such a society? Would it not be a society in which everyone is "developed" to his fullest (whether he will or no?), in which each is re sponsible for all and all are responsible for each, in which it is one's "duty" to contribute significantly to the general welfare? How much longer can such a society permit the wasteful ((laissez-faire" practice of individual choice of vocation? Lest I be accused of imagining such dangers, note this pronouncement by the Commission: We must use available manpower more efficiently. The prac tice of wasting highly trained people in jobs below their capacity ... must be eliminated. (p. 8.) Suppose I were to insist upon wasting my talents, would I have to be eliminated also?

I deal here with· the tendency of these ideas, of course, not entirely with the stated objectives of the CommisHAVING OUR CAKE AND EATING IT, TOO 169 sian. Yet it is the tendency which is most important when we are thinking in terms of developing a society. Even a jet plane goes from one port to another inch by inch, as it were. The tendency of the Report of the Com mission is toward a totalitarian society, however far we may be from that destination. We should attend more to those who have lived in such a society, and listen to what they protest against. Czeslaw Milosz, in The Cap tive Mind (New York, Vintage Books, p. 240) ,was not bemoaning the shortage of shoes under communism or the long hours of work. Read his concluding statement: When ... I stand before Zeus (whether I die naturally, or under sentence of IIistory) I will repeat all this that I have written as my defense. l\fany people spend their entire lives collecting stamps or old coins, or growing tulips. I am sure that Zeus will be merciful toward people who have given themselves entirely to these hobbies, even though they are only amusing and pointless diversions. I shall say to him: "It is not my fault that you made me a poet .... I felt that if I did not use that gift my poetry would be tasteless to me and fame detestable. Forgive me." And perhaps Zeus, who does not call stamp-collectors and tulip-growers silly, will forgive.

Mr. Milosz has seen that there can be no room for the human spirit in a society animated by necessity (called History in the communist orbit), in a planned society, in a society where all activities must be socially significant, where the common good is the final arbiter of what can be done. Ominous ImpliCiations My purpose here is not to indict those who worked on Goals for A mericans for whatever beliefs they may 170 CLARENCE B. CARSON hold about the good society. The tendency of the re port, however, is ominous. Its implications are mislead ing. It implies that there are no hard choices confront ing us. It implies that we can have both free enterprise and government guaranteed security, that we can in crease collective action with little danger to individual liberty, that the federal government can be extended into virtually every area of life without deadening in dividual or local initiative.

The Commission invites discussion but does not pose alternative courses for us to discuss. The most insidious thing about the Report is its failure to present the broad range of alternatives which confront us today. It implies, instead, that we do not have to make any choices among the many values which we may seek, that we can have our cake and eat it, too. Yet just as choice is the sine qua non of freedom, so it is the heavy price of freedom. The individual cannot participate in a group without yielding up some of his autonomy to the group. He can not accept aid from others without having his existence conditioned by that aid. The man who cannot bear to be alone will have to learn to put up with the incon veniences of company. It may be, at best, that for every gain we make there is a corresponding loss. At -any rate, there are no choices which are between everything we desire on the one hand and things we loathe on the other. The choice should be made in terms of what is ultimately most important. If liberty is most to be desired, we must sometimes choose between it and a government guarantee of security. If HAVING OUR CAKE AND EATING IT, TOO 171 the individual is most important, we may sometimes have to see organizations destroyed.

All our choices are not always so immediately press ing as the above might be understood to imply. Yet each direction that we take by each action is a choice which, when its tendency is traced out, points toward some goal. Failing to name the goal does not prevent movement in the direction of it. No more will neglecting to choose as a result of bringing the choices into focus keep us from going in some direction. The Commission, by the vague' ness of its vocabulary and looseness of its thought, has obscured the choices available and created a verbal illusion of compatibility between individual ism and collectivism. Its statement of goals implies that we can maintain our traditional values-individual lib erty, personal independence, and private realms-by adoption of a social ethic which leaves no room for them. They may conjure up a make-believe universe in which such things are possible, but it is not the one I inhabit.

T he Real World The world known to man through the centuries is one in which Socrates drank the cup of hemlock, in which Jesus of Nazareth was crucified, in which Columbus died in disgrace. It is a world in which the right choices sometimes lead to apparent defeat. It is a world in which the nation unwilling to risk failure by maintaining its principles "viII fail because it will be corrupted by its 172 CLARENCE B. CARSON own actions. It is one in which the man who fears to stand on his own two feet may find help to stand, but he will be propelled in undesired or unchosen directions by those who uphold him. Those who would outline national goals should do so with fear, trembling, and humility, conscious of the consequences of whatever direction they take. They should be aware of the numerous choices which confront us. They should have some acquaintance with the uni verse in which we actually live. They should· know that it is one in which you can't have your cake and eat it, too.