Political culture in America—as it always has been and will be, as it is anywhere else—is permeated by myth. Mythology is an indispensable conceptual shorthand, the means by which we comprehend, come to terms with, and talk about complicated social realities. Mythology is the vehicle by which we bequeath our political culture to our children, and teach them lessons about what our society is for. This book has suggested that America’s political mythology can be rendered, with only slight gaps, exaggerations, and overlaps, as a set of four core parables: the Mob at the Gates, the Triumphant Individual, the Benevolent Community, and the Rot at the Top. The basic outlines of this mythology are enduring and uniquely characteristic of our culture; the American mythology of today more closely resembles the American mythology of a hundred years ago than it resembles that of France or Germany in any age, for example. Yet within these broad outlines there has always been a good deal of room for adaptation, evolution, and shifts of emphasis. Myths change—quickly or otherwise, successfully or otherwise—as the cultural environment they interpret also changes.
I have argued that certain peculiar postwar developments have caused the American mythology to evolve in an unfortunate way or, more specifically, to have bred two divergent variants, one conservative, the other liberal, each incomplete and maladaptive. The liberal variant, which has its roots in the unprecedented and irrecoverable domestic prosperity and international preeminence of the earlier postwar decades, and especially the 1960s, is characterized by magnanimity, altruism, an eagerness to conciliate, and to a certain extent, self-reproach. The conservative variant, a response to the disturbing developments at home and abroad that began in the early 1970s, is characterized by defiance, self-assertion, an eagerness to impose discipline, and to a certain extent, aggression.
Both of the current variants were born as responses to new challenges confronting American culture as it sought to come to terms with, in turn, its role as the leading power in a shattered world, its own poor and its long-oppressed minorities, an increasingly strong and enduringly hostile Soviet bloc, and the shock of economic vulnerability. Despite their differences, both versions share one central feature: Each defines “us”—members of the mainstream American community—in large part by reference and opposition to “them”: the Soviets; other nations, whether cast as dependents or competitors; slackers among us who fail to pull their own weight; the poor; and corrupt or incompetent elites, whether in business or government. We never have been a particularly introspective people, but this obsession with the other that both modern variants of our mythology display has led us, as we seek the source of our troubles, to look outward—with pity, fear, or defiance—to a degree unusual even for America. Thus the most complex questions about our place in a changing world, as they are processed by the conceptual filter of political mythology, are reduced to a blunt and binary choice between toughness or charity toward “them.” These are the terms of the stories we tell each other, the level of political discourse that ultimately matters the most.
This narrow spectrum of choice—assertiveness versus accommodation, discipline versus conciliation—bounds our political debates, limits how problems are defined and solutions weighed, and blinds us to a subtler set of options. Appeasement and aggression do not exhaust the potential repertoire of relationships—within productive organizations, with our needy or troublesome compatriots, or with our allies and rivals abroad. Neither variant, accordingly, has been a very reliable guide. Liberal conciliation has often degenerated into an indulgence that invites exploitation. Conservative assertiveness has often hardened the resistance of the intended objects of discipline, sparked resentment, and undermined trust. Much of America’s recent history can be understood as a series of reactions, first to the failures of conciliation, then to the failures of assertiveness. The conventional wisdom at any given time—for dealing with the Japanese or the Soviets or the Third World, for managing the economy, for coping with the poor, for bridling inept or unscrupulous elites—is usually rooted in revulsion against the dismal results of the contrary approach, which had been the conventional wisdom just before.
The common error of both variants is the rigid delineation of “us” and “them.” Modern liberalism—as distinct from its more balanced New Deal ancestor—is too ready to coddle the other; modern conservatism, to defy him. Both tend to envision human encounters as blunt conflicts of interest in which one party improves its lot and the other, out of weakness or magnanimity, concedes. The conservative morality tales speak of the other’s strength and deviousness; the liberal morality tales, of his weakness and need. Neither variant of the basic mythology features stories of mutually rewarding encounters, or common efforts to overcome perils. The tension between a basic stance of accommodation or one of confrontation excludes the middle ground of negotiations and collaborations that both assert “our” interests and comprehend “theirs.” It is here, in the premise of generally opposed interests, that the prevailing myths serve worst as guides to reality. For in any of the areas we have discussed there are few encounters in which one side wins and the other loses, apart from sporting events, litigation, and quick wars on small islands. The general case is for interests to overlap, if not completely; for all parties to gain or lose together, if not all to the same extent; for each to depend on the other, if not all to the same degree and in the same encounter. This holds for international commerce as well as for international diplomacy, for dealings between managers and workers as well as dealings between the poor and the prosperous.
All human organization depends on reciprocal obligation and mutual trust that others’ obligations will be fulfilled. Indeed, civilization may be defined as the state where humans have achieved a richer, more secure and convenient existence through some system of mutual obligation; barbarism, where no such system exists and where confrontation prevails because there are no potential gains from cooperation to be lost. Because most of us are so enmeshed in webs of mutual responsibility—because certain rights and responsibilities are so basic to our culture and so universally enforced—we tend to forget that civilization, so defined, is not natural but an accomplishment of culture. When I leave my office to teach a class I can be confident that my students will not greet my lecture with gunfire, even if they are bored or offended by what I say. Similarly, I do not worry that my colleague next door will profit from my absence to steal my computer. When the university pays me for my labors with a piece of paper, I accept it because I know I can convey the check to the bank and through that institution’s agency can acquire things I need by presenting other pieces of paper. My confidence in each of these encounters is rooted in my experience of the culture legitimating and enforcing certain rights and obligations. This allows me to go about my business in the world without the burden of equipping myself with weaponry or my office with booby traps, or carrying around a bundle of goods to trade should I wish to acquire something from someone else. The cultural basis for this kind of confidence is so pervasive that we appreciate it only when we hear of instances where it breaks down, as in Beirut (as of this writing) or the insecurity and organizational chaos of any nation ravaged by war, plague, or thuggery.
Crucially, the want of social devices to bond responsibilities forces individuals not only to be wary, but to be aggressive. Each party, knowing the other may exploit him, is led to preemptive exploitation.1 The grim state that confronts those who cannot rely on a culture of mutual responsibility is often stylized as the “prisoner’s dilemma.” The basic version: Two suspects, caught with the loot after a bank robbery, are kept apart and interrogated. If they both remain silent, they will each get off with a one-month sentence. But if one agrees to testify against the other, the betrayer will go free, and the other will get twenty years. And if both rat on one another, they will each get five years. Since neither can trust the other not to betray him, they both end up talking, and both receive five-year sentences. Had they had some device for binding trust, their situation would have been far better. Social scientists, nuclear strategists, and game theorists have used the prisoner’s dilemma as a model for endless examples of the breakdown of trust and the resulting mutual losses endured and mutual gains foregone.
This classic version of the prisoner’s dilemma is deliberately structured (by the police) to be impossible to overcome. The prisoners are forbidden any opportunity to build trust.2 In most analogous situations, however, some such opportunities exist or can be developed. Suppose, for example, that the two prisoners are not petty criminals who met only this morning to plan the heist, but rather a pair of underground French Resistance fighters suspected by the Gestapo. Each will likely know that the other shares a culture, a set of values, and a sense of commitment to a cause that will deter him from betrayal. Each, in turn, can confidently refuse to betray the other. Or suppose the two robbers are old partners in crime who’ve been through the interrogation game many times before, and each is secure the other knows how to handle it.3
The problem and the approach are quite general. In any circumstance where we require the cooperation of others to achieve what we want or avoid what we fear, we depend on organizational and cultural devices that make trust possible. Where we lack such devices, we fearfully abandon the possibility of joint gains or must accept as inevitable joint losses. Civilization is in large part a blanket term for systems of such devices. Organizations and understandings that let us act together are cultural tools that broaden, enrich, and safeguard our existence.
This is precisely why the technical changes that increase the integration of global economies and societies pose so urgent a cultural challenge. Global integration ups the stakes. The potential for collaborative gains is greater, as is the threat of losses all around. There are more, and more important, opportunities for profitable collaboration or disastrous betrayal. We have explored several aspects of this global change: National borders are eroding as money, information, goods and services, weapons of destruction, pollution, and immigrants can all slip easily through them. Global corporations are losing connection even with the advanced nations in which they are headquartered. The populations of the Third World are growing rapidly and impatient to find their places in a world system they are ever more intimately aware of. Ongoing technological advances are making it possible to control or liberate the work place, destroy or feed whole continents, bring us immediately closer or terrifyingly apart. The challenge to our capacity to undertake joint endeavors, forge commitments, and cement trust is correspondingly greater.
These social and economic transformations can be difficult and frightening for many people. As change occurs—industries decline, populations shift, technologies are rendered obsolete, older values are challenged—there is a temptation to dump the burden onto others. The pervasive context of fluidity and uncertainty, moreover, makes it more possible to betray without fear of consequence: Exploiters may not again encounter those whom they betray, and the exploited may not be able to identify the origins of the burdens that fall on them. In such circumstances, trust tends to decay, commitment becomes more perilous, and the odds lengthen for joint gains and shorten for joint losses.
The renunciation of cooperation—either through withdrawal or betrayal—has taken many forms: Advanced nations have tried to seal their borders to immigrants and cheaper goods from abroad; poorer countries have been seduced by the romance of leftist revolutions or military dictatorships, or entranced by xenophobic religious movements. Both sets of responses have pushed the burden of change onto other, similarly resistant members of a linked world system. Advanced nations have tried to impose the costs of their inflation or industrial overcapacity on one another; one superpower has tried to gain a strategic advantage over the other. These moves have generated retaliation, ultimately escalating the potential losses for all. Closer to home, managers and financiers have, on occasion, appropriated economic gains to themselves through paper enterpreneurialism and the manipulation of laws and rules; some workers, convinced that they will not share the gains from improved productivity, have sabotaged the work place through rigid work rules, shoddy workmanship, strikes, and slowdowns. These responses have undermined the productive system. Many Americans, rich and poor, have cynically exploited social insurance or welfare and imperiled the system of social benevolence. Some American businesses have sought to circumvent regulations and impose the burdens of pollution and ill health onto others, and have balked at investing in the skills and knowledge of their workers. Public officials have betrayed the trust of office and sought personal power, convenience, or profit at the expense of their compatriots.
Such exploitative maneuvers have undermined trust and stalled progress in many spheres. The result has been a tightening gridlock—with our trading partners, the Soviets, the Third World; within our businesses among workers, managers, shareholders, and other stake holders; within the welfare state, among the poor and the rest of us; in the relationship between government and business. Many of our more visible and immediate problems are symptoms of this basic dilemma. Liberal accommodation has offered no answer. Its foundation of principles and priorities has been too weak to define and guard against betrayal. Its assertion of rights without corresponding mutual obligations has too often served to veil exploitation. Thus it has tempted us to the emotionally satisfying toughness and assertion of modern conservatism, and exposed us to the peril of escalating rounds of retaliation and deepening suspicion. The prisoner’s dilemma is played out on a grand scale.
But we are not bound by the grim logic of distrust and preemptive betrayal. Different aspects of the same broad trends can be turned to our mutual advantage. How well we do depends on our culture’s capacity to create and sustain the organizations that allow collective action, to define and enforce mutual obligation. For example, a more dynamic and adaptable world economy could allow those who gained in the first instance to fully compensate those on whom the burden of change fell heaviest, and restore a broad upward trend in living standards. Domestically, firms that fostered group learning and collective responsibility could generate greater wealth. Public investments in education, child nutrition and care, job training, and public health could lead to a more prosperous economy and society. And a domestic market whose rules were determined explicitly with social “bads” and “goods” in mind, could avoid many heavy-handed government controls. Yet how can we confidently undertake mutual endeavors that inevitably render us more vulnerable to each other? How can common purposes be pursued when they overlap but do not coincide point by point with individual interests? How can we prevent betrayal and exploitation when there are so many opportunities and incentives to renege on trust?
The only response to the dismal logic of the prisoner’s dilemma is the accretion of common interests, patterns of mutual endeavor, traditions of trust—in short, a political culture that engenders an ongoing search for possibilities of joint gain and continued vigilance against the likelihood of mutual loss. And culture is the creature of mythology. Culture is encoded within the tales we tell one another every day. Hence the importance of these tales, and of their evolution.
It is not just geographic isolation that inspired the basic American myth of the Mob at the Gates. America’s earliest settlers were moral dissidents; our nation’s defining documents were expressions of moral theories. The sense of the United States as an ethical exemplar in a deeply flawed world is an abiding aspect of the American mythology. But the current version of this myth has become needlessly exclusive and dangerously insular. We tragically narrow our options when we regard other cultures, until proven otherwise, as parts of a hostile mob that can only be appeased or kept at bay. Our neighbors on the planet vary enormously in the proximity of their values with our values and the consistency of their interests with our interests. Some of them are our natural allies in many spheres, and not even the most extreme manifestations of our mythology have kept us from recognizing and acting on this to some extent. Others will inevitably be opposed to many or even most of our interests, but even with them we share a common concern for avoiding mutual catastrophe. A few groups profess values so repellent that we can only view them as enemies—consider the Nazis of the middle third of the century, or the terrorist groups of the last third, or fascist or Communist butcher regimes. Yet our best response to such true members of the Mob has been and continues to be making common cause with other peoples against them.
Myths cannot be simply edited nor their evolution forced. But I suggest that a successful adaptation of this mythology would engage us in subtler discriminations among other peoples and greater attention to the forging and shoring up of mutually beneficial relationships. It is increasingly apparent, for example, that the world economic system is coming to require new norms and institutions to enforce mutual responsibility among nations for easing the strains of industrial overcapacity, currency misalignments, incompatible national economic policies, and the flow across borders of dangerous drugs, pollutants, and surges of immigrants. Our role in the formation of such institutions is too often warped by the tendency for our internal debates to turn on the question of being either tough or generous toward “them.” It is difficult to decide what burdens and responsibilities we should accept, as our part of common agreements, when the choice is cast in these terms.
The proper way to frame the issue is neither as a matter of charity and appeasement nor as a ploy in a competitive struggle, but rather as an expression of a larger and more enlightened self-interest. The new public philosophy would reject the notion—so deeply embedded within both liberal conciliation and conservative pugnacity—that the central competition of our age is over the division of a fixed quantity of global wealth. There are more and less advantageous roles to search for, and some of our perceived rivalries are real. We can do better than we have done in casting such competition not as a struggle for survival, but as a contest in which even the laggards can gain enormously. The faster and less traumatic the transition is for any one group or nation, the smoother and more rewarding it may be for everyone else. Rather than seek to constrain or appease an apparent Mob at the Gates, we would do better to concern ourselves with the ecology of the world economy as it develops and adapts.
International policies, if informed by such vision, would aim to make manifest interdependencies and build new institutions to manage reciprocal obligations. A few possibilities will give the flavor of policies that might follow from this revised tale (but should not be taken as any considered agenda). In order to avoid global recessions, inflation, or extreme currency swings, the Federal Reserve Board and the central banks of other major economies would attempt to adjust their money targets in light of world liquidity conditions and trends. Similarly, the United States would better synchronize its spending and taxing decisions with those of other key nations. When the productive capacities of the world were being underutilized, we would seek a coordinated expansion; when the world economy was in danger of overheating, we would try to negotiate a reduction in global spending.
Our trade policies would welcome the transfer of basic industries to poorer nations, steering around the grim choice between deindustrialization and protection. The goal would be to orchestrate a balanced global expansion of wealth creation and exchange; as “they” progressed, so would we. As part of our contribution to this common purpose, we would work to ease the transition of our firms and workers out of low-skilled, standardized businesses of the sort that Third World nations are entering. Simultaneously, through the International Monetary Fund or another international lending agency, we would offer Third World nations access to the kind of long-term financing they desperately need. We would reverse the flow of capital from poor nations to rich, inviting other advanced nations to join us in investing in the Third World. This is far from Utopian; the Marshall Plan, through which America invested in the reconstruction of Europe after World War II, stands as a rousingly successful precedent. The mechanics of such a campaign might involve limiting Third World nations’ debt service payments to a fixed percentage of their export earnings, an arrangement that would give them greater confidence that we would fulfill our commitment to open markets.4
So far as these and similar measures cushioned the trauma of global change, the Soviets would have fewer opportunities to insinuate themselves into local upheavals. We could feel more secure about reducing our military support to the Third World and would avoid the periodic left-wing reactions that such martial alliances sometimes inspire. At the same time, the world’s poor would have somewhat less reason to uproot themselves and surge across our borders in search of jobs, or to turn to the cultivation and transportation of noxious drugs as a means of livelihood.
To the extent we solidified our reputation for pursuing our own interests but respecting those of others, for sincerely seeking to identify and act on opportunities for mutual gains, it would become increasingly difficult for our detractors to plausibly cast the United States as either global patsy or global bully. Our hostility to those groups that deserve the label of Mob—terrorists, aggressors, and tyrants of both left and right—would become more respectable, and our appeals to other peoples to join us in closing the gates around such international pariahs would become more credible. By moderating the moralistic fervor and self-righteousness of our rhetoric, we could reclaim true moral leadership in the world.
Our prevailing version of the fable of the Triumphant Individual is similarly out of phase with the challenges our culture faces. The mythology invites us to pose the wrong questions, particularly about individualism in the modern economy, and confounds debate. We wrangle over bids to up the financial reward to lone entrepreneurs and crack down on drone workers on the one hand, or to control enterprise through rigid regulation, constraints on layoffs and factory closings, and union work rules on the other. Neither approach engages the reality that while we may triumph as individuals, in the modern economy we must triumph through teams.
Personal competence, dedication, and pride in accomplishment—those splendid traditional American virtues—will continue to matter a great deal, but to an increasing extent they are forged and have effect principally in the context of collective endeavor. Interestingly, there is evidence that the stories we tell one another are coming to reflect this understanding. As noted earlier, an ever rising proportion of scientific discoveries are made by groups of researchers, and most Nobel prizes are now shared. When I thought of “science” as a child I would usually envision a wild-eyed genius in a lonely lab; my children are more likely to picture teams of white-coated colleagues arguing, comparing notes, and working together on impressive-looking and no doubt staggeringly expensive devices. Popular culture now depicts groups of people, each with different strengths and temperaments, struggling together to design new computers.5 Stories about Triumphant Teams—composed, like any assemblage of Americans, not of selfless and subservient drones but of creative, idiosyncratic individuals, yet devoted to common goals and committed to reaching them through common efforts—may well already be working their way into our mythology. Triumphant Individuals are being replaced by collective entrepreneurs.
To the extent our domestic economy is animated by this new version of the tale, the central problem of economic policy becomes less how to discipline drones or tease the last ounce of genius out of lone entrepreneurs, but rather how to create the kinds of organizations in which people can pool their efforts, insights, and enthusiasm without fear of exploitation. As the earlier discussion of economic gridlock suggested, this is far from a simple task. What kinds of economic arrangements can infuse a broadly shared sense of responsibility throughout productive organizations and build mutual confidence and trust? One possible approach to this problem is to encourage some version of worker ownership and participation.6
This may be seen as an old answer to a new question. Employee ownership has been widely advocated on largely ideological grounds. It has been just as widely condemned as inefficient. Different groups of employees—like younger and older workers—will often have different interests in immediate wages and dividends versus long-term growth, for example. Potential outside investors may suspect the motives and doubt the accountability of worker-owners and refuse to invest their funds. Talented and diligent workers risk being exploited by the incompetent and lazy. And all worker-owners, if most of their wealth is tied up in the firm, bear more risk than if each owned a diversified portfolio of investments.7 If there were nothing to the notion of collective entrepreneurialism, if productive organizations were simply the sum of their fungible parts, it may well be that worker ownership would be a bad idea. But if our future prosperity does depend on ongoing learning through collective efforts, then some kind of worker ownership may be an important device for generating shared experience, cementing common aims, and building trust. It may be sufficiently promising as such a device to warrant considerable efforts to overcome its inherent problems. Indeed, when its purpose is framed this way, it may itself help to overcome some of these problems.
A direct ownership stake can go a long way toward creating a sense of collective responsibility. Employees would reap the benefits of effort and innovation. Honing their firm-specific skills instead of basic skills that could be peddled anywhere would be a less risky strategy. Each worker would have a direct interest in training his colleagues, rather than jealously guarding expertise lest his own position become less secure. Workers would monitor one another, and managers, to guard against lapses of judgment or diligence.
The virtues of employee ownership would not be solely motivational. It would also allow the enterprise more flexibility. When sacrifices were needed to make it through lean times or develop new products or processes, worker-owners would be more ready to accept austerity, knowing they would reap the eventual rewards and not be shouldered aside once they had made their contributions.8 Secure in their place in the organization, they would not need to fear new technologies or endeavors.
The point is that some form of employee ownership and control could provide a superior context for forging joint commitment and fostering trust. Reciprocal dependencies would be clearer. Relationships would be longer-term, and reputations correspondingly more important; the slacker and exploiter would bear the burden of their actions. Such arrangements could go far to reduce the appeal of opportunism and increase the perceived advantages of collaboration, and thus lessen the dilemmas that give rise to economic gridlock.
The American fable of the Benevolent Community is increasingly adrift from the actual American system of social benevolence. Here, what is required is both an adaptation of the stories we tell one another, and a greater appreciation of what is actually occurring with our social insurance and welfare programs. I have suggested that we should stop making “the poor” into the objects of our compassion or suspicion, recognizing instead the pervasiveness of our system of social benevolence and the crucial importance of mutual responsibility for sustaining it. In the revised tale, altruism would be replaced by solidarity.
Social policy, if informed by such a vision, would dispense with the two parallel schemes we now have (one dubbed social insurance; the other, welfare) and institute instead a single, inclusive system of common insurance against misadventure. In broad outline: We would eliminate oddities like the tort liability system, which enriches lawyers predictably but compensates victims only erratically and with whimsical inconsistency, in favor of universal disability insurance.9 Unemployment insurance and many types of welfare would be merged into a single set of programs for the economically dislocated. Benefits would come in large part in the form of training and retraining services, training stipends, and (for those least ready for regular jobs) temporary wage subsidies. No able citizen would be simply supported in idleness, but at the same time no willing worker would be left stranded.
At the same time, we would strengthen and enforce the reciprocal obligations of beneficiaries as members of the community. No aspect of social insurance would come as an “entitlement,” delivered irrespective of individual behavior. The community must stand ready to guarantee each member against misery. But each member, in turn, must be induced to take responsibility for those factors within his control that determine his fate. As earlier sections suggested, this is a difficult balance to strike. But our national community will be better off by applying the principle of reciprocal responsibility more stringently—or, to be more accurate, for the first time—to those programs that benefit all of us. Eligibility for subsidized health insurance would require a preventive program of health maintenance; absent fathers would be required to pay a portion of their paychecks to support their offspring; teenage mothers would receive aid only if they remained in school. One generic device for inducing greater responsibility may be channeling benefits through intermediary groups that have the capacity and can be given the incentive to help monitor and enhance their members’ vigilance against mishap. The models for this are the health maintenance organization and, in the area of tax-subsidized indirect social insurance, the corporations that provide such benefits to their workers. The model may be capable of extension to other intermediary groups, perhaps including, in different ways and varying situations, civic organizations, churches, neighborhoods, and even the family.
But there is one daunting problem to using intermediate groups as agents of community benevolence: Many of our most chronically needy compatriots are either isolated from the most promising kinds of intermediaries, or concentrated within enclaves of poverty and despair. They are poor not only in resources but in organization. So long as this condition holds, it will be difficult to develop systems of mutual responsibility; social benevolence for “the poor” will be apt to again degenerate into special programs funded by the charity of the rest of “us”—unaccompanied by either expectations or esteem. Hence, a somewhat radical proposal: In order to universalize our instruments of community, disperse chronically poor Americans more widely among the rest of us. Laws against housing discrimination should be mercilessly enforced. Zoning ordinances that effectively bar the disadvantaged from more prosperous areas should be challenged. Small clusters of low-income housing should be built in high-income neighborhoods. Current patterns of economic segregation make a self-fulfilling prophecy of the claim that the poor are not like the rest of us.
Finally, we should take seriously the bromide that the future depends on our children. The potential public return warrants substantial public investments in prenatal care, preschool learning, basic education, and abundant opportunities for training and retraining thereafter. Here again, the immediate beneficiaries would be made to understand that these expenditures entailed reciprocal responsibilities. Failure to accept the obligations they implied (by, for example, disrupting or vandalizing a schoolroom) would properly result in whole or partial exclusion.
This brings us, finally, to the fable of the Rot at the Top. Looking on the powerful with a jaundiced eye is not a uniquely American trait, but the nature and degree of our suspicion distinguish us from other cultures. This aspect of our mythology is, in a broad sense, healthy. Yet its current manifestations, once again, convey lessons inappropriate to the problems we face. It is undeniably important to guard against the perennial tendency toward venality, corruption, and arrogance in our public and private institutions. But I suggest the most threatening danger—most threatening because we are so little vigilant against it—is irresponsibility. America faces a crisis of stewardship. Rapid changes in the world, and in our place in it, have undermined traditional assignments of responsibility. For many of the purposes most important to us, there is nobody clearly, accountably in charge.
The cycles of righteous fulmination—against business and government in turn—distract us from the need to enforce joint responsibility for our collective prosperity. When we succumb to a distrust of business, we neglect the imperative to keep up with the quickening pace of global development. When we indulge in contempt of government, we perilously neglect the public sector’s role in ensuring that such economic activity is aligned with the long-term interests of our citizens. There are ever fewer automatic links between technology, capital, and corporations of American origin and the interests of American workers; increasingly, these links must be forged by policy. The current version of our mythology of the Rot at the Top, and the sharp division between business and government it assumes and encourages, undercuts any rational assignment of these responsibilities. Business has no clear mandate of stewardship for the development and employment of our workers; government alone lacks the competence to take on the task.
Stewardship will never be enforced solely by laws and regulations. Consider the miasma of regulation that confounds efforts to achieve far simpler public goals when business feels bound only by the letter and not the spirit of the law. Business executives must attend to the cultural norms and expectations that lie behind the law. Government leaders, in turn, must recognize their limited capacity to dictate specific economic outcomes and tend to their responsibility for designing the market in accordance with social priorities.
Such stewardship can be propelled only by political culture. We will know our mythology of the Rot at the Top is evolving appropriately when we tell fewer stories that sweepingly denounce either the greed of businessmen or the meddlesomeness of government—the chaos of markets or the scourge of planning—and when our scorn falls instead on private power that is willfully unmindful of the public interest and public power that neglects the importance of harnessing private initiative.
These suggestions are meant only to illustrate what the new tales might inspire, not to sketch out an agenda for action. They exemplify a common theme. Throughout the areas this book has discussed, the central question is not how or how much to discipline or accommodate some other group, but how to enlarge the sphere of “us.” How can we create the conditions for confident engagement in joint endeavor? How can we build patterns of trust that serve the pursuit of mutual gain and cut the risk of mutual loss? The generic predicament stylized as the prisoner’s dilemma is especially pernicious in eras like the present, in which old norms and traditions are breaking down under the weight of rapid change, national borders do not hold, the burdens of change seem to fall randomly and unfairly, and notions of membership (within a firm, a nation, a trading or diplomatic system) seem ever more contingent and temporary.
We will never be able to enlarge the sphere of “us” to encompass everyone. The interests of some groups are simply too sharply opposed to our own; some others are simply too anarchic, devious, or even irrational. But if hostility and intransigence were as pervasive in the world as some aspects of our mythology seem to suggest, we would never have been able to achieve the quiet marvels of coordination and mutual confidence that our culture now enjoys. The challenge is to create settings in which obligation and trust can take root, supported by stories that focus our attention on discovering possibilities for joint gain and avoiding the likelihood of mutual loss—stories of the ecology of the world economy, of collective entrepreneurialism, of social solidarity, and of stewardship.
A central tenet of this book has been that the most important function of political culture is not the crafting or evaluation of new solutions, but rather the act of defining core problems. This function is generally submerged and implicit, perceptible only indirectly in the debates that fill the editorial pages and the nightly news. The level of public discourse that ultimately determines the shape of our laws and the results of our elections consists of the metaphors that inform our hopes and fears, and the stories we tell one another. Here data, analysis, and theory matter less than political mythology. This volume is no brief against extended metaphor. A greater abundance of fact provides no guarantee of wiser policy; analytic virtuosity, no deeper insight into the values that animate our collective life.
The problem comes when a changing environment outpaces the political culture. When we become so enchanted with our fables that we wall them off from the pressures for adaptation, the stories may begin to mask reality rather than illuminate it. Instead of cultural tools for coming to terms with the challenges we face, they become means of forestalling them. A living political mythology, while retaining its roots in the same core themes, is constantly incorporating new stories that manifest basic values and beliefs in new and more fruitful ways.
If the broad line of reasoning I present is sound, this evolution of our mythologies is urgent and overdue. If my hopes and speculations are sound as well, the evolution may be already underway. In the years ahead the stories Americans tell one another will haltingly, gropingly, continue to change. Current liberal and conservative variants of our core mythologies, both of them accepting the conventional borders between “us” and “them,” will gradually give way to new versions oriented to a subtler assumption of interdependence. These new stories will speak less of triumph, conquest, or magnanimity, and more of the intricate tasks of forging mutual responsibility and enforcing mutual obligation. There will be fewer triumphant loners among the heroes, and more talented teammates and dedicated stewards. The villains will be found not in broad categories of malevolent others, but in the cynical betrayers of trust found even close by.
Such tales are by no means foreign to the American mythology. Indeed, it is just possible that Americans already are telling one another these sorts of stories, and are only waiting for a new set of leaders to give them clear voice.