Culture and politics are the principal realms of mans liberty
and reason. Fukuyamas refusal to grant them a major place in his
analysis isnt just the product of his quasiMarxist economism; it
follows from his reductive conception of human nature, which,
despite his claims, is anything but Aristotelian. The new age
sciences he employs are rigidly deterministic. Fukuyama protests
that hes no determinist, but I wonder if its possible to embrace
these life sciences uncritically, as he does, and still leave a
place for freedom. Evolutionary biology, for example, with its
theory of the "selfish gene," interprets a mothers sacrifice for
her child not as a free act of love but as a quest to propagate her
genetic heritage. This interpretation is untestable, a matter of
belief. Yet if its a matter of belief, why believe it? Doing so
renders our moral vocabulary vacant and makes the human world
literally senseless. If his notion of freedom is thin, Fukuyamas
understanding of human reason isnt any thicker: his is not the
proud reason of Kant, let alone Aristotle, but is purely
instrumental. It teaches us the most efficient way to get from a to
b, and thats about it.
Given Fukuyamas reliance on untenable economic and scientific
reductionisms and his pinched view of reason, I find his optimism
about moral renewal in liberal democratic societies no more
convincing than his account of its breakdown. Mans nature limits
his freedom, but within those limits experiments in living can take
him far from recognizably good ways of life, where his faculties
can flourish, toward ways of life that diminish his spirit and
lead, in the long run, to social breakdown. Who can say how long a
society can continue runningand in some ways improvingwhile its
spiritual life declines? Furthermore, why should we expect the same
postindustrial economy Fukuyama thinks led to the Great Disruption
to help heal it? Simply because an economy "needs" something
doesnt mean human beings will supply it.
Fukuyamas good news is also more ambiguous than it first appears.
"If the rate of divorce has fallen," observes historian Gertrude
Himmelfarb, "the rate of cohabitation has almost doubled in the
past decade alone, and couples living together without benefit of
marriage can separate (and do so more frequently) without benefit
of divorce." If the rate of outofwedlock births has decreased,
the ratio of such births to all births has only leveled off, and
done so at a high level. If abortions are fewer, in part it is due
to the new respectability of unmarried motherhood. And so on. As
Himmelfarb testily puts it, "For almost every favorable statistic,
an ornery conservative can cite an unfavorable one."
The democratic capitalist societies, then, still have a cultural
problem. And heres where things get tricky, because both Gray and
Fukuyama brush up against the truth. When moral nihilism dominates
the culture, as it does in Western societiesespecially in the
U.S.free markets can radicalize it by shouting it, so to speak,
from the rooftops. Not long ago, a television commercial for
Mastercard featured pallidfaced kids who looked like junkies, with
nose rings, tattoos, and the whole range of alienations
disfiguring equipment. The message was simple: if you have money
(or at least credit), who cares what your attitude toward life
might be? And Mastercard is not alone: theres Nikes famous "Just
Do It" ad campaign extolling release from constraints (which
Fukuyama himself mentions), Calvin Kleins kiddieporn, and
TimeWarners continuing depredations (the most recent being a rap
song about killing New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani). In such
cases, we witness the corporate world bottomfeeding for profit,
and its disgusting.
The greatest threat to the future of democratic capitalism, I
believe, lies in this growing association of capitalist power and
moral libertinism. A few years ago, Buttiglione made a pregnant
observation. "Libertinism," he said, "is in a certain sense more
dangerous than Marxism, because it penetrates more deeply." Instead
of crushing mans reason and his passions, as did communism, moral
libertinism turns mans passions against the truth. Marxism, as
weve seen, was a religious atheism, a secular religion that
hubristically proposed to build utopia only to open the gates of
Hell. Libertinism, Buttiglione maintains, is a "negative
atheism"it "corrupts societies and is unable to offer the values
needed for a society to live." Not everyone can "just do it," or
else society crumbles. In the long run, Buttiglione thinks
libertine capitalism "is existentially unbearable." But in the
short run, and that can last a long time, it coarsens the human
world and intensifies the Great Disruption.
Gray and Fukuyama are right, then, to see a link between
contemporary capitalism and nihilism, but they get things backward:
nihilism is first imported into the market, not exported from it.
Nihilism results, Buttiglione says, from the "suicide of culture,"
and here he means culture in the sense of Bildung, not as an
anthropological term as Ive been using it. Our elite spiritual
enterprises (Buttiglione mentions philosophy and theology, and I
would add art and literature) have become ever more corrupt. In
their main variants, they no longer even bother to seek the true,
the good, and the beautiful, however plural and difficult to attain
these ends might be. The suicide of culture sends its tenebrous
signals throughout the human world; the market receives the
signals, dumbs them down or brightens them up, and then seduces
whomever it can. The bourgeois regimes moral indeterminacy weakens
its capacity to resist.
The connection between nihilism and capitalism is accidental and
need not last. But the struggle against it requires, not
reconciliation to thisworldly realities, as with democratic
capitalisms politics and economics, but something inspired: the
rebirth of culture. Here should be directed the spiritual longings
that Furet worried might again find their way into politics. We
will need to paint again with the grace of Tintoretto; write with
the humanity of Shakespeare; philosophize with the love of truth of
Aristotle and Aquinas; and educate our best in the riches of our
dual heritage of faith and reason. Our religious bodies should be
at the forefront of this struggle, which is both moral and
aesthetic. (Fukuyama laughs at the idea of a religious revival that
might heal the Great Disruption, describing it as "a Western
version of Ayatollah Khomeini returning to Iran on a jetliner." But
this merely indicates his limited grasp of human
possibilities.)
Politics, too, will have a crucial role, though not as a secular
religion. Statesmanship can help set societys moral and aesthetic
tone, and shame the powers that have bargained with nihilism. And
postliberal policies, like those New York City has successfully
implemented in fighting crime, can chip away at the decisions that
fed the Great Disruption.
These three important books, then, help illumine the democratic
capitalist prospect. Here is what it looks like at the dawn of a
new millennium: in politics, it finds itself haunted by moral
indeterminacy and weak before egalitarian demands; in economics,
troubled by the anxieties of the rapid change that creates wealth;
and in culture, suffering from the suicide of the elevated pursuits
that should protect mans highest ends. Not pretty, until you
realize the alternativessome undreamed of political monster
arising from bourgeois discontents, a spiritsapping tutelary
despotism, or a radicalization of libertine capitalism.
Working a slight change on an old truism: democratic capitalism is
still the worst regime, except for all the others. Perhaps, if
were both vigilant and lucky, the twentyfirst century will not
rival Berlins twentieth as "the most terrible in Western
history."