Book Review: The Present Age: Progress And Anarchy In Modern America by Robert Nisbet

Robert Nisbet is one of the most respected sociologists in America. His works, The Sociological Tradition and Sociology as an Art Form, have long been classics in the field. Professor Nisbet also stands out because, unlike many in his discipline, he is neither a socialist nor a welfare statist. He views himself in the tradition of Edmund Burke and Alexis de Tocqueville, and espouses a conservatism that blends a deep respect for spontaneous social order and cultural tradition with a strong belief in the dignity and autonomy of the individual. This blending makes Professor Nisbet a powerful and eloquent defender of the free society and individual liberty. Two of his best works in this defense are The Twilight of Authority (1975) and Conservatism (1986).

In his latest book, The Present Age: Progress and Anarchy in Modern America, Professor Nisbet takes critical stock of the political, economic, and cultural status of the United States 200 years after the founding of the Republic.

He argues that a fundamental break occurred in American history with the entrance of the United States into the First World War in 1917. Prior to that, he explains, America was a land of limited government with a small Federal presence. Americans believed in and practiced political and economic liberty. The U.S. had a “small town” orientation in which the individual saw himself primarily as a member of a local community to which he gave his allegiance and from which he received support through a variety of voluntary, religious, and traditional associations.

This environment (and the social psychology that went with it) was shattered by America’s entry into the war. Woodrow Wilson’s ideal was of a “national community” that would be guided by strong governmental leadership emanating from Washington and manned by a new intellectual elite that would regulate and mold economic and cultural affairs. The goal was the creation of a new state-managed society for a higher “moral good.”

Seventy years later, Professor Nisbet says, the United States has become a moralizing world policeman, a vast bureaucratic state in which government intrudes into practically every comer of our economic and personal affairs, and a culturally bankrupt society in which pursuit of short-run monetary rewards has increasingly replaced loyalty and fidelity to all ethical standards in personal and social conduct.

Since Wilson’s crusade to “Make the Word Safe for Democracy,” Professor Nisbet insists, America has been armed with the vision that it has a duty not only to offer a moral example to the world, but also to take upon itself the responsibility actively to intervene in the affairs of other nations to “teach them” good government. This policy has bred a vast military establishment, fostered an often-corrupting symbiotic relationship between the Pentagon and sizable segments of the business community, and produced disastrous outcomes in foreign policy. (As an example, Professor Nisbet discusses Franklin Roosevelt’s naive fawning over Stalin at the Tehran and Yalta Conferences, all in the name of getting “Uncle Joe” on “our side” in making a better and more moral postwar world.)

Domestically, the emergence of a state-managed “national community” has politicized every facet of economic and social life. While Americans constantly complain about the burden and irritations of the new bureaucratic state, practically everyone wants to see it expand in the direction that materially benefits them. Pro- lessor Nisbet explains that this has arisen from a subtle shift in the meaning of freedom. As he expresses it, freedom no longer means “autonomy from power but participation in power.” In the new lexicon, a free society is one in which each individual has an equal opportunity to plunder all the others.

But it is in the social and cultural realm that Professor Nisbet sees the worst effects of the new America that has grown up since 1917. The omnipresent state has created “the loose individual.” It has intruded upon, disrupted, and, in many instances, fostered the demise of the cultural webs of spontaneous social order and stability. in so doing, the bureaucratic state has severed both individuals and groups from the traditional networks of family, community, and religion that have historically taught, reinforced, and protected the ethical and social values essential for a sound, healthy, and growing society. Today the individual has fewer and fewer attachments to these traditional institutions. The individual has been increasingly “atomized” as the State has destroyed or weakened the intermediary social institutions that historically separated and protected him from political authority. Man in modern American society has lost an Archimedean point to stand on outside of himself. Hence, modern man collapses into an unending introspection about himself and how he “feels” about things, with nothing greater or more worthy outside himself to which he should aspire. His values have been reduced to a narrow “cash nexus” and the pleasures money can buy.

The critical reader can find many points upon which to disagree with either the emphasis or the argument in Professor Nisbet’s analysis. For example, his conception of the “cash nexus” in a market economy ignores the positive role the anonymity of money transactions has played in enhancing and protecting individual liberty and freedom of choice. His conception of the workings of trading deals, and corporate takeovers in financial markets, likewise, suffers from a fundamental misunderstanding of how a competitive market establishes avenues for shifting control of capital resources to more competent hands.

But it is the general focus and orientation that make Professor Nisbet’s reflections an insightful contribution to our understanding of late twentieth-century America. The America of the 1980s would have been radically different from the America of 1917 even without two World Wars and the introduction of the Welfare State. What Professor Nisbet shows is that many of the most repellant features of the present age are the unintended consequences of the plans of those in the political arena who wished to implement an American “new order” at home and abroad. The question now is, how do we undo what has been done?