A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles Page 20

These examples are not meant to prove the already obvious point that mistakes or shortcomings mar the use of evidence. Instead, they are illustrations of particular ways in which disparate and conflicting visions survive together, despite an abundance of factual evidence which might otherwise be expected to shift the balance decisively to one side or another over a long span of time- such as the centuries during which the constrained and the unconstrained visions have survived and flourished together.

  In the extreme case, evidence may simply be falsified, or it may be evaded by verbal expedients which empty the theory of empirical meaning while leaving it full of powerful insinuations. Conversely, evidence may be made to appear to conflict with a theory merely because the specific terms of the theory are misunderstood by those collecting the evidence. But perhaps the most striking demonstration of the power of a vision occurs when no evidence at all is either asked or offered for assertions which are consonant with a prevailing vision.

  A recent example of this phenomenon has been the oft-repeated assertion that higher rates of broken homes and teenage pregnancy among black Americans are a "legacy of slavery." Only after decades of widespread repetition of this assertion was a comprehensive factual study done-revealing that broken homes and teenage pregnancy were far less common among blacks under slavery and in the generations following emancipation than they are today.15 Again, the point is not that a particular conclusion was mistaken but that a sweeping and unsupported assertion went unchallenged for many years because it fit a particular vision. The ability to sustain assertions without any evidence is another sign of the strength and persistence of visions.

  The process of moving from a vision, as an inchoate sense of causation, to a specific set of theories and corollaries-a paradigm or intellectual model representing what is believed to happen-is both intellectually and psychically difficult. The precise definition of terms, the careful construction of causal links, and the derivation of specific hypotheses unambiguously differentiated from the hypotheses derived from alternative theories-all this requires not only skill but discipline and dedicated efforts. To the extent that one has become emotionally committed to, or publicly identified with, a particular theory, its failure in the face of evidence imposes psychic costs that can be painful. In an attempt to reconcile the paradigm with the incoming discordant evidence, an initially simple principle may be modified and complicated until it resembles a Rube Goldberg contraption.

  Ridicule of these ad hoc complications is not refutation. Moreover, any paradigm-being a model rather than reality-will necessarily not fit the evidence perfectly. The scientific formula for the speed of a falling object ignores the effect of atmospheric resistance, but no one considers the law of gravity refuted because actual scientific observations show deviations between the acceleration predicted by the theory and that observed as things fall through the air. Nor are people who believe in the law of gravity accused of denying the existence of the atmosphere. Rather, they do not consider the atmosphere essential to the theory of gravity and omit it as a needless complication, except in special cases (such as helium-filled balloons, which rise instead of fall).

  In much the same way, believers in an unconstrained vision do not deny that man has any limitations. They simply do not treat these limitations as decisive in theories of social phenomena, whose causal elements are explained in entirely different terms, with the limitations of man playing a peripheral role, much like that of the atmosphere in the theory of gravity. What distinguishes those with the constrained vision is that the limitations of man are at the heart of their theories-it plays the role of gravity rather than that of atmospheric resistance- and many of the elements emphasized by those with the unconstrained vision are omitted as incidental (atmospheric). But both visions must omit things which exist in reality, and which most proponents of these visions would admit exist in reality, however much they would disagree as to the prevalence or effect of the omitted factors.

  Given, then, that no vision and no paradigm derived from it can fit the facts perfectly, efforts to adjust and modify visions to accommodate discordant evidence are not inherently mere self-deception, much less dishonesty toward others. But the gray area this provides can shelter rationalizations that do fit these descriptions. Moreover, resistance to the abandonment of paradigms has marked the history of science, as well as the history of social theories. There are simply fewer places to hide from scientific evidence. Nevertheless, a scientific paradigm which encounters discordant evidence is not usually abandoned in favor of nihilistic agnosticism, but is instead patched up and complicated until there is another paradigm to replace it.

  Visions and paradigms exist at many levels. Karl Marx and a street-corner radical on a soapbox may have shared the same vision but at widely varying levels of sophistication. The more sophisticated versions of any vision are in part a tacit concession to discordant evidence which might otherwise be fatal. This general need for complexity can itself become, obliquely, a further protection against clear-cut evidence refuting a social theory. When no other reply to such evidence is possible, because it so clearly contradicts what is asserted, it is always possible to dismiss the evidence as "simplistic," because the issue must be more complex than that. In science, however, a simple explanation is preferred to a more complex explanation with no greater empirical accuracy.

  While visions can survive and thrive on their own inner logic, in defiance of empirical evidence, the social dangers of such insulated dogmatism are obvious. It is no less arbitrary and dogmatic to declare a priori that "the truth lies somewhere in between." It may. It may not. On some highly specific issue, it may lie entirely on one side- and on another issue, with the other side. On still other issues, it may in fact lie in between. The point here is simply that there is no a priori way to say, or to avoid the difficult task of formulating hypotheses and testing them against evidence. Nor is this an exercise in futility. Even zealots may be forced to abandon some extreme outposts of a given vision as indefensible under empirical attack, while the contracted perimeter of the vision continues to be defended fiercely. Intellectual struggles can be wars of attrition as well as wars won or lost in a single battle. The visions of science, rather than those of social thought, seem to lend themselves to single decisive confrontations.

  The growing complexity of social theories in general reflect in part the growing difficulties of defending them in their purer forms. Burgeoning empirical data, and even more sophisticated ways of analyzing them, may fail to deliver a single fatal blow to either of the great opposing visions which have dominated the past two centuries. But some important strategic retreats have been made on both sides. Neither vision can confidently maintain the air of incontrovertible truth which some of its eighteenth-century exponents exhibited. It is an advancement even to admit that we are dealing with a conflict of visions.

  VISIONS AND VALUES

  Both constrained and unconstrained visions are fundamentally and essentially visions of causation. Only derivatively do they involve clashes of moral principles or different hierarchies of social values. The muchvaunted need to make our "value premises" explicit is irrelevant in this contest. Thinkers with identical moral values and social preferences must nevertheless reach opposing conclusions if their initial senses of reality and causation- their visions- are different.

  Identical twins, bred to revere the same moral qualities in the same order, must differ in their conclusions if somewhere along the way one conceives of human attributes and social causation as described in the constrained vision and the other conceives them as described in the unconstrained vision. Just as travelers seeking the same destination must head in opposite directions if one believes it to be to the east and the other believes it to be to the west, so those seeking "the greatest good for the greatest number" (or any other similarly general moral precept) must favor opposite kinds of societies if opposite kinds of human beings are assumed to inhabit those societies, leading to opposite kinds of social causat
ion. Things must work first before they can work to any given end, and what will work depends on the nature of the entities involved and their causal connections.

  In this sense, physical science and the analysis of social phenomena both begin with visions. It is the ability of the physical sciences to winnow out conflicting visions by systematic experiment which marks a major difference between the intellectual patterns in the two areas. However, the ability of science to resolve its conflicts of visions does not mean that scientists share the same "value premises," but rather that "value premises" are neither necessary nor sufficient to explain conflicts of visions or their resolution.

  People with the same moral values readily reach differing political conclusions. Convinced religious believers can split into opposite camps on social and political issues if they see worldly or Divine causation in different terms. So too do philosophic materialists, such as Hobbes, and Holbach, or believers in a variety of other creeds. Where a particular creed implies a particular set of social, economic, and political conclusions- as in Marxism, for exampleit is because that creed contains a particular vision of causation, not simply a particular moral premise.

  Labeling beliefs "value premises" can readily become one more means by which conclusions insulate themselves from confrontation with evidence or logic. To say that a preference for "free speech" rights over "property rights" is simply a "value premise" is to deny that it rests on particular beliefs as to facts or causation, and to make it simply an opaque preference, like that for plums over tangerines. But if in fact the preference for free speech over property rights results from assumptions as to the magnitude of their respective benefits to society at large, and the extent to which the less fortunate members of society are helped or made more vulnerable by the two kinds of rights, then it is not simply an opaque "value premise."

  With exactly the same preferences for helping the many rather than the few, and for protecting the vulnerable more so than those able to protect themselves, one would annihilate the preference for free speech over property rights if one's vision of social causation made property rights extremely beneficial to people who own no property (as in Hayek's vision, for example16). It is precisely the correctness or incorrectness of particular beliefs about social causation that requires scrutiny- a scrutiny arbitrarily barred by the phrase "value premises." ("Value premises" are, ironically, a sort of property right in conclusions, not to be trespassed on by evidence or logic.)

  The persistence of opposing visions in the same society contrasts with major changes of visions that occur in individuals. The large numbers of people, including leading intellectuals, who have both embraced Marxism and then repudiated Marxism are a striking example. So too are those who embrace or relinquish various religious or secular creeds. These suggest that, while the psychic costs of changing visions may be high, they are not prohibitive- especially if the changes are gradual, rather than "road to Damascus" conversions.

  If conversions to and from Marxism turned on differing moral valuations given to the same factual perceptions of the consequences of capitalism and communism, it would be difficult to explain why so many conversions occurred in one direction during the Great Depression of the 1930s and in the opposite direction after the Nazi-Soviet pact in 1939 or the Hungarian uprisings of 1956. The reordering of fundamental moral values so suddenly and simultaneously among a large number of people throughout the Western world hardly seems credible.

  Such conversions are far more readily reconciled with changes in visions than in values. What these cases in capitalist and communist countries brought was new, massive, and intrusively insistent factual information about each social system-not necessarily conclusive evidence but certainly painful facts sufficient to cause many to reconsider. The heavy impact of startling new information may shake or shatter an individual's vision, but does not in itself realign moral values. Mass unemployment, hunger, the killing of innocents, the deliberate degradation of the human spirit, or the cynical unleashing of war, all inspire the same horror as before. What changes is the perception of who or what is doing it and why.

  The thrust of organized, systematic propaganda, especially in totalitarian states, centers precisely on facts and causation as the pivots of belief. Similarly, in places and times where religious authorities have wielded oppressive control of ideas, people such as Copernicus and Galileo have become targets not because they offered alternative value systems but because they presented alternative visions of facts and causation. Existing values seemed threatened only because the vision on which they had been based seemed threatened- not because Copernicus or Galileo were propagandizing for alternative values.

  Values are vitally important. But the question addressed here is whether they precede or follow from visions. The conclusion that they are more likely to derive from visions than visions from them is not merely the conclusion of this particular analysis, but is further demonstrated by the actual behavior of those with the power to control ideas throughout a society, whether those authorities be secular or religious.

  If individuals in substantial numbers find it possible to change their visions, whether suddenly or gradually, how do sharply opposed visions persist over the centuries in society at large? Insofar as visions are (1) simplified projections of reality and (2) subject to contradiction by facts, all visions must encounter facts contrary to their simplified premises. This implies that all visions must also develop both intellectual and psychic means of coping with contradiction, and that any prospect of conversion must contend with the contradictions of whatever alternative vision beckons. Therefore, the instantaneous conversion of a whole society seems very unlikely-and once the conversion process becomes drawn out, individual mortality alone is enough to guarantee that many conversions will never be completed, and that new individuals must begin the process of vision allegiance and doubt all over again from the beginning.

  In the physical sciences, however, the preservation of decisive evidence and the logically demonstrative methods of scientific analysis under controlled experimental conditions means that conversion from one vision to another can be sudden and irreversible, not only for given individuals but for future individuals as well, and therefore for society as a whole. No one needs to re-enact in his own mind the time-consuming process by which the Ptolemaic vision of astronomy gave way to the visions of Copernicus, Galileo, or Einstein.

  While books likewise preserve records of social, political, and economic events and theories, the absence of controlled experiments, decisive evidence, and decisive techniques for analyzing it mean that these records themselves become battlegrounds in the conflict of visions. Disputes still rage over the reasons for the rise of Hitler or the decline and fall of the Roman Empire.

  VISIONS AND INTERESTS

  Believers in both the constrained and the unconstrained visions have long recognized that special interests and special pleading are major factors in day-to-day politics, and that what is said in these political struggles has no necessary connection with the truth, or even with what anyone believes to be the truth.

  Businessmen, according to Adam Smith, are a class whose interests are often "to deceive and even to oppress the public," so that any statements coming from them should be "long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention."17 He warned against "the clamorous importunity of partial interests" in general18 and "the clamour and sophistry of merchants and manufacturers" in particular.19 Of political propaganda, Smith observed that "those who taught it were by no means such fools as they who believed it."20 Much the same views have characterized modern thinkers with the constrained vision, such as Friedman or Hayek.21 It has equally been part of the tradition of the unconstrained vision, going back to Godwin and coming forward to Shaw, Galbraith, or other twentieth-century thinkers.22

  The relationship between special interests and any vision- constrained or unconstrained- may be conceived of as a question whether there is (
1) a direct corruption, (2) a class bias, or (3) a case of particular visions proving attractive to particular interests. Direct corruption may be due to bribes, economic self-interest, or careerism determining what is said, independently of what is actually believed about the facts or causation. Although such explanations are sometimes attributed to Karl Marx, they are much closer to the theories of Charles A. Beard, who depicted the Constitution of the United States as shaped by special interests. Marx's theory was one of class bias distorting the thinker's perception of reality, with sincerely held beliefs being opposite and antagonistic in content when the thinkers drew upon different class experiences. The weakest of the three assertions above is that visions- however they originate-will be pressed into service by whatever special interests find them useful.

  Examining first the strongest of the special-interest explanations of visions produces virtually no evidence that the leading figures in either the constrained or unconstrained tradition stood to gain personally from the views advocated, and much evidence to the contrary.

  The entire tradition of the unconstrained vision, with its equalization emphasis, has been led by individuals who stood to lose both financially and in status terms by the equalization they advocated. Some were of modest means but still almost invariably above the average of their respective societies, and some like Condorcet or Holbach were quite rich. The policies advocated by the leading exponents of the constrained vision have likewise seldom advanced their personal interests. Adam Smith, who promoted both domestic and international free trade, was the son of a customs official and engaged in no trade at all, being primarily an academic-a profession whose practices he severely criticized.23 Virtually none of the leading advocates of laissez-faire have been businessmen, from the time of Adam Smith to Milton Friedman or F. A. Hayek two centuries later.24 Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France represented views that cost him the political alliances and friendships of a lifetime, and though it eventually brought him royal favor, this was hardly something he could have counted on, after years of having opposed royal interests in Parliament.