Bill Schneider: Seymour Martin Lipset's view of democracy
[Mr. Schneider is senior political analyst for CNN and the co-author, with Seymour Martin Lipset, of "The Confidence Gap" (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987).]
Many years ago, Seymour Martin Lipset, the eminent political sociologist who died last week at age 84, startled me, his student, with a casual remark. "I don't believe in education," he said. "I believe in politics." This great scholar, who had taught at Columbia, Berkeley, Harvard and later Stanford and George Mason Universities, didn't believe in education? But I knew what he meant.
Lipset, of a generation of public intellectuals that includes Daniel Bell, Nathan Glazer, Irving Kristol and the late Irving Howe, had a deep and enduring faith in democracy. Not democracy as an ideology to reshape the world: Democracy as a competition of interests and values, a process. He did not believe that people had to be enlightened and sophisticated -- "educated" -- in order to function democratically. What they had to do was understand and pursue their interests....
In his most famous book, "Political Man" (1960), Lipset dispelled many naive notions about democracy. He advanced the idea of working-class authoritarianism -- that poorer, less well-educated people are more intolerant and less willing to accept the norms of democracy. But so what, he said. "In spite of the workers' greater authoritarian propensity, their organizations . . . still function as better defenders and carriers of democratic values than parties based on the middle class." He also showed that trade unions are often corrupt and boss-ridden and function poorly as democratic organizations. But so what, he said. "Many organizations may never fulfill the conditions for a stable internal democracy and still contribute in important ways to the democratic process in the total society."
In another influential book, "The First New Nation" (1963), Lipset argued that the progressive values of equality and achievement have always been ascendant in the U.S. They stem from the American Revolution, which cast off the conservative yoke of a hereditary class system, as well as from the Puritan religious tradition. The U.S. is not the only Protestant-dominated country in the world, but it is the only one in which the dominant Protestant tradition is that of dissenting churches rather than an established church. That explains America's unique religiosity as well as its individualism.
Lipset used the analogy of loaded dice. Once certain values are loaded by defining historical experiences, they will come up again and again to shape later events. Thus, he argued, the moderation of American class politics "is related to the fact that egalitarianism and democracy triumphed before the workers were a politically relevant force. Unlike the workers in Europe, they did not have to fight their way into the polity; the door was already open."...
Read entire article at WSJ
Many years ago, Seymour Martin Lipset, the eminent political sociologist who died last week at age 84, startled me, his student, with a casual remark. "I don't believe in education," he said. "I believe in politics." This great scholar, who had taught at Columbia, Berkeley, Harvard and later Stanford and George Mason Universities, didn't believe in education? But I knew what he meant.
Lipset, of a generation of public intellectuals that includes Daniel Bell, Nathan Glazer, Irving Kristol and the late Irving Howe, had a deep and enduring faith in democracy. Not democracy as an ideology to reshape the world: Democracy as a competition of interests and values, a process. He did not believe that people had to be enlightened and sophisticated -- "educated" -- in order to function democratically. What they had to do was understand and pursue their interests....
In his most famous book, "Political Man" (1960), Lipset dispelled many naive notions about democracy. He advanced the idea of working-class authoritarianism -- that poorer, less well-educated people are more intolerant and less willing to accept the norms of democracy. But so what, he said. "In spite of the workers' greater authoritarian propensity, their organizations . . . still function as better defenders and carriers of democratic values than parties based on the middle class." He also showed that trade unions are often corrupt and boss-ridden and function poorly as democratic organizations. But so what, he said. "Many organizations may never fulfill the conditions for a stable internal democracy and still contribute in important ways to the democratic process in the total society."
In another influential book, "The First New Nation" (1963), Lipset argued that the progressive values of equality and achievement have always been ascendant in the U.S. They stem from the American Revolution, which cast off the conservative yoke of a hereditary class system, as well as from the Puritan religious tradition. The U.S. is not the only Protestant-dominated country in the world, but it is the only one in which the dominant Protestant tradition is that of dissenting churches rather than an established church. That explains America's unique religiosity as well as its individualism.
Lipset used the analogy of loaded dice. Once certain values are loaded by defining historical experiences, they will come up again and again to shape later events. Thus, he argued, the moderation of American class politics "is related to the fact that egalitarianism and democracy triumphed before the workers were a politically relevant force. Unlike the workers in Europe, they did not have to fight their way into the polity; the door was already open."...