Monday, September 14, 2009

The American Work Ethic

What happened to it? (Via The American Conservative) To quote:

In Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville worried that free, capitalist societies might develop so great a “taste for physical gratification” that citizens would be “carried away, and lose all self-restraint.” Avidly seeking personal gain, they could “lose sight of the close connection which exists between the private fortune of each of them and the prosperity of all” and ultimately undermine both democracy and prosperity.

The genius of America in the early nineteenth century, Tocqueville thought, was that it pursued “productive industry” without a descent into lethal materialism. Behind America’s balancing act, the pioneering French social thinker noted, lay a common set of civic virtues that celebrated not merely hard work but also thrift, integrity, self-reliance, and modesty—virtues that grew out of the pervasiveness of religion, which Tocqueville called “the first of [America’s] political institutions, . . . imparting morality” to American democracy and free markets. Some 75 years later, sociologist Max Weber dubbed the qualities that Tocqueville observed the “Protestant ethic” and considered them the cornerstone of successful capitalism. Like Tocqueville, Weber saw that ethic most fully realized in America, where it pervaded the society. Preached by luminaries like Benjamin Franklin, taught in public schools, embodied in popular novels, repeated in self-improvement books, and transmitted to immigrants, that ethic undergirded and promoted America’s economic success.

What would Tocqueville or Weber think of America today? In place of thrift, they would find a nation of debtors, staggering beneath loans obtained under false pretenses. In place of a steady, patient accumulation of wealth, they would find bankers and financiers with such a short-term perspective that they never pause to consider the consequences or risks of selling securities they don’t understand. In place of a country where all a man asks of government is “not to be disturbed in his toil,” as Tocqueville put it, they would find a nation of rent-seekers demanding government subsidies to purchase homes, start new ventures, or bail out old ones. They would find what Tocqueville described as the “fatal circle” of materialism—the cycle of acquisition and gratification that drives people back to ever more frenetic acquisition and that ultimately undermines prosperous democracies.

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2 comments:

Julygirl said...

Exploitation of the natural resources of this continent was the reason it was settled in the first place. There were several trading companies who found ordinary people willing to be shipped over to colonize. The Massachusetts Bay Co. and the Hudson Bay Co. are an example. It turns out there was no big money to be made until the comeing of Tobacco, cotton and slaves. Then in the middle 1800's industrial gains in this country were accomplished by financial geniuses who exploited down and outs to work the factories. Greed has always been and always will be with us. The current financial crises and the greed involved is nothing new.

Alexandra said...

The greed is now ubiquitous, no longer retrained by the moral underpinnings, and common across the board regardless of wealth. There was a balance that we no longer see today. Perhaps because our standard of living is so much better now with conveniences and good medicine. We've become lazy and self indulgent. I think we see this most clearly in Rap music, an honest reflection of the basest(core) instincts of our society. The lyrics tell it all. Bling, bling.