How Did We Lose Our Social Contract?

Part 5 of Post-Modern Human Flourishing in the Absence of a Social Contract

Probably the most central difference of opinion between American liberals and conservatives in the 20th Century was on the nature of individual responsibility and self-reliance, and the role of the state in related policy. The difference focused on the extent to which society should make moral demands on the individual to succeed in meeting socially-determined performance (including behavioral) expectations, and whether the individual should suffer for failures. Liberals generally argued for largely short-term social support to individuals where there were structural obstacles or unanticipated crises. Conservatives normally placed more demands on individuals to overcome most difficulties on their own or through organic community relations. Over time, liberals broadened their position to include structural remediation and compensation in long-term or permanent programs. Proposed justification for this approach was that supportive organic society no longer existed or was prejudiced, and that individuals should not have or be able to overcome adversity by themselves.

While conservatives limited their support for the less successful in society from government and even from institutions, they felt little need to present moral arguments for the success of individuals, because of the historical belief that success is somehow deserved. Nevertheless, during the middle of the 20th Century, the political economy of the United States achieved some compromises between liberals and conservatives and implemented a social democratic system where some constraints were placed on extreme wealth and income, largely through the graduated income tax and inheritance tax. However, those taxes were reduced over time and wealthier Americans learned how to use new institutional structures to isolate and distance themselves, from tax burdens and the broader society.

The result of recent decades has been a near complete upending of the political economy that prevailed in the early 1960s. At that time the American political economy of the United States had to some extent what I term, the patronage pyramid. In simple terms, the patronage pyramid is a representation of the society where there was an coherent and integrated linkage of all levels of the national public so that although those on the lower levels of the pyramid could contact and make claims on those directly above them, and sometimes make claims directly on those even at much higher levels. This did not mean that those claims would get a positive or even a negative response, but at least there was a process and a structure which would allow the claims.

To make this more clear, in a typical city or state, the most powerful economic and social individuals were never independent from normal social, family, community, labor or business relationships. For example, even the lowest worker in a traditional industry would have been linked to those at the next higher level in organizations and communities, which were the foundation of the political system, which would have continued to link all the way up to the top of the pyramid. Even where the organization and community patronage pyramid was not exactly the same as the political patronage pyramid – meaning that there were two pyramids with lateral but not hierarchical linkages – there was at least some at least token method of using the organization and community patronage pyramid to communicate with the political pyramid.

At this stage I should clarify that the organization and community patronage pyramid was more or less integrated into the 1960s, but by the late 1960s both of those affiliations began to decline and separate, so that separate organization and community pyramids were established. With the decline of community affiliation more importance accrued to the organization pyramid. However, while the community pyramid, as well as the political pyramid, had been an organic and natural right structure, the organization pyramid was a more earned credential structure in which any individual could lose membership, and for which there was no guarantee of membership in any other organizational pyramid. As a result, by the 1970s there were increasing numbers of people who had no connection with any patronage pyramid. Increasingly organization pyramids were fragmented and multiplied so that their linkage with the political pyramid was weakened, and the higher levels of those pyramids were hived off to merge with the political pyramid, but no longer having any linkage with the mass of people in the lower levels. Some extremely affluent communities continued to maintain patronage pyramids, but generally this form of pyramid had vanished by the 1970s. In place of community pyramids and organization pyramids for the ordinary public, special interest groups were established which did not have a pyramid structure, only a representation by its leadership class as new elements of the political patronage pyramid which also now included representation from dominant organization leaders. With the decline in broad political platforms, and of community and organization pyramids, a similar break occurred within the political patronage pyramid so that the higher levels separated from the broader pyramid.

The result as expressed in the current political economy is a class of the wealthy, powerful and influential that control the levers of power over national and international public policy and economic structures with no accountability to the broad public. Nevertheless, demands are continuously placed on the broad public, not to sanction, but to support and adhere to a fragmented public policy that is funded by the national economy through the use of technical, social and economic platforms controlled by the new political institutional power center and the distribution of whose benefits are determined independently by that new power center. We can term that power center the political economy management platform association whose privileged members have a form of ownership shares in it. The rest of society is comprised of the fortunate persons who have some well-being by virtue of association with an organization that has no security, and those less fortunate persons who have no association other than that accorded by the platform association. There is no longer a united middle class that dominates a patronage pyramid linking power elites to the precariat. As a result, there is no longer a functional social contract.

From this discussion we may conclude that to re-establish a social contract it would be necessarily to do the following:

1.?????? Restructure the units and coverage of political economy at the local, state, national and international levels

2.?????? Remove the independence of the political economy management platform association

3.?????? Restore the political patronage pyramid on grounds other than traditional community and organization

4.?????? Restore an understanding of human flourishing in the broad society as the primary desired outcome of the political economy ?

In Part 6, I will explore some of the possibilities for accomplishing the above four actions.