Philosopher Robert Paul Wolff's opening essay for A Critique of Pure Tolerance (1965) is called "Beyond Tolerance". He concludes that the practice of tolerance as it actually occurs in the real, existing democratic system of the United States is in important ways an impediment to solving critical problems of society:
Pluralist democracy, with its virtue, tolerance, constitutes the highest stage in the political development of industrial capitalism. It transcends the crude "limitations" of early individualistic liberalism and makes a place for the communitarian features of social life, as well as for the interest-group politics which emerged as a domesticated version of the class struggle. Pluralism is humane, benevolent, accommodating, and far more responsive to the evils of social injustice than either the egoistic liberalism or the traditionalistic conservatism from which it grew. But pluralism is fatally blind to the evils which afflict the entire body politic, and as a theory of society it obstructs consideration of precisely the sorts of thoroughgoing social revisions which may be needed to remedy those evils. Like all great social theories, pluralism answered a genuine social need during a significant period of history. Now, however, new problems confront America, problems not of distributive injustice but of the common good. We must give up the image of society as a battleground of competing groups and formulate an ideal of society more exalted than the mere acceptance of opposed interests and diverse customs. There is need for a new philosophy of community, beyond pluralism and beyond tolerance. (my emphasis)
He argues for an approach that will generate a greater sense of the common good for the whole community. And makes it sound like he's aiming at some sort of socialist or utopian transformation of capitalist society; Wolff is also the author of In Defense of Anarchism (1970). He even laments:
The theory and practice of pluralism first came to dominate American politics during the depression [of the 1930s], when the Democratic party put together an electoral majority of minority groups. It is not at all surprising that the same period saw the demise of an active socialist movement. For socialism, both inits diagnosis of the ills of industrial capitalism and in its proposed remedies, focuses on the structure of the economy and society as a whole and advances programs in the name of the general good. Pluralism, both as theory and as practice, simply does not acknowledge the possibility of wholesale reorganization of the society. (my emphasis)
But in reality his approach comes from a conservative assumption, in which a community subsumes the varying interests of classes, races and the various and sundry bodies of people we loosely call "interest groups".
Wolff is defining the prevailing notion of pluralism and tolerance on much the same basis as James Madison did in his famous essay, Federalist #10:
The latent causes of faction are thus sown in the nature of man; and we see them everywhere brought into different degrees of activity, according to the different circumstances of civil society. A zeal for different opinions concerning religion, concerning government, and many other points, as well of speculation as of practice; an attachment to different leaders contending for pre-eminence and power; or to persons of other descriptions whose fortunes have been interesting to the human passions, have, in turn, divided mankind into parties, inflamed them with mutual animosity, and rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress each other than to co-operate for their common good. So strong is this propensity of mankind to fall into mutual animosities, that where no substantial occasion presents itself, the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been sufficient to kindle their unfriendly passions and excite their most violent conflicts.
And James Madison, the "Father of the Constitution", was clear about the main source of factionalism and partisanship in society. Writing decades before the birth of Karl Marx in faraway Trier, Madison said:
But the most common and durable source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property. Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society. Those who are creditors, and those who are debtors, fall under a like discrimination. A landed interest, a manufacturing interest, a mercantile interest, a moneyed interest, with many lesser interests, grow up of necessity in civilized nations, and divide them into different classes, actuated by different sentiments and views. The regulation of these various and interfering interests forms the principal task of modern legislation, and involves the spirit of party and faction in the necessary and ordinary operations of the government. (my emphasis)
Wolff argues that this basic approach to social and political processes has the effect of hardening social divisions rather than promoting community.
But his arguments have a conspicuously conservative thrust. Laws to protect labor? Why, they help the labor bosses, not the working man. Programs to help farmers? They reinforce the power of the wealthiest farmers.
These are forms of the standard (or chronic?) conservative argument about "unintended consequences". They always direct these against measures to benefit working people. Today's most spectacular example of "unintended consequences", the disaster we know as the Iraq War, most of the same conservatives embraced that without hesitation or restraint.
Wolff even argues - this was 1965! -
To be sure, crime and urban slums hurt the poor more than the rich, the Negro more than the white - but fundamentally they are problems of the society as a whole, not of any particular group.
It's hard not to be a bit sarcastic about this. Oh, yes, if blacks, workers and the urban poor would give up their own organizations and interests in favor of benign advocates of a larger "community", everything would work out fine. To say it's a position that generates skepticism would be putting it mildly.
What is more valuable, though, is Wolff's discussion of the history of tolerance as an idea and a perceived virtue. In colloquial speech, "tolerance" is often used to refer to an emotional attitude. But in the broader and more basic sense, it refers to a practice and process of interactions among the varying and conflicting interests of modern capitalist society.
He traces its development from the concept of the individual in society in the early days of the capitalism of shopkeepers and traders and the"direct democracy" of small political units. This was the environment in which "classical liberalism" grew, including democratic theory. As industrial society developed, the individual relations of early capitalism and classical liberalism gave way to intermediation by larger groups.
He argues that in America, this process and idea of group pluralism was strongly reinforced by three historical factors: the federal system of the US Constitution; the strength of voluntary groups in America; and, "the American consciousness of religious, ethnic, and racial heterogeneity", which we've more recently come to call multiculturalism.
Wolff distinguishes between two aspects of pluralism, the social basis for tolerance. One is pluralism as a description of how society works. The other is pluralism as a value, "an ideal model of how political society ought to be organized".
For tolerance as a value, he finds three major sources. One was religious toleration as "a necessary evil", in order to mitigate the dangers of religious conflict, which had manifested themselves in the bloodiest way in the Thirty Years War of 1618-1648. A second source of pluralism and tolerance was as "morally neutral means for pursuing political ends" in a large democracy in a modern capitalist society; we might call this the moral justification for interest groups.
The third source for tolerance and pluralism has become much more prominent in the four decades since this essay was written. It is the notion of multiculturalism as a positive virtue, the idea "that a pluralistic society is natural and good and an end to be sought in itself".
Wolff then argues that a particular defense of tolerance corresponds historically to each of these sources of pluralism. In a society where pluralism is a necessary evil to prevent destructive religious conflicts, "tolerance is not a virtue - a strength of the body politic - but a desperate remedy for a sickness which threatens to be fatal".
Pluralism as a mode of democratic life produces tolerance as "the live-and-let-live moderation of the marketplace" in which competing factions learn to accept that opposing interests also have valid claims. It is "the ungrudging acknowledgment of the right of opposed interests to exist and be pursued".
Pluralism as positively embraced multiculturalism produces tolerance as the embrace of diversity:
The alternative to the indiscriminate levelling [sic] of differences in a universal brotherhood is tolerance, a willing acceptance, indeed encouragement, of primary group diversity. If men can be brought to believe that it is positively good for society to contain many faiths, many races, many styles of living, then the healthy consequences of pluralism can be preserved without the sickness of prejudice and civil strife. To draw once again on Plato's way of talking, pluralism is the condition which a modern industrial democracy must possess to function at all; but tolerance is the state of mind which enables it to perform its function well. Hence, on the group theory of society, tolerance is truly the virtue of a pluralist democracy. (my emphasis)
He then contrasts the classical conservatism of Edmund Burke and Emile Durkheim with the classical liberalism of John Stuart Mill. Classical liberalism was based on the idea of individuals orienting themselves to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness", in Jefferson's words from the Declaration of Independence. Less egalitarian advocates of classical liberalism would have preferred "property" in the place of "pursuit of happiness". Classical conservatism stressed the importance of the community, arguing that "man is social in the sense that his essence, his true being, lies in his involvement in a human community".
Wolff argues that the modern American practice of pluralism realizes the classical conservative fear of dividing society and the classical liberal fear of individualism being crushed, though rather by group identity than by society as a whole. Ultimately, the effect is to isolate unconventional ideas, practices and people in the very process of multicultural pluralism:
One might expect, for example, that a society which urges its citizens to "attend the church or synagogue of your choice" would be undismayed by an individual who chose to attend no religious service at all. Similarly, it would seem natural - at least on traditional principles of individual liberty - to extend to the bearded and be-sandaled "beat" [beatnik, the hippies ofthe 1950s]the same generous tolerance which Americans are accustomed to grant to the Amish, or orthodox Jews, or any other groups whose dress and manner deviates from the norm. Instead, we find a strange mixture of the greatest tolerance for what we might call established groups and an equally great intolerance for the deviant individual.
As I said at the start of this post, Wolff winds up with what sounds like a fundamentally conservative solution to the problem of pluralism. Although he doesn't phrase it this way, he seems to be arguing that society should embrace the "necessary evil" and pragmatic/procedural notions of tolerance, but reject the embrace-of-diversity approach. In this way, a sense of community is more likely to be created that will better serve to solve society's problems.
Wolff's solution in this essay comes off as a conservative utopianism which ignores the fact that the wealthy in a class society will pursue their own perceived class and group interests and claim those are identical to the interests of society, and maybe Civilization itself Or even that they are making selfless sacrifices in pursuing those interests. For one of the more extreme recent examples, we have only to look back to early 2005 and the claims by the supporters of Bush's push to phase out Social Security that working people would benefit more than anyone.
But Wolff's essay is very useful in that it reminds us of the historical and class roots of tolerance, and of how tolerance is tied to to social pluralism. And it is a valuable reminder that tolerance is not simply an ideal value or legal principle, nor is it always benign.
The "necessary evil" version of tolerance depends on a balance of competing interests that are in principle irreconcilable. If one of those groups becomes powerful enough to dominate, it will be inclined to discard the "necessary" element of tolerance and regard it only as "evil". It bears repeating that Wolff describes this concept of tolerance as growing out of the European religious wars of the 16 and 17th centuries. Originally that kind of tolerance extended to other kingdoms and nations. Each king and prince, Catholic and Protestant, felt entirely justified in imposing his own True Religion on his own kingdom or principality.
The limits and dangers of the concept of tolerance can be seen in American history on slavery and race. The Missouri Compromise of 1820 and the Compromise of 1850 are classic examples of "the ungrudging acknowledgment of the right of opposed interests to exist and be pursued". The problem was, the opposed interest that compromised constructively in this case were white slaveowners and white nonslaveholders. The black slaves held as human property were not represented at the negotiating table. Other examples would be the history of segregation, the treatment of the American Indians and, right now, the 12 million undocumented immigrant workers and their families.
The multicultural version of tolerance does have the kind of risk Wolff identifies. Back in the 1990s, I saw Jerry Brown being interviewed by Chris Matthews. Tweety made some superficial observation about how the diverse groups in the US get along so well. Brown responded drily (quoting from memory), "Yeah, everybody got along fine in Sarajevo, too, until one day they started killing each other". The celebration of group pluralism as a positive good carries the risk that the more restricted tribal identities become the basis for destructive conflict.
What Wolff is attempting to do is to evaluate tolerance as a political virtue in pluralistic democracy. He understands tolerance to be the central political virtue of American-style democracy. He puts it in this context:
For Plato, the good society is an aristocracy of merit in which the wise and good rule those who are inferior in talents and accomplishment. The proper distribution of functions and authority is called by Plato "justice," and so the virtue of the Platonic Utopia is justice.
Extending this notion, we might say, for example, that the virtue of a monarchy is loyalty, for the state is gathered into the person of the king, and the society is bound together by each subject's personal duty to him. The virtue of a military dictatorship is honor; that of a bureaucratic dictatorship is efficiency. The virtue of traditional liberal democracy is equality, while the virtue of a socialist democracy is fraternity. The ideal nationalist democracy exhibits the virtue of patriotism, which is distinguished from loyalty by having thestate itselfas its object rather than the king.
Finally, the virtue of the modern pluralist democracy which has emerged in contemporary America is TOLERANCE. (my emphasis in bold)
Given this kind of definition, one might wonder whether the America of today is more a "nationalist democracy" that a "pluralist" one. But we'll leave that aside for now.
His essay argues the current form of tolerance needs to be transcended. And he makes it clear that he means that in the Hegelian sense of aufheben (negation) - preserved, cancelled and lifted up.
In these times of George Bush's Unilateral Executive claims, when the President claims there are no legal limits on his powers in any matter he designates "national security", the idea of transcending tolerance sounds downright terrifying.
But recent years have also shown how tolerance has it's pathological forms that can be destructive to democratic institutions. The press concept of balancing partisan views on every issue often means in practice that frivolous of fraudulent claims are presented as simply points of that must be treated as equally valid to others. Our "press corps" increasingly acts on the assumption that it is not their role to vet claims, for their truth values. Thus, Judith Miller's articles pimping the manufactured claims of Ahmad Chalabi's group of scamsters concerning Iraq's alleged "weapons of mass destruction" were plastered on the front page of the New York Times and became a key element in the prewar propaganda.
Likewise, the amazingly far-reaching Republican assault on science, from global warning to "intelligent design" creationism to AIDS and cervical cancer, has been based on treating empirically defensible claims as points of view to be "balanced" by claims based on faith or fraud, sometimes both combined.
Two of the most consequential blunders of the Bush administration, the Iraq War and the years of active neglect of global warming, were facilitated immensely by the way in which interests that were narrow and destructive but well-financed and well-connected were able to exploit the weaknesses of our current practice of tolerance to put through policies that wind up being destructive to the country and the world community as a whole.
And that is problem with the ideal, general solution Wolff proposes of giving up pluralism for a broader notion of community. The slaveowners of the antebellum South were determined to use their resources to promote and defend slavery. But that interest was fundamentally illegitimate from the standpoint of democracy, human rights and even of the dominant Christian religion of that time and place. Similar situations still occur in the present day.
Put another way, tolerance can only promote the general good and the functioning of democracy within certain limits. If basic human rights are not respected, as in slavery, if truth-value effectively becomes irrelevant in consideration of public policies, as when science is "balanced" with creationism, tolerance can actually produce destructive results.
Other posts in the series:
1. Are there problems with tolerance?
2. Robert Paul Wolff on going "Beyond Tolerance" (current post)
3. Barrington Moore, Jr., on science and tolerance
4. Tolerance, social analysis and radical democracy
5. Herbert Marcuse on repressive tolerance
6. The need for tolerance, its limits and its "repressive" form
Tags: robert paul wolff, tolerance
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