Perrin Nizbet and Modern State

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RECONSIDERATIONS

Robert Nisbet and the Modern StateRobert G. Perrin

Editors Note: The following Reconsideration, a p art o f the ongoing series beingregularly featured in Modern Age, was written before Dr. Robert A. Nisbets death, a tage 82, on September 9, 1996. The editors o f Modern Age are pleased to be able topublish Professor Robert G. Perrins essay in this issue not only as an evaluativeexam ination o f Dr. Nisbets contributions as a distinguished sociologist and scholarboth to the history o f ideas and to conservative thought and ideals, but also as adeserv ing tribute to his life and w ork.SOCIOLOGISTND HISTORIAN obert AlexanderNisbet @. 1913) has been writing formo re than half a cent ur y. Twooverarching themes characterize his life-time work. First, he attempts to reorientthe formal study of social change in thesocial sciences so that the hoary meta-phor of growth and development,a main-stay n conceptualizing historical changefrom the time of Aristotle t o the present ,yields to narrative history as such . Indifferent words, Nisbet argues tha t so-cial change cannot be understood as akind of gradual, cumulative, necessary,directional, and inborn development ofunderlying potential (a view he dubsdevelopmentalism). Real history isnot gradual or stage-by-stage develop-ment, but, in effect, an incessant andusually unpredictable conflict of ideasystems. Actual history, as opposed toROBERTG . PEFWNs Professor o f Sociology atthe University o f Tennessee, Knoxville, andauthor of Herbert Spencer (1993), and TheSocial Bond ([with Robert Nisbet] 1977).Modern Age

most social-science theoriesof change,is the stuff of time, place, and circum-stance; of key men and usually adventi-tious events sparking crises and reac-tions whose final outcomes a re contin-gent. Real sources of significant changeare not timeless and inherent causes,for example, curiosity, scarcity, devi-ance, social tensions, cultural drift, orthe additive effects of conflicting norms,roles, and statuses. Instead, majorchange owes todatable happenings suchas wars, the action of heroes (or villains)and charismatic leaders, migrations,trading, inventions, culture contact anddiffusion of ideas and technology, envi-ronmental shifts, and natural disasters.Such exogenous factors lie outside therange of predictive theory. Major socialchange thus consis ts in the reaction ofindividuals to intrusions or alterationsof their environment2 or settled pat-terns of behavior by factors and condi-tions which a re foreign to the metaphorof organic growth and development. N oanalogy exists between biological and

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social change.Second, Nisbet warns of he danger to

individual freedom and well-being posedby the runaway political state. He callsfor unblocking the traditional road tofull human development by dislodgingLeviathan-the modern territorial, cen-tralized, bureaucratized, and increas-ingly all-invasive sovereign state-withfreshly renewed or reinvigorated inter-mediate social bodies with real socialfunctions. Although Nisbets effort torefashion the analysis of social changehas been widely applauded, he does notexpect that his call for displacing or atleast containing Leviathan will be takenseriously in todays world. The presentessay briefly reviews Nisbets thoughton the sta te, and also shows, in a conclu-sion, how the two leitmotifs of his lifeswork eventually connect, that is, howNisbets fatalistic and Tocquevillian po-litical outlook emphasizing crushingsta te power and paralyzing bureaucracyis already answered by his critique ofdevelopmentalism and consequent viewof history as the record of clashing ideasystems.Nisbets study of social change empha-sizes the rise in Western society of thecentralized territorial sta te and the con-comitant decline of community and in-termediate forms of human association(corps intem&diaires). Without doubt,says Nisbet, this is thesingle most deci-sive influence upon Western social orga-nization, for t he modern s tate has insti-tutionalized aprocess of almost perma-nent revolution against the social groupsand authorities which [lie] intermediatebetween [the] individual and [i t~e l f ] . ~Crisis, whether because of actual war,defensive or security needs, loudly pro-claimed social problems, public disor-der, or other emergency, real or imag-ined, is an indispensable means ofpoliticization, of accelerating and con-centrating sta te power. The result of an

ascendant political sta te and erosion ofintermediate social structure and moralcommunity is th e multiplication ofloose or unconnected individuals andth e innumerable maladies of social andmoral isolation and uncertainty. Al-though the modern state can stir uppopular and temporary enthusiasm forsuch collective goals as wars, it cannotmeet deep-seated psychological needsfor recognition,fellowship, security, andrnember~hip~-not, hat is, without de-veloping into a hypertrophic and suffo-cating type of political community thatis absolute o r totalitarian in its dimen-sions. Community lost and empty yetseeking individuals, together with a se-ductive political sta te, give Nisbet causefor alarm.

Beginning with his radical reinterpre-tation of Rousseau as a philosopher notof democracy (a will hat is truly gen-eral) but of totalitarianism (or absolutepolitical community), Nisbet has illumi-nated the nature and profound conse-quences of centralizing power in a mono-lithic state.5 The French Revolution,Nisbet notes, provided the first modernexample of the total sta te, a colossustha t attempted-in the name of good-to be all things t o its citizens while refus-ing t o countenance any group or affilia-tion or partialassociation(as Rousseautermed it)6 between itself and the soli-tary individual. (Even private charityand educational and literary foundationswere banned by the new French state.)Guided by Enlightenment ideals of indi-vidual (qua individual) and state-individualisme and &tatisme-revolution-aries sought to eliminate autonomoussocial groups, that is, the societe or so-cial fabric that lay intermediate betweenth e individual and the state.Nisbets political philosophy is espe-cially well articulated in three booksspanning more than thirty years. Thedangersof Leviathanas asubsti tute (andpotentially total) community (or basis

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for belonging) for increasingly detachedand spiritually needy individuals areanalyzed in The Quest for Community,where Nisbet finds th e beginnings ofatomistic individualism in the justifica-tion for central-state power and preroga-tive by intellectuals such as Hobbes,Bentham, Rousseau, and Marx.8 For thepolitical intellectual, th e sta te appearsto offer unity, even a pure form of com-munity, if only competing sources ofloyalty and identity are banished or atleast severely weakened. Rousseau, forexample, writes that it is our businessto make every individual member [ofsociety] absolutely independent of hisfellow members and absolutely depen-den t on the ~ t a t e . ~n Twilight ofAuthor-ity, Nisbet castigates a state that system-atically engulfs o r sterilizes everythingbetween itself and the isolated individual,noting in particular the decay of West-ern politics and its host culture. He de-tails how militarism, bureaucratic arro-gance and absolutism, wholesale cul-tural disintegration,O and individualalienation have accompanied the growthof the state in the twentieth century.Perversely, the states ability to main-tain public order and safety hasdecreasedwith its growth. Political Leviathan isnow confronted and threatened by th every social disintegration,alienation, anddisorder it has helped t o crea te. Writingin the aftermath of Watergate and theViet Nam debacle, Nisbet wonders if anew Reformation may be astir , that is,a retreat of the state, at least in itspresent form.

Finally, Nisbets Present Age focuseson the rapid growth of government andfederal power in the United States fromthe time of the First World War, a war-ridden period Nisbet chris tens the Sev-enty-Five Years War.12The national gov-ernment is involved in the day-to-dayaffairs-great and small-of states, cit-ies, and towns, and in the daily lives,from cradle to grave, of each citizen. It

enthralls by its growing control overdetail.I3The allencompassing role of hefederal gov ernm ent in present-dayAmerica could not have been imaginedby the Founding Fathers. The presentage in the United States is one of cease-less militarism; hyperbureaucracy; themonetarization of the human spirit bythe Carlylian cash nexus, this spawn-ing loose or morally rudderless indi-viduals; and the trivialization of cul-ture with such subjectivist bosh asdeconstructionism and minimali~rn.~Each of Nisbets political treatises con-cludes with a discussion of countermea-sures-how to restore some measure ofpersonal freedom and group autonomy.Each is also a jeremiad that seems moretenebrific than its predecessor, so thatThePresentAge virtually despairs of anyhalt or even break step in the march to abureaucratized, otalitarian society. Theonly vis ible hope is pinned onTocquevilles observation tha t changeof the many by the few (great reform-ers) may be ignited when the condi-tions of menare notyetabsolutelyequaland thus contraceptive of great revolu-tions of the mind or new ideas thatcan suddenly change the face of theworld.I5

The state became ascendant in West-ern society by successfully underminingthe autonomy and functions of civil soci-ety, that is, the intermediary or close-at-hand social groupings which develop,integrate, regulate, and energize indi-viduals through kinship, belief, work,and recreation.I6 Civil society (or some-times society as contrasted to thestate) is, then, the whole range of hu-man communities and associations (in-cluding Edmund Burkes littleplatoonsand smaller patriotisms) that alwaysand everywhere precedes the state,whose origin and growth lies in war andother cr ises or emergencies, real or con-trived. The consolidation of power in theterritorial state has depended on a


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manufactured individualism wherepolitical power reaches directly to eachindividual to create both rights andimmunities uis-ci-vis intermediary socialgroups and institutionsas well as obliga-tions and dependencies on itself. Thegrowth and extension of s tate power hasalso (and especially of late) dependedon egalitarianism, that is, levelling thenatural hierarchies of competing so-cial institutions, thus creating equalindividuals, all conceived as liberatedfrom compet ing allegiances....8 Thecontinuing drive for redistributiveequality presently represents th egreatest single threat to liberty and so-cial ini tia ti~e. ~s Louis d e Bonald per-ceived long ago, despotism and democ-racy sha re a common goal: levelling so-cial differences and thus promoting anequality wherewith the individual ismore nakedly exposed to the state.20Although political states have alwaysbeen aggrandizing, democracyhas donethe most to widen and deepen the statessupremacy over other social ai le-giances, for it is first and last aboutpower, not freedom. Such a powerdoes not destroy, but it prevents exist-ence; it does not tyrannize, but it com-presses, enervates, extinguishes, andstupefies a people, till each nation isreduced t o nothing better than a flock oftimid and industrious animals of whichthe government is the shepherd.22 hestate extends its reach under the dis-arming banner of beneficence; it seducesany real or titular opposition and en-larges itself by acting to secure or betterensure incontestable values such as in-dividual rights, equal opportunity, andpublic well-being and safety.23

In the aforementioned triune processof centralizing power while individualiz-ing and equalizing people abstractedfrom anterior social memberships, theWestern state has attrac ted t o itself aclerisy of power-a long successionof philosophers and intellectuals from

Greek and Roman times to our own whohave made the pol i t ical s ta te thetemple...of their devotion.24 or the po-litical clerisy, the ideal state wields allpower as it presides over individualswho are equal, that is, men shorn ofmeaningful and rival social ties and loy-alties and democratized, in so far aspractical , in their life situations and cir-cumstances. The history of t he rise ofthe state is also the history of the atro-phy and decline of once-competing so-cial institutions, for example, the tribe inancient Athens, the family in ancientRome, the guild, family, village, commu-nity, and church in the early modernperiod, and the family, neighborhood,local community, town, school, univer-sity, church, enterprise or business, vol-untary association, and local and re-gional government today. Historically,the doctrine of individualism offered theattrac tive idea of full individual develop-ment and, correlatively, release or lib-eration from presumedly restrictive oreven oppressive institutions such a s kin-ship, guild, and church. But these sameinstitutions were a counterweight againstcentralized political authority; they of-fered some immunity or protectionagainst political excess or arbitrariness.As the creed of individualism indeedworked t o undermine traditional institu-tions in Western society, state powerincreasingly filled the vacuum. As thefunctions of traditional social institutionsdiminished, so did the respect in whichthey are held and their moral influence.Consequently, the state more and morebecomes the exclusive source of aspira-tion, allegiance, and authority. What re-mains today is an omnipotent sta te andbadly crippled institutions and interme-diate associations.The price of Leviathan is paid daily.Government in the United States pres-ently extracts half or more of t he earn-ings of even ordinaryfamilies,allof whichis not nearly enough to satisfy its wildly

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escalatingcostsfrom the four black holesof war, welfare, waste, and wile.25 Be-sides its mounting material cost, thecentralized state has an atomizing andalienating effect in that it does not-andcannot-truly replace the functionallysignificant and psychologically mean-ingful groups and associations it hashelped to devitalize and disintegrate; forthese are the smal l areas of associationwithin which alone...valuesand purposescan take on clear meaning in personallife and ensure the integrity of thelarger collectivity.26Human beings seekcommunity, a strong sense of purpose,membership, status, and cont in~it y,~ and this basic human urge cannot besatisfied by simply calling citizenship ina giant territorial s tate political com-munity. The political st ate cannot seri-ously offer-at least, not without prom-ising totalitarianisrnz8-the kind of psy-chological gratification that alone re-sults from membership in the socialgroup. The decline of intermediate as-sociation, which Nisbet calls the fun-damental problem of our time,29 iesbehind increasing disenchantment, es-trangement, alienation, isolation, root-lessness, insecuri ty , uncer tainty ,normlessness, and the social symptomsof unchecked individualism or egoism,3ofor example, intense,often morbid, sub-jec t i~ ism,~rrationalism, including oc-cultism, inner consciousness probing,narcissism and hedonism at large, andthe fragmentation of the body politicinto cynical interest groups, each seek-ing controlofLeviathan for its own gain.32Such periods of deepeningdarkness,oursincluded, are twilight ages, imes whenpower is ascendant and moral authorityis in retreat.

Nisbet favors a political state thatrecognizes a pluralism of functions andloyalties in the lives of its people, thatactively seeks decentralization becauseit values culturalautonomy and spon-taneous association and creation over

monolithic power and intractable bu-reaucratic decree.33H e urges a renewalof the social and its diverse contexts ofauthority and freedom while recogniz-ing that the road to relief or even seriousreform is all but closed.%Much, indeed,would be required to break or evenblunt the absolutism of the iron state.True pluralism entails, first, functionalautonomy for the various spheres ofsociety-familial, educational, eco-nomic, religious; second, decentraliza-tion of power from the political s tat e toas many hands as possible, includingworkers, enterprisers, professionals,families, and neighborhoods; third,natural hierarchy reflecting real func-tion and true merit instead of vain andcrippling equality fatuously enforced byagencies of the absolutist state; and,fourth, the greatest possible reliance onthe automatic pilot of tradition-i.e.,convention, custom, adaptive and utilepractices, or use and wont in gen-eral-instead of formal law, ordinance,regulation, adversarial mentality, andconstant litigation which step-by-stepsurrenders the private to the publicsphere by legally defining and control-ling once autonomous social relation-s h i p ~ . ~ ~

Over fifty years ago, Nisbet explicitlylinked the future of a free Americansocietyto rehabilitat[ ng] and mak[ing]meaningful the small social units.36H ethought thepar ipassu multiplication ofstate functions and decline of primarygroups and mutual aid was an ominoustrend. In Nisbets current estimate, pros-pects for reversing the politicization ofsociety are bleak. Americans endureever-widening and ever-deepening gov-ernmental intrusion into both the com-mon features and private recesses oftheir lives.37We are, he says, prison-ers in the House of Politics.38 ndeed,the major political ideologies-conser-vatism, liberalism, and radicalism-in-creasingly embrace, rather than chal-

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lenge, the sovereign sta te as an effectivetool or ready-made vehicle for enforc-ing, from the top down, their own social,cultural, economic, and moral agenda.Conservatism, or instance, seems of lateto mean far-right moral evangelism andsometimes unabashed militarism, whileliberalism generally means ever-multi-plying restrictions on peoples liberties(of association and property, for ex-ample) and heavy taxation to financeendless entitlements and transfer pay-ments in the name of still greater equal-ity-not of opportunity, but of result.39Today he American state has opted forredistributionism as its philosophy-that is, for egalitarian steamrolleringof ...difference^."^^ Envy, which actuallyincreases in proportion as differencesare eliminated, hat is,as things are equal-ized, fuels the team roller.^' For sometime now, the politics of envy has playeda leading role in the American politicaldrama.42The drift towards absolute politicalcommunity-even in the face of publicdisillusionment and present decentralistwinds-seems irreversible. Indeed, themeans forresisting the Leviathanstate-uiz., healthy intercessory social bodies-are not present. Democraticnations, withtheir liberty-sapping cult of equality andgrowing ethic of redistributionism, areespecially vulnerable to political abso-lutism, for they best offer the illusion ofcompensating for community lost.43 sHerbert Spencer once observed, thelonger people are accustomed to a statethat does everything for them, the moredifficult becomes even theconception ofassuminggreater responsibility for them-selves and their own families and fu-t u r e ~ . ~ ~he legacy of thirty years expe-rience (some would say sixty) with theAmerican welfare state, of a sta te pater-nalism that now reaches everywhere inthe name of justice, rights, equal-ity,and compassion,s agrowing num-ber of Americans without the qualities,

ski l ls , or even will to take care of them-selves, and a Leviathan sta te that cannotcover its daily cost s without annual defi-cits and cumulative public debt whichtruly stagger the mind. For Nisbet, thepresent age is one that greatly chal-lenges all those who cherish freedom ofperson , association, and property, for apolitical state that trumpets inequal-ity as its most pressing and gravestsuffering situation is one where confis-catory and despotic policies convergeto hasten its citizens along the road t oserfdom.45Robert Nisbet has had alifelong concernwith t he Western theor y of devel-opmentalism (social change a s growthor development) and the nature of politi-cal legitimacy (or the relation betweenthe state and not only individuals assuch, but groups and associations aswell). As a result , he is instructive o n twoessential matters. First, Nisbet shows u show to understand major social changeas the result of essentially exogenousvariables or intrusions (precipitated bycrises born of fortuitous events) uponsettled social patterns. Seen this way,we wax suspicious of all old and newattempts to find the sources (and futuredirection) of important change withinthe structure or natureof the changingentity, and of all proud claims to haveconstructed a unified or general theoryof change, one with fidelity to a widerange of historical data. In fact, Nisbetdemonstrates how history is not un-equivocal; its complex and variegatedmaterials can be arranged and rear-ranged t o imply support for almost anypreconceived theory of change. Neitheris history goal-directed. There is noth-ing towards which it necessarily tends.It is not pushed from behind by the pastor pulled forward from a future sta te, asif it were stage-by-stage developmenttowards a genetically fixed and futureend. There are no developmental or In-

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exorable Laws, or, for tha t matter, anyhistorical and social forcesbefore whichhuman beings stand helpless. In differ-ent words, human agency is supremeand historicism, including futurology, isbunk.46Second, Nisbet explains how thepresent Leviathan state came to be as itis, what now sustains it, and what itsimmense dangers are: primarily, evapo-rating liberties and the continuing after-shocks (often called contemporary so-cial problems) of ruptured families andcommunities as well as weakened inter-mediate or interstitial association in aworld increasingly composed of rudder-less or loose individuals and mono-lithic states.

Whatever Nisbets deep personal pes-simism and its firm basis in the past fourcenturies of Western e~perience,~isown disproof of developmentalism (andany other differently-named approachto change or social trends resting onassumptions of what is natural, direc-tional, necessary, continuous, and soon) suggests that life with Leviathan is

1.Social Change andHistory@lewYork,1969).2.TheQuest for Community @lew York, 1953), 87, italicsomitted. 3. The Quest for Community, 98; Twilight ofAuthority(TVewYork, 1975), 204-205. This theme isprovocatively encapsulated in the long title of ashort article Nisbet contributed to Harpers Maga-zine: Besieged by the State: By Defending th eIndividual, Government Destroys theFabricof Soci-ety (268 [June 19841, 49-52). It is not surprisingthat Nisbet numbers Albert J. Nocks Our Enemy,the State (N.P.: Free Life Editions, 1935) among thebooks toinfluence himthemost . Thepoliticalstateis a unique institution in that it has sovereignty-that is, absolute and unconditional power over allindividuals, associations, and their property andpossessions within a specified geographical area.Euphemisms for its power are many (state as fam-ily, religion, social compact, ThePeople,or socialwelfare), but all state power is ultimately securedby the same thing, namely, amonopoly on the rightto use force, including violence, to compel obedi-ence (The State, pp. 185-202of In Fair of Speech,ed. byD. J.Enright [Oxford, 1985]).4.MoralValuesand Community (1960), pp. 129-141 of Traditionand Revolt (New York, 1968), 137. 5. Cf., e.g.,

not inevitable: It can, at least in prin-ciple, be ended by divorce. For Nisbet,Everything vital in history reduces it-self ultimately to ideas, which are themotive forces.@ ndeed, Nisbetsideas-his own articulation of a sociologicallyinformed philosophy of pluralism-arenow playing a part in energizing thosewho would attempt to reverse the tideand devolve many of t he functions of hecentral government while restoring in-termediary authorities. Writing in TheWashington Monthly, Nicholas Lemann,a candid adversary of Nisbets Burkeanor pluralist political philosophy, is com-pelled t o proclaim t he triumph ofNisbetism as the stated creed of Ameri-can politics at the highestLemann means that Nisbets ideas, asfirst enunciated four decades ago in TheQuestforCommunity,now constitute themother lode of anti-big-government con-servatism in America.5oNisbetism hasbecome an intellectual and politicalforce-an idea system-with which toreckon.

Rousseau and Totalitarianism,Joumal ofpolitics,5 (May 1943). 9S114; Rousseau and Equality,Encounter,43 (September 1971),40-51.6. Rousseauwas largely opposed to even the family. He rea-soned that its abolition bythe sta tewould have thevirtueof separating children from the wrong-headednotions (prejudices) of their fathers. Nisbet ob-serves that the war between family and s ta te isvery old in human history; as a rule, there is aninversely functional relation between t he two insti-tutions: When one is strong, the other is weak(Prejudices [Cambridge, Mass., 19821, 11 1). Todayis no exception, for under th e intent and rhetoricof helping the family, of shoring it up against divi-sivesocial and economic undercurrents, t h e h e r i -can state often further damag[es] he family as arepository of vital authorities and functions (Fore-word, pp. xix-xxvi of The American Family and theState, ed. by J. R. Peden and F. R. Glahe [SanFrancisco, 19861, xix). 7. Nisbet was first labelledconservative as a result of this book. For aconcise account of the central tenets of conserva-tism, as it emerged in the wake of the FrenchRevolution, see Nisbets Conservatism and Sociol-ogy(American Journal ofSociology,58 [September


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19521,167-175).(This essay also anticipates Nisbetsnovel argument in The Sociological Tradition [NewYork, 19661 hat thedisciplineof sociologyemergedas a conservative reaction to the French and Indus-trial Revolutions. See also The French Revolutionand the Rise of Sociology in France, AmericanJournal ofSociology,49 [September 19431,156-164.)Nisbets fullest treatment of thesubject is Conserva-tism: Dream andReality (Minneapolis, 1986). whichincludes his less-than-cheery estimate ofconservatisms future prospects (essentially thatof gadfly in the liberal welfare state). In brief,conservatism values the sacred, the family, socialrank, property, viable intermediary social bodies,local community, tradition, and political decentrali-zation. See also Nisbets thoughtful reflections onAmerican conservatism (or neo-Conservatism)as reinvigorated bythespectac1eof disaster afterdisaster in the welfare state, each a result... f put-ting into practice ideas so long hailed as liberal andprogressive by most intellectuals in this country(The Dilemmaof Conservatives in a Populist Soci-ety, Policy Review; no. 4 [Spring 19781, 91-104 at95). For Nisbet, the essenceof conservatism istheprotection of the social order-family, neighbor-hood, local community, and region foremost-fromthe ravishments of t he centralized political state(Prejudices, 55). 8. Nisbet has enriched a line ofthought in thesocial sciences that dates as far backas Auguste Comtes conviction that intellectualstend to oppress the people when they have poweror access to it. H e names the rise to power of theintellectual in our society as one of the two mostseminal changes of our time (the other being theerosion of peoples sense of membership in alarger social order). (Interview of Robert Nisbet byRobertW.Glasgow,fsychologyToday, 7 [December1973],43-64at 64). Intellectuals want to see soci-ety run by ideas not, say, t he mere interplay ofsocial and economic interests (Ibid., 64). Nisbetlinks attraction to power, especially public power(and its centralized use to achieve fashionablesocialobjectives through planning), o what hesometimes calls liberal intellectuals (cf. Powerand theIntellectual,YaleReview, 3 [March 19641,321-341; see also Robert G. Perrin, The Dynamicsand Dialectics of Capitalism,[JournalofLibertarianStudies, 5 (Spring 1981), 21 1-2361 on whyintellectu-als tend to disparage what is traditional or custom-ary and what is spontaneous and self-regulating,e.g., capitalism). Nisbet also sees (and attempts toaccount for) a general dedication to egalitarian-ism (or compulsive large-scale redistribution ofproperty, income, power, and status) on the part ofthe large majority of academics and other intellec-tuals in the West (The Fatal Ambivalence of anIdea: Equal Freedmen or Equal Serfs,Encounter,47[December 19761,lQ-21 t 13-14). For intellectuals,the apparatus of the political state is generallyviewed as the necessarymeansfor realizing certainideals and abstractions.9. Le ContratSocial(l762),

ed. by Charles E. Vaughan (Manchester, 1918), Bk.2: 12. 10. The root cause of the malaise, entropy,and decay of twentiethcentury Western society is,Nisbet writes in 1980(Historyofrheldeaofhgress[New York, 1980],354),spiritual-namely,thedis-appearance of the sacred,always at the heart of anygenuine culture. nNisbets (ibid., 352-357) estirna-tion (like Toynbees in an earlier generation), some-thing on t he order of a major revival of religion-adeep and wide sense of the sacred-would berequired to reinvigorate and reintegrate a despair-ing and decaying Western culture in which moneyhas become the only common denominator. Suchspiritual renewal, however, is not judged as verylikely(ibid., 353).11. TwilightofAuthority,6.12. ThePresentAge(New York, 1988), 1.13. Bureaucracyisthe invisible government; it consists in the com-missions, bureaus, and regulatory agencies of ev-ery imaginable kind [that enter] daily into whatTocqueville calls the minor details of life(Nisbet,Twilight of Authority, 197). This fourth branch ofgovernment is often nearly impervious to t he willof elected constitutional bodies (ibid., 197). 14.The PresentAge, 134-135. Subjectivism-obsessivepreoccupation with ego, self, sta tes of the mind,reflexivity, etc.-ordinarily increases asinstitutionalauthori tydecreases (Interview, 44).15.Democracyin America (1835-1840), qt. in Nisbet, The PresentAge, 135-136. 16.Certainly, Nisbet recognizes thatthe modern states pulverization of intermediaryassociation-e.g., of primary groups (membershipgroups directly mediating between man and hislarger world)-has been a process or long-termtrend, not a fait accompli. At one point (MoralValues and Community, 134), he refers to thenaturaland autonomouscommunitiesof individu-als which have developed somehow even with thegreat impersonal space s of the modern state. 17.TwilightofAuthority,205. 18. Ibid., vii, 206.19. Ibid.,198.20. Qt. in Robert A. Nisbet, De Bonald and theConcept of the Social Group,American Journal oftheHistoryofldeas,5(June 1944),315-331at327.21.Besieged by the State, 50. Nisbets political soci-ologydevelops a key themeof TocquevillesDemoc-racy in America, namely: A critical tension existsbetween t he demands of liberty and equality. Be-cause democracy tends to undermine or inhibithierarchy, it also deters the formation of intermedi-ary social bodies (those between the individual andthe political state), thus promoting both individual-ism and political centralization, which, if unim-peded, tends towards a despotic or authoritarianregime. 22. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy inAmerica, 2vols. (1835-1840), ed. by Phillips Bradley(New York, 1945), 2: 337. 23 . As Anatole Broyardaptly frames this idea, peoples freedom and hu-manity... are]being crowded out by governmentalhumanitarianism:In healleged interestsof equal-ity, welfare, education, safety, health and environ-ment, we are ncreasingly being forced to surrenderareas of decision we traditionally regarded a s our

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own(Humanvs. Humanitarian,New York Times,125 [22 December 19751, 27). Of course, as theconception of thekindof equality o be achievedevolves (as it has) from hat of equality of rightsandopportunityto equality ofconditionor result,govern-mental control necessarily broadens, deepens, and,especially, tightens, for in the natural order ofthings, people ar e different-not equal-in theiraptitudes, merits, and achievements {Twilight ofAuthority, chap. 4). Such control as is needful toensure equal or nearequal outcomes in lifes gameis a natural suppressant of nitiative and creativityand, eventually, respect for th e larger politicalo rder . For Nisbet (ibid., vi-vii), socialequalitarianism ...s bred less by the moral value ofequali tythan by [the] centralized [states] evelingeffectsupon the natural hierarchies of all socialinstitutions. 24. Twilight ofAuthority, 205-206.25.According to Dateline a production of NBC News[8 and 15 November 1995]), Medicare fraud-totake just one example-consumes $46,000,000 ev -eryday. 26. The QuestforCommunity,70.27.lbid.,73.Communities fulfill th e fundamental human de-siresof living ogether, working together, experi-encing together, [and] being together (MoralVal-ues and Community, 137). Thus, th e quest forcommunity-some kind of community cannot bestopped, for it springs from some of the powerfulneeds of human nature (The Quest for Community,73). Communitycontrasts with emotional and spiri-tual emptiness; anticommunityis thus social void,estrangement, alienation, isolation, and lostor miss-ingidentity. Communityreaches its highest unityduring times of conflict with external forces{TheSocialPhilosophers [New York, 19731, 5). 28. Na-zism, for example, may be understood as a move-ment attempting to confer upon the individualsome sense of that community which [had] beenlost under the impact of modern social changes(Moral Values and the Community, 132). Liberaldemocracies are subject to totalitarianism in pro-portion as they eliminate individual and institu-tional immunities ostrictlypolitical power, whethersuch power is called majoritarian or otherwise.29.The Quest for Community, 70.30. For all its celebra-tion of individuality and self, Nisbet argues thatAmerican cultural history reveals a powerful andongoing, if often overlooked, quest for commu-nity (American Culture and the Idea of Commu-nity, pp. 93-105 of Arab and American Cultures, ed.by George N. Atiyeh [Washington, D.C., 1969],94).31. The great fallacy of subjectivism is the beliefthat what lies within...one persons consciousnesshas more reality, more value, [and] perhaps evenmore truth, than what lies outside the person in theworld (The PresentAge, 128). Like Coethe, Nisbet(ibid., 125-126) associates subjectivism with cul-tural decline.32. TwilightofAuthority, i; The Questfor Community, 103.33. The Quest for Community,283.34. TwilightofAuthority,230. 35. Ibid., 23. 36.The French Revolution and the Riseof Sociology,

164. 37. The Present Age, chap. 2. 38. Twilight ofAuthority, 242. 39, Cf. The New Equalitarians,Columbia Forum 4 (Winter 1975), 2-1 1; The FatalAmbivalence of an Idea, passim. 40. Besieged bythestate,52.41.Prejudices, 109.42. Nisbet recallstha t it was Tocqueville who excoriated socialismfor stirring up war between the classes,and whocondemned the democratic disease of envy,[which] infect[ed] more and more people(Tocquevilles History, Partisan Review 57, no. 3[19901, 483-486 at 484). 43. Prejudices, 52-54. 44.Robert G. PerrinJferbertSpencer, 2vols. (NewYorkand London, 1993), 1: chap. 1.45. TwilightofAuthor-i& chap. 4. 46. Cf. Karl R. Poppers Poverty ofHistoricism(NewYork, 1964),wherescientific theo-ries of historical development that serve as a basisfor prediction are ruled out on strictly logicalgrounds. Nisbets excoriation of futurology (thestudy and forecasting of future or potential devel-opments) isso thorough that even his own idols-Edmund Burke, Alexis de Tocqueville, and MaxWeber-are not forgiven their occasional lapsesinto prognostication and prophecy. Nisbet labelsfuturologists extrapolation charlatans (Has Fu-turology a Future?Encounter,37 [November 19711,19-28; see also The Year 2000 and All That, Com-mentary, 45 [June 19681, 60-66).47. Nisbet advises,for example, that the conservative impulse, at leastin any true sense of the term, isnot destined for along life; its force is nothing compared to thesheer mass of the liberal provider-state (Preju-dices, 60). In fact, present efforts to reduce theprovider-state do not even compare with chipmunks tryingto bringdownagian tredwood (ibid.,61). Subsequent writings, including (as noted) ThePresentAge, do not encourage the desires of socialpluralists. StillQuesting(Intercol1egiateReoiew,SO[Fall 1993],4145), Nisbets most recent statemento n the subject deftly restates the problem of with-ered intermediate association, including, espe-cially, th e universal antagonisms between st ateand family (which generally disrupt, weaken oreven disintegrate the latter), and individualism-turned-social fragmentation. But the analysis, in-cluding wise words for a would-be conservativeparty, begins and ends in cold darkness, that is,without t he ray of light tha t even faint hope wouldemit. 48. Twilight ofAuthority, 233. 49. ParadigmLost: The Shortcomings of th e Small-Town Solu-tion,TheWashingtonMonthly,23(Aprill991),46-50at 46.50. Ibid.

Perrin Nizbet and Modern State

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