For those who don't share my English lit major's
fondness for escaping our troubled world into Victorian novels (definitely NOT
untroubled but differently troubled), let me define one of my key terms. See,
one of the stock character types of the English Victorian novel--though often
fleshed out quite nicely there--is the "prig," someone who's dogmatic, stuck-up,
self-righteous, and inflexible.
Now, in a sense, Victorian writers did their age a
profound disservice, for the extent to which the prig character figures there
makes it seem that priggishness--a clearly unattractive human quality--was an
essential and characteristic trait of their times. I'd like to argue, on the
contrary, that priggishness among English Victorians was perhaps no more common
than it is in human societies generally, but was bound to assume an unusual,
perhaps unprecedented SIGNIFICANCE there because--if we may temporally adjust
Bob Dylan--"The times, they WERE a-changin'." An age that spawned--among many other
developments--widespread Marxism, anarchism, Darwinism (both biological and
social), atheism, agnosticism, Freudianism, and pragmatism itself was hardly a
hidebound era averse to change. These facts are precisely what make for the
deep, lasting interest of the English Victorian novel--and its equally
intriguing coevals in Russia and on the Continent. The "prig" was simply an
important common (and extremely natural) reaction to "so much God-damn change."
But the pragmatism--and "prigmatism"--I'm concerned
with here are specifically political, so Victorian times may by no means the
proper era to which to date their parentage. Sticking strictly to formal philosophy,
pragmatism per se IS a Victorian era product, associated with the Americans
William James and Charles Sanders Peirce. However, a certain freedom from
dogmatism and willingness to experiment has always, for good reason,
characterized the political sphere, and I think we're totally justified in discerning
an early pragmatic streak (for far different ENDS) in, for example, both
Aristotle and Machiavelli. But I feel that pragmatic streak reached it socially
beneficial zenith in American Founders like Madison and Jefferson and their English
exemplars and predecessors--and later in the deep, experimental pragmatism of
the FDR administration. Granted, many favorable things can be said of the
subsequent European experiments in social democracy, but it's doubtful they
ever would have been tried without the prior, hugely successful social experimentation
under FDR.
So my point is that, where human well-being is
concerned, the greatest benefit has NEVER been conferred by doctrinaire
idealists, but by an entirely different species of visionary: those who were
willing to take the admittedly imperfect institutions of their time and remodel
them into something recognizable and acceptable to the contemporary public, but
something that nonetheless included a large element of fairly radical change. Nor
do I demean the "doctrinaire idealists" (at least the ones who were
philosophical theorists), for their ideas loomed STRONGLY in the background--if in
no way else, as political pressure--for those who invented and institutionalized
the needed pragmatic changes. As political change, insofar as it's democratic,
must always require widespread political support, I think what we need to be
talking about--as under both the American Revolution AND FDR--is a way of "radicalizing
the mainstream." And radical, doctrinaire philosophies--like Marxism, socialism,
or anarchism (or, not philosophically but politically, the Green Party)--simply won't cut it. I don't claim to have the required pragmatism
answer, but I DO lay claim to the needed SENSE of pragmatism and would strongly
like to discuss strategies with those who share that same pragmatic sense.
The relevant question is how we can get capitalism
sufficiently under control that it offers substantial benefit to the vast majority
of the American (and ultimately, the world's) people. Perhaps the ultimate
solution involves going beyond capitalism, but I see no feasible way of
entertaining that question--without letting human civilization first be
environmentally destroyed--without getting popular control of EXISTING
capitalist governments. I'm simply a pragmatist, and I strongly suspect, based
on history and available practical options, that anyone who thinks otherwise is
a PRIGmatist.
Please consider joining the one existing political revolt
movement, True Blue Democrats, attempting to "radicalize the mainstream." We're
political pragmatists, to the extent that we're even seeking a more effective
name; we're NOT hidebound or dogmatic, and to us nothing--except effective
democracy--is sacred. Check us out at www.facebook.com/TrueBlueDemocratsAProgressiveRevolt .
