Tonight we take up Chapter Six of Reihold Niebuhr's Moral Man and Immoral Society. The title is The Ethical Attitudes of the Proletarian Class.
In light of the fact that I was first attracted to learn more about Niebuhr because Obama had named him one of his favorite philosophers and hearing that this particular book is practically required reading for White House staff, I want to begin by saying that I had to chuckle a bit as I read this chapter. The Palins of the world, who had a field day with Obama's connections to the likes of Reverend Wright and Bill Ayers, must never have read this book. That's because this chapter is basically a recitation of a Marxist view of the proletarian class and its role in visioning a moral society.
Before we go any further though, I think its important to hear how Niebuhr defines the proletarian class - especially in a democratic state.
The true proletarian regards the democratic state as the instrument of the bourgeoisie for the oppression of the workers. His complete cynicism upon this point stands in striking antithesis to the sentimental overestimates of the achievements of the political democracy which are current in the middle-class world. Lenin declared, "In their sum, these restrictions (of middle class democracy) exclude and thrust out the poor from politics and from active share in democracy..." (pages 148-149)
He's not just talking about folks who walk that fine line between struggling and comfort...he's talking about those who are left out of any power in the system, but who are regularly the victim of its cruelties.
An industrial mechanism, which moves by instinct and defies the canons of reason and conscience, makes determinists of those who suffer the most from its cruelties. A culture which tries to hide the cruelties by moral pretensions that do not change the facts makes cynics of those who know the facts. (page 155)
So then we ask, why is it that the proletarian class can best provide a vision for a moral society?
Who is better able to understand the true character of a civilisation than those who suffer most from its limitations? Who is better able to state the social ideal in unqualified terms than those who have experienced the bankruptcy of old social realities in their own lives? Who will have more creative vigor in destroying the old and building the new than those in whose lives hunger, vengeance and holy dreams have compounded a tempestuous passion? (page 157)
But in the end, Niebuhr sounds this note of caution.
No community, whether class or nation, can build a society by destroying everything outside itself. It must finally yield to the complexities of society and hope to win its foes to co-operation rather than to destroy them, or to trust that force will coerce a doubtful allegiance. (pages 157-158)
And ends with this.
If we accept his social vision as society's legitimate goal, we ought nevertheless to scrutinize his means of attaining the goal with critical judgment. Society needs greater equality, not only to advance but to survive; and the basis of inequality is the disproportion of power in society. In the recognition of the goal of equal justice and in the analysis of the roots of present injustice the proletarian sees truly. But whether the means he intends to employ are the only possible means, as he thinks, or whether they are the most efficacious which an intelligent and realistic society could devise, is another question.<...>
The question which confronts society is, how can it eliminate social injustice by methods which offer some fair opportunity of abolishing what is evil in our present society, without destroying what is worth preserving in it, and without running the risk of substituting new abuses and injustices in the place of those abolished. (page 167)
Yes...those are the questions that have forever and will perhaps continue to challenge us. I suspect we'll be hearing more about Niebuhr's answers in the chapters to be discussed in coming weeks. Dirkster42 will host a discussion of Chapter Seven, Justice Through Revolution, next week.