_Journal of World-Systems Research_, 1995, Volume 1, Number 1
http://jwsr.ucr.edu/
ISSN 1076-156X
From Mesopotamia through Carroll Quigley to Bill Clinton:
World Historical Systems, the Civilizationist, and the President
David Wilkinson
University of California, Los Angeles
Department of Political Science
Los Angeles, CA 90024
Fax (310)206-6030
e-mail wilkinso@polisci.sscnet.ucla.edu
Copyright (c) 1995 David Wilkinson
ABSTRACT
The noted comparative civilizationist and world-historical
systems analyst Carroll Quigley, whose theorizing rested on the
whole historical span from Mesopotamia to the 1960's, was a teacher
well-remembered by his student Bill Clinton. Quigley, by an
intensive process of reduction, or rather idealization, of masses
of historical data, derived a procedure for the diagnosis and
therapy of ailing civilizations/world systems, especially the one
which he inhabited. The coherent, persistent and personal motifs
of the policy discourse and variant initiatives of his student, the
President, bear more than a passing resemblance to the hopeful,
idealistic, voluntaristic, intellectual, scientistic, economistic,
demi-materialistic propensities of the civilizationist and teacher.
.................................................................
"Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from
any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct
economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are
distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years
back." --Keynes
And (on the other hand?) teachers sometimes influence
students.
"As a teenager I heard John Kennedy's summons to citizenship.
And then, as a student at Georgetown, I heard that call clarified
by a professor I had named Carroll Quigley, who said America was
the greatest country in the history of the world because our people
have always believed in two great ideas: first, that tomorrow can
be better than today, and second, that each of us has a personal,
moral responsibility to make it so."--Bill Clinton, "A New
Covenant" (Clinton and Gore, 1992: 231)
If Carroll Quigley said that much, he said considerably more.
[Page 1] The question of whether world system theory has anything
to do with the practical performance of politicians and Presidents
arises as an empirical one simply because one of the pioneer world
system theorists of the 1960's, who hoped to influence his
practitioner students, had one student who obtained a position of
unmatched, if also quite circumscribed, political power: Quigley
was the theorist, Clinton the student. Clinton may have been the
first world-system leader to have been directly stricken by the
educational influence of a ranking social theorist since Alexander
decided to ignore Aristotle and conquer the world instead of his
own hubris. Has Quigley fared any better than his remote
predecessor? What difference--if any--did Quigley's systems-
theorizing make to Clinton's praxis: his dispositions, intentions,
vocabulary, policies, achievements? What difference could it have
made?
QUIGLEY AND CLINTON. Carroll Quigley (1911-1977) was
professor of history at Georgetown University for 35 years, from
1941 to 1976. Quigley, a historian by training, identified himself
as a comparative-civilizationist; I have labeled him an analyst of
world systems, for the one implies the other. [I have both long and
recently argued that civilizations are world systems (large-scale
and urbanized), and have accordingly treated Quigley's
civilizational theory as properly comparable to, for example,
Wallerstein's world-system teachings: Wilkinson 1980-1982, 1988,
[Page 2] 1994.] Quigley's course, "Development of Civilization,"
was judged by Georgetown's Foreign Service alumni from 1941 to
1969 to have been the most influential course in their
undergraduate studies (Washington Post, 1977). Clinton was a
senior at Georgetown University from fall 1967 through spring
1968, in the School of Foreign Service. His housemate Jim Moore
recollected that, of the Georgetown professors, two had most
impact "shaping the worldview" of those who shared the house.
One of the two was Carroll Quigley. (Maraniss, 1992)
Quigley had just completed a massive history of the Western
"civilization" (i.e. tradition) in its world context (i.e. the
world system), with most focus on the crisis epoch, as he saw it,
since 1914. (Quigley, 1966.) Clinton was a student in Quigley's
world civilization class. What did Clinton think of Quigley?
"Half the people at Georgetown thought he was a bit crazy and the
other half thought he was a genius. They were both right."
(Maraniss, 1992)
Clinton was favorably impressed by Quigley's inclination
toward hopefulness, which pointed toward social engineering, even
toward what one might call moral engineering -- the rational and
deliberate choice of moral norms with a view to producing social
consequences. "The hope of the twentieth century rests on its
recognition that war and depression are man-made and needless.
[Page 3] They can be avoided in the future by turning from" the
current cultural tradition of laissez faire, materialism,
selfishness, false values, hypocrisy, and secret vices "and going
back to other characteristics of our Western society always
regarded as virtues: generosity, compassion, cooperation,
rationality and foresight." (Quigley, 1966: 1310-1311; cited by
Maraniss, 1992, and in a context which suggests that Clinton had
cited it to him.)
Clinton naturally recalled his teacher's views as of the time
of their connection. Later Quigley became less optimistic about
Western civilization's retrievability. "In 1961 [Quigley] still
thought that the future of the West was open. But by the 1970's he
believed that all signs pointed to our violent, irreversible,
devastating destruction." (Melko, 1977: 6-7). In his last
public statement Quigley spoke favorably of political localism and
of "opting out of the system," the "bureaucratic structure": the
"process of copping out will take a long time, but notice: we are
already copping out of military service on a wholesale basis; we
are already copping out of voting on a large scale basis....
People are also copping out by refusing to pay attention to
newspapers or to what's going on in the world.... the final result
will be that the American people will ultimately prefer
communities"; "Do not be pessimistic. Life goes on; life is fun.
And if a civilization crashes, it deserves to. When Rome fell,
[Page 4] the Christian answer was, 'Create our own communities.'"
([1977]: 40)
Without checking the course syllabus, or interviewing its ex-
students, one cannot tell whether Quigley used his theoretical
treatise (1961) in addition to his historical treatise, which was
required reading for Clinton (Maraniss, 1992), and in which his
theory is highly condensed (1966:3-7), though embedded
descriptively at great length. There are aspects of Quigley's
major theoretical work, _The Evolution of Civilizations_, and of
the theory it embodies and to which Quigley habitually referred
(e.g. 1972b: 2-3; [1975?]: 7; 1977: 29-30), which make it
particularly apt to be not only effective but memorable. As the
leading contemporary analyst of the comparative study of
civilizations, Matthew Melko, puts it: "his theory has a clarity
that no other comparative study has.... Because of its brevity and
clarity, its marvelous examples ..., striking charts and meaningful
maps, it is the best of all books ... for undergraduate students,
and an excellent way for any layman to begin studying
civilizations" (1977: 7).
Quigley's economics is itself economical, entailing a short
and particular vocabulary (expansion, growth, rate of growth,
production, surplus, savings, investment, invention, instrument,
institution) which he considered necessary and sufficient to form
[Page 5] a theory intended to account for those phenomena common to
all "civilizations" (citified literate societies). Of these terms,
the most significant is "expansion."
QUIGLEY'S CIVILIZATIONAL THEORY: EXPANSION, AND THE
ALTERNATIVES. Quigley asserted that civilizational systems
displayed a periodic alternation between stages with and without
"expansion," a fourfold increase: in population, in per capita
production, in geographic area, and in knowledge. Quigley
perceived the alternative to expansion in several ways. In one
formulation, a stage of expansion gave way to one of "conflict" or
"crisis": decreasing rate of expansion, increasing class conflict,
imperialist war, and irrationality (1961: 82).
In another formulation, Quigley argued that "the process of
evolution of a civilization has its main thrust along the economic
level, beginning as expansion but gradually changing to growth and
ultimately to gross growth." The central economic feature of
"expansion" is per capita production increase; that of "growth" is
increase in production without per capita increase; that of "gross
growth" is increase in state area. "Expansion" Quigley
conceives as intensive, with means subordinated to ends, taking
place by innovations in a society's artifactual system for
transforming resources of nature to satisfy human needs. "Growth"
is extensive, taking place by increased mobilization and
[Page 6] consumption of resources, and involving the subordination
of ends to means, the frustration of needs, and their replacement
by desires manufactured by external controls, "based on political
and military means supplemented by ideological propaganda."
(Quigley, 1972a: 73, 69.) "Gross growth" is simply growth at the
expense of others, violent redistribution by spoliation, conquest
and empire. ([1975?]: 11)
In October 1976, Quigley, having retired the previous spring,
delivered, to an audience of his former colleagues and students,
his final reformulation, in his Oscar Iden lectures. He provided
a third sequence, now emphasizing the degenerative succession
economics--politics--force, with particular reference to the West.
The West began to expand in 976. By that I mean they
began to produce more goods per person per day or per
year. You know what I mean by expansion if you took my
freshman course: increased output per capita, increased
knowledge, increased geographic area for the civilization
itself, and increased population.... The economic
expansion was achieved chiefly by specialization and
exchange....commercialization.
When the expansion reaches a crisis, you get
increasing politicization.... Politicization means that
[Page 7] the expansion is slowing up, and you are no longer
attempting to achieve increased output per capita, or
increased wealth, or increased satisfactions, or whatever
is motivating you, by economic expansion, but you are
going to do it by mobilizing power. We have seen this
going on in our society for almost a century.
And then, as the society continues and does
not reform, you get increased militarization....[;]
misplacement of satisfactions, [which are obtained
increasingly from] power...wealth...organized
force...sadism...just war.... ([1977]: 29-30)
CAUSES OF EXPANSION: THE INSTRUMENT OF EXPANSION. All three
versions center on expansion and its breakdown. What explains the
occurrence of expansion? Quigley's causal analysis crosscut the
nineteenth-and-twentieth-century debate between advocates of
capitalism and socialism, or statism and free markets, which
characteristically had each party contrasting its idealized utopia
to the opposing, deplorable reality--Adam Smith vs. Joseph Stalin,
Marx and Engels vs. the Lancashire mills. His approach was
empirical, comparative and historical rather than critical and
idealistic: he looked for real periods of expansion, and the actual
sociocultural structures that accounted for them, periods of crisis
and the formations in which they occurred. He concluded that a
[Page 8] wide variety of social organizations and cultural
structures had at one time produced expansion, but that each had
then stopped expanding and fallen into crisis. He observed that
these diverse structures shared common features in their expansive
success, and shared a different set of common features in their
crisis. Priesthoods, socialist states, slavery, feudalism,
commercial capitalism, and industrial capitalism have each and all
functioned at times as "instruments of expansion," and later broken
down in crisis. When functional, all provided three things: an
incentive to innovate, an accumulation of surplus, and an
investment of that surplus in innovation. That was what they had
in common, and that was all they had in common. (1961: 69-71)
Stages or periods of expansion were uniformly preceded by
the establishment of organizational patterns marked by
three characteristics....: (a) an increased tendency to
invention or innovation, both in artifacts and in
organization; (b) the accumulation of economic surplus
through inequitable distribution of the social product;
and (c) the application of such surplus to utilize the
innovations. These three could, of course, be called
"invention", "capital accumulation", and "investment", except
that these briefer terms have a narrow economic sense which is
misleading, since the civilizational process is far more than
simply a materialist economic process. (1972b: 2-3)
[Page 9]
Quigley concluded that these three characteristics could be
treated as a causal trinity, "the triplice organization of
expansion." (1972b :9)
INSTITUTIONALIZATION AND CRISIS. Expansions in due course
broke down. The usual form of breakdown is a decrease of the rate
of investment in invention, and an application of the surplus to
the consumption of its elite controllers instead. (1961: 69-78)
"The absence of...investment...is the most frequent cause of a
failure of economic progress. It may be absent when both of the
other factors [saving and innovation] are working well. In such a
case, the savings accumulated are not applied to inventions but are
spent on consumption, on ostentatious social prestige, on war, on
religion, on other nonproductive purposes, or even left unspent."
(1966: 498)
In this connection, Quigley drew attention to a particularly
potent systemic process which has been studied by others before and
since under various labels; he styled it "the institutionalization
of social instruments." Human needs are satisfied by processing
resources through an organizational structure or culture. The
organization's effectiveness is normally suboptimal, and tends to
decline, because its parts develop their own ends, and attempt to
preserve established routines despite changing circumstances. When
[Page 10] a structure or culture
has become a collection of vested interests, we say that it is
no longer an 'instrument' for satisfying needs but has become
an 'institution,' leaving the original needs substantially
unsatisfied. ([1975?]: 6)
The general economic crisis of a civilization is for
Quigley strongly connected to the "institutionalization" of its
organization for expansion, a process which occurs in the face of
a rising population, hence of insistent demands for an increased
output of goods. An early sign of crisis is precisely the shift
from "expansion" to "growth."
If a society seeks to increase its supply of goods in spite of
an increasingly ineffective productive organization, it may do so
either by increasing the inputs processed by the organization,
using more resources less effectively ("growth") , or by reforming
the organization so that it produces more goods from the same or
even fewer resources ("expansion").
Of these, "expansion" is preferable to "growth" for the
society as a whole, because resources are always limited
in supply, but expansion is not preferred by vested
interests which must be reformed in order to obtain
[Page 11] expansion rather than growth; vested interests usually
prefer growth, or even gross growth, to
expansion. The changes which are required to satisfy
human needs or the society as a whole (in order for it to
survive) are different from the changes which are wanted
by institutions within the society. What is good for the
country is not necessarily good for General Motors.
Indeed, it can be taken as a general rule that long run
improvements for a society often require short-run
sacrifices and disadvantages for some of its parts. By
definition, reform in any society is any increase in the
satisfaction of the real needs of its members even when
some of those members regard the necessary changes as
totally destructive of their own interests. Such members
will resist these changes, so that the changes will come
about only if the powers supporting reform prevail over
the powers of the vested interests resisting these
changes. ([1975?]: 7)
The society attempts to increase its production of
goods, while each vested interest seeks to prevent its own reform
but willingly increases the rate at which resources are processed
(and diverted) through its institutionalized structure. This
results both in enormous waste of limited resources, and in
increased competition for them between groups, classes and states.
[Page 12] "These struggles gradually move downward [in a
psychological hierarchy] from the economic level to the political
level and finally to the level of applied force." ([1975?]: 11)
SYSTEMS AND ETHICS. As with most civilizationists, and most
historical economists, a moral vision underlies Quigley's analysis.
His is expansive and organicist: expansion is preferable to growth
and gross growth (and to stagnation/stability or decline); the
interests of the social whole are preferable to those of its
various parts; the privileged elite ought to act as trustees for
the general good.
Quigley's civilizational theory, intended to be
explicitly scientific (1961:1-2) was "not deterministic, has no
independent variables, is a system of interaction." (The quote is
from my notes on his 1972 presentation to the first annual meeting
of the International Society for the Comparative Study of
Civilizations, on "The Civilizational Process: A General Systems
Approach.") The evolutionary social process "is not relentlessly
deterministic at all points but merely at some points, in the sense
that men have power and free will but their actions have
consequences nonetheless." (1961: 89) Accordingly, Quigley treats
the activities of vested interests as fully explicable in terms of
rational self-interest, freely chosen, dystrophic, highly
undesirable, and wrong; and he is concerned with how they can be
[Page 13] got round.
VESTED INTERESTS AND PUBLIC ACTION. Quigley had Crane Brinton
as his honors tutor at Harvard. They discussed Sorokin, Pareto and
Lyford Edwards. Quigley judged that Brinton had not derived
his model of revolutionary process from a model of social and
psychological structure ([1975?]: 1-3). Quigley tried to
fill the gap.
Attempts to replace or preserve vested interests necessarily
arise both continuously and increasingly in a crisis of expansion.
A continuous process of reform by persuasion--intellectual,
religious, emotional, social and material-economic appeals, going
down level by level in a hierarchy of psychological needs--is
conceivable; when it fails, external controls (political power,
military force) are resorted to, either to compel reform or to
foreclose reform ([1975?]: 8-15).
In Quigley's view, most civilizations failed to reform;
successful foreclosure of reform by vested interests, and
increasing resort to external controls, marked their next stage of
development. Orthodox/Russian civilization reformed once, the
Russian Revolution providing it with a new instrument of expansion
(1966:93). Western civilization reformed its instrument of
expansion twice: the feudal instrument of the 10th-century
[Page 14] expansion (1961:227) was replaced by the commercial-
capitalist instrument of the 15th-century expansion (1961:233), and
that by a more complex agro-industrial-finance-monopoly capitalist
instrument of the 18th-century expansion (1961:249-258), in crisis
by the late 20th century (1961:265).
Despite its past record of reform, Quigley regarded the
contemporary West as deeply sunk in a "crisis of expansion." He
pointed to a variety of current practices as exemplifying the
obsolescence, the vesting and the hidebound institutionalization of
such a crisis: the stubborn persistence of "the internal combustion
engine using gasoline" ([1975?]: 7); the extensive, resource-
wasting economics of destruction of "natural capital," soils,
forests, fossil fuels ([1977]: 35-36); the destruction of human
communities by commercialization, corporate and statist
bureaucracies ([1977]: 36-37); autonomous, immortal, monopolistic
corporate structures ([1977]: 36, 39-40); "a capital intensive
medical system devoted to keeping people who are almost dead alive
a few more days" ([1977]: 37); the American Imperial Presidency,
with particular reference to the institutionalization and
consequent paralysis of the system for impeachment, so that there
is no easy way of removing a nonperforming or malperforming
incumbent ([1977]: 38-39).
Without predicting that the West would reform, Quigley
[Page 15] believed it reformable, and strongly favored its reforma-
tion. "[W]ar and depression are man-made, and needless. They can
be avoided in the future.... We now know fairly well how to
control the increase in population, how to produce wealth and to
reduce poverty and disease; we may, in the near future, know how to
postpone senility and death...." (1966: 1311.) This was what he
taught his students; this was what Bill Clinton recollected.
QUIGLEY'S INFLUENCE. Quigley taught practitioners, and
intended to influence their practice. How might we trace his
actual influence? Bill Clinton is, I am sure, the first U.S.
President to have studied under a theorist of world historical
systems -- or, in that theorist's terminology, of the evolution of
civilizations. Did it make a difference? Does Clinton
show the theoretical as well as the moral influence of Quigley?
"Influence" is difficult to prove; correlation may mean
coincidence; statistical techniques are hard to apply when N=1. A
may teach B, convert B, resonate with B's preconceptions, or be
taken for granted by B as part of the background noise; real
influence may be overlooked or denied by the recipient, likewise
its absence. Still, I take it that a practical politician
influenced formatively by, say, Spengler, would have a rhetoric of
gloomy acquiescence to historically inevitable decline; by Toynbee,
of the delights and desirability of free-wheeling artistic,
[Page 16] cultural and religious creativity; by Sorokin, one of
resolute idealistic altruism; by Wallerstein, one of continuing
commitment to a socialist future despite realistic acceptance of
enormous difficulties; by Quigley, one of general expansiveness and
reformativeness, with particular emphasis on ongoing economic
reforms and continuous struggle with vested interests. If one knew
that Bill Clinton had been influenced by some civilizationist's
theory, the choice would seem reasonably clear. Even
without that assumption, the question of influence can be pursued
by way of a more detailed exploration of rhetorics and policies.
QUIGLEYAN MOTIFS IN PRESIDENTIAL UTTERANCE. The words of a
practitioner may reflect not only his thought but its sources.
President Clinton's January 25, 1994 State of the Union message
(Los Angeles Times, 1994) contained 125 paragraphs. Twenty-eight
were devoted to health care reform (a proposed redistributive
increase in forced private spending to subsidize the cost of
improving health care delivery to the poor). Twenty-three were
employed for an inspirational and congratulatory introduction.
Eighteen went to defense and foreign affairs. Fourteen were
dedicated to an inspirational peroration. Seventeen went to
crime-control. Thirteen were given to welfare and
unemployment-system reform. Twelve were left over for
miscellanea. Among the latter were the following:
[Page 17] As we reduce defense spending, I ask Congress to invest
more in the technologies of tomorrow. Defense conversion will
keep us strong militarily and create jobs for our people here
at home. (Para. 28)
We must also work with the private sector to connect every
classroom, every clinic, every library, every hospital in
America into a national information superhighway by the year
2000. (Para. 30)
Among the congratulatory remarks to Congress was praise for "a
budget that cut the deficit by half a trillion dollars," for the
ratification of the North American Free Trade Area (para. 7), for
"tax cuts to reduce the taxes of nine out of 10 small businesses
who use the money to invest more and create more jobs," for "a
dramatic increase in high-tech investments to move us from a
defense to a domestic high-tech economy" (para. 9), and for the
fact that "business investment and equipment is growing at seven
times the rate of the previous four years" (para. 22).
Also in the congratulations: "Once we reduced the
deficit and put the steel back into our competitive edge, the world
echoed to the sound of falling trade barriers. In one year, with
NAFTA, with GATT, with our efforts in Asia and the national export
strategy, we did more to open world markets to American products
[Page 20] than at any time in the last two generations. That means
more jobs and rising living standards for the American people, low
deficits, low inflation, low interest rates, low trade barriers and
high investments" (para. 26-27).
Buried in a paragraph on crime control through community
empowerment is a reference to "challenging businesses to provide
more investment through empowerment zones" (para. 110). There may
be more to this than its depth of burial would suggest. One strand
in welfare theory proposes that even this stubbornly consumption-
directed subsidy can be redirected to investment; e.g. the
Empowerment Network Foundation's president, David Caprara, states
that its Center for Economic Enterprise's business incubator
program has "incubated" a family-based child-care business
for an ex-welfare client. (Caprara, 1994)
Although they are certainly not dominant, Quigleyan motifs of
saving (exclusively state-based, via deficit reduction), investment
(in both state and private sectors, neutrally as to sector) and
invention (again bisectoral and neutral), are definitely present,
and more than mere undertones.
An element in Quigley's moral policy of which Clinton
especially approved was his espousal of "future preference," the
practice of sacrificing today for the benefit not of others now
[Page 19] living but for future generations yet unborn. (Maraniss,
1992) To the extent that current U.S. federal and state budgeting
inclines very strongly in the opposite direction, i.e. to present
consumption subsidies and to "elder preference," via Medicare,
Medicaid and Social Security, Clinton's address is slightly
Quigleyan, i.e. in its extensive attention to children (paras. 32-
34, 38-39, 45-47, 113-118) and its skepticism about doles in
unemployment (paras. 35-36) and welfare proper (para. 37),
but about as ambivalent as possible concerning elder preference
(e.g. paras. 67-68 on Medicare, proposing to cut, protect and
increment it, rather than for instance providing tax incentives
for effective and substantial personal retirement savings).
CLINTON AND NAFTA. The evidence so far makes a Quigleyan
connection plausible, but remains inconclusive. One way to pursue
the question would be to ask what mental picture a person
influenced by a Quigleyan analysis would be expected to have of
some current political issue.
Take, for instance, the argument over free trade in general,
and NAFTA in particular. The protectionist argument both in
general and in this instance is noticeably dominated by the sense
that free-trading hurts the incomes of existing high-cost protected
producers--farmers, industrialists and trade unionists. Populist
protectionism leaves the protected industrialists out of the
discussion, focuses on the lost jobs of workers (e.g. US auto and
[Page 20] apparel workers) and small farmers (in e.g. Chiapas), and
plays up the benefits of free trade to the profits of large firms
exporting capital, jobs, goods and services.
The free-trade argument tends to be couched in terms of
consumer interests, lower prices, and the survival of the most
efficient producers. It seems reasonable to expect that the very
way in which the argument is habitually couched would incline a
student of Quigley's to equate "protection" with "vested interest,"
and to be alienated by precisely those arguments considered most
poignantly persuasive by anti-NAFTANS: "vested interests resist
reform, from normal human inertia and because the established ways
of operating [within the institutionalized structure or culture]
bring incomes to those who are part of it." ([1975?]: 6)
Clinton, himself involved in promoting the import of
investment capital to Arkansas as its governor, expressed support
for NAFTA in principle ("I believe in open markets and free trade")
from the outset of his campaign in 1991, but did not
commit himself to a position on the text--negotiated by the Bush
Administration in August 1992--until October 4, 1992, when the
position was "Yes, if Mexico and Canada would negotiate side
agreements with further labor and environmental concessions."
Clinton's argument was that, if "done right, it will create jobs in
the United States and in Mexico." (Behr, 1993) When those
[Page 21] agreements were concluded, he enlisted three former
Presidents to join him (September 14, 1993) in promoting NAFTA; in
this company, his remarks proposed to embrace global economic
change rather than resist it "hoping we can preserve the economic
structures of yesterday." (Devroy, 1993)
Clinton's arguments for NAFTA contained attacks on
isolationism as selfish (Broder, 1993) and on the job-loss fears of
American workers as false since NAFTA would "create 200,000 new
high-paying jobs in the next two years." (Jackson, 1993) After
its passage, he spoke to seven Central American Presidents of plans
for "the expansion of free trade to other market democracies in the
hemisphere." (Scott, 1993) Buried in a foreign policy
paragraph on "democratic renewal" we find in the 1994 State of the
Union Address: "We will ask Congress to ratify the new GATT accord"
(para. 88).
A theoretical defense of free trade could certainly have been
couched in Quigleyan terms (as promoting increased per capita
production); so could a polemic (against vested interests
preferring their own sectoral prosperity to the general interest).
Clinton avoided such discourses, preferring a populist rhetoric of
"jobs" and an inspirational rhetoric of fearlessness. But these
were adventitious, and do not seem to reflect the reasoning process
which led him to favor NAFTA in principle, and free trade in
[Page 22] principle. It seems unlikely that any reader of Quigley
would look at Clinton's discussion of NAFTA and deduce Quigley's
theoretical influence therein.
CLINTON AND VESTED INTERESTS. NAFTA is of course more than
the surrounding rhetoric, which raises a broader issue. The
operations of a Quigleyan politician ought surely to
damage "vested interests," more particularly to those which
obstruct investment, innovation, productivity, as compared to the
more traditional populist conception, which focuses on monopolistic
price-raising, monopsonistic wage-squeezing, bureaucratic abuse of
individuals, and profit-preserving tax-resistance. A Washington
observer expressed surprise at Clinton's 1995 budget, which
daringly proposed to eliminate a large number of small programs
with protective constituencies, and to cut subsidies for energy
consumption, public housing and mass transit. (Risen, 1994b.) A
wide variety of "vested interests" have in fact suffered criticism
or damage at Clinton's hands. Most are predictable targets on a
strictly populist basis: insurance companies (in the healthcare
reform package); high-income groups (in the 1993 tax increase and
the healthcare reform); the military and the defense industry (in
the FY 1994 and 1995 budgets); employers (in the family and
medical leave law). Some are predictable from an ideology of
nanny-state liberalism, i.e. armed citizens and the National Rifle
Association (in the Brady bill and law). But some, fewer, are on
[Page 23] those bases, surprising: sunset-industry labor unions and
their industries (in NAFTA); government employees (in FY 1995
employment cuts); constituency clientages (in the FY 1995 program
cuts). Without its being preponderant, there is some inclination
in Clinton's praxis to reduce, though not to denounce or confront,
interests vested in the Quigleyan but not in the populist sense.
Some observers see this as deliberate: Clinton's purpose "is
to change the way the Democratic party works by curbing the power
of special-interest groups. The deficit helps him do that. It
forces Congress to make a choice between the demands of selfish
interest groups and the needs of the whole society." (Schneider,
1992) Still, the evidence remains ambiguous. Once again, it is
unlikely that an impartial observer would find more of Quigley
than, say, William Jennings Bryan or Franklin D. Roosevelt in this
area of Clinton's politics.
CLINTON ON SAVINGS: THE ISSUE OF DEFICITS. The deficit as an
issue was forced upon Clinton, not hunted out. The problem is
complex; human and practical-politician ability to grasp
and cope in a brief time compels radical simplification of
perception. There are many stereotypes for a quick-study
practitioner to choose from. Among the various ways of looking at
the chronic fiscal "crisis of the state," indicated by the growth
of
federal entitlements, budgetary deficits, the gross national debt,
[Page 24] interest on the national debt, and taxation to finance
debt interest, is to focus on the effect of federal borrowing upon
net private savings, net domestic savings, net national savings,
net world savings, intergenerational wealth transfers, net social
welfare, etc. Practitioners who have been trained to be especially
alert to the categories of "surplus," "savings" and "investment"
are likely to simplify their view of the deficit to see it as
combining (1) by definition, state dis-saving; (2) by its special
welfare effect on the elderly, discouragement of private
retirement savings; (3) by its provision of safe, conservative bond
"investment" alternatives, discouragement of investment in
"invention," e.g. stocks in general, startup companies and venture-
capital operations more particularly.
Clinton's key confrontation with the deficit came in
his February 17, 1993 State of the Union Address. Rather than
provide a lengthy analysis of the pros and cons of deficits, it
assumed a (controversial) analysis, and referred to it only
parenthetically, e.g. Clinton's "comprehensive plan" (para. 6) "has
a deficit reduction program that will increase the savings
available for the private sector to invest" (para. 24). There is
not much meat here. There are remarks to the effect that "The more
money we take out of the pool of available savings, the harder it
is for people in the private sector to borrow money at affordable
interest rates for a college loan for their children, for a home
[Page 25] mortgage, or to start a new business" (Para. 75.); here
private spending in general is counterpoised to government spending
in general, a laissez-faire or limited-government rather than
Quigleyan argument.
"We have to cut the deficit because the more we spend paying
off the debt, the less tax dollars we have to invest in jobs, in
education and the future of this country." (Para. 74)
This muddles the concept of public investment in a populist but
also consumption-disguising direction.
Clinton discussed his proposed tax increases for deficit-
reduction (Paras. 88-94) without reference to their effects on
private savings, though they were targeted at high-income groups
classically considered to have a relatively high propensity to
save.
Again the verdict is ambiguous. If we assume a Quigleyan
influence, we can find traces of it; if we do not, we are unlikely
to notice them.
CLINTON ON INVESTMENT. The rhetorical tag "investment" proves
much more rewarding when searched for. Quigley's dynamics center
on the investment of saved surplus in invention; breakdown is
usually a consequence of a failure of investment. Where does
[Page 26] "investment" figure in Clinton's speech and thought?
Approximately everywhere. A concordance of presidential
utterance would, I guess, show that President Clinton has
officially uttered the word "investment" more often than the
preceding six Presidents combined (since Kennedy was politically
competitive with Nelson Rockefeller, the last national politician
of rank to home in on the topic of economic growth, I leave him out
of the hypothesis).
In a general sense, governments of mixed marketive-corporate-
statist capitalist-corporatist-socialist states such as the 1994
United States can invest in transportation and communications,
research and development, and education and training with some
expectation that those portions of state investment not diverted by
corruption and fraud to consumption subsidies, wage and salary
subsidies, employment subsidies, bureaucratic Parkinsonianism,
operating subsidies to prevent the collapse of loss-making
enterprises public and private, constituency welfare and
representative re-election subsidies will result in some lasting
increment to private incomes and income-tax driven state revenues.
Clinton's campaign proposed to spend on standard
public investment projects (roads) and unheard-of projects
(information superhighway) of parallel character--tending to speed
[Page 29] the flow of exchange and to enlarge network penetration
of private spheres.
"Clintonomics" became recognizable, and was recognized, in the
1992 campaign, not in issues of free trade, vested interests,
deficits, or savings, but in relation to "investment":
Call it "Clintonomics"--a strategy to insure robust
economic growth through a one-two punch of government
investment, which Clinton would increase by $220 billion
over four years, and private investment, which he hopes
to spark through tax credits....
Public investment. Many still call it "government
spending. Clinton prefers investment because it suggests
the long-term benefits he seeks through improved
education, technology and infrastructure.
(Peterson, 1992)
At least one observer of the 1992 economic conference came
away persuaded that Clinton had a genuine and peculiar economic
doctrine:
Clinton distinguishes government spending for
investment and consumption. Consumption is spending for
[Page 28] immediate needs and gratifications, like welfare
payments and veterans benefits. This is exactly the kind
of spending that interest groups like. The basic rule of
Clintonomics, as George Bush might put it, is,
"Investment--goood. Consumption--baaad."....
The difference, in the gospel according to Clinton,
is that investment generates economic growth.
Consumption does not. Therefore, it is good to spend
money on investment, even if it increases the
deficit in the short term, because a growing economy will
eventually bring in new tax revenues....
Clinton wants to change the way government works by
shifting resources from consumption to investment....
Clinton wants government to get out of the business of
endlessly expanding programs and into the business of
promoting growth.
It's really a political strategy to secure middle-
class support for the Democratic party. (Schneider,
1992)
No doubt the cynic's special variety of utopianism is the
naive faith that someone (usually himself) has penetrated to the
[Page 29] core of the truth and perceived Reality. Still, there is
a connection, though the means and ends are muddled, among the
policies, the "gospel," and the strategy; and the "gospel"
seems really to be present somewhere in the muddle.
The 1993 State of the Union Address was reported on at the
time as a "Plan to Raise Taxes, Cut Deficit" (Marcus and Devroy,
1993), which it certainly was. But Clinton did not view it, nor
wish it to be viewed, in these terms, except incidentally. Here is
how he introduced it:
The plan I offer you has four fundamental
components:
First, it shifts our emphasis in public and private
spending from consumption to investment, initially by
jump-starting the economy in the short term and investing
in our people, their jobs and their incomes over the long
run. (Paras. 13-14)
The term "invest" or "investment" appears in paras. 3, 8, 14, 21,
24, 25, 26, 27, 29, 36, 40, 73, 78, 90, 91, 100, 102, and 107 (of
110), doubtless rivaling "the," "and" and "a."
Nonetheless the reporters for the Washington Post buried their
substantive references to "investment" deep in para. 44 of their
[Page 30] story (Marcus and Devroy, 1993), and gave it a spin
Clinton can scarcely have enjoyed:
New spending. Clinton calls this "investment" and has
concentrated it in two places. One is on projects aimed
at creating jobs quickly and thus stimulating the
economy, much of this traditional pork barrel government
spending...that Congress will divvy up among its various
members.
Specific references to investment included "a permanent
investment tax credit" for the estimated 90% or so of businesses
with revenues under $5 million (Para. 27), investment in "our
roads, our bridges, our transit systems and high-speed railways and
high tech information systems" (para. 29), in immunizations against
preventable childhood diseases (para. 40), and an arcane reference
that seemed to invite taxpayers to view Clinton's
proposed--and ill-fated--"broad-based tax on energy" as "a wise
investment for them" (paras. 98-100). The Republican response by
House Minority Leader Robert H. Michel was predictable but not
uninvited: "The Clinton spin-doctors have even given us a new
political vocabulary: 'Investment' now means big government
spending your tax dollars." (Michel, 1993)
In denouncing the deficit, Clinton raised the specter that
[Page 31] failure to reduce it would mean "we'll be terribly
dependent on foreign funds for a large portion of our investment"
(Para. 78), a specter more dreadful to populists than to
Quigleyans,
and one unlikely to have been mentioned in, say, discussions with
Mexico on NAFTA.
The narrowly victorious 1994 budget was not quite so free-
ranging in its "investment" rhetoric, but still contained
traditional and non-traditional "investments" (sometimes shrunken)
such as small business investment tax credit and capital gains
exclusion, research and development tax credit extension,
the Janus-faced "empowerment zones" (Bush-era "enterprise zones"
revised) to encourage investment through tax incentives
(Republicans' face) targeted at depressed areas (Democrats' face),
Head Start, roads and bridges, nutrition for pregnant mothers,
childhood immunizations, the student loan program, worker training,
the earned income tax credit for the working poor.
The fiscal 1995 budget planning again involved an
"investment" package--technology development, job training, help
for small manufacturers--which was also explained as a means to
"produce jobs," which is subsidy-rhetoric. However, casual
observation suggests that when in 1994 Clinton uttered "investment"
he very closely uttered "jobs," which may mean that a term
("jobs") that resonates favorably with his audience has been
[Page 32] employed to allay their doubts about a term
("investment") which does not.
In this area, Clinton's rhetoric perfectly reflects one aspect
of Quigley's theory, the absolute centrality of investment. The
closing link of the circular Quigleyan process, where
investment feeds back into surplus production and accumulation, is
on the other hand never inspected: no estimates are given for the
rates and dates of return on these "investments," some of which
(e.g. maternal nutrition) are very long-term. This omission no
doubt feeds the suspicion that welfare-consumption-subsidy programs
were being misleadingly relabeled "investment" by vested interests
intending quick institutionalization of the new investment budget,
which would provide an ironic, but predictable, case of Quigley's
rhetoric being co-opted by his targets, to evade Quigleyan reforms.
In the area of investment, Clinton's form suggests the influence of
Quigley; the substance suggests haste.
CLINTON ON INVENTION. This area, labeled, however,
"technology" or "productivity," was early recognized as a Clinton
special. In April 1992, Alan Murray, the reporter for the Wall
Street Journal quoted Clinton adviser Rob Shapiro of the
Progressive Policy Institute: "Clinton foresees a heroic expansion
of the government's commitment to support basic research in the
development of nonmilitary technology." And Murray concurred that
[Page 33] Clintonomics indeed entailed "emphasizing measures to
increase investment in technology" so as to increase productivity,
hence wages and living standards" (Murray, 1992a)--pure practical
Quigleyanism.
In their 1992 campaign document Putting People First, Clinton
and Al Gore proposed a variety of redistributive, regulatory,
investment and inventive measures. The latter included:
creation of a high-speed rail network linking our major
cities and commercial hubs (1992: 10)
investment in 'smart' highway technology to expand the
capacity, speed and efficiency of our major roadways
(1992: 10)
development of high-tech short-haul aircraft (1992: 10)
Environmental technology to create the world's most
advanced systems to recycle, treat toxic waste, and clean
our air and water (1992: 10)
Mak[ing] permanent the research and development tax credit
to reward companies that invest in groundbreaking
technologies. (1992: 12)
[Page 34]
Creat[ing] a civilian research and development agency to
bring together businesses and universities to develop
cutting-edge products and technologies. This agency will
increase our commercial research and development
spending, focusing its efforts in crucial new industries
such as biotechnology, robotics, high-speed computing,
and environmental technology. (1992: 13)
Creat[ing] a small business Technical Extension
Service through the SBA, based on the successful
Agriculture Extension and Minnesota's proven Outreach
Program, to give small business easy access to technical
expertise. (1992: 79)
[D]irect[ing] funds to the development of new, clean,
efficient energy sources. (1992: 144)
Reorient[ing] the mission of hundreds of national
laboratories, moving from defense R&D to more work on
commercial renewable energy projects. (1992: 91)
In this venue, there has been a fairly straightforward follow-
through, from the 1993 State of the Union Address ("We propose to
give small business access to all the new technologies of our
[Page 35] time...," para. 27; "this plan invests in...high-speed
railways and high tech information systems," para. 29), the FY 1994
budget (which sought to protect net government R&D expenditure from
deficit-cutting and inflationary erosion while reallocating between
programs), the 1994 State of the Union Address (praising Congress
for "a dramatic increase in high-tech investments to move us from
a defense to a domestic high-tech economy," para. 9; "I ask
Congress to invest more in the technologies of tomorrow" via
defense conversion, which "will create jobs," para. 28; "we must
invest in the environmental technologies of the future which will
create jobs," para. 29; "Instant access to information will
increase productivity.... It will create jobs," para. 30); the
planning for the FY 1995 budget: "For the first time in memory, the
Commerce Department has become a top priority at the White House.
The Administration plans a 12% increase in the department's budget
for 1995, primarily to help fund new technology initiatives. One
of the biggest beneficiaries is the Advanced Technology Program ...
fostering technological research and development on the civilian
side. It would receive about $451 million in 1995, up from $190
million." (Risen, 1994)
Most of the 31.2% proposed 1994-1995 increase (above
3% for inflation) for Commerce is absorbed by a 77% increase for
the National Institute of Standards and Technology, including $451
million for the Advanced Technology Program for high-risk high-
[Page 36] payoff projects, "critical technologies" in which the
state sector becomes increasingly a venture capitalist jointly with
industry. Another massive increase is $865 million for technology
transfer, up 54% FY 1994-1995.
Even though inflation-adjusted federal R&D spending would
actually decline slightly for FY 1995 (due to cuts in defense
laboratory and academic research facilities spending, fossil energy
funding, nuclear fission funding, human space flight, and the
abandoned Superconducting Super Collider), it was relatively
protected once again. There would be substantial increases for
research on nuclear-waste storage, energy efficiency, renewable
energy, global change, earth studies from orbit, and individual NSF
awards. (Science News, 1994) It is hard to disagree with the
substance of Michael Schrage's (1994) judgment--provided it is
considered as far apart as possible from its metaphoric
expression--that "this is an Administration that is putting
taxpayer's money where its mouth is in the high-tech arena."
Though that mouth can increasingly be heard chanting the apparently
protective mantra "will create jobs....will create jobs....will
create jobs," the underlying initiative is surely entirely in
accord with the Quigleyan admonition to invest in invention. Again
there is no estimated rate of return; but for innovation, that
omission seems proper.
[Page 37] THE KEY INVENTION: THE INFORMATION SUPERHIGHWAY. While
Clinton allowed one mammoth scientific-technical project with
narrow expected economic return, the Superconducting Super
Collider, to suffer supersession, another superproject has become
the major technological endeavor defining the Clinton
Administration; identified with Vice-President Al Gore, but fully
supported by the President. It was advanced in the campaign
document as "A national information network to link every home,
business, lab, classroom and library by the year 2015. To expand
access to information, we will put public records,
databases, libraries and educational materials on line for public
use." (Clinton and Gore, 1992: 10)
It was accelerated in the 1994 State of the Union Address: "We
must also work with the private sector to connect every classroom,
every clinic, every library, every hospital in America into a
national information superhighway by the year 2000. Think of it.
Instant access to information will increase productivity. It will
help to educate our children. It will provide better medical care.
It will create jobs. And I call on the Congress to pass
legislation to establish that information superhighway this year."
(Para. 30)
If this superproject is to be an extension rather than a
corruption of today's "information highway," the Internet, it will
[Page 38] be a state-subsidized linkup between computers in home,
backpack, workplace, and market at high bandwidth to allow the fast
transmission of enormous volumes of information. Some will be
"free," i.e. state-subsidized: library-like, museum-like,
school-like, government-document-like, deliberative, rhetorical.
Some will be "free," i.e. advertiser-subsidized: radio-like,
broadcast-TV-like, newspaper-like, flyer-like, classifieds. Some
will be sold for profit, competing with or supplementing or
supplanting the videotape, CD, book, magazine, telephone, fax.
Some will be as yet unthought-of.
The technical bases for the "information freeway" are the
technologies governing rates of information transmission, e.g.
speed of electronic circuitry, high-carrier-frequency high-
bandwidth cabling (e.g. fiber-optic), information-compression,
satellite linkups of computers.
Will the "information superhighway" improve or disimprove the
current, spontaneous, accidentally state-subsidized (Internet is a
mutant from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's
ARPAnet) "information freeway"? Internet has managed a 1983-1992
growth rate faster than the federal deficit, for its linkups
increased over 3000 times, from under 300 to over 1 million
computers (with over 4 million users). (Cramer, 1994:131) This is
a statistic comparable even to the rate of decline of the ruble:
[Page 39] "should this trend continue," all anticipated humans will
be plugged in--more than once--by the end of Clinton's (possible)
second term in office, as whoever changed the target date from
2015 to 2000 must have noted.
There are, however, constraints on network growth. Since
costs of linkup are still too high for most individuals,
businesses and universities underwrite and control most Internet
nodes. The extension to individuals may come via telephone, cable
TV, or cellular telephone. Some of the entities which could
accomplish the linkup are hidebound; others have corrupt
relationships with state monopolism and regulationeering.
What ought not to be done, in the form of state meddling, is
fairly clear. The state could best obstruct the linkup process by
choosing the most hidebound and corrupt claimant to access control,
granting it a monopoly, and then demanding unsound cross-
subsidies of the resulting inefficient system via ever-rising tolls
upon the users of the current system; this would provide a constant
uproar which, no matter how it was "resolved," would divert
attention more or less permanently away from Internet expansion,
which could be expected to grind to a halt.
At present, the state sector's participation in the
information superhighway has not taken a regulatory,
[Page 40] redistributive, institutionalizing form, but rather one
of investment in invention: e.g. NSF's high-performance computing
initiative, with a 23% proposed increase to $328 million (while
NIH's high-performance computing budget would go up 41%, to $82
million). (Science, 1994) But the extant expanding network can
hardly fail to attract controllers, monopolists, fixers,
protectors, and the like. Internet in fact offers a nicely
Quigleyan case of an instrument of expansion already functioning,
with would-be vested interests on the verge of a pounce. Perhaps
we can treat Clinton's future response to their predictably
dystrophic initiatives as a test of Quigley's teaching
effectiveness.
THE HEALTH CARE ISSUE. There were initial signs of Quigleyan
concepts in Clinton's discussion of health care, the substantive
issue which preoccupied him during much of his first two years in
office. Thus in the 1993 State of the Union Address, it was
explicitly juxtaposed to "investment": "In 1992 we spent 14
percent of our income on health care.... [If present trends
continue] almost 20 percent of our income will be in health
care.... Reducing health care costs can liberate literally
hundreds of billions of dollars for new investment and growth....
Reforming health care over the long run is critically essential to
reducing not only our deficit but to expanding investment in
America." (Paras. 35-36) There was however also a redistributive
[Page 41] side to the issue: the need to provide "a basic
package of health care benefits" to all citizens "so that no one
will be denied the coverage they need." (Paras. 35, 37)
Even this sidelong investment reference, which sees
investment as an alternative to health care, was a deviation from
the course laid down in the 1992 campaign document Putting People
First, in which the health care section (1992: 19-23) is
exclusively regulatory and redistributive, with no reference to
investment, return, technology or research.
By the time of the 1994 State of the Union Address, the
redistributive aspect had taken full control of Clinton's rhetoric.
In his extensive discussion (paras. 48-75) of what was intended to
be that year's crucial agendum, the word "investment" does not
appear; instead the theme is to guarantee by legislation to every
American health care coverage "that can never be taken away" (para.
75) at the same high level of quality and low costs as that
available to the state bureaucracy (paras. 66, 73) via state-
guaranteed employer-based "private insurance for every American"
(paras. 64-65).
Despite a rousing attack on "special interests" that
would oppose these proposals (paras. 71-72), Clinton's analysis of
the health care issue has become essentially non-Quigleyan, except
[Page 42] in reflecting the redistributive struggles characteristic
of Quigleyan breakdowns. The possibility of reforming,
circumventing or reinventing sclerotic medical institutions by, for
example, placing free-access diagnostician programs on the
"information freeway," moving more drugs from the pharmacy to the
open shelves, expanding the practices of nurses and pharmacists and
public-health workers, increasing the reach of mailout pharmacies,
shifting the entire balance of health expenditure from treatment
toward prevention (especially of smoking-, alcohol- and
diet-related disease), concentrating medical research in areas that
could reduce chronic debilitation (e.g. neurology, Alzheimer's and
other "agings"), shifting costs of preventable diseases toward
imprudence by health-cost-taxing not only tobacco and alcohol but
salt, animal fats, sugar, and currently illegal (necessarily then
legalized to allow taxation) substances, is thoroughly marginalized
("People who smoke should pay more for a pack of cigarettes," para.
70) and next to nowhere.
CLINTONOMICS OR QUIGLONOMICS? By the time of the Group of
Seven industrialized nations Detroit meeting (March 14, 1994),
James Risen (or his headlineer--1994c) was labeling the President's
economic-policy tendencies not merely as a consistent
"Clintonomics," a label traceable at least to 1992 (Murray 1992a)
and one which implies a certain systematicity, but as the "cult of
Clintonomics," which implies the same, plus a judgment. Risen's
[Page 43] piece and a companion piece by James Gerstenzang did
indeed show a certain mantric tendency of their own, citing
Clinton's views on "technological advances" four times (to be
taken advantage of), "technological revolution" once,
"technological changes" once (to be embraced), "productivity" four
times (connected with gains, growth, improvements, increases), and
"investments" once (to be sharply increased).
At the G-7 meeting, Clinton sought a "convergence" of
U.S., European, and Japanese labor policies upon his own vision:
full acceptance of labor-saving technologies; substantial state
investment in training and apprenticeships in advanced skills.
Indeed, in its focused emphasis on the desirability of investment,
invention, institutional reforms, and collective convergence toward
pattern-uniformity, the President's speech could hardly have been
more Quigleyan in character.
The central theme of Quigley's theory--investment in
invention--is equally central to Clinton's rhetoric, and there has
been a determined effort, marginalized by the deficit crisis, to
realize it. "Investment" per se is also central to Clinton's
rhetoric, though here there is more room for doubt as to the
relationship between the idea, the label, and the programs.
Reformist confrontation with vested interests is very important to
making Quigley's doctrine operational, and Clinton's rhetoric is
[Page 44] frequently confrontational--but only with respect to
traditional populist targets; yet some reforms do impinge strongly
on interests that would be Quigleyan but not populist targets.
Deficit-cutting has been accomplished while protecting investment
and invention, as Clinton conceives them. Free-trading, consistent
with Quigley's approach, has been pursued, but via a populist, not
a Quigleyan rhetoric. The health-care episode, in its
fundamentally redistributive character, appears in this context to
be a deviation, a very large one to be sure, but a deviation still,
from the main track of Clinton's discourse (represented especially
by the 1992 campaign document and the 1994 State of the Union
Address), and of his action (represented by the discretionary parts
of the FY 1994 budget and the FY 1995 budget plan), to which he
recurs whenever considerations of the moment do not persuade him
otherwise.
Either Clinton paid very close attention to Quigley, or they
chanced to focus on almost precisely the same set of economic
ideas. Though intensely inclined to compromise, to hedge, to
balance, to screen with references to "jobs," to wander (the health
care package wanders almost antipodally), Clintonomics can
reasonably be judged the practical and contemporary
incarnation of Quigley's operative world-systems theory.
CRITIQUE: QUIGLEY. Once a theorist becomes politically
[Page 45] influential, it is well to take a new look at his theory.
I have previously (1988) discussed Quigley's theories, in the
context of comparison to those of Immanuel Wallerstein, at some
length. I think now, as I concluded then, that "Carroll Quigley's
economically driven model of the evolution of a civilization is
elegant, lucid, consistent, and tight." (1988: 55) Quigley's
concept of an instrument of expansion, of core-periphery
relationships, and of expansion/stagnation cycles, are of great
analytical value, and should receive more attention than world-
systems analysts have given them.
I also judged then, and judge now, that there were serious
problems in Quigley's model's "delimitation of the units of
macrosocial analysis, and in its dependence upon a relatively
homogeneous structure and process to explain fluctuations in
relatively heterogeneous social systems" (1988: 55). The
issue of heterogeneity vs. uniformity is of fundamental importance
in the study of civilizations/world systems, and has implications
for practice as well. At the micro as at the macrolevel societies
are culturally heterogeneous stewpots. As regards economic
culture, it is entirely normal to change economies as one crosses
the house threshold, or moves from marketplace to cathedral, from
retail shop to giant corporation. Economic polyculture, with no
pervasive "instrument of expansion" or "mode of production," is
also the norm of cities past. In ancient Athens one found
[Page 46] household economy, and state slavery, and a welfare
state, and a trading oligarchy, and statist imperialism, and a
marketplace, and a tributary protection racket, all coexisting
disharmoniously. If such a variety of instruments and
institutions of expansion could struggle on within so tiny an area,
how much more likely that a polycultural economy is the norm at the
macrosocial level!
We ought to assume that it is the norm for macrosocieties to
have many different instruments of expansion, badly orchestrated so
as to have different timescales of function and crisis
(cf. Iberall and Wilkinson, 1987; 1993). In a diverse polycultural
society -- where diversity is not a utopian goal but a natural fact
-- this means that what Quigley sees in bilateral relationships as
the propensity of those cultures in or nearer to expansion to
dominate those cultures not in expansion or farther from it
(1961:91-92) may be extended to the whole world system: where all
its main regions are in phase (cf. Wilkinson, 1992a) there may be
no pre-eminent core, while if they are out of phase one will emerge
-- but not last forever (cf. Wilkinson, 1991).
The chief weakness of Quigley's theory seems to me to be its
tendency to social monoculturalism, which causes him to perceive in
the contemporary world a plurality of monocultural civilizations
which have only external relations with each other, rather than the
[Page 47] single polycultural civilization, with many complex
transactions among its cultural strands, which I would contend now
exists (Wilkinson, 1987a) as the sole successor to the plurality of
civilizations of the past, which were themselves polycultural
rather than monocultural (Iberall and Wilkinson, 1993).
In particular reference to the economics of
civilizations/world systems: in Quigley's theory of stages of
civilizational development, there is found a stage of gestation
during which the whole society is pervaded by a single instrument
of expansion (1961:80). If I am right, this never happens, or is
never all that happens. Rather the new instrument propagates at
first, looks as if it will be all-pervasive, but then slows down,
hits boundaries, takes up a merely diffusive velocity, becomes
diluted, fails to penetrate this region or that sector, falls into
breakdown before it has reached the society's outer boundary, and
in short runs into one or another limit on its own expansion. I
believe this can be shown to be empirically true of priestly,
feudal, slave, statist, marketive and corporate instruments of the
past, and that it ought to be treated as generally true.
Quigley himself took two significant steps in this direction,
with his core-periphery theory, which incorporates a very
significant diffusive delay (1961: 81-82), and with his
labeling of the West's economic organization, at least since 1934,
[Page 48] as "pluralist" rather than "capitalist." 1966: 37-39)
But more is needed. Quigley admits to his theory a stage of
cultural "mixture" (1961: 79-80); but the stage of mixture is
always a remote preliminary [or, as a stage of "invasion,"
postliminary (1961: 88-89)] to the period of expansion, which is
one of organizational uniformity. I would propose, on the
contrary, that expansion is characteristically heterogeneous and
involves continuing "mixture," cultural borrowing, and innovation
in response to culture-contrasts. Although within any expansion it
is quite likely that some of the expanding regions and sectors
become more uniform, i.e. pervaded predominantly by one instrument
of expansion, others will have become less alike, i.e. pervaded by
different instruments which serve the same purpose.
World systems as a whole may be more or less homogeneous as to
their orchestra of instruments of expansion. The more uniform a
world system is, the more tightly coupled and synchronized
its growths and breakdowns ought to be; the more striking its
glorious achievements; the more notable and devastating its
catastrophes. The more diverse it is, the more dephased its
components should be; always afloat, like Lincoln's raft, but with
the rafters' feet always wet. On the whole, it seems wiser to
preserve economic diversity, if that can be done.
[Page 49] In a heterogeneous orchestra (or festival?) of expansion,
the instruments will all break down from time to time, but out of
sync, so that, during each such local crisis, alternative local
instruments of expansion may be imported or created to circumvent
the old broken-down ones, so that the same subeconomy that exports
corporate capitalism in its time of success to broken-down state
socialists may import monopolistic bureaucratism, or welfare
social-liberalism, in its time of crisis. Accordingly, the
abstract test of actual expansion is a better test of a world-
economy's vitality than the formal test of economic structure,
since all structures function at some times and fail at others.
As far as contemporary students of world systems are
concerned, this is a vote for Frank and Gills (1993: 46) in their
argument over the disutility of the modes-of-production concept in
world-system analysis, and a suggestion that Quigleyan theory as
well as world-systems theory be worked over from a polycultural
perspective.
CRITIQUE: CLINTON. Despite this partly critical reading of
Quigley's theory, I nevertheless believe that Clinton was lucky in
his choice of teachers, and that he would on the whole do well to
grant Quigley's economic-reform theory even more power, in his
words and his priorities, than it already seems to possess; the
more of Quigley's ideas that Clinton's praxis reflects, the more
[Page 50] effective, coherent and innovative it seems.
Some of the fringe areas adopted by Clintonomic "investment"
rhetoric could profit from further application of Quigleyan
principles. Thus "investments" in mass transit commonly turn out
to mean enormous and interminable consumption subsidies to failed
state monopolies (subways, buses) or state-private
monopolies (suburban rail). One needs to think of reforms that
might allow the privatization of--and investment in--some elements
(despite resistance from such vested interests as riders, employees
and bureaucracies); reduced deficits for others (e.g. by extension
of subway platforms to serve as walkways, and rentals of business
frontage along these "understreets"); circumventions of others, as
by jitneys (despite resistance from taxi monopolies); even genuine
innovations, such as freeway monorail (however abominable to the
nimby).
Another area needing reinvention, even if in violation of
vested interests to the contrary, is low-income housing, which
historically occurred spontaneously in rapidly developing areas
with low land values and vanished as land values skyrocketed. Why
not found new cities, around new industries and universities
devoted to government-and-industry funded technological research,
on marginal or abandoned farm- and ranch-land (often sold for
1/1000 of the price of land in the high-rent districts); if you
[Page 51] build it, they will come. There will still be a subsidy,
but it will subsidize invention, which is legitimate Quigleyan
economics; the improvement in consumption should be allowed to
follow.
Clintonomics also needs to take to heart--and to be seen as
taking to heart--the following:
[A] 1991 Congressional Budget Office study of the
$125 billion or more the federal government already
spends on physical and human capital development
concluded that higher rates of return on public over
private investment "can only be expected on carefully
selected spending projects." (Allen, 1992)
A characteristic of the entire body of Clinton's discourse on
"investment" from his campaign blueprint to his FY 1995 budget
is the absence of a discussion of anticipated rates of return.
Clinton economic adviser Robert Solow of MIT has been quoted as
saying "Public capital probably has the same net addition
to productivity as private capital" (Murray, 1992b), which may
reflect the "Aschauer curve" theory of 1988, showing a net positive
relationship between U.S. government spending on infrastructure and
productivity growth, a proposition not endorsed by the 1991 study;
but more is needed. Aschauer himself doubts (Morgan and
[Page 52] Southerland, 1992) that real pork-barrel highways would
provide as good long-term returns as more advanced technologies.
Without being too ambitious, one might begin by trying to
distinguish investments--current as well as proposed, private
(especially subsidized) as well as public--with negative rates of
return, and turning them into disinvestments, to finance the more
hopeful portion of the investment budget.
In the area of foreign policy, however, rather than being more
Quigleyan, I judge that Clinton needs to reconsider certain
Quigleyan tendencies reflected in his G-7 reference to
"convergence." Like most other civilizationists of his
generations--and others--Quigley was strongly influenced by the
monoculturalism of the preceding great theorists of
civilizations, particularly Toynbee. (See, e.g., Toynbee 1972.)
Monoculturalism in comparative-civilizational studies draws spatial
and temporal boundaries of civilizations around areas of cultural
coherence (vs. intense social interaction), treats essential
civilizational change as culturally endogenous, and sees
intercultural interaction most importantly in terms of threat,
clash, or invasion (e.g. Quigley, 1961: 88-92; or, most recently,
Samuel P. Huntington: 1993). This description, although it
neglects their vital trading relations within the oiukumene
(Wilkinson, 1992b, 1993a), does in fact fit the historic
interaction of genuine civilizations, which collided with each
[Page 53] other, and in doing so lost their historical autonomy and
ceased to exist as self-determined entities (Wilkinson, 1984,
1987a). But the past is past, and this process is obsolete, because
it is complete. Today there is only one global civilization, one
surviving world system, no longer many; this already extant,
singular, world civilization, like the several root civilizations
that fused to form it, is polycultural not monocultural;
having no civilization external to it, it need fear none.
The external policy of a state in a polycultural civilization
can, however, possess a very Quigleyan virtue, albeit one that he
praised only in respect of the internal politics of Western
"civilization," namely "Inclusive Diversity."
[T]he West believes in diversity rather than uniformity,
in pluralism rather than monism or dualism, in inclusion
rather than exclusion, in liberty rather than authority,
in truth rather than in power, in conversion rather than
in annihilation, in the individual rather than in the
organization, in reconciliation rather than in triumph,
in heterogeneity rather than in homogeneity, in
relativisms rather than in absolutes, and in
approximations rather than in final answers. The West
believes that man and the universe are both complex and
that the apparently discordant parts of each can be put
[Page 54] into a reasonably workable arrangement with a
little good will, patience, and experimentation. (1966:
1227)
[T]he tradition of the West....is one of Inclusive
Diversity in which one of the chief problems is how
elements that seem discordant, but are recognized as real
and necessary, may be fitted together. (1966: 1233)
The theme of Inclusive Diversity has a direct application at
the systemic/civilizational (global) as well as the
regional/cultural (Western) level. It is probably superior to
"convergence" as a slogan for international economic policy. The
aspect of "inclusion" in this context becomes one of exchange in
ideas, persons and patterns, not just trade in goods; the aspect of
"diversity" becomes the acceptance that no amount of converging
will produce convergence.
Before pressuring Japan to abandon its industrial
policy, or India to drop its tariff and investment barriers, or
Russia to dissolve its statal/parastatal firms, or West Europe and
the US to homogenize their respective welfare states, one should
ask, are these economies in a crisis of expansion? If so, are
these the responsible institutions? Or are the economies
successfully producing surplus, saving, investing, inventing,
[Page 55] investing in invention? If so they need and will
tolerate no reforming; rather their patterns should be tolerated,
studied and learned from. If not they need reforming, and will
rebuff it. But in that event, there will also be deprived
majorities and innovative reformers critical of the vested
interests and willing to try a new way. With such, one can
cooperate in discussing reforms which need not be structurally
homogenistic, or in creating what Quigley called "circumventions,"
new patterns which perform the functions of expansion while the old
patterns are left unreformed to wither away.
It isn't clear that Clinton has yet accepted that the
world economy is a macroeconomy where "a rising tide lifts all the
boats," to quote a phrase Kennedy applied to the US "macroeconomy"
(i.e. microeconomy, or at best mesoeconomy). Clinton's arguments
for investment in education and infrastructure are said (Peterson,
1992) to derive from Robert Reich's contention (1991) that this
will provide a competitive edge in the global struggle to attract
free-floating capital and technology -- but the argument is valid
only in short-range mesoeconomic terms, since other states are
active players and can do the same, ending in a subsidy race whose
outcome may or may not be macroeconomically (world-economically)
rational, as compared to a cooperative division of labor such as
increasingly attractive in big-ticket long-term big-science/high-
tech megaprojects like space stations and high-energy physics
[Page 56] installations. Who is to say that the boats will not be
lifted best by a U.S. subsidy to education or infrastructure in,
say, the Philippines, or India, or China, or if one must show more
mesoeconomic commitment, in Mexico?
The comparative study of civilizations and world-
historical systems may supply would-be reformers and circumventors
with a flow of ideas, once it is recognized that history is not a
neat sequence of developmental stages each of which renders its
predecessor obsolete. For instance: in former times the Phoenician
and Greek innovators in Central civilization c. 1500-500 BC got
round the stagnant statist economies of extractive monarchs by
setting up emporiums (e.g. Emporium itself), free ports where
traders could ship and sell at international market prices. Hong
Kong embodies the modern version of that ancient but long-effective
pattern. Consumers cheated of the chance to shop at international
market prices by tariffs, trading monopolies, quotas, and the like,
and unable to afford international air fares, might well be able to
travel domestically to a St. Petersburg, a Vladivostok, a Goa, a
Detroit, a Nagasaki -- among many other potential emporia--to
access the international consumer goods market, if only these
cities' national customs barriers were shifted to the city limits.
An international agreement to permit a standard minimum duty-free
allowance across those shifted barriers (which could also be raised
outside rather than inside great international airports,
[Page 57] or run-down waterfronts, which would accordingly turn
into enormous shopping centers) of, say, US $1000 per trip and
$10,000 per year might be less offensive as a bargaining target in
international economic negotiations than "Be more like us."
Before saying that, in any case one should have asked, are we
ourselves saving? investing? inventing? investing in invention? If
we have realized a scheme for doing all of the above, we have
something to offer; but if we do we will probably disseminate it
unwittingly and unintentionally by the creative fascination of the
successful example (cf. Toynbee, 1972: 224). If not, attempts to
disseminate imperfect patterns via the power of the jawbone are
likely to call forth amusement, resentment, disillusion or
resistance. To institute the free-port innovation at half a dozen
U.S. airports in troubled cities might be rewarding politically as
well as economically, effective domestically as well as
internationally, exemplary rather than domineering; and, for a
student of Quigley's, in accord with his most expansive teachings.
Since it appears that one piece of Clintonomic
doctrine, microbanks to make microloans to microenterprises,
credited to experience in Chicago and Arkansas (Clinton and Gore,
1992: 149), also involves some learning from the experience of
Bangladesh (Murray, 1992a, citing Lewis Solomon), this
Administration may in general be inclined to import ideas--and even
[Page 58] technology--from less conventional sources than the norm.
A great deal of research of general use to the world economy could
be done (and is being done but not disseminated) in the Russian,
Indian and Chinese economies, whose labor-intensive research
enterprises should not be precluded from competing for grants via
NSF, or receiving operating subsidies via AID.
And there is no reason on Earth why the "information
superhighway" should be merely national in its reach--Internet is
already multicontinental--and every reason why a national web
should be conceived as only one major interchange in a global
"information freeway." (This point has, in principle, perhaps been
taken: Reuters 3/22/94 reports that Vice President Al Gore told the
International Telecommunications Union conference in
Buenos Aires that it was time to build a "global information
infrastructure," a "network of networks," to raise business
productivity, bring education everywhere, and promote
representative democracy. Privatization, competition, and
interconnection were emphasized as governing principles.)
Given these reservations and suggestions, in the net it seems
fair to say that Clinton learned much from Quigley, gained much by
what he imbibed of Quigley's distillation of world system history.
Despite Quigley's objections to Plato, it seems fair to compare him
to that philosopher in respect of their students who were, or
[Page 59] became, statesmen. In that sense, Clinton as a student
to Quigley has proven closer to the model of the faithful Dion ("as
soon as he got a taste of a rational philosophy which led the way
to virtue, his soul was...on fire": Plutarch, 1918: 9) than to that
of the hopeless Dionysius (who "was driven to use inaptly what he
had imperfectly learned from Plato": 1918: 37). Distracted by the
need to respond to daily events and by the struggle for power and
survival, driven by an inclination to compromise,
rhetoricize, dilute and seek consensus, constrained by the
marginality of his freedom to budget, with neither his own
appointees nor the various Washington establishments (bureaucratic,
Congressional, media) inherently sympathetic to the theory he
favors but does not fully command, Clinton also provides a case
study of the limits that would constrain the application of any of
the prevalent theories of the very large scale and the very long
term, whether of "world-systems," "world systems," or
"civilizations."
..................................................................
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