Perils of Pluralism

THE END OF LIBERALISM by Theodore J. Lowi. 322 pages. Norton. $6.95.

With almost obsessive regularity, both radical right and radical left denounce the Liberal Establishment as Public Enemy No. 1. Too bad they are wasting so much time on a paper tiger, asserts Theodore Lowi, a liberal professor of political science at the University of Chicago. No such establishment exists, except on paper, and for that matter, not much is left of liberalism.

Lowi's is only the latest assault on liberalism from the left side of the political spectrum. The favorite thesis, suggested by Christopher Lasch (The Agony of the American Left) and Noam Chomsky (American Power and the New Mandarins), is that liberals sold out their principles once they came to power. Lowi's theory is quite different. He argues that liberalism, which in theory has dominated Government policy for decades, has not really been put into practice.

Rise of the Interests. When the New Deal was launched in 1933, a new age of liberalism seemed about to be born. After long years of struggle with private interests, liberals in favor of big government* were now in control. In their hands, government swelled enormously and impinged on individual lives as never before. But things were not as they seemed, says Lowi. Rather than effectively applying federal power, the liberals were paradoxically parceling it out to a variety of special interests--some old, some new and better organized. It was not the Federal Government but blocs of farmers who in reality determined the policies of the Agriculture Department. Broadening the powers of the Interior Department gave timber interests more incentive to exercise sway over government. The Army Corps of Engineers responded to the demands of local developers. Direct federal control, so widely asserted in theory, became more and more attenuated in practice.

Why did liberals in government abdicate their power to this extent? Partly out of natural attrition. They had to share power and influence because of the democratic process; some agreement had to be established with the private groups to be affected by federal policies. But beyond that, Lowi says, liberals have been the prisoners of a pluralistic theory that has become almost an article of faith in the U.S.: the belief that out of the clash of special interest groups emerges the common interest. This pluralism has been cast in various disguises. It has been called countervailing power, creative federalism, partnership and participatory democracy, though this last phrase has also been appropriated by the New Left as a call for a politics of direct action. By whatever name, writes Lowi, pluralism results in something uncomfortably like Mussolini's corporate state: a congeries of largely unassailable, unresponsible special interests, armed with governmental power, that set national policy.

The gap between liberal aims and achievement has inevitably widened. A most instructive (and destructive) example, according to Lowi, is urban renewal, one of the most important domestic programs of the last quarter-century. Intended to create a renaissance of urban life, it was warmly supported by liberals. Yet it quickly fell into the hands of profit-minded developers and inadequate local authorities who turned urban renewal into the bad joke often referred to as "Negro removal." Public funds were used to demolish black homes and herd the residents in ever greater numbers into ghettos. Another creation of liberal thought, the Federal Housing Administration, also came under the control of real estate interests that made mortgages available to whites escaping to the suburbs but not to the poor in the cities. Thus a federal policy, conceived and supported by liberals, contributed to what Lowi bluntly calls apartheid in the U.S.

Many liberals, says Lowi, do not seem to have learned from experience. In company with conservatives, they are now making community control of projects the fashionable panacea and are busy trying to take even more power from the inefficient central government. In the process, they are simply encouraging further control by vested interests whose primary concern is to perpetuate themselves. Lyndon Johnson's ill-fated poverty program, Lowi thinks, is the worst example. It invites assorted, untested private organizations to compete for federal funds and then spend them with scant guidelines. The result: confusion, disillusion and corruption.

Declining Standards. This steady erosion of federal power, in conjunction with the general belief that the Federal Government has license to control everything, thinks Lowi, is one of the main causes of the dramatic loss of public confidence in government itself. It explains why some of the people who stand to gain most from government --the minorities, the poor, the aged --are among the most hostile to it. The people, writes Lowi, want more than just a "piece of the action." They want justice. They want standards they can live up to--or at least try to. Democracy reaches its lowest ebb when government tries to create consensus by buying people off, as, for example, many programs have quietly tried to buy off black militants in order to keep them quiet. Marx felt that man first became alienated from his work when he was paid for it; Lowi feels that Americans have become alienated from their government for much the same reason: it tries to buy their allegiance.

Weary of political pragmatism, Lowi prescribes a return to idealism. That idealism is at times Procrustean and not easy to put into practice, but all of it is refreshing to hear. His program calls not for less central government but for more --and this time with teeth. He would establish a senior civil service group, for example, composed of generalists with ties to no single agency, who would be responsible for providing a "proper centralization of a democratic administrative process." Sloppily written laws, he feels, have been much to blame for the failure of government. Accordingly, he would strengthen congressional control over federal programs by putting a five-to ten-year limit on all organic acts of legislation. Congress would then be free to overhaul or eliminate programs that do not turn out as they were intended. He would end de facto apartheid in congested areas by breaking down the artificial distinction between cities and suburbs. A study of Chicago convinced him that Negroes could be redistributed by bus throughout city and suburban schools until they constituted about 15% of the student body in each. This, Lowi feels, would achieve integration not only of education but of housing as well, for homeowners would be far less likely to move from racially mixed areas if the percentage of Negroes in the schools were everywhere the same.

In his zeal to point out liberal shortcomings, Lowi may blame liberalism for failures due to the largeness of the state and its duties, human folly in general, human greed in particular. But his book is a useful and often fascinating corrective to much current theorizing about liberalism, government and decentralization. There is considerable evidence, moreover, that many Americans, growing as generally outraged about the state of the nation as Ralph Nader specifically was about the quality of U.S. automobiles, are willing to take stern measures to be sure that the machinery of government is well made and well run.

*As opposed to 19th century liberals, who believed in laissez faire.

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