Ideological Schism

Competition is preferable to collusion, even if collusion (or "cooperation") might be the best way to counter the cartel formed by foreign oil producers. That seems to be the philosophy of trustbusters who are waging war against the nation's big oil companies.

The trouble is, says Harvard Business School Professor George C. Lodge, that the trustbusters are being guided by the "old American ideology." In his new book, The New American Ideology (Knopf; $12.50), Lodge declared passe the old 17th and 18th century business and political values of competition, property rights, limited government and rugged individualism--philosophical products mainly of John Locke and Adam Smith. What is emerging, he believes, is a new set of ideas that business executives and Government planners may not routinely articulate but that nevertheless are already partly in place. Some tenets of Lodge's "new ideology":

> Fulfillment in belonging to a community--"communitarianism"--is replacing the old individualism. "There are few who can get their kicks `a la John Wayne, although many may try." In corporations, communitarianism has taken the form of consensus between management and labor as the source of authority, supplanting the old system under which management alone ruled.

> Property rights are waning in value. "A curious thing has happened to private property--it has stopped being very important." Americans "may get a certain psychological satisfaction out of owning a jewel or a car, a TV or a house, but does it really make any difference if [they] rent them?" More important are rights to survival, enjoyment of income and good health.

> Competition, which once determined how and to what degree resources would be used, is being eroded by community need. It was to this notion that ITT appealed in 1971 when it successfully prevented the Justice Department from forcing it to divest itself of Hartford Fire Insurance Co. "The company lawyers said, in effect, 'Don't visit that old idea of competition on us. The public interest requires ITT to be big and strong at home so it can withstand the blows of Allende in Chile, Castro in Cuba and the Japanese in general.' "

> The Federal Government, far from being limited, is bigger than ever and will get even bigger as it takes on unprecedented tasks of planning. "But it will need to become far more efficient and authoritative if it is to prove capable of making the difficult and subtle trade-offs which now confront us--between environmental purity and energy supply, for example."

> The old notion that the whole will somehow take care of itself if the parts are looked after is no longer valid. Instead, there is a growing acceptance of "holism," a new consciousness of the interrelation of all things. "Spaceship earth, the limits of growth, the fragility of our life-supporting biosphere have all dramatized the ecological and philosophical truth that everything is related to everything else."

Lodge, the 48-year-old son of Henry Cabot Lodge (the former U.S. Senator, ambassador and vice-presidential candidate), concedes that much of what he writes in The New American Ideology has been said by others. What is original is that he sees those familiar and increasingly accepted notions as an ideology every bit as forceful as the revered one it is replacing.

Traditional free enterprisers are bound to disagree with Lodge's ideas, arguing that accepting them would only further big Government and more intervention, creating a "neosocialist" system in which "public interest" would justify even more Government interference. Yet to Lodge, that smacks of hypocrisy. Business and political leaders have fallen short, he argues, by singing hymns to the old ideology while practicing parts of the new. This has resulted in an "ideological schizophrenia" that blocks solutions to such critical problems as the inequitable distribution of wealth and undermines the legitimacy of corporations. His solution: bring business and Government into a more harmonious relationship by federally chartering the 2,000 largest companies, then enfranchising them to fill community needs. Under this scheme, for example, Con Edison would work with Government to plan power needs. Ultimately, such community requirements would determine the controls on the corporations. Ironically, suggests Lodge, the outcome could be less intervention by Government than there is now in the affairs of U.S. business.

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