Critique Of Richard Rorty Ach Essay
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The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedience, and by parts.
+ Edmund Burke
No advance in wealth, no softening of manners, no reform or revolution has ever brought human equality a millimetre nearer. + George Orwell
Justice For All, Liberty For None
Richard Rorty envisions an America that is vastly different from that of today. The capitalist system, with all of its inequalities, will be replaced with the socialist principals of redistributing wealth to the poorer citizens. Differences in religion, society, and partisan attitudes will be replaced by a civic religion that will enable citizens to have common outlook on issues. Self-consciousness among citizens is to be replaced with a mutual respect and curiosity for others. Rorty presents his ideas under the guise of pragmatism, but one has to wonder if the damage to liberty that would be done in the name of social justice is indeed pragmatic.
Rorty seems to have a few central concerns about the nature of America in the present day. Capitalism is perceived to be a failed system. The growing dichotomy between rich and poor is leaving the poor in a state of disenfranchisement, with very little political efficacy. The small group of super-rich, in Rorty s view, will soon control every aspect of the political process. Rorty also believes that capitalism has failed to help all of the citizens. Rorty does not see capitalism as a tide raising all boats ; rather he sees many getting left behind or falling through the cracks of the system.
According to Rorty, one of the most prevalent reasons for the social and political injustice in America today is the lack of input from the intellectual left, a group that Rorty describes as academics and professorial leftist. (57) These elite are no longer concerned with economic and social equality. In Rorty s view, the left has removed itself from political participation and now study only theory and concern themselves with metaphysical and other non-pragmatic notions. Along with this removal from active participation, the left has developed a growing disdain for America. Rorty thinks that if there is to be any hope of reform the left needs to be more pragmatic in its thinking and concern itself with economic issues. He believes that a focus on social and economic justice is crucial to our ends. By concerning himself only with those on the left, Rorty discounts a great number of academic thinkers on the right. Peter Mead, John Dillulio, Robert Woodson, and James Q. Wilson have all devoted serious works to the study of poverty and social inequality.
In order to establish social equality, there must first be economic equality. The redistribution of wealth by a large, authoritarian central government (he distrusts local government) is foremost in Rorty s future. By empowering the poorer among us, Rorty believes that they will emerge as a great political entity, thus reducing the stranglehold that the capitalists have over the political process. The authoritative government of the future is to be comprised by those with a technocratic expertise . (103-4) These technocrats would efficiently redistribute the wealth to those in need and eliminate the need for a participatory government.
Herein lies one of the problems with Rorty s theory. He espouses that after social and economic equality has been attained, the stage would be set for development of a civic religion. The civic religion would replace cultural, religious, and personal differences with political longings and feelings of curiosity and love among citizens. (17) Like Marx, Rorty believes that eventually the government would wither away. There are two problems with this theory. A technocratic controlled government resists the notion of participatory democracy, yet Rorty wants a citizenry that has political longings. Also, it is hard to envision a large authoritative government filled with technocrats just withering away. Has Rorty learned nothing from the history of the communist nations? Communism taught us that a large bureaucratic government becomes oppressive and self-serving. It empowers only its members. It is hard to imagine Rorty s technocrats voluntarily withering away, or at the least, utterly concerned with justice for all citizens.
At the heart of Rorty s theory is the socialist notion of equal economic and social justice for all citizens. Rorty wants a large, authoritarian central government that will ensure these justices. This notion of equality for every citizen goes against the very principals that America was founded upon. America is a land where every one is not equal, but has equal opportunity. Few are na ve enough to propose that all Americans have purely equal opportunity. A person born to a wealthy or prominent family will have a better opportunity to achieve their goals than a person born to a poor family on the south side of Chicago. However, even if the poor person does not have equality of opportunity, they have an equal right to opportunity. The rich cannot, by law, infringe on the right of the poor to pursue their goals.
It is the role of government to aid the poor and less able of the citizens to pursue their own notion of the good life. This should be done with programs financed by the limited distribution of wealth from the rich. It should not, however, be done by a systematic distribution of wealth from the rich to the poor, thereby resulting in a moral hazard where the poor are more dependent on the government. A massive redistribution in wealth could result in many forgoing the opportunity to create capital. There will always be entrepreneurs who, despite the perceived punishment, will seek to create as much capital as possible. Those on the fringe, however, may be less likely to reinvest their money if they are to be punished for success by a government that gives a majority of their income to the poorer citizens. There is also a hazard concerning those who are not well off but still wanting to start a business or invest what little money they have in a venture. With the knowledge that the government will provide for their every need, these people may not think it worth the effort to try and succeed.
George Gilder speaks to the issue of redistributing wealth in an article in Ideological Voices. During the 1970 s there was a massive redistribution of wealth from the rich to the poor. On average the person receiving entitlements from the government was making more than the average person who received none. (Heilke 299) During this period the rich were taxed at the highest rate in American history. The result was that the rich sought ways to shelter their money instead of reinvesting it. This caused the economy to stagnate. Inflation was in double digits and interest rates were as...
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