No Vacancy?

When the immune system begins to break down, the body politic is infected by many different exotic nosogens simultaneously. As with the analogous biological case, many of these are closely related or at least very similar, and thus end up struggling for the same pathological niche. One of them must do in the rest before going on to do in the patient, and being in place first is likely to be a major advantage.

The application of this morbid figure is indicated by the title above. Civil Socialism is a latecomer and it is going to have trouble taking over the slot presently occupied by something ideologically similar and already well established. Once again I venture to try your taste by inventing a short and snappy name for a recognized phenomenon: let us call the in-place competitor of Civil Socialism "Special Interestism."

Simply to juxtapose the words "civil society" and "special interests" makes it clear enough that we are talking about much the same thing, yet we should engage in a little bit of pedantic distinguishing. "Civil society" is a collectivity, whereas the special interests are things collected. Strictly speaking, the special interests correspond to the Montequieuvio-Tocquevillesque corps intermédiares postulated by Civil Socialism, whereas Special Interestism has no special name for the collectivity. In theory it might even borrow the term "civil society," but that is very unlikely, since the people who talk about "special interests" are always against them, unlike the Civil Socialist friends of "civil society." Although the two schemes are structurally very similar, it is plain that their evaluations of the structure could scarcely agree less.

There is an additional structural feature of Special Interestism lacking in Civil Socialism: in addition to the State, it recognizes a second entity outside the congeries of special interests. We might expect this to be "the public interest" or something of the sort, but on reflection we see that any idea of that sort must go with the State. Although the current terminology is puzzling, there is no doubt that this tertium quid that is neither an individual special interest nor the State is most often called "the Middle Class."

Special Interestism is a popular rather than an educationalist viewpoint, which no doubt explains its strange and heterogeneous terminology, not to mention the need to make up a name for it from scratch. Its prime antithesis is undoubtedly between the (bad) special interests and the (good) middle class, and it has little or no concern with either common interests or the upper/lower classes. It has run together two quite separate verbal systems and thrown half of each away.

All this nitpicking makes Special Interestism sound dreadfully incoherent, but on the whole it makes sense enough. Sense enough, at least, for millions of Americans to think in terms of it when they think about how America works at all. Civil Socialism not only finds Special Interestism in place, it finds it in place with an immense amount of raw demography behind it. Worse still, however, is the polarity of attitudes. The CS can hardly hope to attain ideological supremacy without erasing the horns and tail that most Americans mentally associate with the words "special interests." I'd guess this task will prove no easier than converting the same Americans from the NFL to soccer.

The CS may object to this view that "special interests" is a purely economic term, and that if Americans once get that point clear, the way to Civil Socialism lies open. Perhaps so, but the most interesting thing about Special Interestism, historically speaking, is that it has been moving farther and farther away from mere economics. A century ago there would be no doubt that "a special interest" conjured up a clear bottom-line-oriented picture like "United Widget Manufacturers for NAFTA," but nowadays the strangest and most uneconomic things count as special interests. The strangeness culminates with the feminist branch of the Multiculturalists, where half the population zoologically defined becomes "a special interest." (Oops! the Multicultis themselves are not Special Interestism theorists, what I'm referring to is their enemies' image of them. But that's a good deal more important, since enemies vastly outnumber Multicultis. Certainly feminism is the very model of "a special interest" with a grave popular authority like Dr. Rush Limbaugh.)

Equally oddly, almost any particular concept of the public interest is "a special interest," say Ralph Nader consumerism or Sierra Club environmentalism or even the Democratic Party en masse. (The GOP, however, is the middle class, as everybody knows.) If enough Americans ever hear of it, Civil Socialism itself will inevitably be pronounced "just a special interest."

There may, however, be an opening here for the Civil Socialists, or at least for a sort of fusion ideology. What Special Interestism means by "special" has stopped being strictly economic, but what has it come to mean instead? I don't think it is too hard to answer that question: a special interest is a group of selfish people who want something from the State, whereas the noble middle class exists only to be taxed and regulated and generally taken advantage of. Despite the seemingly opposite evaluation of corps intermédiares, at a deeper level antistatism unites Civil Socialists and Special Interestites. What makes special interests vile is that they have touched pitch by asking for something from Uncle Sam, usually money, to be sure, but sometimes just influence on policy or recognition of their special wonderfulness. A group, even a very selfish group, that abstained from that one thing would no doubt remain just a harmless component of the middle class, or perhaps even a worthy corps intermédiare.

That would be fusion from the Special Interestism side, however. It is harder to see quite how the Civil Socialists could accomodate the popular notion of "the middle class" without undoing themselves theoretically. They would have to introduce a radical distinction between good and bad I-bodies (as we will English corps intermédiares, starting now), instead of a promiscuous approval of them. Congenial though the obvious antistatist criterion might be, there is nothing in the existing Civil Socialism to the effect than an I-body that flirts with the State becomes degraded and denatured. Even something as outrageous as an I-body accurately described as "Citizens for Big Government" would not seem to be excluded from "civil society," unless, indeed, it were a sham actually consisting only of government employees.

Reflecting once again that the Civil Socialists are isolated educationists or "intellectuals" and not at all the populace, we may more probably anticipate that they will keep their present ideology intact and try to cooperate with the Special Interestites by trying to teach them tolerance, by suggesting they not stigmatize every I-body they don't happen to belong to as "a special interest," not even if it has been known to lobby in Beltway City. Of course the CS would do their part also by trying to get such I-bodies to stop lobbying and by preaching antistatism to all and sundry, for clearly a "civil society" full of I-bodies that lean on the State cannot appear to them a healthy one.

(Although the Civil Socialists may regard what I write against them as nothing but a series of cheap shots, here is one even I recognize as such: if they take their antistatism entirely seriously, wouldn't it be best to enforce a strict Separation of School and State? It is difficult to believe that any educational body funded entirely by the State can really be very "intermediate," is it not? Putting this point in the context of Special Interestism, consider that very few Americans would be likely to agree that public education is entirely a matter of special interests and nothing to do with the middle class. Communis error facit ius, "A welfare benefit everybody receives is not a welfare benefit.")

The Civil Socialists, then, may try to coopt Special Interestism by liberalizing its rather narrow notions. As usual, I see no very bright prospects for their immediate success, since liberalism is for the moment out and narrowness in. As with the libertarians and communitarians discussed elsewhere, the CS may perhaps end up with only the emptiest of verbal triumphs, for the Special Interestites also could borrow just the words "civil society" and not learn the Civil Socialist lessons at all. They would use the borrowed words as a mere high-falutin' synonym for "the middle class." Time will tell.