Robert Putnam's Irving Kristol Turn

Abstract

Robert Putnam's Irving Kristol Turn Haimo Li (bio) Robert Putnam and Shaylyn Romney Garrett, The Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2020. 465 pp. Notes and index. $32.50 This genuinely insightful book traces four curves in the development of American society from the Gilded Age to the present: economic inequality, political partisanship, social capital, and cultural narcissism. These curves, in the authors' view, follow an inverted-U shape, with the mid 20th century serving as a kind of golden age for the United States, and the late 19th and early 21st centuries the nadirs, full of fierce partisan strife, far-reaching economic and social inequalities, and various critical problems. The major force that brought the U.S. from the first trough to the peak, from Gilded to golden age, was a grassroots communitarian ethos that emerged during the Progressive Era. That orientation, Putnam and Garrett suggest, helped significantly to curb oligarchical plutocracy, while fostering more equality, cooperation, and solidarity throughout the population. Then the pendulum began swinging. A series of social movements that emerged in the United States after the mid-1960s, including school violence, urban unrest, civil rights movements, anti-Vietnam War demonstrations, and assassinations of politicians eventually triggered the start of a downward trend, lasting through today, another nadir for the authors. The focal point of this book is to introduce and provide a "new evidence-based narratives that encompasses the ups and downs of an entire century," thereby "setting a clearer agenda for choice going forward" (p. 314). Simply put, the authors' essential suggestion is that we should borrow the communitarian progressivism formula from those previous reformers who lived 100 years ago. The transition from the Gilded Age to Progressive Era is a strong case. For example, if we compare the intensity of political polarization during the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, the former one is more severe and dramatic than the latter. Also, most scholars tend to agree that "the decline in congressional polarization occurred during the 1920s."1 That said, Putnam and Garrett are too hopeful that we can recapitulate the successes of the Progressive Era in generating a communitarian political culture in the twenty-first century. It is [End Page 317] not clear that the problems of the Gilded Age, such as "inequality, political polarization, social dislocation, and cultural narcissism" (p. 8), were actually all properly solved by the communitarian spirit of early-twentieth-century progressivism alone. And it seems even more dubious—an example of wishful thinking rather than scholarly rigor—to think that by creating a modern copy of that communitarian spirit, the United States can solve today's examples of inequality and political polarization. Many scholars tend to depict the current American political situation as a "New Gilded Age," however, we probably need to pay attention to the fact that the partisan clash that happened during the Gilded Age was fundamentally different from the widespread polarization today. As pointed out by political scientist Frances E. Lee, when we talk about contemporary political polarization, the term actually denotes a "wide divergence on an ideological continuum structuring alternative views on national policy." By contrast, that kind of phenomenon rarely happened in the Gilded Age. The ferocious partisan warfare at that era was mainly about spoils, patronage, and office—not about the "sharp party differences over national policy" per se, as the two major political parties at that time presented very few "programmatic alternatives" to each other.2 Moreover, there are many other vital differences between the current situation and the Gilded Age. For example, as pointed out by historian Patrick Maney, during the Gilded Age, the rich were often regarded with contempt or suspicion. Now, though, "when the rich flaunt their wealth as a sign of their success, the strongest emotion they provoke is envy." In other words, class envy has replaced class conflict.3 Another difference pointed out by some scholars is that there are now actually two different types of political and cultural polarization: one is issue polarization; the other is social/affective polarization (such as resentment and distrust).4 The second is particularly hard to...