Walter A. Jackson's 'Gunnar Myrdal and America's Conscience: Social Engineering and Racial Liberalism, 1938-1987'

Gunnar Myrdal's An American Dilemma (1944) influenced the attitudes of a generation of Americans on the race issue and established Myrdal as a major critic of American politics and culture. Walter Jackson explores how the Swedish Social Democratic scholar, policymaker, and activist came to shape a consensus on one of America's most explosive public issues.

Gunnar Myrdal and America's Conscience: Social Engineering and Racial Liberalism, 1938-1987: The Fred W. Morrison Series in Southern Studies.

Gunnar Myrdal and America's Conscience: Social Engineering and Racial Liberalism, 1938-1987.

Gunnar Myrdal and America's Conscience: Social Engineering and Racial Liberalism, 1938-1987

Gunnar Myrdal and America’s Conscience: Social Engineering and Racial Liberalism, 1938-1987

As two of the leading social scientists of the twentieth century, Alva and Gunnar Myrdal tried to establish a harmonious, “organic” Gemeinschaft [community] in order to fight an assumed disintegration of modern society. By means of functionalist architecture and by educating “sensible” citizens, disciplining bodies, and reorganizing social relationships they attempted to intervene in the lives of ordinary men. The paradox of this task was to modernize society in order to defend it against an “ambivalent modernity.” This combination of Weltanschauung [world view], social science, and technical devices became known as social engineering. The Myrdals started in the early 1930s with Sweden, and then chose the world as their working field. In 1938, Gunnar Myrdal was asked to solve the “negro problem” in the United States, and, in the 1970s, Alva Myrdal campaigned for the world's super powers to abolish all of their nuclear weapons. The Myrdals successfully established their own "modern American" marriage as a media image and role model for reform. Far from perfect, their marriage was disrupted by numerous conflicts, mirrored in thousands of private letters. This marital conflict propelled their urge for social reform by exposing the need for the elimination of irrational conflicts from everyday life. A just society, according to the Myrdals, would merge social expertise with everyday life, and ordinary men with the intellectually elite. Thomas Etzemüller's study of these two figures brings to light the roots of modern social engineering, providing insight for today's sociologists, historians, and political scholars.

Purpose Theoretical reconstruction for the sake of practical political relevance is inherently resistant to the theorisation of a rigorous sociological discipline. Yet, the need for such theoretical reconstruction recurs in history, particularly in times of social and economic crisis when social reconstruction of damaged, fractured and conflict-ridden societies was seen as urgent by both applied sociologists and publics at large. Methodology/approach This paper directs itself to questions regarding the intellectual and political origins of the Swedish, egalitarian, democratic welfare state ideology in the 1930s, and how it came to be theoretically defined in opposition to the overarching binary frameworks of ‘conservative’ capitalism and ‘progressive’ Marxist socialism. Findings Using McLennan’s notion of a ‘vehicular’ concept, I will attempt to show that the ‘third’ or ‘middle way’ compromise between opposing interests has, since its inception in the earlier parts of the twentieth century, changed over time, and will continue to change, within shifting political contexts and changing practical, political demands to ‘move things on’. Practical implications This paper also examines the concept of social planning – social engineering – as a ‘third way’ practical strategy and how it came to be used as a political and theoretical stick by which attack ‘third way’ democracy by both neo-liberal and Marxist theorists. Originality/value The paper builds on the author’s previous research on the intellectual and political visions of the Swedish social scientists and reformers, Alva and Gunnar Myrdal, and argues for the continuing importance of theoretical reconstruction and innovation in the preservation of justice and democracy.

This chapter deals with Gunnar Myrdal’s interest in population issues. It provides an account of the best-selling book he wrote together with his wife Alva, Kris i befolkningsfrågan [Crisis in the Population Question], published in 1934, considered as the starting point of the Social Democratic construction of the modern Swedish welfare society. The book not only dealt with the problem of the decreasing rate of reproduction in Sweden at the beginning of the 1930s, but it also called for a radical restructuring of social policy along collectivist lines. The chapter tells the story of the hostile reception of the book not least by two of Myrdal’s most famous Swedish fellow economists: Gustav Cassel and Eli Heckscher. It also sheds light on the latter-day discussion of the actual importance of the Myrdal book for the Swedish model of society. Finally, it traces the main steps of the beginning of Myrdal’s conversion to institutionalism.

Heinz Steinert’s recent work on Max Weber’s Calvinist thesis is challenging and thought provoking, but hardly convincing. There are reasons to believe that Weber’s views on the birth of Modernity will survive also this assault. Steinert, however, brings in a methodological dimension about how to interpret classics in the proper pursuit of intellectual history, in the search for a pragmatic balance between formative experiences, context and tradition. Niccolo Machiavelli and Max Weber are both manifestations of Modernity, in different epochs. There are amazingly many affinities between them. They both need to be understood and interpreted in context, yet being significant in a long line in intellectual history, characterized by anti-metaphysics, calculability and demise of natural law. Weber’s value-philosophy makes ready soil for rationalization of value-hierarchies, further developed by Gunnar Myrdal in his social engineering. Machiavelli’s amazing modernity is an embryonic early bird to instrumental means-end rational policy analysis and part of a tradition with Thomas Hobbes, Samuel Pufendorf and Jeremy Bentham as important way-stations. This tradition has many opponents. Steinert is right in most of his criticism of Weber’s analysis but has not much new to add, except a more clear emphasis on the Bismarckian Kulturkampf against cosmopolitan forces, such as Marxism and Catholicism, as main elements in Weber’s context.

Gunnar Myrdal and America's Conscience: Social Engineering and American Liberalism, 1938-1987

Gunnar Myrdal's contribution to social science could be encapsulated in the following key words: secularization, intellectual migration and trans-Atlantic reciprocity, objectivity and value-intrusion (-bias), the role of philanthropy, Protestant reform creed, social engineering, and national styles of research. Myrdal's central role in the history of social thought is his part in facilitating the diffusion of Weberian value-orientation, despite differences in nuances between Myrdal and his neo-Kantian predecessors. His oeuvre is multi-disciplinary and he could himself be characterized in terms of a number of antinomies, such as the parochial cosmopolitan, the patriotic internationalist, the compassionate 'nihilist'. the elitist egalitarian, the social Darwinist anti-racist, the male chauvinist feminist, the ahistorical 'historicist', the conservative socialist, etc. He never hesitated to take a controversial position. Essentially he is a theorist of modernity, combining ambiguity and antinomies with anti-metaphysics (anti-natural law, instrumental means-end-analyses).

1. Introduction: A Path through Modernity 2. Orchestrated Lives 3. Exploratory Steps 4. The Project of Modernity 5. The Power of Cold Reason 6. Rebuilding Society 7. Project Child 8. An Exemplary Life? 9. America 10. World Citizens 11. Conclusion: Latitude

Charles Mills’s Liberal Redemption Song

Gunnar and Alva Myrdal: Social Science as Social Engineering

Before Brown: The Racial Integration of American Higher Education DAVID W. LEVY I. The landmark case of Brown v. Board ofEducation of Topeka' is known, at least in its general outline and result, to millions ofAmerican citizens. It may, in fact, be the most univer­ sally recognized of all of the decisions ever handed down by the Supreme Court of the United States. No reputable high school or college textbook in American history fails to mention it as one of those monumental determinations of the High Court that changed forever the fabric of American life. And there can be no doubt that the Brown case—followed as it was by spirited debate, invigorated efforts on behalfof integration, and bitter resistance by many whites—fully deserves the notice it has received since 1954. How is it possible, after all, to overestimate the importance of the decision that declared unconstitutional the long-established practice ofracial segregation in elementary and high school pul But while the Brown case resulted in a flood ofcommentary and debate and anger and violence, and while the Brown case has been retold many times and from numerous perspec­ tives by historians, participants, textbook writ­ ers, and others, the prior episode, centering around the legal attack on racial segregation in higher education, has been relatively little stud­ ied. Perhaps because the demolition of segre­ gation in the nation’s colleges and universities education?2 was accepted rather more calmly by the gen­ eral public, it has tended to be given much less attention. But that story too was an important one. It was a dramatic and profoundly signifi­ cant episode in the history of race relations in our country. It too was characterized by enor­ mous courage and heavily freighted with im­ plications and lessons about the complicated connections between law and social change. In the battle to rid American colleges and univer- RACIAL INTEGRATION 299 sities ofthe injustices ofsegregation, moreover, the Supreme Court played a decisive role . . . and one which paved the way for the Justices’ monumental opinion of 1954. II. In the late 1930s, when for practical pur­ poses the effective attack on segregated higher education began in earnest, the availability of post-secondary education for African Ameri­ cans was largely a matter of region. In the North, no state university prohibited the en­ trance of black students. Once they were on campus, however, they were subjected to vari­ ous sorts of discrimination, often connected with the university’s social and extra-curricu­ lar life. Some of that discrimination was for­ mal, but most of it was unwritten, quietly un­ derstood, and traditional. Northern private schools had varying policies, but Gunnar Myrdal, in his classic study of 1944, An American Dilemma, offered this generaliza­ tion: “Private universities in the North restrict Negroes in rough inverse relation to their ex­ cellence: the great universities—Harvard, Chi­ cago, Columbia, and so on, restrict Negroes to no significant extent if at all. . . . Most of the minorprivate universities and colleges prohibit or restrict Negroes. Some of these permit the entrance of a few token Negroes, probably to demonstrate a racial liberalism they do not feel.” Probably there were fewer than a dozen or so African-American faculty members in all northern colleges and universities.3 In the South, of course, things were very different. At the outbreak of World War II, seventeen states and the District of Columbia maintained, by law, separate school systems at all levels. The post-secondary education of African Americans in Southern states was car­ ried out in 117 all-black colleges. Thirty-six of these were public schools; ofthe private ones, only seven were not church-related.4 Atten­ dance in these black Southern colleges had been growing steadily: they had 2,600 students in 1916, 7,600 in 1924, 34,000 in 1938, and 44,000 in the 1945-46 academic year. Although this was an impressive rate of growth, it must be remembered that by 1940, one out ofevery twelve Southern white youths received some college education, while only one out ofa hun­ dred Southern black youths did. Just as impor­ tant, moreover, is that despite theirhealthy rate ofgrowth, and despite the myth that...