The reckoning. - book reviews

Washington Monthly, April, 1987 by James Fallows

Now, if both Shaiken and Amaya are correct,Halberstam needs to help us understand how their seemingly-opposite views can be reconciled. One suggests that the future looks dark for America; the other, that there's lots of hope ahead. There's room to argue with Amaya's ideas, as well as with Shaiken's. But Halberstam doesn't argue with either of them. He presents these two different perspectives on world economics with equal portent and equally impressive personal credentials. Halberstam didn't need to get into this thicket, but if he's going to introduce the issues he should provide some of the evidence on each side, so we'll have an idea which is likelier to be true.

It's a shame that Halberstam gets himselftangled up this way, because the first two-thirds of his book does have a clear and important message, and one that is perfectly attuned to his narrative style. The message has to do with contrasting cultures, and it remains relevant despite the recent twists in the fortunes of Ford and Nissan. The contrast is between the Japanese culture, which has never taken even survival for granted and has arranged itself to cooperate for mutual good, and the American culture that became so rich after World War II that it forgot many of the original sources of its success. The closing words of the book are these: "No country, including America, was likely ever to be as rich as America had been from 1945 to 1975, and other nations were following the Japanese into middle class existence, which meant that life for most Americans was bound to become leaner. But in the middle of 1986 there seemed little awareness of this, let alone concern about it. Few were discussing how best to adjust the nation to an age of somewhat diminished expectations, or how to marshal its abundant resources for survival in a harsh, unforgiving new world, or how to spread the inevitable sacrifices equitably."

Who can doubt that observation after watchingmanagers hog huge benefits even when they're asking workers to cut back, perhaps the most destructive form of greed evident in American industry. If you've compared Japanese and American factories making similar products, you can't help but see the contrast. In Japan there's as much egalitarianism as industrial life permits, while in America it's a daily class war. To some degree the Japanese can agree to share because they see themselves as part of one racially- "pure" tribe. Also, as Halberstam points out, Japanese managers worked hard to crush a militant form of unionism 30 years ago. But laws, company policies, and public values also have helped minimize the gap between classes.

The most important element of Halberstam'scultural analysis of America's economic condition concerns the nation's inherent difficulty in competing against Japan. Our society has always been based on the "pursuit of happiness" and the chance for individuals to make better lives for themselves. The system stops working so well when individual opportunity turns into raw self-centered greed, but our society contains few built-in barriers to keep self-interest within useful bounds. In addition to their mystical racial bond, which allows them to think they all share their brothers' fate, the Japanese also have their still-powerful sense of duty and deference, and their chronic fear that they're about to be destroyed by earthquake or frozen by oil boycott, and a hundred other social and psychological forces that keep selfishness under control. It's amusing for outsiders to watch the Japanese agonize over the supposed weakening of these work-oriented virtues, since compared to any place on earth except Korea, they still seem so strong.