Can't Buy Me Love

Sojourners Magazine, Jun 2004 by Dionne, E J Jr

Why the language of the marketplace shouldn't rule our moral and political thinking.

It is hard to express your own beliefs if you are forced to speak in the tongue of your opponents. Arguments are lost before they begin because the terms of debate are skewed in advance. That is the position in which Democrats, liberals, and even moderates now find themselves.

One telltale sign of the shift is the extent to which the language of the economic marketplace now dominates the political discussion. We are at a point where any action that might seem good or wise on other grounds must nonetheless be defended in the markets terms. The tongue-in-cheek comment of Anne Lewis, a veteran of Democratic campaigns and administrations, is exceptionally revealing: "We used to call for immunizing little children against disease. Now we call it an investment in human capital."

Distorting language in this way concedes what should not be conceded: that the market represents the one and only proper measure of a public action. As columnist and economics writer Robert Kuttner has argued, the idea that everything should not be for sale reflects a deep popular wisdom. Immunizing littie children would be a good idea whether a market analysis justified its economic value or not. We don't measure the moral rights of children on the same basis as we might calculate the value of a stock or the purchase price of a car.

We could all catalogue areas where the moral sense drives us to resist the calculus of the marketplace. Where public policy is concerned, consider the imperatives of strengthening family life, educating the next generation, and reducing suffering and need among the elderly, the sick, and others who are vulnerable. all are things worth doing whether or not some economist tells us they'll pay off. We do them because our consciences tell us they are right. Allowing narrow economic arguments an unassailable place in the political realm undermines moral claims rooted in any aspirations that defy economic calculation.

THESE SHIFTS IN language are self-reinforcing. Appeals to moral arguments are made to seem "soft" when compared with the supposedly hardheaded assessments of the market. As a result, advocates of a particular moral course gradually stop making moral arguments at all. Or they make them apologetically. "Well, uh, yes, I think it's right to help the poor, but forget that; just think of all that lost productivity if we don't help the poor get more skills." Consider the concession that has just been made: If it could be shown with reasonable certainty that helping the poor does little for productivity-or promotes productivity less than, say, doubling education spending on rich kids-the case is lost.

It turns out that it's not "softheaded" to make moral arguments. What is soft-and also timid and ineffectual-is to be so fearful of looking soft as to abandon the strongest arguments one can make and instead make whatever claims are in fashion at any given time. This has happened again and again. As liberals and progressives lost faith in their own moral compass, they turned to die lodestar of their opponents.

The reluctance of liberals and progressives to make arguments on straightforwardly moral grounds has the corrosive effect of ceding all moral argument to the right. Liberals and Democrats, center and left, are unwilling to turn to the traditional sources of moral guidance-including religious traditions. By default, they leave the impression that tradition and religion always point rightward. The public domain of "moral" talk is narrowed, usually to the personal and the sexual. But morality speaks to the social as well as the personal. The social, in turn, affects the personal.

Lectures about "family values" can be valuable; sometimes they're even necessary. But support for families, especially in a society in which so many mothers and fathers both work outside the home, requires more than talk. How society organizes pay, leave time, health care, and child care powerfully affects the ability of families to cope and stay together. These questions implicate morality no less than do discussions of sex, adultery, abortion, divorce, and homosexuality. Yet if someone says that he or she is going to talk about "morality," most people these days are certain they're about to hear a commentary on sex. The practical questions that face parents, spouses, and children every day about work, the quality of the schools, and putting food on the table are every bit as "moral." But we rarely think of them that way.

THE ENERGY AND commitment of progressive religious people rarely receive the attention they deserve. When the institutions of the mass media bring on "religious voices," their reflex is to talk with representatives of the Religious Right. The assumption is that religion lives on the right. This ignores the majority of religious people who are moderate or liberal in their political views. The African-American church is rarely dealt with as a spiritual entity. African-American preachers are typically dealt with as "civil rights leaders," which leaves aside the fact that their views on social and racial justice are rooted in the scriptures and in commitments that are just as "religious" and "moral" as the views of conservative religious leaders.