The Cultural Contradictions of Conservatism (and Liberalism)

Jacob Heilbrunn talks to Daniel Bell about our “endless culture wars.” Bell’s most famous work, The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism, argued that capitalism sows the seeds of its own destruction by engendering a libertine consumerism that undermines the bourgeois values necessary to its own success. Bell was also one of the famed “New York Intellectuals” and co-founded The Public Interest with Irving Kristol.

Don’t call him a “neocon” though:

Bell gets tagged as a dreaded neocon by the left, in part because he started the Public Interest with Kristol, a magazine that debunked liberal shibboleths about the welfare state, among other things. But as Bell said to me with some exasperation, he remains “a socialist in economics, a liberal in politics, and a conservative in culture.”

In fact, Bell blames the conservative agenda of the GOP for much of our cultural degradation:

Few things infuriate him more than the GOP’s moral contradictions, as its concerns over cultural decay bump against the needs of big business. For instance, Bush sponsors a sexual abstinence program for teens while gliding over the fact that his biggest media booster, the Fox network, airs such titillating shows as “The O.C.”

It’s also the case that conservatives who preach moral values readily turn a blind eye to ethical violations committed by corporations. Despite plenty of evidence that the accounting industry was running amok, Bush acceded to reform only when the calls for it became overwhelming. Now he should be denouncing the outrageous compensation package slated for Franklin D. Raines, Fannie Mae’s outgoing chief executive, under fire in an accounting scandal — but once again, the silence is deafening.

The Democrats don’t get a free pass either:

…They claim to do a better job in holding corporations and Wall Street accountable, but their rights-based platform has made them loathe to back societal limits on much of anything. Even now, as the Democratic Leadership Council pushes a moral values agenda, the backlash against it is mounting.

Heilbrunn concludes:

With social conservatives, libertarians and neocons pushing conflicting agendas, the unity of the GOP is more fragile than it may appear. One of these days a canny Democrat will link the voters’ demand for moral values to their anger over corporate excesses to call for a new age of reform. For that to occur, however, the Democrats will have to admit that culture matters.

(link via Godspy)