I cannot count the number of times I've tried to explain to my conservative friends why I feel so strongly about corporate responsibility, both as a practical consideration and a normative manner, but I've never quite managed to effectively convey why it's so important.
Today, I ran across a column by Jim Hightower, in which he puts it precisely right.
In practice, America's historic social contract has established within our huge, diverse and fragile society something essential: a stable middle class. While the Constitution and Bill of Rights are the legal glue of our nation, this contract is the social glue -- it binds us as one people, giving tangible evidence that "we're all in this together." Those who produced this democratic advance were not the founders back in 1776, but our parents and grandparents -- and doing so did not come easily for them.
Sometimes I think that one of the greatest harms we ever did to ourselves was adopting "In God We Trust" as our national motto, relegating "E Pluribus Unum," and all that it represented to the back burner. Instead of being defining ourselves as a family unified by principles based on universal values, we becan to identify ourselves as a community of faith, a particularly unfortunate happenstance given the manner in which, throughout human history, religion has served as a source of disharmony and violence.
When you allow "Out of many, one" and everything it implies to be the centerpoint around which your civic and political life revolves, community and one's obligations - morally and materially - to other members become all important. The values embodied in this approach are the same as those embodied in the notion of the social contract between worker and company which used to hold true in this country.
The ensuing bargain was straightforward: Corporations would get labor, loyalty and productivity in exchange for assuring job and retirement security.
A friend of mine once told me that, in her view, all a boss owed his employees was a paycheck and compliance with federal wage and hours laws. There was no obligation for a boss to treat his employees well. I might be economically maladaptive to do so, but that was all.
That a good-hearted person - and she truly is one of the nicest people you could ask to meet - would hold this view and see nothing wrong with it is a
huge indicator to me of precisely how much our fundamental values have changed over the last thirty years.
Work was still hard and demanding, but the development of our social contract meant that, for the first time, tens of millions could find the American dream within their reach. By no means would you be a millionaire, but you could buy a modest home, have health care for your family, take a vacation and not have to fear retirement -- in other words, have the work ethic fairly rewarded.
Over the years, I've discovered that, in general, one of the most common misperceptions white collar and professional folks have of blue collar workers is of their industry. The common presumption is that blue collar workers, especially one's in unions, are lazy. And, worse, that they are stupid. Growing up in a blue collar family, I found the exact opposite to be true.
Now, painting with too broad a brush would lead to needless and counterproductive romanticization of the working class. There are, of course, bad apples in every bunch. That being given, there is a set of civic values that can be found embodied in the ethical lives of most blue collar households:
Work - If you're going to do a job, you bloody well do it right. Charity - Anyone can end up flat on their face. You could be on your face tomorrow just as easily. So, it's only right that, if someone needs help, you do whatever you can for them. But you never make a big deal out of it or go looking for praise for how nice you are.Patriotism in Action - This isn't putting a placard on your car or flag on your house. You can do those things, of course, but patriotism, in the world I grew up in, means more than that. It means holding true to American values - read the Constitution and the Declaration of Independance if you've forgotten what they are - and serving your community in every way you can, from volunteering at a polling station on election day, to serving in the military, to manning a booth at the local school's fundraiser.Loyalty - To your family, to your team, and to the company. With the expectation that this loyalty will be returned.
Such a contract also enabled working folks like Paulk and Roy to feel positive about America's commitment to the common good, to pride themselves as being a valued part of the economy and the larger community, and to have hope for the next generation. Such feelings are more than touchy-feely niceties -- they determine whether people support the social order. This is why the feelings of workaday folks like Paulk and Roy are a crucial baromenter of America's well-being, and why today's corporate and political elite had better begin tuning in to them. "We're all worried. Everybody is worried," Paulk says of GM's workers. "There are a lot of people that are really mad. They think this is the thing that revolutions are made of."
This is the thing that a lot of people in the white collar and professional classes seem blind to. And I shudder sometimes when I think about the long-term consequences.
Around what shall we gather? Learned from early childhood, the importance of fairness and sharing is central to our becoming social beings. Indeed, these were the basic values behind the social contract, which pledged that loyalty, productivity, cooperation and quality work would be fairly rewarded.
But, if these values aren't expressed in our civic and economic lives, what will tie us together. And how long until our children opt out of what they perceive as a hypocritical society before even entering it? That may seem an odd question, but children are incredibly perceptive when it comes to "do as I say, not as I do."
Until recently, the Wal-Mart model has been taking advantage of low-skilled, low-income workers, but moving that model upward to autos, steel, high-tech, and other industries ensnares highly skilled middle-income workers. There's a big difference between holding people down and knocking them down. Middle-class working families are people who've had a slice of the American pie -- and for them to be told now that their slice will be taken from them and their children is not merely to shred the social contract and throw it in their faces, but to dissolve the social glue that holds our big, sprawling, brawling country together.
This is a critically important point. No society in history that has undergone the upheaval of a revolution came to that pass without some sort of warning. Looking back at early 20th century Russia, at mid-17th century England, and late 18th century France, one is struck by how clear the signs are in retrospect. One cannot help wondering, "How did they miss all of this? How did they not see what was coming and act to avert it?"
For the sake of our Democratic Republic and the continued survival of this glorious experiment in equality, I hope we can be more perceptive than our forebears were.
