the sainted Third World and domesticnunderclasses do suffer from the warfare-welfarenstate, the vast bulk of thenbill, economic and cultural, is footednby the American middle class. Capitalism,nto Lasch, has the “ungodly ambitionnto acquire godlike pov/ers overnnature.” Although he does not citenhim in this context, Lasch agrees withnDiderot: “I am convinced that thenindustry of man has gone too far. … Inbelieve there is a limit in civilization, anlimit more conformable to the felicitynof man in general and far less distantnfrom the savage state than is imagined.”nThis is the Green-socialist agendanin a nutshell. Contrast this attitudenwith that of Tertullian, who in thensecond century wrote: “Every territoryn[is now] opened to commerce. Thenmost delightful farmsteads have obliteratednareas formerly waste, plough-landnhas subdued the woods, domestic cattlenhave put to flight the wild beast, barrennsands have become fertile, rocks arenRHETORICnLIBERAL ARTSnA commentary on the quality of publicndebate and public education in the UnitednStates:nLast spring politicians and the medianwere intensively discussing whether thenU.S. might get into a “quagmire” in thenMideast because of the Iraqi refugeenproblem. A survey of a large class ofnfreshman history students at a state universitynrevealed that three-fourths ofnthem had not a clue as to what “quagmire”nmeans.n— Clyde Wilsonn28/CHRONICLESnreduced to soil, swamps are drained,nthe number of cities today exceeds thennumber of isolated huts in formerntimes, islands no longer inspire fear norncrags terror; everywhere people, everywherenorganized communities, everywherenhuman life.”nLasch, an admirer of syndicalismnand guild socialism, also attacks capitalismnfor being essentially immoral.nWhile rejecting Keynes’s personaln”immemorialism,” Lasch in effect embracesnhis equally immoral economics:nmass theft through inflation and othernforms of redistribution. He charges thenfree market with breeding covetousnessn(although human greed seems to havenbeen in abundant supply since thenFall), but he approves the covetousnstate. Lasch also claims that capitalismnstimulates “insatiable demand,” butnwhere is his evidence for this? Surelynthis “demand” is more prevalent still innthe Soviet nomenklatura, let alonenamong our own bureaucracy and specialninterest organizations.nArecovering Marxist, Lasch has hisnown favorite class, which is not thenproletariat but the petty bourgeoisie,nwhom he praises for it’s unique moralnvirtue. He argues that “small proprietors,nartisans, tradesmen, farmers” aren”unlikely to mistake the promised landnof progress for the true and only heaven.”nBut that is not the same as rejectingnthe very idea of material progress, asnLasch does on their behalf How manynmembers of the petty bourgeoisienwould refuse, say, a backyard swimmingnpool or a second car on the ground thatnit would be morally corrupting? Hownmany, in fact, would live happily asnsmall holders in the shadow of thenacademic manor house? Lasch disparagesn”the tendency to want more thannwe need,” but this view is ultimatelyntotalitarian. John Kenneth Galbraith,nfor example, sees all goods that maintainnlife above a subsistence level asn”artificial,” to be taxed away or directlynseized by the state; like Galbraith, Laschnwould allow us only a lower-middleclassnstandard of living.nLasch believes that an economynwhere “every wage earner is a potentialnartisan” or “shopkeeper” is the ideal,nbut complains that today, the “dream ofnsetting up in business for yourself. . .nremains almost universally appealing”nand unachievable. So does the dream ofnnnwriting a 591-page book, but are we tonbemoan a division of labor that does notnmake every man an author? There isnnothing wrong, morally or economically,nin being an employee. To disparagenthis as wage slavery is to besmirch whatnmust be, in an advanced economy, thenprevalent form of work.nAnother economic sin in Lasch’sneyes is advertising, designed “to makenthe consumer an addict, unable to livenwithout increasingly sizable doses ofnexternally provided stimulation.” Heneven blames drug addiction on “thenvery nature of a consumerist economy.”nAside from that silly analogy (soap adsnlead to cocaine?), the advertising ofnbooks and other products provides economicallynvital information to consumers.nAnd what, by the way, is wrongnwith consumption? It is the purpose ofnproduction. But since there will be sonmuch less production as the Laschiannstate expands, advertising will be taboonexcept, presumably, for governmentncommercials. (There will be no shortagenof those.)nIt is all too easy to overemphasize thenmaterial, of course, but that does notnmake general privation a virtue, nor isnthe vice of materialism restricted to thenwell-off. Bums scrounging quarters arenhyper-materialistic, as are people in socialistncountries, who must constantlynfocus on material concerns in order tonsurvive.nUltimately, for Lasch, capitalism failsnbecause it is not familial. The familyncreates “obligations that override considerationsnof personal advantage.” Then”market—no respecter of persons —nreduces individuals to abstractions,nanonymous buyers and sellers.” But thisnmakes no more sense than equatingnsociety with the individual, with you thenfinger and me the toe, both under thenstrict direction of the head. Like everyonenelse who makes the society-asfamilynanalogy, Lasch sees the state asnthe brain. He has apparently nevernvisited Congress.nThe idea of progress, even reasonablenprogress, certainly has its dangers.nAs Paul Elmer More pointed out, it canngenerate a “contemptuous attitude towardsnthe past,” a “restiveness undernany form of discipline or restraint, thenfeeling that one man is as good asnanother,” and “the introduction of ansort of down-at-the-heels laissez-faireninto morals.” Condorcet, for example,n