Democratic Responsibility: The Politics of Many Hands in America

Democratic Responsibility

NORA HANAGAN

Democratic Responsibility

THE POLITICS OF MANY HANDS IN AMERICA

University of Notre Dame Press

Notre Dame, Indiana

Copyright © 2019 by the University of Notre Dame

Notre Dame, Indiana 46556

undpress.nd.edu

All Rights Reserved

Published in the United States of America

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019021663

ISBN: 978-0-268-10605-8 (hardback)

ISBN: 978-0-268-10608-9 (WebPDF)

ISBN: 978-0-268-10607-2 (Epub)

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To my family

CONTENTS

Preface

Introduction

ONE Resisting the Machine: Henry David Thoreau on Responsibility and Individual Autonomy

TWO Sharing Responsibility: Jane Addams’s Social Ethics

THREE Choosing Justice over Order: Martin Luther King Jr. on Responsibility, Extremism, and Democratic Politics

FOUR Transforming Silence: Audre Lorde on Responsibility, Self-Expression, and Bearing Witness to One Another

FIVE Democratic Responsibility in the Twenty-First Century

Notes

Bibliography

Index

PREFACE

I first became interested in responsibility for many hands problems as an undergraduate at Wesleyan University, as I struggled to understand my own complicity in a misguided war started by a leader for whom I (and a majority of my fellow citizens) did not vote. During my years at Wesleyan, Arash Abizadeh, Donald Moon, and Nancy Schwartz not only inspired my growing interest in political theory but also taught me that political theory can be an important resource for thinking about contemporary political ills. David Morgan taught me to sympathetically interpret the behavior of historical actors and also encouraged me to see economic and political outcomes as the result of both individual behaviors and larger structural processes.

As a graduate student, I found Duke University’s Department of Political Science to be a stimulating and supportive intellectual community. I am grateful to my teachers—Rom Coles, Peter Euben, Michael Gillespie, Ruth Grant, Malachi Hacohen, and Tom Spragens—for exposing me to such a wide range of methodologies and perspectives on democracy. During my time at Duke, I was inspired and challenged by my fellow graduate students: Ali Aslam, Nazli Avdan, Winter Brown, Harriet Baker, James Bourke, Keegan Callahan, Dominique Déry, Amber Díaz Pearson, Stefan Dolgert, Bill English, Laura Grattan, Ben Hertzberg, Alisa Kessel, David McIvor, David Gonzalez Rice, Joel Schlosser, and Nick Troester. Special thanks go to Laura for her professional advice, and to James, David Rice, Joel, and Nick for commenting on very rough drafts. A fellowship from the American Association for University Women funded me during my final year of dissertation writing.

I have benefited immensely from the support of my dissertation committee, which oversaw the project that eventually became this book. From the beginning, Ruth Grant, Michael Gillespie, Mike Lienesch, and Tom Spragens encouraged my unconventional idea of using American thinkers—many of whom are not part of the traditional canon—to explore contemporary philosophical debates about responsibility. Each member of my committee went well above the call of duty. The chapter on Jane Addams was inspired by a conversation I had with Ruth during the very early stages of the project. I have learned a great deal from Michael Gillespie’s Academic Writing Working Group. Michael’s advice about writing—in particular his advice about how to craft a clear and engaging introduction—is always at the back of my mind when I write. His feedback also helped me weave together various threads in early versions of these chapters. Mike Lienesch was crucial in helping me transform this project from a dissertation into a book; he not only gave me the confidence to envision its eventual publication but also read and commented on multiple versions of every chapter. I am also grateful to Mike for pointing me toward Martin Luther King Jr.’s early sermons on responsibility, and for more generally sharing his exhaustive knowledge of American political theory and history with me.

Tom was an exemplary dissertation advisor. In his relationship with me, he embodied his own commitment to autonomy, insisting that my dissertation and subsequent writing reflect my own beliefs. Moreover, while Tom’s commitment to autonomy meant that he never sought to impose his own ideas on my writings, the entire argument of this book rests on his claim that democracy is rooted in multiple, sometimes competing, ideals.

I began revising my dissertation for publication while serving as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s American Democracy Forum. I am grateful to Rick Avramenko, Dan Kapust, and Jimmy Casas Klausen for advice on everything from finding an apartment to communicating with journal editors. John Zumbrunnen was an excellent mentor, who commented on several drafts of the chapter on Jane Addams. I am also grateful to the Jack Miller Center for funding my fellowship.

I finished this book while working at Duke as a visiting assistant professor and program administrator for the American Values and Institutions Program, with financial support from the Thomas W. Smith Foundation. Michael Gillespie—the director of the American Values and Institutions program—continues to be an excellent mentor. My colleagues, Nolan Bennett and Matt Whitt, offered perceptive comments on multiple versions of this manuscript and probed me to think more clearly about both responsibility and democracy. I have had the privilege to get to know a new generation of Duke graduate students, each of whom has offered useful feedback: Samuel Bagg, Eric Cheng, Chris Kennedy, Antong Liu, Alexandra Oprea, Aaron Roberts, Brian ­Spisiak, and Isak Tranvik. My undergraduate research assistants, Kari Barclay and Bre Bradham, were also invaluable.

Molly Lyndon Shanley deserves particular thanks for her encouragement and feedback over the years; I particularly appreciate her detailed comments on the penultimate version of the manuscript. Hollie Mann, James Patterson, Justin Rose, Peter Stillman, Jack Turner, and Joel Winkelman also offered valuable feedback at various stages of the writing process.

I have benefited from comments and questions from audiences at the following places: the American Political Science Association Annual Meeting, the Association for Political Theory Annual Meeting, the Kenan Institute for Ethics Monday Seminar Series, the Midwest Political Science Associate Annual Meeting, the University of Wisconsin American Democracy Forum Conference on Popular Sovereignty, and the Western Political Science Association Annual Meeting.

My editor, Steve Wrinn, was a pleasure to work with. Robyn Kar­kiewicz and Matthew Dowd did an excellent job overseeing the revision and production process. Additionally, I am delighted that my reviewers—Bob Pepperman Taylor and Lida Maxwell—made themselves known to me so that I can give them the credit they deserve for their thoughtful and helpful comments.

I am grateful to Alden Ferro, Katie Lehman, and Kat Selzter for copyediting assistance and to Ryan Denniston for tracking down primary sources.

Parts of this book draw on a previously published article, Democratizing Responsibility: Jane Addams’s Pragmatist Ethics, Polity 45, no. 3 (2013): 347–71. My thanks go to the publisher for permission to reuse this material.

Thanks also to Courtney Brown, Russ Damian, Josh Kaye, Heather Mayer, and Stephanie Schaffer for providing both emotional support and welcome distractions. Over the course of the past few years, my colleagues in the Duke Faculty Union have helped me put some of the ideals articulated into practice, and I am profoundly grateful to them.

My parents, Miriam Cohen and Michael Hanagan, have been a constant source of encouragement and inspiration. They not only fostered my own sense of responsibility for processes that are a source of suffering but also provided examples of teacher-scholars who are passionate about social justice. I am grateful to my mom for sharing her knowledge of the Progressive Era, and to my dad for encouraging me to read the American pragmatists. My dad passed away while I was finishing the project, but his commitment to democracy lives on in these pages. I am also thankful for the support of my sister Julia Hanagan, who responds to many hands problems every day in her work as an attorney. My brother-in-law, Nate Verbiscar Brown, is a welcome addition to the family, as is my nephew, Emmet Michael Hanagan-­Brown.

This book would not have been possible without the love and support of my wife, Melanie Priestman, who taught me the benefits of hiking as a cure for writer’s block and never seemed to doubt that this project—which I have been working on the entire time we have been together—would eventually be finished. Our daughters—Eve and Leah—did not necessarily make it easier to finish the book, but they have made the process even more joyful.

INTRODUCTION

The Problem of Many Hands in American Life

In 2008 the editorial board of the Economist described the series of events leading to government bailouts of major American financial ­institutions as genuinely democratic in nature.¹ By using the term democratic, the editorial board sought to convey that the financial meltdown that almost brought the American economy to its knees was not caused entirely by the actions of a few villainous elites. Rather, the crisis resulted from a series of poor decisions made by numerous individuals, including hundreds of thousands of homeowners who bit off a little more mortgage than they could chew.²

In concluding that the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression was caused by the combined interactions of multiple individuals and institutions, the Economist’s editorial board was surely correct.³ At the same time, this conclusion does not offer a great deal of moral clarity. Efforts to hold agents accountable for events like the Great Recession are subject to what Dennis Thompson has called the problem of many hands.⁴ When everybody is responsible for an outcome, it often seems as though nobody is truly accountable. If all Americans are responsible for the Great Recession, then there is no reason for anybody to feel particularly ashamed of their behavior or to put an end to predatory lending practices, which continue to bury people who take out loans to buy cars or attend school in mountains of debt. There is also no reason why anybody should feel especially compelled to address the long-term consequences of imprudent lending practices. Some of the workers who lost their jobs during the economic crisis have been out of a job for so long that they no longer seem attractive to potential employers, and many people who lost their homes are now struggling to pay soaring rents. Who exactly is responsible for addressing these problems?

Holding all participants accountable for harms caused by processes in which they participate also risks obscuring different degrees of culpability. Numerous actors participated in the chain of events that triggered the financial crisis, including borrowers who defaulted on their mortgages, bankers who made risky loans that they subsequently sold to unsuspecting investors, financial agents who lied about borrower qualifications on loan applications, and regulators who failed to supervise dicey financial transactions. Both the political leaders who de­regulated the banking industry and the voters who put them into office also helped create a climate that encouraged excessive risk. Describing the subprime mortgage crisis as a shared responsibility ignores the reality that some of these actions were more blameworthy than others, as well as the fact that some people suffered more than others. Though the Economist is correct that both homeowners and bankers share responsibility for the subprime mortgage crises, this fact frequently functions to obscure the extent to which the former have suffered far more in the long run than the latter. It likewise obscures the reality that African Americans and people with less education have suffered dis­proportionately from long-term unemployment in the wake of the financial crises.⁵

Moreover, not all of the behaviors that contributed to the crisis were blameworthy. People who lied on mortgage applications or who knowingly rated residential mortgage-backed securities as safe investments even though they were filled with risky loans are surely deserving of blame. At the same time, expecting homeowners to understand the risks of adjustable rate mortgages is unrealistic given that many of the people selling the mortgages failed to understand the risks. In a nation that exalts homeownership and directly incentivizes it, it is difficult to be too hard on individuals for striving to achieve one of the most important components of the American dream and for assuming that the banks’ approval of their mortgage applications meant that they would be able to meet their financial commitments.

When discussing problems such as the financial crisis that are the result of many hands, it may be tempting to abandon the concept of responsibility altogether. This temptation should be resisted. To be sure, there is little point in trying to identify and either punish or shame all of the people whose poor decisions contributed to the financial crisis. While criminal or particularly reckless behavior is certainly deserving of punishment, assessing the extent to which millions of mortgage brokers, homeowners, developers, lenders, and investment bankers behaved in a blameworthy manner and determining an appropriate punishment would be a massive and futile undertaking. Going forward, however, a much greater sense of responsibility on the part of citizens is needed to address the lingering effects of the Great Recession and to ensure that dodgy behaviors do not once again bring the economy to the brink of collapse.

From structural racism to climate change to declining opportunities for social mobility, many of the most pressing challenges facing twenty-first-century societies are caused by the combined interactions of many individuals. It is hard to imagine how these problems will be addressed without a much greater sense of responsibility on the part of citizens. Furthermore, in the absence of a sense of shared responsibility, it is all too easy to hold victims of unjust processes accountable for their own misfortunes. Those who view food stamp recipients as idle free riders often fail to recognize that their own actions sustain an economic system that does not provide employment, let alone a living wage, to everybody who is willing to work. When it comes to outcomes that result from many hands, responsibility is a concept that is difficult to apply but impossible to live without.

The existence of problems that are caused by the combined interactions of multiple individuals and institutions is not, however, exclusive to an age of globalization and hyperconnectivity. Indeed, American reformers and activists like Henry David Thoreau, Jane Addams, Martin Luther King Jr., and Audre Lorde have long held their fellow citizens accountable for harms caused by many hands, including chattel slavery, sweatshop labor, and white supremacy.⁶ Like the Economist’s editorial board, these reformers regarded many hands problems as democratic in the sense that they are not perpetuated entirely by elites. They also, however, encourage us to consider other connections between democracy and many hands problems. First, they demonstrate that we cannot live up to our democratic ideals unless we take some responsibility for harms in which we are embedded. Second, they suggest that democratic ideals require us to resolve many hands problems in a particular manner; democrats cannot sanction solutions devised entirely by elites.

Finally, these reformers call attention to the ways in which democracy intensifies many hands problems. Democratic institutions dramatically increase the number of people who are implicated in political decisions. Meanwhile, faith in majority opinion and affection for majoritarian institutions can make it difficult for democratic citizens to recognize the extent to which they are implicated in harm. The fact that democrats cannot sanction paternalistic endeavors in which elites solve problems on others’ behalf also complicates efforts to address many hands problems. It is unfair to expect innocent victims of unjust ­processes—such as the construction worker who lost her job during the financial crisis or the residents of impoverished island nations whose survival is threatened by global warming—to take responsibility for problems that they did not cause. And yet adult victims of injustice must take responsibility for reforming the processes that harmed them in order to avoid paternalistic outcomes that are inconsistent with democratic ideals.

Drawing on lessons learned from close readings of Thoreau, ­Addams, King, and Lorde, I articulate a distinctly democratic approach to responsibility. The advantages of my approach are partly rhetorical. Given widespread support for democratic values, a theory of shared responsibility that emphasizes democratic ideals is particularly capable of persuading citizens to accept responsibility for problems that are caused by the combined interactions of multiple individuals and institutions. A democratic approach to shared responsibility is also needed to confront aspects of the many hands problem that are unique to democratic societies. Last, even though the democratic requirement that shared problems must be addressed in an inclusive manner often complicates efforts to address harms caused by many hands, in the long run, inclusive solutions to many hands problems are more likely to be effective.

In addition to informing contemporary debates about responsibility, this book seeks to intervene in ongoing conversations about the meaning of democracy. Commitment to democratic principles, I argue, entails more than voting, obeying the law, and expressing a general concern for the common good. It also entails coming to see ourselves as having a responsibility to address harms, such as climate change, that we neither intended nor created. This in turn means that we must agitate for structural change and listen to people whose life experiences are different from our own.

This introductory chapter begins with an overview of the philosophic literature on the problem of many hands in which I both highlight important contributions made by philosophers like Larry May, Iris Marion Young, and Jade Schiff and lament the lack of scholarly attention paid to the ways in which democratic ideals might inform our response to problems caused by many hands. After offering an overview of the relationship between democracy and responsibility, I explain why historical American thinkers offer particular insight into this relationship. In the final two sections, I provide an overview of the theory of democratic responsibility that I defend in the final chapter of this study and briefly discuss how this theory might apply to the financial crisis.

PHILOSOPHY AND THE PROBLEM OF MANY HANDS

The liability model of responsibility—in which individuals are held ­accountable only for outcomes that are caused by blameworthy individual behavior—is the dominant approach to responsibility in Western philosophy and culture.⁷ Marion Smiley finds some version of this ­approach to responsibility at work in thinkers as diverse as Aristotle, ­Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and Immanuel Kant. Aristotle and Augustine, for example, assumed the existence of external standards established by either a political community or an omnipotent God that can be used to determine blameworthiness. Kant, on the other hand, believed that individuals should be capable of independently differentiating between moral and immoral actions by applying universal moral laws that are recognizable to all rational creatures.⁸ All of these ­thinkers, and indeed most thinkers in the Western political tradition, adhered to some form of the liability model.⁹

When confronted with the horrors wrought by the Nazi regime, however, a number of mid-twentieth-century philosophers concluded that an alternative to the liability model was needed. To be sure, there were many people—such as those who were convicted at the Nuremberg trials—who deliberately committed acts of genocide and who therefore could be held responsible for Nazi atrocities according to the liability model. At the same time, the liability model let the millions of people who remained silent while government officials rounded up and killed their fellow citizens off the hook because they did not physically harm anyone. It likewise absolved soldiers and government officials not directly involved in the Final Solution of any responsibility for the crimes committed by the regime they helped sustain. The idea that citizens who remained silent as their government committed genocide bore no responsibility for Nazi war crimes was troubling to philosophers who sought to encourage individuals to actively resist regimes that failed to respect basic human rights. It also troubled those who believed that the post-1945 German government should make reparations to Holocaust survivors.

Jean-Paul Sartre’s Being and Nothingness—written in the early forties in Nazi-occupied France while Sartre was participating in the Resistance—points toward an alternative to the liability model. According to Sartre, we are responsible for the social processes and in­stitutions in which we participate. If I am mobilized in a war, he explained, this war is my war; it is in my image and I deserve it.¹⁰ It is worth noting that Sartre departed from the liability model by separating responsibility and causality. Sartre held citizens who were drafted into the army responsible not because their actions were a direct cause of violence but rather because they had chosen to support the war effort. Assuming responsibility for our choices, Sartre explained, is essential for human dignity and freedom. Given the context in which he was writing, it is likely that Sartre also hoped that individuals who held themselves responsible for the institutions and processes in which they participated might refuse to be involved in the Nazi war effort.

In response to postwar debates about whether ordinary German citizens bore responsibility for the Holocaust, the political philosopher Hannah Arendt also called for a new kind of responsibility. Her ­alternative—which she referred to as political responsibility—­focused on communal membership rather than individual choice. Political responsibility, as explained by Arendt, differs from both moral and legal responsibility in that it does not result from blameworthy behavior but rather from membership in a political community. As members of political communities, individuals are responsible for harms that have been committed by people acting on the community’s behalf.¹¹ Unlike moral or legal responsibility, political responsibility is not accompanied by guilt, shame, or punishment, as all of these things are associated with blameworthy behavior. Rather, political responsibility is accompanied by an obligation to remedy harms that have been committed in one’s name.

More recent efforts to develop an alternative to the liability model are less concerned with state-sponsored evils and more concerned with injustices perpetuated by civil society, such as global sweatshop labor and hate crimes against minority groups. These efforts are nevertheless significantly indebted to Sartre, Arendt, and other mid-twentieth-­century thinkers who sought to hold citizens accountable for complicity in Nazi crimes.

Larry May’s influential account of shared responsibility draws on the idea—espoused by Sartre and other existentialists—that the ability to take responsibility for our choices and actions is what makes human freedom and dignity possible.¹² May, however, insists that individuals are responsible not only for their own choices but also for the impact that their words and actions have on others in their community. For example, an individual who espouses racist sentiments should not be held blameless if those who hear her words commit violent crimes against members of the race she has depicted as inferior and prone

to criminality.¹³ In situations where the combined interactions of multiple individuals result in harm, May concludes, responsibility must be shared. Rather than being evenly distributed among all participants, however, responsibility should be distributed based on the degree of control particular agents exerted over the outcome and the extent to which they engaged in blameworthy behavior. Lesser degrees of responsibility may be accompanied by shame, regret, or outrage, as opposed to guilt; even these lesser degrees of responsibility should be sufficient to motivate individuals to address political and social harms in which they are implicated.¹⁴

As Iris Marion Young points out, one of the limitations of May’s approach is that it cannot easily be applied to structural injustices.¹⁵ Problems such as inequalities in the public school system, she observes, are shared responsibilities in the sense that they are caused by the combined interactions of multiple individuals. They differ from the outcomes that May describes in that the behaviors that contribute to them are not necessarily blameworthy. When affluent parents shun neighborhoods that have poor or overcrowded public schools, they make it even harder for those neighborhoods to have a sufficient tax base to meet the costs of a decent educational system. They also drive up housing prices in areas with effective public schools. As Young sees it, however, blaming parents for wanting to provide a decent education to their children is unjustified.¹⁶

In order to deal with circumstances in which May’s model is inadequate, Young proposes a social connection model of responsibility, which says, individuals bear responsibility for structural in­justices because they contribute to the processes that produce unjust outcomes.¹⁷ This model is influenced by Arendt’s account of political responsibility. While Young embraces Arendt’s effort to distinguish guilt and responsibility, she has reservations about Arendt’s particular linking of responsibility and political membership. For Arendt, political responsibility is tied to membership in a particular political community; German citizens bore responsibility for the Holocaust because it was committed by people acting on their behalf. Arendt’s understanding of political responsibility thus cannot be applied to harmful processes—like global sweatshop labor—that transcend national borders. Young therefore concludes that responsibility for injustice should not be linked to national membership but rather should stem from belonging together with others in a system of interdependent processes of cooperation and competition through which we seek benefits and aim to realize projects.¹⁸

Young’s approach to responsibility is also different from Arendt’s in that it is forward looking. By this, Young means that the point is not to compensate for the past, as Arendt wants Germans to do for the Holocaust.¹⁹ When it comes to thinking about responsibility for structural injustice, Young explains, past behavior matters only so far as it can help us understand how we are connected to ongoing harms, and why we therefore have an obligation to work together to transform the processes that have caused those harms.²⁰

Young’s social structural model speaks to twenty-first century concerns about how political actors should respond to a wide variety of ongoing harms that are caused by complex processes, over which individuals have little control. According to Jade Schiff, however, Young offers little guidance as to how recognition of complicity in the suf­fering of others might become a practically meaningful part of our everyday experience.²¹ Drawing on Sartre’s discussion of how bad faith led to anti-Semitism in Europe and Arendt’s account of the Nazi functionary Adolf Eichmann who argued that he couldn’t be blamed for his role in the Holocaust because