This book is a searing indictment of America's
social morality. In successive chapters it exposes recent cases of corruption,
such as the electrical equipment industry's price-fixing conspiracy of 1951-59,
the antics of wheeler-dealers like Billie Sol Estes and Bobby Baker, the TV quiz
show scandals of 1958, and such widespread activities as income-tax chiseling,
business bribery and kickbacks, industrial espionage, and the use of
executive-suite call-girls as salesmanship gimmicks.
These are all described by Cook in a
vividly-written volume, replete with direct-discourse conversations and exact
monetary details. The recital is fascinating, startling, alarming. There is no
doubt that the stories are true and that they give only a part of the picture.
Nevertheless, I have an impression that the picture shown, of a society so
deeply corrupted in its essential nature as to be beyond salvation, is
misleading.
It is misleading, it seems to me, on several
grounds. In the first place, Cook is talking about organizational activities,
about how people behave as occupants of positions in our complex world. He is
not talking about the behavior of persons as individuals in their private
personal relationships. And it seems to me that these latter are, despite Cook's
indictment, becoming increasingly honest, generous, and kindly, above all in
America. This has been noted, again and again, by foreign visitors, especially
Europeans, who come here with expectations based on their experiences with
American exports of movies, TV shows, magazines and books or with, perhaps, some
contact with the behavior of middle-class Americans abroad. In case after case,
such Europeans are surprised to discover that we are more relaxed, more
thoughtful, less violent, and lass materialistic than they had expected.
Nature of the Problem
The reason for such misconceptions rests on the
difficulty any observer has in determining which manifestations of a culture are
evidence of the culture's real nature and which are compensations for lacks or
deficiencies in the culture's nature, or in the life patterns of the society's
members. Much of the sex and violence in the more public aspects of American
life are compensations for the lack of these things in the increasingly humdrum
and nonviolent lives of ordinary Americans. And, in the same way, many of the
social practices which so arouse Cook's alarm arise from the lack of challenge
to the adventuresome
qualities of man in ordinary living.
In the second place, the activities described
here arouse the alarm of Cook and his readers, and are even condemned by the men
whom he describes as doing them in this book, because they are parts of the
patterns of our lives and are not evidence of widespread internal moral
corruption. As long as perpetrators of corruption unite in decrying corruption,
the society is not beyond salvation.
This volume is a far better book than a casual
glance at it might indicate. It is deeply researched, documented by notes, and
is brilliantly written with a welcome spice of ironic humor. Its author is
obviously a very well-informed and intelligent man, who penetrates beneath the
surface and is deeply concerned with social and moral implications. The book
should be read, not only for its clear exposition of scandals which inevitably
remain fragmented and confused in the minds of even the most careful newspaper
readers, but because it does ask the right questions about the underlying
implications of these events.
Understanding Events
To Cook as to most of his readers, these
implications will appear shocking. But I submit that much of this shock rests on
the fact that we try to understand the events of today in terms of conceptual
and legal ideas and assumptions of an earlier historic period. The world in
which the individual now finds himself has two quite distinct aspects. On the
one hand, we have changes going on in the material world, the manipulation of
resources into wealth, with its drastic transformation of the observable
environment, and its immense outpouring of goods. On the other hand, we have a
parallel, but not identical, flow of claims on those physical objects, claims
which may be specific, as titles and deeds, or which may be general, as money
is. These two, the flows of wealth and the flows of claims on that wealth, are
not only different, but they are constantly changing. Scattered throughout these
patterns of flowing objects and claims are individual persons seeking to divert
the flows of claims so that they can increase their control over objects. Note
that I do not say that they are seeking to increase their ownership of objects.
About this situation Cook makes a number of
assumptions which, however true they may have been at one time, are now rapidly
ceasing to be true. He makes no real distinction between the flows of wealth and
the flows of claims on wealth, although he is constantly amazed when they do not
coincide. Secondly, he is still in an old-fashioned way concerned that ownership
of wealth is no longer as significant as the control and use of wealth. And he
assumes that the individuals trapped in this double network of flows are free to
act differently from the way they do act, when, in most cases, if they acted
much differently, they would either be removed from their positions or the flows
of claims on which they live would be diverted away from them.
Cook, for example, is amazed that Billie Sol
Estes, who lived like a millionaire, had debts much larger than his assets, so
that he was not a rich man at all.
In the same way, Bobby Baker never had any
money to put into any deal, business or personal, yet large amounts of other
persons' money and property flowed through his area of usage.
Moral Issue
Cook treats all these matters as moral issues,
sees our world as deep in the mire of moral corruption, and calls, without much
hope, for moral reform.
No reform will be possible until the situation
is faced in the terms in which it really functions, not as moral issues but as
the patterns of relationships in which people actually live. These patterns
obviously need to be reformed so that rewards conform more closely to social
contributions and so that personal responsibility is increased in both. Failure
to make reforms in this direction rests at the door of conditions in our society
which Cook hardly considers. They are three: The mass media, such as the press,
broadcasting, and magazines, which are rewarded for their advertising rather
than for their efforts to inform the people of the actualities of today's world,
and which, accordingly, continue to portray that world as personal and
individual activities in obsolete social contexts and expressed in obsolete
concepts and words; (2) the whole legal profession, including the judiciary, who
are trained and practice in out-of-date concepts and whose rewards are increased
because the obsolescent nature of their concepts increases their work and their
incomes; and (3) the corruption of legislative bodies, from the Congress through
the states down to municipal councils, who are prevented from doing what is
needed to improve the situation by the fact that their campaign expenses can be
obtained most easily from those persons whose incomes reflect the existing
objectionable patterns.
Cook comes closest to these aspects of the situation in his chapter
on Bobby Baker and in his remarks about what happened to income-tax reform
(especially the curtailment of expense accounts), honesty in labeling, in the
whole morass of utilization of national resources, especially those concerned
with petroleum and natural gas, above all with the 27 1/2 percent depletion
allowance, the federally-financed superhighway construction program, non-price
business competition, and other aspects of today's world. As Cook says (page
230): "Since man in so much of his life no longer deals with fellow men but with
a vast and
impersonal them, his ethics based on a code of man-to-man honor no longer apply;
each to himself becomes a David pitted against the all-powerful Goliath of
them—and, in this climate, no means of getting his, of getting even, carries
with it a moral stain."
— CARROLL QUIGLEY
Scan of original review
