Self-Rule: A Cultural History of American Democracy [Paperback]

Robert H. Wiebe (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 15, 1996 | ISBN-10: 0226895637 | ISBN-13: 978-0226895635

Something profoundly important occurred in early 19th century America that came to be called democracy. Since then hundreds of millions of people worldwide have operated on the assumption that democracy exists. Yet definitions of democracy are surprisingly vague and remarkably few reckon with its history. In Self-Rule, Robert Wiebe suggests that only in appreciating that history can we recognize how breathtaking democracy's arrival was, how extraordinary its spread has been, and how uncertain its prospects are.

American democracy arrived abruptly in the 19th century; it changed just as dramatically early in the 20th. Hence, Self-Rule divides the history of American democracy into two halves: a 19th century half covering the 1820s to the present, and a 20th century half, with a major transition from the 1890s to the 1920s between them. As Wiebe explains why the original democracy of the early 19th century represented a sharp break from the past, he recreates in vivid detail the way European visitors contrasted the radical character of American democracy with their own societies. He then discusses the operation of various 19th century democratic publics, including a nationwide public, the People. Finally, he places democracy's white fraternal world of equals in a larger environment where other Americans who differed by class, race, and gender, developed their own relations to democracy.

Wiebe then picks up the history of democracy in the 1920s and carries it to the present. Individualism, once integrated with collective self-governance in the 19th century, becomes the driving force behind 20th century democracy. During those same years, other ways of defining good government and sound public policy shunt majoritarian practices to one side. Late in the 20th century, these two great themes in the history of American democracy—individualism and majoritarianism—turn on one another in modern democracy's war on itself.

Finally, Self-Rule assesses the polarized state of contemporary American democracy. Putting the judgments of sixty-odd commentators from Kevin Phillips and E.J. Dionne to Robert Bellah and Benjamin Barber to the test of history, Wiebe offers his own suggestions on the meaning and direction of today's democracy. This sweeping work explains how the history of American democracy has brought us here and how that same history invites us to create a different future.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Although American democracy in the 19th century excluded white women and all people of color from civic life, it nevertheless was a radical, progressive departure from the European experience, asserts Northwestern University history professor Wiebe. Its hallmarks were an open, popular politics; resistance to institutionalized power; and diffusion of responsibility. This populist democracy, he maintains, was swept away by America's industrial transformation between the 1890s and the 1920s, which created hierarchical divisions between a powerful capitalist "national class," a middle class fixated on local concerns and a multiethnic, unskilled lower class. Twentieth-century American democracy, in Wiebe's unsettling, profound analysis of the decline of popular self-government, has brought a proliferation of pressure groups and lobbies as well as the rise of individualism and consumerism, with millions of Americans indoctrinated to participate in their own marginalizing. To revitalize today's apathetic, atomized citizenry, he calls for "a guerrilla politics of everyday life" that would demand corporate accountability and foster groups with a hand in shaping public policy.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

Northwestern University historian Wiebe asks: What is democracy? How did it arise in the U.S., and what is its future here? Self-Rule addresses these issues two ways: by tracing "the webbing of values and relations that enable a society to function" from 1820 to the present, and, in the book's introduction and conclusion, by judging against this history assessments of the state of democracy in the U.S. issued over the past quarter-century by 60-plus "publicists," philosophers, and social scientists. For Wiebe, the vital element of all democracy is popular self-government; individual self-determination is the defining secondary characteristic of U.S. democracy. Collective and individual self-determination generally reinforced each other in a nineteenth-century democracy limited to white men, but since the 1920s, they have increasingly worked at cross-purposes. This change, "new relations between work and authority," and the "tension between the inherently radical nature of democracy" and efforts to use democratic institutions to override equal participation are Wiebe's central themes. The key obstacles to a revival of popular democracy in the U.S., he argues, are centralization and hierarchy, which began to dominate American life in the transitional 1890^-1920 period, not individualism or group identities, which have historically coexisted with and even strengthened popular self-government in the U.S. Includes rich bibliographic essays. Mary Carroll --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 332 pages
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press (November 15, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0226895637
• ISBN-13: 978-0226895635
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 5.9 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,808,690 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A history of our democracy, February 24, 2005

By 

greg taylor (Portland, Oregon United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Self-Rule: A Cultural History of American Democracy (Paperback)

Robert Wiebe has written a brilliant history of the American meaning of democracy.
Over the years, Wiebe had (he passed away a few years ago) read deeply in democratic theory whether written by philosophers, social scientists or what he calls publicists (what I would call popular commentators- people like Kevin Phillips, Robert Bellah, William Greider, Irving Kristol).
He concluded that most of their writings about democracy had been skewed by a lack of any historical foundation. Their theories had no cultural specificity and no sense of what had worked as opposed to ideas about how democracy "should" work.
This book is the result. He chose about 60 core writings (one by each author with the singular exception of Rawls who is allowed two). The introduction is a very enjoyable summing up of the some of the problems that Wiebe has with these core writings. It comes down to the fact that, whether from the left, right or middle, all of the authors feel that We the People have failed to live up to our responsibility to see it their way. (Please note that Wiebe is much more elegant about how he argues for his point).
Wiebe then launches into his historical corrective. He has three major themes about the history of democracy in this country.
The first theme is based on his assertion that, "societies organize around the rules of who works for whom, and the beneficiaries protect those rules in the name of all that is good in this world and holy in the next" (p.23). Wiebe asserts that there have been two major changes in those rules in our history and that those changes have created three major stages in our democratic history.
The second theme is that our democracy has two major components: the collective and individual or, in another phrasing, popular self-government and individual self-determination (p.9). These components have sometimes worked with each other and sometimes against each other.
The final theme is how the various institutions of democracy (e.g. voting qualifications) have been used to tame or obstruct some of the "excesses of democracy"
Wiebe (I am stating this very baldly) sees the major changes as occurring sometime around the 1820s and the 1930s. In the first case, we moved from a system that was still based on deference to elites in all aspects of our lives. As a people we looked to leaders in our churches, in our local communities and on the national level to represent us, to act in our common interest. Many Americans arrived on these shores legally obligated to their employers. We were a nation of apprentices, indentured servents and tenants. Wiebe's democratic changes began with challenges to that form of work structure. Indentured servitude was challenged in the courts and lost. Apprenticeships began to disappear. After the War of 1812, the Native American no longer had any European power that helped them resist American incursion on their lands. We stole as much land from them as we could including large chunks of Alabama, Georgia and Florida. The U.S. government then sold that land cheaply and in small parcels. As a result, by the 1850s, almost 90% of American farmers owned their own land.
Such self-directed work was reflected in the political realm. The mandate broadened to include all white men. And those white men played the democratic citizen with a fervor throughout the 19th century that has not been matched since.
In some ways, this is the period of American history that Wiebe sees as having been the most democratic. The political power of the time was diffused so there was little chance for effective corruption. White men exerted control locally and nationally. When the discussion broke down, we went to war, i.e., the Civil War. But afterwards, after the brief interlude of Reconstruction, we went back to white men deciding within their own communities how to do things. Please do not read me or Wiebe as saying this was a good thing- it is simply the way it was. The 1930s put an end to all that democracy by establishing a national elite working together with local middle class elites. The national elite was not so much one of money as of values. Wiebe sees this compromise between national and local elites as born of the necessity of the 1930s. The national government determined the shape of policy and the local elites were allowed how to put it in place. Choices were presented as not being about competing values but about the rationality of policies. Such things should be left to the experts, the technocrat.
This particular compromise worked until the 1960s. Previously marginalized groups (African-Americans, women, Native Americans, etc.) began to assert their rights on the streets, through the courts or through Congress. When the national elite institutions like the Warren Court began to challenge the local elites over their control over their own communities then the war of values began again.
This is where Wiebe leaves us. I cannot overstate how more insightful his presentation of the argument is then my summation. I have rarely marked up a book as much as I have marked up this one. His arguments and insights cut across the political spectrum and are fueled by a faith in our ability to decide our own fate as a collective and as individuals. He does not feel that we have to be more educated, more rational, less religious or more serious. Wiebe wants us to simply show up, act and demand control over our lives. His solutions can be summed up in the idea of diffusing decision making. I have serious doubts about how easy he makes some of this sound (I wonder sometimes if it is possible to universalize the rights enumerated in or "emanating" from the Constitution. Yet I know we have to keep trying). But I cannot express how refreshing is Wiebe's attitude and faith in us. This book deserves the widest possible audience and discussion.

2 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Contemporary Democracy in America, March 11, 2004

By 

Eric Chaet (Wisconsin, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Self-Rule: A Cultural History of American Democracy (Paperback)

Toqueville's Democracy in America brought up to date--i.e., post-Mexican War, Civil War, emancipation, Native Americans on reservations, urbanization, industrialization, Spanish War and consequent empire, national and corporate-global economy, incredible immigrations, world wars, New Deal, Cold War, Korean War, Civil Rights Movement, Women's Liberation, Reagan Revolution, Gulf War, etc.--up to the 1990's "seething discontents" and "selfish interests, oblivious to minority rights, passing unjust laws...all unchecked by an overriding vision of the public good or what it might consist of...." Decision-making and those left out of it, "a babel of narrow-minded parochial concerns." Beyond "the radical premise that something terrible had gone wrong in the world," a parade of brilliant insights and a self-help strategy.

For instance, in the 20th century--unlike the USA before 1870, say--newcomers "needn't prove themselves anyone's equal"--they couldn't. They only needed "to find their proper level."

And: Big national government focusing on the economy and military, leaving cultural and ethnic matters to local juries. Ruling opinion, i.e., "ideological habituation," having its effect, "as though instinctual."

Wiebe was a small-d democrat, a disrespecter of those holding power, who risked--knowing the risk--believing in the potential to fulfill the dreams of democracy, liberty, and justice.

Great book.