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Who Killed Civil Society?: The Rise of Big Government and Decline of Bourgeois Norms Hardcover – September 10, 2019

by Howard A. Husock (Author)

4.3 37 ratings

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Billions of American tax dollars go into a vast array of programs targeting various social issues: the opioid epidemic, criminal violence, chronic unemployment, and so on. Yet the problems persist and even grow. Howard Husock argues that we have lost sight of a more powerful strategy―a preventive strategy, based on positive social norms.

In the past, individuals and institutions of civil society actively promoted what may be called “bourgeois norms,” to nurture healthy habits so that social problems wouldn’t emerge in the first place. It was a formative effort. Today, a massive social service state instead takes a reformative approach to problems that have already become vexing. It offers counseling along with material support, but struggling communities have been more harmed than helped by government’s embrace. And social service agencies have a vested interest in the continuance of problems.

Government can provide a financial safety net for citizens, but it cannot effectively create or promote healthy norms. Nor should it try. That formative work is best done by civil society.

This book focuses on six key figures in the history of social welfare to illuminate how a norm-promoting culture was built, then lost, and how it can be revived. We read about Charles Loring Brace, founder of the Children’s Aid Society; Jane Addams, founder of Hull House; Mary Richmond, a social work pioneer; Grace Abbott of the federal Children’s Bureau; Wilbur Cohen of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare; and Geoffrey Canada, founder of the Harlem Children’s Zone―a model for bringing real benefit to a poor community through positive social norms. We need more like it.

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“Most decent people on both sides of the political spectrum nowadays recognize that the widening gap between rich and poor is a grave threat to American democracy. What is to be done? For too long, too many on the left and the right have been caught in a false debate about whether the problem is ‘really’ economic and structural or ‘really’ cultural and normative. The debate is false because the answer is: both. Howard Husock has long been a thoughtful leader in this discussion, emphasizing the role of cultural norms. In this new, multilayered, and accessible book he sketches thoughtful portrayals of the work of American social reformers in order to help us discern the path forward.”
―Robert D. Putnam, Research Professor at the Harvard Kennedy School and author of Bowling Alone and Our Kids

“Howard Husock has offered a powerful diagnosis of the dysfunction at the heart of our social ills. He shows that healthy norms are essential to a healthy society, and that the institutions that might form such norms have grown weak in our time. But more important, he shows what might be done about it. This is an essential read for understanding contemporary America.
―Yuval Levin, Editor of National Affairs and author of The Fractured Republic

“Howard Husock’s new book exhumes the bourgeois norms of personal and social uplift that preceding generations championed but that our current bureaucratic systems stifle and even discredit. By portraying the institutions these civil society pioneers built, and by spotlighting some of their successors’ work today, Husock argues that recovering and selling these norms―'preaching what we practice,’ in Charles Murray’s apt phrase―is necessary for sustained progress for our most disadvantaged Americans and thus for the quality of our community life. I think he’s right.”
―Peter H. Schuck, Emeritus Professor, Yale Law School; Scholar in Residence, NYU Law School; author of Why Government Fails So Often and One Nation Undecided

About the Author

Howard Husock is vice president for policy research at the Manhattan Institute, where he is also a contributing editor to City Journal. He is the author of America’s Trillion-Dollar Housing Mistake (Ivan R. Dee, 2003), and Philanthropy Under Fire (Encounter Books, 2013). He is a longtime print and television journalist and documentary filmmaker, whose work for WGBH, Boston won three Emmy Awards. In 1987–2006 he served as director of case studies in public policy and management at the Harvard Kennedy School, where he was also an adjunct lecturer in public management and a fellow at the Hauser Center on Civil Society. He was a member of the board of directors of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (2013–18).

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Encounter Books (September 10, 2019)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 176 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1641770589
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1641770583
Reading age ‏ : ‎ 18 years and up
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 14.4 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 0.9 x 9.1 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #814,195 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #437 in Poverty
- #555 in Government Social Policy
- #1,371 in Social Work (Books)

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Jon
Government can not be the end all and do all of meeting societal needs.
Reviewed in the United States on October 17, 2019
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This was an excellent history on how the way we look at, treat and talk about true human need in this country. I liked the historical perspective and illumination of the challenges currently presented. On a local level, it challenges our thought process on how needs are met and the expectation placed upon the recipient of the assistance. There is a governmental function in this need, but not to the exclusion of private assistance. I liked the author's analysis at the end of the book.

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Mike Mac
Private Philanthropy to Government - A historical Perspective
Reviewed in the United States on January 13, 2020
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Fabulous history of private, then public programs that assisted poor and immigrants to assimilate into country and learn the skills, behaviors and US history to survive and thrive. I will leave it to the reader which approach - private philanthropy or government spending - works better. But you will understand how and why it started, how it evolved and whether it’s working today. Fascinating history!

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Richard Kirk
How Social Work Became a Pit of Despair: From Moral Norms to Entitlements
Reviewed in the United States on December 26, 2019
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The Manhattan Institute’s Howard Husock begins this overview of social services in America by considering the “biggest mystery” of his childhood, namely, “how my father survived his.” Husock’s dad was an orphan living in a scruffy Philadelphia neighborhood during the Great Depression. The answer his dad provided was “The Agency,” a private, largely volunteer organization that stressed norms over material provisions -- a message often delivered to the elder Husock by a widow who rode in a chauffeured Cadillac across town to encourage principles like self-control, honesty, and good manners.

By contrast, today’s social service message is that “institutional barriers are to blame” for the plight of America’s “marginalized” individuals. In the words of a recent textbook, “Social Workers recognize the extent to which a culture’s structures and values may oppress, marginalize, alienate, or create or enhance privilege and power.” Consequently, social workers should “engage in practices that advance social and economic justice.” Husock’s book documents this fateful transition from the structure and philosophy of “The Agency” to massive government programs that focus on material provision, social issues, and the amelioration of existing maladies (e.g. drug addiction and broken families) rather than the formation of character traits that prevent those maladies from arising.

Five prominent figures are employed to chart Husock’s road toward our cultural Hades -- a path paved, to be sure, with good intentions: Charles Loring Brace, Jane Addams, Mary Richmond, Grace Abbott, and Wilbur Cohen. A sixth figure, Geoffrey Canada, provides a contemporary example of the type of organization Husock hopes will flourish to help reestablish “Middle-Class Values” among a burgeoning social services population.

The norm-centered focus of the Juvenile Aid Society that saved Husock’s father was pioneered in the latter half of the 19th century by Charles Brace’s Children’s Aid Society which began its privately funded mission of instilling the values of education and civility in thousands of newsboys, bootblacks, and other waifs who roamed the streets of New York City. Beyond supplying lodging homes and living necessities, Brace sought to influence the character of children who possessed no vision of a better future. Brace thus became a “missionary of bourgeois norms” that provided the means for achieving a good life. A major aspect of Brace’s effort involved “orphan trains” that relocated 120,000 children to Midwest farm families -- not as servants but as family members who would learn the same morals and habits as their parents. Brace, who died in 1890, noted that “our whole influence is moral” and shunned assistance “which doesn’t touch habits of life and … character.”

Much better known than Brace is Jane Addams, founder of Chicago’s Hull House. Addams’ approach to social work began, as it did with Brace, with modeling and encouraging behavioral norms and habits for the poor immigrants with whom she lived. Over the years, however, Addams focused more attention on government-funded assistance and political issues (a living wage, workplace safety, child labor laws, etc.). Indeed, in 1935 Addams won the Nobel Peace Prize for her advocacy of that expansive goal. Meanwhile, the task of instilling positive character traits began to be derided by the crusading Addams as “incorrigibly bourgeois.”

Mary Richmond, who herself (unlike Brace and Addams) came out of difficult circumstances, attempted to preserve the character-focused approach of Brace while also emphasizing the need for significant material assistance. Her “friendly visit” vision of social work stressed professional “diagnostic” methods employed largely by trained volunteers working with private organizations. This non-governmental approach that retained an emphasis on moral norms was abandoned completely by the Abbott sisters, Grace and Edith, both University of Chicago graduates, Hull House residents, and fervent advocates for government assistance programs. The capstone of their efforts was the Social Security Act of 1935 that included an Aid to Dependent Children component.

The final nail in the coffin of a character-centered vision of social work was administered by Wilbur Cohen, “the consummate federal bureaucrat” who earned the sobriquet “Mr. Social Security.” Cohen, who had no close connection with the population affected by his policies, saw poverty purely as a product of economic circumstances whose solution was to be found in a variety of “social insurance” programs. Cohen’s lasting legacy was achieved via LBJ’s massive Great Society welfare system that focused overwhelmingly on providing material “entitlements” and dealt with existing, often intractable, pathologies. But to Cohen’s dismay, “social services increased along with benefit levels,” and many of the problems those material benefits were intended to solve (e.g. illegitimacy) increased dramatically.

Husock’s new model for social services follows the structure and philosophy of Geoffrey Canada whose Harlem Children’s Zone project grew out of his own experience of the violence and cynicism inculcated in youngsters by hardened mentors who saw the system rigged against them and scoffed at the foolishness of seeking anything beyond immediate gratification. Canada’s privately-funded project focuses on young kids not yet corrupted by the negative influences around them and has grown from one block to more than a hundred. His urban oasis provides a stark example of a clean, graffiti-free neighborhood and demonstrates what can be achieved by embracing “middle class values” such as self-discipline and education.

While Husock’s overview of social work’s abandonment of moral norms is instructive, the hope he places in admirable efforts like Canada’s seems unrealistic. As Husock himself admits, the world of social work represents only a fraction of the cultural input that shapes individual perspectives and habits. And Canada’s work, even multiplied by dozens of similar projects, represents a small fraction of the services delivered by state and federal government agencies. Put bluntly, the cultural input of all social service workers pales in comparison with that of mass media. Husock mentions rap music in one sentence, noting its banishment from Canada’s model community. Yet rap is a cultural item whose negative influence by itself dwarfs all the unquestionably positive work done by Canada and similar projects. Now add to rap the drumbeat of cynicism promoted by Hollywood, academics, politicians, and the mainstream media. While morally-focused social projects are certainly saviors for the thousands they touch, the idea that such projects will significantly move the broader cultural needle in the same direction is naïve.

Attorney General William Barr’s recent Notre Dame speech accurately summarized the massive secularist attack on religion and traditional values over the last half-century – an attack that includes but goes well beyond the world of social services. The success of that attack is poignantly summarized by Planned Parenthood’s indignant response to New York City’s “moralistic” campaign to discourage teen pregnancy: “It’s not teen pregnancies that cause poverty, but poverty that causes teen pregnancies.” This anti-moral economic determinism is now deeply engrained in American culture.

Without a “fundamental transformation” of the mass media’s constant condemnation of personal moral judgments – without a drastic change in its lionizing of hedonistic pursuits that “push the envelope” beyond every prior boundary of decency – without a rejection of its reflexive division of society into privileged and victim groups -- without a massive intellectual and moral shift on the part of educators, the entertainment industry, prominent intellectuals, and folks in electronic communications, the prospect for significant improvement in the culture at large, including its ever-expanding social services arena, seems bleak.

Richard Kirk is a freelance writer living in Southern California whose book Moral Illiteracy: "Who's to Say?" is also available on Kindle

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OldFish
Good history
Reviewed in the United States on October 26, 2019
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Excellent history of how we got into this government organized service provider business mess. "When you are up to your neck in alligators, it is hard to remember that the original project was to drain the swamp." BOHICA

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God's Child
Niece loves it
Reviewed in the United States on March 20, 2022
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Niece loves 💘 💕 it. Very giftable

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Peter Enns
The Book I Have Been Waiting For?
Reviewed in the United States on September 14, 2019
176 pages considering how bourgeois norms can make the poor richer, the rich more engaged and communities more vibrant: Is this the book I was looking for when I bought Dierdre McClosky's 3000 page Bourgeois Virtues/Dignity/Equality trilogy?
(Note: This is a comment, not a review. I haven't read the book.)

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Tom Accola
Great informative book.
Reviewed in the United States on September 27, 2019
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Thought provoking.

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Richard B. Schwartz
Good as Far as it Goes
Reviewed in the United States on January 22, 2020
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In COMING APART Charles Murray argued that if one studies large statistical aggregates it is clear that following middle-class values leads to greater happiness and greater prosperity. These values include (but are not limited to) patriotism, monogamy, religious faith, education, civic involvement, hard work, deferred gratification and thrift. His study was done completely within the framework of white society but he argues that the same holds true if you confine the research to the experience of black society. Hence, one of his conclusions: those who hold these values should promulgate them and encourage others to inculcate them. While some see this as patronizing or condescending or 'blaming the victim' the alternative is to keep these values as a closely-guarded secret and let one's fellow citizens go to hell in a handbasket while 'we' thrive.

That notion is the impetus behind WHO KILLED CIVIL SOCIETY? The author traces how we got from a benevolent/philanthropic mode which inculcated values to one which purports to solve problems. One of those problems that remains unsolved, however, is the fact that the war on poverty has been lost. We have invested vast sums in remedying human suffering but have, in many cases, instead encouraged dependency. This does not mean that all of our current welfare state programs are failures, but they do need to be calibrated to counter dependency. They should not be constructed in such a way as to encourage it.

The book is then a history of benevolent/philanthropic movements, beginning with Charles Loring Brace's Children's Aid Society and going up to Geoffrey Canada's Harlem Children's Zone. Jane Addams' Hull House is a transitional example, since it begins as a project to inculcate values but ends as an enterprise that looks more like something of which Lyndon Johnson would approve. The historiography is depressing, as we see more and more resources bringing fewer and fewer results, but the Geoffrey Canada example at the end provides some hope that we might be able to recover the strengths of past efforts and develop programs (largely through private giving) that bring positive results.

The book succeeds in all of these efforts. If I have a single criticism it is that too little attention is paid, overall, to politics. The so-called Great Society programs were conceived by LBJ as a way to secure the long-term support of a voting bloc and the current opposition to charter schools by the NY mayor is clearly part of an effort to secure support from the teachers' unions which oppose them. In all matters such as this there are dedicated, idealistic, well-meaning individuals and callous power-grubbers. The author makes the point that Washington generally complicates things for the worse but acknowledges that some problems are so large that private philanthropy may be inadequate to the task. How do we walk that line between private and public funding without contaminating the work of the lord with the political aspirations of the devil's city? The topic is discussed but in my opinion this should have been the central subject of the book. The importance of norms and values is beyond question (in my opinion); Charles Murray has driven the point home again and again. What do we do now if we wish to ameliorate our condition, knowing that we will be slandered by ideologues and face the opposition of a large section of the media and a large section of the political class (and their armies of employees, contract officers, bureaucrats, et al.) who are invested completely in the status quo?

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