Utopianism and the Expansion of the Bureaucracy
This tendency toward government assuming ever greater levels of responsibility quickly became institutionalized in the machinery of government. The new that role Roosevelt had chosen required a vast increase in the number of bureaucrats needed to run government and its programs. Most often, the people who filled these positions were part of a new breed of bureaucrats, professional government workers.
Professionalism was a movement affecting much of our society after the turn of the century; it was the attempt to apply the processes of science to improve performance. Occupations such as business became specialized studies with specialized degrees; business became the science of management, sales became the profession of marketing and talking became the science of communications. By rationally examining the different elements and how they interacted, the people in these various fields hoped to advance their ability to achieve their chosen goals.
Professionalism improved the workings of many occupations, and should also have been beneficial in government; an understanding of the workings of government should have allowed us to improve the government's ability to extend individual freedom. However the study of government, public administration, was an outgrowth of the social sciences. Consequently, it tended to embrace many of the same beliefs, including the belief that individualism no longer suited the needs of our country. For this reason, public administration rejected individualism and freedom as a goal, attempting to remain "value neutral"; its only purpose was to create "rational" government.
Unfortunately, "value neutral" was a myth. The value they held, the goal toward which they were working was "rationality", which they defined as the harmonious interaction of the elements of society. They believed that government should work to achieve a holistic social unit.
Here was the vision of the world found in Looking Backward, absorbed into the social sciences and now part of the new "profession" of government. Public administrators thought it was their responsibility, and scientifically necessary, to shape society away from individualism and toward collectivism. The science of government required the values of societalism.
Like the social scientists, the professional bureaucrats also embraced the inequality of human beings and Noblesse Oblige, once again as part of their scientific values. For society to function as a whole, all of its parts must work together, each part fulfilling its function. The "professionals" considered it their role to decide the direction of society, to take responsibility for the whole, because with their specialized knowledge they thought that they were better able to do so. They believed that they were better able to decide than anyone else, and so they felt that they had a responsibility to do so, to take care of everyone.
It is this view of life which has led to the immensely bloated bureaucracy that exists today. The "professional" bureaucrats entering the government, starting in the thirties, did not have freedom and individual responsibility as their goal. Instead their aim was to make the different parts of society work harmoniously together. Because they saw their part as taking responsibility for people, when an opportunity to extend the government's responsibility arose they were quick to do so. For the general good, they were going to take care of the country.
But the blame doesn't rest entirely with our growing bureaucracy; utopianism had started to seep into our society as well. People, like governments are creatures of habit. People got into the habit of looking to government for help, and expecting politicians to promise that help. From then on, government was expected to answer all problems; instead of looking to themselves for an answer, people now looked to government.
It was during this time period, the mid thirties to the late forties, that the use of the term "progressive" gradually began fading out. More and more, the people who embraced these collectivist ideas, who once would have been referred to as progressives, were now simply called liberals. The utopia of "Rational Socialism" had become the new liberalism.
Does this mean that every liberal politician since then was consciously trying to create a utopia, a heaven on Earth? No. Most were simply well intentioned people doing what they thought would help bring a better tomorrow. But at the basis of their proposals, at the heart of liberalism even today, are the ideas of this rational socialist utopia: people are better off, will be happier, if government takes responsibility for them. Government has to take care of people, because people cannot take care of themselves.
Consciously or unconsciously, these liberals were trying to create a holistic, harmonious world, in which everyone shared a common purpose and common goals. To create such a world, people have to subjugate individual freedom to the control of the group. A person has to give up what he or she might want to do so that the group goals can be achieved. People have to surrender individual responsibility, allowing group responsibility to take control.
Responsibility is a means to satisfaction. The only reason to give up control of one's life is in the belief that government will be better able to bring happiness. A utopia is the attainment of universal satisfaction. Utopianism in government is the promise that government can make people happy, can lead them to that satisfaction. In attempting to take responsibility for people government was making an implicit promise that it would be able to offer them a greater degree of satisfaction than could be achieved if individuals remained responsible for themselves. The satisfaction they offered was the satisfaction of the group. In a society in which individual responsibility is sacrificed to group responsibility, people can only find satisfaction in their place in society, from their integration into a holistic society. People would be happy because they had found their place in the social unit.
This is clearly utopianism. The liberals of the past sixty years might not have been conscious of this utopianism, but nonetheless the better world they were offering and the goal toward which they were attempting to lead the country was a utopia; they were trying to make people happy, instead of letting each individual find his or her own satisfaction.