Nader vs. the Big Rock Candy Mountain

I SUPPORTED RALPH NADER FOR PRESIDENT IN 2000. Nonetheless, I think that in some ways Nader and the Greens offer a bad model for the future of independent politics, and I've been struck by a kind of loyalty oath among Nader supporters that has stood in the way of serious debate and analysis. This is a brief preliminary contribution to critical rethinking of one aspect of the campaign, aiming to improve our continuing efforts to develop independent politics.

Here is my criticism, first in summary: Nader and the Greens abstemiously turned their backs on people's reasonable and deeply human longings for abundance, joy, cornucopia, variety and mobility, substituting instead a puritanical asceticism that romanticizes hardship, scarcity, localism and underdevelopment -- a traditionalism that blinds us to the possibility of utopia. I see in this complex, vestiges of an Old Left/New Left puritanism, a continuing quest for a kind of a faux working-class authenticity and a reaffirmation of the Protestant Ethic. Max Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism continues to have much to tell us about puritanical asceticism.

A lot of this austere and abstinent complex has been seen as just a quirk of Nader's character, but it's more pervasive than that. Many of us who gave general support to Nader nonetheless saw and spoke -- as Landy and I did in our pro-Nader petition -- of serious problems in his views on abortion, race and gender. Some friendly critics spoke of Nader's "tin ear" or "blind spot" in these areas. But these are not just blind spots or imperfections in an otherwise good program, but rather add up to a coherent and systemic component of Nader's thought, rooted in a Gitlinesque horror of identity politics. Nader's contempt for what he called "gonadal politics" is as deep as Todd Gitlin's contempt for identity politics, and despite the political gap between them, there is an interesting congruence on this.

Similarly, a romance of parsimoniousness and asceticism is not just a quirkiness of individual Greens but rather permeates Green thought. (In this paper I often speak simultaneously about Nader and about different kinds of Greens. Obviously, there are differences. But to deny the fundamental consensus among them on asceticism is to throw out all reasonable generalization. The central point is not whether there is explicit and total agreement, but whether these beliefs are ever questioned. My experience and reading indicate that these values are hegemonic and are publicly unquestioned among Greens.) Such blinders leave the left incapable of tangling with many difficult questions that independent politics should face: What, after all, is the matter with food in abundance, and wonderful material goods? Might globalization, under popular control, be a good thing, or is it intrinsically and inevitably bad? Might large- scale agriculture, under different conditions, be a good thing? How can it be that in 2000 Nader still believed in the family farm as what he anachronistically called "the cultural backbone of America"? Why do we hear so much about such archaic notions as "self-reliance"? Are TV, Viagra, Prozac and tourism necessarily, as Nader thinks, bad things? What about cars? Even if we were to deal successfully with pollution, I just don't think that Greens would accept, much less delight in, the utopian potential of the easy mobility given to us by cars.

The supposed inherent evil of cars offers an example of the prejudices that prevent Greens from planning realistically for utopia. In the sixties, Amsterdam anarchists ("Provos") developed the notion of the "white bicycle" -- bicycles that were to be used, without charge, left in the streets, and picked up by other cyclists as needed. With today's more advanced technology, including computers, plastic swipe cards, and Global Positioning Systems, fleets of publicly owned pollution-free "white cars" could be easily available to users, providing the marvels of door-to-door city-to-city travel pretty much on one's preferred schedule without toting one's stuff from one mode of transportation to another, and with severely cut congestion. Shouldn't we give such solutions some experimental attention -- both for themselves, and as a suggestion of how to achieve the fruits of modernity in socially better ways?

After I had completed this, I did a Google search on the Internet under "Provo + White Bicycle." I found that the Provos' White Bicycles left historical tracks -- even the British rock group Tomorrow's 1967 "My White Bicycle." For a brief time (and unsuccessfully) in Amsterdam in the 1980's, White Bicycles did indeed evolve into White Cars ("Witkar") different from but also with some similarities to what I have proposed above. I am happy to have my ideas reinforced, but troubled that I find no evidence for U.S. Green attempts in this direction. I believe that the explanation for this is that Green asceticism expressed in simplistic anti-car views prevents planning for such utopian forms.

Do demographic and other data support Green notions of scarcity, or does the Green mystique of scarcity precede investigation of the realities? Are Green ideas of "sustainability" sometimes rooted in apparent givens that turn out in fact to be political choices? For instance, would population decrease with increased education for women and increased social and cultural rewards for female roles other than motherhood? Empirical study after empirical study seems to support this conclusion, which points the way to a radical feminist alternative to Green strategies for cutting back demands for food and fuel. These latter seemingly given demands would decline with a declining birth rate.

So it's not clear whether the real limits of what the earth can produce cause the ascetic complex, or whether the ideology comes first, a priori, focusing attention on the limits rather than the possibilities. What ever became of the notion of planning -- figuring out how to accomplish social goals, especially with newer technologies? Are there problems with my "white car" proposal? If so, could we, rather than simply opposing cars, figure out how to experiment with and overcome these problems? Could we imagine developing actual expertise and -- dare I say? -- our own experts, rather than leaving these matters to the experts who work for the bad guys, as we inevitably will if we simply abandon the field, out of hostility to planning and to expertise. These ideas should not be misread as technocracy, Sovietism or elitism. American leftists put nails in their own coffin and lag far behind European leftists when they fail to recognize the possibility of socially responsible planning. Similarly, our failure to propose modes of development different from those offered by IMF-WTO and the rest leaves the Third World underdeveloped, lacking things they want that we don't think they should want or have. Who will want to join with us if we eschew modernity and instead advocate a romance of backwardness, Spartan living and underdevelopment? Nader and the Greens, as I will show, will not get us to the Big Rock Candy Mountain that so many have longed for.

WOULD THE CAMPAIGN HAVE BEEN A BETTER ONE, as many feel, if we had seen more of Winona LaDuke, Nader's Native American vice-presidential candidate? Did a woman's presence on the ticket somehow compensate for Nader's 1996 condemnation of "gonadal politics" and for his continuing reticence on abortion and for what even LaDuke delicately acknowledges to be his unfamiliarity with women's issues? LaDuke says: "Ralph didn't say much about women's issues because he's a 67-year-old Lebanese bachelor and his familiarity with some of the experiences that I have had is nonexistent. He speaks from his own experience." (Jennifer Baumgardner, "Kitchen Table Candidate," Ms, April/May 2001, p. 53.)

LaDuke dodges questions about abortion, ranking choice fairly low as only one of a "spectrum of issues." Instead she presents an essentialist and traditionalist picture of women's role. Reflecting the content of the interview, Ms gives its cover to LaDuke, portrayed as mom with child, and seems utterly to miss the antiquated Ladies Home Journal flavor of the cover and the title given to the article.

LaDuke never really answers the interviewer's question: "What do you say to the criticism that you talk about motherhood rather than feminism?" Her ranking of feminism below motherhood is related to her endorsement of a traditionalism that places women in a subordinate role. Consider LaDuke's satisfaction with women's roles among her people: "In the context of most native women, you cannot separate the woman from her community. We have always had roles that women have and roles men have. My assessment of my community, and I can't speak for all native communities, is that we got the confusion about roles all worked out a long time ago" (emphasis added).

This is an astounding statement, implying that LaDuke can somehow manage to be both a feminist and be content with traditional gender roles. Interviewer Baumgardner comments approvingly about LaDuke, "In everything she did, she saw her goal as restoring native tradition, culture, language, and reclaiming land . . . " What I get from this is traditionalism, essentialism and the subordination of women. Is this just LaDuke, or does it fit with Nader? Let me connect this to Nader's traditionalism and then return to the issue of asceticism.

A year ago today during a Nader talk at the Washington protests against the IMF and World Bank, I first heard Nader's oft-used anecdote about the desirability of mud huts for Egyptian peasants. (He continues to use this anecdote in 2001.) Nader is a fan of Hassan Fathy, the Aga Khan Award-winning Egyptian architect who built the village of New Gourna from bricks of mud and straw. It was Fathy's hope, according to the New York Times, to build a village where peasants "would follow the way of life that I would like them to." Fathy rejected "the idea of running water" partly because it was too expensive, but also because, as the Times reported, he found it "unsuited to village customs." Instead, he installed neighborhood wells. Although, the Times reports, Fathy "rhapsodized about the result," the peasants have rejected it: they "see no charm in communal wells and prefer running water."

The themes of Nader and women, asceticism, and the romance of underdevelopment come together in Fathy's reaction to the peasants' rejection of his plan: "It is hard to imagine a village in Egypt without its black-robed women, . . . erect as queens, each with her water jar carried nonchalantly on her head, and it will be a pity to lose the sight." How picturesque! This, finally, is what Nader is endorsing. With Nader's admiration of this archaic design, and LaDuke's dedication to preserving traditional ways, including sex roles, we have a complex that is traditionalist and rejects modernity -- combined with a mystification of underdevelopment and the subjugation of women.

This romanticization of hard, peasant life should remind us of Nader's mind-boggling revival of the Jeffersonian romance of the yeoman farmer. (The VoteNader website carried as Reason #14 to Vote for Nader: "Ralph Nader protects family farms, 'the cultural backbone of America.'") Critics of agribusiness have alerted us to the environmental horrors of today's large-scale agriculture. Partly in reaction to such horrors, but also for culturally conservative reasons, Nader seeks to revert to a historical "reliance on the family farm as the main production unit," and to construct a system of "Independent, entrepreneurial food producers with close proximity to the land." He also seeks a decentralized market infrastructure, to foster "a fast growing trend of consumers buying food locally from farmers markets, farm stands . . . "

Think of it: declaring our independence from the delights of world-wide all-season distribution of food. What an advance, rejecting one of the glories of modernity! Beneficiaries that we Americans are, we have no idea of the utopian significance of abundance to so many others. I recall the day in Moscow in November 1978 when the city was abuzz, a near riot, because it had been heard that actual, big fat tomatoes from Rumania were being sold in the streets. To Muscovites, tomatoes meant a form of utopia. Today, fast refrigerated transportation brings to the streets of New York flowers and fruits from all over the world. In the face of this dream come true, why romanticize localism, and little farm stands?

The availability for sale in the streets of New York City of fine, luscious tomatoes from Israel and the Netherlands gives the lie to the romantic notion that vegetables must be of local origin to be good. These tomatoes prefigure a socialist system of rapid world- wide food distribution, rooted in joy rather than profit, that we might devise and seek to make real if we could free our brains of archaic localist prejudices. If the history of sugar is wrapped up with the history of imperialism and racism, does that make sweets less of a delight to eat? Repeatedly, it seems, Greens condemn as intrinsically bad things whose badness is rooted only in their place in the existing capitalist market structure. The intrinsic virtues of the same things -- whether globalization or tomatoes -- would emerge if they were placed under popular control. Getting over notions of "self- reliance" would enable us to envision a world in which each area, tied into a socialist global economic system, produces those transportable things that it is good at or that are supported by climate.

And, to return to Fathy and to Nader and the romance of small farms: this is an urbanite's fantasy that provides ideological support for continuing a cruel and hard way of life. Small-scale agriculture is among the worst kinds of labor and conditions of life. Only those still blinded two centuries later by the romance of the Jeffersonian yeoman farmer ideal would fail to see these horrors.

AGAINST SUCH ASCETIC NOTIONS, I have argued elsewhere (together with Naomi Weisstein) in favor of cornucopia -- which the U.S. left disliked even before the Greens came on the scene. We noted Hans Magnus Enzensberger's insightful idea that "deep social needs" that come through in "depraved form" in the media convey a kind of utopianism: "Goods and shop windows, traffic and advertisements," may perpetrate a swindle, but "a swindle within the present social structure . . . is the harbinger of something else . . . Consumption as spectacle contains the promise that want will disappear . . . The need -- it is a utopian one -- is there . . . Consumption as spectacle is -- in parody form -- the anticipation of a utopian situation."

Seeing the utopian content in consumption, Weisstein and I argued against "the puritanism . . . that cuts much of the left off from the authentic longings of most of humanity." We concluded: "At a time when something that called itself socialism is in ruins in part because it provided neither bread nor roses, more than ever we need to revive and reconsider the joy surrounding both material and spiritual cornucopia . . . this means moving beyond a socialism of scarcity, efficiency, and utilitarianism to a socialism of abundance and joy, a socialism that makes real the pursuit of happiness . . . "

A new book adds strength to such views, by showing the persistence of myths of what to Greens would be seen as obscene plenty and over-consumption. That book is Herman Pleij's Dreaming of Cockaigne: Medieval Fantasies of the Perfect Life (NY: Columbia University Press, 2001). The medieval myth of Cockaigne was nicely represented in the New York Public Library's recent exhibit "Utopia: The Search for the Ideal Society in the Western World" (www.nypl.org/utopia) where the Land of Cockaigne is described as "a medieval peasant's dream, offering relief from backbreaking labor and the daily struggle for meager food." In fact, as Pleij writes, it was more than that: "Dreaming of Cockaigne was a means of alleviating the everyday worries of peasants and the lower middle classes . . . . rebelliousness . . . manifests itself in the form of aggressive and highly imaginative hyperbole, which pits itself against the often intolerable scarcity and misery of everyday life by defying it with a superabundance so exaggerated as to be provoking."

Here's something of what it's like in the Land of Cockaigne, as presented in myth, poetry, oral tradition and art: people are arrested for working; the more you sleep, the more you earn; there are four Easters and four Christmases a year; shops supply goods for nothing, and everyone finds beautiful clothes on their doorstep; there is singing and dancing to flutes and trumpets; sex is easily available, "with ever-willing partners" ("Nothing sinful about it, no one feels shame"); owls lay fur coats; horses are born with saddles. And the food: mountains of grated cheese sit on a sea of Greek wine; grilled fish, roast geese, buttered larks and other birds fall from the sky like rain, directly into people's mouths, together with "custards, pancakes, pies and tarts"; roast pigs offer themselves for carving; trees bear ripe fruit all year long, and artichokes are always ripe for picking; fish leap out of the river and offer themselves for food; houses are made of sugar and cakes and meat and fish, and streets are paved with pastry. (Indeed, the word cockaigne probably means "land of cakes," as well as "abundance").

Cockaigne and the Protestant Ethic are directly at odds. One familiar with the life and work of Benjamin Franklin, and with the fact that Max Weber saw him as the personification of the spirit of capitalism, can't help but recall some of the virtues which young Franklin attempted to practice: "Temperance. Eat not to dulness. Drink not to elevation. Chastity. Rarely use venery but for health or offspring . . . "

The focus in Cockaigne on "vast quantities of food," Pleij writes, "illustrates how, in the middle ages, fears of hunger were dispelled by conjuring up images of food in mind- boggling quantity and variety." With Cockaigne, we have gone far beyond such prosaic modern left goals as "adequate food."

THE MOST FAMOUS REPRESENTATION OF "The Land of Cockaigne" is the 1567 painting by Pieter Breughel (The Elder). (It was also represented visually in Niccolo Nelli's 1564 etching "Description of the Great Land of Cockaigne where he who Sleeps the Most Earns the Most" -- www.nypl.org/utopia, q.v. also for mention of 18th century feast days in Naples involving erection of a "Cuccagna arch made of meats, cheese, bread, fruits, and vegetables . . .") But Breughel's vision seems a hostile one. When an engraving version was published, it was accompanied by a poem by Hieronymous Cock attacking "loafers and gluttons." The painting shows a slothful and overfed clerk, peasant and soldier lying about, the unused tools of their trade carelessly strewn around them. A half-eaten egg runs between them, and a goose reclines on a silver platter, waiting to be eaten. A traveler eats his way though a mountain of pudding; we see a fence made out of sausages.

Human dreams of cornucopia have endured throughout history, in culture after culture, and in popular memory and tradition. Mythic lands of abundance long pre-date Cockaigne, and there are other such lands with other names: for the Germans, Schlarrefenland, the land of milk and honey; for the Dutch Luikkerland ("lazy luscious land"); and various Topsy-Turvy worlds. And, at the beginning, some saw America through the lens of Cockaigne, or as Eden.

In mid-twentieth century America, I grew up with Burl Ives's recording of "Big Rock Candy Mountain." And many of us have recently seen the Coen Brothers' magnificent movie, O Brother Where Art Thou? which begins with the original song:

A burly bum . . . sang a song
Of the land of milk and honey . . .
Where there ain't no snow
Where the sleet don't fall
And the winds don't blow . . .
Where you sleep all day,
Where they hung the jerk
That invented work . . .
There's a lake of stew
And ginger ale too . . .
There's a lake of gin
We can both jump in . . .
We can sleep all day
And the bars all have free lunches . . .
And there ain't no cops . . .
And the hens lay soft-boiled eggs

Oh the buzzin' of the bees
In the cigarette trees
Near the soda water fountain
At the lemonade springs
Where the bluebird sings
On the big rock candy mountain

*In Work Without End: Abandoning Shorter Hours for the Right to Work (1988) and elsewhere Benjamin Kline Hunnicutt has explored the vanishing from labor's agenda since the New Deal of demands for a shorter work week. A century-plus struggle, beginning in the 1830s, came to an end with the achievement of the 40-hour week. The left's general acquiescence in this (with honorable exceptions) seems another mark of its unquestioning acceptance of the Protestant ethic.

Contents of No. 31

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