The Lonely Crowd

by David Riesman

  These inside-dopesters of the upper middle class should be contrasted with those found in small towns and rural areas who are in easy contact with their local and even state officials. In the small towns social distance between the politically influential and the non-influential is small, and very little in the machinery of government is opaque—the telephone party line on which everybody listens may be thought of as symbolizing this. Though ordinarily these people can muster quite a bit of indignation over the local issues, this is not always the case; and we find occasional small-town and rural people who, bringing to politics the cosmopolitan style of the other-directed types, give a good imitation of urban inside-dopesters.6

  Actually, the distinction between the inside-dopester and the indifferent is often hard to draw. This may serve as another illustration of the point made earlier, that there are striking similarities between the tradition-directed and the other-directed. Both groups feel helpless vis-À-vis politics, and both have resorted to varieties of fatalism which the inner-directed moralizer would sternly reject. However, there are important differences. The inside-dopester, unlike the indifferent, is subordinate to a peer-group in which politics is an important consumable and in which the correct—that is, the unemotional—attitude toward one’s consumption is equally important. The new-style indifferent can take politics or leave it alone, while the inside-dopester is tied to it by motivations hardly less compelling than those of the moralizer.

  The inside-dopester does bring to politics a certain kind of realism that the moralizer often lacked. The notion of transcending the inevitable never arises for the inside-dopester. As spectator, as well as operator, he has a very good idea of what the limits are; he does not set his sights very high. The other-directed man has carried what are essentially political skills into many areas outside of formal political science as defined by the moralizer—for example, into the field of city planning and labor-management relations. Moreover, as against the oversimplifications of many moralizers, the inside-dopesters include a corps of specialists who know much more than the often narrowly partisan indignants and enthusiasts even in the days of their power, let alone in the days of their wane. Many people, not only specialists, have become accustomed to thinking in world-political terms, and cross-cultural terms, such as were hardly to be found amid the ethnocentrisms—or world-brotherhood idealisms—of even a generation ago. In the nineteenth century, most journalistic treatments of international politics drew on such parochial slogans as “national honor”— in the case of Mason and Slidell, for instance, or the Maine. Today, however, the mass media, although with many exceptions, appear to discuss world politics in terms made familiar by psychological warfare, and events are interpreted for their bearing on the propaganda of one side or the other. The public is often asked to support a policy because such support, in a kind of self-manipulative balancing act, will influence public opinion; such arguments can only be made because of the heightened understanding, in an era increasingly dependent on other-direction, of psychological forces in politics.

  Some may find current talk about our “way of life” reminiscent of discussions of national honor. But the change is not merely one of phrasing. “National honor” could be a hypocritical phrase to cover such clear-cut class interests as led to our invasion of Haiti, or it could be grouped with the various internal xenophobias of the nineteenth century. Yet however vague the content of the phrase, what it demanded of the national enemy was quite specific. “Our way of life,” on the other hand, has many more psychological connotations; it is fairly specific in domestic content but highly unspecific as to what the consequences in foreign policy are, or should be, of this slogan. “National honor” sometimes strait-jacketed our foreign policy by establishing a moral beachhead we were neither willing nor prepared to defend. As against this, “our way of life” gives almost no moral guidance to foreign policy, which seems, therefore, to be left to Realpolitik. Only seems to be, however. For just as the phrase “national honor” calls to mind a Victorian form of hypocrisy, so the phrase “our way of life” reminds us that the other-directed man conceals from himself as well as from others such morality as he possesses by taking refuge in seemingly expediential considerations. A young veteran interviewed in 1947 by the University of Michigan Survey Research Center, when asked whether he thought the United States had given in or had its own way too much in the United Nations, replied:

  This will sound funny, but I think we are getting our own way too much. (Why do you say that? he was questioned.) Because we don’t want the other nations to feel that we are trying to take over their countries. They know that Russia wants that and I think that’s why there is so much argument. But if they feel we are trying to grab, they won’t trust us either and then we won’t be able to steer this whole program which is what I think we should do. So when we don’t get what we want and the headlines say we have been beaten on something, I think that’s really good because it makes the other countries feel that we’re just like them and that we are having troubles too. That would make them more sympathetic to us and more friendly.7

  Psychological understanding such as this represents a real advance. The moralizer would not ordinarily have been capable of such subtleties, or interested in them.

  Many important questions remain. Why do so many peer-groups in which the other-directed move continue to put politics on their bill of fare, and why is it that fashion does not, as it has with many intellectuals, substitute something else, for instance, religion? What should surprise us in America is not the number of the indifferents but why their number is not greater still and why people hang on as moralizers and seek to inform themselves as inside-dopesters. I suggest as a partial explanation that the mass media of communication play a complex part in the training and sustaining of people (of appropriate character) in both these latter styles. The media are at the same time continuous bringers of information and tutors in tolerance for would-be inside-dopesters, and tutors and provocateurs in indignation for would-be moralizers.

  IX

  Political persuasions: indignation and tolerance

  The super market that “offers the shopper the subtle, psychological values” will have a better chance to build a profitable customer following than one which depends solely on low price and good quality merchandise, G. L. Clements, vice-president and general manager of the Jewel Food Stores of Chicago, asserted here today …

  In determining how to provide “psychological values” attractive to the customer, Mr. Clements said he thought a business should seek to develop “the same traits that we like in our friends.” He outlined these traits as being cleanliness, up-to-date appearance, generosity, courtesy, honesty, patience, sincerity, sympathy, and good-naturedness. Each store operator, he said, should ask himself whether his store has these traits….

  Mr. Clements asserted that in seeking to understand the psychological forces motivating customers “we might start out by asking the question: ‘Do people really know what they want?’ “The answer to the question indicates that people do not know what they “want,” Mr. Clements said. But they do know what they “like or do not like,” he asserted….

  From the report of the twelfth annual convention of the Super Market Institute, New York Herald Tribune, May 10, 1949

  The inner-directed moralizer brings to politics an attitude derived from the sphere of production. The other-directed inside-dopester brings to politics an attitude derived from the sphere of consumption. Politics is to be appraised in terms of consumer preferences. Politicians are people—and the more glamorous, the better. Moreover, in imitation of the marketplace, polices becomes a sphere in which the manner and mood of doing things is quite as important as what is done. This corresponds with the other-directed man’s tendency to put more emphasis on means than the inner-directed man did, and less emphasis on ends.

  The mass media of communication are perhaps the most important channels between the other-directed actors on the stage of polit
ics and their audience. The media criticize the actors and the show generally, and both directly and indirectly train the audience in techniques of political consumership. The direct training media are those which are openly political, such as the modern descendants of the Springfield Republican or the New York Tribune and a very small number of old-time newspapers, with their inner-directed moralizing editorializers. Much larger and more influential are the media of indirect training: they include the whole range of contemporary popular culture from comic books to television. They dominate the use of leisure in all American classes except at the very top and perhaps also the very bottom; and their influence is very great in creating the styles of response compatible with other-direction.

  Although the pattern of this influence is complex it may be summed up in three tentative generalizations.

  First, since popular culture is in essence a tutor in consumption, it teaches the other-directed man to consume politics and to regard politics and political information and attitudes as consumer goods. They are products, games, entertainments, recreations; and he is their purchaser, player, spectator, or leisure-time observer.

  Second, the media, by their very sensitivity to pressure, have a stake in tolerance. But even where they are moralizers in intention, the mood of the audience of peer-groupers will cause the indignant message to be received in an unindignant way. This attitude of the audience, moreover, leads to an emphasis not on what the media say in terms of content but on the “sincerity” of the presentation. This focus on sincerity, both in popular culture and in politics, leads the audience tolerantly to overlook the incompetence of performance.

  Third, while there is a significant residue of inner-directed moralizing in American political news coverage and editorializing, it slows down but does not halt the persuasions exercised by popular culture in favor of other-directed tolerance and passivity.

  I. Politics as an Object of Consumption

  The other-directed man’s inability to know what he wants, while being preoccupied with what he likes—as observed by the retailer quoted at the head of the chapter—applies to politics as well as to other spheres of life. In contrast to this, the inner-directed man, in those spheres of life, such as politics, that he identified with work, knew what he wanted but did not really allow himself to know what he liked.

  A striking illustration of this is to be found in a group of interviews conducted in the newly built suburb of Park Forest near Chicago. Park Forest is a development of a federally-aided private concern called American Community Builders; the homes are rented to occupants, and the ACB retains the financial functions of government, in cooperation with a sort of town council of residents. Residents were asked in the interviews how they felt about ACB, and what part, if any, they took in local politics, including griping and gossip. Many had complaints about their living quarters and community arrangements generally. What was noteworthy was that these complaints were frequently put in terms of the allegedly—and, as it appeared, actually—“bad public relations” of ACB. That is, direct criticism, based on the residents’ wants and feelings, was muted; rather, “they” were criticized because their public relations were so mishandled as to leave people—presumably, people other than the speaker—critical. In effect, people were complaining not about their direct grievances but because they had not been so manipulated as to “make them like it.” Their wants (in concrete living arrangements) took second place to their likes (as to the proper degree of skill deemed suitable for a large organization).1

  Under these conditions of passive consumership we would expect people to drop out of the league of inside-dopesters into the great mass of the new-style indifferents. Left to themselves, perhaps many would do so. But they are not left to themselves. The mass media act as a kind of barker for the political show. These have discovered one sovereign remedy, glamor, to combat the danger of indifference and apathy. Just as glamor in sex substitutes for both love and the relatively impersonal family ties of the tradition-directed person, and just as glamor in packaging and advertising of products substitutes for price competition, so glamor in politics, whether as charisma—packaging—of the leader or as the hopped-up treatment of events by the mass media, substitutes for the types of self-interest that governed the inner-directed. In general: wherever we see glamor in the object of attention, we must suspect a basic apathy in the spectator.

  The result of the search for glamor in politics is the effort, not dissimilar to that of the retailer quoted above, “to provide ‘psychological values’ attractive to the customer.” And, as Mr. Clements told the Super Market Institute, the values are “the same traits that we like in our friends,” namely “cleanliness, up-to-date appearance, generosity, courtesy, honesty, patience, sincerity, sympathy, and good-naturedness.” Many of the maneuverings of politics can be interpreted in these terms. In 1948, Truman was felt to lack the up-to-date appearance; Dewey, the sincerity, sympathy, and good-naturedness. Eisenhower seemed irresistibly attractive on all these scores—he had “everything.” People wanted a candidate with both appeals, and the spontaneous elements in the Eisenhower movement were to a large degree a tribute to people’s desperate search for glamor. The Eisenhower supporters in the 1948 campaign were saying, in effect, that a candidate who “has everything”—whom one could wholeheartedly like—would surely know what one needed.

  Where likable qualities are less evident than with Eisenhower, people try hard to find a candidate with charm. To be sure, this was true in earlier eras, but I think it likely that this style of political appeal has been growing steadily in the United States in the radio age. For even the hardheaded political bosses in America have learned, enduring their experience of Franklin Roosevelt, to take these appeals into account; the wider the electorate, of course, the more glamor tends to displace issues or old-fashioned considerations of patronage. But this is as yet only a tendency; I do not mean to suggest that people now ignore their wants in voting their likes, or that an understanding of the other-directed character will help us predict elections better than an understanding of economic currents, ethnic traditions, and political organization.

  II. The Media as Tutors in Tolerance

  There are several reasons why the mass media of communication develop an attitude of tolerance that becomes the mode of experiencing and viewing everything, including politics.

  The most powerful factor making for this slant is the sheer size of the audience. The press, though less terrorized than the movies, is subject to a variety of pressures brought by groups seeking protection from attack; and these pressures are internalized in the very structure of management and distribution of the media.

  Again, the larger the scope of the medium, the more likely it is to be edited and produced in a large metropolitan center where the pressures toward other-directed tolerance are greatest. While freer from pressure of advertisers and local cranks than smalltown editors and broadcasters, and, in general, often considerably more daring, big-city media with a city-wide audience cannot help being aware of those attitudes that may offend their complex constituencies. Whereas the early nineteenth-century editor could gamble on a crusade that might bring him both a libel suit and a circulation, the twentieth-century publisher often cannot afford to let his editor gamble even on an increased circulation. Like the modern corporation generally, he wants a relatively inflexible demand curve for his product; he cannot risk sharp losses of circulation and often not sharp increases either, since his managers have guaranteed his circulation to the advertisers, planned his paper supply, and committed him to Newspaper Guild contracts and distributive relationships long in advance.

  Obviously, moreover, as the one-paper towns and cities grow in number, the owner-monopolist has little to gain by attacking a powerful group. He will prefer the comforts of fair trade, as enshrined in the American Newspaper Publishers’ Association or the Broadcasters’ Code, to the risks of free trade in punches and ideas. Hence, all other things being equal, the larger the
scope of the medium, the more it tends to be produced and consumed in a mood of other-directed tolerance and the less it makes an appeal to the indignants. Indeed, since the chief strategy of the media as tutors of consumption is to introduce and rationalize changes, enrichments, or discontinuities in conventional tastes and styles, the media have a stake in tolerance of taste. They cannot afford to have people overcommitted to a taste that they may want to change tomorrow. But it is hardly likely that they are aware of this perhaps most fundamental aspect of their commitment to tolerance.

  On the other hand, the very intolerance of some of the older captains of the press and radio, ambitious men with a message, allows them, and the editorializing commissars they encourage, to take a “tough” approach, to find and hold an audience among all those indifferent and maladjusted people who seek not political news but excitement and diversion from their apathy. Hearst, McCormick, Gannett, Shepherd of the Yankee network—such men want power through the press and radio, rather than money or approval. Yet their audiences are made up not primarily of political indignants but of political new-style indifferents—would-be inside-dopesters who are attracted by the impiety of Hearst, the Chicago Tribune, and especially the New York Daily News, because this sort of news-handling seems to promise them the un-faked inside story. Having been trained to associate piety with the official culture of sermon, school, and print, they take whatever appears by contrast to be sophisticated, brutal, illegal, or mysterious as true almost by definition and think the editor sincere for letting them in on it.

  TOLERANCE AND THE CULT OF SINCERITY