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CHAPTER 3 The Critic's Narrative Life is unfair. (7) Those who are rich control everything. (9) You could be rich ... [and] basically you do what you want to do, and you can get away with anything you want to do. (8) There are injustices that occur in anyone's lifetime, in any generation, that aren't corrected.... It just seems that no matter what we recognize is necessary to correct them, it doesn't seem to happen.... That's just sad. (6) Sometimes you get so frustrated with not seeing the results about something, you get these flashes where you say, "Gee, I wonder if we'd be better off burning this fucking place down." (6) Nine of the senators, a quarter of those interviewed, fit the mold of the critic. Their narrative may startle. What makes the account presented here particularly surprising and interesting is the fact that it is the product of a group of established, elected politicians. Although the stories these nine senators tell vary in significant ways, the critic's narrative is held together by a strong sense that American society is not just; that equal opportunity, the metaphor for upward mobility that Americans of all ideological shades endorse, means much more than the requirement that openings in employment and education be filled in a formally nondiscriminatory fashion; that this stronger form of equal opportunity does not exist in fact; that society is highly stratified-into classes-and that it is stratified unfairly; and that the poor and racial minorities are kept down socially and economically, and in some cases exploited. What is the solution to these problems? In abstract terms, most critics share the view that the ultimate solution to the problems of poverty and inequality lies not so much in the traditional welfare state efforts to sustain and eventually change those at the bottom end of the socioeconomic distribution, but rather in the transformation of the socioeconomic structure itself and the larger environment within which individuals operate. But when they come down to the more specific, concrete prescriptions ofmeasures to achieve these goals, the critics' views become softer, gentler, and more subjectively oriented than what their original diagnosis, taken alone, would appear to warrant. They concentrate not so much on structural reorganization, but rather on meeting 37 38 Narratives of Justice individual needs and engendering compassion and understanding among individuals . Thus, though the critic's narrative presents a challenge to the commonly held notions about American patterns ofeconomic thinking, the apparent contradiction between diagnosis and treatment points to two distinctively American traits: the endurance of the norm of differentiation concerning the economic realm, and the individualistic framework and approach toward social problems (Hochschild 1981; Lamb 1982). The critics appear to be different, perhaps unique, but are nonetheless American. Nevertheless, the critic's narrative remains in many important respects remarkably different from the generally accepted notions of American beliefs about distribution, at both the elite and mass levels. To better set the stage for the critic's narrative, as well as the other narratives that follow, I shall begin by briefly expanding on the account ofthese accepted notions I offered in chapter 1. In painting this backdrop I use the broadest of strokes, but I believe the portrait is in the main accurate. My portrait also will be limited to a contemporary representation of American beliefs; I will not discuss the historical and philosophical origins ofthese beliefs in such elements as the early absence ofa feudal order or the Anglo-Scottish versus the French Enlightenment. When looking across the landscape ofAmerican economic thinking, most observers are struck by the premium placed on economic individualism, which in tum tempers support for public assistance, government regulation, and any significant moves toward economic equality. At the same time, this premium bolsters support for the norm of differentiation in the economic realm. This premium is in part reinforced by (and also reinforces) a sense that there is at least an acceptable supply ofavailable opportunity for economic advancement. The notion of equal opportunity is key in this belief system. Varying conceptions ofequal opportunity are ofcourse possible. Stronger conceptions imply a greater degree of government intervention in the economy. The brand of equal opportunity found to be most supported, however, is a comparatively weaker, more formal and negative variant; protections against overt discrimination, for instance. Within the notion ofequal opportunity, the framework is again an individualistic one; there is comparatively little emphasis placed on the social and economic realities that...

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