Lingering Influence
While the identity of Anonymous was never determined, the perspectives offered by this person continued to gain some purchase in American society. Harmony of interest informed the policies formulated by two American presidents who were related to one another: Theodore Roosevelt and Frankly Roosevelt. For both leaders, government was to play an important corrective and protective force in sustaining a harmony of interest. Smith’s laissez-faire perspective was to be tempered by selective, but critical, governmental regulations. Without this protection, massive monopolies (such as Standard Oil) would trample any real harmony of interest among all members of a modern society.
What would be the natural tendencies of today in the third decade of the 21st Century – or even the last half of the 20th Century? Are Anonymous’ farmers and manufactures of iron still in need of one another and do they still, as a result, find a “harmony of interest” in working together and consuming each other’s labor and products? What about the new people at the table – or those who are still not invited to the table? With increased diversity in the populations of many countries (such as those in Europe and North America) as a result of either voluntary or imposed migration, is it not much harder to find a shared set of values and perspectives that provide the foundation for a mutuality of interests?
In many societies, the premodern is still dominant. And with this premodern comes the strong hold of tribalism and strong family ties. While this allows for a mutuality of interests within these small, isolated cultural islands, it also makes the building of a broader base of mutuality much more difficult. As Malcom Gladwell (2002) has noted, we human beings typically can only really get to know and relate to about 150 people at any one time. Everyone else is in some sense an alienate with whom it is hard to share a mutuality of interests.
This suggests that in some ways we are all still living in a tribal and family based premodern world. We only want to believe that we have moved beyond the premodern (though some of us probably yearn nostalgically for a fanciful premodern life). Even though we might all be a bit tribally oriented, nations such as Afghanistan and many African countries are particularly likely to find it hard to establish a strong national identity given the familial and tribal dominance in their societies. Countries that were created artificially, with national boundaries being established in an arbitrary manner (such as Iraq) and often by colonial powers (such as many African countries) are also likely to find the identification of a mutuality of interests difficult to challenging.
Perhaps there is something to learn from what has occurred in Eastern Europe as its citizens move past the artificial imposition of a new, very large state structure (the Soviet Union) on their own lives. While the European societies have long moved past a premodern status, they still have important remnants of premodern boundaries and loyalties. In my own work in Estonia, I found that initial concerns were soon put to rest regarding the boundaries that existed between Estonian farms prior to the Soviet confiscation of the farms. While the new Secretary of Agriculture in Estonia shared with me her fears that the old boundaries could not be identified and restored, she told me several months later that the location of these boundaries were still vividly in the memory of her Estonian colleagues: “This corner of Mikk’s farm begins at this large stone and extends out to that old oak tree by the pond . . . “ The old world of local loyalties and shared interests remained intact. What then about a broader mutuality post-Soviet occupation?
