Taking exception with Hirschman

In Exit, Voice, and Loyalty, Albert O. Hirschman discusses the particularly American bent towards "exit" as a means of correcting institutions that stray from producing high quality goods and/or services. As evidence, he points out that Americans exited Europe rather than stay and agitate for reform in Europe; later, they had the Western frontier as exit. He says, "The curious conformism of Americans, noted by observers ever since Tocqueville, may also be explained in this fashion," and cites Frederick Jackson Turner's thesis that the closing of the frontier closed off exit, leaving Americans with a need for "voice". The result was the Progressive Era and the New Deal.

Now, Hirschman's grasp of history and culture is wide and deep, but I think he has overlooked two bits of evidence, and conflated two streams of history. The first bit of evidence is Hannah Arendt's brilliant essay, On Revolution, in which she explores the differences between the American and French Revolutions. Beginning with a wide-ranging search for the meaning of revolution, she finds that one is that people wish to obtain a public outlet for their grievances. In France, they had none prior to the Revolution, so once they had the control of the government and Robespierre elevated "the people" (singular) as the source of government, they were not going to let it go again. In America, the people had long been used to exercising public happiness in townhall meetings since the first colony was established. Thus, they were not offended when Adams, Jefferson, and Madison located the source of government power in "the people" (plural), who understood that they retained powers and rights that were prior to the federal government. In other words, the people already had "voice", exercised through local government:

Even at this point, the difference between the Europeans and the Americans, whose minds were still formed and influenced by an almost identical tradition, is conspicuous and important. What was a passion and a 'taste' in France clearly was an experience in America, and the American usage which, especially in the eighteenth century, spoke of 'public happiness', where the French spoke of public freedom', suggests this difference quite appropriately. The point is that the Americans knew that public freedom consisted in having a share in public business, and that the activities connected with this business by no means constituted a burden but gave those who discharged them in public a feeling of happiness they could acquire nowhere else. They knew very well, and John Adams was bold enough to formulate this knowledge time and again, that the people went to the town assemblies, as their representatives later were to go to the famous Conventions, neither exclusively because of duty nor, and even less, to serve their own interests but most of all because they enjoyed the discussions, the deliberations, and the making of decisions. What brought them together was 'the world and the public interest of liberty' (Harrington), and what moved them was 'the passion for distinction' which John Adams held to be 'more essential and remarkable' than any other human faculty: 'Wherever men, women, or children, are to be found, whether they be old or young, rich or poor, high or low, wise or foolish, ignorant or learned, every individual is seen to be strongly actuated by a desire to be seen, heard, talked of, approved and respected by the people about him, and within his knowledge.'

The second bit of evidence comes again from de Tocqueville, who noted that Americans had a tendency to establish associations any time they had a project they wanted to pursue and either wanted or needed the aid or participation of their neighbors.

Americans of all ages, all conditions, all minds constantly unite. Not only do they have commercial and industrial associations in which all take part, but they also have a thousand other kinds: religious, moral, grave, futile, very general and very particular, immense and very small; Americans use associations to give fêtes, to found seminaries, to build inns, to raise churches, to distribute books, to send missionaries to the antipodes; in this manner they create hospitals, prisons, schools. Finally, if it is a question of bringing to light a truth or developing a sentiment with the support of a great example, they associate. Everywhere that, at the head of a new undertaking, you see the government in France and a great lord in England, count on it that you will perceive an association in the United States.

In America I encountered sorts of associations of which, I confess, I had no idea, and I often admired the infinite art with which the inhabitants of the United States managed to fix a common goal to the efforts of many men and to get them to advance to it freely.

I think that Hirschman overlooks both of those as evidence that the American people prior to the Progresive Era had always had a mechanism for expressing voice, even though that was through informal, ad hoc, decentralized institutions. Mutual Aid Societies come to mind as a more complex institution in which the members were officers as well as consumers. And those were just the institutions that Croly and the Progressive movement wiped out. Where some might see an invisible hand, creative destruction, or spontaneous organization at work, the Progressives saw chaos, disorder, and such corrosive horrors as "rugged individualism". They sought to replace that with centrally planned, controlled, scientifically managed order. This all happened concurrently with the closing of the American West, so it's easy to see how Hirschman might have conflated the two currents of activity. However, it does seem inexcusable that he overlooks the fact that the Progressive Movement sought to replace spontaneous order, in which voice and exit were effective means of maintaining high quality, with planned order, in which educated bureaucrats would scientifically determine what the people needed, and in which voice and exit were specifically forbidden. Hirschman repeatedly expresses admiration for Ralph Nader, though he never says exactly what Nader accomplished, nor does he ever recognize that Nader was merely the velvet glove on the iron fist of the regulatory state.

Despite these oversights, Exit, Voice, and Loyalty does contain a number of remarkable insights. I intend to dive into more of Hirschman's work when I can.