Morality vs Values in Bouton's Analysis

Ordinary Folk. The Common Folk. “The People.” Ordinary Americans. The Middle Sort. The Lower Sort. The Farmers. The Ordinary People. As was mentioned in class, Bouton makes a concerted effort in use ordinary language in Taming Democracy. But whether he is trying to model his diction on every day usage from the time, using words he found in the documents of the epoch, and especially if he is making the claim that he is in tune with the struggle of early Americas, Bouton makes an explicit political choice when he uses these pseudo-historical identifiers.

Like many historians, Bouton uses the language of the era whenever possible. But the terms that he borrows do not reflect pluralism. Rather, what Bouton copies from the ordinary American discourse defines in his text a working set of ideals. And rather than demonstrating the egalitarianism that he wishes to convey, Bouton actually embraces terms generated by the very historical and economic conditions that he attempts to condemn. What is more, Bouton's adoption of terms like “the little man,” “lower sort,” “the middle sort,” and also “the big man,” “the gentry,” “the federalist” Bouton reinforces a perception that these social positions are normal in society.

Stephen is right that Bouton's choice to use these kinds of terms reflects a sort of moral honesty in the analysis. However, Shephen goes on to discuss Bouton's moral language as "value laden terms” which make the analysis pure. Stephen is close to an important point. Because history is a limited endeavor that is never scientific, its practitioners often find it fruitful to flesh their own value judgments to the surface. If assumptions are explicit rather than implicit, their influence is better understood. Yet Stephen is wrong to characterize morals as mere value judgments.

Value judgments are methodologically necessary because they are a consequence of how we see the world. This relates to my point when I quoted Marx's passage on the Camera Obscura. Bouton engages historical materialism when he looks for the material and economic interests that drove the political and social movements of the time. Granted, Marx need not be followed in his entirety in order to make use of his material framework of history. But one of Marx’s most important contributions is the idea that social analysis becomes empirical precisely by admitting that value judgments are materially constructed and unavoidable in analysis. The famous version of this argument is Althusser on Marx and science. My point is that morality, as applied in Taming Democracy goes beyond the value judgments that are necessary to a sound reading of history: recognizing values is no reason to adopt moral analysis. Interestingly, a careful reading of strict Marxism finds a striking absence of moral condemnation (for those of you following at home this is especially true after what Althusser terms the epistemological break between Marx's early work and his later work). Some thinkers argue that a strict Marxism does not allow for the use of terms like "just" and "unjust," or a belief in human rights. (Althusser, Can a Marxist Believe in Human Rights?)

This is important because Bouton's "moral honesty" is not analytically sound. I agree with Stephen that Bouton is unforgiving with his morals. But his strong moral stance drives him to embrace shaky distinctions between rich and poor, farmer and gentleman, and even thick and thin. (see Morris figure!)

Bouton is right to use language from the era to show how actors on both sides defined their collective selves along whatever lines that were economically advantageous. This is the strength of his work. Further, doing this is a good way to link Taming Democracy with other works we have studied so far this semester. For example, Bouton's claims about class in Pennsylvania are compatible with Morgan's argument about the economic construction of race in Virginia because the linguistic dynamics that Bouton explores during the revolution seem quite similar to what Morgan studies in the early colonial period.

But in making a moral statement about the elite actors behind the American Revolution, Bouton makes his point less convincing and leaves important elements out his story. There is a difference between showing how the historical characters spoke (defining categories of historical practice), and using the same language as a basis for categorical analysis (adopting categories of practice as categories of analysis). The terms that Bouton uses in the book embrace binaries: rich versus poor, farmer versus gentry, federalist versus anticonstitutionalist and other similar statements. From our point of view as social historians, we are used to thinking about the "gentry" as morally reprobate. Yet Bouton takes it further when he adopts a term like "federalist," which is ordinarily morally neutral, as a moral indictment.

On one hand, this kind of approach sets Bouton apart from the typical historian of American history, who tends to maintain the prevailing value system of American political discourse. I applaud Bouton for the freedom of thought that allows him to break with the typical way of speaking and thinking. And yet, on the other hand, Bouton also goes further than a rejection of typical values; he imbues his work with moral judgment. And I think that there is an analytic plight unavoidable in the use of moral terms: if the subject is either good or evil it cannot be fully understood. This linguistic suppression is also a common tool and in contemporary American Politics. Does not a binary characterization of so-called “moral” issues often serve as the ultimate distraction from important political decisions?

Similarly, Bouton's adherence to a binary distinction between farmer and gentry actually obscures subtle pluralistic and multidimensional interactions. Bouton misses the relationships between his "ordinary" farmer folk and poor city residents they sometimes fought, between poor white farmers and blacks they enslaved, and between "Ordinary Americans" and Native Americans they displaced. According to Morgan, it was precisely this kind of a trick, imposed by the ruling class in early colonial Virginia, that lead to the development of racial slavery in America. Then, elites constructed a binary between Black and White to make the disparity between rich and poor harder to perceive.

On first read, Morgan's views on the construction of race struck many of you as morally insensitive. But I think that it was only by setting down the moral framework that he correctly identifies the real trend. On the other hand, Bouton makes explicit moral judgments that can be emotionally satisfying. And yet these moral statements obscure some important aspects of the story.

I agree in full with Bouton's rejection of the ideals behind the American Revolution. Personally I would extend it to American ideals in general. But I also think that Bouton's "moral honesty" relies on his own set of ideals and I think it damages his credibility. The irony is that Bouton succeeds in showing how the morals of the era were economically constructed tools yet he does not free his own text from moral analysis.

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