{"id":27463,"date":"2017-10-31T05:55:49","date_gmt":"2017-10-31T10:55:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=27463"},"modified":"2017-10-31T05:56:48","modified_gmt":"2017-10-31T10:56:48","slug":"a-system-problem-for-democracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=27463","title":{"rendered":"A System Problem for Democracy"},"content":{"rendered":"

A System Problem for Democracy<\/a><\/h3>\n
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\nIn 1956 William H. Whyte published a book entitled\u00a0<\/em>The Organization Man<\/em><\/a>. Basing his findings on a large number of interviews with CEOs of major American corporations, Whyte concluded that, within the context of modern organizational structure, American \u201crugged individualism\u201d had given way to a \u201ccollectivist ethic.\u201d Economic success and individual recognition was now pursued within an institutional structure \u2013 that is, by \u201cserving the organization.\u201d<\/p>\n

Whyte\u2019s book was widely read and praised, yet his thesis was not as novel as it seemed. \u201cRugged individualism,\u201d to the extent that it existed, was (and is) the exception for human behavior and not the rule. We have evolved to be group-oriented animals and not lone wolves. This means that the vast majority of us (and certainly not just Americans) live our lives according to established cultural conventions. These operate on many levels \u2013 not just national patriotism or the customs of family life.<\/p>\n

What Whyte ran across was the sub-culture of the workplace as followed by those who set themselves upon a \u201ccareer path\u201d within a specific organization. The stereotypical examples are those,\u00a0to quote Whyte<\/a>, \u201cwho have left home spiritually as well as physically, to take the vows of organization life. [They adopt an ethic that] rationalizes the organization\u2019s demand for fealty and gives those who offer it wholeheartedly a sense of dedication.\u201d<\/p>\n

Today, some private sector organizations have moved away from the most extreme demands of such conformity, but some other career lines have not, two examples being the military and career party politics. For insight in this we can turn to the sociologist\u00a0C. Wright Mills<\/a>, whose famous book\u00a0The Power Elite<\/em><\/a>\u00a0was published the same year as Whyte\u2019s\u00a0The Organization Man.<\/em><\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A System Problem for Democracy In 1956 William H. Whyte published a book entitled\u00a0The Organization Man. Basing his findings on a large number of interviews with CEOs of major American corporations, Whyte concluded that, within the context of modern organizational structure, American \u201crugged individualism\u201d had given way to a \u201ccollectivist ethic.\u201d Economic success and individual […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,6],"tags":[1311,5493,204,16363,16792,16791],"class_list":["post-27463","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","category-liberty","tag-collectivism","tag-counterpunch","tag-democracy","tag-lawrence-davidson","tag-rugged-individualism","tag-william-h-whyte"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27463","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27463"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27463\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27464,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27463\/revisions\/27464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}