Foundations of the American Century

by Inderjeet Parmar

  The parastates’ state orientation is remarkably similar to Gramsci’s state spirit. What this suggests is that Gramsci’s concepts have a great deal to offer in analyzing power in the United States. Also, it is apparent that the greater comprehensiveness of Gramsci’s theoretical framework effectively subsumes but also articulates the concepts outlined above, permitting a more comprehensive, compelling, coherent, and critical study of power.

  EPISTEMIC COMMUNITIES

  Epistemic (or knowledge) communities play an important role in policy processes. The concept is considered here because it relates to state-private networks, especially in one of its particular forms. Epistemic communities are “networks of specialists with a common world view about cause and effect relationships which relate to their domain of expertise, and common political values about the type of policies to which they should be applied.”58 Understood this way, epistemic communities appear to be value/ knowledge-based special interests, very much in the pluralistic mold, who seek to influence the state. Influence, if any, flows from the private group to the state.

  A nuanced version of the concept of epistemic communities argues for a “two-tier” dynamic within knowledge groups: the first tier consists of government officials, international agencies, and corporate executives; the second, of academics, lawyers, and journalists. Both tiers share a common conceptual framework but operate within an agreed division of labor: government officials have access to policy making and use the second tier to publicize/disseminate their ideas, legitimate them as “objective and scientific,” and to elaborate on them. Additionally, the second tier’s ideas are brought to government officials and decision makers as evidence of a growing consensus. When such interactions conclude successfully, they lead to the institutionalization of the epistemic community’s “policy paradigm” and the incorporation of experts into direct state service.59

  In relation to Gramscian thought, the concept of epistemic communities is limited—it contains no general theory of power or the state nor of the multiple sources of power in the corporate economy, the academy, and so on. The present argument differs from Haas’s pluralism and the lack of articulation of epistemic communities with other aspects of power, especially the power of the purse, and the rather casual way in which Haas suggests that knowledge networks “emerge” in response to “demand” without examining the precise mechanisms by which effective demand for information is distributed and whether there are any agencies that both generate demand and foster the growth and development of suppliers of knowledge. Haas implicitly works within a notion of a free market of ideas. This book argues that certain strategic institutions with financial power try to foresee problems and foster the scholars that may assist in problem conceptualization and solution. Placed in a Gramscian context, however, the epistemic-community approach becomes a more usable empirical concept that might have something to say about the precise character of state-private networks and relations.

  The concepts of Establishment, the corporatist organizational sector, parastates, and epistemic/knowledge communities have much in common, and they may usefully be applied to American foreign relations to help us understand the relationship between key elements of private elite and other organizations and interests with various agencies of the American state. Each concept clearly shares the view that there are numerous and significant overlaps in outlook and interests between the state and elite sectors of society. Despite the use of different language and vocabularies, each concept highlights the utility of blurring the distinction between state and society, moving beyond ideas of state power that set up the state against society and vice versa. They suggest that political outcomes, policies, and state behavior are better understood as an alliance between state and society; even more, they suggest that state penetration of society and vice versa are so deep and comprehensive—physically, politically, ideologically, psychologically, and organizationally—that it is almost impossible to say where one ends and the other begins.

  Political reform is another leitmotif of the four concepts examined here. Enlightened, elite-led change is central to each concept. But the changes/ reforms sought and campaigned for are not purely for the sake of change: their aim is to establish a new order, combat “chaos” and “disorder,” and create a new regime in which there will be “stability” and “progress.” Even though Hodgson’s Establishment and the corporatists’ organizational sector aspire to stability, they are at heart reformers who challenged the status quo (of isolationism and untrammeled competition, respectively); undermined it through political, economic, and social critiques; and eventually overcame their foes. They then became the upholders of stability—to defend their new order.

  Relatedly, each concept also favors elite-led, top-down, technocratic change. The masses do not make a positive appearance in any of the concepts examined. There is an underlying assumption of the superiority of expertise, certified knowledge, status, position, social origins, and intellect. The Progressives, the Establishment, etc. shared the view that the masses were poor judges of public issues—indeed, they sink to the level of “primitives” when examining matters of politics, according to Schumpeter,60 an elite democrat—and were too emotional, unstable, and too easily swayed by rabble rousers and demagogues. In each of the concepts, except the corporatist, the people are the objects of surveillance, elite guidance, and mobilization.61

  If they frown on the dangers of electoral politics, elites are more optimistic about those men who occupy the higher echelons of the state, for it is the higher executives who are considered as enlightened as they, who indeed are often drawn from the same corporations, elite universities, private schools, foundation boards, churches, and so on. Relatively insulated from the vagaries of electoral politics and public opinion’s mood swings, to some extent at least and especially in foreign affairs, the executive branch offers the opportunity of great influence, of realizing goals of political, economic, and administrative reform. The revolving door from Wall Street and Cambridge, Massachusetts, to the corridors of Washington, D.C., expresses and symbolizes the easy circulation of Establishment men in the exercise of power: the symbiosis of private elites and public power.62

  A NEO-GRAMSCIAN PERSPECTIVE

  Hodgson’s Establishment and the corporatists’ organizational sector are the most economistic of the four concepts, favoring the idea that elites are, at least in part, drawn from the ranks of capital-intensive international manufacturers and bankers. By recognizing the importance of economic interests to politics and the political system, the two relevant concepts move closer to a more radical interpretation of power: Gramscian thought. The latter framework is far more comprehensive and certainly more critical than any of the ones examined above, and it is a better way of explaining state-society relations. In addition, Gramsci’s rarely examined notion of “state spirit” offers new insight into understanding state-society relations that is hinted at in several of the four concepts examined above but never satisfactorily articulated.

  Gramsci made more explicit what Karl Marx argued: “The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas.”63 Gramsci, however, located ideological, political, and cultural struggle more centrally into Marxist thought, thereby creating space for intellectuals. It is the role of “organic intellectuals”—thinkers who are connected with the dominant class, for example, within the universities, or the church, mass media, political parties—to develop, elaborate, and disseminate dominant ideas, values, and norms and to make “natural,” “commonsensical,” and psychologically satisfying to the whole society what are, in reality, ideas that principally support the ruling class.

  Through struggle, compromise, and the building of enduring coalitions that cut across class, ethnic, and racial cleavages is formed the prevailing idea of “reality,” the dominant concept that underlies a particular regime. As political regimes—or hegemonic projects and alliances—are made up of cross-class coalitions, they require for their formation and
sustenance mobilizations of public opinion to convince the masses—or at least a critical proportion of them—that they have a stake in current arrangements. In short, the historic bloc is generated and sustained by leadership based on the “consent of the governed,” under the hegemonic leadership of politicians and intellectuals of the capitalist class.

  As the “consent of the governed” is so vital to political arrangements, it is engineered64 by intellectual, political, and cultural elites through numerous channels that involve not only the state but also the sort of organizations that Hodgson’s Establishment, the corporatists’ organizational sector, Eisenach’s parastates, and the epistemic communities would recognize: the major private and public universities, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the great philanthropic foundations—Ford, Carnegie, and Rockefeller.

  In Gramscian terms, elite and popular authority are constructed by an alliance of state and private agencies in order to undermine the old order and to usher in the new. Central to the motivation of private elites is Gramsci’s concept of “state spirit.” In essence, state spirit inspires leaders to take personally the concerns of the nation and state and to subordinate narrow economic and political interests to the broader, long-term interests of the state/nation as a whole. State-spirited leaders contextualize themselves in the broad sweep of national and global historical development: their outlook “presupposes ‘continuity,’ either with the past, or with tradition, or with the future; that is, it presupposes that every act is a moment in a complex process, which has already begun and which will continue.”65 According to Gramsci, such leaders may even come to believe “that they are the State.”66

  Studies of the American state’s and private elites’ foreign policy behavior that do not adequately appreciate the importance of state-private networks must be questioned. Private elites played key roles in the making of foreign policy, opinion mobilization, and overseas policy implementation, with the direct and indirect support of the American state. Indeed, foundations and think tanks often were able to operate under the fiction that they were independent nonstate institutions in sensitive countries and regions. The best way to conceptualize and appreciate this phenomenon is through frameworks that provide adequate cognizance of the importance of consensus building and network construction—and the state spiritedness that motivates the state-private network—both within the American Establishment and in its relations with subordinate social classes.

  However, the dominant conceptualizations of the position, roles, and history of the Big 3 foundations provide a stark contrast to the critical analysis advanced by neo-Gramscians. “Mainstream” scholars of foundations, as well as foundation insiders, tend to view American philanthropy as comprising benign, enlightened, and selfless forces for the betterment of the nation and world; as above politics and ideology, beyond big business and the state, and part of a third sector above and independent of both;67 as led by and dependent upon university academics and other intellectual institutions rather than mobilizing the former to advance any ideopolitical agenda; and as builders of a more open and pluralistic America and a democracy-enhancing global civil society (the latter since the late 1980s). They argue, for example, that foundation trustees do not “interfere” with university research and teaching, either within or beyond the United States because American academic professional associations predated the foundations and had, by the time the foundations were established, developed an intellectual autonomy that could not be and was not diminished by philanthropy.68 They also raise a fundamental objection to Gramscian theory (along with other European elite theories) as inapplicable (or at least less applicable) to the American case, owing to critical differences between the two cultures. In Europe, they argue, intellectuals were mobilized by political parties, but in the United States, parties were different and less legitimate organizations and were shunned by intellectuals. Philanthropy and academia, therefore, steered clear of politics and even government, remaining above partisanship, patronage, and parochialism.69 Karl and Katz, therefore, react to a Gramscian analysis of foundations by reverting to the more optimistic interpretations of foundation insiders, who claim that foundations merely sponsor good ideas or knowledge for its own sake, rather than for political, strategic, or ideological ends.70 Karl and Katz et al., therefore, would expect to find, in the case of the foundations’ roles in the cases considered in this study, disinterested, apolitical, and nonideological grant-making and investment initiatives that were independent of the American state; that is, they would expect to find evidence to confirm the foundation’s own publicly stated claims about their role. Foundations of the American Century fundamentally challenges such interpretations.

  QUESTIONS AND METHODS

  Given this radically divided set of ideas and arguments about the position, roles, and history of the Big 3 foundations, in what follows I directly address several questions:

  Are foundations above governmental and corporate interests, or are they part of an unrepresentative East Coast Establishment and part of a hegemonic ruling elite?

  What are and historically have been the roles of philanthropic foundations—at home and abroad—in U.S. foreign policy?

  Are American foundations and their increasingly powerful networks of global philanthropy actively creating a politically and ideologically skewed “global civil society” that sustains American (and Western) hegemony? Are the foundations now building the organizations and civil-society infrastructure that support U.S.-led globalization?

  What does the evidence suggest about “how power works” in the United States, particularly regarding the role of knowledge and knowledge networks?

  These questions are addressed through a series of detailed case studies of the foundations’ roles from the 1930s to the “war on terror” after 9/11 by analyzing relevant comprehensive historical and contemporary primary evidence from foundation records. Those foundations’ roles break down into the following kinds: first, policy making and building state research capacity, especially focusing on the foundations’ support for think tanks and other policy-related intellectual institutions, such as the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Yale Institute of International Studies, and the American Committee on International Studies; second, elite opinion formation and mobilization efforts through the examination of, for example, the activities of the CFR’s regional committees, Foreign Policy Association, and Institute of Pacific Relations, as well as university IR programs’ outputs; third, the building of formal and informal international organizations in and through which American influence and hegemony was exercised; fourth, direct overseas interventions in coordination with the U.S. state in promoting American ideas, values, and methods in regard to economic-development strategies in specific cases, including interventions in Indonesian, Chilean, and Nigerian universities during the Cold War, as well as promoting Americanism and combating anti-Americanism more generally; and, finally, in post–Cold War promotion of neoliberal globalization and strategies of democracy promotion.

  Foundations’ records are an extremely rich source of knowledge and insights as to the mindset of their leaders and the rationale, scope, and effectiveness of their funding programs. They yield information on their policy-making committees’ main preoccupations and assumptions, including the boards of trustees; documents on internal conferences for clarifying aims/objectives; grant files charting the funding of particular programs, projects, and institutions; grant impact evaluation reports; internal correspondence and memoranda chronicling policy debates; correspondence between officials and grantees; external referees’ reports; annual reports; officers’ and trustees’ oral histories; and correspondence with relevant sections of the State (and other) Departments. These records have yielded much evidence—links with U.S. universities’ area studies and IR programs, elite opinion mobilization activities, and the foundations’ own overseas operations in support of U.S. hegemony—to shed light on the key questio
ns. The case studies (from the 1930s/World War II years, the Cold War, and the post–Cold War periods) reveal the difference to U.S. foreign affairs made by philanthropy over a long historical period; provide evidence of their political-ideological characteristics and their relationships with the American state and corporations; their perception of the roles and effect of the knowledge networks they historically constructed; their role in globalization, democracy promotion, and global civil society construction and, thereby, in “mobilizing bias” in certain policy-related and ideological directions and away from others; and in addressing the final question as to what the evidence tells us about “how power works” in a major liberal democracy and through its increasingly “globalized” reach.

  The whole study permits consideration of the first question regarding the foundations’ third-sector claims. Most specifically, however, the question will be addressed by an original analysis of the political, religious, educational, occupational, and corporate backgrounds of the foundation trustees and officers. By examining the connections of scores of foundation leaders with the rest of American society, politics, state, and economy, I analyze trustees’ wider linkages and changes over time. It is explicitly recognized, though not in any overly deterministic way, that social origins have far-reaching consequences. It is also recognized that socialization processes are lifelong in duration and effect: each time individuals enter a new phase of their lives or enter new institutional cultures, they undergo subtle reeducation in their self-concept.

  The second question—the historical and contemporary roles of U.S. foundations in American foreign affairs—will be explored in a number of related ways. For example, I analyze the foundations’ contributions to enhancing the American state’s policy-making functions, through financing initiatives to increase the research/knowledge-construction capacities of the state; improving official policy makers’ linkages with experts and think tanks; increasing the supply of academic policy-related expertise useful to policy makers; and increasing the supply of better-trained graduates from U.S. foreign policy–related area studies and IR programs.