See also: Lippmann

Walter Lippmann , born with New York the September 23rd 1889, dead the December 14th 1974, thinker and American political commentator. He was journalist with the New Republic , with the World , the New York Herald Tribune where he held a syndicated column, Today and Tomorow , and with Newsweek .

Youths

Harvard

Lippmann was born with New York in an easy family which was accustomed to going on an annual journey in Europe. It enters to Harvard in 1906, where it had, in particular, as professor William James and George Santayana of which he was the assistant. Assiduous reader authors of the Fabian Society (the Webb, Herbert George Wells or George Bernard Shaw), rejected clubs élitaires of this University, it creates, in 1908, with eight other students the Harvard Socialist Club of which he became president. In 1910, It follows the courses of Graham Wallas, a professor of political science of the London School off Economics (L.S.E) guest with Harvard. This meeting is decisive and Lippmann, as before him Graham Wallas, an eminent former member of the Fabian Society, moves away from the Socialisme to approach the Libéralisme.

Herbert Croly and New Republic

After its studies, he becomes the assistant of Lincoln Steffens, a journalist “muckraker” and takes part in the presidential campaign of 1912 which sees to clash a republican William Howard Taft, Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924) and an old republican president representing the wing progressist Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919), an uncle of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882-1945). This intellectually interesting countryside will mark the American political life and the work of Lippmann. Indeed, in backdrop one finds on the one hand the need for adapting the democracy to the complexity of the modern economic life, and on the other hand, that to better take into account the reality of the vote for all. Two structured projects face: the program of New Nationalism of Theodore Roosevelt and Herbert Croly, the program of New Freedom worked out by Wilson and his adviser Louis Brandeis. The two first are as favorable to a reinforcement of the Federal state as they are reserved with respect to the antitrust legislation. With wrong way, Woodrov Wilson is favorable to a reinforcement of the antitrust legislation, and reserved as for a reinforcement of the State. Lippmann engages then beside Theodore Roosevelt. With that two reasons seems it: it will always have a certain sympathy to the blazing political personalities, its faith in the reason of the contractors and the experts. Reality, like, will be often contrasted and finally if Wilson will reinforce the anti-monopoly acts, it will reinforce also the role of the President.

In November 1914, Walter Lippmann with in particular Herbert Croly and Walter Weyl takes part in the foundation of the New Republic, a newspaper “of the liberal consensus to be rather on the left stimulative (Steel, 1980, p.75)”. The newspaper will have a certain influence rather quickly and will be “a forum for the spirits of the most serious English language and most original (Steel, 1980, p.75)”. John Dewey, Charles Beard, James Bryce, George Bernard Shaw, Graham Wallas published articles in particular there. With the New Republic , Lippmann was certainly that which was impassioned more for the foreign politics. He pled rather quickly for the United States gives up “isolationism” and more strongly implies himself in the international businesses. In 1916, Wilson who needs the voices of the progressists for the presidential election brings closer to them. Walter Lippmann, very requested, becomes in 1917, assisting of the Minister for the war Newton Baker.

Of the Fourteen Points to the Treaty of Versailles

Enough quickly, in September 1917, it is named general secretary of the Inquiry , a commission of specialists formed by Woodrow Wilson and Colonel House in order to studied the problems of nationalities in Europe and to reflect on the way in which could be redrawn the European landscape post-war period. Lippmann with the Inquiry took an active part in the development of eight of the Fourteen points of Wilson (items 6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13). At the end of 1918, member of the American delegation to the conference of Paris, it will be charged to carry out the official interpretation of these same Fourteen Points. It will leave Paris quickly, at the end of January 1919, because it saw that it could be there of no utility the more so as its mentor, Colonel House, itself was marginalized by the arrival of Wilson to Paris. The only positive aspect of its Parisian stay was its meeting with Keynes (Goodwin 1995, p. 336) and Bernard Berenson with which it maintained a durable friendship thereafter. In Paris, little listened Keynes of its chief of delegation also left the scene before the end of the part.

Lippmann returned to the United States will be opposed, with the other editors of New Republic, with the ratification of the Treaty of Versailles. They were in particular opposed to the “balkanization of the Central Europe” and to the war reparations (Steel, 1980, p.158). It obtained Keynes the authorization to publish certain extracts of the Economic consequences of the Traité of Versailles in the number of Christmas 1919 of New Republic. The wild portrait that Keynes draws up of Wilson served those which, to the Senate, were opposed to the ratification Traité of Versailles (Steel, 1980, pp. 164-165). Later, Lippmann seems to have regretted its gesture and to have underlined the influence of Croly in its decision (Steel, 1980, p.166). At all events in this beginning of the year twenty, a page is turned for the world and Lippmann. At the beginning of 1922, it leaves New Republic for the World de Ralph Pulitzer. Professionally installed in what will be its trade its life during, it passes to a new stage of its life not without to have delivered one of its major works Public Opinion (1922), a book where it develops the concept of Stéréotype of which he is the inventor and that close to Pictures in Our Heads . This book was followed into 1925 of The Phantom Public . During the remainder of its working life, it will appease its passion for the businesses of the world thanks to its journalistic profession and to its participation in work and debates of the Council one Foreign Relations .

The liberalism of the Free City and the Conference Walter Lippmann

At the end of the Twenties, Lippmann written has Prefaces to Morals . It is only after the Economic conference of London of July 1933 that it really will be interested in the liberalism then disputed and threatened of all shares. Its research will lead to the publication into 1937 of its book The Good Society whose French translation the Free City will be the element release of the Colloque Walter Lippmann. The examination of the Libéralisme of Lippmann will be articulated around three axes: its opposition to let make, the importance which it attaches to design of the law, its analysis of the liberal government. The second point east can be most difficult to apprehend so much the image of the law in our head ( picture in our head ), to show one of the key expressions of its book Public Opinion , can be different from his and that of the quoted lawyers.

Liberalism and let make

According to Clavé (2005, p. 91) “one of the key questions of the book the Free City can be thus formulated: why the Liberalism, which was the engine of the great Revolution (the industrial revolution) and " as an historical mission had of discovering the division of the travail" , it was not really " the pole star of the humain" spirit; what until about 1870? ”. If it raises this question it is that it estimates that after takes place a double reaction. On a side on the right one attended an alliance of the soldiers and politicians aiming at substituting for the market the authority of the State. Other, on the left, with a socialist reaction also etatist. In front of this dilemma for him the last liberals, he thinks in particular of Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) were not with the height. Lippmann (1937, p.223) note that “since the Marxists and the last liberals left the same premises, namely that the social order of the 19th century was the order necessary, the adapted order, that it was the perfect reflection of the novel mode of production, all their quarrel consisted in deciding if the type of question were good or bad”. Why, according to him, in one arrived there?

In the center, is the question of let make which leads to distinguish a field from the economy, place of the natural laws and a sphere of the policy governed by the laws of the men. If Lippmann (1937, p.323) is so sensitive on this subject, that it names the " dilemma of Burke" it is that in the United States, there was, at the end 19th century and at the beginning of the 20th century, a wild conflict between the Supreme court which supported that the State was not to intervene in the economy because this one was regulated by natural laws and politicians who supported the opposite. This opposition did not relate only to the will to improve the working situation, it also related to the way of conceiving the law. For the lawyers and certain adverse economists with let make architectonic laws of this form of liberalism, was not in conformity with the legal English tradition resulting from Lord Coke and the fight against the absolute monarchy. During the Colloque Walter Lippmann this architectonic problem subjacent with liberalism let make will be evoked with force by Michael Polanyi and Alexander Rüstow with, in this sum of money case, of the solutions forts different from those of the Free Cité .

Lippmann and the English legal tradition of the XVIIe century

For Walter Lippmann, as for Roscoe Pound, a lawyer of Harvard, the laws can be heard either like commands (authoritative tradition), or as being the expression of relations between human beings or things (liberal tradition). To explain this opposition, Lippmann returns to the conflict which opposed, at the 17th century, the king Jacques {{Romanian|I|1}} {{er}} at the English Parliament and Lord Coke. For the king, the law was “the emanation of the will of the sovereign (Lippmann 1937, p. 404)”. Opposite, Lord Coke retorted that the king “is subjected to God and the law”. For Lippmann, the large English lawyer means by this sentence that: “the law is conceived like tie its origin of the nature of the things and the report/ratio of the king on his subjects, and of any man with the others, is regarded as bench by impersonal laws which oblige everyone (Lippmann 1937, p. 404)”. Lippmann sees this conflict like a prototype of the opposition between “the logic of the authority” defended by the king and the liberal logic defended by Lord Coke. To think the law in terms of relations has for Lippmann two other advantages. First of all, the field of the law is not vertical any more, from the capacity towards the mass, but multidimensional. In addition, in this way one cannot treat the individuals as if they were insulated as if they were of “Robinson Crusoë before the appearance of Friday” since the important thing resides in the treatment of the interactions.

One can perceive that for him, the classical economists starting from Ricardo yielded to authoritative temptation. Indeed, he shows them to have conceived “an imaginary social order”, “the world such as he would have to be remade” with blow of assumptions, into which it often introduced “the conclusions that they claimed to draw”. In extreme cases, for him, their step could have been interesting if it had been used as a basis for a critical study of the divergences between this ideal and reality it were not the case. Actually Walter Lippmann opposes the hypothético-deductive method and prefers as a disciple of Wallas to place himself within the framework of limited rationality. Thus it is grateful to the founding fathers of the United States to have understood that, if the people could control themselves, it could not do it naturally. He congratulates them to have written a constitution intended “to refine” the capacity of the people.

Another element is recurring in its work and that of Wallas, even if at Lippmann clarification is sometimes a little confused. A good law is not only that which satisfies best the material life of the men, it is necessary also that it brings an interior harmony to them. If there is on their premises an idea of natural law, it is not within the meaning of physical laws but of laws morals heard like respectful of major nature, interiority, the human being.

The liberal government

For some, Lippmann in two of its works, Public Opinion (1922) and The Phantom Public (1925) would have doubts about the possibility of a “true democracy in the modern society”. In fact, the problem arises differently. Elie Halévy (1904, p.121) opposes the constitutional mechanism of the liberals based on a moral pessimism which pushes them to put a whole of legislative power, legal, executive of weights appreciably equal so that they limit the ones the others without destroying itself, to the mechanism of the radical State of Jeremy Bentham. In this last case, so nominally the people to be able it, it must delegate it to the State and the countervailing powers are not intended to limit and control the official apparatus but on the contrary to thwart any “partial” expression or “catégorielles” of the people. This extremely widespread framework of thought in certain countries is not that of Lippmann. Indeed, its design of the human nature which derives from that exposed by Graham Wallas in Human Nature in Politics brings it to reason within a liberal framework within the meaning of Elie Halévy (a friend of Graham Wallas). In fact in the two quoted books, he seeks to include/understand how to make take part the best possible citizens being given the limits of the human beings. If it does not have recourse to a very abstract concept of the type “will general” it is on the one hand that it sees there that a return to the prerogatives of the former lords and Masters and thus to the principle of authority. It is also that such concepts do not say anything on reality things. However, it is precisely of the study of the facts that it awaits possibilities for improvement. In the same vein, Graham Wallas, which it indicates in introduction of the Free Cité as being its Master, liked in Jeremy Bentham the capacity of invention, the desire of progress, but not the designs utilitarian. This mixture of desire benthamien of innovation and liberal design of the man will at the same time push it to accept a larger intervention of the government in the economy and to reflect on the institutional means ready to dam up the abuses and the perverse effects. In Godkin readings which it gave to Harvard in May 1934 (published under the title of Method off Freedom ), it notes impossibility of restoring the worldwide economy on the basis of principle of pre-war period because the men do not accept any more without reacting the purgings caused by the business cycles. For him, the great innovation of the inter-war period resides the fact that the State has economic responsibilities now. It is the Nouvel requirement (1935). In this new role, according to him, the State has the choice between two solutions: the system of directed economy or absolute collectivism and the system of compensated economy which it calls also free collectivism. free collectivism , it writes: “its method consists in rectifying the balance of the actions deprived by public actions of compensation. (Lippmann 1935, p. 46)”. In the Free Quoted , it does not include these topics, it does not speak any more a free collectivism but it accepts some of the contributions of Keynes which go in the same direction. On the bottom, it there does not have, seems it, great change. On the other hand, as in the two above mentioned works, the increased role of the government of which it fears that it leads to a multiplication of catégorielles claims, worries it. To face this threat, it suggests that “the first task of the liberal policy consists in judging the claims of the private interests which require revisions of the laws, and endeavouring to make decisions equitable between these contradictory claims (Lippmann 1937, p. 338)”. For this purpose, he proposes to integrate in a liberal constitution a guiding principle which would oblige to legislate only by means of laws treating in a general way of the reports/ratios of the men between them. The role of the experts is one of its other subjects of concern. In the Free Quoted , it notes that “the Welfare state of the future will have all the authority of absolute States of the past, but it will be very different; the devoted technicians will replace the courtiers and favorite kings and the government, armed with an irresistible capacity, will have with its liking humanity (Lippmann 1937, p. 43-44)”. To thwart this temptation, it seems to recommend to make return the experts in the field of the capacities subjected to the process of the “check and balances”.

Lipmann questions the capacity of the ordinary man to be determined with Sagesse and proposed that the erudite elites cleanse the Information before it reaches the mass.

Lippmann after the Second world war