Pullman in Perspective

ED: So Brian, they said at the beginning of that segment that this is the one utopia that America could not afford to fail, right? Why is that? Why would the general population look at Pullman more positively than they did at Fruitlands, or some of these other Utopian experiments?

BRIAN: I think, Ed, it’s because capitalism couldn’t afford to fail.

PETER: Right, right. Yeah. It’s working within the system.

BRIAN: And this was such a statement about the Utopian capacity of capitalism. Now, when we think about Fruitlands, we think about most of the utopias we’ve discussed so far on the show. These are ways of really getting outside of capitalism, or getting outside of individualism, which is a very important component of capitalism.

ED: Right, right.

BRIAN: Pullman was all about pushing capitalism that extra mile, so that we wouldn’t need to get outside of capitalism. That’s why it couldn’t afford to fail.

PETER: And this is the period of the so-called robber barons, and in many ways for contemporaries, that evoked the old regime, the past, when we had barons and we had a feudalism. But what Pullman would demonstrate against Marx is that yes, capital is concentrated and it becomes a force for good, it creates great wealth, and the enlightened capitalist knows how to share it.

BRIAN: And that’s why it was so important to demonstrate that this could really work.

ED: Except, of course, that it didn’t.

BRIAN: Yes, exactly.

ED: But you know, what I would like to suggest is that parts of it did. The idea that capitalism can best foster its own kind of mini utopia, we see it today in the free food available at Silicon Valley workshops, and the treadmills, and all these kinds of things, you know? As it turns out, I grew up in such a place.

Kingsport, Tennessee was designed from the ground up around the time of World War I by 10 northern corporations who came in and hired a city planner from Cambridge, Massachusetts to come out and figure out how all the different buildings would fit together, and how you would attract an Anglo-Saxon labor force from the mountains of Appalachia, and take away their guns so we wouldn’t shoot each other.

I’m not kidding. You had to stack your guns when you went into the Eastman Kodak, the Kingsport Press, Mead Paper. And when I was growing up, it was called the model city, and we were all very proud to live there. And it was an example of what industrial capitalism could do if the companies controlled everything there was to control in the city.

And so as it turned out, my folks didn’t work for Eastman Kodak, the big one of these, and so I have to admit, I burn with resentment at certain times of the year. You know, well, matter of fact, every Saturday when the kids got to go off to free movies and popcorn–

PETER: Free? Oh, no!

ED: At the Eastman Kodak. And then at Christmas, when Santa would just give away gifts to the kids who would just line up, who were the kids of Eastman Kodak employees. And so we benefited from having that prosperity around us, but I think I’m still trying to get over it. So, you know, I’m a little pointed about that because I see how exciting it was to have this operating in the middle of Appalachia.

And you realize, looking back on it now, that it’s kind of fallen apart. But it had strong elements of Utopian ideals in it.

PETER: Well, Ed, what you’re talking about is enlightened self interests of the capitalists.

ED: Yeah.

PETER: And how do you create or attract a working class to make factories work to produce profits? And not that corporate self interest is a bad thing. I’m not making a moral judgment, but I am saying it’s not the same as the impulse to escape the market, to escape property, to escape the ways in which we are made to compete with each other.

And that notion of hierarchy, that some will have power because they have wealth, and others will be at their mercy, well, that’s a refutation in intention with the whole idea of democracy of equality.

BRIAN: But there’s an element in lots of the utopias that we’ve been discussing, Peter and Ed, that I hadn’t thought about before, but it it’s a kind of static nature, and you can really see it in Pullman’s notion that people, if given the proper environment, will be happy with exactly who they are, where they are.

And it so much cuts against the central tenet of capitalism, of mobility. Of moving up, of making your own way.

ED: That’s why it’s Utopian.

BRIAN: No, that’s exactly right within capitalism, but it’s also this just incredible paradox.