Kevin R. Kosar is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, DC. He is the host of the Understanding Congress podcast and the coeditor of Congress Overwhelmed: Congressional Capaity and prospects for Reform (2020). he has written the New York Times, National Review, the Atlantic, and many other publications.
Big cities so often appear to have terrible problems, and Americans have a long history of convincing themselves that urban areas are in crises and that the federal government must do something to improve matters.
Edward C. Banfield argues the conventional wisdom is incorrect. In The Unheavenly City Revisited, he presents rigorous analyses showing that “by any conceivable measure of material welfare the present generation of urban Americans is, on the whole, better off than any other large group of people has ever been anywhere.” He furthermore argues that there is little evidence that the billions of dollars of government spending is improving matters. Indeed, well-intended government actions have proved harmful in some instances.
The Unheavenly City Revisited cautions policymakers that their biases may affect their perceptions of America’s metropolitan areas. Improving the lives of people in cities through government action is an exceedingly complex enterprise. Government officials and citizens alike must be realists about what government action can achieve.
“I intend to limit myself to the question: Has two hundred years of the pursuit of happiness left us more happy or less happy? Almost all of those who have pronounced on this question say it has left us more unhappy.”
Thus begins Edward C. Banfield’s contribution to this 1988 symposium convened by the American Enterprise Institute (EI). What a gathering: Banfield, Allan Bloom, and Charles Murray, three social scientists who had written best-selling books. They were convened by longtime AEI fellow, Robert Goldwyn, who authored and edited a number of books.
Banfield’s answer to his question is a subtle one, as readers of the symposium will see. But there is no mistaking his disagreement with the various critics left and right who dumped on the American experiment and the notion of limited government and free enterprise.
“Wealth has not prevented America and Americans from being at least as humane and protective of human rights and peace as any society. Indeed, the great calamities that Tocqueville, Solzhenitsyn, and others have spoken of have not eventuated, and what has eventuated has had nothing to do with American wealth. Nazism, Communism, and Muslim fundamentalism were not the results of an excess of material things.”
AEI Press republished Edward C. Banfield’s classic book, Government Project, in late December 2023. Copies of the book may be purchased at https://amzn.to/48S4nV2. The new edition retains Banfield’s original text, Rexford Tugwell’s original introduction, and a new preface by Kevin R. Kosar. Government Project tells the story of an attempt by the US government to remake the lives of some of its citizens by establishing a cooperative farm in Pinal County, Arizona, in 1937. These individuals were among the most desperately poor and disadvantaged in the nation. The farm financially succeeded for a time, but the inhabitants shuttered it in its seventh year of operation. Many of them walked away with hardly anything, to the shock and dismay of the government officials overseeing it. Government Project deftly explains what went wrong at Casa Grande. In telling this story, Banfield illuminates larger truths about human nature and the limits of governance.
AEI Press has brought back this classic book, which has been out of print since the 1950s. The new edition retains Banfield’s original text, Rexford Tugwell’s original introduction, and a new preface by Kevin R. Kosar.
Government Project tells the story of an attempt by the US government to remake the lives of some of its citizens by establishing a cooperative farm in Pinal County, Arizona, in 1937. These individuals were among the most desperately poor and disadvantaged in the nation.
Casa Grande Valley Farms was an elaborate venture that provided the Americans who volunteered to settle there with housing, work, and the opportunity to earn income. For five years, the farm succeeded. The revenues from the sale of its crops gave the Casa Grande settlers material comfort and wealth far beyond what they had ever possessed.
But in the farm’s seventh year of operation, the inhabitants shuttered it and walked away with hardly anything, to the shock and dismay of the government officials overseeing it.
Banfield’s Government Project deftly explains what went wrong at Casa Grande. In telling this story, Banfield illuminates larger truths about human nature and the limits of governance.
“It is not a nice story.” -Rexford G. Tugwell, administrator, United States Resettlement Administration, from the 1951 introduction
“Devotees of Aeschylus, Sophocles, or Dreiser will understand this book. With the relentlessness of a Greek tragedy, the story of this Resettlement Administration project… moves forward from relief and destitution… through hope, then security, to the very brink of success, only to disintegrate.” -Howard J. McMurray, American Political Science Review
“Sociologists will find much meat in this book for the purposes of illustrating the processes of social interaction—conflict, co-operation, and attempts and failures at accommodation.” -Lowry Nelson, American Journal of Sociology
Edward Christie Banfield was born in Bloomfield, Connecticut on November 19, 1916. He married Laura Fasano in 1938, who helped him produce the renown book, The Moral Basis of a Backward Society (1958). Banfield died in East Montpelier, Vermont on September 30, 1999. (Mrs. Banfield died in New York City on August 20, 2006.)
Banfield worked for the Farm Security Administration during the New Deal before entering the University of Chicago, where he earned his Ph.D in political science. He taught at there and at Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania. He served as an advisor to President Richard M. Nixon and authored numerous studies on poverty, urban planning, policy, and politics, and American governance generally.
Banfield’s scholarship drew upon many sources, including his employment as a journalist and government employee, and his readings in philosophy, history, sociology, and economics. Written in clear and often blunt prose, Banfield’s works attracted attention both within and without academia and, sadly, often elicited intemperate responses and personal attacks. Radical students, who were offended by Banfield’s research findings, protested and disrupted his classes and speeches.
Though many years have passed since they were first written, Banfield’s books remain insightful and intellectually provocative.
The best biography of Banfield was written by one of his star pupils, James Q. Wilson: “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court: A Biography,” Charles R. Kesler, ed., Edward C. Banfield: An Appreciation (Claremont, CA: Henry Salvatori Center for the Study of Individual Freedom in the Modern World, 2002), pp. 31-80.
Audio recordings of Edward C. Banfield are exceedingly rare. years ago, I posted a couple of them on this website. Over time, I have added a few more.
A few weeks ago, I was delightfully surprised to find an audio recording of Banfield from April 11, 1970. He was on a panel discussion of urban issues held by the Philadelphia Society. The conference, I hasten to add, included some big names: Milton Friedman, Walter Berns, and M. Stanton Evans.
The recording is quite clear, and Banfield speaks for over 20 minutes.
Edward C. Banfield talk on urban issues and solutions
Banfield states that it is helpful to think about urban problems through the lens of class. There are normal class variants of a problem and there are lower class version. Take unemployment as an issue: the normal class problem involves individuals who are disabled, people who are between jobs, etc. The lower class variant frequently involves individuals who do not want to work regular jobs preferring instead “the action of the street.”
He then takes up solutions to these problems, observing that different phenomena require different interventions, and that some problems are not readily addressable by policy. For example, he states that the libertarian proposal to reducing unemployment by abolishing rid the minimum wage to create jobs—well, that will not do much for someone who doesn’t care to take a job. This class framework he developed first in the publication of his book, The Moral Basis of a Backward Society (1968) and came to fruition in The Unheavenly City (1970).
Banfield’s comments range widely, and display is clear-eyed realism about the urban “problems.” I thank the Philadelphia Society for preserving and sharing the Banfield talk and the many other presentations.
I found this photograph for sale on EBay, which was serendipitous. I had not seen it previously. Apparently, it was taken at Banfield’s office at Harvard University.
It was addressed to James Wilhelm “Jim” Wiggins, who was an Associate Dean and Professor of Sociology at Converse College in Spartanburg, South Carolina. The back of the photograph has handwritten notes indicating that Banfield was a commencement speaker at Converse in 1971. Banfield and Wiggins were at a Philadelphia Society conference the year prior.
Quite possibly, their relationship went back further. Wiggins coedited a volume titled, Foreign Aid Reexamined: A Critical Appraisal, in 1958. Banfield authored his own jaundiced assessment of American foreign aid (American Foreign Aid Doctrines) five years later, and may have read Wiggins’ volume. Additionally, Wigguns was a sociologist, and wrote about human behavior and coordination, which were topics central to Banfield’s research.
In February of 1971, Edward C. Banfield trekked to Connecticut College, located in the state of his birth, to discuss his book, The Unheavenly City. He declared before the audience that he wanted to challenge the gloomy “conventional wisdom” about the condition of cities.
Contrary to the claims of much of the liberal intellgentsia and the media, cities were not in terrible shape, and many of the problems were actually annoyances. As for the real problems, Banfield explained he was dubious that federal government intevrentions would improve them, and might well make them worse. He pointed out that “that urban renewal has destroyed more housing for lower income people than it has created.”
The reports in the student newspaper note that students argued with Banfield for much of the two hours he was in the lecture hall, and some walked out.
In November 2023, Daniel DiSalvo, authored an essay titled, “The Unsolvable City” in City Journal. He notes that “[r]evisiting the still-controversial work of urbanist Edward Banfield can help put race relations, education, housing, crime, and other policy debates into a broader perspective.”
Importantly, Banfield’s book reminds us that American cities have always been raucous places, and their problems may be managed but cannot be solved. “The foundation of Banfield’s urbanism is an interconnected argument: most of what we view as urban ‘“’problems’ are not really problems at all, and the genuinely serious issues are not amenable to ‘policy solutions’ that are technically feasible and morally legitimate in a democratic society.”
“The Unheavenly City leaves the reader in little doubt that only one of Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s two “truths” is actually correct. Culture—the habits of mind, conduct, beliefs, and values—“determines the success of a society,” and that politics is far too limited an enterprise to change the deeply ingrained cultural orientation of those who comprise it. That is a lesson it is never too late to learn.”
“In The Unheavenly City, Banfield suggested, like Plato did, that we judge society ‘“’by its tendency to produce desirable human types.’” He grounded his analysis of urban decay in the primacy of culture over bureaucratic edifices, government tinkering, and liberal do-gooderism. Unlike today’s Ivy League professors with their Ph.Ds and New York Times subscriptions, Banfield grew up on a Connecticut farm where common sense trumped an academic CV. As such, he could distinguish a muddy pigsty from an urban slum, which he defined not by the decrepit nature of its housing but rather by its “squalid and vicious” style of life.”
A bibliography on research resources on appropriations mention an American Political Science Review article by Edward C. Banfield. The bibliography notes Banfield’s wry observation: “In all the discussion of congressional reform no one has suggested that the objective of budgeting and appropriating is to secure the most desirable allocation of resources among alternative uses.”
Banfield’s observation was not wrong then (1949) nor today. Despite the enactment of the 1974 Congressional Budget Act, which aimed to rationalize budgeting, pluralistic politics and the demadns of the administrative state still dominate budgeting decisions.
Edward C. Banfield, An Online Resource 