Res Cogitans

The MAGA movement has been said to be motivated by resentment. Liberals accuse MAGA people of anger because they have been left behind. Rust belt cities are the victims of globalization; white males are the victims of identity-politics (feminism, gay rights); the uneducated are the victims of the educated elite. Indeed the MAGA movement has been described as motivated by a victim mentality.

This characterization of MAGA is consonant with Nietzsche’s remarks on ressentiment (as German has no word for “resentment”).

“The slave revolt in morality begins when ressentiment itself becomes creative and produces values: the ressentiment of beings to whom the real reaction, that of the deed, is denied, who can only indulge in imaginary revenge. Whereas every noble morality springs from a triumphant acceptance and affirmation of oneself, slave morality is in its very essence a negation of everything “outside” and “different,” of whatever is “not oneself”: and this negation is its creative deed. This reversal of the perspective of valuation—this necessary determination by the outside rather than by oneself—is typical of ressentiment : in order to arise, slave morality always needs a hostile external world. Physiologically speaking, it needs external stimuli in order to act at all — its action is fundamentally a reaction.” (Genealogy of Morals, Part I, Section 10).

“It is not surprising that the lambs should bear a grudge against the great birds of prey, but that is no reason for blaming the great birds of prey for taking the little lambs. And when the lambs say among themselves, “These birds of prey are evil, and he who least resembles a bird of prey, who is rather its opposite, a lamb,—should he not be good?” then there is nothing to carp with in this ideal’s establishment, though the birds of prey may regard it a little mockingly, and maybe say to themselves, “We bear no grudge against them, these good lambs, we even love them: nothing is tastier than a tender lamb.”(On the Genealogy of Morality, 1:13)

Max Scheler has written a book on ressentiment that relies on Nietzsche’s concept, from which the following is a quote:

“Ressentiment must therefore be strongest in a society like ours, where approximately equal rights (political and otherwise) or formal social equality, publicly recognized, go hand in hand with wide factual differences in power, property, and education. While each has the “right” to compare himself with everyone else, he cannot do so in fact. Quite independently of the characters and experiences of individuals, a potent charge of ressentiment is here accumulated by the very structure of society.” (Max Scheler Ressemtiment: Das Ressentiment Im Aufbau Der Moralen, 1912-15, trans. Louis A. Coser, 7-8)

In other words, in democracies there is an ideal of social equality presented, but not instantiated in social fact. And this “the very structure of society” is the source of modern resentment. 

However, there is another theory of resentment.

The English philosopher, P. F. Strawson, wrote an influential paper titled “Freedom and Responsibility.” His main point is to reconcile free will and determinism. However, I want to focus on what he says about resentment.

Resentment is what Strawson calls a “moral emotion.” Resentment is a kind of anger or frustration felt by a person A that is caused by another person B doing what he should not have done to A. Resentment is a justified reaction to a moral wrong done to oneself. 

Bertie in a great hurry pushes Alice out of his way. Alice feels resentment; Bertie should not have done that. When resentment is felt, Alice ascribes to Bertie an act of free will for which Bertie should be held responsible. 

Alice may reconsider if she discovers that Bertie himself was pushed. Or suppose Bertie was a doctor hurrying to deal with a medical emergency. Then Alice might still ascribe responsibility for the push to Bertie but will allow the emergency to be an excusing condition; and retract her feeling of resentment. She now knows her resentment was based on incomplete knowledge of the facts.

Resentment in Strawson’s sense is a moral emotion in two senses: it is a reaction to a wrong-doing and it is not a blameworthy reaction.

Envy is not a moral emotion. Envy is the feeling that results if Alice has something Bertie wants, let’s say a great apartment in a good neighborhood, but does not have. Bertie’s envy is not a moral emotion; it is not the result of some event that Bertie thinks violates some norm. Spite is different from and worse than envy. If Bertie is spiteful towards Alice, he wishes both that he had a great apartment and that Alice not have her great apartment. Both envy and spite are considered ignoble feelings.

Strawson does not put any constraint on the moral expectations a person has in order to feel justifiable resentment. A person may feel resentment because another was promoted on some other basis than sheer merit (race, gender). A belief that affirmative action is wrong can still be the basis for justified moral resentment.

Long preceding Strawson’s discussion is Aristotle on anger. “Anybody can become angry – that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way – that is not within everybody’s power and is not easy.”

The right purpose of anger is anger towards instances of injustice. Virtuous anger is like resentment in Strawson’s philosophy but is not simply anger at an injustice done to oneself. Virtuous anger is anger towards injustice anywhere, though “too much” anger becomes vicious.

The difference come to this. In Aristotle-Strawson resentment is morally justified. In Nietzsche-Scheler resentment is an ignoble emotion, the complaints of the “lambs” against the “birds of prey”. 

John Torpey of CUNY interviewed Rob Schneider, author of The Return of Resentment: The Rise and Decline and Rise Again of a Political Emotion (University of Chicago Press, 2023). 

(Note that I’m quoting from a written transcript of an oral interview and therefore thoughts may not be expressed in perfect prose.)

“So we could see resentment, which again, come from Nietzsche and otherwise, is often seen as unappealing and attractive, just merely irritant, a complaint, a symptom. And here, [in his book] it’s rather seen as productive, to force others to address the moral harms that have been committed.”

Schneider, a liberal, thinks that the MAGA mindset has a justified form of resentment. I quote Schneider on resentment, which is Aristotle-Strawson:

“What do we mean by emotion by this emotion by resentment? I think to resent involves not just a sort of sense of being injured but a moral injury. And I think the rather trivial knowledge we have, say, having someone step on your toe, and apologizing, well, your toe is hurt, but you accept the apology. If someone, say, then steps on your toe the physical pain, and then fails to apologize, the physical pain is the same. But it’s been compounded by a kind of moral outrage, that something has been violated a certain protocol certain requirement that one apologized for an action that is hurtful. And it seems to me that resentment has this component to it. It’s not just a kind of injury. It’s an injury which has been molded over and which is complexified by a sense of moral outrage. And therefore, I think resentment also then represents a sort of violation of expectations, that we have certain assumptions, a certain set of, of expectations of principles that should not be violated, that should be followed. And that when these are violated, it’s not just a matter of something happening, which is harmful, it’s a matter of, again, a moral injury. And here, I think the analogy which I use in the book, which other people have also used is, again, a rather trivial one, but it can expand be expanded to the collective experience is jumping the queue or breaking in line.”

There was no resentment in feudal society in which birth determined your place in society. “It’s only when you have the ethos or the expectation, at least the principles of equality democracy, when people as Tocqueville I think, brilliantly outlined that when there’s an aspiration and the expectation of equality that is not met, then you have resentment as a potential and least emotion, which can take hold among people individually, or more meaningfully here, for me, collectively.”

What is MAGA resentful of? Identity politics has upended the expectations of white people, of males, and of heterosexuals by the freedom or rights claims of blacks, women, and gays.

But in Schneider’s estimation, the worst culprit is globalization.

“And whatever you think about their political posture, it seems that they are using the term “white privilege,” in a very casual, indiscriminate way, is just sort of pouring salt into their wounds, because we do have a vast number of people in this country, who are white, who are working class who have been really abused by the forces of globalization and neoliberalism. Have you wanted to describe it the ways in which if you just traveled throughout this country, and you see towns that have been emptied by any meaningful industry or work, where a generation before there was a sense of a civic life and economic life, that the current job problems among those sorts of people, I mean, it’s just, it’s a kind of plague.” And “this is complicated by the racism and the xenophobia and the sexism, which is often part of that culture or those people’s dispositions.”

Adam Smith thought the motivation behind capitalism was individual self-interest (greed, if you like), but that the collective actions of self-interested people operated as an “invisible hand” by which means capitalism advanced social welfare. Invisible hand explanations of something, X, impute no intent to the actors whose collective actions created X. 

But globalization is a counterexample to Smith’s theory (there may be others, perhaps many other counterexamples).

Akron, Ohio, billed itself as “Rubber City” and for decades was the center for manufacturing tires. In the 1970s, the French company Michelin began manufacturing radial tires, which didn’t need to be replaced as often as older tires. Akron began to lose business to foreign companies. In 1990 Michelin acquired B.F. Goodrich’s tire holdings, and outsourced its manufacturing to the South and overseas. Beginning in 1980 employment in rubber manufacturing shrank from 26,000 to 7,000. (Reference)

I grew up in Shenandoah, PA. The original economic engine of Shenandoah and its neighbors was coal, which gave drew people from Eastern Europe to work in the mines. When the coal ran out, the economy switched to factory garment making, where the wives of the unemployed miners worked, until clothing making was moved to China and elsewhere overseas.

The GDP of the U.S. rose during the period of increasing globalization.

But there are winners and losers. Akron and Shenandoah are losers. Both Ohio and Pennsylvania voted for Trump. My home town was staunchly Trump. Suppose their votes were motivated by resentment – but of which sort? Was an injustice done and anger towards this injustice justified? Or are there simply winners and losers – birds of prey and lambs?

I strongly doubt that MAGA supporters are anti-capitalist. I wonder if their sense of resentment is that of a person who expected to continue to be prosperous but who, through no fault of his own, has fallen into poverty. He wants someone or something to blame. And the MAGA candidates are various: immigrants, blacks, drag queens, and universities – though strangely not the very institutions that brought about poverty, namely, big business. 

Capitalism is not a democratic thing. The people of Shenandoah had no say in whether the garment work should be moved to China. The people of Akron did not vote to sell Goodrich to Michelin. 

There is no categorical imperative to use democratic processes in all aspects of life, including how one runs one’s business. Marx thought that workers’ control over their economic life was the solution to capitalist exploitation and alienation. Surely MAGA does not subscribe to this.

If the effects of globalization are an injustice, then justice demands a rectification of past injustice. And what would that be? How can a form of life, destroyed by globalization, be restored?

In sum, I think MAGA resentment is of the Nietzsche-Scheler, not the Aristotle-Strawson, variety. This of course is not to deny that it is very powerful. After all, Trump was elected.