Thread by @TheLitCritGuy

On @CoreyRobin's "The Reactionary Mind" and US conservatism: A Thread #TheoryTime

Robin begins with a story about the modern age - that under a variety of banners, movements and ideals groups of people have organised for freedom, equality, democracy and at every point they have been resisted, often violently.

Or as Robin puts it, 'every so often the subordinates of this world contest their fate,' and in that contesting they become active agents. More than the demand it is the agency of the subordinated class which poses the threat to the status quo

For example, Guatemala’s Agrarian Reform of 1952 gave 1.5 million acres of land to 100,000 working class families. BUT the bill also brought out the political agency of this group.

The archbishop complained of the peasants, gifted with the facility for words, that came to to the capital and where given 'the opportunity to speak in public' - THAT was the danger of the reform bill...

Another example, John C. Calhoun in his last major address to the Senate saw the decision to receive abolitionist petitions as the point where the US set itself on a collision course over slavery.

In the American labour movement, the bosses constant complaint is not that workers who are unionized are lazy, but rather, unionized workers are self-organizing and independent.

The independence and organization of workers is dangerous because it serves as a visible symbol of the superfluousness of the bosses.

In the 1919 General Strike in Seattle, workers provided basic government services, including law and order, proving that the systems of authority they were rebelling against were not needed.

Robin's thesis is that conservatism is the theoretical voice of this animus, this opposition to the agency and organization of oppressed peoples and groups.

Robin makes the case that this goes all the way back to the intellectual forefathers of conservative philosophy - as with Burke for example:

Burke might have admitted that by virtue of their membership in a polity, men have rights but that doesn't extend to the right for all men to have some say in the management of the state.

Conservatism sees the extension of freedom as a threat, whether that freedom be economic or political, as greater equality raises the possibility of the loss of their power

Quoting G.A Cohen, Robin makes the point that economic redistribution does not entail a sacrifice of freedom for the sake of equality, but rather the extension of freedom from the few to the many (I'd add Losurdo's book on LIberalism here as further evidence)

Furthermore these are not abstract arguments, but touch upon the most personal realities of everyday life:

Here's the quote mentioned from James Baldwin, who sees the significance of small gestures in the setting of the US South:

American slavery was predicated upon direct, personal control, with slaves having every aspect of their lives dictated by their masters and this direct control resulted in slave owners complete identification with that notion of control.

The master classes fought to preserve slavery out of both financial incentive and personal desire -to maintain their very sense of self.

Or, as Robin puts it, 'When the conservative looks upon a democratic movement from below, this (and the exercise of agency) is what he sees: a terrible disturbance in the private life of power...'

Burke saw the true aim of the French Revolution as breaking all those "connexions, natural and civil, that regulate and hold together the community by a chain of subordination" - the dangers of personal insubordination would be a common Burkean theme

Robin on John Adams reactionary politics:

Very simply, the conservative aim of forestalling democracy in both the public and private spheres rests upon the assumption that advances in one area spurs advances in the other

"In order to keep the state out of the hands of the people,” wrote the French monarchist Louis de Bonald, “it is necessary to keep the family out of the hands of women and children.”"

Generally, the US right has been pragmatic too - you might allow people to participate in public politics, but in private make sure they remain feudal subjects in the family, the factory, and field. (A similar argument made by Matthew Arnold on cultural grounds).

"The priority of conservative political argument has been the maintenance of private regimes of power—even at the cost of the strength and integrity of the state" - #CoreyRobin #Quotes

As a result then, conservatism is at base, not a commitment to limited government or a politics of virtue but is underpinned by a resistance to the liberation of men & women from their superiors, especially in the private sphere.

Or, to put this is more formulaic terms, conservatism is a mode of counter-revolutionary practice.

What's interesting about this point is that it goes against the easy assumption of the left, which is that the right has no ideas. Conservatism is idea driven, and the left needs to know what those ideas are and how to respond to them.

In 1976 George Nash in his now classic work The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America since 1945 asked 'what is conservatism?' The answer?

"Resistance to certain forces perceived to be leftist, revolutionary, and profoundly subversive..."

If this radical desire for emancipation were to disappear then too would conservatism would too because its only in the appeal to the dangers of revolution that the appeals to tacit, naturalized right wing thinking can have any purchase

Or, as Robin puts it, 'the fussiest conservative who would deign to enter the street is compelled by the left to pick up a paving stone and toss it at the barricades...'

Robin here quoting Lord Hailsham and his 1947 work 'Case for Conservatism':

Of course, Robin points out that the counter-revolutionary right has been perfectly willing to turn to their own kind of radicalism too:

Conservatism's radicalism stems from its belief that not only is the left powerful but it has been in charge of society for a while (since the French Revolution or the Reformation) Robin quotes Dinesh D'Souza who puts the case very clearly:

The conservative doesn't oppose change for its style or pace. Change is opposed because it is either revolutionary or could lead to revolution.

The modern conservative might have made their peace with some emancipations of the past but their conservative forefathers were almost certainly against those freedoms.

I'll stop there. You can follow Robin here: @CoreyRobin and you can buy the book here: global.oup.com/academic/produ…