Social Democracy is Conservative (More Tony Judt)
Following up from yesterday’s post, another Judt quote:
“We do not typically associate the ‘Left’ with caution. In the political imaginary of Western culture, ‘left’ denotes radical, destructive, and innovatory. But in truth there is a close relationship between progressive institutions and a spirit of prudence. The democratic Left has often been motivated by a sense of loss: sometimes of idealized pasts, sometimes of moral interests ruthlessly overridden by private advantage. It is doctrinaire market liberals who for the past two centuries have embraced the relentlessly optimistic view that all economic change is for the better.
It is the Right that has inherited the ambitious modernist urge to destroy and innovate in the name of a universal project. From the war in Iraq through the unrequited desire to dismantle public education and health services, to the decades-long project of financial deregulation, the political Right – from Thatcher and Reagan to Bush and Blair – has abandoned the association of political conservatism with social moderation which served it so well from Disraeli to Heath, from Theodore Roosevelt to Nelson Rockefeller”.
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unrequited desire to dismantle public education
Null set, anyone?
Exactly! IN many instances, “conservatism” and “liberalism” have switched places.
Marx, who, though a genius, was an almost pathologically cruel human being, SCORNED bourgeois “reformist” types–the predecessors of modern social democrats.
The people he literally LIONIZED were the capitalists, for representing the “last stage” of economic development that would make the apocalyptic and genocidal revolution he longed for possible. He adored high capitalist culture BECAUSE it was destructive of indigenous cultures, religions and social institutions–none of which he desired to “conserve.”
Marx waxed enthusiastic over the changes in BASIC HUMAN NATURE that he saw radical capitalism precipitating: borrowing terminology from Hegel’s dialectic, he called it the “transvaluation of all values,” and he meant by it that every last aspect of human life on this planet would only have an ECONOMIC or material value.
Truly, the opposite of atheistic Marxism is NOT laissez-faire, radically “individualist” or “libertarian” rule by the “hidden hand” of the infallible “market”–but, rather, the social democracy of the papal encylicals.
Both Marxism and “free-market capitalism” have this in common: they seek to “conserve” NOTHING that is basic and traditional about human nature and society; they submit EVERYTHING to a radically materialist evaluaton, creating, both of them, the “consumerist society” that John Paul II rightly called “the culture of death.”
It strikes me that in order for Judt to make this description, it’s necessary for him to rule out a great deal of what actually exists on the left in the US and the UK, considering to be part of the true left only those parts which he happens to like. Meanwhile, he imputes to the right all the worst elements he sees of their actions and ignores those which are fairly similar to his own desires.
Of course, those of us on the right frequently do the same thing in opposite, and the results are similarly rosey. It often feels great, but convinces no one.
One a side note: I’m kind of fascinated by some of his choices of persons to praise and blame. For instance, is Blair really seen as being the same as Thatcher, Reagan and Bush by British leftists? Sure, he went with Bush on Iraq (which looking at history is hardly surprising, the US and UK have been pretty universally united in their military efforts, good and bad, for the last century). But in domestic policy he seems much more a Clinton figure, at least from my distance. Is this view common?
Also, I have to wonder, from your view, MM, do you really think his praise of Teddy Roosevelt and Nelson Rockefeller represents the kind of “conservatism” you desire? Even leaving aside their eugenic interests, it seems very, very hard for me for a Catholic to see these two in a very positive light — much though I enjoy Teddy as a personality.
And those who believe that “free market solutions” can get us out of the currenct economic crisis–which is much more than a “crisis,” but, rather, a momentous historic shift of world-shaking proportions–would be well advised to read this article and abandon Hayek and “Viennese” schools:
http://www.thenation.com/article/154458/busted-stories-financial-crisis?page=full
The problem is “liberal economics” or “free market” capitalism itself. Its problem is that, in a world of finite resources, it runs out of things to create “booms” over, and then begins to EAT the future of those who continue to employ it as an economic model. And most humans, being weak fallen creatures of limited imagination, locked on a planet of dwindling resources, do not have sufficient energy or intellect to create infinite prospects for investment; instead, the “opportunities” he creates (i.e. “technological break-throughs,” “financial instruments” and “outsourcing”–to diminishing populations of “wage slaves”) actually LESSEN people’s employment prospects and eventually LOWER incentives to be “industrious” and “self-reliant.” In other words, it’s not the “welfare system” that’s sapping the “rugged individualism” of this nation of supposed “self-starters”–it’s the cancerous growth of capitalism itself, as it devours the material world.
I would add the caveat, however, that there DOES seem to be ONE single industry that holds a prospect for infinite expansion: the medical campaign to create eternal life. Of course, it will be “eternal life” only for those who can BUY it, but a whole lot of those who won’t be able to afford it can be made busy engineering it for the rich. And look out below, you Catholic enthusiasts of “Vienna,” because many, many experiments in “genetic engineering,” i.e. cloning and stem-cell-experiments, are going to accompany THAT particular “bubble”!
A few points, Darwin.
Judt views the left as having lots its way after the individualist 1960s, and having lost it’s voice during the individualist 1980s. He wants the left to return to what it was in the postwar period, and leave behind the identity politics. He especially wants the left to regain its compelling moral voice, instead of the carefully crafted nostrums of the Clinton era. I am struck by the differences between Obama and FDR in facing rather similar economic problems. Their instincts are not that different, but their language is poles apart. FDR thundered against injustice and inequity, the bankers, and the special interests in the Republican party. When Obama tries to do this, he sounds flat, because he does not speak the same moral language (he did during the election, which I believe is why he met with such enthusiasm, but in power he defaults to technical and wonkish language).
On Teddy Roosevelt and Rockeller, the point is not that they are men worthy of emulation, any more than Disraeli. The point is that they had authentically conservative instincts that the right has jettisoned completely. It’s not just the embrace if the world altering power of free markets, it’s the descent into relativism, which again is a 1960s legacy. Even though Buckley and his National Review were economic liberals, he would never resort to the fact free nihilism today’s right.