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February 16, 2005
In comments to this post Drury, Leo Strauss and Populism Dominc writes:
"I think the real story of American neo-conservativism is the APPROPRIATION of Strauss by people like Kristol, people who perhaps did not read him with sufficient attention . . . . Or rather, because Strauss' thought is so rich, political conservatives have been able to mine his thought --- but this shouldn't bar the possibility of people on the vaguely defined "left" from also mining his thought."
My response was that I concurred about the significance of Irving Kristol.
I had briefly mentioned Kristol here, but only suggested that he was responsible for adapting a pre modern or classic conservatism to America liberal society, so that it worked in terms fo the American grain. As Shadia Drury writes Kristol transforms conservatism so that it celebrates the bourgeois ethos.
What then is this ethos?
Drury says that Kristol understands it in terms of bourgeois society being:
"...organized for the convenience and comfort of ordinary men and women ...not for the production of heroic memorable figures. Bourgeois civilization understands the common good as security and liberty under the law.It promises a steady increase in material prosperty for those who apply themselves to that end. The virtues of bourgeois society---honesty, sobriety, diligence and thrift--are directly connected to world success."
This is the puritan ethos or Protestant ethic of early capitalism. It is deeply at odds with the spectacle of consumer free market capitalism and its celebration of negative freedom. Would not the neon world of New York's Times Square with its celebration of the marketplace and sexuality and porn make neocons uncomfortable with modern America?
So how does Kristol respond?
According to Drury, Kristol says that the economics of capitalism are okay, he champions contemporary corporate capitalism and defends the achievements of a capitalist civilization. It is the ethos of liberal society that need revitalizing and he defends the traditional moral and cultural bourgeois standards. This would place him offside with the radicalized liberalism of the 1960s and 1970s. He writes:
"What began to concern me more and more were the clear signs of rot and decadence germinating within American society-a rot and decadence that was no longer the consequence of liberalism but was the actual agenda of contemporary liberalism. . . . Sector after sector of American life has been ruthlessly corrupted by the liberal ethos. It is an ethos that aims simultaneously at political and social collectivism on the one hand, and moral anarchy on the other." (My Cold War)
The rot and decadence refers to rising crime rates, the devastation wrought by drugs, rising illegitimacy, the decline of civility, and the increasing vulgarity of popular entertainment. These are seen as manifestations of American cultural decline from the traditional virtues of this culture. These values are now being lost. As the vices multiply and its values degraded the culture itself is seen to be unraveling.
Are we not talking about the process of nihilism here?
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Gary
Don't you think that Kristol and company underestimate the extent to which capitalism itself is responsible for the licentiousness and corruption of western liberal societies? That is the part of their criticism that always seemed disengenuous to me. They certainly know that the free market can and will sell anything, so why does their rhetoric attack academics and other "liberal elites?" I think it is because they need to continually define who the "enemy" is, whether it is an external or internal threat. This is what maintains social cohesion and keeps them in power.