The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin by Corey Robin
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Cultural Criticism Is a Tricky Business

Corey Robin’s essay on contemporary conservatism was published in 2011, five years before Pankaj Mishra’s The Age of Anger (See: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...) and Mark Lilla’s The Shipwrecked Mind (See: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...). The Reactionary Mind covers much of the same ground at a time when the contours of that ground were less clear than they have become. And, unlike the later books, it was written more for academic consumption than a popular or general literary audience. It is also a better book, quite an achievement given the merits of Mishra’s and Lilla’s obvious skills as writers and social observers.

Unlike Mishra and Lilla, Robin’s analysis starts not with a judgment of a prevailing sentiment of the times - nostalgia for Lilla; ressentiment for Mishra - but with a timeless philosophical and sociological issue: power. For Robin, the perennial source of reactionary conservatism is the concern of those in power to maintain that power. He neatly encapsulates his entire thesis in a single phrase: “Conservatism is about power besieged and power protected.”

According to Robin’s line of argument, there is nothing new about today’s political situation - particularly, neither nostalgia nor ressentinent - which makes our current reactionary politics different except the identities of those who feel threatened by the extension of emancipatory freedom, and by implication, equality. The most intense critics of the ancien regime, whatever that happens to be, are present conservatives. He cites Burke and Maistre at length to make his point that conservative sentiment neither yearns for past glory nor resents the power lost through incompetence. That conservative fear should now be directed toward immigrants and atheists is not qualitatively different from that shown by the less recent immigrants and atheists of the 19th century towards their newly arriving God-fearing neighbors. What goes around comes around.

Robin shows up the analytic flaw in both Mishra and Lilla: post hoc ergo propter hoc. Nostalgia and anger may well be emotional symptoms of our times. But are they causes or effects? Do they provoke the sort of social and political reactions one can observe around the world or are they simply correlates of a more fundamental phenomenon? Robin contends that the conservative creed is “Submission [by the inferior classes] is their first duty, agency the prerogative of the elite.” Lilla’s commentary on Michel Houellebecq’s 2015 novel Submission [i.e. Islam] is in fact a literal confirmation of this thesis. Islamic fundamentalism hardly differs from its Christian evangelical counterparts. All have the same intention to re-establish absolute authority in society, and this means God. Whether God is a nostalgic fiction or a wrathful enforcer is not an essential difference.

The issue of nostalgic, fearful chickens vs. submissive, un-emancipated eggs is not a trivial one. For example, it appears that much of the reactionary momentum in the world is generated not by the rich and powerful but by the threatened lower middle class who feel they no longer can count on the dreams of infinite advance they once had. Is the evident populism of their politics the result of manipulation by the same elite who orchestrated their current condition or a spontaneous eruption of ‘we’re fed up and we’re not going to take it anymore.’? The situation seems similar to that of the South African Boers after the British conquest. The subjugators had become subjugated, their real power already eliminated. Yet their feelings of righteous indignation and cultural threat create both nostalgia and anger for power past and lost. Emotion was the residue but residue with motive force.

Robin’s analysis is intellectually fruitful in a number of ways. First, it gets behind the reactionary rhetoric:

“Conservatism, then, is not a commitment to limited government and liberty - or a wariness of change, or a belief in evolutionary reform, or a politics of virtue... Neither is a conservative a makeshift fusion of capitalists, Christians and warriors, for that fusion is impelled by a more elemental force - the opposition to the liberation of men and women from the fetters of their superiors, particularly in the private sphere.”

This last phrase, ‘the private sphere,’ is important. The current reactionary is aware that the legal, public war is lost. What’s left is populist guerrilla fighting outside of the normal channels of legislation and law enforcement. Hence the importance of the Twitter-sphere for Donald Trump, who recognised both the problem and the solution. There a good case to be made that Robin predicted Trump.

Robin also recognises that ultimately reactionary conservatism is an aesthetic judgment not an ideological belief. For the conservative, the world is threatened with brutality, ugliness, and lack of order by the inclusion of those who are presently or until recently excluded from cultural influence. These latter are barbarians, not essentially because of race or ethnicity or economic status but because their very presence undermines the appearance of power in society - law, authority, entitlement. Their factual impact is of little concern; they make the system look bad. Immigrants, for example, may contribute far more economically than they cost to assimilate. But this is irrelevant. What matters is that they are aesthetically disruptive - on the streets, in the news, and especially in the conservative psyche.

The situation is further complicated by the symbolic significance of power to those that do not have it but admire it. Robin cites Edmund Burke: “When Burke [says] ... that the ‘great object’ of the [French] Revolution is to ‘root out that thing called the Aristocrat or Nobleman or Gentleman’ he is not simply referring to the power of the nobility, he is also referring to the distinction that power brings to the world.” This might imply the possibility of one day holding the power one sees. But, more likely given the obvious probabilities of life, it means something much more attainable - giving power to those who should have it, conservative politicians surely, but also the police, the military, authoritarian religious leaders and the very wealthy in society who have proven their worth. These elites are trustworthy surrogates not enemies of the already oppressed.

Robin quotes an essay by the ultra-conservative Liberty Fund: “To obey a real superior... is one of the most important of all virtues - a virtue absolutely essential to the attainment of any thing great and lasting.” The love of a certain order is enough to grant the monopoly of power to others in order to achieve it. Hierarchy is order. And as Dr Johnson said, “Order cannot be had except by subordination.” Coercion is the product of one’s sense of beauty. How remarkable is that for an interesting conclusion?

Yet another aesthetic paradox is noted by Robin: the conservative aesthetic is one of ‘maintaining excellence.’ This is the creed of those upwardly mobile middle class people who have been successful in the meritocratic process of test-taking, degree-acquisition, and corporate advancement. These people are the current holders of power, at least the power visible to most of us in government, business, and academia. They have emerged by and large from the parts of society which have benefitted most from racial and social emancipation - second and third generation immigrants, working class children given access to higher education, racial minorities given enough opportunity to demonstrate they know how to play the game well.

These people are therefore ‘natural’ liberals, but only so long as the basis of their power is recognised as legitimate and enduring. They are in a sense conservative liberals for whom the meritocratic structure is as sacred as that of historical nobility or bonded serfdom and slavery. So today’s reactionaries are a species of anti-anti-liberal who feel themselves in need of emancipation.

Robin is a tad less elegantly suave than Lilla; he is not as consummately cosmopolitan as Mishra. But he is a more thorough and careful thinker. I have no doubt that among the three I would take Robin’s book to the desert island.

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