Andy Robinson's article "Democracy vs Desire: Beyond the Politics of Measure" was published in "Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed"
(issue 60, 23 [2], fall/winter 2005-06: page numbers not given).
The full text of the article can be read free of charge here:
www.theanarchistlibrary.org/HTML/Andy_Robinson__Democracy_vs_Desire__Beyond_the_Politics_of_Measure.html
Excerpts: "My contention in this article is that anarchy and democracy are incompatible, because anarchy is based on an active politics of desire whereas democracy is necessarily reactive and thus plays into the repressive logics of industrial society and especially, of contemporary capitalism. [...] Democracy and the politics of desire may seem complementary, but in fact they run contrary to each other. [...] That minorities be prevented from expressing themselves with wildness and immediacy – that they remain always the 'loyal opposition' within the confines of a system in which the majority gets its way – is a necessary part of the idea of democracy. For this reason, democracy goes against the emancipation of desire, operating simply as a particularly powerful ideology of recuperation with especially effective, and therefore insidious, ways of excusing social repression. [...] [D]emocracy is a specific instance of state power – and not, as implied by some anarchists, a critique of state power or a form of anarchy. [...]
"The people – the 'decent' or 'law-abiding' or 'hard-working' ordinary folk or 'citizens' invoked to justify crackdowns and repression – are the agent of repression, while the excluded, the new barbarians, defined as criminal, indecent, and 'anti-social,' are the object. It is thus 'rule by the people' at its most brutal – a violent tyranny by those who define themselves as the authentic people, over those who are excluded from it. It is also, of course, a self-policing of capitalism and industrial society – but this is unsurprising, since the 'people', after all, are not defined externally to this society but rather are constructed by it. [...] Reactive psychology, which expresses itself in the ethics of self-deadening 'shoulds,' transmutes the internal repression of desire (itself necessary for one to subordinate oneself to the majority) into a hostility against the expression of active desires by others, thus drawing social repression as the consequence of psychological repression. Where the majority have such character-structures, democracy can be nothing more than a dictatorship by bigots. Where they do not, democracy is unstable, undermined in its calculative finality by desires that overflow it. [...]
"Is it a coincidence that the same self-styled anarchists who identify anarchism with democracy are also often insufficiently rigorous in opposing the new form of capitalist control expressed through the crackdown culture? [...] Everywhere, 'class struggle' anarchists rally behind the calls to oppose 'anti-social' activities, even to the point of critically supporting crackdowns (always, of course, with the usual supplements, denouncing the existing state even while forming the working-class itself into a parallel state with its own repressive force and its own conformity-imposing closures). One thus finds these would-be anarchists cast as the last defenders of the state. For the state, in its last instance, is not the macro-social aggregate; it is the logic of control and policing of life from above, which is epitomised locally in policing agencies (whether those of the official state police or of vigilantes, snoops, and busybodies), and psychologically in repressively formulated ethics (whether those of a liberal or aristocratic elite, or those of a self-righteous 'decent people' fixated on its own decency). Without a rejection of the fixed identities and categories that operate as cops in our heads, there can be no destruction of the state – only its transmutation, fragmentation, and ultimate revival ih [sic] new, and maybe stronger, forms.
"The 'people' who rule must after all be a determinate entity, and in order to be conceived as such, the 'people' must be given fixity as what Max Stirner terms a spook – an ideological construction to which actual people subordinate themselves, and of which one is a part only to the extent that one conforms. [...] 'Rule by the people' thus turns out not to be self-determination by actual people at all, but rather, to be the tyrannical imposition of a normative conception of an essence of peoplehood by those whose own identity is constructed around this category. What is excluded is the 'un-people' to misquote Stirner – the flows of desire and activity which exceed and overflow the fixed category, which are unspeakable in terms of its representations. [...] The adherents of anarchy, the opponents of despotic gestures of this kind, must necessarily be on the side of the excluded, indeed, among the excluded, and thus, against the imposition of conformity, and radically exterior to the imagined 'community' their fixed categories construct. [...]
"Democracy is not an inclusion of all those who vote; it is a means of silencing those who are left in the minority. [...] Active desire is not capable of accepting the a priori insistence that it conform to the result of a majority decision. [...] Thus, desire is minoritarian not simply in that it can often end up in the minority when a vote is taken; it is minoritarian in that it is non-denumerable, it cannot be reduced to something to be counted and weighed on a scale with other desires or with other entities of whatever kind. To reject the aspiration to be the majority – not only in the numerical sense but in the ideological sense, to reject the aspiration for one's own desires and contingencies to be classified as decent and normal to the exclusion of others – is a logical extension of active desire. Active desire, wildness, is unconditional and irreducible. It cannot, therefore, find expression in a system which reduces it to its representation, as one among many elements to be counted."
Andy Robinson is a Leverhulme Fellow in the Centre for the Study of Social and Global Justice at the University of Nottingham, from which he holds a PhD in Political Theory.
Showing posts with label anti-egalitarianism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label anti-egalitarianism. Show all posts
23 April 2010
Article: William Graham Sumner: Against Democracy, Plutocracy, and Imperialism
H.A. Scott Trask, "William Graham Sumner: Against Democracy, Plutocracy, and Imperialism" ("Journal of Libertarian Studies", 18 [4], fall 2004: pp. 1-27).
The article can be read free of charge here:
http://mises.org/journals/jls/18_4/18_4_1.pdf
Excerpts: "Pioneering sociologist William Graham Sumner (1840-1910) was a prolific and astute historian of the early American republic. His work is informed by both his classical liberalism and his understanding of economics. [...] Sumner's political insights can be found throughout his histories and biographies, but [...] [c]onsidering them together, it is possible to reconstruct Sumner's political thought. This reconstruction reveals that Sumner was a first-rate diagnostician of the vices and flaws endemic to modern democracy, and that he saw with remarkable prevision how it would develop into the twentieth century. [...] Democracy is more than a term for a certain type of government; it is [...] an ideology, a quasi-religious faith, a 'superstition,' and it is false. Its two foundational dogmas – human equality and social atomization – have no support in human nature or experience. [...]
"The advance of civilization has been marked at every stage by an increase in inequality, social differentiation, and complexity. The principle of one-man one-vote, by giving no political recognition to differences in intelligence and wealth among persons, to the natural divisions within society, or to the existence of classes, is unjust, and can only lead to laws that are unjust and unwise. He also questioned the democratic dogma that the same form of government was suitable for all kinds of different societies and collectivities, without regard to their level of education, industrial development, and internal diversity. [...] Because Sumner rejected the moralistic, equalitarian, and atomistic dogmas upon which democracy rested, he was not in favor of extending the suffrage to ex-slaves or to women. He denied that either group could claim a moral right to vote, as he denied that anyone had such a right. [...]
"There is no reason to believe that democracy would prove friendlier to liberty than would monarchy, aristocracy, or other forms of elitist rule. [...] If political power be vested in the masses, '[t]hey will commit abuse, if they can and dare, just as others have done.' Ruling elites have misused their power for selfish ends because it was in their nature to do so. The people share the same nature. Greed, selfishness, and other 'vices are confined to no nation, class, or age.' [...] The theory behind extending the suffrage to all adult males was that this would ensure that legislation was framed to benefit the interests of all, rather than of the few. Sumner demonstrated in his historical studies that it did not work out that way. [...] 'The fate of modern democracy is to fall into subjection to plutocracy.' The term plutocracy [...] meant a type of government in which effective control rested with men of wealth who sought to use political means to increase their wealth. Sumner believed that there is no form of government better suited to their control than democracy. [...] The plutocrats have [...] no qualms about flattering, lying to, or bribing the masses. [...]
"At election time, the voters are given a choice between two candidates who may stand for essentially the same thing, or nothing. [...] [G]iven that the nature of democracy is to throw off all limitations upon government power, elections become 'struggles for power – war between the two parties' for control of the state. [...] One election is hardly over before the intrigue and planning for the next one begins. [...] Party platforms are full of 'empty phrases and Janus-faced propositions,' and often 'two contradictory propositions are combined in the same sentence, or a non-proposition is so stated that each man may read there just what will suit his own notions.' [...] The object of political campaigning is not to educate the public at all, but to energize one's supporters and win over by means of deception the non-committed middle. [...] No idea more annoyed Sumner than the superstition that democratic elections are a magic elixir from which flow liberty, justice, and wise governance. [...]
"Sumner feared that American 'democracy' would grow even worse by becoming paternal while not ceasing to be plutocratic. Plutocracy would prove to be the parent of paternalism [...] such as limitations on the length of the working day, unemployment insurance, government health care, and other means of providing for economic and social 'security.' The plutocrats may conclude that extending such benefits is the price they must pay for retaining power and their own lucrative privileges, while the masses will regard paternalism as their right to a share in the spoils of the state. Sumner condemned the incipient welfare state as incompatible with freedom and inimical to liberty. Those citizens who favor it are hypocrites who clamor for security with the same insistence and sense of entitlement as they demand freedom and equality. [...] There was also a danger that 'democratic' government would enact moral reforms or try to alter the structure of society. [...] 'The taxing power is especially something after which the reformer's finger always itches,' as it offers endless potential for rewarding certain behaviors and punishing others. [...]
"The Bush doctrine – American world dominion is justified by her divine mission to spread freedom and democracy – is not new. The Spanish-American War and its imperial aftermath were justified on the same grounds. Sumner noted how a senator had claimed that the United States would occupy the Philippines only long enough to teach them self-government. [...] If America attempts 'to be schoolmistress to others, it will shrivel up into the same vanity and self-conceit,' and be the object of the same loathing and hatred as the other imperial powers. Moral imperialism is as 'false and wrong' as any other kind of imperialism, for it violates freedom and self-government. The nation that says, 'We know what is good for you better than you know yourself and we are going to make you do it' cares nothing for liberty or national self-determination, since liberty 'means leaving people to live out their own lives in their own way.' It is also a recipe for endless intervention and perpetual war, as the subsequent history of the United States demonstrated. [...]
"Sumner's final judgment on nineteenth-century American democracy was that it had failed to secure liberty or good government, and it would do worse in the next century. Who was to blame? He blamed the people. 'The root of all our troubles at present and in the future is in the fact that the people fails of what was assumed about it and attributed to it.' The people complain about the politicians, about the special interests, and about the power of corporations to corrupt the political process. But who elected the politicians? Who makes up the special interests? Who elected corruptible legislatures and presidents? 'He who rules is responsible, be it Tsar, Pope, Emperor, Aristocracy, Oligarchy, or Demos.' The 'people is altogether at fault. It has not done its first duty in the premises, and therefore the whole system has gone astray.' [...] What is [our] destiny? A paternalistic, plutocratic, imperial state, in which freedom and individuality will slowly suffocate and civilization coarsen and die. A century of war and collectivism has vindicated Sumner's pessimism, and it appears that the twentieth century has bequeathed even worse to the twenty-first."
H. Arthur Scott Trask, PhD, an independent historian, is an Adjunct Scholar at the libertarian Ludwig von Mises Institute.
The article can be read free of charge here:
http://mises.org/journals/jls/18_4/18_4_1.pdf
Excerpts: "Pioneering sociologist William Graham Sumner (1840-1910) was a prolific and astute historian of the early American republic. His work is informed by both his classical liberalism and his understanding of economics. [...] Sumner's political insights can be found throughout his histories and biographies, but [...] [c]onsidering them together, it is possible to reconstruct Sumner's political thought. This reconstruction reveals that Sumner was a first-rate diagnostician of the vices and flaws endemic to modern democracy, and that he saw with remarkable prevision how it would develop into the twentieth century. [...] Democracy is more than a term for a certain type of government; it is [...] an ideology, a quasi-religious faith, a 'superstition,' and it is false. Its two foundational dogmas – human equality and social atomization – have no support in human nature or experience. [...]
"The advance of civilization has been marked at every stage by an increase in inequality, social differentiation, and complexity. The principle of one-man one-vote, by giving no political recognition to differences in intelligence and wealth among persons, to the natural divisions within society, or to the existence of classes, is unjust, and can only lead to laws that are unjust and unwise. He also questioned the democratic dogma that the same form of government was suitable for all kinds of different societies and collectivities, without regard to their level of education, industrial development, and internal diversity. [...] Because Sumner rejected the moralistic, equalitarian, and atomistic dogmas upon which democracy rested, he was not in favor of extending the suffrage to ex-slaves or to women. He denied that either group could claim a moral right to vote, as he denied that anyone had such a right. [...]
"There is no reason to believe that democracy would prove friendlier to liberty than would monarchy, aristocracy, or other forms of elitist rule. [...] If political power be vested in the masses, '[t]hey will commit abuse, if they can and dare, just as others have done.' Ruling elites have misused their power for selfish ends because it was in their nature to do so. The people share the same nature. Greed, selfishness, and other 'vices are confined to no nation, class, or age.' [...] The theory behind extending the suffrage to all adult males was that this would ensure that legislation was framed to benefit the interests of all, rather than of the few. Sumner demonstrated in his historical studies that it did not work out that way. [...] 'The fate of modern democracy is to fall into subjection to plutocracy.' The term plutocracy [...] meant a type of government in which effective control rested with men of wealth who sought to use political means to increase their wealth. Sumner believed that there is no form of government better suited to their control than democracy. [...] The plutocrats have [...] no qualms about flattering, lying to, or bribing the masses. [...]
"At election time, the voters are given a choice between two candidates who may stand for essentially the same thing, or nothing. [...] [G]iven that the nature of democracy is to throw off all limitations upon government power, elections become 'struggles for power – war between the two parties' for control of the state. [...] One election is hardly over before the intrigue and planning for the next one begins. [...] Party platforms are full of 'empty phrases and Janus-faced propositions,' and often 'two contradictory propositions are combined in the same sentence, or a non-proposition is so stated that each man may read there just what will suit his own notions.' [...] The object of political campaigning is not to educate the public at all, but to energize one's supporters and win over by means of deception the non-committed middle. [...] No idea more annoyed Sumner than the superstition that democratic elections are a magic elixir from which flow liberty, justice, and wise governance. [...]
"Sumner feared that American 'democracy' would grow even worse by becoming paternal while not ceasing to be plutocratic. Plutocracy would prove to be the parent of paternalism [...] such as limitations on the length of the working day, unemployment insurance, government health care, and other means of providing for economic and social 'security.' The plutocrats may conclude that extending such benefits is the price they must pay for retaining power and their own lucrative privileges, while the masses will regard paternalism as their right to a share in the spoils of the state. Sumner condemned the incipient welfare state as incompatible with freedom and inimical to liberty. Those citizens who favor it are hypocrites who clamor for security with the same insistence and sense of entitlement as they demand freedom and equality. [...] There was also a danger that 'democratic' government would enact moral reforms or try to alter the structure of society. [...] 'The taxing power is especially something after which the reformer's finger always itches,' as it offers endless potential for rewarding certain behaviors and punishing others. [...]
"The Bush doctrine – American world dominion is justified by her divine mission to spread freedom and democracy – is not new. The Spanish-American War and its imperial aftermath were justified on the same grounds. Sumner noted how a senator had claimed that the United States would occupy the Philippines only long enough to teach them self-government. [...] If America attempts 'to be schoolmistress to others, it will shrivel up into the same vanity and self-conceit,' and be the object of the same loathing and hatred as the other imperial powers. Moral imperialism is as 'false and wrong' as any other kind of imperialism, for it violates freedom and self-government. The nation that says, 'We know what is good for you better than you know yourself and we are going to make you do it' cares nothing for liberty or national self-determination, since liberty 'means leaving people to live out their own lives in their own way.' It is also a recipe for endless intervention and perpetual war, as the subsequent history of the United States demonstrated. [...]
"Sumner's final judgment on nineteenth-century American democracy was that it had failed to secure liberty or good government, and it would do worse in the next century. Who was to blame? He blamed the people. 'The root of all our troubles at present and in the future is in the fact that the people fails of what was assumed about it and attributed to it.' The people complain about the politicians, about the special interests, and about the power of corporations to corrupt the political process. But who elected the politicians? Who makes up the special interests? Who elected corruptible legislatures and presidents? 'He who rules is responsible, be it Tsar, Pope, Emperor, Aristocracy, Oligarchy, or Demos.' The 'people is altogether at fault. It has not done its first duty in the premises, and therefore the whole system has gone astray.' [...] What is [our] destiny? A paternalistic, plutocratic, imperial state, in which freedom and individuality will slowly suffocate and civilization coarsen and die. A century of war and collectivism has vindicated Sumner's pessimism, and it appears that the twentieth century has bequeathed even worse to the twenty-first."
H. Arthur Scott Trask, PhD, an independent historian, is an Adjunct Scholar at the libertarian Ludwig von Mises Institute.
05 April 2010
Article: Nietzsche's Anti-democratic Liberalism
Béla Egyed's article "Nietzsche's Anti-democratic Liberalism" was published in Slovakia's "Kritika & Kontext: Journal of Critical Thinking" (35, 2007 [2]: pp. 100-13).
The full text of the article can be read free of charge here:
www.kritika.sk/pdf/2_2007/7.pdf
Excerpts: "The title of this paper reflects my view that, 'liberalism' and 'democracy' denote related but separable concepts. [...] Nietzsche was a sworn enemy of populism and egalitarianism, [...] a liberal but not a democrat. [...] In what sense is his liberalism 'anti-democratic'? My short answer to this question is that Nietzsche was, indeed, an 'aristocratic radical' [...], and his general criticism of 'the democratic idea' was motivated mostly by his mistrust of the 'new idols', political imposters seeking to take the place left vacant by the death of God. [...] What he is opposed to is the democratic ideology which he attacks relentlessly for its promoting mediocrity and the basest of human instincts. [...]
"It is a mistake to construe Nietzsche's elitism of the spirit as an advocacy of a rigid political hierarchy. His 'higher type' does not denote a political category: it refers to those who possess the aristocratic instincts as a countervailing force against the instinctive hatred of any form of distinction on the part of the 'democratic herd'. [...] These higher types need to understand, but keep their distance from, the herd and its values. [...] Nietzsche has, in fact, two politics: the one is a perfunctory endorsement of existing institutions he considers essential, inevitable and contemptible, the other is a proto-politics of para-personal drives and intensities, practiced by genealogists and critics of existing values and institutions. [...] Let me give the last word to Nietzsche: 'Liberal institutions immediately cease to be liberal as soon as they are attained: subsequently there is nothing more harmful to freedom than liberal institutions [...]'."
Hungarian-born Béla Egyed is Adjunct Research Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Carleton University and Adjunct Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Concordia University, Canada.
The full text of the article can be read free of charge here:
www.kritika.sk/pdf/2_2007/7.pdf
Excerpts: "The title of this paper reflects my view that, 'liberalism' and 'democracy' denote related but separable concepts. [...] Nietzsche was a sworn enemy of populism and egalitarianism, [...] a liberal but not a democrat. [...] In what sense is his liberalism 'anti-democratic'? My short answer to this question is that Nietzsche was, indeed, an 'aristocratic radical' [...], and his general criticism of 'the democratic idea' was motivated mostly by his mistrust of the 'new idols', political imposters seeking to take the place left vacant by the death of God. [...] What he is opposed to is the democratic ideology which he attacks relentlessly for its promoting mediocrity and the basest of human instincts. [...]
"It is a mistake to construe Nietzsche's elitism of the spirit as an advocacy of a rigid political hierarchy. His 'higher type' does not denote a political category: it refers to those who possess the aristocratic instincts as a countervailing force against the instinctive hatred of any form of distinction on the part of the 'democratic herd'. [...] These higher types need to understand, but keep their distance from, the herd and its values. [...] Nietzsche has, in fact, two politics: the one is a perfunctory endorsement of existing institutions he considers essential, inevitable and contemptible, the other is a proto-politics of para-personal drives and intensities, practiced by genealogists and critics of existing values and institutions. [...] Let me give the last word to Nietzsche: 'Liberal institutions immediately cease to be liberal as soon as they are attained: subsequently there is nothing more harmful to freedom than liberal institutions [...]'."
Hungarian-born Béla Egyed is Adjunct Research Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Carleton University and Adjunct Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Concordia University, Canada.
30 March 2010
Interview: Putting democracy on hold to fight climate change
More from the environmental front: Yesterday, the "Guardian" newspaper printed an interview with the 90-year-old independent British scientist James Lovelock, named one of the world's top-100 global public intellectuals by "Prospect" magazine in 2005 (article "James Lovelock: 'Fudging data is a sin against science'" by Leo Hickman):
www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/mar/29/james-lovelock
During the interview, Lovelock reportedly fired "off verbal thunderbolts at the various 'dumbos' with whom we have bestowed our collective fate: namely, 'the politicians, scientists and lobbyists'. [...] He is not one to toss around crumbs of comfort when he believes they're not justified, and displays a great deal of contempt for what he believes to be the naive idealism and ideologies of much of the current environmental movement – a significant proportion of which still looks up to him with a certain reverence. For example, it was his high-profile switch a few years ago to promoting nuclear energy as the best hope for saving ourselves that helped convince many environmentalists to rethink their instinctive opposition to this technology. Now, he says, he is not convinced that any meaningful response to 'global heating', as he likes to call it, can be achieved from within the modern democracies of the western world.
"'We need a more authoritative world,' he says resolutely. 'We've become a sort of cheeky, egalitarian world where everyone can have their say. It's all very well, but there are certain circumstances – a war is a typical example – where you can't do that. You've got to have a few people with authority who you trust who are running it. They should be very accountable too, of course – but it can't happen in a modern democracy. This is one of the problems. What's the alternative to democracy? There isn't one. But even the best democracies agree that when a major war approaches, democracy must be put on hold for the time being. I have a feeling that climate change may be an issue as severe as a war. It may be necessary to put democracy on hold for a while.'"
In a full transcript of the interview posted by Hickman on the Guardian's environment blog, Lovelock is quoted as saying: "Elitism is important in science. It is vital. [...] Science was always elitist and has to be elitist. The very idea of diluting it down [to be more egalitarian] is crazy. We're paying the price for it now."
And on the Copenhagen summit: "The UN was a lovely idea, but its primary objective was to make sure the British Empire was got rid of. You just can't get all those people to agree."
www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/mar/29/james-lovelock
During the interview, Lovelock reportedly fired "off verbal thunderbolts at the various 'dumbos' with whom we have bestowed our collective fate: namely, 'the politicians, scientists and lobbyists'. [...] He is not one to toss around crumbs of comfort when he believes they're not justified, and displays a great deal of contempt for what he believes to be the naive idealism and ideologies of much of the current environmental movement – a significant proportion of which still looks up to him with a certain reverence. For example, it was his high-profile switch a few years ago to promoting nuclear energy as the best hope for saving ourselves that helped convince many environmentalists to rethink their instinctive opposition to this technology. Now, he says, he is not convinced that any meaningful response to 'global heating', as he likes to call it, can be achieved from within the modern democracies of the western world.
"'We need a more authoritative world,' he says resolutely. 'We've become a sort of cheeky, egalitarian world where everyone can have their say. It's all very well, but there are certain circumstances – a war is a typical example – where you can't do that. You've got to have a few people with authority who you trust who are running it. They should be very accountable too, of course – but it can't happen in a modern democracy. This is one of the problems. What's the alternative to democracy? There isn't one. But even the best democracies agree that when a major war approaches, democracy must be put on hold for the time being. I have a feeling that climate change may be an issue as severe as a war. It may be necessary to put democracy on hold for a while.'"
In a full transcript of the interview posted by Hickman on the Guardian's environment blog, Lovelock is quoted as saying: "Elitism is important in science. It is vital. [...] Science was always elitist and has to be elitist. The very idea of diluting it down [to be more egalitarian] is crazy. We're paying the price for it now."
And on the Copenhagen summit: "The UN was a lovely idea, but its primary objective was to make sure the British Empire was got rid of. You just can't get all those people to agree."
22 March 2010
Book: Where Have All The Fascists Gone?
Tamir Bar-On, "Where Have All The Fascists Gone?" (Ashgate, 2007), with a foreword by Roger Griffin (Professor in Modern History, Oxford Brookes University):
www.ashgatepublishing.com/default.aspx?page=637&calcTitle=1&title_id=8080&edition_id=10650
Publisher's description: "The Intellectual European New Right (ENR), also known as the nouvelle droite, is a cultural school of thought with origins in the revolutionary Right and neo-fascist milieux. Born in France in 1968, it situated itself in a Gramscian mould exclusively on the cultural terrain of political contestation in order to challenge the apparent ideological hegemony of dominant liberal and leftist elites. It also sought to escape the ghetto status of a revolutionary Right milieu wedded to violent extra-parliamentary politics and battered by the legacies of Fascism and Nazism. This study traces the cultural, philosophical, political and historical trajectories of the French nouvelle droite in particular and the ENR in general. It examines the ENR worldview as an ambiguous synthesis of the ideals of the revolutionary Right and New Left. ENR themes related to the loss of cultural identity and immigration have appealed to anti-immigrant political parties throughout Europe. In a post 9/11 climate, as well as an age of rising economic globalization and cultural homogenization, its anti-capitalist ideas embedded within the framework of cultural preservation might make further political inroads into the Europe of the future."
Reviews: "Post-war right-wing extremist movements come in a bewildering variety of shapes and forms, but this book provides a well-written and masterly guide (the first one in the English language) to the evolution of one particularly influential variety known as the European New Right. It deserves to be read by all who care about the future of Europe." (Cyprian Blamires, editor of "World Fascism: A Historical Encyclopedia")
The book is fully searchable on Google Book Search (including table of contents):
http://books.google.com/books?id=OcaHOPaa0iMC&printsec=frontcover
Also of interest may be a recent article by Bar-On, "Understanding Political Conversion and Mimetic Rivalry" ("Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions", 10 [3-4], December 2009: pp. 241-64):
www.informaworld.com/smpp/1868151755-12274951/content~db=all~content=a918688855
From the abstract: "In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the French nouvelle droite under its doyen Alain de Benoist claimed that it had made a political 'conversion' from the revolutionary Right (or conservative revolutionary) milieu to 'democracy' and that it had created a 'post-fascist' political synthesis. The paper under consideration will argue that the nouvelle droite's political 'conversion' process was only exoteric in nature by mimicking the ideas of the New Left and that its esoteric orientation was of 'true believers' who never left a political pantheon of conservative revolutionary ideas with roots largely in the 1920s and 1930s. Using the model of the nouvelle droite, as well as the ideas of René Girard and Emilio Gentile [...], I trace a model of political conversion for the twentieth century and new millennium, with particular emphasis on conversionary prerequisites and processes, as well as the mimetic symbiosis and rivalry between Right and Left."
Excerpts: "It is no accident that the nouvelle droite leader in France, Alain de Benoist, argues [...] that his fundamental quarrel is with egalitarianism, which he argues in a Nietzschean vein produced the mass 'slave' ideologies of the Judeo-Christian tradition and its secular derivatives, namely, liberalism, social democracy, socialism, communism and Marxism. [...] Furthermore, in ideologically diverse journals, de Benoist never tires of pointing out that the shifting sands of the political landscape might dictate if he converts towards the Right or Left. This calculation will presumably be based on whether extreme radicals of the Right or Left can better assist in the destruction of liberal democracy. [...] [H]is conversion to 'democracy' is circumscribed, as it must be direct democracy in the ancient Athenian or Icelandic mould. It [...] bypasses his vehement rejection of liberal and socialist variants of democracy."
Israeli-born Tamir Bar-On is Professor of Humanities and International Relations at the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education.
www.ashgatepublishing.com/default.aspx?page=637&calcTitle=1&title_id=8080&edition_id=10650
Publisher's description: "The Intellectual European New Right (ENR), also known as the nouvelle droite, is a cultural school of thought with origins in the revolutionary Right and neo-fascist milieux. Born in France in 1968, it situated itself in a Gramscian mould exclusively on the cultural terrain of political contestation in order to challenge the apparent ideological hegemony of dominant liberal and leftist elites. It also sought to escape the ghetto status of a revolutionary Right milieu wedded to violent extra-parliamentary politics and battered by the legacies of Fascism and Nazism. This study traces the cultural, philosophical, political and historical trajectories of the French nouvelle droite in particular and the ENR in general. It examines the ENR worldview as an ambiguous synthesis of the ideals of the revolutionary Right and New Left. ENR themes related to the loss of cultural identity and immigration have appealed to anti-immigrant political parties throughout Europe. In a post 9/11 climate, as well as an age of rising economic globalization and cultural homogenization, its anti-capitalist ideas embedded within the framework of cultural preservation might make further political inroads into the Europe of the future."
Reviews: "Post-war right-wing extremist movements come in a bewildering variety of shapes and forms, but this book provides a well-written and masterly guide (the first one in the English language) to the evolution of one particularly influential variety known as the European New Right. It deserves to be read by all who care about the future of Europe." (Cyprian Blamires, editor of "World Fascism: A Historical Encyclopedia")
The book is fully searchable on Google Book Search (including table of contents):
http://books.google.com/books?id=OcaHOPaa0iMC&printsec=frontcover
Also of interest may be a recent article by Bar-On, "Understanding Political Conversion and Mimetic Rivalry" ("Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions", 10 [3-4], December 2009: pp. 241-64):
www.informaworld.com/smpp/1868151755-12274951/content~db=all~content=a918688855
From the abstract: "In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the French nouvelle droite under its doyen Alain de Benoist claimed that it had made a political 'conversion' from the revolutionary Right (or conservative revolutionary) milieu to 'democracy' and that it had created a 'post-fascist' political synthesis. The paper under consideration will argue that the nouvelle droite's political 'conversion' process was only exoteric in nature by mimicking the ideas of the New Left and that its esoteric orientation was of 'true believers' who never left a political pantheon of conservative revolutionary ideas with roots largely in the 1920s and 1930s. Using the model of the nouvelle droite, as well as the ideas of René Girard and Emilio Gentile [...], I trace a model of political conversion for the twentieth century and new millennium, with particular emphasis on conversionary prerequisites and processes, as well as the mimetic symbiosis and rivalry between Right and Left."
Excerpts: "It is no accident that the nouvelle droite leader in France, Alain de Benoist, argues [...] that his fundamental quarrel is with egalitarianism, which he argues in a Nietzschean vein produced the mass 'slave' ideologies of the Judeo-Christian tradition and its secular derivatives, namely, liberalism, social democracy, socialism, communism and Marxism. [...] Furthermore, in ideologically diverse journals, de Benoist never tires of pointing out that the shifting sands of the political landscape might dictate if he converts towards the Right or Left. This calculation will presumably be based on whether extreme radicals of the Right or Left can better assist in the destruction of liberal democracy. [...] [H]is conversion to 'democracy' is circumscribed, as it must be direct democracy in the ancient Athenian or Icelandic mould. It [...] bypasses his vehement rejection of liberal and socialist variants of democracy."
Israeli-born Tamir Bar-On is Professor of Humanities and International Relations at the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education.
31 January 2010
Book: Nietzsche Contra Democracy
A book showcasing Friedrich Nietzsche's anti-democratic thought: "Nietzsche Contra Democracy" by Fredrick Appel (Cornell University Press, 1999).Publisher's description: "Apolitical, amoral, an aesthete whose writings point toward some form of liberation: this is the figure who emerges from most recent scholarship on Friedrich Nietzsche. The Nietzsche whom Fredrick Appel portrays is of an altogether different character, one whose philosophical position is inseparable from a deep commitment to a hierarchical politics. Nietzsche contra Democracy gives us a thinker who, disdainful of the 'petty politics' of his time, attempts to lay the normative foundations for a modern political alternative to democracy. Appel shows how Nietzsche's writings evoke the prospect of a culturally revitalized Europe in which the herdlike majority and its values are put in their proper place: under the control of a new, self-aware, and thoroughly modern aristocratic caste whose sole concern is its own flourishing.
"In chapters devoted to Nietzsche's little discussed views on solitude, friendship, sociability, families, and breeding, this book brings Nietzsche into conversation with Aristotelian and Stoic strains of thought. More than a healthy jolt to Nietzsche scholarship, Nietzsche contra Democracy also challenges political theory to articulate and defend the moral consensus undergirding democracy."
www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/cup_detail.taf?ti_id=3083
Reviews: "From the opening words of this new book on Nietzsche's political philosophy, we know we are in the hands of a capable scholar: 'Friedrich Nietzsche's great concern is for the flourishing of those few whom he considers exemplary of the human species.' Appel's book demonstrates, from start to finish, the economy and lucidity found in this pithy statement. [...] He laces together textual evidence and strong arguments to make his case, to my mind incontrovertibly, that Nietzsche's opposition to liberal and egalitarian political ideas ... was unvarying." (Philip R. Munger, "The Boston Book Review")
"Fredrick Appel offers a thorough and devastating critique of what he calls the 'new orthodoxy' about Nietzsche which dominates contemporary scholarship. Appel [...] demonstrates how much scholars have to distort Nietzsche's writings to turn him into an enemy of social hierarchy and domination". (Bernard Yack, University of Wisconsin, Madison)
"[A] brilliant piece of scholarship, both clearly written and well argued, or if you prefer, both lucid and logical." (David A. Gugin, "Perspectives on Political Science")
The book is fully searchable on Google Book Search (including table of contents):
http://books.google.com/books?id=My2-0mPc9cAC&printsec=frontcover
Fredrick Appel is Senior Editor at Princeton University Press. He appears not to have published since – neither books nor articles.
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