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Political ideals, pluralism and pederasty
Posted by diogenes on 2025-July-17 12:42:46, Thursday|
I happened to mention in a previous post a work by Philip Ironside entitled The Social and Political Thought of Bertrand Russell: the development of an aristocratic liberalism, in which the author shows how Russell was led to very radical political views by a political and cultural outlook that might in many ways be considered old-fashioned, or even reactionary. I am fascinated by how a nostalgic reactionism can lead to a radicalism. Ironside uses the term “aristocratic liberalism” to denote Russell's cultural attitudes. Alan S. Kahan, in his book on Aristocratic Liberalism, identifies a number of strands to this attitude: Aristocratic liberalism - a preference for high culture, disdain for commercialism - belief in individual rights and liberties - distrust of the masses, and the middle class; preference for elite rule - scepticism towards centralised state power and bureaucracy This struck me as very close to the attitudes that Peter Wilkin identifies as belonging to 'Tory anarchism' in his work The Strange Case of Tory Anarchism: Tory anarchism - a feeling of being radically out of step with the modern world - respect for privacy and liberty - fear of the state's expanding power over social life - a dislike of social conformism - a temperament of nostalgia and pessimism It is clear that these two political stances are practically identical. I would say that I certainly find myself pretty much completely emotionally in tune with Tory anarchism, and to a large extent with aristocratic liberalism as well. Do these social attitudes yield any clear political programme? It might seem at first blush that a programme based on these attitudes must be right wing; but I believe that, when applied to modern conditions, the result is actually the very opposite. Certainly, both groups disdain the ever expanding scope of the state. In some ways, the rise of collectivism was almost inevitable given industrialism. As Wilkin notes in the above mentioned book, It had become abundantly clear to politicians, state managers and capitalists alike [by 1945] that the state had to assume a much larger role in the organisation and maintenance of capitalism itself. Thus the state was subjected to a complex array of pressures: from capitalists demanding subsidy and protection; from a professional middle class seeking professional jobs and to run the new welfare state; and from a working class seeking to protect itself from the negative consequences of capitalism.Now Tory anarchists/aristocratic liberals are against the ever widening scope of the modern state, and will therefore be against state socialism. However, the basic problem is with the effects of the “destructive economic system” which the state has to control and mitigate. And if these problems will not disappear under state socialism, they will not disappear either with capitalism, which is the source of these problems in the first place. For the effects of capitalism are precisely to break up communities by exposing them to the full blast of market forces, undermining the informal networks of familiarity, trust and mutual aid on which these communities are run, and thus clearing the way for encroachment by the state. So the Tory anarchist, whilst being opposed to state or bureaucratic socialism, will also be “anti-capitalist”; and Wilkin notes how the Tory anarchists in the 80s had a decided preference for Kinnock over Thatcher. Indeed, insofar as Thatcher jettisoned the more “paternalistic” aspects of the old Toryism, she is seen as embodying the very worst political outcome. But is there any positive economic vision that arises out of this? Or is it just an impotent protest against modernity? If there is a positive programme, at once anti-bureaucracy, anti-centralist and anti-capitalist, then it must be the idea of radically devolving power, not only territorially but in terms of functional groups, including economic groups. In other words, the idea is a Pluralist one. At the economic level, it would have workers in each industry managing their own internal affairs. One reason why I find Bertrand Russell's politics interesting is that he did come from an approximately “aristocratic liberal” position, but, in contrast to many of the Tory anarchists, was not content with merely lamenting the drift of politics but actually wanted to propose a practical alternative. To this end, he adopted the idea of an economy based around self-governing guilds, an idea that has also been championed in modern times by the anarchist Tom Hodgkinson. To some degree, the Pluralist perspective overlaps with the Burkean conservative idea of support for society's “little platoons”. The main problem I have with this latter is that in practice the Conservatives have never actually believed in it. This is obvious from the authoritarian and centralising tendencies of the Thatcher government in the 80s. And the Tories have always placed profit and “efficiency” above communities. So railway lines, for example, in the 50s, were scrapped as a result of Beeching's Axe, because they were unprofitable, a move that undermined the economic and social viability of small communities, and accelerated migration to the cities. In the area of the welfare state, I think aristocratic liberals should favour the universal basic income over means-tested benefits and eligibility requirements. It is precisely the latter that leads to state bureaucrats wielding power over citizens. A Citizen's income as an entitlement would put an end to all that. Furthermore, it would grant to individuals the freedom to pursue activities that are meaningful but which do not feed the capitalist profit machine. It would support real individualism, as Oscar Wilde realised in his essay on The Soul of Man Under Socialism. In one sense, it would extend to the population at large the freedom to be idle that aristocrats have historically enjoyed. And this too is a very radical proposal. So in very many ways the aristocratic liberal or 'Tory anarchist' perspective will lead to something quite radical, and considerably to the left of the current Labour Party. From this perspective, Labour's great failure in the post war era was its reliance on a top down model of state socialism, its failure to develop a libertarian alternative to capitalism. Finally, Tory anarchism is aligned with quite radical ideas in the area of environmentalism; for it is, after all, the modern state and capitalism that are destroying the very biosphere itself. Why do these ideas matter to pederasts? Because the expansion of the modern state in the wake of industrialisation has also meant an expansion of the central state, fuelled by the attitudes of mass society, into the arena of childhood which has to be protected from alleged harms. In a more pluralist society, by contrast, there is less central control, more scope for people to carve out their own way of doing things in their own communities. With people having more democratic control over the things that affect their lives most directly, there should hopefully be more of a tendency to trust one's own experience and perceptions rather than rely on the beliefs of a mass media. It would seem, then, that a kind of reactionism and nostalgia can lead naturally to radicalism. Radicalism and reactionism are not, from this political perspective, necessarily opposed.  |
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