4/21-23/98. Latest revision 4/21/98
*the problem of defining "conservatism" in the U.S. is that the
forces of conservatism seem to range themselves on two quite
different sides of the intellectual spectrum, the first basing their
views in science (and by extension, "classical liberalism") the
second in culture, tradition, religion. Thus since the 1880s a
typology of "conservatism" looks something like the following:
Science
(classical liberalism): Sumner (and "social Darwinists"), Mencken,
Sociobiology, Reaganomics
Tradition, religion: Genteel Tradition, H. Adams,
Agrarians/Humanists/Fundamentalism, Barzun/Buckley/Christian Right,
Allan Bloom
** this division surfaces in "conservative reaction of the 1970s and
1980s that ranged from Sociobiologists/Reaganomics on one side and
Pro-choice, Religious Right on the other. The alliance is thus rife
with contradictions: (1) atheistic sociobiologists to
Fundamentalist/Creationist Christians; (b) laissez faire free market
economists to interventionist moralists who will use government to
control various aspects of private behavior, immorality in arts
etc.(c) Jews and Christians
***even here problems arise (a) because some seem to fall in between
e.g. (i) Mencken who was economic/social conservative but a cultural
radical, and (ii) current opponents of "multiculturalism" who
consider themselves "liberal" in politics but oppose
"multiculturalism" as a new form of "tribalism". CF Daniel Bell: "I
am a socialist in economics. A liberal in politics, and a
conservative in culture." [Quoted Tallack, p. 332].
and (b) the tendency on the Left to consider most varieties of
"liberal" to be "really "conservative: in attempt to stabilize and
ultimately to defend the status despite their apparent "reformism."
Thus "scientistic" sociologists like Ogburn and other New Deal
intellectuals were considered "conservative " by the New Left of the
1960s, despite the fact that they and their contemporaries often saw
them at the "radical" end of the liberal spectrum.
****the problem can be partly resolved if one recognizes
(1) the successive changes in the "liberal" tradition whereby one
generation's "liberal" is the next generation's conservative. Thus,
e.g. Sumner was a "liberal" in the mid-19th century but a
conservative after New Liberals redefined the tradition to give
government as active role in the redress of the problems of
industrialism. In part this is result of facts that "forces of
liberalism" have differed from one generation to the next: middle
class, industrial working class/ethnics/Jews; Blacks-women-New
immigrants (since 1970) especially from Asia and Latin America
(2) thus
(a) "religion" was liberal or even radical in the 19th century
because it represented the voice of local, democratic communities
against centralized control and institutions of America's "ancien
regime" (slavery, Roman Catholicism, old colonial economic
structures); but in 20th has become vehicle for same local groups who
are threatened by this nationalizing of American life the shift in
liberal tradition between 1880 and 1920 gave rise in name of "reform"
to a national economy, national network of professionals and
bureaucracies, national media.;
(b) the 1960s represented a rejection of many of these same
structures-the legacy of progressivism, making some "new liberals"
join the "neo-conservatives" in the 1970s, e.g Daniel Bell.
(3) the complex relation between culture and capitalism whereby
culture often represents the antithesis of the materialism of the
market, but ultimately stabilizes and justifies.
(4) similar ambivalence of extreme devotees of "scientism" whether in
the eugenicists and "scientific mangers" of the progressive era; in
Ogburn and the behaviorism of J. B. Watson or B.F. Skinner, or even
the socobiologists whom many consider "radical"
I. Conservatism in the 1920s
*** instead look today at four traditions within criticism related to
these developments.
1. Henry Louis Mencken and American
Mercury
2. Cultural Conservatives
Southern Agrarians
New Humanists
3. Religious Conservatives: Fundamentalism
Note: for further details on these various movements see especially
Frederick Hoffman's The
1920s,
A. Henry Louis Mencken
(1880-
*Baltimore journalist and editor of Smart
Set (1912- ) and American Mercury (1924-). Former
was first American "urban" mag in tradition later represented by the
New Yorker .
1. Mencken represents convergence of three strains within earlier
American thought.
a. "debunking" : a tradition especially among journalist representing
the underside of American idealism. Pre-Civil War humorists Artemus
Ward, Petroleum V. Nasby, and "Josh Billings; turn of century the
journalist Ambrose Beirce, (Devil's
Dictionary, "Occurrence at Owl Creek
Bridge").
*Hemingway parodies in Sun Also Rises
(p. 116) as Bill says to Jake Barnes:
"Listen. You're a hell of a good guy. I couldn't tell you that in New
York. It's mean I was a faggot. That was what the Civil War was
about. Abe Lincoln was a faggot. He was in love with General Grant.
So was Jefferson Davis. Lincoln just freed the slaves on a bet. The
Dred Scott case was framed by the Anti-Saloon League. Sex explains it
all. The Colonel's Lady and Judy O'Grady are lesbians under the
skin."
b. Elitist intellectuals as seen in English Yellow book, Oscar Wilde, G.B.
Shaw. Represented in U.S. by such "transmitters" as Edgar Saltus
("favorite character in fiction? God"); and James G. Huneker. Brought
U.S. such thinkers as Nietzsche, subject of HLM book of 1908).
c. Individualism, going back to William Graham Sumner. Almost a
parody of mid-19th century liberalism. Evident in Mencken's
Men vs the Man
(1910) [patterned on Herbert Spencer's Man
vs. the State 1884]
2. Given Mencken's lifelong attack on academics, his own background
was rather curious. Enrolled in mail order "Cosmopolitan University"
to get degree. Wrote awful sentimental poetry in his younger years
("Love walks upon the waters/And fares into the hills; Love makes
himself a hiding place/ Among the daffodils.")
3. But soon introduced American audience to new currents of European
thought: G.B.Shaw (1905); Nietzsche
(1908); The
Players Ibsen (ed.)
4. During 1920s were really "two Menckens"
a. conservative critic of American society (see Notes on Democracy 1926) and
progressive tradition in particular (see essays on Wilson, Bryan,
Howells et al in six volumes of his essays published as
Prejudices.
Attacked "booboisie" and "homo boobiens," using anthropological
language for satiric purposes. Why live in America if he so disliked
it? "Why do people visit zoos."
b. cultural critic whose American
Language in a sense realized the cultural
nationalism of Bourne and others; and whose essays helped reshape the
American literary canon.
5. Assessment reflects this dual tradition.
a. Some Attack as last gasp of 19th century liberalism "gone sour."
Oscar Cargill, Intellectual
America p. 493 wrote that M was "selfish
bourgeois and rugged individualist" who knew a "decisive hoot is
worth more with the mob than sound reasoning." Walter Lippmann in a
review of Notes on
Democracy detected beneath the polemic "a
romantic yearning for feudal aristocracies, Prussian kingdoms,
Bismarckian empires." During the 1930s Mencken for a time seemed like
he would support Hitler and Nazism but finally did not.
b. other defend him for attacking a "liberalism" that had grown soft
and sentimental with its language of "service and "uplift, " as well
as the "intolerance" that flourished at Dayton, Tennessee (Scopes
Trial). Also praised for his role in sweeping away the last vestiges
of Victorianism.
[note: recent Mencken diaries published have raised again the issue
of his anti-Semitism, racism, and reactionary attitudes]
B. Southern Agrarians
Introd.
1. various groups in the 1920s looked to a past--real or
imaginary--as a source of values/standards against which to measure
the present(e.g. African past for Harlem Renaissance or even actual
return to Africa for followers of Marcus Garvey; a "classical" past
for the Humanists; a Medieval Past for Henry Adams).For a group of
Southern Agarians, this past was the "community" as it had existed in
the ante-bellum south.
e.g.ALLEN TATE: "The traditional community is made up of me who are
newer quite making their living all the time and who never quite
cease t make it; they are making their living all the time and
affirming their code all the time."
2. at the base of this tradition there must be a land with which one
is familiar, to which one refers in terms of personal situations
extended to social forms, qualified and given quality by habitual
repetition
3. to realize this ideal, the Agrarians did not propose a literal
return to self-sufficient plots (although some of their critics
charged them with doing so). Rather they insisted that the industrial
process of the North had succeeded in imposing an untraditional,
abstract, and abstracting society. Cities thus created were
non-entities, people suffered from drab repetition of uninviting
tasks, and the arts did not exist except in museums.
1. Who were they?
a. earliest were group of poets/writers(the "Fugitives" after a
magazine they published) who met from 1916 to 1928 to discuss their
work. Included: Allen Tate (bn. 1899), John Crow Ransom (1888),
Donald Davidson (1893), and Robert Penn Warren (1905).
b. later joined by historians, sociologists and others including:
Andrew Lytle, Stark Young, J.G. Fletcher, Frank Owsley, L.
Lanier,
2. Publications included:
Tate, Stonewall Jackson (1928), and Jefferson
Davis (1929)
Ransom, God without Thunder (1930)
Twelve Southerners, I'll Take My
Stand (1930) [major statement of
principles, and focus of considerable debate at the time]
*Note: this Nashville based group represented one major faction in
southern culture in the interwar years, the other being the
"regionalists" led by Howard W. Odum, a sociologist at the University
of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
3. Background
a. Social:two traditions contending in post Civil War south.
i. New South movement. Begun by Henry Grady, Atlanta Constitution in
1880s to "Yankeeify" the south
ii. the "midnight and magnolia" tradition of post Civil War
romanticism that idolized ante-bellum plantation society
*agrarians repudiated both, at least ostensibly.
b. other concern was poetry and role of art in a world from which all
mystery appeared to have been banished ("demystified" in later
jargon).
4. Major works showed both sides
a. I'll Take my Stand [analysis of "Statement of Principles" which opened
work]
b. God Without Thunder. Here Ransom had two concerns: (a) what happens to God
when he is deprived of His sternness and religion is reduced to mere
humanitarianism; and (b) what happens to the individual when he
sacrifices a free, aesthetic impulse to a tyranny of efficiency .
Developing the later point, Ransom revealed his essentially poetic
view of the world, his desire to treat nature as "poets,
religionists, Orientals, and sensitive people do", that is, as a
thing to be feared and loved, not as a scientist does, as a
thing to be controlled [note rejection of "scientism"]
5. Assessment.
(a) earlier arguments against involved the allegedly reactionary
nature of their program: attempt to turn clock back, even roots of
extremist anticommunism that flourished in late 1930s and into Cold
War era (assuming this is still a "bad thing")
(b) defenders argued that their concerns always transcended politics.
With other "modernists" noted problems in a world in which every
shred of what could be called "humanity" was driven out or dismissed
a sentimentalism, nostalgia, or cowardice." In doing so, they
insisted on treating literature as literature, and were important
contributors to the tradition now called "modernism."
(c) Tallack in 20th Century American
Culture presents a sophisticated argument
that the social attitudes were inextricably bound up with the
modernist program.
(i) their precapitalist"southern" past does not meet the tests of
modern scholarship (e.g. Eugene Genovese) and was in fact symbolic
rather than real
(ii) likewise their vision of the Civil War as the "fall" contained a
large measure of nostalgic pastoralism (here Tallack applied the
critique of Leo Marx, The Machine in the
Garden.
(iii) behind both--and their celebration of "nonscientific ways of
knowing" was an inability/refusal to face two major contradictions in
the southern past : class (yeoman v. aristocracy) and race. Their
"symbolic" view of the southern past was thus born of this
evasion.
(iv) by extrapolation, their view of literature as "symbolic"--as a
"thing unto itself" rather than sociological-- was an extension
of this mode of thinking. (see quotation p. 174 from Holman)
(d) specific instance of the convergence of the political and
aesthetic can be seen in the "modernist" appropriation of Faulkner,
e.g. in Cowley's Portable
Faulkner, and Cleanth Brooks,
Faulkner.
See summary of position in Tallack, pp. 175-76.
C. Humanists
*sometimes called the "Nation
school of critics (since Paul Elmer More
was editor of the Nation magazine from 1909), the Humanists represented the extreme
right of cultural conservatism during the 1920s, opposing "modernism"
in literature and the arts. Leading proponents were Paul Elmer More
and Irving Babbitt (1865-1933), and younger followers Stuart Sherman,
Norman Foerster, and Seward Collins, the last of whom edited The
American Magazine in the 1930s, a profascist journal.
**the "Humanists" were "classicists" in a rather literal sense that
they wished to return to the purity of 18th century and even
"classical" culture which had been (in their view) debauched on the
one hand by Romanticism since Rousseau; and on the other by a
mechanistic pragmatism which had taken Enlightenment ideology as
licence to exploit a continent ("scientism" being an example,
although they did not use the term to my knowledge).
***their definition of "humanism" was rather precious and could lead
to a wrong impression of their goal. Derived from the "humanitas" of
the late Latin writer Gellius, "humanism" meant neither "promiscuous
benevolence (humanitarianism), but "doctrine and discipline." An
elitist doctrine it was frankly antidemocratic in its call for
"standards."
[note: despite important differences among members of the group,
following treats them together)
1. Educational background
a. although born in midwest both More and Babbitt were the spiritual
sons of the "New England Brahmins"--an example of what some
historians call the "colonial phenomenon" whereby the periphery is,
as it were, "holier than the Pope," in this case to a Genteel
Tradition now grown crabby and defensive.
b. At age 19 Babbitt was already warning friends against dangers of
reading French novels, although ironically, unable to get a job
teaching classics (after two Harvard degrees and another from the
Sorbonne), he ended up teaching French literature which he
despised.
2. In late Progressive ra already sufaced as voices of cultural
conservatism.
a. Babbitt, Literature and the American
College (1908) : traces all difficulties
of modern culture and education to Rousseau and Bacon
respectively--attacking especially Harvard President Eliot's
"elective system" (started 1869) which he traces to Rousseau's
permissiveness.
b. More's Shelburne Essays.
3. Major points in their philosophy.
a. individual behavior: prescribed "decorum" or what More labelled
the "inner check."
"The philosophy of Humanism finds its master truth not in men as they
are (realism) or in men worse than they are (naturalism) or in men as
the 'wish' to be (romanticism), but in men as they 'ought' to be
--'ought with reference to the perfection of the human type."
(b) this ideal very similar to older notion of "reason" checking
"instincts," although propounded at a time when this Victorian
dualism seriously eroded by Freud et al.
b. social theory also concerned with "outer control" which they
generally identified with some form of aristocratic society. Spoke of
"natural aristocracy," a selection of "best" from a community as the
"true consummation of a democracy." But not a sharpy defined cl;ass
(see criticism of them below). See e.g. More, Aristocracy and Justice (1915),
and Babbitt Democracy and Leadership
(1924).
c. their repudiation of the American democratic faith came especially
in their attack on "humanitarianism" which they distinguished from
Humanism.
d. found moral tradition embodied in "great" literature, the reading
of which could help cultivate individual control.
(i) found few to praise among modern writers: Edith Wharton, E.A.
Robinson, Robert Frost and "the fairly distinguished output of Booth
Tarkington," and Dorothy Canfield.
(ii) except for Stuart Sherman, who capitulated to modernism, thus
found against new entries. E.G
Dos Passos, Manhattan Transfer : "might be described in a phrase as
an explosion in a cesspool."
Dreiser's English when "he tries to be literary is of the mongrel
sort to be expected from the miscegenation of the gutter and the
psychological laboratory"
Gertrude Stein: "that adventuress into the lunar madness of literary
cubism."
3. Legacy and Evaluation
a. critics later thier conservatism as even less realistic than
others that flurished in the 1920s , e.g. medievalism (Ralph Adams
Cram), Agrarianism (Twelve Southerners), or Anglicanism (Eliot).
Theirr ideal order was finally possible not in society but in a
collection of "perfect gentleman," a sort of secular saint of
self-control.
b. Nonethlessleft legacy in "great Books " programs of 1920s and
1930s (Stringfellow Barr, St. Johns at Annapolis, being good
examples;). See echoes in more extreme critics of current
"multiculturalism", although ironically it is now the New Republic that represents
this train of critcism, while the Nation defends.
D. Fundamentalism
* for background
see George Marsden, Fundamentalism and
American Culture.
1. "Liberal" protestantism
a. New Criticism-modernism
b. Social Gospel
2. 19th century. No "fundamentalism" in 20th century sense. Rather
four strains
3. Darwin not a factor
4. WWI and Transformation
5. Scopes Trial
6. Interpretation
*Inherit the Wind: the "modernist" version.
II. "New Conservatives' and Cultural
Conservatism in the 1950s
A. "New Conservatives: (as cleaning house of right of pro-fascist
overtones, just as New Liberals distancing themselves from
Communism)
B. Cultural Conservatism. Jacques Barzun, House of Intellect
III. Sociobiology
*biological theory at nadir: 1950s (see H47.chron.Sociobiology)
A.. Re-biologizing social theory: molecular biology
F. Crick, Of Molecules and
Men (1966)
J. Monad, From Biology to
Ethics (1967)
B. The ethnologists
Konrad Lorenz, On
Aggression (1966)
Robert Ardrey, Territorial
Imperative (1966)
_____. Social Contract (1970)
Desmond Morris, Naked Ape (1967)
_____. Human Zoo (1969)
Lionel Tiger, Men in Groups
'' and Robin Fox, The Imperial
Animal
C. E.O. Wilson, Sociobiology: the New
Synthesis (1975)
D. Popularizations and Extensions
1. Later Wilson
Wilson and Lumsden, Genes, Mind, and
Culture (1981)
Wilson, Promethean Fire (1983)
2. Other Popularizers
Richard Alexander, Darwinism and Human
Affairs (1979)
David Barash, Sociobiology and
Behavior
_____, Whisperings Within (1979)
R. Dawkins, The Selfish
Gene (1976)
Robert Wallace, The Genesis
Factor
E. The IQ Controversy: Richard Herrenstein
IV. Neo-behaviorism. B.F. Skinner,
Beyond Freedom and Dignity
V. Neoconservatism and the New Right:
1970-1980s
*the following is based primarily on Crawford, Alan, Thunder on the Right [New York,
1980) [useful on the New Right]; Peele, Gillian, Revival and Reaction: the Right in Contemporary
America (Oxford, Eng. 1984) [useful
schematic survey]; and Steinfels, Peter, The NeoConservatives (1979)
[critical account by the editor of Commonweal]
A. Neo-conservatives:
1. Neo-conservatives of the 1970s consisted largely of right-drifting
representatives of the New York intellectuals, many Jewish in
background.
a. Irving Kristol (1920-
*started Public Interest 1966
b. Daniel Bell
c. Norman Podhoretz (1930- ) * editor Commentary
d. Nathan Glazer, eg. Affirmative
Discrimination
e.Seymour Martin Lipset
f. Gertrude Himmelfarb
g. others: (i) Daniel P. Moynihan, esp. for part played in the
Moynihan Report on African-American families in mid-1960s
(ii). Robert Nisbet
* Themes
1. defense of capitalism
2. scepticism re: government (Great Society as foil:3.
anti-affirmative action
4. orthodox moral standards (e.g. Bell reversion of "republican"
virtue at end of Coming of Post-Industrial
Society
5. hostility to communism
NOTE: (Tallack) Culkturally they are part of reaction against
"modernism," particualrly the subjectivity of the artist and the cult
of immediate expereince, which they see the New Left of the 1960s
building upon . See quotation from Bell in Tallack, p. 314.
**. Explanation of why arose (from Steinfels, Neo-Conservatives)
1. classic case of division between new and old: we remained faithful
(generational?). But doesn't really explain why did not turn to
stress federal initiatives
2. last stage of antiStalinist battle against Stalin (going back to
`partisan Review. Some truth
3. Defending hard won success (privilege). E.g. Podhoretz
Making It, or
recent article about Bell.
4. fear of antiSemitism as inherent in popular opinion. Fear
tribalism ; also how nativism and ethnic revival will hurt Jews and
Israel
5. Ideology of party professionals.
*Steufels: confusing because they also distrust asocial engineers,
politicized intellectuals, rootless reformers. Key is classic
oposition between sociological tradtion and philosophes.The
neo-conservatives represent a "new class". But they are neither
social engineers or adversarial/radical. This explains their interest
in "legitimacy." The will provide via their ideology.
2. in late 1980s have regrouped in battle against
"multiculturalism"
a. Allen Bloom, Closing of American
Mind [summary of reading)
b. multicultural debate [summarized briefly]
*explore ongoing tension between the Neo-conser (formerly End of
Ideology) and the social engineer New Liberals. Historically is the
debate between philosophes and sociological tradition. Look at ways neos survived the
1960s, or were affect by it in different ways.
B. New Right (including Religious
Right)
a. May be defined (Peele, pp. 52-54) as loose coalition of (a)
General purpose political organizations: eg. Howard Phillip's
Conservative Caucus); and (b) single- issue interest groups including
those associated with "Moral Majority;" research institutes (Heritage
Foundation, Hoover Institute)
b. as such is defined more by its characteristic structures and
strategies rather than new ideas e.g. Richard Viguerie, architect of
direct mailing.Other characteristics included drop pessimism
associated with "old right;" hostility to existing parties (although
most vote Republican); drop anti-communism issue in favor of family
centered ones; and have curious element of "populism".
C. Antifeminism and Radical Right
(analysis of antifeminist backlash based
on Barbara Ehrenreich, Hearts of Men.
D. Multicultural Debate (do next week )
Written by Robert Bannister, for classroom use in History 47,
Swarthmore College 1/98. Latest revision 4/21/98. May be reproduced
in whole or part for educational purposes, but not copied or
distributed for profit.