weber - ambiguous victories

Ambiguous VictoriesAuthor(s): Eugen WeberSource: Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 13, No. 4, A Century of Conservatism (Oct.,1978), pp. 819-827Published by: Sage Publications, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/260086 .Accessed: 04/11/2013 20:11

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Eugen Weber

Ambiguous Victories

The rule of the road is a paradox quite, Both in riding and driving along If you keep to the left, you are sure to be right, If you keep to the right, you are wrong.

Out of Enlightenment, by French Revolution. There is the pedigree of modern conservatism and, as Robert Nisbet shows, this marks its nature and its future stance. Conservatives are condemned to define themselves largely by what they oppose, to argue less for than against. This distinct ideological disadvantage is not unrelated to a certain inarticulateness (the great ideologues of the right are less conservative than reactionary, less moderate than radical) and a tendency to subordinate theory to practice. Not only as a conclusion of Burkeian logic, but as a lesson of experience which asserts that plus qa change, plus c'est la meme chose. Time, the conservative believes, will prove him right - at least by proving the radical wrong, his pro- mises hollow. But by then it will be too late. Hence, the true conservative is not only sceptical, but pessimistic. And his reading of history reinforces both views.

However, as Burke said, who said so many pithy things, custom reconciles us to everything. And the conservative, who cannot accept revolution in the making will accept the revolution once it has been made. For his dislike of troubling the established order that he moves in is greater than any desire he may have of seeing it replaced by one closer to the opinions he holds.

It has been said that Louis Philippe's most interesting premier, Louis Guizot, was converted to conservatism by what he saw in July (and early August) 1830, and it is clear that he was frightened by what took place then. Fear is certainly another major component of the conservative spirit - sometimes less justified than that of men

Journal of Contemporary History (SAGE, London and Beverly Hills), Vol 13 (1978), 819-827


Journal of Contemporary History

like Guizot, who could remember the terrors (and the Terror) of their youth. And this fear rises most strongly when disorder threatens. Guizot praised Napoleon, first for his 'horreur du desordre' then for his 'instincts de gouvernement' and the swiftness with which he reconstructed the country's shattered social framework: - another way of saying that Napoleon established order where disorder reign- ed. But he criticized him for lack of measure; for knowing no limits (thus threatening the order reestablished) and, hence, 'remaining revolutionary while fighting the revolution.' Here is the true conservative ideal: order, but also limits without which that order cannot be preserved; a sense of the possible (perhaps a little tight), and of measure (he boasts of defending liberty against absolute power, and order against the revolutionary spirit). The equipoise of the juste milieu. Finally, acceptance of History: when the Revolution is over and Napoleon gone, new rights and interests have been assimilated and society cannot deny the past any more than it can reject the future.

So the conservative does not reject change ('A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation', Burke), provided it is not too dramatic ('To innovate is not to reform.' Burke again!) or disruptive. Since man cannot master his destiny, only fumble with it, since fate makes dust of man's inten- tions, what counts is a cost-benefit ratio estimated in what are cor- rectly described as conservative terms.

Historically, conservative parties arise in situations where status, property, and even life, are threatened by radical reform or signifi- cant organization aiming to bring that about. French conservatives of the nineteenth century took such things seriously. They had reason to do so. Guizot and Louis-Philippe had lost their fathers to the guillotine, and the sanguinary cries of 1794 could be heard again in 1848 and 1851. Equally important, competition for office and power, represented by a very restricted number of places in societies where material possibilities were still severely limited, made political victory exclusivist - for its advantages were still too narrow to be shared. The dichotomy between the party of Movement and that of Resistance, forged in the 1830s, reflected very real interests: fear of revolution, of bloody anarchy, of destruction, of the Republic that embodied all that; faith in the Republic, in the progress and liberty it represented, and in the Revolution that made them possible whatever the cost.

By the 1870s and 1880s, such vivid commitments had waned. For

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Weber: Ambiguous Victories

one thing, some issues had been clarified. As Napoleon III and Bismarck both perceived, 'The people' tended to conservatism. For another, political radicalism did not necessarily lead to social conclusions. By 1882, France's most dedicated socialist, Jules Guesde, could comment that radicals distinguished themselves from conservatives only by their hypocrisy. Disraeli had suggested as much two score years earlier; but he regarded creative hypocrisy as a political virtue and did his best to blunt his opponents' lightning by stealing their thunder.

The constraints of politics - and, increasingly, of government were beginning to affect both right and left. Both remained true to their original character, their ideological source, but both found it increasingly difficult to reconcile ideology and practice. A study of electoral vocabulary in the France of the 1880s notes the (predic- table) difference between the abstract notions favoured by the left and the more concrete references of right-wing candidates. But their vocabulary remained the same: on both sides, 'the electoral language is redundant and stereotyped.'1 Proof that old flags were being left to flutter over new battlegrounds.

What was happening? For one thing, the old struggle between liberals and conservatives had become redundant. Conservative adaptability on one hand, the rise of socialism on the other, shifted the benchmarks of conflict, though not its verbiage. As H. von der Dunk observes of the Netherlands, the traditional antagonism between liberals and conservatives became increasingly blurred until, after 1917, liberals and conservatives were hard to tell apart. Liberals had become conservative. Conservatives had assimilated liberalism.

In France, conservative Republicans and Orleanist liberals had been drifting closer for some time. Jules Ferry had looked forward to a two-party system of progressives and conservatives, on the English model. Before long, the conservatives had come to call themselves Progressives, because they could not admit their conservatism - nor, apparently, had a very clear idea just what that might be - part of the problem of trying to defend conservative positions in societies that do not believe in them. Meanwhile, the erstwhile radical Republicans, challenged by more socially radical critics, were having every trouble in the world to avoid assimilation with more modern foes.

This is when two important developments occurred. Jurgen Puhle tells us that in Germany, as the nineteenth century ended, 'conservatism lost its separate identity and became merged with a newer

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and wider volkisch nationalist, social-imperialist, militant and militaristic ideology which was distinctly middle-class, had marked antisemitic features, and inclined to organic, integrationist theories of social harmony.' Though the middle-class distinctiveness of the new phenomenon continues in doubt, the same development grosso modo took place in France. In the absence of a clear conservative ideology, the old sceptical conservatism gave way to doctrines that were more radical than moderate, more explicit and more dogmatic than anything the conservative tradition had conceived, and also more populist. As Puhle says, 'the ideologists of the conservative revolution ceased to be conservative in any reasonable sense of the term.' Naturally, since conservative revolution is a contradiction in terms.

Some of this may have been a reaction to the challenge of a highly ideological socialism. And it is well to remember that many of the leaders and some of the doctrinaires of fin-de-siecle nationalism and 'conservative revolution' came from the left, or had close ties with it. Professor Zeev Sternhell has recently documented the left-wing sources of the radical right in France,2 and confirmed Silberner's in- sistence on the popular, populist and 'left-wing' associations of antisemitism. Antisemitism may well have been the socialism of fools, but fools have always been many; and wise socialist leaders found it politic to soft-pedal their disapproval of it while many radicals of left and right agreed on its relevance.

The organic and historical nationalism of a man like Maurice Barres, reconciling self and community, arguing that true self- realization could only be attained with reference to one's terre and morts, implied acceptance of both determinism and contingency: a good conservative doctrine for the times. Interested in defending what was and in improving what could be, the conservative Barres (not to be confused with his earlier anarchistic incarnation) stressed the legitimacy of the established order (Republic) in a context of historical continuity. Between him and his more radical competitors and critics of the right there was the distance that satiety creates. Barres was one of those who illustrate Ralph Waldo Emerson's remark that men are conservative after dinner. He had certainly shown little sign of moderation before success, and marriage to a wealthy heiress, toned down his national socialism. Others would take his place in the vanguard, and furnish the extreme doctrines that could unify and enthuse conservative moderates who were obviously only moderately conservative.

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This is where discrimination becomes crucial, and where the distinctions between conservatives on one hand and radicals of right and left on the other are sometimes lost from sight. There is less difference between a radical of the left and one of the right than between two men of the right (or left), one of whom is radical and the other conservative. Conservatives want to preserve the present even against the past. Reactionaries want to break with the present and return to a version of the past that omits all the aspects they dislike. Radicals envisage breaking with both present and past. The better to do this the radical of the left appeals to a fantasy-eschatology in- spired by an outdated economics, while the radical of the right appeals to a fantasy-tradition culled from a perverted history.

Professor Griffiths talks about some of the latter, and it is important to remember that their radicalism, whilst occasionally attractive, could only become compelling when conservatives felt themselves in such danger as to warrant extreme steps. That explains why the traditional elites of Weimar Germany would accept the alliance of 'desperadoes and outcasts', while those of the Third Republic seldom went farther than a flirt. It also explains why the first targets of the radical right were often their conservative neighbours, attack- ed not only for their anti-social failings but for the pusillanimity that sought more to conserve than to destroy.

Meanwhile, the self-designated adversaries of the established order were coming to terms with it. As the nineteenth century gave way to the twentieth, the leaders of Europe's major socialist parties aban- doned revolutionism for reform. In France, notably, the success of the radical right at the height of the Dreyfus Affair forced socialists to take the defence of the endangered Republic and abandon the class struggle in order to maintain the parliamentary democracy they had been denouncing as corrupt. The rapprochement between left and centre confused issues but also clarified them. It facilitated conservative denunciations of liberalism, and gave force to the criticisms of the extreme right. It also encouraged the reaffirmation of revolutionary opposition to those who sold out to established (dis)order. This opposition, most evident at first in anarchic syndicalism, later expressed itself in communism and fascism.

But the more or less cordial entente of left and centre also enlarged the reassuring middle ground where men of good will could ignore the siren songs of all extremes. With socialist parties increasingly reformist or, in Puhle's words, 'largely social conservative', the philosophy of conservatism could afford to lose ground; the scope of

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Journal 'of Contemporary History

conservatism was growing. Here the ideological nullity and the public timidity of conser-

vatives made its contribution. The absence of explicit doctrines and the typical conservative reluctance to admit conservatism made assimilation of and to conservative positions easier. In effect, whatever the major parties in most countries today, most are oppor- tunistic and syncretic in typically conservative ways. The left, in- cluding what used to be its most unyielding portions now threatened by new leftisms, has learned to moderate its ardours; and conservatives have adjusted to unthinkable degrees of collectivism. The oft- heard description of European communist parties as the great conservative force in their lands is only part-facetious. Acceptance of democratic politics, explicit or tacit, means that most parties are moderate in practice. This includes a moderate conservatism, and a communism bent on conservation. Meanwhile, as Puhle says, 'essen- tially conservative politics' are 'being put forward as dynamic, forward-looking, reformist politics of "the centre", whatever that may be.'

The expansion of the centre, the effective spread of conservatism adjusted to the new mood of interventionist statism, re-edit after mid-century the ambiguities of the fin-de-siecle. Neither reactionary nor radical, no longer ideologically inclined to tilt at windmills on behalf of authority or legitimacy, committed to historical traditions that were unknown not long ago and to an order established the day before yesterday, immoderate only in their moderation, passionate only in their commitment to calm, conservatives are the Sancho Pan- zas of politics. More-or-less replete societies may sneer at them, but they show little inclination to discard them.

A world of Sanchos evokes its Don Quixotes. As at the fin-de- siecle, these characteristically reject all and everything connected with the corrupt order, their first priority destruction, violent as it may be. Cocteau had warned against revolutionaries who merely conserve old anarchies. But, in the true revolutionary's eyes, creative an-archy is a necessary step towards the better world, even if the former threatens to wash out babies with the bath water. The bath water is dirty.

Along with second generation culture there sometimes goes a second generation conscience. Creatures of a replete society, hence more sharply aware of its shortcomings, the neo-romantic neo- populists of the 1960s and 1970s attack the dominant conservatism that dare not speak its name, denounce the ruling order as disorder,

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the institutions of democracy as sham, the institutionalized reform- ism as a cover of capitalist exploitation, the relative freedom as corruption. They also reject the fallout of industrialism, of technological advance, the productivity that permits hypocritical reforms and the bureaucracy that carries them out for their constraints, claiming that they diminish humanity, restrict alternatives, and confuse issues which would otherwise be clear. Anti-capitalist, anti-bourgeois, anti-conservative, high-principled, violent, and pure to the point of nihilism, the leftists of today recall their late- nineteenth century predecessors even in their sporadic tendency to antisemitism.

Their idealism thrives on the resources of the system they condemn and on the unease that can amount to guilt which comfortable societies generate. The deprived have little time to worry at their failures. The sated cannot get over the imperfections of success. Healthy societies generate accommodations with reality which ideologues deplore.

Here, the old tension between conservatives and their ideological foes resurfaces. Radical criticism judges reality in terms of abstract values. Conservatives evaluate it according not to some ideological model but to whether it works well enough.

The tensions that rise from this are clearest in the United States, where widespread agreement on common values and remarkable success in achieving common ends have made for widespread guilt about the limits of the achievement. Paradoxically, the party of max- imum interventionism calls itself liberal, and few but scattered in- tellectuals call themselves conservative. But the liberalism of American liberals goes back to the neo-Hegelian analysis of T.H Green who, after 1880, argued for the state intervention that alone could provide the preconditions for truly free enterprise. The conclusions of Green's arguments were drawn by the Fabians, and also by such advocates as Walter Lippmann, eager for a free society where the inequality of men could not be ascribed to extrinsic causes. Such positions could extend a long way - as North American political debate and legislation have shown of late. Even to racial quotas ('goals') imposed to reject racist injustice.

Very sensibly, one of our best Marxist historians, Eugene Genovese, recently remarked that 'suffering is a liberal hangup, not a Marxist hangup.'3 The United States probably count as few Marx- ists as they do conservatives. The vast majority of the population seems to accept the dominant myths of guilt and atonement. As

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Fran;ois Bourricaud remarks, 'the ability of a pressure group to speak loudly and openly depends neither on the number of interests that it represents nor on the economic rationality of its demands, but rather on the more or less acceptable image of its primary concerns.'4

What people are ready to believe, and even more to say, depends on the social support their views receive. That means, among other things, that wise politicians will air the views that strike the most responsive chord among their public or, at least, air them in what they think is the form in which they will be found most acceptable. In the US today, from cocktail party to the hustings, while radical chic is out, conservatism is nowhere near chic. It is characteristic that David Noble has to seek his conservatism in books and among in- tellectuals - the very quarters where oppositional creeds historically nest. Conservatism does not come naturally to North Americans; at least not in thought, for most Americans are conservative in their progressivism.

Determination to guard one's share of a limited pot, reluctance to distribute wealth at the cost of one's own, are sharper in other lands. But throughout the West conservative unwillingness to run under conservative colours is compounded by agreement on politics of distributive justice and social change, the only issues up for debate being those of degree, of speed, and of personality. Awareness of the growing dependence of all on all? Enfeebled capitalism trying to atone for managerial incompetence by dashes of spurious humanitarianism? Americans, conservative or not, appear determin- ed to ignore the mutual contradiction of liberty and equality when carried towards their logical conclusions. In the process, they prove how thoroughly egalitarianism can inhibit freedom.

If we believe Pareto, every elite that is not ready to fight to defend its positions is decadent. All it can do is to give up its place to another elite possessing the virile qualities it lacks. One is tempted to refer to this and cry decadence. The trouble is that the discernible elite of Pareto's day, or even of the 1930s, is nowadays hard to identify. In- choate upper and middle classes, lesser economic and social groups aspiring to join them, a culture with little that unifies it, and no ideology in sight to challenge the present ideological absence, leave one disoriented whether referring to Pareto or Marx. 'Liberalism' is the assimilative conservatism of North America, exhibits the same weakness without modesty, the same fatuousness without con- fidence, the same belief that people are capable of doing anything for money - even of doing good, the same fear of being tarred with the

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brush of reaction. But what offers a challenge, and who? The ideological left secretes no alternative elite: only counter-elitism and aspiring collaborators, panting for the fleshpots that they criticize.

Marx, unfortunately for our intellectual discipline, is little read. He never was read, of course, and socialist history becomes clearer when we remember this. His epigones and exegetes do not seem able to furnish an alternative ideology. The fact is that, while Marx pro- vides the intellectual litanies of our time, Max Weber offers its most plausible explanations. Weber and Michels insist on bureaucracy and oligarchy, whatever the ideological colouring of party or regime. Ex- perience suggests that they are right. The great decisions of politics are still about who pays, who gets, and who decides this. These decisions, once transferred from oligarchies to the market, have been recaptured by new oligarchies, more numerous but also more over- weening. Whatever the regime, large government is the norm or the aim. Maintaining and advancing it has become the new conservatism of our day.

Notes

1. Antoine Prost, Vocabulaire des proclamations electorales de 1881, 1885 et 1889 (Paris 1974), 25.

2. La Droite revolutionnaire 1885-1914. Les Originesfranqaises dufascisme (Paris 1978).

3. Quoted in Wall Street Journal, 10 April 1978. 4. 'The Right in France since 1945' in Comparative Politics, October 1977, 20.

Eugen Weber is Dean of the College of Letters and Science at the University of California, Los Angeles. His latest book is Peasants into Frenchmen (1976).

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Article Contentsp. [819]p. 820p. 821p. 822p. 823p. 824p. 825p. 826p. 827

Issue Table of ContentsJournal of Contemporary History, Vol. 13, No. 4, A Century of Conservatism (Oct., 1978), pp. 629-828Front Matter [pp. 764 - 818]Preface [pp. 629 - 634]Conservatism in the USA [pp. 635 - 652]Democracy and Reform in the Conservative Party [pp. 653 - 670]Hugger-Mugger in Old Queen Street: The Origins of the Conservative Research Department [pp. 671 - 688]Conservatism in Modern German History [pp. 689 - 720]Anticapitalism and the French Extra-Parliamentary Right, 1870-1940 [pp. 721 - 740]Conservatism in the Netherlands [pp. 741 - 763]Spanish Conservatism 1834-1923 [pp. 765 - 789]Conservatism in India [pp. 791 - 802]The Problem of Conservatism: Some Notes on Methodology [pp. 803 - 817]Ambiguous Victories [pp. 819 - 827]Back Matter [pp. 828 - 828]

weber - ambiguous victories

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