Betrayal of the Old Right, Lecture 4

The National Review Conservatives, Part 2

Burnham and Kendall

• Buckley started as a follower of Nock and Chodorov, but he thought that libertarian policies had to be put aside until the end of the Cold War. The struggle against communism required drastic measures, in his view.

• James Burnham and Willmoore Kendall were Senior Editors of National Review who were not libertarians in theory. Both had worked for the CIA.

Burnham

• James Burnham (1905-1987) was the most influential writer on foreign policy for National Review. Buckley respected his intellect greatly.

• Burnham was a philosophy professor at NYU before WWII and, with Philip Wheelwright, wrote An Introduction to Philosophical Analysis.

Burnham and Trotsky

• Burnham during the 1930s was associated with the Socialist Workers Party, a Trotskyite group. Trotsky criticized Stalin for his “socialism in one country” policy.

• Burnham knew Trotsky, but Trotsky attacked him because Burnham didn’t consider the USSR under Stalin a socialist country .

Burnham and Morality

• The key to Burnham’s thought can be found in his 1943 book, The New Machiavellians.

• Burnham contrasts Dante and Machiavelli. Dante had unrealistic ideas about a peaceful society under the Holy Roman Empire.

• Machiavelli was a realistic analyst of power. He wanted to unify Italy, and he considered what would be needed to do this and, more generally, to gain and keep power.

Burnham and Morality Continued

• Dante asks, “what is the way the world ought to be?” He does not ask, “what does reality indicate the world is going to be?”

• Burnham was influenced by Pareto and Mosca in denying the independent influence of morality and ideas on history. Ideas are just ideological reflections of people’s interests.

More Morality and Ideas

• Burnham was also influenced by the logical positivist movement in philosophy. Ayer, Stevenson, and others said that judgments of morality aren’t regular propositions with a truth value. They are statements or expressions of approval. They are used to urge people to action.

Burnham and Power

• If morality and ideas in general don’t determine history, what does?

• Burnham answered that the struggle for power is the primary factor in history.

• He explains this in his most famous book, The Managerial Revolution, which appeared in 1941. He applied his view of power to try to explain the coming course of history.

The Managerial Revolution

• As George Orwell noted, Burnham believed that he could foretell history. He tended to portray what he wanted as an inevitable trend .

• Burnham thought that technological developments meant the rise of a new ruling class, composed of corporation managers, engineers, scientists, and government bureaucrats.

The Managerial Revolution Continued

• Burnham was influenced by Berle and Means, The Modern Corporation and Private Property. This book argued for a separation of ownership and control in the modern corporation. Mises rejects this.

• Burnham that a new system, neither capitalism nor socialism, would come to prevail. It would resemble fascism. Burnham claimed to be describing what would happen, rather than approving or condemning it, but Orwell thinks he clearly likes what he foresees.

Burnham After WWII

• During WWII, Burnham became convinced that the US and the Soviets would be engaged in a struggle for world power.

• He favored a preventive nuclear war, if needed, to win this struggle.

• George Orwell may have modeled the struggle in 1984 between Eurasia, Eastasia, and Oceana on Burnham’s ideas.

A Problem for Burnham

• Burnham obviously wants the US to win the Cold War. But on his own theory of power, why should he care? Aren’t the systems in America and Russia essentially the same, according to The Managerial Revolution?

Problem Solved

• We can answer this problem by considering The New Machiavellians. A system that allows some civil liberties and democracy may be better, from a power point of view, than one that doesn’t. Further, this was in accord with Burnham’s own preferences. Of course, the people will never really rule.

The Later Burnham

• As Burnham got older and was associated with National Review, he became more attached to the traditional American way of life. This comes out in his book Congress and the American Tradition (1959).

Later Burnham Continued

• He thinks there is a place for Congress, even though his own theory of the managerial revolution seemed to go against this. He likes the older America, even though his theory says its doomed. This was also a problem for his paleo disciple, Sam Francis.

More Burnham

• Burnham never abandoned his belief that power is primary and ideas secondary.

• In Suicide of the West (1964), he argues that liberalism is the ideology of American suicide.By “liberalism”, he means the contemporary left, but he includes such things as belief in universal human rights and opposition to torture as examples of weakness.

Burnham and the Neocons

• The emphasis on power rather than ideas is a crucial difference of Burnham from the neocons.

• Another is that Burnham tended to be pro-Arab and anti-Israel, in large part because of the importance of oil from the Middle East for America.

Willmoore Kendall

• Kendall (1909-1967) was Buckley’s teacher at Yale.

• He contrasted the beliefs of alleged experts with the common beliefs of the American people. Liberal experts tend to be tolerant of communists and other radicals. The common people are not.

• The common people believe in a public orthodoxy.

Kendall and Mill

• People who oppose a public orthodoxy often appeal to the arguments in John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty.

• Mill thought that the contest of ideas, even ideas we hate, is the best way to achieve truth.

• Kendall denies this. He points out that scientists only listen to their fellow scientists, not to everybody.

Kendall and Rousseau

• Suppose that there is a public orthodoxy in America that is intolerant, just as Kendall thinks. Why should we go along with what this orthodoxy mandates?

• Kendall accepts Rousseau’s idea of a “general will”. Kendall translated The Social Contract.

• If the people deliberate, special interests will cancel out and the result is likely to be true. Wisdom resides in the people, not the experts.

Kendall and Majority Rule

• Kendall’s belief in the general will did not make him a majority-rule democrat.

• He thought that one needs to consult the “deliberate sense of of the American community”. This required more than a bare majority in a presidential election. He thought that local communities, voting for their member of Congress, were more likely to reflect the general will.

Rothbard and Kendall

• Rothbard offers a devastating criticism of Kendall’s belief in the wisdom of the community.

• Rothbard asks, wouldn’t Kendall have to side with the Athenian assembly against Socrates and with the mob against Jesus?

• Kendall admitted that he would have sided against Socrates.

Kendall and Rights

• Kendall tended to be suspicious of individual rights. It is the deliberative community that is important, not the rights of individuals, considered apart from one another.

• He thought that Locke was a majority-rule democrat.

Kendall and National Review

• Although Kendall was very influential in the early years of NR, he quit the magazine and quarreled with Buckley.

• In part this was personal. He had a very cantankerous personality.

• There was a serious issue at stake. He thought NR had become too elitist. The American people wouldn’t die for the abstractions professed by most of the NR writers. Instead, one should appeal to the common beliefs of the American people.