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H-NET BOOK REVIEW
Published by [log in to unmask] (November, 1997)
Mark Gerson. _The Neoconservative Vision: From the Cold War to the
Culture Wars_. Lanham, Md. and London: Madison Books, 1997. x +
368 pp. Bibliographical references and index. $27.95 (cloth), ISBN
1-56833-054-5; $16.95 (paper), ISBN 1-56833-100-2.
Reviewed for H-Teachpol by David J. Rovinsky <[log in to unmask]>,
Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania.
The Neoconservatives: The New Vital Center?
Neoconservatism in American politics is a phenomenon that social
scientists, especially that majority whose political home remains to
the left of center, have never fully understood. The term is
regularly misused, primarily in reference to free-market philosophy
during the 1980s and 1990s. In this sense, neoconservatism is not
properly distinguished from conventional conservatism, or
"paleoconservatism," in the parlance of the neoconservative.
Neoconservatism refers to a specific intellectual school in the
United States descended from the liberal anti-communism of the World
War II era and its aftermath. It is distinguished primarily by its
rejection of the pronounced radicalism of both the American left in
the early years of the Cold War, and early twentieth century
conservatism. Neoconservatism is thus not simply another branch of
American conservatism; in fact, a substantial majority of its
adherents continue to support the Democratic Party, despite their
intellectual proximity to the Republican administrations of the
1980s. The 1980s represented, in some ways, the climax of the
neoconservative movement, in that its views on such matters as
Communism and American foreign policy, welfare, government
regulation of the economy, religion in the public sphere, and race
relations became part of the conventional wisdom of American
political life. To the extent that the Left has resurrected itself,
it has done so by embracing many of the arguments of
neoconservatism.
In _The Neoconservative Vision_, Mark Gerson presents a detailed
synthesis of neoconservative thought, going back to the battles
among pro- and anti-Stalin factions within the American socialist
movement of the 1930s. In the wake of World War II, democratic
socialists were frequently lumped together as "fellow travelers"
with pro-Soviet intellectuals. The future neoconservatives resented
this association, and quickly came to see the radical Left as more
of an enemy than the mainstream Right. Gerson takes his summary of
the writings of neoconservatives from Sidney Hook, Lionel Trilling,
and Reinhold Niebuhr in the 1930s and 1940s through the observations
of the likes of Irving Kristol and Michael Novak as they
contemplated a world without Communism. Based upon an extensive
reading of neoconservative journals and essays (the favored form of
neoconservative writing; Gerson observes that neoconservatives write
few books) as well as dozens of interviews with major
neoconservative personas, Gerson provides an impressive and perhaps
unprecedented review of the literature of neoconservatism, one that
will make _The Neoconservative Vision_ an important reference work
for students of political ideologies and American political thought.
The neoconservatives began their political lives as New Dealers,
originally opposing the extreme laissez-faire individualism embodied
by the Republican Party of the 1920s. These New Dealers rejected
traditional conservatism not primarily for economic reasons, but for
social ones. Traditional conservatives were white, Anglo-Saxon
Protestants who discriminated against all those unlike themselves.
The future neoconservatives did not reject the mythology of American
life. Rather, as representatives of traditional nineteenth-century
immigrant groups like Jews, Polish, Irish, or Slavs, they sought to
integrate themselves into American society through the accepted
route of hard work and individual achievement, only to find
themselves excluded due to their non-British stock. To this day,
neoconservatives are disproportionately Jewish and Roman Catholic,
the "assimilated" immigrants.
Neoconservative intellectuals treat another group of intellectuals,
the "anti-anti-Communists" (later to become the New Left), as their
chief antagonists. In the wake of World War II, many Western
intellectuals remained enamored of the Soviet Union and "Uncle Joe"
Stalin, convinced, as was Walter Lippman in the 1930s, that in the
USSR they had "seen the future, and it works." Neoconservatives,
the liberal anti-Communists, argued, as did George Orwell in his
novel _Animal Farm_, that it was unprecedented for the intellectuals
of a democratic country to fall under the sway of a totalitarian
ideology. Neoconservatives like Norman Podhoretz, editor of the
journal _Commentary_, later went on to argue that democracies
inherently have difficulties standing up to totalitarian regimes,
for these latter ideologies are able to penetrate into democracies
and influence political debate.
For American intellectuals, the McCarthy period dominated the 1950s.
This was a difficult period for all American leftists, as all were
suspected of connections to the Soviets. During the McCarthy
hearings, the split between pro-Soviet and anti-Communist liberals
became pronounced, as liberal anti-Communists refused to join in the
anti-McCarthy hysteria encouraged by the far Left, while opposing
McCarthy's witch hunts, claiming that they distracted from the true
anti-Communist struggle, the Cold War.
Neoconservatism came into its own during the 1960s and 1970s, and
during these decades became a force that would oppose the Left far
more than the Right. Neoconservatives view the cultural sphere as
the most important one, a sphere from which economics and politics
draw their meaning. Therefore, a battle over the definition of
American culture is one that neoconservatives view as one for the
American soul. The New Left appeared after 1960, with an agenda
supporting civil rights, the restructuring of the American
university, and opposing the use of American military power overseas
on the grounds that the United States lacked the moral legitimacy to
act as a global force. Neoconservatives joined the New Left in
opposing the Vietnam War, but on the narrower grounds that the war,
as defined by the Pentagon, was not winnable, and that the overall
strategic interest of the United States in Southeast Asia was
questionable. Neoconservatives also supported the civil rights
movement, in that it offered the potential for African Americans to
join the American mainstream in the same way that their own
grandparents did. However, the civil rights movement soon spawned
affirmative action programs that offered elaborate racial and gender
preferences to traditionally disadvantaged groups.
Neoconservatives, sympathetic to individual achievement without
regard to membership in a social or racial group, opposed
affirmative action for both ideological and self-interested reasons:
they believed that the true path to success in the United States was
the one taken by their own families, and they were resentful that
the discrimination faced by their own families (especially Jewish
ones) was repeated, this time as reverse discrimination.
Neoconservative disaffection with the Democrats mounted particularly
during the Carter administration after 1976. They saw it as
embodying New Left values, and the Iranian hostage crisis and the
administration's limp response to it showed that it remained a
hostage to the Vietnam syndrome. For these reasons, most
neoconservatives supported Ronald Reagan's successful bid for the
presidency in 1980. Reagan promised not to be afraid to project
American military power and undertook a substantial buildup of
American armed forces to send a clear message to the Soviets. At the
same time, Reagan turned Washington away from attempts at economic
management in the direction of a less fettered capitalist economy,
another favorite topic of neoconservatives, still chafing at the
resentment many New Left activists harbored toward capitalism and
the way of life that upheld it.
While Gerson's historical review of the neoconservative movement
illustrates well the reaction of the group to specific periods in
American political history, it runs the risk of obscuring the common
themes that have animated neoconservatism from the beginning. Above
all, neoconservatives stress the centrality of ideology and culture
(they are two sides of the same coin for neoconservatives) in
determining the course that a society ultimately follows. While
paleoconservatives differ from neoconservatives in their apparent
lack of interest, and even contempt for, culture, the New Left shows
active hostility to an American culture developed over more than two
centuries. Neoconservatives believe it is this New Left critique of
the United States that is more nefarious and that demands pointed
opposition. All neoconservative writing is inspired by this
perceived need to protect American culture and the forces that
support it.
Neoconservatives believe that politics is about morality, and that
morality should infuse political behavior. Democracy thrives upon
what they call "the bourgeois virtues" of thrift, the delaying of
gratification, honesty, probity, and loyalty. The importance of
individual moral responsibility is the flip side of the classical
liberal's insistence upon personal freedom and initiative;
neoconservatives maintain that each side is needed to make the other
work. For example, while material wealth is necessary for a
thriving society with a high standard of living, it is not an end in
itself. This wealth can be put in the service of the things that
truly "matter" in life, such as education and intellectual vitality;
civil society, as in those mediating institutions that give society
a collective existence independent of the state; and religion.
Religion is the source of the moral virtues that animate both
individuals and the society in which they live.
This raises the question of the role of religion in public life. In
recent decades, under the influence of modern liberalism, the
practice of religion within public institutions has been discouraged
on the grounds of separation of church and state. Neoconservatives,
Jewish and Christian alike, respond that this is too broad a reading
of the concept. They note that the Constitution prohibits the
establishment of an official state religion but does not say that
religion has no place as a motivating force in politics. The state
merely cannot do anything for interfere with the individual practice
(or non-practice, a point on which neoconservatives do not all
agree) of religion. Judeo-Christian morality is the starting point
of American culture, and neoconservatives believe that such
controversial events as invocations at public school graduations and
Nativity scenes on municipal property reflect this morality and do
not stop followers of other faiths from practicing them.
Neoconservatives have displayed a religious fervor in their defense
of capitalism. In fact, religion and capitalism together create
what neoconservatives view as the ideal social order. While most of
the paleoconservatives praise capitalism for promoting economic
growth and personal freedom, neoconservatives view the market as an
ideal mechanism of moral restraint. Libertarian arguments for
capitalism point out that the market efficiently translates
individual demand into social outcomes. Neoconservatives respond
that capitalism, having no values of its own, requires some form of
moral background to sustain it, a moral background that is to be
found in religion. If a public is infused with religious morality,
it will influence consumer demand, meaning that all participants in
the economy, if they are to thrive, must acknowledge this morality.
Therefore, economics cannot pollute culture, but a corrupt culture
can be propagated by the ruthlessly efficient market. Therefore,
neoconservatives do not fret over the likes of selfishness and
greed--they are moral failures that religion, not socialism or
government regulation of the market, will cure.
The neoconservative theologian Michael Novak has put forward a moral
defense of capitalism along these lines that seems to have
influenced even Pope John Paul II. Keeping in mind that the support
that neoconservatives offer to capitalism is more for moral than
economic reasons, several writers worry openly that capitalism, an
inherently amoral system, is coming to undermine the Judeo-Christian
ethic, just as it sustained it in the past. For this reason, Irving
Kristol has written that capitalism deserves only two cheers instead
of the traditional three. It supports the production of material
wealth, and it is the most efficient of economic systems, but it
also has the potential to undermine religion and morality by doing
nothing to combat a nihilistic ethic of self-indulgence and greed.
While neoconservatives are pro-capitalism, they are anything but
libertarians.
Indeed, neoconservatives have a diffident attitude toward democracy
and freedom. Neither is a good in itself. Rather, they are
acceptable only to the extent that they are consistent with the
bourgeois virtues. While they oppose totalitarian regimes on the
grounds that they impose an all-encompassing ideology upon society,
the bourgeois virtues seem to take on the same kind of global role.
While castigating New Left intellectuals for lacking touch with the
common people, neoconservative intellectuals also complain that the
United States is too democratic in its ideology, leading the people
to reject the wise advice that neoconservatives are offering them.
Similarly, neoconservatives believe that freedom is inherently
subject to abuse, with liberty dissolving into license, in the
terminology of John Locke. Criticism of the bourgeois virtues
ultimately undermines society's institutions, meaning that dissent
is a threat to society rather than a vehicle for improving it.
Therefore, society is inherently fragile and under constant threat.
Perhaps neoconservatives are not aware that they are using a similar
argument to that of totalitarian Marxists. Gerson, content merely
to summarize neoconservative writings, never addresses this
contradiction.
Similarly, what is the role of the intellectual? Traditionally,
from the Greeks to the present age, the intellectual has been the
force to discomfort the comfortable, the gadfly to shock society out
of its complacency. Life is to be examined, not simply to be
accepted for what it seems to be. Indeed, through Gerson's words,
the neoconservatives dwell upon the consequences of ideas, arguing
that what intellectuals debate at their conferences today dictates
the shape of society decades down the road. The neoconservatives
thus condemn the New Left intellectuals who challenge the accepted
institutions of society. Neoconservatives criticize social
scientists for putting forward ideas that are not necessarily
workable, yet the Canadian neoconservatives David Bercuson and Barry
Cooper argue that inventive intellectual suggestions are vital to
the political system, and that the give and take of politics, and
the inherent need to compromise, generally sand down the most
unrealistic edges of intellectuals' prescriptions.[1] From American
neoconservatives we again see the belief that to contest society is
to destabilize it. Instead, neoconservatives pride themselves upon
_celebrating_ bourgeois virtues and society's existing institutions.
Is this to mean that the intellectual's obligation is to serve
merely as a cheerleader for the status quo? Stalin demanded the
same of Soviet intellectuals--in what way is this different?
Religion played an important, if not primary, role in the formation
of neoconservative thought. Yet the place that religion is to have
in the neoconservative vision is far from clear in the text. For
example, Gerson frequently writes that neoconservatism is a unique
alliance of Jewish and Christian (largely Catholic) intellectuals
making a common defense of the Judeo-Christian ethic. In other
places, Gerson portrays neoconservatism as a Jewish movement that
only begrudgingly tolerates a Catholic presence. In places, Gerson
hints that the Jewish neoconservatives welcomed Christian allies
when politically useful (such as their courting of the Christian
Right, another force that wanted religious morality to direct
decisions in the marketplace), but on other occasions depicts
Christian conservatives as a threat to Judaism in the United States,
such as in a peculiar digression into Irving Kristol's heated
opposition to religious intermarriage (p. 302). Is neoconservatism
an ideology that is meant to offer something to every American, or
does it boil down to the self-interest of Jewish intellectuals? Is
affirmative action distasteful because its groupist focus is
illiberal, or because it threatens the faculty positions of future
Jewish intellectuals? Is U.S. support for Israel laudable because
Israel represents an important strategic interest of the United
States, or are the neoconservatives merely another manifestation of
the Jewish lobby? Once again, the approach of reviewing literature
never brings this contradiction into the open, and even in choosing
the texts to review, Gerson's text often shows little distinction
between the important and the trivial.
As Bill Clinton's "New Democrats" and Tony Blair's "New Labour"
preside over a renaissance of the Left in English-speaking
democracies, the question of the origin of this post-Reagan Left
arises. While Clintonite policies are typically derided as
warmed-over Reaganism by the most strident liberals, in many ways,
Clinton's administration may well signal the reconciliation of the
neoconservatives with the Democratic Party. For example, the
Clinton administration has not shied away from the use of the U.S.
military, defends welfare but supports measures forcing individuals
to seek private employment, and maintains an overall attitude of
tempering private activity with concern for its effects on the
entire community. Blair's government in Britain is even more open
about its support for these traditionally neoconservative themes.
The success of Clinton and Blair against paleoconservatives is
rudimentary proof that the neoconservatives were more liberal
critics of liberalism than converts to conservatism--their ideas
were partly responsible for the resurrection of the Left. As 1990s
conservatives continue to place economic growth before the health of
civil society, Kristol's refusal to give capitalism "a third cheer"
seems increasingly valid.
While the analysis is severely underdeveloped, Gerson provides an
excellent summarized history of neoconservative thought. For this
reason alone, _The Neoconservative Vision_ seems to be a prima facie
candidate for classroom use. The only problem I foresee in my own
courses is where to place it upon a syllabus. Neoconservatism is a
rather specialized intellectual school, and as such, does not rate
more than cursory attention in introductory classes. In
"Contemporary Political Ideologies," my department's first level
course in political theory, I already ask my students to read a
chapter from Kristol's _Two Cheers for Capitalism_, which is all the
time that can be spared for a short course that covers ten distinct
ideological systems. "American Political Theory" would be a
possible candidate for this book, though again, in this course I
focus on primary texts (including Kristol and Novak). Gerson,
however, may make useful supplementary reading. Where I see Gerson
as being most useful in the classroom is at the graduate level,
especially in a seminar on American conservatism or in recent trends
in American political thought. Above all, Gerson's detailed summary
and bibliography present an interesting and useful overview of
neoconservatism for those who intend to go on to more detailed study
of the subject.
Notes:
[1]. Bercuson, David and Barry Cooper. _Derailed: The Betrayal of
the National Dream_. Toronto: Key Porter Books, 1994, p. 114.
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