The American Conservative
Burke Versus the Economists
_Edmund Burke: The First Conservative_
(https://www.amazon.com/dp/0465058973/ref=as_li_ss_til?tag=theamericonse-20&camp=0&creative=0&linkCode=as4&creati
veASIN=0465058973&adid=1QKD448T66MTVFPGW7P7&) ,
Jesse Norman, Basic Books, 306 pages
By _Carl T. Bogus_
(http://www.theamericanconservative.com/author/carl-t-bogus) • _October 4,
2013_
(http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/burke-versus-the-economists/)
I’m so jealous! A member of Parliament has written a book that is
historically and philosophically erudite, yet an enjoyable read for any
intelligent
reader, elegant, and truly important. If any member of Congress could
accomplish a similar feat—or amidst the relentless scramble for campaign cash,
even find time to do so—I don’t know who it is.
Perhaps Jesse Norman is unique even on the other side of the pond. That he
comes from a wealthy, aristocratic family and is a graduate of Eton and
Oxford hardly makes him unusual in Parliament. But Norman also holds a Ph.D.
from University College London, taught philosophy in distinguished
universities, and previously wrote four books and edited a fifth. Elected to
House
of Commons three years ago, he has already been appointed to the powerful
Treasury Select Committee and the Policy Board at 10 Downing Street.
Norman belongs to the Conservative Party and argues that Edmund Burke was
the original conservative, but not in a merely partisan sense. “Not a member
of the Conservative Party,” he writes, “not a neocon or a theocon, not a
Thatcherite or a Reaganite—but a conservative nonetheless.”
Norman divides his book in two parts. “Part One: Life” briskly describes
Burke’s upbringing, professional and political life, and key speeches and
writings. After graduating from Trinity College Dublin, Burke briefly
followed his father’s wishes and became a barrister, but he soon left the Bar
to
instead pursue a career as a writer. As a young man, Burke wrote three
well-regarded books and edited an annual compendium of essays, scientific
reports, literary pieces, and poems. His standing within London’s
scintillating
intellectual community was sufficiently great that Samuel Johnson invited
him to be one of nine members of The Club, his famous discussion group. All
this served as something of a spectacular graduate education.
When he was 35, Burke became private secretary to the Marquis of
Rockingham, the leader of a faction of Whigs in Parliament. In short order,
Rockingham arranged for Burke to be elected to the House of Commons, where
over the
next 28 years Burke delivered some of history’s most enduring speeches.
Those speeches—together with his letters and Burke’s most famous book,
Reflections on the Revolution in France, published near the end of his
Parliamentary career—elaborate a sophisticated political philosophy.
Unlike some of Burke’s biographers, Norman is adept at crisply giving
readers—even Americans not well-versed in English history—whatever’s necessary
to make the relevant events accessible. For example, one of Rockingham’s
allies, Lord Verney, arranged for Burke’s first election to Parliament from
the pocket borough of Wendover. But what’s a “pocket borough,” and how does
it differ from a “rotten borough”? Norman explains: “Wendover at the time
had just 250 electors—the modern constituency has around 75,000—most of
whom were Lord Verney’s tenants and therefore disposed to vote as instructed.
” Meanwhile, the rotten borough of “Old Sarum, long owned by the Pitt
family … had three houses, seven voters—and two MPs.” Similarly, in a single
paragraph Norman ably describes the origins and political divisions between
the Whigs and the Tories and explains why they were not really political
parties.
That last point is important because Norman argues that Burke made the
Rockinghams into the first proto-political party in a Western democracy.
Previously, subgroups of Whigs and Tories were factions—temporary alliances
designed to acquire or retain power. Political parties, by contrast, are
dedicated to advancing principles, and they promote their ideas over time,
whether in power or in opposition. Looked at from this standpoint, maybe it’s
fortunate that the Rockinghams were in power only for two short stretches of
time. Opposition offers the greater opportunity to develop and articulate
ideas, and that was Burke’s special gift.
The first part of Norman’s book also describes Burke’s great campaigns:
his efforts to maintain the constitutional balance of power between
Parliament and the Crown; his attempt to persuade Britain to listen to the
complaints of American colonists about being taxed without representation,
followed
by his entreaties against attempting to bring the colonists to heel through
military force (“a nation is not governed which is perpetually to be
conquered”); his work to end trade restrictions on Ireland and repressive laws
against Catholics in England; his efforts to end the terrible abuses
perpetrated by the British East India Company in India; and his passionate
warnings against being seduced by siren songs of the Jacobins and following
France
down the bloody road of revolution, mob rule, and—as Burke predicted nine
years before Napoleon’s coup d’état—the inevitable rise of a military
dictator.
Although Norman has done as well possible in the space he allocated for
describing Burke’s life and works, other one-volume biographies of Burke—
including those by Russell Kirk and Conor Cruise O’Brien—are more complete. (O
’Brien’s runs nearly 700 pages.) At times, Norman’s brevity has costs. An
example is Burke’s detailed plan for ending slavery in the British
Caribbean. It is important because it demonstrates that not only was Burke an
incremental reformer, but when circumstances merited it Burke could be a
radical
reformer. Even then Burke was, well, a Burkean reformer: he studied the
situation with great care, worked mightily to anticipate and ameliorate
adverse consequences, and believed that culture and institutions would be more
potent than legislation. Norman mentions that this design is
underappreciated, but then brushes past it in a single paragraph.
But it is “Part Two: Thought” that distinguishes Norman’s book and makes
it so important. The “Thought” here is a much Norman’s as Burke’s: Norman
situates Burke within Western political philosophy and argues that his
thinking is essential today. He begins by contrasting and comparing Burke to
Newton, Rousseau, Hobbes, Locke, Bentham, Adam Smith, Kant, John Stuart Mill,
Abraham Lincoln, and others. If this sounds heavy going, be not afraid!
Norman is clear and fluid; never does his fascinating discussion bog down.
Moreover, this philosophic tour is not of mere academic interest. Everything
drives forcefully toward Norman’s argument about why we need Burke today.
If we need Burke—maybe even desperately—it must be because we are in
trouble. What, then, is the problem? “The world has become flat, competition
is
global and the consumer is king,” Norman observes. Yet various indicators
give us a deep sense of unease, including troubling levels of loneliness,
drug abuse, suicide, and a loss of national identity.
The root problem, suggests Norman, is that we as a society have lost sight
of what sustains us as human beings. “The consumer is king”: is that what
we are made for, to live in societies devoted to consumption? To have
nations—and indeed the world—constantly dependent on consumer confidence?
There are contemporary villains in Norman’s book. We’ll come to them in a
minute. But first, let’s go back to the 17th and 18th centuries and the
Enlightenment. Burke himself must be considered a part of the explosion in
science, philosophy, and literature that constituted the Age of Reason—as were
Adam Smith, David Hume, and Samuel Johnson, who were Burke’s friends.
Norman argues that the Enlightenment branched into two forks. Rousseau led the
way down one fork. He believed that human beings are naturally free,
rational, and autonomous creatures. “Man is born free, but is everywhere in
chains,” he proclaimed. The individual is of transcendent importance; society
is
inherently corrupt.
Burke represents the other fork. He saw human beings as innately social
animals. “Growing up within a given society is not simply a process by which
humans become civilized; it is a process by which they become human,” writes
Norman, describing Burke’s thinking. Our societies were not built in a
day, and they cannot be demolished and remade in a day. They evolved over
time. They are comprised of rich fabric of institutions—schools, colleges,
professional groups, occupational associations, religious organizations—to
which individuals can be deeply devoted, and are the product of many people’s
life’s work. “To be attached to the subdivision, to love the little platoon
we belong to in society is… the first link in the series by which we
proceed toward love to our country and mankind,” wrote Burke. Society, said
Burke, in perhaps his most famous quote, “becomes a partnership not only
between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are
dead, and those who are to be born.”
All of this has been said before, though seldom as well as Jesse Norman
says it. But Norman follows the chain to our present time. This brings us to
the contemporary villains.
They are the economists. Not that Burke would distain all practitioners of
the dismal science. After all, Adam Smith once said that Burke was “the
only man I ever knew who thinks on economic subjects exactly as I do, without
any previous communications having passed between us,” and Burke pronounced
The Wealth of Nations, “probably the most important book ever written.”
The villains are today’s neoclassical economists, who have constructed a “
dazzlingly sophisticated array of mathematical techniques” premised on three
assumptions about human nature: that individuals are rational, that they
seek to maximize their utility, and that they act independently based on
perfect information. Norman argues that the ideas of Bentham, the utilitarians
and indeed modern economists have themselves now become highly influential
institutions in their own right, embedded in universities, business
schools and corporations around the world. Since their basic tenet is often
that
humans are purely economic agents, seeking gain and shunning loss, the
danger is that this creates further feedback loops, inculcating successive
generations into an orthodoxy of self-interest and thereby making them more
selfish. What starts with an economist’s assumption ends up as a deep cultural
pathology.
Burke always recognized that human beings are driven by emotions as well as
logic and that our behavior is shaped as much by customs and habits as by
reason. He considered manners more important than legislation. Norman
carries Burke’s thinking into the 21st century. Drawing on cutting-edge
research
in sociology and behavioral economics, he persuasively argues that the
rational maximizer model is inconsistent with fundamental aspects of human
nature. Nevertheless, that model has become so influential that it affects, at
a deep level, how we view ourselves, what we consider valuable, and the
function of government and society.
The full extent of Norman’s sophisticated argument cannot be captured here.
I urge you to read it for yourself. But be warned: the magnitude of Norman’
s argument is difficult to overstate. He is arguing for nothing less than
a paradigm shift in worldview. “The great paradox, Norman writes, “is
that, thus understood, Burke the anti-radical becomes a far more radical
thinker even than Karl Marx himself.” He’s right.
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