Digressions&Impressions

Hayek on Liberal Utopia, the Long Game, and Weberian Politics

[Over time I am plan to phase out this blog at typepad. This post was first published at  digressions.impressions.substack here. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber at <digressionsimpressions.substack.com>]

In response to my recent suggestion, in my celebration of Chandran Kukathas, [see also this nicely edited reprint in Liberal Currents] that, not unlike other liberal thinkers, "Hayekians" are profoundly anti-political (even suspicious of politics), I was redirected to Hayek's (1949) "The Intellectuals and Socialism" by the doyen of Hayek studies, Bruce Caldwell. In that paper, Hayek argues that liberal intellectuals should focus on the long game and develop what Hayek calls, "liberal utopia." Contemporary neo-Hayekians -- I am thinking of people not unlike Caldwell and Kukathas, but also Pete Boettke (whose writings [see, for example here] first alerted me to the significance of the passage I am about to discuss) -- seem to be  inspired by the following passage as articulating the task of liberal intellectuals:

What we lack is a liberal Utopia, a program which seems neither a mere defense of things as they are nor a diluted kind of socialism, but truly liberal radicalism which does not spare the susceptibilities of the mighty (including the trade unions), which is not too severely practical and which does not confine itself to what appears today as politically possible. We need intellectual leaders who are prepared to resist the blandishments of power and influence and who are willing to work for an ideal, however small may be the prospects of its early realization. (F.A. Hayek (1949) "The intellectuals and socialism," p. 432; emphasis added).

Somewhat sadly most critics of Hayek and what is now known as 'classical liberalism' or 'neoliberalism' do not take this passage seriously at all. They are quick to associate Hayek with Reagan, Thatcher, and Pinochet and all kinds of (dirty) practical politics. Such critics find it hard to believe that the argument's effect on Hayekian intellectuals has been to urge them to keep their hands politically clean and to focus primarily on the noble task of contributing to articulating the elements of a liberal utopia unhindered by short-term feasibility.

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In a creative (2022) paper, Mikayla Novak plausible treats Hayek's pre-WWII proposal for interstate federation as a kind of exemplar of the sort of liberal utopian thinking, which she treats as an instance of heterotopia, Hayek may council. In an important article, Caldwell himself points to Hayek's theorizing in The Constitution of Liberty (1960) and Law, Legislation and Liberty (1973-79) as other examples of such utopian theorizing. The function of a liberal utopia is not to guide day-to-day policy based on a blueprint (that's there error of the so-called 'man of system' derided by Adam Smith), but to offer an ideal (even a social theory) that may mobilize others in the long term and that also may be useful in interpreting reality. In fact, in Law, Legislation and Liberty Hayek puts the point as follows: "It is not to be denied that to some extent the guiding model of the overall order will always be an utopia, something to which the existing situation will be only a distant approximation and which many people will regard as wholly impractical. Yet it is only by constantly holding up the guiding conception of an internally consistent model which could be realized by the consistent application of the same principles, that anything like an effective framework for a functioning spontaneous order will be achieved." And in context, it is clear that Hayek treats Adam Smith's impact on the development of British free trade as the exemplar to be emulated.

However, if we look again at the passage quoted from "The intellectuals and socialism," it is worth noting that a liberal utopia is also called a "program" (Foucault picks up on this) and that in his choice of words, 'truly liberal radicalism,' Hayek is evoking the Philosophical Radicals, the politicians who were inspired by Bentham's program. The natural implicature in light of Hayek's relentless criticism of the constructivism of Bentham, which is thus a false liberal radicalism, is that Hayek is trying to generate a program that involves both an intellectual revolution and eventually actionable legislation of the sort we find in the circle of Bentham's political admirers in the 1820s and 30s. Since Hayek (and other neo-liberals of the period) was in dialogue with Dicey's Lectures on the Relation between Law and Public Opinion (recall; also here; and here), and Dicey describes the significance and impact of the Benthamite program, it stands to reason Hayek was inspired to offer an alternative.

Now, I admit that the claims of the previous paragraph rests on slender evidence. But the liberal utopia passage is preceded by another one on the previous page that motivates my reading:

"The difficulty of finding genuine and disinterested support for a systematic policy for freedom is not new. In a passage of which the reception of a recent book of mine has often reminded me, Lord Acton long ago de-scribed how "[a]t all times sincere friends of freedom have been rare, and its triumphs have been due to minorities, that have prevailed by associating themselves with auxiliaries whose objects differed from their own; and this association, which is always dangerous, has been sometimes disastrous, by giving to opponents just grounds of opposition..." More recently, one of the most distinguished living American economists has complained in a similar vein that the main task of those who believe in the basic principles of the capitalist system must frequently be to defend this system against the capitalists-indeed the great liberal economists, from Adam Smith to the present, have always known this. --Hayek "The intellectuals and socialism." (p. 431).

The point of this paragraph is not that the true liberal must restrict herself to devising a new utopia, but that in addition they must seek out ("finding"/"associating themselves") political coalition partners. To be sure, this is not ad hoc policy. It has to be a 'systematic policy' -- that is based on a program -- that can promote freedom. In fact, this is so in the full expectation that these others will not share in Hayek's liberal ideals and may be motivated by much less lofty goals.

In fact, both Acton & Hayek recognize that coalitions with others will involve judgment, including judgements one may turn out to be truly mistaken or "sometimes disastrous." (Just ask the critics of neo-liberalism's occasional flirtation with transitional dictatorship.) And the risks involved include that one must also be willing to speak truth to potentially powerful friends (capitalists), and take on vested interests (unions) that are also dedicated to helping the people whose freedom one claims to promote. This all echoes Weber's account of the sometimes tragic choices facing a “politician with a sense of vocation.”

As an aside: I don't think that Hayek is here anticipating the fusionism (between truly liberal radicalism) and conservative thought that became so characteristic of actual American politics on the right. But that it occurred need not surprise after the fact. What Hayek shows is that political life involves aligning oneself with those, who may share quite different commitments, to make possible one’s goals. This is, in fact, very much like my own view,* and this is why I spoke of 'Hayekians' and not Hayek in my piece.

Now originally, I thought Caldwell understands Hayek to be advocating a kind of political dis-engagement by the intellectual who prepares the way for later generations. But he called my attention to a set of recorded remarks by Kukathas on the 'dilemma' that the liberal, who might exercise power, faces. In his five minute remarks, Kukathas rejects the path of avoiding political life and the path of realism, but advocates restraint and forbearance in power and to stick to liberal principles, especially as ground in the core value of toleration. (The remarks start around 1 hour and 13.) I take it Caldwell thinks this is more principled than the one I endorse. I agree that Kukathas' position is rather noble, it follows (to quote Weber) "the maxim of an ethic of ultimate ends-that is, in religious terms." But this one sided political stance, is not Hayek's.

For, I doubt Hayek believes that when one associates "with auxiliaries whose objects" differ from one's own, one can always stick to one's liberal principles in political life (be at coalition building or power holding). For, if one could stick to one's principles in political life then there wouldn't be any danger or risk of disaster. That's to say, Hayek is, as Foucault discerned, a Weberian in ways that many contemporary Hayekian intellectuals are not.

• Over time I am plan to phase out this blog at typepad. This post was first published at  digressions.impressions.substack here. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber at <digressionsimpressions.substack.com>

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*Recall I wrote: "So, from this perspective, any program of reform must include a constituency or coalition that can promote the policy effectively. Obviously, the promise here is that this may increase the chances of uptake; it also often makes all liberal proposals much more status-quo friendly. Sometimes the concession to feasibility makes the liberal program appear as a handmaiden to conservatism or common sense morality."

That Renegade Kautsky, and the fate of Capital and Liberalism

In the matter of defining imperialism, however, we have to enter into controversy, primarily, with Karl Kautsky, the principal Marxist theoretician of the epoch of the so-called Second International—that is, of the twenty-five years between 1889 and 1914. The fundamental ideas expressed in our definition of imperialism were very resolutely attacked by Kautsky in 1915, and even in November 1914, when he said that imperialism must not be regarded as a “phase” or stage of economy, but as a policy, a definite policy “preferred” by finance capital; that imperialism must not be “identified” with “present-day capitalism”; that if imperialism is to be understood to mean “all the phenomena of present-day capitalism”—cartels, protection, the domination of the financiers, and colonial policy—then the question as to whether imperialism is necessary to capitalism becomes reduced to the “flattest tautology”, because, in that case, “imperialism is naturally a vital necessity for capitalism”, and so on. The best way to present Kautsky’s idea is to quote his own definition of imperialism, which is diametrically opposed to the substance of the ideas which I have set forth (for the objections coming from the camp of the German Marxists, who have been advocating similar ideas for many years already, have been long known to Kautsky as the objections of a definite trend in Marxism).

Kautsky’s definition is as follows:

“Imperialism is a product of highly developed industrial capitalism. It consists in the striving of every industrial capitalist nation to bring under its control or to annex all large areas of agrarian [Kautsky’s italics] territory, irrespective of what nations inhabit it.” 

This definition is of no use at all because it one-sidedly, i.e., arbitrarily, singles out only the national question (although the latter is extremely important in itself as well as in its relation to imperialism), it arbitrarily and inaccurately connects this question only with industrial capital in the countries which annex other nations, and in an equally arbitrary and inaccurate manner pushes into the forefront the annexation of agrarian regions.

Imperialism is a striving for annexations—this is what the political part of Kautsky’s definition amounts to. It is correct, but very incomplete, for politically, imperialism is, in general, a striving towards violence and reaction. For the moment, however, we are interested in the economic aspect of the question, which Kautsky himself introduced into his definition. The inaccuracies in Kautsky’s definition are glaring. The characteristic feature of imperialism is not industrial but finance capital...The characteristic feature of imperialism is precisely that it strives to annex not only agrarian territories, but even most highly industrialised regions (German appetite for Belgium; French appetite for Lorraine), because (1) the fact that the world is already partitioned obliges those contemplating a redivision to reach out for every kind of territory, and (2) an essential feature of imperialism is the rivalry between several great powers in the striving for hegemony, i.e., for the conquest of territory, not so much directly for themselves as to weaken the adversary and undermine his hegemony....

Kautsky refers especially—and repeatedly—to English writers who, he alleges, have given a purely political meaning to the word “imperialism” in the sense that he, Kautsky, understands it. We take up the work by the English writer Hobson, Imperialism, which appeared in 1902, and there we read:

“The new imperialism differs from the older, first, in substituting for the ambition of a single growing empire the theory and the practice of competing empires, each motivated by similar lusts of political aggrandisement and commercial gain; secondly, in the dominance of financial or investing over mercantile interests.” 

We see that Kautsky is absolutely wrong in referring to English writers generally...We see that Kautsky, while claiming that he continues to advocate Marxism, as a matter of fact takes a step backward compared with the social-liberal Hobson, who more correctly takes into account two “historically concrete” (Kautsky’s definition is a mockery of historical concreteness!) features of modern imperialism: (1) the competition between several imperialisms, and (2) the predominance of the financier over the merchant. If it is chiefly a question of the annexation of agrarian countries by industrial countries, then the role of the merchant is put in the forefront.

Kautsky’s definition is not only wrong and un-Marxist. It serves as a basis for a whole system of views which signify a rupture with Marxist theory and Marxist practice all along the line. I shall refer to this later. The argument about words which Kautsky raises as to whether the latest stage of capitalism should be called imperialism or the stage of finance capital is not worth serious attention. Call it what you will, it makes no difference. The essence of the matter is that Kautsky detaches the politics of imperialism from its economics, speaks of annexations as being a policy “preferred” by finance capital, and opposes to it another bourgeois policy which, he alleges, is possible on this very same basis of finance capital. It follows, then, that monopolies in the economy are compatible with non-monopolistic, non-violent, non-annexationist methods in politics. It follows, then, that the territorial division of the world, which was completed during this very epoch of finance capital, and which constitutes the basis of the present peculiar forms of rivalry between the biggest capitalist states, is compatible with a non-imperialist policy. The result is a slurring-over and a blunting of the most profound contradictions of the latest stage of capitalism, instead of an exposure of their depth; the result is bourgeois reformism instead of Marxism.

...

The reply seems quite plausible, but in effect it is a more subtle and more disguised (and therefore more dangerous) advocacy of conciliation with imperialism, because a “fight” against the policy of the trusts and banks that does not affect the economic basis of the trusts and banks is mere bourgeois reformism and pacifism, the benevolent and innocent expression of pious wishes. Evasion of existing contradictions, forgetting the most important of them, instead of revealing their full depth—such is Kautsky’s theory, which has nothing in common with Marxism....

“From the purely economic point of view,” writes Kautsky, “it is not impossible that capitalism will yet go through a new phase, that of the extension of the policy of the cartels to foreign policy, the phase of ultra-imperialism,” i.e., of a superimperialism, of a union of the imperialisms of the whole world and not struggles among them, a phase when wars shall cease under capitalism, a phase of “the joint exploitation of the world by internationally united finance capital.” 

...

Kautsky’s utterly meaningless talk about ultra-imperialism encourages, among other things, that profoundly mistaken idea which only brings grist to the mill of the apologists of imperialism, i.e., that the rule of finance capital lessens the unevenness and contradictions inherent in the world economy, whereas in reality it increases them.--Lenin (1917) Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism, Chapter VII

Much of Lenin's argument in his Imperialism, The Highest State of Capitalism is directed against that 'renegade' Kautsky's position. But Kautsky's own stance has not generated much enthusiasm nor, it seems, interest from subsequent scholarship (which tends to read Kautsky (1854 –  1938), a major theorist of the second International, explicitly or implicitly, through Lenin's perspective). It is pretty clear why it was important to Lenin's leadership and strategic ambitions to disqualify Kautsky and why, perhaps, there is a sense in which Kautsky's stance on imperialism is not echt Marxist (I have no stake in that debate). But Kautsky's account treats uncorrupted liberalism as the pathway into modern (nineteenth century) imperialism. If Kautsky is right about this (to be explored below) this would be highly salient to the liberal tradition's self-understanding. For, by contrast, Lenin and Hobson put rent-seeking elites at the core of their explanations of such imperialism (even if they diverge on the details--with Lenin ((recall; and here) singling out monopoly capitalism as the late stage of capitalism, while Hobson (recall) points to a too limited franchise that facilitates elite rent-seeking). 

Now, characteristically Lenin does not  literally misrepresent Kautsky. But through his omissions one ends up missing the significance of Kautsky's definition of imperialism quoted above. Kautsky's underlying position is this: once post Cobden, industrialized/industrializing European societies embrace free trade and invest in their comparative advantage in industry and through technological innovations escape the Malthusian trap with growing populations (also, as Kautsky explicitly notes, through immigration from agrarian countries), they will start to need to import a growing number of agricultural goods. Under a regional federation or in pacific times, this state of affairs is splendid with all sides gaining from trade. 

But in the context of great power rivalry the effects of such a liberal free trade policy makes one vulnerable to food blockades or other ways in which the need for food imports can be weaponized. (The risks associated with the experience of the blockade of grain shipments from Ukraine's ports this year was all too common during the nineteenth century.) And so, what Lenin treats as Kautsky's definition of imperialism is de facto a description of the effects of free trade on industrialized wealthy states in an imperfect security environment (or a Hobbesian state of nature in international affairs). And so they will try to control agricultural zones in order (and I quote Kautsky's (1914) Ultra-Imperialism) "to force them to restrict themselves entirely to agricultural production."

As hinted above, what's important about Kautsky's approach to imperialism, is that it foregrounds how as liberalism's political fortunes rise -- as it manifestly did in the middle of the 18th century -- with a peak moment the 1860 Cobden–Chevalier Treaty (an Anglo-French free trade agreement, including most favored nation clauses that facilitated more such agreements) -- it generates the seeds for imperialism, absent a wider political settlement. To the best of my knowledge only Kautsky noticed how liberalism's political success generates a dynamic that threatens to become self-undermining. (I don't mean to suggest the lesson wasn't later learned and applied!)

That is to say, domestic liberal economic policies require, once implemented, transnational political responses in order to be managed. And is clear from Lenin's description, Kautsky anticipates this point. I don't mean to suggest Kautsky is the first to notice the need for transnational liberal institutions -- Kant, Mazzini, and others had argued for it --, but rather Kautsky recognizes that such institutions will be needed to solve the political problems that are the effects of embracing free trade.

Here, too, Lenin's approach to Kautsky is literally true, but turns out to be misleading through his omissions. What's key to Kautsky's analysis is not the possibility of international cartels who manage trade in the way Deutsche Bank manages German industry, but rather (and now I quote Kautsky directly), "the result of the World War between the great imperialist powers may be a federation of the strongest, who renounce their arms race." (Recall also here my discussion of Luxemburg's criticism of Kautsky; and especially here where I discuss Kautsky's 1911 proposals). Such a federation would also turn the zero-sum political environment into a context in which the gains from trade would generate mutual prosperity and security. 

And in so far as international institutions like the IMF and World Bank act as 'cartels' for capital/finance, then these, too, serve the same interest. Either way, from a liberal perspective Kautsky points the way toward the future, and turns out to be quite prescient and even helps explain why the internal contradictions of capitalism have not been the ultimate undoing of liberalism, so far.*

 

 

On Ivor Jennings, Hayek, A Federation for Western Europe

It is a great pity that the flood of federalist publications which in recent years has descended upon us has deprived the few important and thoughtful works among them of the attention they deserved. One which in particular ought to be carefully consulted when the time comes for the framing of a new political structure of Europe is Dr. W Ivor Jennings's small book on A Federation for Western Europe (1940).--Hayek (1944 [2001] The Road to Serfdom, p. 239.

Despite Hayek's signal boost Jennings's small book has languished in relative obscurity. This despite the fact that scholars are aware that Jennings (1903 -1965) was a member of the Federal Union Research Institute which included Beveridge, Brailsford, Hayek, Jennings, Robbins, Wilson and Wootton, who worked together on proposals for a European union after the war.* Jennings himself was a constitutional lawyer, and educational administrator (also in the colonies).

Hayek's interest in the book has also not received much attention despite the huge interest in Hayek's ideas on European federalism during the last decade. This is prima facie surprising because as Edwin van der Haar (2009) notes, "it is somewhat puzzling that Hayek also recommended the ideas of the socialist Ivor Jennings." (Classical Liberalism and International Relations Theory: Hume, Smith, Mises, and Hayek, p. 108) It is not obvious Jennings is a socialist when you read Jennings' A Federation, and Van der Haar does not provide any evidence for the claim.

However we can state Van der Haar's puzzle in a modestly revised form. In the proposal, Jennings claims that "the constitutional scheme in this book is not suggested as a mans for protecting capitalism or hindering socialism. Nor, on the other hand, it is suggested as a means for attaining socialism." (A Federation Cambridge University Press [1940 (2016)], p. 122). (In my view Jennings here echoes Lionel Robbins' approach to European federalism; and Robbins was not a socialist.) So, the fact that it does not decisively block socialism may well be raise questions about Hayek's endorsement. For, Hayek's account of European federalism is almost uniformly presented as a means to prevent socialism.**

In addition, Jennings foresees the "extension of trade unionism" in the federation. (P. 130) And he echoes Lippmann in claiming that the age of "strict laissez faire" has "long passed." (p. 131) He believe that the choice for or against socialism should be left to democracy because a "constitution which does not enable the people to try experiments which it wants to try is a faulty instrument." (p. 132) It it is worth noting that Hayek himself is explicitly seeing federalism in democratic terms (again, in general commentators tend to notice Hayek's skepticism about democracy, although I think that because of his association with Pinochet this is not wholly unfair). Here's what he says in the passage surrounding the note to Jennings (I left the footnote mark in):

The form of international government under which certain strictly defined powers are transferred to an international authority, while in all other respects the individual countries remain responsible for their internal affairs, is, of course, that of federation. We must not allow the numerous ill-considered and often extremely silly claims made on behalf of a federal organisation of the whole world during the height of the propaganda for "Federal Union" to obscure the fact that the principle of federation is the only form of association of different peoples which will create an international order without putting an undue strain on their legitimate desire for independence.1 Federalism is, of course, nothing but the application to international affairs of democracy, the only method of peaceful change man has yet invented. But it is a democracy with definitely limited powers.--Hayek (1944 [2001] The Road to Serfdom, p. 239.

I think it's little remarked that Hayek identifies federalism with democracy, and that he stresses it's peaceful nature. This echoes Jennings because for Jennings it is a sine qua non that the members of the federation are democratic and that its institutions are democratic (pp. 17 & 94-100).

Democratic critics of Hayek unsurprisingly seize on the equally clear emphasis of limiting the powers of democracy. Although I think in particular context it is clear that by the limitation on democracy Hayek does not mean a rejection of one-man-one-vote (although he is not especially perturbed by the lack of vote for women as, say, Mill and Hobhouse were), but rather rejection of popular sovereignty such that it could override the principle based rule of law/Rechtstaat that Hayek promotes. As Foucault notes, the rule of law and collective planning, which allows a high degree of arbitrary government control, are explicit antonyms in Hayek (and defined in light of each other in The Road to Serfdom). I return to this below.

Now, Jennings is eager to leave the federal states as much leeway as possible to pursue their own policies (this also echoes Robbins). But he also seems to think, if I understand him correctly, that the kind of judicial extension of a commerce clause familiar from the US where nearly everything comes under federal purview is eventually unavoidable in Europe, too(p. 141). 

I don't mean to suggest there is nothing to like for Hayek in Jennings' proposal. For it is by no means easy to bring about a socialist revolution in the multi-layered democracy Jennings foresees. For, Jennings clearly envisions a transition to free trade in about ten years (p. 119). And he is very much thinking about this along the functional lines set out by Cobden (and (recall) anticipated in Molesworth), that is, the "generalisation of "most favored-nation" clause...common in commercial treaties." (p. 117). And Jennings is very alert to the fact that there are many means for concealed protection by states, and he provides the federal entity with powers to prevent it (pp. 126-128), including a road map to stable currencies and a common currency (pp. 127-128).

But Jennings' vision of federal free trade is constrained by the need to regulate, "health, morals [!], safety, and general welfare of the citizens." (p. 120)+ Jennings calls these constraints the 'police power' a term he claims then used Stateside. (Readers of Foucault and Adam Smith are familiar with this terminology, which is not uncommon in the eighteenth and nineteenth century, especially before the rise of professional police forces.) I suspect Jennings is here also alluding to the US tenth amendment, but in a substantive (and not pro forma) way.

Before I wrap up, I should explicitly note that Jennings is not committed to a slow functional integration of Europe. Rather, Jennings' vision of federalism is organized around the need to avoid future wars in Europe and caused by European rivalry: "not only should we prevent wars in Europe, but also we should prevent European rivalry from leading to wars elsewhere." (p.6; see also p. 104 where the central importance is reiterated.) And so the lynchpin of Jennings' proposal is a willingness of European states to give up independent armies and even local police forces to the Federation (pp. 101-104).++

Above I emphasized Jennings' commitment to democracy. But as he notes with disarming frankness, "necessarily a federation is a "lawyer's paradise". Disputes arise not only under the law about the law." (92) And while Jennings' builds in many precautions to avoid what we would judicial activism or the politicization of constitutional jurisprudence and judge selection, he also recognizes that this cannot be prevented altogether in a federal structure. As he puts it, "Rule or government by law cannot be placed on a firm foundation unless all disputes are determined by judicial decisions." (144 [emphasis added]) And so, in his plan, the democratic institutions are protected and shaped by a relative restrained jurisprudence that (with the exception of preserving democratic institutions) focuses primarily not on outcomes but on legal form. And so Hayek's fondness for Jennings anticipates (see chapters 3-4 of Quinn Slobodian's Globalists) the ordoliberal ideals for international law.

 

 

 

Liberalism after Ukraine, Part 2: Changing Perceptions on Russia and NATO

It's been more than 80 days since the renewed Russian invasion of Ukraine. And so it's time for some punditry outside my expertise. I do so because the war is clearly reshaping the fate of contemporary liberalism.

Because of a badly handled American retreat from Afghanistan, Putin clearly assumed America is weak. In addition, his regime seems to have believed its own propaganda about Ukraine and so did not anticipate the military and political resistance it has encountered. When one listens to American military analysts like Michael Kofman and Dara Massicot about Russian performance, they emphasize two things: (i) don't believe the narrative you see on social media--we're still in the fog of war; (ii) it's inconceivable to send a giant army into combat that it has not really been planning to fight while keeping it secret from most of the backbone of that giant army [the logistical planners, the local commanders, etc.], and yet that's what seems to have happened. And, in addition, (iii) America's spies seem to have known more about the plans than those within the giant army.

On (i) it is worth noting that Finland's rush to abandon neutrality and join NATO and become a protectorate as part of Pax Americana, which (recall) I understand as empire with liberal characteristics, is as clear a sign of Russian weakness perceived by those with the greatest existential downside as any. Finnish neutrality has always been a least bad option for them (which has worked out surprisingly well); one their ancestors earned on the battlefield with great, heroic sacrifice; neutrality is still a bad option for them.* But since the transition period between signaling and applying for membership is the greatest risk for them in the face of stated Russian 'military-technical' retaliation, the fact that they have been increasingly brazen in pursing this otherwise high stakes policy is the clearest possible evidence of perceived Russian weakness by those who have the greatest incentive to get the facts about Russia right. The actual Russian retaliation -- suspension of some energy delivery -- has caused minor inconvenience (and suggests Russia is weak).

To be blunt: the military failures in Ukraine have exposed that Russian is no great power (in the sense that Realists use it). My friend Joshua Miller suggested this already before the war. Yes, it's a dangerous country because it has enormous amount of nuclear weapons, is capable of many lethal special operations (including electronic ones), has access to enormous natural resources, and a political leadership that is not averse to gambling with other people's lives. But it has many of the worst weaknesses of dictatorships: secrecy, bad internal communications, corruption, an economy that is seeing huge brain-drain, and a demographic crisis with declining birthrates. Their military has been able to defeat even annihilate militias, but it has not really faced modern armies (and it has been conspicuously restrained around Israel and Turkey).

At the moment Russia clearly lacks the capability of executing large scale military campaigns in a somewhat organized fashion. In fact, what has been astonishing over the last 80 days is the fact that it seems to lack the capacity to learn from failure in the field--something that is pretty much a given for any functioning army given the existential nature of war. The only really well designed military tasks that have been reported are disciplined retreats.

To be sure, the professional military analysists are right to say that Russia is no paper tiger. It has enormous fire-power. And it has shown a willingness to use it. It may well hold on to parts of Ukraine indefinitely. It's important that the Biden Administration continues its caution and level-headedness in not crossing various red lines that might lead to nuclear warfare. It's been very wise to maintain its involvement as a sponsor of a proxy-war without escalating to direct contact.

Another clear sign of Russian's regional weakness: Turkey (a NATO member) has closed off the Bosphorus and Dardanelles straits to warships meaning that Russia cannot now reinforce its naval capabilities in the Black Sea Fleet. So far Russia has not even bothered to try to challenge Turkey, and I have found no sign of a formal protest. (Russia does not consider its invasion of Ukraine a war; Turkey's invocation of the Montreux Convention suggests it does.) 

Of course, Russia is blockading Ukrainian ports militarily and commercially. If and when this war, as seems likely, extends into the next harvest season, world food supplies will become much tighter. (Ukraine is a major exporter.) The FAO food index is a third higher than a year ago. (The real question is if a failed Fall harvest is already priced in or not.) And high food prices, alongside rising global temperatures, are politically explosive in lots of countries.

My guess is that China and India (who surely also expected a quick war) will come to regret their support for Putin once they are faced with the effects on food and energy prices of this conflict dragging on. Of course, a lot of the worst hit countries and individuals will be those with the least power to influence any outcomes. The failure of so many important states like China and Russia, but also others who prefer to focus on American and European hypocrisy, to ignore the need for collective security and the enlightened benefits of enforcing it will be one of the main lessons of this conflict. The longer they continue to support Russia, the longer they de facto support its blockade of Ukraine, the more local social unrest they should expect around the world.

Given the structural challenges facing the overstretched Russian federation, it is an open question if it can ever recover great power status. If anything, since its mineral wealth is concentrated in the relatively unpopulated East, one must wonder if it can maintain its de facto independence vis a vis China over the next few decades and avoid debilitating civil war once Putin leaves the scene.

The military experts all emphasize that a large part of Russia's military predicament is that the stated political objectives have not adjusted to the failure of its initial aims (capture of the main cities and regime change in Ukraine as a set-up to partial annexation). Crucially, it is not making the decisions to win a war of attrition. (And given Western sanctions its capacity to do so will weaken over time.) My own view is (going beyond the experts) that if the Russian regime continues to be unwilling to make a serious political offer to Ukraine, that is, to recognize it as a political equal, in order to settle the conflict on the negotiating table that might allow it to consolidate some of its earlier gains (especially Crimea), we may well see a total collapse of (what we may call) the Russian Ukrainian expedition force later in the Fall on par with the German collapse in the Fall of 1918. 

Meanwhile beyond the military tactics it's been a good few months for perceptions about American empire. American intelligence has been impressive (also aiding Ukraine on the battlefield). Its allies and dependencies have committed to increasing defense spending, a lot of which will end up filling American military contractors' coffers. The German establishment's generation long strategy to (a) play America and Russia off against each other, and (b) to normalize the Russian regime in return for cheap energy has resulted in failure. European elites are rushing to re-integrate into US led military alliance, and the political leadership of Hungary has made it clear there is no interest in defecting toward a more neutral stance.+

It's also been a good few months for liberal democracy as a species of war-time governance. The purported decisiveness and singlemindedness of dictatorship turns out to be hollow if good information (and a willingness to act on it) cannot reach the top, as it cannot in a kleptocratic regime, where submission to the leader is preferred over loyalty to the state or truth. The contrasting images between an isolating Putin at one end of his long table and a Zelensky surrounding by his team in wartime Kyiv under fire is going to haunt the dreams of all the friends and admirers of authoritarian, purported strong men. 

While there is huge amount of support for Ukrainian freedom across the European continent,  this has not made prior association with Putin truly toxic to European electorates. Orban got re-elected comfortably. And while Le Pen lost, she did make it to the second round and got an incredible 44% (more than doubling her dad's numbers a generation ago). It is by no means obvious if, say, NATO can survive a second Trump administration. 

One of the oddities of the last few weeks has been Sweden's political elites' rush to join Finland in membership application of NATO. Sweden's policy of neutrality -- while it involved some  deviations -- basically existed for two centuries prior to 2009. And while it has a whole bunch of recent mutual defense agreements, it has, as Professor Erik Angner has noted, avoided a large public discussion of the costs and benefits of joining the NATO alliance. (Swedish publish support for NATO membership only went over 50% after the Russian invasion of Ukraine.) This may well cause downstream trouble once it has to join NATO missions unpopular domestically.

My take on the Swedish elite decision is this: Sweden, which has to deal with tactical Russian naval and air incursions in the Baltics on a regular basis, has been an EU member for over twenty five years. Its political class has clearly come to the conclusion that a true intra-European defense capability is never going to be generated (perhaps one of the side-effects of Brexit). That is to say, it does not expect 'Europe' to find a way to match its economic power with independent military capabilities. And so it has opted for American protection now that it can sell the choice. America's empire may well last a while longer unless its political class falls into the self-inflicted precipice it's been dangling over.

On Sanctions, and Realism

One unexpected benefit of teaching a large lecture course in English to students who are overwhelmingly non native English speakers is that ambiguities in (my) English are noticed by them. So, for example, one student was confused by my use of 'sanction' a few weeks ago (in the context of a comment I made on Chinese political philosophy). For, 'sanction' has two standard meanings that are, in their valences, the opposite of each other: it can either mean something like 'official permission for an action' or it means 'a penalty for disobeying a rule.' And, after my exchange with one of my students I remembered a disagreement with a colleague a few years ago that turned on a mutual confusion in what sense the other was using 'sanction.'

As regular readers know, I thought last week that the call for expelling Russia from Swift would have largely symbolic effect. I did not anticipate that there would also be a (much more potent) central bank asset freeze. The jury is out on how effective these and related sanctions will be (a lot will turn on the details of enforcement and the way exceptions are allowed, as well as on Russian skill in patching together alternatives). One fears that by the time sanctions are enforced many oligarchs have moved assets out of reach. But what I did not foresee at all is that these sanctions would promote a classic bank-run, and that Russia risks a financial meltdown. In addition, it's quite clear that lots of other countries one could have expected to ignore these sanction have joined in, and that many important companies (in energy, microchips, and transportation), sports federations, and art organizations have been nudged into actions that effectively isolate Russia in financial and cultural ways.

Of course, sanctions are not the only source of pressure on Russia. There is an increasing supply of weapons being sent to Ukraine. Most of these weapons are defensive in character (anti-tank missiles and anti-aircraft missiles), but there has been talk of some older fighter jets being shipped to  the Ukraine by the EU (this is important for EU's future). As long as the Polish-Ukrainian border is in hands of the Ukrainian government these kind of shipments may well reach Ukraine's defense forces in an effective manner. But, this kind of support tends to be limited, in practice (and mostly symbolic), because nobody wants to get entangled in a shooting war with Russia, which has a major Nuclear arsenal.  What may happen is that outsiders will support proxy wars (as they have done in lots of conflicts during the last few decades).

In general, sanctions tend to enrich the well-connected in the country being sanctioned because they tend to have new forms of rents and can gain in all kinds of ways from new forms of smuggling (through bribes and monopoly profits). They also tend to be a form of collective punishment on the rest of the population, who are thereby impoverished and for whom ordinary life becomes much more challenging (not the least because they will be asked for a lot more bribes), and so hard to justify. In general, they also tend to be not very effective if the goal is regime change or to induce changes of behavior. In fact, they tend to strengthen the repressive apparatus directly (or indirectly by providing an excuse for more repression) and to enrich it, and so seem self-undermining.

Before I get to my own view of the matter it is worth distinguishing conceptually three kinds of critics of sanctions because they come at it from different angles (even if these can overlap in practice and even if they embrace the claims in the previous paragraph). First, one kind of critic has a liberal sensitivity and thinks that isolation is a sure route to permanent conflict. This kind of 'liberal' can be the classical liberal who praises markets and soft-war power of culture, or the more Kantian liberal who likes internal treaties and organizations (there is, of course, partial overlap in these ideal types.)* They may even note that such a course of action will drive Russia into the hands of the (rather illiberal) Chinese government, which is thought undesirable for western interests or world peace (etc.). So, faced with Russia's invasion of Ukraine the liberal critic of sanctions and isolating Russia has to accept facts on the ground and/or support the mostly symbolic military assistance to Ukraine. 

In general my own sympathies are liberal and I often sign up for the kind of views expressed in the previous paragraph. But it is fair to say that such liberalism is unwilling to acknowledge that integrating Russia into the global order has been a failure if the goal was to pacify Russia after the collapse of its empire. In effect globalization has allowed Russia to enrich itself and thereby become more menacing to others. During the last few decades, Russia has been almost constantly at war. Several of the wars involved the reconquest and pacification of breakaway regions, but a few of them also involve(d) sovereign states, including Georgia and since 2014 Ukraine. So, the liberal who wants to double down on the path of mutual interdependence is revealing a touching faith in the light of cold facts. In a future post, I return to what liberalism can take away from this going forward.

The other kind of critic (who may also have liberal commitments) is a self-described realist. Such a realist will emphasize that Russia has legitimate security concerns and interest and these have been threatened by NATO expansion. And that, in fact, self-congratulatory sanctions in the past and the new ones in the present are themselves a cause of conflict (here's part of the overlap with some liberals). 

Now, as I hinted last week, I have some sympathy with the realist critique of Zelensky (who is otherwise hugely admirable and heroic). Once it became clear to Ukraine that NATO and EU were unwilling to help defend Ukraine (after 2014), despite the occasional and reckless lipservice to the contrary, he should have aggressively sought out other allies. And, in fact, it's pretty clear that Ukraine tried to develop Chinese support, and that this was torpedoed by Trump during his presidency (recall my link last week). What is puzzling is that there seems to have been little success and/or effort to return to the Chinese after Biden's victory or to interest Turkey and Israel into supporting Ukraine independence with military aid. And given how badly western countries have treated their nominal allies in Afghanistan and Iraq (Vietnam, etc.) it is puzzling why any state would count on them if they are not a member of Nato or covered by American nuclear deterrence. 

For, one oddity of the purportedly realist 'Putin/Russia has legitimate security concerns over Nato expansion' trope, is that the security concerns of Russia's neighbors are constantly belittled, discounted/ignored, and/or trivialized. This has two perverse effects: First, it privileges great power interests over the others. This is a feature not a bug of such purported realism, for such realists will probably say something like, ''it's only natural that great power interests matter more than other powers." What's odd about this (in realist terms) is that it fails to account for the efforts at balancing and coalition forming against great powers by smaller and other powers (which is what the realism that does not victim blame ordinarily suggests). This matters because the underlying logic of realist thinking requires such balancing/coalition forming and also requires a willingness by outsiders to balance and if necessary contest aggression on the battle-field.**

 

Second, because doctrines have effects in the world (they can be performative or be causes of actions), the doctrine that is biased toward great power interests over smaller power interests effectively legitimizes aggression by greater powers against the smaller powers while masking as an explanation. I don't mean this as a criticism of realism as such, only the realism that is not serious about the security interests of smaller fish. A lot of such realists are blabbering about 'Ukraine neutrality with security guarantees,' while ignoring that these guarantees have been worthless for the last few decades (and as was clear (recall) by 2014). Such realists tacitly assume that Russia is a status quo power rather than revisionary/revanchist. And these victim blaming pretend realists are really ignoring the facts of the last few decades. (That's compatible with the thought that liberal democracies have been irresponsible in all kinds of ways, including the speaking in split tongues and the unwillingness to help check Russian expansion as some realists should have urged.)

 

Some realists suggests that Ukraine should have pursued a neutrality course familiar from Sweden, Switzerland, Jordan, and Finland. All these countries had assets that Ukraine lacked (not the least non-trivial military capacity and willingness to fight) and had outside countries who had a clear stake in their continued existence as a buffer or neutral services. Ukraine's neutrality would have been more like Dutch neutrality at the start of WWII; nice if it's respected, useless otherwise. But again, it is pretty rich for people who call themselves 'realist' to suggest that Russia would have respected such neutrality given the evidence of the last few decades.

 

Again, I am not criticizing real realism here. I am critical of those who pursued their perceived interests (and so left Ukraine out to dry in return for Russian energy, legalized graft, and being a gateway for money laundering) in the name of realism without paying attention to the need to balance and check Russian power or to help Ukraine create its own security coalition. As it is, such purported realists seem to have no place for the heroic national defense by the Ukrainians of their homeland, and so in a way misunderstand the facts on the ground (even if Ukraine is successfully occupied or carved up, it is clear that the Russians cannot keep their hold on it without enormous costs downstream) . 

 

There is also a third kind of critic of sanctions, who worries that it is foreplay to Armageddon. This too comes in two kinds of flavors. First, there are those who worry it's possible that sanctions and military assistance to Ukraine lead to a kind of tit for tat escalation that turns this into WWIII and/or nuclear Armageddon. I think the risk of this is fairly low because Russia and the US have considerable experience in proxy warfare that they always manage to contain during the last few decades. The other worries that isolation and sanctions of Russia (alongside a drawn out conflict in Ukraine) lead to the implosion of Russia. This, in turn, can be a civil war, destabilizing of other countries, or, again, nuclear Armageddon (if Putin feels very threatened). I grant this is is uncharted territory and a real concern. 

 

So, let me wrap up. I personally hope and advocate that the sanction regime can be improved such that ordinary, individual Russians don't have to carry an enormous burden through it. So, with the more symbolic sanctions (say sports boycotts), I  think it's completely legitimate to boycott national teams (of Russia and Belorussia) and anything involving Gazprom sponsorship, but would urge a reconsideration for individual athletes (and artists, educators etc.) It would be good if face-saving mechanism to help de-escalate were developed, but these must also involve non-trivial roll-back of Russian expansion (and so I do not expect this to happen).

 

A policy of far-reaching sanctions that isolate Russia ought to be pursued in large part because the alternatives have so clearly failed, and because they do raise the cost of aggression (even at the expense of one's own economic welfare). It's the least bad of the existing options and can be expected to fall short of triggers that might lead to world war. It also buys time to wean oneself off energy dependence on Russia. A foreseeable effect of this is that Russia (with structural population decline and all the problems of imperial overreach) will become increasingly dependent on China (with whom it shares an enormous border and where it has strategic vulnerabilities). While the circumstances are very bad, this dependency would itself not be a bad outcome because (i) it can forestall Armageddon; (ii) and, while China, too, is a nationalist dictatorship which treats its own citizens shabbily and with design on some of its neighbors, it has repeatedly signaled its eagerness to play by global rules and it has shown far more restraint in pursuing its international aims. And in fact, China has more capacity to restrain Russia when the latter is a client state of it.*** Okay, let me stop here and explore the implications of the new political realities for liberalism, and its relationship to nationalism and federalism, in a future post.+ 

 

 

On the Implosion of Liberal Democracy in 1940, and the Roots of the European Union (Burnham, Pt 1)

Only the hopelessly naïve can imagine that France fell so swiftly because of the mere mechanical strength of the Nazi war machine that might have been sufficient in a longer run, but not to destroy a great nation with a colossal military establishment in a few weeks. France collapsed so swiftly because its people had no heart for the war as every observer had remarked, even through the censorship, from the beginning of the war. And they had no heart for the war because the bourgeois ideologies by which they were appealed to no longer had power to move their hearts. Men are prepared to be heroes for very foolish and unworthy ideals; but they must at least believe in those ideals.

Nowhere is the impotence of bourgeois ideologies more apparent than among the youth, and the coming world, after all, will be the youth's world. The abject failure of voluntary military enlistment in Britain and this country tells its own story to all who wish to listen. It is underlined in reverse by the hundreds of distinguished adult voices which during 1940 began reproaching the American youth for "indifference," "unwillingness to sacrifice," "lack of ideals." How right these reproaches are! And how little effect they have!--James Burnham (1941) The Managerial Revolution: What is Happening in the World, pp. 35-36 (New York John Day).

Matthew Rose's A World After Liberalism: Philosophers of the Radical Right, alerted me to the significance of Burnham as "a central figure in the history of American Conservatism" (118). And since Alex Aragona, who is no conservative at all, recently mentioned The Managerial Revolution in favorable terms to me, I decided it was time to read Burnham's three major works, The Suicide of the West: An Essay on the Meaning and Destiny of Liberalism (1964), The Machiavellians: the Defenders of Freedom (1943), and The Managerial Revolution, in reverse order. Unfortunately, while The Suicide of the West is the most accessible of the three, and of continued interest because it develops major political tropes that still structure political debate, it's also a work that defends civilizational (and racial) hierarchy and its racism (and homophobia, etc.) is intrinsic to the argument. (The racism is not 'scientific,' but primarily cultural in character.) The Machiavellians, by contrast, reads Machiavelli as republican defender of freedom and builds on it a concise, but important introduction to the Italian Elite school (recall). While the claims about civilizational hierarchy are undoubtedly lurking in the background, The Machiavellians deserves a place in the small cannon of twentieth century conservative and realist political theory; it offers a sensible alternative to liberalism without ending up in Schmitt's camp (no small feat). And I expect to return to it.

The passage I quoted above introduces a subsidiary theme that runs through the Managerial Revolution. Before I get to that let me offer a superfical summary of this book, which made Burnham -- then an ex-Trotskyite philosopher at NYU -- famous. The book is primarily diagnostic in character. And in light of his later works we can see that it diagnoses a major trend in order to warn the public against it. While Burnham is scathing of liberals like Hayek and Lippmann, in many ways his diagnosis (and the genre) is very similar: what they call "collectivism" is unfolding in the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, and the New Deal America and this will empower what he calls 'managers' everywhere. Socialism and Capitalism are both doomed, and instead there will be mega-states in which those (managerial) technocrats, whose major role is to coordinate production (and distribution), will become the dominant class.

Okay, now back to the quoted text. This is meant to illustrate Burnham's idea that by the end of the crisis of the 1930s, the young have given up on liberal democracy in the face of mass unemployment, negative growth, and terror by Fascists and Soviets alike. And importantly, Burnham claims that this was not just the case in Nazi Germany (where social democrats and communists basically folded in 1933), but also in the more established liberal democracies in which he also notably includes various attempts at popular fronts (e.g., France and Spain). On his view, by the end of the 1930s, true socialism had been tried in the first few years after the 1917 October revolution and had been transformed into managerialism by the time of Lenin's death. And in "a large number countries-Germany, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Austria, England, Australia, New Zealand, Spain, France-the reformist Marxist parties have administered the governments, and have uniformly failed to introduce socialism or make any genuine step toward socialism." (54)

One reason why managerialism is the way of the future, on this account, is that "we know, without waiting for the future, that managerial economy
can do away with mass unemployment or reduce it to a negligible minimum. This was done, by managerial methods, in Russia and Germany at the same time that England, France, and the United States proved incapable of doing it by capitalist methods." (133) He also clearly thinks managerialism will develop better "fighting machines" too (134). And while Burnham is careful not to endorse the violent methods of really existing managerialism, it is pretty clear he treats those (and the world wars) as transitional phenomena and as birth-pains of a new world order (akin to the wars that gave rise to bourgeois-capitalist civilization at the end of feudalism). As he puts it, "as has happened in the other comparable historical transitions, managerial society does away with the representative political institution of the old society, not merely because a new type of institution is technically better for the new society, but precisely because the old institution represents the old society; it becomes despised and hated, and the resentment of the masses is turned against it (look at France in the early summer of 1940); psychologically, ideologically, it is not suited for the new rule." (149; see also: "The masses in France could not be stirred to enthusiasm for a war for "democracy" (that is, capitalism). They rejoiced at Munich. They were passive when the war started, and all through the war. They did not have the will to fight....It is incredible that the defeat should have been so swift unless we admit, what is undeniably true, that the masses in France did not want to fight the war. They did not want to because the capitalist slogans no longer could move them." (189-190))

My present interest here is neither to defend or criticize Burnham's main thesis, but to call attention to his treatment of the significance of the collapse of France in the 1940s, which as my citations show, runs through the book (despite, compared to the elaborate analysis of developments in Russia and Germany, general lack of interest in offering a careful treatment of the French situation). For as it happens the French collapse also imperils the future of the British empire and prefigures European federation:

From the war of 1939 are coming at least two more of the major political leaps toward managerial society : first, the political consolidation of the European Continent, which involves also the smashing of England's hold on the Continent ; and, second, the breakup of the British Empire, chief political representative of capitalist world society. Though it is not yet understood in this country, both of these steps were assured when France surrendered in June, 1940. The dominant position of capitalist England has always depended upon its acting as middleman between the European Continent and the rest of the world, including most prominently its own great Empire. From this dependence followed the "balance of power" policy which England has been compelled to uphold during the entire capitalist era. This policy demands that no single nation shall dominate the European Continent; or, rather, that England shall dominate the Continent through balancing Continental nations against each other. England's domination can be achieved in no other way, since its comparatively meager national resources and its small population make impossible direct domination through its own force. But the balance of power on the Continent is possible only when the Continent is divided up into a number of genuinely sovereign and powerful states. Such a division ended, for all time, when France surrendered. Consequently, whatever happens during the remainder of the present war, whether or not Hitler's regime is overthrown, whether or not new revolts take place, the old system is finished, and England can never again be dominant in Europe or the controlling political center of a vast world empire. (177-178)

In a famous (1946) essay, "Second Thoughts on James Burnham." George Orwell had a lot of fun showing that many of Burnham's predictions turned out to be falsified. (The essay is the preface to my paperback edition of The Managerial Revolution.) And, in fact, Orwell makes fun of the passage that I quoted at the top of the post (and some of the other passages I have mentioned). But Orwell grudgingly admires Burnham's attempt to "plot the course of the ‘managerial revolution’ accurately on a world scale" and this clearly influenced, as is well known, his treatment of the inner party and the global competition of three world states portrayed in 1984. 

But in 1946, in victory, Orwell refuses to acknowledge what Burnham got right: that with the collapse of the European balance of power, the British approach to a concert of Europe -- which, with a nod to Foucault (recall), goes back to Hume's era and writings -- is finished. As an aside, in June 1940, with French resistance to Germany collapsing (and after the Dunkirk withdrawal), there was briefly a window for a "Franco-British Union" offered by the British cabinet (Wikipedia has a brief overview of the story). And so while Burnham's analysis may be thought fanciful, it's not unlikely that Churchill saw matters in the same way.

For Burnham, capitalist liberal democracy, the balance of power in Europe, and the success of British imperialism are all inter-related. And so with the first in retreat and the second collapsed, the third has no future. While it certainly had dawned on the British governing class by 1941 that they were going to be overshadowed by the Americans, as subsequent history proved, it took them at least to the (1956) Suez fiasco to fully realize that their imperial days were over.* 

However, what it means for the "old system" to be finished means in Europe, is that Europe will be an integrated industrial economy (under German leadership):

This phase, the consolidation of the European base, was completed with France's surrender. It is completed irreversibly and can no longer be undone whatever the outcome of the succeeding phases of the war, which are really other wars. This consolidation, fundamental to the world politics of managerial society, is not going to be dissolved, not even if the present German regime is utterly defeated. In fact, no one expects it to be, not even the English statesmen. The day of a Europe carved into a score of sovereign states is over; if the states remain, they will be little more than administrative units in a larger collectivity. Any attempt to re-divide Europe would collapse, not in the twenty years it took the Versailles system to collapse, but in twenty months. (246; emphases added.)

That is to say, that for Burnham it's obvious that the days of independent European states, who had ruled the world for a few centuries, are over. Given the new political and economic realities, Europe would have to develop into a continental wide integrated, industrial area (akin to the United States of America) in what he calls a "European super-state". (247) From his perspective Nazi-Germany was merely accelerating that which had become inevitable. What Burnham ends up missing is that this would occur eventually much slower under American guidance with European states reduced to satellites (in the manner of Canada, in his account). I leave it for another time to evaluate how the partial vitality of capitalist liberal democracy was so underestimated.

Even so, we might say that on Burnham's account that the (real possibility of a) technocratic European Union was born with French surrender in 1940.* One might be have to be a Kojève to see in this the cunning of history. 

 

 

International Arbitration, and a forgotten precursor to Liberalism

Suppose for instance that peace is signed to-day, that it is published to the whole world: how do we know that posterity will ratify the articles. Opinions are changeable, and the actions of the men of the present time do not bind their successors. To put an end to this objection, it suffices to  remember what we have said about the causes of war, which not being considerable, for the reasons given above, there is nothing that can occasion the rupture of a peace. Nevertheless, to prevent the inconvenience of this, it would be necessary to choose a city, where all sovereigns should have perpetually their ambassadors, in order that the differences that might arise should be settled by the judgment of the whole assembly. The ambassadors of those who would be interested would plead there the grievances of their masters and the other deputies would judge them without prejudice. And to give more authority to the judgment, one would take advice of the big republics, who would have likewise their agents in this same place. I say great Republics, like those of the Venitians and the Swiss, and not those small lordships, that cannot maintain themselves, and depend upon the protection of another. That if anyone rebelled against the decree of so notable a company, he would receive the disgrace of all other Princes, who would find means to bring him to reason. Now the most commodious place for such an assembly is the territory of Venice, because it is practically neutral and indifferent to all Princes: added thereto that it is near the most important monarchies of the earth, of those of the Pope, the two Emperors, and the King of Spain. It is not far from France, Tatary, Moscovy, Poland, England, and Denmark. As for Persia, China, Ethiopia, and the East and the West Indies, they are lands far distant, but navigation remedies that inconvenience, and for such a good object, one must not refuse a long voyage.--Émeric Crucé (1623) The New Cyneas, translated by Thomas Willing Balch, pp. 102-104 [page-numbers of modern translation].

The perspective of modern liberalism tends to be future oriented and too involved with the problems of governing, that liberals tend to forget key episodes from its own history of social activism. This, more than the framing by their Marxist critics, helps explain why Richard Cobden has become associated with the reductive label ‘Manchester liberal.’ But even when liberals remember free-trade and the corn-laws as victories, the liberal tradition tend to ignore his anti-imperialism[1] and his courageous anti-militarism. In addition, even within free-trade, he was creative and instrumental in making most favored nation status as a key device of a liberal trade order. And, finally, in opposing gun-boat diplomacy and militarism, he was an incessant advocate of international arbitration as an alternative to war.

While you, my dear educated reader, have at least heard of Cobden, I am pretty sure that  Crucé is almost certainly obscure to you (unless you paid attention to my recent blog post). But while it would be anachronistic to call Crucé a liberal – but perhaps less so than calling Locke a liberal --, Crucé definitely deserves attention for articulating many of the best features of a liberal program long before they were popular (religious toleration including non-Christians (pagans, Jews, Muslims, etc.)), the virtues of commerce, the significance of public works, and the rule of law, low taxes, etc. Crucé’s larger program is founded on cosmopolitan principles of common humanity and sympathy.

Because I started this digression with Cobden, today I want to focus on one of the more technocratic devices, his idea of a truly international court of arbitration. The first thing to notice is that he includes non-Christian and non-European sovereigns in the process. This is very much untainted by the kind of racism that plagues so many of such (later) proposals. To be sure, at times Crucé expresses genocidal hatred of barbarians and savages. And while he may sound like Aristotle (“I place among beasts savage people who do not reason” (52)), but, upon closer inspections, these only involve folk who refuse to play nice with others (and so Crucé is not inclined to treat one approach to political life as superior than others). In general Crucé loathes the admiration of conquerors in the European tradition, and wishes honor and admiration to accrue not “by sackings, massacres, and acts of hostility, but by gentle government, a legitimate and regulated power.” (48)

Crucé is not especially interested in the law. And I understand why lawyers have not treated him as one of their own because he asserts early in the book, “Jurisprudence is also not necessary, and a good natural judgment is sufficient to finish lawsuits, without resorting to a multitude of laws and decisions that only con-fuse cases instead of simplifying them.” (82) So, the arbitration council is, perhaps, better seen as an anticipation of the security council than the international court of arbitration.

The point is not so much to build up, and develop an international case law, but rather to prevent war and maintain peace among those – great powers – most likely to resort to war. And to achieve this, what’s required is not so much knowledge of the law, but good worldly judgment. This is also reflected in the composition of the international arbitration council of ambassadors.

Unlike the modern security council, in Crucé’s arbitration tribunal great powers do not arbitrate their own cases. But like the modern security council, there may well be enforcement troubles. Crucé is probably too optimistic in assuming that collective security is possible if a great power is just adamant on going to war. But it is worth noting that that for the vast majority of states declining to obey the outcome of arbitration, and violate international norms, does tend to come with a steep price. An even know, EU member states have come in the habit of resolving all their disputes peacefully either by law, or very much in the spirit of Crucé’s proposal (with ambassadors in Brussels). So, while he recognizes, repeatedly, that his proposal will be treated as utopian (Plato’s Republic not More is treated as the exemplary work), we ought to pause that we live, partially in such utopian world.

Unlike Kant, Crucé does not think such a scheme is only possible with suitably reformed states (who should be liberal republics with division of powers). From what he writes I suspect Crucé agrees with Kant that such states are more pacific. And much of the book (about which some other time more) is devoted to creating the conditions of peaceful public administration. But from Crucé’s perspective, the urgency of his proposal is precisely that its absolute sovereigns that need to be constrained. This is why it’s clearly more important to have kings and emperors represented in Venice than republics.[2]

I do think there is a democratic sentiment tucked into Crucé’s proposal. For it is quite clear that one ground of inclusion in the arbitration council, is great populous-ness. Admittedly this is easy to miss because shortly after the passage quoted, Crucé addresses the worry about the relative rank of the ambassadors next at great length. But it’s pretty clear  this reflects the preoccupation with hierarchy of his intended audience more than his own sensibility. And one cannot help but think that part of his rhetorical strategy is to make such preoccupation seem like a ridiculous species of superstition. Even so, it is pretty clear that Crucé's proposal is a concession to realism; this is a feature not a bug of his proposal.

Anyway, I often intend my digressions as invitations to read the works discussed, but I hope this post has made you intrigued about Crucé to explore his “little book” (350) The New Cyneas (which is easily found on the internet).

On American Foreign Policy

It's been almost thirty years since the United States has had a President, George H.W. Bush (41), who was skilled in foreign policy, and knowledgeable about the strategic and political challenges it faced. He had, in fact, served American governments abroad and in key strategic positions long before he became President. To say this is not to ignore his limitations or failures (or to approve of his policies). To observers of the nature of liberal democracy, it should come as no surprise that he has few genuine admirers among the citizens of that proud nation. 

Since, the foreign policy of the most powerful nation of the globe has been hijacked by war profiteers, adventurers of the liberal humanitarian, neo-con, and Christian kinds not to mention the outright corruption of the previous administration. Among the longer-sitting, elected senators and members of the House, there are few with the curiosity and background to help steward and steady foreign policy. One need not treat the Fulbright's, Nunns, Lugars,  Proxmires as saints or wise, to recognize they have no obvious counterparts today. It is not obvious they would flourish (recall the sad spectacle of Rex Tillerson).

The effect has been notable: a steady erosion of American alliances such that notionally American allies were aiding different sides of the Syrian civil war and undermining official American policy. Another notional ally, Pakistan, aided and abetted Bin Laden and the Taliban. Last I checked the assassination of a US citizen-journalist ordered by the leader of a key ally has had no consequence at all. Meanwhile there has been retreat from free trade (the Doha round has been languishing forever). Liberal democracy and human rights are in retreat (not infrequently cheered on by the occupant of the White House). Until there is multilateral policy, we can expect covid to linger and cause problems. And American leadership in the most important collective action problem, the environmental crisis, is lacking for decades now.  (Feel free to add your own issues to the list.)

It's pretty clear that there is no institutional reason to expect this drift to change any time soon. Leaving foreign affairs to the military or the experts means competent stewardship, but de facto no real policy at all. For policy involves facing tough trade-offs and mobilizing support for long term aims. And because the many advantages the US enjoys on the world stage, it is doubtful that foreign policy challenges will become salient to informed American voters and party leaders any time soon.  

The shameful ending to twenty years American involvement in Afghanistan with betrayal of local allies and dependents is, thus, no accident.* It's been long known that insurgencies can outlast occupation when the occupier is a liberal democracy (and, to be sure, not interested in colonizing the occupied land). At some point, and often years too late, voters and their politicians simply lose interest. Even those that profit big time from continued occupation lose heart. 

There is another recurring pattern: that the salience of foreign policy is discovered by US Presidents after their initial domestic agenda has been defeated or frustrated. (It is, after all, an area in which they are less constrained than other policy areas.) But, by then they are in search of quick results, and so easy prey for advisers that promise too much and foreigners that can smell a good opportunity. And while this occasionally means a worthy deal, it rarely shapes long-term policy for the better. The net effect is not just drift, but also the capture of foreign policy by rent-seeking interests who have the expertise and financial focus to shape the highly technical features of international patent law and technological collaboration or localized military interventions.

Perhaps all of this is to be expected in a continent wide republic without a clear military threat or a dire emergency. But I suspect it's also the effect of the tendency to disregard the Constitution, which tries to provide a unified framework for domestic and foreign policy, when it comes to foreign policy (and war) during the last century--arguably since United States v. Curtiss-Wright Export Corp (1936)). The imperial, unchecked presidency has been a long time coming. But this lack of true checks on the American President (when it comes to  foreign affairs, border control, and the very grey zone of US illicit security activity abroad) has had the perverse effect of less government by discussion and more impulse decisions. 

Given that the US has military bases with rapid response teams spread around the world, and that it has military contractors pursuing profit under their protection, it is to be expected that the next foreign policy disaster will occur with the same stupidity and opportunity costs before long. Perhaps, it's unfolding already. 

David Hume's unusual (Lockean) argument for free trade

Nothing is more usual, among states which have made some advances in commerce, than to look on the progress of their neighbours with a suspicious eye, to consider all trading states as their rivals, and to suppose that it is impossible for any of them to flourish, but at their expence. In opposition to this narrow and malignant opinion, I will venture to assert, that the encrease of riches and commerce in any one nation, instead of hurting, commonly promotes the riches and commerce of all its neighbours; and that a state can scarcely carry its trade and industry very far, where all the surrounding states are buried in ignorance, sloth, and barbarism.

It is obvious, that the domestic industry of a people cannot be hurt by the greatest prosperity of their neighbours; and as this branch of commerce is undoubtedly the most important in any extensive kingdom, we are so far removed from all reason of jealousy. But I go farther, and observe, that where an open communication is preserved among nations, it is impossible but the domestic industry of every one must receive an encrease from the improvements of the others. Compare the situation of Great Britain at present, with what it was two centuries ago. All the arts both of agriculture and manufactures were then extremely rude and imperfect. Every improvement, which we have since made, has arisen from our imitation of foreigners; and we ought so far to esteem it happy, that they had previously made advances in arts and ingenuity. But this intercourse is still upheld to our great advantage: Notwithstanding the advanced state of our manufactures, we daily adopt, in every art, the inventions and improvements of our neighbours.--David Hume "Of the Jealousy of Trade"

Of the Jealousy of Trade presents itself as a companion piece to "Of the Balance of Trade," and is easily overshadowed by it. That's a shame because Hume's particular argument is still timely, as I look at the news reporting on Brexit talks. Unlike the more familiar Smithian ('absolute advantage') and Ricardian ('comparative advantage') arguments,* Hume's here is focused on what we may call the epistemic effects (or positive externalities) of trade. I assume this is familiar in the literature, but I had not noticed it before.

For Hume trade exposes us to innovations of others and induces imitation, learning, and what he calls "emulation" from them. And the effect of this is enhanced technology and productivity ("we daily adopt, in every art, the inventions and improvements"). I don't want to overstate the originality of Hume's argument not just because I may be unfamiliar with relevant contemporary authors, but also because it is pretty clear that Hume is extending an important argument by Locke.

Recall that in Locke's art of government (in sections 41-42 of the chapter 5 of "Two Treatises") and in his (1695) "Further Considerations Concerning Raising the Value of Money," Locke advocates for policies that would grow the population and simultaneously grow their skill/productivity. This argument was noticed and emphasized by Toland in his argument for Jewish emancipation (recall). And, in fact, Hume' echoes one of Locke's key arguments. Hume writes, shortly after the passage quoted above, "But if our neighbours have no art or cultivation, they cannot take them; because they will have nothing to give in exchange. In this respect, states are in the same condition as individuals."

In section 43, of Chapter of the Two Treatises, Locke had made the same conceptual point in terms of the American Indian being unable to benefit from the same amount of labor in land as the European because he lacked wealthy neighbors. Locke's point here is often missed because scholars and critics are more focused on debates about his labor theory of value and to what degree these passages support colonialism. But it would be very surprising if Hume had not noticed the point. After all, this is treated as axiomatic by Hume in this essay ("it is obvious, that the domestic industry of a people cannot be hurt by the greatest prosperity of their neighbours;").

I do not mean to ignore the significance of pro-European free trade argument ("a British subject, I pray for the flourishing commerce of Germany, Spain, Italy, and even France itself") lodged at the end of  the little essay. But I have already discussed it in the context of Foucault's arguments of 24 January 1979, lecture 3, The Birth of Biopolitics. 54-6.

 

Otto Bauer and the Origin of the Functionalist Account of European Federation

But because it is precisely from the progress of social production and the international division of labor that the principle of nationality emerges, it is soon confronted by its own limits. Already within capitalist society, ever-closer interaction links the different states; a generally valid form of regulation of this interaction becomes even more necessary, a legal system the validity of which extends beyond the borders of the individual states. The increased interaction between states resulting from the development of the capitalist economy, the emergence of the great modern states, and the expansion of the power of the European nations over the colonial territories abroad has given rise to international law. In the first instance, the states regulate their relations through treaties. To the old pacts of alliance and peace are added agreements concerning the laws of land and naval warfare. Economic relations also gradually come to be regulated by agreements between states. Thus emerges the diverse system of treaties that constitutes the foundation of modern international law: agreements concerning inland and maritime shipping, trade and customs duties, railway traffic, postal and telegraph systems, and measures, coinages, and weights. But international law soon reaches beyond the sphere of immediate economic interests. Thus, today agreements between states regulate the policing of sanitary conditions, in particular in regard to the struggle against epidemics, and the struggle against both the white and black slave trade; thus, there is the attempt to initiate through agreements parallel systems of regulating civil and procedural law.
Out of all these agreements there emerges a series that creates a quite new structure, the international authority. Wherever the foundation of common administrative activity is to be established, the states create a common organ, an authority that, by virtue of its international mandate, is permanently to fulfill the tasks assigned it by the treaties between states. Such a character is borne by the international health commissions, the international commissions for the monitoring of the financial administration of individual states, the international rivers commissions. These are granted rights that are otherwise accorded to sovereign states and that even the theory of the state has therefore attempted to construe as a particular form of the state, as riverstates.
But by far the most important among the international authorities are the so-called administrative communities. These have been emerging since the 1860s and are based on agreements to which every state is in principle free to accede. Among them are, for example, the International Postal Union, the International Telegraph Union, the Community of States for the Protection of Commercial Property, the Association of States for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, the Union of States for the Struggle Against the Seizure of Slaves, the Central Office of International Transport, the Office of the Standing Sugar Commission, and so on. Some of these authorities have already been granted judicial power, for example, the Health and Rivers Commissions, the offices of the International Postal Union and the Community of Railways; in addition, since 1899 The Hague has housed the permanent Court of Arbitration.
As imperfect as these individual structures are, they carry within them the healthy seed of new social organisms. The interaction between the different states has already become so close that the law and organs of the state are proving to be no longer enough. The direction of development is toward a legal system that stands above state rights and binds the states themselves; it is creating organs the activities of which will no longer be hindered by any state frontier. State treaties and international authorities today satisfy this need. But they are beset by an internal contradiction. The community of international law has statutes and organs, but has not itself yet been constituted as a legal entity. We have statutes and are ignorant of the collective will that establishes them and whose power guarantees them; we have international organs  and are ignorant of the body whose organ they should be.
In socialist society, the agreements between the polities and the international organs will without doubt rapidly grow in number. At the same time, the increasing interaction between the different polities will in the first instance compel the implementation of the international division of labor.
However, international regulation to a far greater extent will become possible and necessary only when the social processes that are today composed of innumerable decisions and actions of individuals are consciously regulated by the different polities. For example, large migrations will be possible only on the basis of international treaties. Finally, in socialist society the planned regulation of international interaction will also be necessary due to the fact that every disappointed expectation, every inappropriate calculation affecting the individual merchant, the individual emigrant, will quite directly affect the whole society. One can imagine, for example, the consequences when a socialist polity organizes itself for the production of a good that is to be exchanged against the products of the other nations and finds this expectation disappointed. The international division of labor is impossible if the exchange of goods and interaction is not directed and regulated on an international basis.
Interstate agreements and administrative communities will thus ultimately not be able to meet the needs of the society of the future. Statutes that are not guaranteed by an organized collective will and organs that cannot be regarded as the organ of any entity will not suffice for this society. It will ultimately have to constitute the community of international law as a legal entity and provide it with permanent representatives. This will come about the day the national polities establish an international office to which they entrust supreme authority over the exchange of goods between the polities and thereby indirectly also supreme authority over the production within every polity. Just as the development of capitalist commodity production linked the manorial estates and the towns isolated during the Middle Ages to form the modern state, so too will the international division of labor create in socialist society a new type of social structure above the national polity, a state of states, into which the individual national polities will integrate themselves. The United States of Europe will thus be no longer a dream, but the inevitable ultimate goal of a movement that the nations have long since begun and that will be enormously accelerated by forces that are already becoming apparent.-Otto Bauer (1907 [1924]) The question of Nationalities and social democracy, [Die Nationalitätenfrage und die Sozialdemokratie]. translated by Joseph O'Donnell, University of Minnesota Press  pp. 412-414 (emphases in original).*

A few months ago Christopher Brooke alerted me to the significance of Bauer's work, and the passage above in particular, in the context of a series of posts on the historical and conceptual roots of modern federalism and its complex relationship to modern imperialism. When the book appeared Bauer was not yet a leading political figure and much of the excitement and turmoil of his life was still ahead. He was not, however, obscure, because Lenin makes a point of alerting his reader to the fact Bauer is one of his targets as one of “most prominent theoreticians” of the (bankrupt) Second International in his Preface to the French and German Editions Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism A Popular Outline.

It is noticeable that Bauer does not mention Hobson's Imperialism because there are many striking similarities in their analysis of the economic roots of (nationalist forms of) imperialism (recall here; here). And while Bauer is clearly marxist/socialist (as Hobson is not), not unlike Hobson, he sees in imperialism the possible seeds of something better. And in so doing Bauer articulates what we may call a functionalist account of the rise of federalism. And such functionalism is one of the ongoing, ruling commitments of the political and bureaucratic class of the EU. (I am unsure how well known Bauer's influence on this is--feel free to send literature my way!) So, it is worth taking a look at. 

Bauer's book has its roots in Bauer's PhD in law at the University of Vienna. And this is visible in the crucial passage quoted above. Internal law is rooted in capitalist development which gives rise to international trade. International trade generates the demand for international law along multiple dimensions (regulation of warfare and commerce). And with growing commerce, including commerce as a consequence of imperial conquest (this is part of Bauer's larger argument in the book), the range and complexity of international commercial law expands. 

Interestingly enough, it is the complex nature of some of modern commerce that gives an impulse to new forms of international collaboration, a "new structure, the international authority. Wherever the foundation of common administrative activity is to be established, the states create a common organ, an authority that, by virtue of its international mandate, is permanently to fulfill the tasks assigned it by the treaties between states." These international authorities have important characteristics: (i) they are created by states (ii) who create or delegate juridical authority to them; (iii) they are functionally, that is domain specific, organized;  (iv) they are technocratic in character, that is, a place where under the guise of authoritative law experts meet to solve coordination and standard setting problems; (v) they rely on the member states (with juridical/military power) for enforcement; (vi) they are heterogenous in character (not all have the same juridical power and internal structure). And (vii) in virtue of their existence, the character of states and their self-conception (that's the point of some turning into 'riverstates') and state sovereignty changes.

Crucially, for Bauer, the effect of (vii) is also to make room for, (viii), that is, there is a teleology toward both (a) a larger edifice of international law built into these new structures and (b) a (minimalist) federal state. It is pretty clear this directedness is a consequence of the economic forces of capitalism as it has turned into globalization and imperialism. 

Strikingly, the teleology is not automatic. For while, a spontaneous order ("innumerable decisions and actions of individuals") gives rise to the need for coordination and standardization, political guidance is needed for the organization and transformation of the state system ("consciously regulated by the different polities.") And what he has in mind is not just more treaty-making, but the establishment of a political (and federal) representative structure ground in international law ("constitute the community of international law as a legal entity and provide it with permanent representatives.")

If I understand him right this higher authority is also limited in character. Its jurisdiction is fundamentally economic ("the exchange of goods"). Now, the glue that would hold such a limited European Union together is, on the one hand, socialism, and, on the other hand, economic-juridical integration. 

What's striking about Bauer's approach is that it is quite clearly not wholly modeled on (say the way Kant and Adam Smith are inspired by) The United States of America, where republican/representative government comes conceptually first (or close to first alongside commercial connectedness). In Bauer's approach, politics remains in a sense nationalist (and socialist), but integrated in (and subordinated to) a larger juridical structure devoted to coordination and problem solving. (Kind of what Austrian liberals were hoping from the empire.) I use 'in a sense' because in socialism there are no incompatible ends, so it (the higher authority) need not do more (and certain kinds of politics are abolished). In addition, although this is not explicit in Bauer, socialism provides a common civic religion that ties the whole together.

It would be worth exploring what the pre-history of Bauer's ideas are. Brooke has given me hints to suggest that Cobden may be very important for this part of the story. But I close with the thought that one way to understand the present tragedy of the EU is that even more than Hayek (recall here; and here) or Mises (recall) and Kautsky (here; and recall Luxemburg's criticism) it has de facto adopted Bauer's vision (he died in 1938) without a glue like socialism that can help coordinate ends and act as a civic religion.