Sometimes politics brings together strange bedfellows, which is usually due to an unusual or turbulent set of circumstances. In the 20th century, for example, the unlikely (and short-lived) alliance of the Bolsheviks and the Liberals brought down the Tsar's regime in Russia in early 1917, with the Bolsheviks as the ultimate victors through their own "revolution" (more like a coup) in October the same year. By 1932, Germany was in the middle of a political upheaval that saw the Communists and the Nazis in a kind of joint campaign of chaos and terror against the political mainstream in the middle of an economic meltdown, which saw the Nazis as the victors.
The "postwar consensus" that was established following the turbulence of the Second World War lasted for around thirty years, until a combination of economic factors like "stagflation" brought an opportunity for right-wing economic extremists to take control of the situation.
"Strange bedfellows": Libertarians and Conservatives?
The "economic extremists" were Libertarians, whose ideas of a shrunk-back state and a "pure" form of Capitalism with unfettered market forces had been widely espoused by their icon, Ayn Rand.
In Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, these ideas were being promoted in the UK and USA respectively by two enthusiastic leaders, with the aim of first winning over their own (Conservative and Republican) parties, and then the country.
The ideas of the Libertarians were not popular initially within their own party, as some of their philosophical ideas seemed directly counter to those of traditional conservatives. Firstly, the "postwar consensus" was still considered an established fact not to be challenged, both with the Heath government in the UK and the contemporary Nixon administration in Washington. It was only the discrediting of both these administrations under different circumstances that gave "outsiders" like Thatcher and Reagan a chance of a hearing. By the mid-70s, Thatcher was leader of her party and Reagan was the "poster boy" of the conservative right. Both would soon be leaders of their country, and "de facto" leaders of the Libertarian movement.
Libertarian thought, as espoused by Ayn Rand, is fundamentally against traditional conservative tenets that emphasize the importance of faith, family and country. Rand's sense of Libertarianism is atheistic, materialistic, and individualistic: it sees the world through the eyes of the free-spirited entrepreneur, detached from the fuzzy, old-fashioned values of orthodoxy. Traditional Conservatism is about community, culture and social hierarchy; ideas that would be anathema to an ideological Libertarian. So how did these two sides reach an understanding?
Apart from the changing dynamics of the economy being on the side of the Libertarian narrative, as mentioned above, the "strange bedfellows" of the Libertarian and the Conservative found out that they did have a few things in common, and enough for an understanding of a common goal.
At its core, one of the central tenets of Libertarian thought is that while the state should do as little as possible, it must provide law and order and security. What this means in practice is that it is the defender of property rights, free choice and the rights of people to earn their own money. In other words, the state is in reality the instrument of the wealthy, as the defender of the rights of the status quo. By definition, it will do nothing to change circumstances to benefit those who are doing badly under the current system, as this would, in its eyes, undermine the impartiality of the legal system.
While Libertarian thought is ideologically meritocratic, in practice their absolute adherence to respecting the rights of the status quo mean that they are really defenders of the social hierarchy; the same social hierarchy supported by traditional conservatism. In theory, traditional conservatism is about creating a culture that unfairly protects its interests through a patriarchal system, while Libertarianism is about getting rid of such artificial constructs that prevent a level playing field. In practice, their absolute adherence to the respect of property rights and free choice means that even under any meaningful changes to the system (say, for instance, the abolition of beneficial subsidies), those at the top of the hierarchy would be guaranteed an in-built advantage.
One example would suffice. The existence of private schools gives an in-built advantage to the richest in society to get the highest quality education for their children. While I'm not here to argue exactly one way or the other (although the author has made his view clear before), it's clear that this could never be called a "level playing field" in children's education. On this subject, Ayn Rand was always consistent in being in favour of the right to private schooling as being a) a matter of parental choice, and b) that private education is no guarantee of a child's intelligence or success, so is therefore "fair".
It is easy to point out that while this may be, technically, true, in practice having a private education gives even the most dim-witted child an in-built advantage over any more intelligent, but impoverished, peer. In short, being born into a wealthy family is like playing a computer game called life in the "easy" setting.
As Libertarians are the strongest advocates of not wanting to tell people how to live their lives or what people should do with their money, this allows traditional conservatives a lot of slack, at least on the second point (if not the first).
Social policy is one area of contention between Libertarians and traditionalists (as any momentary look at how David Cameron's ideas on social policy compare to Theresa May's will tell you). But this is a minor issue when looking at the overlap that they share on their mutual economic interests: they both want to get rich and stay rich. And Libertarians showed the traditionally Conservative establishment how it could get even richer.
A marriage of convenience
For the last thirty-five years, Libertarian ideology on both sides of the pond has created a boon for the richest in society, while on the other hand (especially since the financial crisis) created a period of unprecedented uncertainty and hardship for those at the wrong end. The marriage of interests between (Libertarian-supporting) big business and the (traditionally conservative) establishment was thus based on a trade-off: the Libertarian right made the establishment even richer and more empowered, while the establishment turned a blind eye to liberalizing some areas of social and economic policy.
Issues like gay marriage and the relaxing of drug laws caused traditionalists to make a fuss, but these are cosmetic changes that simply reflect social reality. Meanwhile, the state's real changes to society - such as how the establishment now has unparalleled access to an individual's privacy -go unchecked. This may be another part of "marriage of convenience". Traditionalists turn a blind eye to social policy, but gain powers over other issues like state surveillance; Libertarians gain on social policy, but "lose" on issues like state surveillance. Then again, both traditionalists and Libertarians can also see the longer-term benefit to both these policies to their shared agenda: relaxing social policy feeds the illusion that government has become more "liberal", which masks the fact that it has become much more intrusive in other ways. Meanwhile, the gap between the richest and the poorest grows to their mutual advantage.
In this sense, "Conservatism" has always been a tent of varying interests and (sometimes conflicting) ideas. The Libertarians of today share more in common ideologically with the Whigs of yesteryear in the UK and the USA. The politics of Donald Trump and Steve Bannon seem unlikely bedfellows to people like the TEA Party and Evangelical Christians, but their differences seem to have been (temporarily) overcome in the pursuit of power and mutual self-interest. Across in the UK, the same is true with the most zealous supporters of "Hard Brexit": many of them are ardent Libertarians, while others follow an agenda that seems to pursue an nostalgic form of neo-colonialism and nativism. Like the conflict between Bolsheviks and Liberals in 1917 Russia, or the Nazis and the Communists in 1932 Germany, they all see opportunities in the chaos.
While having very separate visions of their own, Fascists and Libertarians are extremists that thrive on seeing opportunism in social collapse. As said earlier, Libertarianism only found a receptive audience in the mainstream right in the 1970s due to specific economic factors; prior to then, it was the obsession of fringe movements and think tanks. And now, in the economic malaise that has struck segments of society since the financial crisis, we have seen Brexit in the UK and Donald Trump in the USA marrying elements of both Libertarian and Fascist thought into an idiosyncratic melange.
Like with traditional conservatism and Libertarianism, the natural links between the latter and Fascism seem tenuous. More seems to contradict them that unite them. But the same could have been said of traditional conservatives in the 1920s in Italy, and those in the 1930s in Germany: they both united behind Fascists due to their mutual self-interest.
Looking at the Fascist thinking of Julius Evola in particular (especially as he has allegedly been a subject of fascination to Steve Bannon), in spite of their many differences, there are still a number shared aspects of thought between the Libertarianism of Ayn Rand and the Fascism of Julius Evola. These include:
- A hierarchical, Social Darwinian, view of society. Julius Evola's Fascism was one that human society progressed through the strong over the weak, where the poor were seen as the lowest "caste" of society. In this light, democracy was the immoral antithesis to this "natural" order of things, as it gave power to the weak (i.e. the uneducated masses) over the strong (the educated elite). Libertarians are likewise "social Darwinists" at heart, and oppose altruism and government involvement in society; they believe that humans can only progress through self-advancement, and that the poor are therefore to blame for their own circumstances. Rand seemed to have a similarly skeptical - even hostile - view of modern "social democracies", seeing them as being a vehicle of altruistic indulgence, and thus against the rights of the individual and morality of society as a whole. While Rand was a critic of dictatorship as a rule, it is also implied in Libertarian thought that if government exists only to defend the property rights of the rich against the poor, it is also in favour of the elite against the masses. Thus, by definition, Rand was an elitist like Evola, albeit in a different manner. The manner of the method they were advocating may have been different, but the result is essentially the same.
- Ardent anti-Communism. Although Rand was an atheist and an arch Capitalist, and Evola was a neo-pagan and against "materialistic" ideologies like Capitalism and Communism, they both saw Communism as the worst threat to society. Would Rand ever have worked with a Fascist to destroy Communism? Probably not directly, but many of her later acolytes certainly did, especially in places like South and Central America (e.g. Pinochet in Chile, the Contras in Nicaragua). The Cold War saw Libertarians and repressive "neo-Fascist" dictatorships work together to prevent what they saw as "Communism", regardless of what that meant for ethics or the rule of law. And these days, this fear of "Communism" has evolved to an unspoken understanding that seems to operate between these two groups in their battle against "Socialism" in all its forms, regardless of how moderate, from the welfare state to equal rights. In the modern USA, many Republicans acquiesce to the unstable behaviour of Donald Trump out of fear of losing control of Capitol Hill, while in Britain, moderate Conservatives are silenced by extreme Brexiteers, out of fear of the "Socialist" agenda of Jeremy Corbyn.
- Use of violence and oppression to achieve their aims. While Rand saw war as against humanity's self-interest, and Evola was a strong advocate of violence as a means to an end (as well as a natural result of Social Darwinism), both ideologies would be unattainable without violence and oppression being some part of the equation. Both these extreme ideologies can only be achieved in times of social and economic upheaval. Whereas Fascism sees violence as a necessary means to achieve its objective, and Libertarians do not, a Libertarian society (like a Communist society) would only be possible after the previous social structure collapsed, or became discredited. Like with the advocates of "Hard Brexit" in the UK, by implication their objective could only be reached after the previous order had disintegrated completely. Thus, for a Libertarian to achieve his goal, he must be indifferent to the necessary social disorder and chaos as a "means to an end", which puts him in the same moral plane as a Fascist. It is only a question of the means of the chaos. Lastly, a Libertarian's love of "freedom" only extends as far as his ideology is unchallenged; when challenged, a Libertarian will abuse their position of power like any tyrant, twisting the law and corruptly using the state apparatus to achieve their goal, while dishonestly claiming that their opponents threaten "stability" in the same manner.
Put in this light, Libertarians and Fascists could be argued to operate in much the same moral plane, as well as much the same ideological universe; the only difference is how they seek to get there.
Hi. My response was too long, so I made a blog post to respond to your article, https://lordprotecteur.blogspot.com/2022/05/bannon-evola-and-rand.html
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