Oakeshott on War and Mass Democracy

Let me start with two bad jokes: first, Oakeshott out-Strausses Leo Strauss in his famous (1947) essay, “Rationalism in Politics.” Second, a true friend speaks truth to his friends in times of crisis, but Oakeshott (1901–1990) withholds the truth from the mass democrat and so is no friend of mass democracy. Don’t let these bad jokes discourage you from reading because the point of what follows is about democracy and war (no laughing matter, alas).

Rather than speaking in riddles let me get to the point. In “Rationalism in Politics,” Oakeshott never uses ‘democracy,’ or any of its cognates, and so it may seem perverse to treat it as an attack on it (in its modern mass society sense). But that’s what it is.

It may seem especially perverse because in a different essay, Oakeshott also makes clear (in his (1961) “The Study of Politics in a University,”) that he considers the use of the term ‘mass democracy,’' and theoretical abstractions like it, as diverting “our attention from the often irregular character of political organizations and events, and thus makes our 'vocational' education less good than it might be.” (p. 322; all my page-numbers are to (1962) Methuen edition Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays.)

Even so, Oakeshott treats the “demand” (p. 2; pp. 33-34) for rationalism in political life as caused by the relative inexperience of politicians. (A decade before Anthony Downs’ famous essay, Oakeshott liberally uses economic concepts to explain or make salient certain political phenomena.) I quote a key passage:

the politics of Rationalism are the politics of the politically inexperienced, and that the outstanding characteristic of European politics in the last four centuries is that they have suffered the incursion of at least three types of political inexperience - that of the new ruler, of the new ruling class, and of the new political society - to say nothing of the incursion of a new sex, lately provided for by Mr Shaw. How appropriate rationalist politics are to the man who, not brought up or educated to their exercise, finds himself in a position to exert political initiative and authority, requires no emphasis.—p. 23

Oakeshott treats the cause of this increase of inexperience with considerable reserve. In fact, there are two decoys in his overall argument (both of which also make an appearance in the quoted passage). First, in his essay Oakeshott treats (cf. “the last four centuries”) Machiavelli’s The Prince as the first major exemplar of a text that supplies an ‘art of government’ to the new (opportunistic) rulers (p. 2 & p. 24). Machiavelli’s work was bastardized by into a kind of “technique of politics” (by unnamed followers). Second, Oakeshott treats the expansion of the franchise to women with barely disguised contempt. For, while he claims here “to say nothing” of “the incursion of a new sex,” elsewhere he treats, en passant, the “Votes for Women” (p. 6) as an one of a long list of instances of the Rationalism he diagnoses.

I use ‘decoy’ because in both cases they draw emotional attention away from the criticism of mass democracy. Oakeshott thinks there is a craft or genuine skill of political leadership. And like all such crafts it consists of a theoretical and more informal practical kind. (He cites Polanyi’s views on tacit knowledge approvingly.) He thinks the combined element that constitutes such crafts can only be acquired through extensive apprenticeship.

One may think (invoking, say, Dewey or Luxemburg) such apprenticeship is compatible with mass democracy: political parties and unions can provide the salient education in the political craft including long stints of apprenticeship. But it’s quite clear that Oakeshott wishes to deny this.

For Oakeshott clearly thinks that in political life only a kind of aristocracy can systematically generate the experience that can provide a “a more trustworthy guide than the book’;” for he goes on to write, “at least it is real knowledge and not a shadow - but still, it is not a knowledge of the political traditions of his society, which, in the most favourable circumstances, takes two or three generations to acquire.” (p. 30; see also “One of the ways in which this sort of knowledge has hitherto been preserved (because it is a great human achievement, and if it is not positively preserved it will be lost) and transmitted is a family tradition. But the Rationalist never understands that it takes about two generations of practice to learn a profession.” p. 34) That he has a high opinion of aristocratic forms of government he goes on to imply a few pages later: “And it is of no consequence that the moral ideology which inspires [the Rationalist] today (and which, if he is a politician, he preaches) is, in fact, the desiccated relic of what was once the unself-conscious moral tradition of an aristocracy who, ignorant of ideals, had acquired a habit of behaviour in relation to one another and had handed it on in a true moral education.” (p. 35, emphasis added.)

English parliamentarianism had been governed by great families until the expansion of the franchise diluted their power.+ So, in one sense, Oakeshott agrees with Schumpeter that mass democracy separates too sharply the art of gaining power from the art of government. But unlike Schumpeter, Oakeshott leaves it to the reader to infer this. And unlike Strauss, who only a few years before had trumpeted the fact that there exists a systematic technique of conveying unpalatable truths, Oakeshott only mentions this in the context of a (1960) essay on Hobbes, where, in the context of analyzing Hobbes’ views on obligation, he writes, in “Numerous other writers on these topics (Plato, for example, Machiavelli and even Bentham) were the authors of works which contain at once, and imperfectly distinguished from one another, an esoteric and an exoteric doctrine; and the view that matters of this sort (indeed, political questions generally) are 'mysteries' to be discussed candidly and directly only with the initiated goes back to the beginnings of political speculation and was by no means dead in the seventeenth century.” (p. 288)

Why does this matter? To get there we need to go through another decoy (sorry). In the body of his essay, Oakeshott seems to suggest that the inexperience of democratic politicians leads to permanent “succession of crises,” (p. 5; also pp. 23, 31, 35). But while in one sense this is definitely something he implies, he thinks the very idea of political crises is itself the effect of seeing political life in terms ( we might say a scientific paradigm) of problems that need to be “solved.” That’s already clear on p. 5: “And [the Rationalist’s] politics are, in fact, the rational solution of those practical conundrums which the recognition of the sovereignty of the felt need perpetually creates in the life of a society.” (emphasis added.)

The really disastrous effect of inexperience is only mentioned in a footnote:

War, for example. War is a disease to which a rationalist society has little resistance; it springs easily from the kind of incompetence inherent in rationalist politics. But it has certainly increased the hold of the Rationalist disposition of mind on politics, and one of the disasters of war has been the now customary application to politics of its essentially rationalist vocabulary. (p. 28 n. 2)

I read Oakeshott as making three claims here: (i) unnecessary war is more likely in mass democracy because it is unable to prevent stumbling (‘incompetence’) into it; (ii) war itself generates the temptation to use incompetent forms of politics and (iii) so, in a perverse feedback-loop, entrenches mass democracy. If you need an example of this cycle just reflect on the politics of Israel — institutionally about as pure a mass democracy as one finds today — this past month.

Oakeshott publishes “Rationalism in Politics” in 1947. And, because he re-published it subsequently, it is incredibly tempting to treat his criticism of ‘Rationalism’ as a critique of the welfare state (‘The Beveridge Report’ is mentioned alongside ‘Vote for Women’) or as a contribution to cold war politics. But it is an essay born of the experience of World War II—he hints at this in a subsequent note, “The army in wartime was a particularly good opportunity of observing the difference between a trained and an educated man.” (p. 34 n. 2)

Not to put too fine point on it, Oakeshott doesn’t treat WWII as a great victory for England. But rather he sees it as a triumph for Rationalism, that is America, which (and now I quote slightly out of context) “represents the politics of the felt need interpreted with the aid of an ideology.” (p. 28)*

Perhaps, it’s wrong to treat the essay as an attack on mass democracy. Perhaps, it’s best to see it merely as a lament for an age that has passed. But that can’t be quite right because, as noted, Oakeshott’s essay is designed to offend popular pieties without naming their common cause. So, the real question that needs to be asked is who did Oakeshott think he was writing this essay for?

To be continued.

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+Clearly, government by a royalty is vulnerable to vagaries of chance putting an incompetent heir on the throne. Mass democracy will occasionally generate a preference for a political dynasty, but suffers from the same problem (as the Kennedy and Bush families have taught).

*The quoted passage is on the Declaration of independence, not America.