On Manent on Liberalism; with Montesquieu on polarization and patronage

If one pays attention to the flight of Hegelian owls, one might take the avalanche of works on the history of liberalism, alongside the political events of the last decade, as evidence that the age of liberalism has come to an end. That strikes me as premature. As regular readers know, I date the current crisis of liberalism to 2008/9 (recall here (I); here (II); here (III); here (IV); here (V); here (VI); here (VII); (VIII); here (IX) in an open-ended series (see also here, here, here, here; and here), but I also happen to think that crises are endogenous to liberalism.

Be that as it may Pierre Manent’s slender An Intellectual History of Liberalism originally dates from 1987 and the elegant translation of Rebecca Balinski was published in 1995. The Wikipedia page devoted to Manent suggests (not implausibly) that “his work has helped the rediscovery of the French liberal tradition.” It also claims (much less plausibly) that Manent is a “classical liberal.” I return to this point below.

In what follows, it is worth keeping in mind that Manent’s book was written before the end of the Cold War. In fact, Manent writes in a way to suggest that from the political right, liberalism has become intellectually unassailable. This theme is introduced in an unobtrusive endnote in the chapter on Rousseau:

Rousseau's attitude is based upon a certain insincerity, an insincerity that moreover will be quite frequent among the "reactionary" critics of liberalism. Liberal society is denigrated when it is contrasted with the supposed or real grandeur of the Greek city-state, or of feudality, or of the monarchy, but when the time comes to pass to practical measures, it is hastily made clear that there is no question of going back to the Greek city-state, or to feudality, or to monarchy.—p. 165, note 11.*

Here, it is suggested that even the reactionary critics turn out to embrace progress. These progress-accepting reactionaries are certain kind of republicans, aristocrats, and monarchists. Their historic role is to criticize liberalism, but not to offer a ‘substitute’ for it. (p. 72) Assuming that some of their criticism is perceptive, this represents a kind of fruitful domestication of reactionary forces within liberal life.

When Manent returns more visibly to this theme at the start of chapter 9 (which is on Guizot) it becomes clear that the quoted position in note 11 adopted by Manent in his own voice, is one that he also ascribes to Constant. In fact, he treats Constant as the inventor of the view. Manent writes:

[L]iberalism was essentially a negative or critical political doctrine, not a positive or founding one. This would prove to be the theme of the right-wing critics who attacked liberalism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. As Carl Schmitt put it, "there is no sui generis liberal politics, there is only a liberal critique of politics.”

This criticism would be unanswerable if it could not be turned equally against the right. And Constant, we have seen, already returned it by pointing out that the enemies of liberalism are in fact purely critical or polemical, that their apparently positive references are anachronisms, that they have no principles for offering a serious and sincere opposition to liberal individualism. One can add that the leftist critics of liberalism, in particular the Marxists, also conceived of themselves explicitly as critics. They proposed no new principles to counter those of liberalism; they simply turned its own principles against it, showing that liberalism, in the form of capitalism, "contradicts itself" and hence necessarily calls for a new, noncontradictory state of society, about which one can say nothing except that in it man will be reconciled with himself and with nature. p. 93-94

Manent, thus, goes beyond Constant by suggesting that left-wing critics of liberalism are de facto also fruitfully domesticated within liberal life. Not to put too fine point on it, here Manent anticipates Fukuyama’s famous end of history thesis (please read this post for my views on it). Of course, as the quote from Schmitt’s (French translation of) The Concept of the Political suggests, Manent draws on some of the same sources as Fukuyama: Schmitt and Strauss. (Not unlike Strauss, he treats Hobbes as de facto intellectual and conceptual founder of liberalism, despite Hobbes’ own preferences to the contrary.)

In fact, Manent’s whole history of liberalism is framed by the idea that liberalism itself is a response to the theological-political problem (chapter I). He treats liberalism as the effect of “bitter fight against Christianity, and particularly against the Catholic Church.” (p. xvii) This is why the first chapter is devoted to Machiavelli. Not because Christianity has overcome (as it is in Nietzsche’s philosophical prophecy), but because in liberalism “we can discern “Christianity "realizing" itself.” (p. 82)

The mention of Schmitt should alert the reader that there is an unmentioned alternative kind critic of liberalism. This critic rejects liberalism’s account of progress, but that has neither a wish to return to an unreachable past nor accepts the Marxist’s embrace of political equality. In fact, it rejects liberalism’s embrace of moral equality altogether. For convenience's sake, let’s call this the ‘Fascist option.’ This kind is willing to engage in real politics—say expelling a university and using force to redraw borders.

Manent makes it clear that he believes the Fascist is unanswerable, in principle. It’s one faith/intellectual will against another. To quote Fukayama (1989), "What destroyed fascism as an idea was not universal moral revulsion against it, since plenty of people were willing to endorse the idea as long as it seemed the wave of the future, but its lack of success." (p. 9) But lack of success may be forgotten or thought contingent. The dice can always be rolled again. So, in so far as Manent offers a history of liberalism, he hints fairly boldly at a vulnerability in its intellectual framework, one that Fukayama makes explicit. Let’s call this the ‘no recognized alternative framework.’

This vulnerability isn’t so much liberalism’s commitment to Constant’s sociological ideal of progress, but rather the thought that there are ‘lessons from history’ or ‘historical truths’ that prevent alternative political projects. Truth is, alas, never self-actualizing.

It’s worth noting, as an aside, that Foucault’s treatment of the evolution of liberalism’s art of government in his 1978 and 1979 lectures is a kind of response to this Schmittian understanding of liberalism. But about that some other time.

I could stop here, but I don’t want to leave you with the impression that there is nothing to learn from this book which ends its history with Tocqueville (and systematically ignores quite a bit of liberalism that preceded Tocqueville). I liked the chapter on Guizot, and it made me renew my interest in Montesquieu. In particular, there is a wonderful description of the inner dynamics, as it were, of how representative government (with some separation of powers) generates liberty. I won’t try to summarize Manent’s tracing out of this dynamics (which you should go read). Here’s his conclusion:

Thus such a regime produces a double impotence. The division of power leaves the citizens generally incapable of doing much to each other; conversely, citizens can easily make the power powerless by changing parties. The impotence of citizens and of power condition each other. This is ultimately what Montesquieu calls liberty. Since divided power can neither do much against the citizen (hence the feeling of security), nor for him (except for patronage) the citizen has only to "assert his independence whenever he pleases." He turns his desires and activities toward domains unfamiliar to politics, toward domains where strictly speaking one does not exercise power over other men. He can now earn money or write books: the economy and culture are the two great domains liberated by this double impotence.—p. 60

Manent is quoting here from Book XIX, chapter 27 of Spirit of the Laws (How the Laws contribute to form the Manners, Customs, and Character, of a Nation). And he treats this as an account of liberty in which it is a “neutralization of the political.” (p. 60) Note, again, the Schmittian framework. For Manent, the lesson of Montesquieu is that people are encouraged to engage in entertainment or grow rich.

I was curious what Montesquieu says there about patronage (because (recall) of my recent interest in Hume’s and Smith’s defense of it). I quote:

Since in this state there would be two visible powers, legislative power and executive power, and as each citizen would have his own will and would value his independence according to his taste, most people would have more affection for one of these powers than for the other, as the multitude is ordinarily not fair or sensible enough to have equal affection for both of them.

And, as the executive power, which has all the posts at its disposal, could furnish great expectations but not fears, all those who would obtain something from it would be inclined to move to that side, and it could be attacked by all those who could expect nothing from it.

As all the passions are free there, hatred, envy, jealousy, and the ardor for enriching and distinguishing oneself would appear to their full extent, and if this were otherwise, the state would be like a man who, laid low by disease, has no passions because he has no strength.

The hatred between the two parties would endure because it would always be powerless.—p. 325 in Anne M. Cohler’s (CUP) translation*

So, much to my surprise — I tend to think of Montesquieu as at least somewhat worried about corruption midway, as he is, between Spinoza and Rousseau — Montesquieu also defends the utility of patronage in a representative government. But he does on different grounds than Hume and Smith. For Hume, especially, patronage is a means for the executive to get things done in parliament in the face of everyone’s self-interest to free-ride (and not to have to pay taxes).

Obviously, this is compatible with Montesquieu’s position. But there is also, let’s call it a secondary effect, from the existence of patronage that Montesquieu is diagnosing. In virtue of the fact that government is de facto a spoils system, it generates vivacity to the whole body politic which is now permanently in motion. And that’s a great thing.

In fact, Montesquieu here domesticates Machiavelli’s insight (at the start of Discourses on Livy) that a society doesn’t need harmony, but requires some kind of (what I like to call) ‘creative turbulence.’ (In Ancient Rome, this was the tumult that accompanied the durable class conflict between patricians and plebs.) During the eighteenth century, Mandeville is the most satirical and notorious defender of a version of this position.

Obviously, it comes with an unpleasant side-effect: the permanent state of polarization of society. The good news is that what one is polarized about is quite contingent.

I was especially struck by the fact that Montesquieu insists that the full diversity of human passion is unrestrained, and in particular ambitious desire for honours is awoken through this mechanism. Somewhat oddly, Manent also quotes that sentence, but in the chapter on Rousseau (pp. 70-1), in order to articulate Rousseau’s criticism that Montesquieu accepts “the institutionalization of human debasement.” (p. 71)

And, in fact Manent inscribes this material in the ‘no recognized alternative framework’ I diagnosed above:

It would be highly presumptuous of anyone to decide hastily between Montesquieu and Rousseau. Rousseau's strength lies in the extraordinary persuasiveness of his description of modern man, to which we owe some of the most powerful achievements of modern literature. Montesquieu's strength is less dazzling, but no less convincing in the end: he proves that there is no desirable substitute for liberalism. Absolutism, of which the French monarchy represented the perfected example, could no longer be a real possibility.—p. 71 (emphasis added)

Now, if we put two-and-two together, it’s pretty clear then that Manent accepts Rousseau’s (purported) charge that Montesquieu debases human nature. This is, as the Straussians would say, liberalism’s lowered sights. And, so as long as one accepts desirability as authoritative, liberalism is secure. (Of course, the status of this proof is as solid as the axioms from which it is derived.)

Here, Manent quietly glides over Montesquieu’s diagnosis that ardor for distinction (the ambitious desire for honour) is possible in a regime characterized by modern liberty. As Hobbes, no less, teaches, these are the men that pursue dangerous politics. So, it would be a mistake to treat Montesquieu as guilty of the charge put in Rousseau’s mouth here.

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*I haven’t checked the French.