On Burkean Marxism

“We are afraid to put men to live and trade each on his own private stock of reason; because we suspect that this stock in each man is small, and that the individuals would do better to avail themselves of the general bank and capital of nations and of ages.” Commenters on a recent post of mine have pointed out that my awareness of individuals’ limited cognition echoes that famous claim of Edmund Burke, and wonder how a Marxist can express such a sentiment.

The question’s a good one. Anyone who doesn’t feel the force of Burke’s point is a bumptious prat who knows nothing of history, politics or psychology. If Burke and Marx are incompatible, that’s bad for Marx.

But are they incompatible? Perhaps not.

First, a distinction. We Marxists are fighting both defensive battles (against inequality and reaction) and offensive ones. In the defensive battles, we are and have been certainly on the side of Burke whilst the right is against him. For example, Harry Braverman’s account of deskilling by Taylorite management is a defence of traditional craft knowledge against a form of rationalism. Our support of coal mining communities against the Thatcherite attack in the 1980s was a defence of Burkean small platoons against sophists and calculators. And our resistance to the managerialist-neoliberal attempt to revolutionize universities is a Burkean defence of tradition against arrogant know-alls.

In these respects, Marxists are the Burkeans and neoliberals and Tories have been the anti-Burkeans.

There’s more. One reason why I’m a Marxist is that I doubt that capitalism can be greatly improved by moderate reforms. That arises from a Burkean scepticism about rationalist scheming.

Which runs into the question: isn’t communism the most hubristic rationalist scheme of all? Isn’t there therefore a flat contradiction between Marx and Burke?

Not necessarily. Except for a few policy proposals in the Communist Manifesto (some of which were subsequently enacted) Marx notoriously did not provide a blueprint for a communist society and was rude about those who did. Instead, he wrote:

We do not anticipate the world dogmatically, but rather wish to find the new world through the criticism of the old…We do not confront the world in a doctrinaire way with a new principle: Here is the truth, kneel down before it! We develop new principles for the world out of the world’s own principles.

Burke wrote that “the individual is foolish, but the species is wise” – a claim we now know to be true only under special conditions. You can read those words of Marx as seeing the process of socialism as an attempt to unlock the wisdom of the species.

Many leftists today think of the transition to socialism in these terms. Erik Olin Wright has written (pdf) of “interstitial transformation” – building and then expanding socialistic institutions. In this spirit Paul Mason has written:

Capitalism, it turns out, will not be abolished by forced-march techniques. It will be abolished by creating something more dynamic that exists, at first, almost unseen within the old system, but which will break through, reshaping the economy around new values and behaviours.

In this sense, the transition to socialism will be a modest process of trial and error. That’s consistent with a Burkean scepticism about our ability to foresee what will work.

There’s something else. A big gripe Marxists have with capitalism is that it is a system of domination; in the workplace and in politics, only a few have effective power. By contrast, under communism such domination will cease; communism is a society “in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.” In this sense, communism replaces the rule of foolish individuals with that of the wise species. It therefore facilitates Burkeanism in a way which capitalism cannot.

Of course, Burkean epistemology has often been used as a tool of reaction and conservatism. But it needn’t be so.

Comments

[The Philosopher]

Burke is right that we can't cognitively know how to be social engineers.

But we can trial and error with iteration.

Burke is wrong that we can't diagnose what went wrong in the past with enough research in a rationalist manner.

If you can diagnose what went wrong in the past. This doesn't necessarily mean you can build a model of how not to be wrong in the future. Hence the fund manager health warnings.

How would Burke feel about interracial marriage?

Did the ((Frankfurt School)) of postmodernism (and post geneticism, and post genderism, and post anything ism except for Israel's right to be the only war on theatre terrorism country with walls around it, blood citizenship and no right of return for Ethiopian Jews - ism work?

[The Philosopher]

Would Burke being alive and watching TV ads with black man white woman couples (never any other racial combo, blacks <2% of population, yet 40% of ads...your illusion is fading) join us on the Alt - Right?

Burke believed in sanctity. That is related to amygdala. Those without amygdala instinct protection endorse open borders and enjoy watching Star Wars become cucked.

Cos they weren't meant to be good at the Struggle off the Will.

They were bred to make widget for Master.

[Dave Hansell]

Provided of course that the analysis is sufficiently robust to accurately identify the relevant factors of what went wrong in the past.

The record of the AUPSL&OPTP so far on this matter is not encouraging, preferring to conclude what it aims to deduce by fixating on its favourite fetishism about racial and genetic purity and blaming immigration being the source of all our ills, lost jobs, decreased wages etc in its usual reductionist way whilst ignoring the transfer of resources from all the offshoring and rentier financialisation which has been taking place during the neo liberal era.

The selective use of Burke for a rigid approach to change, using only those writings which suit a specific position, might well have drawn raised eyebrows from the man himself who, whilst a champion of evolution rather than revolution and gradual change based on prior tradition was nowhere near as rigid as some of his self styled contemporary acolytes. Indeed, what would Burke think of a whole raft of modern day taken for granted aspects of today's society from the universal franchise, votes for women, and trades unions through to the Geneva Convention, Universal Human Rights and the idea of good old fashioned good manners in the form of the traditional Christian teaching of treating others as one would treat oneself as can be found in the modern notion of equal treatment and equal rights?

Let's ask the man himself shall we:

"Our late experience has taught us that many of those fundamental principles formally believed infallible are either not of the importance we imagined them to be, or that we have not at all averted to some other far more important and far more powerful principles which entirely overrule those we had considered omnipotent. "

Edmund Burke - Speech on moving resolutions for conciliation with the colonists, March 22, 1775. Source: Selected Writings, 196.

What Burke is saying here is firstly that in his, the Burkian view, that what at the present time are considered to be fundamental principles are not immune to revision or criticism based on lessons learned from experience. Secondly, our continuing experience more often than not demonstrate that current operating principles are subordinate to even more fundamental principles that overrule them.

There is no way that this can be interpreted in any way as an argument for any static form of Governing philosophy. Quite the reverse. First and foremost Burke was a product and child of the Enlightenment rather than some rigid traditionalism founded in some half baked pseudo philosophy of traditional tribal, racial, genetic or cultural purity.

On that basis the answer to the question posed about what Burke would think of interracial marriage is certainly unlikely to be what the AUPSL&OPTP and its fellow travellers want it to be.

Someone here is certainly terminally confused as to who it is actually making widgets for Master. To paraphrase Marley, free yourself from the mental slavery of the easy option of scapegoating others for all the ills of the world.

[Dave Timoney]

Nice try, but I doubt that Burke can really be reconciled with Marx. The key part of the opening quote is "the general bank and capital of nations and of ages". Burke isn't trusting the species but the accumulated wisdom of earlier generations. As Thomas Paine noted at the time, this is merely another form of tyranny: of the past over the present.

Marx's point is that policy must arise from the world "as we find it". This is not merely a gesture towards a positivist worldview, but a recognition that tradition can have no claim: "All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind".

Mason's postcapitalist hope is just an update on the gravedigger of the bourgeoisie, replacing the industrial proletariat with digital technology and some vague idea that we can hack the gig economy. Just as the concentration of labour was thought to herald the inevitable end of the bourgeoisie, so the diffusion of labour may do the same. Colour me sceptical.

[David]

We all have amygdala protection, with all of its emotional joys and fears.... but...

"Fear producing visual stimuli are quickly processed by the thalamus and this information is passed to the amygdala producing a quick response to danger. The thalamus also passes the information to the cortex so that more careful (and slower) judgments can be made about the real potential danger."
http://neuroscience.uth.tmc.edu/s4/chapter06.html

So how does the Cortex get involved?

"The cerebral cortex plays a key role in memory, attention, perception, awareness, thought, language, and consciousness."

And so humans that think a little about the world around them, becoming aware and perceptive, can learn to be less fearful of "dangers" such as open borders.... unless their amygdala is constantly aroused only by the language of the Daily Mail.

George Eliot summed it up rather well a long time back......

"But to minds strongly marked by the positive and negative qualities that create severity - strength of will, conscious rectitude of purpose, narrowness of imagination and intellect, great power of self-control, and a disposition to exert control over others - prejudices come as the natural food of tendencies which can get no sustenance out of that complex, fragmentary, doubt-provoking knowledge which we call truth. Let a prejudice be bequeathed, carried in the air, adopted by hearsay, caught in through the eye - however it may come, these minds will give it habitation: it is something to assert strongly and bravely, something to fill up the void of spontaneous ideas, something to impose on others with the authority of conscious right: it is at once a staff and a baton. Every prejudice that will answer these purposes is self-evident."

David.

[The Philosopher]

The cortex can be manipulated.

Our expert media is doing a fine job.

That is why the West has spent $6tr in wars for the House of Zion and the House of Saud (and they will never end until Persia is eliminated and a gentile bribed or physical imperial force stays in Eygpt, Libya, Yemen, Iraq, Lebanon, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Somalia, Sudan and Iran to keep their lebensraum). Thank god for Muscovy.

"You may write our history books. You may convince me there are no differences between races. You may hypnotise me with made up trigger words joined to negative imagery in my formative years using Bernays techniques. You may debase our daughters. And send my son to fight the Musul-man"

But you can never, take.

MY AMYGDALA!!!!!

(Raise up your kilts, and face buttcheek outwards)

[The Philosopher]

"Undocumented immigrants"

"Guest worker"

"refugee"

"DREAMER"

"skilled worker arrival"

Why use Orwellian language Mr Rotschild Economist if they are such an amazingly great proposition?

ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT

INVADER

MARAUDER

Did you know Lord Evelyn has a publicly noted wealth of £20b but is never near the Forbes or Sunday Times List?

He also owns The Economist.

Hilary took 4 days out of her campaign to visit him. His wife emails her directly about how the Economist is going to brainwash 'geniuses' like you guys with framed info and dodgy data.

The Economist: "Open Borders. Good. Opposition to OB =hate crime. Israel wall good. American Wall. Racist. Ethiopioan Jew - dirty animal. Non black jew - "God's people.

IS YOUR ILLUSION STARTING TO FADE CHATTERING MAN?

[Kevin Carson]

Nice to see that alt right human garbage is posting here without being shunned.

[Felix FitzRoy]

You 'doubt that capitalism can be greatly improved' but the capitalist Nordic social democracies do miles better than neoliberal UK and US on every indicator of well-being, with much higher taxes that are generally accepted.

[begob]

Burke came out of the oppression of Catholic Ireland - emphasised by Cruise O'Brien in his biog - and fought a painful battle against Warren Hastings' corruption in India. I guess he would oppose any abuse, even if rooted in tradition.

[marcel proust]

A big gripe Marxists have with capitalism is that it is a system of domination; in the workplace and in politics, only a few have effective power. By contrast, under communism such domination will cease;

Galbraith expressed some skepticism on this point: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/j/johnkennet122383.html

[Dave Hansell]

"There must be some kind of way outta here
Said the joker to the thief
There's too much confusion
I can't get no relief"

All Along the Watchtower. Bob Dylan.

And there is no bigger confusion in the minds of those from the Amalgamated Union of Philosophers, Sages, Luminaries and Other Professional Thinking People than what exactly is meant by open borders in actual practice.

Whinging like a bunch of mardy arsed five year olds, denied their sugar rush at the supermarket checkout counter by the grown ups, about the millions of jobs lost over the past four decades and the undermining of wage levels by Master from Open Borders for Capital transferring those jobs and industries to third world free enterprise zone sweatshops and attacking labour unions they give Master a free ride by scapegoating fellow human beings pretending that the Open Borders problem is about the "other", the non "native", coming over rather than recognise they have been spoon fed these ideas to provide cover for Master transferring everything abroad and pocketing the money through Open Borders for Capital.

Whose a good little dog? Listen for Masters dog whistle and stick your fingers in your ears whilst parroting la la la la la la la lest pesky facts get in the way; like two million Latinos ejected from the US under the Great White Hope Obama; most of the immigration figures into the UK being from outside the EU and therefore under the control of Westminster rather than Brussels, whilst including many students studying in the UK who not only subsidise 'native' students through the higher fees foreign students pay but many of whom leave once their studies have concluded; or that it works both ways with millions of UK Citizens benefitting by working and/or studying across Europe.

The best that can be said is that it is at least entertaining, in a pathetic sort of way, watching Masters minions coming on here trying desperately to believe in six impossible things before breakfast.

But as for real life, well, don't talk to them about life!

[Achim]

When Marx says that "The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his “natural superiors”, and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous “cash payment”.", he does not seem to mean this negatively. So not all of your defensive battles may be "Marxist".