Latest / Comps List Radio / Episode 5: Louis Hartz, "Liberal Tradition in America," 1955

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Episode 5: Louis Hartz, "Liberal Tradition in America," 1955 · Comps List Radio

• Robert Ferguson: Hello and welcome to H-Poll's, again, by this point, serial podcast. We've been going here for five or six episodes. ⁓ Clomps List Radio, thank you very much for joining in and thank you for everybody who's liked and subscribed to this podcast. Please do tell your friends, tell your colleagues, tell people in the grad students in your history departments. I think we're providing a lot of value here. We've gotten some Excellent feedback. And anyway, we're just happy to have you aboard. ⁓ I'm joined today by my co-host, Marie Totten at the University of Central Arkansas. Marie, how is Conway, Arkansas now that we are truly into March? Yes, all good here. We did have a tornado warning yesterday, but the excitement is over and it's a beautiful, very cool, but beautiful March day. How are things in Arizona? We are going into the first heat wave of the year. here. We are expecting three days over 100 degrees this week. ⁓ wow. Yeah. And it is warm. It's also a little early for this amount of warmth. So ⁓ there's a lot of people, a lot of snowbirds still in town for spring training. And so because of that, there's been a lot of ⁓ issues. People were just not prepared for it. They're used to it being like, you know, all winter long, you can, you don't need to prepare for the heat here. Even if it's warm, you don't need to prepare for it. But you know, what you don't realize is when it's a hundred degrees in the desert, you're getting dehydrated and you don't feel it. Right. Here the hundred degrees is humid. So, you know, it's coming, but I have heard it's dry where he's there. Yeah. Yeah. Which it makes it a lot more bearable and a lot more comfortable, but at the same time it's, it's you're being dehydrated and you don't even necessarily realize it. But anyway, enough about my meteorological. premonitions. ⁓ We are today we have a really interesting book on deck, one that I've been meaning to read for a very, long time and never read in my university education. So ⁓ Marie, I don't think you read this one either, did you? No, no, no to me. Okay, so this is one of those books that, although again, I think we don't really, you know, it doesn't really get read much anymore. It casts a very long shadow. And people today are wrestling with this book, even though they don't even know they're wrestling with this book. This is Lewis Hartz's, The Liberal Tradition in America, written in 1955, published in 1955, I should say. ⁓ And ⁓ this might, I don't know that this is the apogee of the consensus school of American history, but it's probably pretty close to it. Yes. I think Hofstadter came first, but I think Hartz may be right behind him. Right. And I mean, I don't, and again, I mean, I think I, when we talked about Hofstadter on the earlier episode, I think we kind of quibbled, is this consensus school? I don't know if it's consensus school or not. Right. And I can understand why Hofstadter would have resented the notion of being consensus school. Hartz wouldn't resent that. He leans in. He leans it and he's very critical of it. Right. But he is, he is very arguing that America operates in a, you know, that there is a consensus over liberalism in American society and in American political history. Absolutely. And that the political battles that are fought are fought between different camps of liberalism. To our detriment. In his mind towards, yeah. And he would say at least intellectually to our dad. ⁓ and he, ⁓ but anyway, Marie, maybe you could, we could talk a little, I think we should talk a little bit more about the consensus school because again, I think that for the most part, consensus school histories are now absent on most comps lists. And, ⁓ and we've got Schlesinger in a few weeks, so he's kind of another, you know, quasi example of consensus school. So maybe, maybe this would be a good for an introduction, for an introduction into it. Marie, are you able to do that? Yeah. Yeah. So, ⁓ This is ⁓ the Consensus School to Grouping of Historians. Hofstadter Hartz and Borstein are the first three major Consensus School Historians. And they're writing in the late 40s and throughout the early 50s. And they're pushing back against these, the progressive historians of the generation before them, like Beard, ⁓ which I'm sure someday we'll talk about the Beardian School and the progressive historians as well. ⁓ But the progressive historians emphasize conflict, class struggle, economic interests as these motors for American history. The consensus school said that underneath all of that apparent conflict really is this stable agreement on fundamentals. So the Lockean liberalism, property, individual rights, liberal democracy. ⁓ And so, you you have these conflicts, but they're being argued in this very narrow ideological range. And they're explaining, the consensus historians are explaining that range. They're not debating, know, Lockean liberalism is the consensus, but the arguments going on within that framework are what the consensus historians look at. I also thought it was interesting that this school really emerged during the second Red Scare McCarthyism era. And some of these scholars had been more left leaning early and had become disillusioned with that and had come to see that there was no alternative. or they believe there was no alternative to this lock in liberalism in American society. And so they are responding to what they see around them. I mean, I think the last chapter of Hartz's book, ⁓ where he really, ⁓ emphasizes the cold, really emphasizes the cold war environment. And it wasn't until I read that last chapter that I really kind of figured here's why he's writing it. Here's really what's influencing him. and that it is this, ⁓ not just the McCarthyism, but the Cold War generally, where he is seeing that the United, he really, he has no love for the Soviet Union. He's a family of Russian emigre Jews who grew up in Ohio, but no love for the Soviet Union, really hates Stalin, and really. and is worried about the imperialist designs of the Soviet Union recognizes that the United States is probably the only geopolitical force counterweight to that. But he says the American liberal tradition means that it is entirely incapable of understanding the perspectives of people around the world who are a threat of Soviet domination. Right. that the Soviets probably under might understand them a little better than we do. Right. Right. That we don't even know that we're, we've always had this tradition from the very foundation. And so we're not even aware that that is our ideology. So we can't look at other ideologies in the same way that they can look at us because they've had to fight for that. And that's part of their memory. And, ⁓ and we don't have that. Right. ⁓ okay. So what is, you know, ⁓ in your mind, Marie, what did you see as sort of the main, other than the fact that the United States is opera operates within a ⁓ narrow band of political theory and political conflict. Why, what's your sense on, and why hearts thinks that's the case. Why Hartz thinks that we operate in this narrow band. Well, he's taking these different philosophers and he's synthesizing their arguments and he's saying we never had a feudalism in the country. So we never had anything to fight back against. We never had any true conservative forces like Berkey and conservative forces to actually fight for, you know, return to feudalism. We also never had a true socialism in the country. And that wasn't possible because we never had a proletariat that wanted to rise up and take, you know, take over the government. So we never had those extremes. And he's looking at Burke and Marx to determine that. And so because of that, we, we, we're stuck in this Lockean liberalism, like Locke was America, he says at one point. Yeah. He makes a really interesting point early on in the book. And yeah, I mean, I, I, I agree that. He argues that the thing that makes, ⁓ you know, this word makes people uncomfortable. There were this phrase makes people uncomfortable. I don't necessarily think that it should, but ⁓ you know, what does make the United States exceptional? And this doesn't necessarily mean exceptionally good or exceptionally bad. He just legitimately means exceptional is that that lack of feudal tradition. And that, the, ⁓ and he argues that ⁓ A lot of the time, although Marxists claim that their battle is against capitalism, he's arguing that in most senses they're actually fighting against forms of feudalism. Right. And that there's a blending of feudalism and capitalism in some instances. And in those cases, that's where ⁓ the Marxist attacks are often the most effective, or at least on the political side, if not the intellectual side. And so, ⁓ you know, and just kind of make sense if you realize, when you realize that Marx assumed that the communist revolution was most likely to happen in England or Germany or in West Germany where, in Western Germany, where capitalism was the most advanced in the world. But of course, communism succeeds in Russia. And that's always been a, you know, that was always a problem for Lenin. That was always an intellectual problem for so many of the socialist philosophers. how do we account for the fact that in fact, communism's greatest successes have happened in places that were like the least capitalist. know, China would be another example of the 1940s. So if you in Hartz's mind, he's saying, actually, they're fighting against feudalism. Right. And that age is a feudalism, if not feudalism itself, but vestiges of feudalism. And I mean, he's not, you know, he's writing in 1955. I think if he was writing in the 1970s, he'd even be on firmer ground there intellectually because the Maoist movement has had time to kind of flourish. And Maoism is more ostensibly opposed to feudalism than, and that's because of its, you know, more peasant background. than the Marxist cosmopolitan urban form. Right. Communism. so Hartz is arguing that, in fact, it's because there is no feudal tradition in America, you really cannot get that socialist tradition too. So in fact, the radical or the reactionary right and the socialist left, ⁓ cannot exist without the other. Right. And that the absence of one predetermines the absence of the other. And so what I thought was really fascinating about this book and not what I was expecting was that ⁓ Hart spent several chapters dealing with the right wing intellectual movements and explaining why the right wing intellectual movements have virtually no ability to sustain themselves in American history. American history. And he's using that to explain this is why the left can't either. Right. You need that opposition. Right. You know, the conditions that prevent the flourishing of a reactionary political movement in the United States are the same conditions that prevent the flourishing of a socialist movement in the United States. Yes. And that fundamentally that issue is the lack of a feudal origin story. Origins. Right. Right. Now, I mean, I think that there's room to criticize that notion, especially when we're dealing with land policy in the United States South. Yes. And you've got, but I mean, however, I will say that you probably see the most, most subsets for left-wing radical movements in the United States are in places that look the most like feudalism. Long term for sure. Right. mean, I'm looking at, I'm thinking of places like, ⁓ you know, company towns. Right. mean, it's, know, I, I don't believe in playing the semantical game of whether something is, is that cup at least, or is that feudalist? mean, there's a lot of kids that there's a whole cottage industry of that. I'm not particularly interested in it. mean, we're going to talk, I think about Genovese in several months that we can get into that there too. those categories matter to Marxist historians. They don't really matter to me much, but what I do think is important to note is that these are places where in American economic history, the most coercion occurred, the most naked coercion occurred. And if we take a look at company towns, for instance, where the coercion was very clear and very apparent, it wasn't subtle. Right. You know, it's more subtle in cities. It's more, you know, people can talk about the urban proletariat in the United States, they certainly existed as a class. And their experience being, you know, working for, you know, as wage slaves or, or whatever you want to call them. That was a less direct coercion than if you lived in a company town, you were paid in script, you were expected to work, you to buy at the company store. ⁓ that's a more naked coercion. And unsurprisingly, this is where a lot of the radical, you know, or they were in mining towns in the West. And these are the places where you see the most coercion. And unsurprisingly, you get the greatest revolutionary fervor. in American history. ⁓ There were communist movements among black communities in the American South. Some of them, I mean, I think they're overplayed by some scholars, but they were definitely there. ⁓ And so there's definitely a radical sense of thought there and that's where coercion was the most evident. Right. Who's not saying these things didn't exist. He's just saying, They don't exist. They exist in these pockets, but they never fully like take over the government in a way. Yeah. Just like if we think about slave societies in the American South, I mean, he's saying that this is the closest to feudalism where that's what they're trying to do. But then you have the civil war and that's defeated. So he very conveniently kind of, and I think that's one of the things that gets a lot of criticism for is he very conveniently kind of washes over. slavery and goes straight to the Civil War and says, okay, these ideas were ultimately defeated. So liberalism won. This lock in liberalism won once again. Yeah. But I mean, I think he's speaking into, this is an intellectual history. It's not a social history. Absolutely. Right. And so, I mean, I think he, he's speaking in intellectual terms. And I think if you want to say he doesn't take the actual horrors of slavery seriously enough, that there's no doubt about that, but that's not what he's trying to do. This is an intellectual history, right? And, ⁓ you know, for instance, I mean, if you were to, ⁓ you know, he doesn't take the history of, you know, there is some intellectual, there is intellectual thought going, and we see these in the slave narratives and that kind of thing. And I'm sure if you were to really he talks a lot about Calhoun. He talks about John Calhoun throughout, right? Right. And so, but it's in service... to his argument of why there is no, he presents the 1840s and 1850s ⁓ in the American South as the one time where you actually have a a legitimate widespread reactionary intellectual movement. Right. And he's particularly pointing to Calhoun and Fitzhugh. But he argues that because they're in America, they never really work. intellectually, purely from a theoretical coherent perspective. mean, they were able to whip slaves. were able to do terrible things to people. from a, from an actual coherent intellectual perspective, they were always ⁓ kneecapped by the fact that they were in America. Right. They could never make the same kind of like a reactionary connections that a mask. Mest had far more freedom because he was talking about France and trying to recover bourbonism. Right. He had a far greater field and flexibility as to what he could talk about. Whereas in the American South, you get Calhoun and Fitzhugh. they are like Calhoun. ⁓ Hearts makes fun of Calhoun a lot. And one of the things that he makes fun of them for is that Calhoun is still a slave to constitutionalism. And how can you be a reactionary and a slave to constitutionalism? Yeah, he's making the argument of look, he's making these this reactionary argument from a legalistic perspective. And then at the same time, he's also saying things like, well, we need free trade. And he's like, hold on, you can't be a reactionary and be for free trade. You're good. That's going to fall apart. Right. And so ⁓ whereas he points to Fitzhugh and he says Fitzhugh is actually kind of a more natural reactionary and he kind of fits more better into the American tradition. And one thing that he suggests that, and for those of you who don't know, mean, Maria, you, I mean, we're both 20th century Southern scholars and we're not intellectual historians, I don't think. Yes. So ⁓ how's your Fitzhugh? ⁓ I'm not as well versed in Fitzhugh as you may be, since you've got a little bit more experience with- Well, for experience- Sorry, before we jumped on, I I was gonna say they have taught some American political theory in the last year, so I'm a little more familiar with the history of American political thought, but Fitz who doesn't make it into the syllabus. But he is this interesting figure in American intellectual history. But he's kind of a camp of one. He doesn't really have followers as far as I know. Maybe he might have a few sympathizers, but you know, he certainly writes a lot, but he's not a... ⁓ You know, he's a, I don't know very many people who truly like, are actually followers of Fitzhugh. think it's just him. He's idiosyncratic. He's like this weird eccentric. Right. you know, so for he, Fitzhugh writes probably his most famous book is Cannibal's All. ⁓ And he's writing in the 1850s in the American South and Fitzhugh is more of a true reactionary in the sense that he doesn't think we should just stop enslaving Africans. He thinks that the American South should just enslave anybody who's poor. Because that's better for people. It gives them purpose, it stops them from being listless, it makes it productive, it creates more orderly society. So he doesn't really, you know, again, one of the things that kind of makes him unique Is that he's, I'm sure he was quite racist. He was, but he's his political movement is not the racial theory of so many of the other, ⁓ southerners at the time. It's more slavery is the positive good. it fits you that you first uses the term, ⁓ the wage slave, the talking about the negative, ⁓ like, like you're talking about the company towns or the mills. talking about how Northern wage slaves are actually worse off than enslaved African Americans. He definitely talks about that. don't know that he's the first. It might be John Henry Hammond. Okay. It's one of those guys anyway. There's a small constellation of thinkers like that, but nobody goes as far as this. Right. He was out on an island. Right. And Hartz talks about this too. But one of the things that Hartz You know, and he's purely talking intellectually. He's not talking morally or anything like that. He's purely speaking intellectually. Right. He gives Fitzhugh credit for at least being generally like a, a true reactionary in the sense that he's not possessed by American. Like he's not, he's not held prisoner by his Americanism intellectually. He's able to think in bigger terms. It's like, whereas Calhoun is constrained by his Americanism. Ultimately, he's thinking in terms of the Constitution as a social contract. He's thinking of, ⁓ you know, what are the legal justifications for nullification or the legal justifications for, you know, eventually for secession. ⁓ You know, he's pointing to the Kentucky and Virginia declaration. know, he's not, Fitzhugh doesn't worry about things like that. No. Right, right. And so, you know, Fitzhugh is in some ways like the opposite of Garrison. He might actually be the more, because Garrison doesn't really feel constrained by legalism either in the North. I like that. I like that comparison. And think that works. Fitzhugh sort of says, listen, you know, I know I'm right about capitalism and about the Northeast because all of the most ardent abolitionists are also trying to socially reform the North. If the North was so perfect, why do they need social reform? Right? I'm here saying the South doesn't need social reform. It just needs more slavery. Right. ⁓ So, Hartz talks a lot about that. So Hartz really distinguishes Fitzhugh from Calhoun. And he says that this is really the only period in American history where you actually do have a reactionary intellectual movement. And it's mostly concentrated in the American South ⁓ as a justification, generally justification for slavery. And again, slavery becomes a positive good order becomes a positive good. But he says, but even in the end Fitzhugh can't truly escape his Americanism because he's not trying to recover some bourbonists, some bourbon monarchy or some Stuart monarchy. Right. he didn't have the support for it. Like you said, he's kind of an ideologue and he's got a following of no one. Where Calhoun has seen and he writes this, the darling of the reactionaries at the time and then in history, even though Ashart's is saying, no, he's not a true reactionary. He's trying to find these frameworks in the constitution. Right. Calhoun still tried to be president. Right. know, Fitzgerald's not trying to be Of the existing country. Not a completely new country. Yeah. He died before the Civil War. He can't really conceptualize a confederacy. Right? ⁓ so, but I think his point there is really, is really interesting that there's this one period of flourishing of reactionary thought in the United States. and again, Hartz is not, I want to be, you know, it's, it's Hartz is playing intellectual games here. He's purely dealing in a political theorist mindset. He's not concerned about the consequences of this thinking. In the last chapter, talks about the importance of like, he's a liberal. He talks about the importance of liberalism, but he's worried that, ⁓ and he would certainly not sympathize with anybody who's a reactionary thinker in the old South. But what he's concerned about is that American, the American liberal, ⁓ for those of you who aren't watching, who are listening, I'm putting my hands out there to kind of present like a box, right? Like there's a little box that. that prevents American thinkers from having the creativity to be able and the empathy to be able to understand people who have a very different history. Right. And to be able to respond to those people. And that's what he's saying in the Cold War with McCarthyism is that because we can't conceptualize that we're not responding to it well. Right. And that's what he's saying there. Yes. Right. And so because even this floor, this reactionary flourishing that predates the Civil War in the antebellum south, for the most part is rallying around Calhoun, which is a very American form, which he's like, it's a very American form of reactionaryism. It's not really particularly, and he's like, it's not particularly reactionary, it's just racist. Right. ⁓ Whereas Fitzhugh, who is far more reactionary, and you could find a person like a Fitzhugh around the world. generally speaking, whereas Calhoun, he's arguing Calhoun would be hard to find anywhere else. Calhoun is a product of America. ⁓ And I think this is ⁓ where he says that in the American tradition that the, what you might call a radical right, however far you want to go with that, But the more extreme right-wing positions have tended to follow Spencer more than they've tended to follow like messed because that Spencer's social Darwinism ⁓ is more, I think, consistent with the American experience rather than an inherited birthright aristocracy. Right. Absolutely. Their aristocracy isn't here to defend itself where you do have that idea of If you work hard and you are like this Horatio Alger myth that he talks about throughout the book, but you can pull yourself up. You can go from rags to riches and you are in a way, know, Spencer saying, if you're at the top, then you deserve to be there. If you've pulled yourself up, you deserve to be there. There's something inherently good about you. And that's the American exceptionalism in a way, maybe not the way you were talking about exceptional earlier, but that's the ideology there. And so. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. think that's exactly it. And I'm glad you brought up Alger because that's, you know, a part of his whole ⁓ discussion here is like the myth of Alger. Right. And that Americans are no matter who they are from the furthest right-wing person to the furthest left-wing person still like still kind of have this myth of heratio Alger. Right. For the myth he creates, right, in these books that he writes, this rags, riches sort. I really enjoyed learning about Horatio Alger and the influence he had, because we hear this rags to riches part of being American, like this is such an American idea, and it does in a way keep socialism at bay, because anybody can pull themselves up. And Alger is writing about ⁓ these young poor boys in urban areas who make it. And so what an inspiration and what a way to tamp down on those potential socialist feelings there. I mean, that's the one thing about America is that, ⁓ you know, whether the odds are in your favor or not, there's always an Andrew Carnegie story to tell. Exactly. Right. And, ⁓ whereas, know, because That's not true the rest the world. Right. And we don't have that aristocracy. Right. That blocks that. There is an aristocracy that blocks the parvenu, right, in other societies. And the parvenu is not blocked in American society. Right. Right. And he brings in the idea of American wickery. So it's not that there's an attempt. There's an attempt to do that. It's just not going to work here. because we do believe in individual rights. We believe in those ideas of law. let's, you know, we talk about Hofstadter a few weeks ago. It's probably a good time to bring in, ⁓ you know, Hartz is not just making an intellectual argument here. It is a history and it goes to change over time. It's very apparent in this book. Maybe it's worth talking about, ⁓ you know, in American history, I think that he sort of points to like the aristocratic tradition or what resented as an aristocratic tradition, which she believes was a false aristocratic tradition and maybe a false aristocratic consciousness, was associated with high federalism. of Alexander Hamilton and the people that maybe more, maybe more so the people that followed him rather than Alexander Hamilton itself. ⁓ you buy that? I buy his argument that Jefferson and Jackson ultimately won out. I think it's right that there's only so far that the Whig tradition, that high federalist tradition, the way he talks about it early on, ⁓ can go without an aristocracy, without something to push back against it. And so when he talks about the more liberal traditions of Jefferson and Jackson ultimately winning out, you have more democracy through both of them in different ways. I think I buy more into that within the context of his argument. I think as you follow his argument through liberalism as the mainstream that that kind of died with, like you said, the people who come directly after Hamilton but follow the Hamiltonian system. Right. Well, I mean, and you know, when you read Tocqueville, I mean, you've got, know, Tocqueville talks a lot about this, that there is a minority party and, know, according to Tocqueville, the minority party are the high federalists. that have basically just retreated into their mansions. Right. They don't participate in politics much anymore. They've been thoroughly thrashed by, ⁓ you know, by the Republicans turned Democrats. ⁓ And that, you know, the era of good feelings, what's the era of good feelings except just the dominance, one party dominance. Right. Right. Right. Going back to Hofstadter there. Right. And so ⁓ You know, Harp sees ⁓ that yes, there were some people who wanted to maybe impose an aristocracy on the United States, even though it wasn't necessarily a European style aristocracy, but something more akin to that. Like they had no, they were not. They may have been the minority party, but they were, they were totally marginalized other than maybe a few seats here and there, know, Fisher Ames or something like that. Like even Daniel Webster isn't really that. up. ⁓ Whereas in 1840, according to Hartz, this high federalist opposition or the federalist opposition turns into wickery. And he says, that has far more ⁓ by kind of jumping in with Henry Clay. That's sort of the natural opposition. Now, I don't necessarily know that I buy that because Henry Clay is as American, he's very much a Democrat, Republican, right? He just has a different, at least intellectually, emotionally, culturally, different policy preferences maybe, just as a nationalist policy preferences, policy preferences that are by the way, shared by James Madison. mean, James Madison is a guy that introduces the American system. ⁓ We have ⁓ this, but in 1840s says the, the, these federalists turn wigs, embrace the log cabin. Right. So that's the American wiggery. That's the American version of the wig. As conservative as we can. Yeah, I vote as conservative as we can. And I mean, think that's an interest. I agree with that, I think. Like a mainstream conservative movement, think that's probably correct. In fact, I think you can draw lines from the... intellectual movement or main factions of both the modern day Democratic party and Republican party that can trace their roots back to that type of Americanism ⁓ of wickery, what Hartz would call wickery. again, I don't know that I fully buy it. I think that's just a victory of the Henry Clay forces that you just had this split in Republicanism that creates two separate parties. And the high Federalists joined the one that there's not enough of them. They're just, there's a few prominent ones and they jump on with the one that they like, that they dislike the least. Right. ⁓ but anyway, that, that comes to dominate one major strain, the conservative strain of American thought up until the 1950s, guess. All right. And it can never go as far as conservatism goes in Europe. Again, coming back to this, I know we said this, but because of that lack of aristocracy. Right. That there's just this, that there's a guardrail there. Exactly. Perfect way to that. That prevents it from going too far in a right wing, in a traditionalist right wing direction. Right. Whereas in, ⁓ and yet the same thing is true on the left. That the Jacksonians put a You know, the fervor of the Jacksonian movement could have gone in a jake of indirectly. ⁓ yeah. Right. But it doesn't. And part of that might be that the desire for fee, simple land ownership. You know, that just, the, the vast volume of land or just the fact that in America, it never. The idea is I want a piece of it. I want a piece of success. the potential is there. And that's what he keeps coming back to is the idea that these men, now they have the right to vote or these, you know, Jackson's going to expand suffrage. So now they have a stake in the American system. And then you can become a small landowner. can be self-sufficient in a way you cannot in parts of Europe. Right. And I think that, one of the, when he talks about Europe, he does separate a little bit. He talks about the, you know, the continent versus the UK. ⁓ And one of the figures that I think, you know, there's sort of two figures that I think American conservatives of that bed, of the traditionalist bed, kind of would have looked, would have looked towards in the UK and said, here's, an example that we wish to follow or here's an inspiration. And the one that ⁓ Hart's mostly, I'm pointing to a book that is not Hart's, but apparently I keep pointing to it as if it is Hart's. It's actually Jordan Schwartz's The New Dealers, but that's neither here nor there. The, ⁓ is Disraeli, and the other one is Carlisle. It's little bit less of a Carlisle, mostly Disraeli. and that there is this kind of longing, though some Americans would long for a Disraeli-like figure, Disraeli does not transfer to the Americans. And he may be from a Parvenu family of cosmopolitan, that were initially cosmopolitan Jews, right? In many ways, it is sort of a bit of an American story. ⁓ His romantic notions of order and his romantic notions of the importance of imperialism, the importance just to the British character, not even a Teddy Roosevelt. Right. So anyway, ⁓ what did you think of his analysis of progressives? I'm the progressive school or progressives themselves. Progressivism. Okay. Sorry. Yeah, no problem. We do. This is a great thing about American history is we use these terms to mean so many different things. Yes. So I think that with progressivism and again, ideological history is not where I'm at. So please correct me or push back against this. But he does see another push here for. ⁓ Like trying to, you you talk about those guard rails. It's almost as if you're trying to push outside of those guard rails, some progressives or the issues that progressives are trying to look at seem to be on the other side, but they still work within the American system. I mean, the progressives do change society, but like they're saying they're working within these parameters. There are very few arguments between the two parties. by the 1912 election, 1916 election, they're all progressives. And so it all works with this idea of liberalism, even if some of the issues that people are facing during the time seem to be outside of those guardrails. They're going to try to fix them within that liberal tradition. Right. I think that's, that's good. mean, so, you know, we talked about Weeby last month. How does his conception of the progressives differ from maybe Weeby's conception? ⁓ that's a great question. mean, we be still argued that the progressives are, you know, we talk about that professional class evolving with we be and they're definitely working within the American system. They're trying to be, ⁓ I wouldn't go so far as to say like, we be would argue that they're American wigs. Like they're not trying to necessarily, ⁓ you know, in way I guess they are trying to, ⁓ preserve their, although that's getting into more, that's getting a little away from we preserve their status in society. They are trying to become professionals, but I do not think he would go so far as to call them WIG. ⁓ Yeah, I think that's, I think that's, I think that's true for Weeby. And I think that, you know, this speaks to Hartz's con understanding is that, his, pardon me, his argument is that ⁓ in the United States, everybody has a middle-class consciousness. From the richest to the poorest, everybody has a middle-class consciousness. Weeby is saying, you know, Weeby is saying, Progressivism is a consequence of the creation of this new middle class and you know, hearts might not disagree with that, but hearts would say, well, yeah, but everybody thinks they're middle class. Right. Or everybody, even if they know they're not middle class, thinks they could be one day. They have that potential. Exactly. Right. And even the richest Americans don't have this self, very few of them least, you know, have this self conception of them as being ⁓ anything but. the successful middle class. Right. So, ⁓ and that's the thing that constrains, you know, in order for reactionary thought to work, at least it will consider reactionary thought. And again, maybe Spencer ⁓ is not reactionary, maybe he's something else, maybe social Darwinism is something else. again, I don't want to get lost with the taxonomical, you know, semantics here. But For a true reactionary type of thought to flourish, you need people who consciously don't think of themselves in any way related to the middle class. Right. Right. You need an upper class that has no conception of themselves as being middle class. And in order for socialist politics to work, you need a lower class that thinks of themselves as a being entirely outside of the middle class, as opposed to the middle class that just hasn't made it yet. Right. And that's where, again, coming back to that Horatio Alger argument, I he spends a whole chapter bringing exactly that in. mean, without that mythology, you don't have, like, you do have those two classes that are outside the system, but because that becomes such a part of the American fabric, like you said, everybody thinks they can be middle-class, if not farther than that. But that potential is always there. Yeah. Right. Or, you know, And among the extreme upper class, people are like, well, you I might be, I recognize that I am not middle class, but my family was middle class. And I still have bourgeois values. I'm not, again, and this might be the only exception. The only exception to this might be the Antebellum South, where there was this attempt to kind of create this, you know, Walter Scott-like, ⁓ you know, mythological middle age society. among the upper class, but with that one exception, I'd leave that the upper class just sees themselves as the successful middle class. Right. Right. It's almost the ranks richest story. Like those first industrialist are proud of that. Where a true aristocracy, you would never admit you came from, if not nothing, the middle class to the upper class. you would always have been the upper class. in those, among those first industrials, it is, they appreciate and sometimes celebrate that story about themselves. Now, over time that changes, of course, but at that point you do have that, I mean, it's just such a difference from European aristocracy. Yeah. I mean, you think of the, you know, in American history, you like, you know, you think of, the robber bears, if you look at the robber bears, many of did have middle-class origins. Yeah. In Carnegie's case, it wasn't even middle-class. was lower than that. Exactly. You know why he's the one I was thinking of. Rockefeller is kind of like, you know, he comes from kind of a broken middle-class family. Right. You know, ⁓ you got some education, but not much. ⁓ And, you know, I don't exactly know the origins of the Vanderbilt family. They might be a little more aristocratic. I don't know. Morgan, know, Gould certainly not an aristocrat. So, you know, and then, you know, you go back a generation previously, look at John Jacob Astor. I mean, here was a guy who came as an immigrant, as a poor immigrant to the United States as a boy. And these are personal examples that these are great examples other Americans can look at to say, like a reason not to rebel, a reason to fill part of the system that this has happened before it can happen to me. Right. And even if they don't think, and this is, think sometimes where when, um, you know, left-wing philosophers get a little, uh, you know, they, they blame Americans for thinking that. Right. Or they think that Americans just assume they're going to poor Americans just think they're going to be rich one day. That's why they won't rebel. I don't know this that they think they're going to be rich one day. It's that I think they think there's an honest chance. Right. I think that's it. I think that's it. And I think that's what hurts is arguing. Right. It's like, you know what? If things break my way. I recognize that, you know, hard work alone is not going to accomplish it. But if I work hard and something breaks my way, you know, there's a good chance and that's worth protecting or worth preserving. It's not that everyone thinks, okay, I'm going to be a billionaire someday. It's that they think I could do well for myself and my family someday. Right. That potential. You know, I could, you know, and yeah, exactly. Um, and I think that Definitely, you know, one of the things that I liked about Hartz, and I'm going to take us out of this a little bit, because I think we could talk about this all day, that Hartz talks about is that, you know, when he's criticizing the progressive historians, not the progressives, but the progressive historians, he, one of the things that is interesting is he says, you know, there's all these historians that have all these various, like, inspirations for their work. This has been, none of them seem inspired by Tocqueville. ⁓ yes. Yes. am self-cautiously writing of the Tocquevillian tradition. Right. That's the framework of what he's writing. Yeah. How do you think, do you think he succeeds at that? I think so. mean, wouldn't Tocqueville say that America was born free, that it didn't have to become, it was born free? And I think that's essentially what Hartz is arguing, that the liberal tradition was there from the beginning. Like Locke was America, the liberal tradition was there. And that's essentially what Tocqueville sees when he's writing. Now, of course, Tocqueville has those warnings, just Hartz has the normal warning. But I think it works. Yeah, and I think he definitely, ⁓ his warning is pretty similar to Tocqueville's warning. That this universal ⁓ attachment to liberalism, while not necessarily bad on its own, ⁓ allows for a certain type of tyranny to emerge. This sort of, this is not one that's used by Tocqueville, it's not a word used by Tocqueville. It's I can't remember the scholar who uses it, but the sort of notion of soft theory. Yeah, that's that. We become soft, desperate. That's I'm looking for. Yeah. Yeah. ⁓ And and we get weather. Right. Right. ⁓ Thank you. And I, I, I, again, I don't know how far I buy that, but it is certainly a very interesting discussion to have. and very interesting scholarship that emerges from that. and Anything more you and anything you want to bring up because I have a soapbox I want to get on here. ⁓ but, ⁓ I want to let you go first because I don't know how long I'm going to go. Well, before I let you get on your soapbox, which I will absolutely enjoy, I just know it. ⁓ I do, as I was reading this, I kept thinking, I hope he has an answer to this. I hope there is some positivity at the end of this work. And I was. Perhaps by the end, not as surprised, but there is no answer. He ends with the very questions he begins with. And I think part of that is probably writing in the mid fifties at the height of McCarthyism. It probably did seem as if there were no answers. It probably did seem as if this could go on and on. And you have that soft despotism. You have that tyranny of the majority that he's writing within the framework of. And so the fact that he ended exactly where he began was slightly disheartening, although again, by the end, maybe not so surprising, but no answers for us as far as how this goes. I mean, I think that he kind of comes to the same conclusion of the economist Frank Knight does, after exploring, you know, the potential in America for all these various like opportunities and different And wouldn't it be great if there was this other intellectual tradition or this other thing that we could maybe bring into America? Because liberalism is kind of sterile and boring, right? It's sort of an idea. that like, but like Frank Knight, he kind of comes back, no, there isn't. And maybe that's okay. Yeah. ⁓ So, all right. ⁓ Yeah. Anyway, I think that's an interesting point. He definitely like, it's not... I don't want to say it's pessimistic. Yeah, I wouldn't say pessimistic and he's not trying to be either one. He's not trying to be optimistic. He's not trying to be pessimistic. That's me putting my own, you know, desire for a, for a solution as we all have ⁓ on hearts here. But I think he's just trying to be a realist. I mean, he's just trying to be very realistic about where we're at and what he sees. And I think that's fair. Yeah. I mean, I think there's sort of, this is an interesting and stylistic thing. think there's sort of two ways to write really good history. And one is sort of the, the, the more I'm going to use the word, the interested person where like you have a protagonist. You have somebody who you kind of treat as like maybe not the good guys because we're historians, but like somebody who your sympathies are clearly with. Right. And it's about their triumph or their tragic failure. Right. that's a, you can write a lot of really good history that way. The other really good way to write history is sort of above it all. And I mean, I'm going to say, you know, with the sort of detached sense of Tory irony about it all, or it's like, doesn't, know, everything sort of has an ironic component to it. And it's like, look at all these little people trying to move their little ways. Isn't it adorable that these little people try to do all their little things and it's not going to matter. Right. And I think Hartz is writing in that second way. ⁓ absolutely. This detached sense of Tory irony. Now that doesn't mean he does not have sides he takes here and there, right? But that overall there's no one protagonist. There's no, there's no, it's no hero's journey. ⁓ it's, ⁓ so again, before we get on my soap box, I do want to just, what did you think of this as like, did this give you a different sense of the consensus historians? And maybe you'd expect it. It definitely made me appreciate the schools that they spawned more. So it made me appreciate, ⁓ like Baylin and Wood in a different way because they're responding directly to this. And I know we will talk about both of those scholars. ⁓ it, know, in a couple months, but it, it made me appreciate those people who responded to, ⁓ hearts because it was so controversial. He is leaving out intellectual history or not. He's leaving out voices and he is creating a framework where this works. If you look at certain Americans, but it complicates his story. If you bring in, you know, African Americans or certain types of immigrants or. ⁓ you know, the wage slaves as, as sometimes they were called, but it's, you know, when you bring in those pieces, it complicates the narrative and it complicates the argument Hartz is trying to make. And like you said earlier, that's not what he's trying to do. He's not writing a narrative history. He's writing an intellectual history, but he gets such pushback from that, that it actually spawns these others, like the Republican synthesis. And, he will, he will spawn these entire schools of thought. And I think that that is in a way, I mean, that's beautiful. That's what historians do. That's what we all want, right? Someone to respond and to appreciate our work, whether they like it or not. They appreciate it. They appreciate that it exists. And so if anything, that's maybe not so much the consensus school, but what it spawned, I think is what I, what really stuck out to me here. Yeah. I mean, I think this is the wrecking ball to progressive history. This book is the wrecking ball. Yes. I agree with that. I don't know that Hofstadter is truly the wrecking ball. I think this is the wrecking No, I think it's Hart. I agree. And that, ⁓ it, you need hearts for other things to emerge. You need him to destroy the progressive school. And he, don't know that he fully destroys it, but he takes it, he gives it a beating. and, ⁓ you know, we're going to, we're going to do some progressive history later on. It'll be curious to see what we think now that we've read hearts, whether he actually got the job of that or not. But, ⁓ and so, you know, he, he, the, the wrecking ball is necessary in order for other things to emerge. And, ⁓ I think that, you know, ⁓ one of the things that he's creating, you know, again, leaving voices out, there's a lot of voices he obviously leaves out. And I mean, and you can, you can, and one of the things that I think people will do to refute hearts later on is they will say, no, there's this movement that maybe it didn't, maybe it ended up becoming kind of middle-class or progressive, but it has these radical origins. And I think you get these historians that are themselves pretty radical and want to see. ⁓ a linear or want to see ends their own ancestors and they don't want to feel like they're fully alien to the American society. They want to say, listen, this person, shows that I exist in the American tradition. Screw you hearts. I'm in the American tradition too. Right. And they're through more radical times. Not only are they sometimes more radical, but I mean, we're all they're responding to the events that they're living through. And it's much different than what Hartz is living through. Sure. And again, it's going to be harder to the consent, a consensus history in 1968, although I think you could. I think I may take it a hard see, a hard scene perspective and say, listen, it's not the new left has to, the new left has success in the United States as an intellectual movement. Why does it? Because it's kind of based on bourgeois values. Right. It's not the value. The new left is not the values of the proletariat. No. Yeah. Right. It's a bourgeois philosophy. And which is why it kind of has kind of more, it's kind of more anarchist in many ways than it is communist. Right. But it's a bourgeois philosophy. And so you can actually, although I know they prefer Rousseau, I think that like, if you were to look at the social contract theorists, the new left, There's a block borrowed there, if not full, through the lens of Rousseau, know, kind of reflected through Rousseau and reflected through others. But it's not, it doesn't come through, you know, it doesn't come through the same Marxist, ⁓ like lineage. And so because of that, I think it's kind of, does. The hearts could say, listen, the new left is not that radical. It's still lock in. It's still within those guardrails. If lock is still within those guardrails, maybe, right, maybe pushing up against it. And maybe she will break it just a little bit. But it's still taking the notion of Americanism because again, so much of it is based on this notion of it's unfair. Right. We are not given our chance. Right. And that, and now that being said, that could also potentially explain why the new left has only gone as far as it ever has. is that it is, even though it's in the American tradition, it's so far to the extreme of an American tradition that the mainstream of American voters are never willing to fully embrace it. Right. It swallows it up. It swallows it up. Which brings me to my soap box. Yes. Arts in this book does more to dismantle modern reactionary thought and post-liberal thought. that is in any current volume. Hart's obliterates it, before he even knows that he's obliterating. And you know this to be true because if you read Deneen, you read Vermeule, you read the modern post-liberals, less so in Yarvin and the neo-reactionaries, but definitely in the post-liberal thought, they're desperately trying to refute Hartz. And they can't. They're creating workarounds. They're trying to slip in between gaps. And they think they've accomplished it, but they haven't. And the real problem, as Hartz explains, and actually I think I have it quoted here, I want to make sure that I get this right. Yeah, so one of the things that's very clear is that in American history, You know, if you want to Burke in the American context, you can't buy, Burke just takes you back to Locke because of the American tradition, Burke is all about tradition. And Burke says that, you know, societies need their traditions and societies, know, you can't move too far from your traditions if you want to be successful. And in the American context, that means Locke and the post liberals are desperate to refute Locke's influence in American. or that Locke, you know, they would acknowledge Locke obviously has an influence in American society, but they think it's a perverse cancerous influence. And so they want to be able to take Burke and speak to some tradition that just doesn't exist. And Hart says, listen, if you follow Burke, you're just gonna get right back to Locke. So you can't refute Locke by going to Burke, because Burke's gonna take you to Locke. And so... what you have to do is you have to go to a European continental tradition, something like a domestic, right? But the problem is, if you bring that into America, you're essentially Thomas Paine, because you're breaking down everything that currently exists and all of the traditions and inventing your own tradition. And if there's anything that reactionary thought believes, it's that Thomas Paine is basically the arch enemy. The notion that you could return to a state of nature. is the most horrifying thing possible. That's why they point to people like Thomas Hobbes. says, you can never return. You never want to return to a state of nature. It's horrible to return to a state of nature. But Paine says, now it's okay. We'll rebuild again. Right? And so if you go to Burke, if you want to focus and so much reactionary thought is based on the notion of tradition, right? But there is no tradition of this in American history. So you have to invent something new, right? And then impose it. which goes completely against reactionary ethos. And so they become completely, they can't emerge from that. And this is a thing that you see, like Danine and Vermeule, they're constantly trying to break out of this box and they can't. what he tries to do is he tries to say, no, no, no, no, no, there's this like three, like constitutional notion of the community that we're going to try to get back to, right? That there's these communitarian values and that's the real America. And then what happens is in that the revolutionary era, we impose this Lockeanism on it. So in fact, what we're trying to do is we're not going to go back to an aristocracy. We're going to go back to these communitarian, traditional communitarian American values. The problem is, that he's inventing. Or maybe he's not inventing them. Okay. Good faith. Maybe he's not inventing them. But it's different when there's like a bourbon mon. That you can point back to and say, here's what we used to do. Or an aristocracy you could point back to and say, here's what we used to do and things were better. You're trying to say that, ⁓ well, there was these wonderful nebulous communitarian values that defined every aspect of America. And that's really the most important aspect of American history. It's not, it's, you know, it's not the individualism of Locke. That was just like an invention that of of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. And it's like, okay. But when you can't speak to tradition in right-wing thought, especially in the more right-wing you go. you are totally blocked out from making it here. You have to invent these things. know, Vermeule has his own argument. I don't want this to become about them. I don't want my soapbox to go too far. ⁓ You know, and his is even more esoteric than Deneen's ⁓ and therefore even more difficult to refute, frankly, because it's so esoteric. ⁓ Their answers to these questions becomes almost, you know. they're creating something that was never here. And so they're just completely incoherent from the beginning. Right. And so they're strongest on when they're basically doing the right wing version of quit theory. right? They're less strong when they're actually trying to ⁓ impose their own or call back their own preferred political system. But anyway, I'm done talking about that. Excellent soapbox. here's the thing. convinced Fortunately, it... Okay. Fortunately, I waited until we were an hour into this before I did it, which meant that had less energy. So I didn't get the full effect. Well, no, it's a good thing you didn't because I was buzzing. Start. Well, you a very good job. ⁓ thank you. Again, Political theory is still, I'm still a little new to it, I must admit. it's interesting. It's interesting. It's such a different direction than I've been. And so learning the foundations of these arguments, I mean, like you said, if hearts drives an L through the heart of the progressive school, everyone has to respond to him. Everyone has to respond to the consensus school. And so it's interesting to see where this all comes from. And that's what we're doing. I mean, that's the point of Composite Radio, right? We're laying the foundation. They're getting the other book. We're reading the heavy, ⁓ very dense works, giving them this analysis. And ⁓ I'm learning a lot. I learned a lot reading Hart this week. Sorry, there was a little bit of a break up in the connection there. So if you were, I only caught about the first 80 % of it. But is there a, what was the finale of your point there? I'm so sorry, I didn't actually say it. Oh, you're fine. Just that I learned quite a bit from hearts this week. And I think this will help our future listeners, maybe future viewers to see where this comes from. to see where these ideas that they're not gonna get as, I I know whenever I looked into hearts, you know, I read, I did some research here and there and they say, okay, he's on every comps list. Well, obviously that's not true because we hadn't read him before, but the people who respond to him are on every comps list. ⁓ And like I read Wood and Balin, they're responding directly to hearts. so creating that, like knowing where that comes from, knowing those, what their books are responding to invaluable. So the finale was I learned, I learned a lot this week. I, this, mean, I, I must admit of the new books I've picked up, this was the one that got me thinking the most. I agree. Yes. Yes. This one sat with me at night. I agree. This, this, ⁓ this was on my mind the last week. and, ⁓ yeah. So Marie, like maybe you'll People have come this far. Is the pod like, should they read the book? Like, do they need to read the book or is the podcast enough? Oh, great question. I mean, definitely listen to the podcast first. This, this will help you dive into it because it is dense and he is writing from, know, like you said, from above and his writing is a little ironic. It's he snipes here and there. And once you get into it and you understand his voice and all of this, it becomes a good read, but definitely listen to the podcast and then and then maybe look through the book here and there. The last chapter, I think is excellent. I think he really sums that up and talks about going into the Cold War. If you don't have a good understanding of the narrative American history of American history and you don't know the names because he just throws them out there. No context. You don't need to read this book. Because you're going to be lost. is a tough, this would, I would art. Yeah. This would be a real tough book to read at the start of your comps. ⁓ yeah. No, not at the start. No, because you, and that was going to be, that was my point is that names, names from all over the world are thrown out there and he expects you to know who they are. Yes. Right. And he expects you to get it. He's not taking time to introduce them. There's no, like, there's no even first names. No. In many cases, no. And I've been teaching 10 years and there were some of these people that I had to either refresh myself on or look out for the first time. And so you could not, you could not follow this at the beginning of a conflict. Not today. But I do think that all honestly for that alone, as you finish your comps or even after you're done your comps, you should read it to see, because it will either prove to you that you. If you can get through this book and understand everybody he's referring to, you know enough. Yes. You're, you're right there. are a day ahead. You are way ahead of senior scholars. Right. And so, and, and if you don't know everyone, which I certainly didn't, there's lots of people whose names I didn't know in this book, but I know a lot more now because of it. Oh, absolutely. Where did they fit into this? My Wikipedia button. was, is callous after reading this book. You know, my Wikipedia finger is calloused after this. Just constant, who's at the source point? Yes. I learned a lot about different people. And, ⁓ you know, so it's, again, again, and it is just thrown out there. Like, you know who it is and you know, we're going to do, for instance, later in the year, somebody really wanted to do was Vernon Parrington. And one of the reasons I wanted to do Vernon Parrington, he's progressive historians. ⁓ one of the prominent ones has said, people remember beard. People remember Turner, but they don't remember parenting at all. Like if you were to go to senior faculty lounge right now, you know, you'd get the older scholars. They'll go, ⁓ yes, Vernon parenting. But the middle-aged scholars wouldn't even people in their sixties probably wouldn't. You'd have the weird guy in the eighties in the corner or the weird, you know, weird professor in their eighties, or he and she would say, ⁓ yes, I remember learning about parenting. Right. But practically now we'll be able to do that. Right. Exactly. And our listeners will be. But know, Perrington comes in for a lot of criticism here. In fact, of the progressive historians, I he's the one that he really attacks as Perrington. ⁓ And ⁓ yeah, so again, like, it's an argument that we forgot ever occurred. Right. And anyway, and that's kind of the purpose of this podcast, right? Is to recover some of these old things, some of these old arguments that we didn't, that have been forgotten. Exactly. Exactly. Preserving these foundational texts. So we're going to take a break after this for a couple of weeks. So it'll be a few weeks before you hear from us again. Marie, would you like to give the people, give the fine people a preview of what's coming next in our next episode, which will probably be in three weeks or a month. Did we have John Hope Franklin next? don't have our list. Yeah, think it's John Hope Franklin. Yeah. So we're going a little bit of a different direction when we come back. What will that be? And we've got three weeks off. So maybe five weeks. Yeah. We'll be back with our John Hope Franklin episode. Admittedly, part of the reason I built this break in is I'm going to the UK for the business history conference next week. And I didn't want to read any No, I didn't want to any assigned readings for while I was there. You really want to all. Yes, it worked out well because next week is our spring break here. And so I'm going to visit my in-laws who live in Florida near Cocoa beach. Okay. So yeah. So we're going to have a short vacation and I would have read, I love this podcast. am so committed. But I am also looking forward to our short break here. It won't be that long. We'll be back before you know it. Yes, we will. Thank you again for everybody who's listening, everybody who's recommending this podcast to their friends. I think there's serious value in this if you're not just a graduate student, but if you're a scholar. Again, really appreciate everybody. Like and subscribe this, which is the thing I have to say as a podcast host, guess, is like and subscribe. I feel a little bit dirty saying it, but... I'll ask, here we are. Yes. a, you know, getting involved in such muddy sort of commercial attitudes, right? It's part of it. It is part of it. But anyway, please do. Looking forward to any feedback and we'll see you in about a month. Marie, take care.