French and German influences . . .

[Xunzian]

Lately I’ve been thinking about how much the modern American political divide can be paralleled by both the French and German attempts at modernization.

On the American Right, you’ve got the legacy of the French Revolution:

1. Extreme nationalism.
2. The idea of popular rule used to bolster a more autocratic system
3. Opposed to taxes (largely a reminant of pre-Revolution France where paying taxes was considered decadent since the upper class didn’t have to)
4. Militarism as an outgrowth of nationalism (opposition to national policy is opposition to the military by default. “Support our Troops” as a defense mechanism)
5. The idea of the self-made man
6. The idea of initial equality
7. Change starts at the bottom and works its way up

On the American Left, you’ve got the legacy of the German Restoration:

1. Pan-nationalism linked to an amorphous identity.
2. The idea of autocracy better supporting the General Will
3. Large tax infrastructure coupled to a complex civil service.
4. Militarism as a corrective (Bosnia, Darfur, ect)
5. Strong emphasis on an educated elite with governmental support, #3
6. The idea of initial inequality which needs to be leveled by #2.
7. Change starts at the top and works its way down

Granted, all are gross generalizations within each example but I think that each does have major elements that hit to the heart of the current political divide.

Thoughts?

[Peter_Kropotkin]

Xunzian: Lately I’ve been thinking about how much the modern American political divide can be paralleled by both the French and German attempts at modernization.

On the American Right, you’ve got the legacy of the French Revolution:

1. Extreme nationalism.
2. The idea of popular rule used to bolster a more autocratic system
3. Opposed to taxes (largely a reminant of pre-Revolution France where paying taxes was considered decadent since the upper class didn’t have to)
4. Militarism as an outgrowth of nationalism (opposition to national policy is opposition to the military by default. “Support our Troops” as a defense mechanism)
5. The idea of the self-made man
6. The idea of initial equality
7. Change starts at the bottom and works its way up

K: to be honest, I think this misses. Extreme nationalism
does not seem to flow from the french revolution.
For example, the English it seems to have really begun
during the Elizabethan age. Shakespeare seems quite clearly
to have a nationalistic theme, for example his Henry the 5th.
And the french seems to have their nationalism fervor also from
this time period. Now having read the right extreme opposition
to the french revolution, for example edmund burke, I don’t think
the right believes in any aspect of the revolution.

On the American Left, you’ve got the legacy of the German Restoration:

1. Pan-nationalism linked to an amorphous identity.
2. The idea of autocracy better supporting the General Will
3. Large tax infrastructure coupled to a complex civil service.
4. Militarism as a corrective (Bosnia, Darfur, ect)
5. Strong emphasis on an educated elite with governmental support, #3
6. The idea of initial inequality which needs to be leveled by #2.
7. Change starts at the top and works its way down

K: I think the left is more about the french revolution then the
german restoration. The ideal’s you describe for the right actually
works better for the left and the german restoration works
better for the right (some of it, not all of it)
But that is just me.

Kropotkin

[tentative]

Hi Xunzian,

I see what your trying to do, but like Peter, the generalizations seem a little broad. I kept seeing the exceptions canceling the rules… Given the decided difference in cultures, I’m not sure that the parallelism doesn’t fall victim to cultural reductionism, which distorts any possible generalizations… Can you narrow things down a bit? I’m not sure where to go with this.

[Xunzian]

I’d argue that (for the most part) Nationalism began with the French Revolution since prior to the revolution one’s loyalty was largely to the crown. You can see this especially clearly in England where the royalty is (still to a certain extent) tied to the idea of the nation and what it is to be ‘English’.

Whereas with the French Revolution it wasn’t about the Bourbons, or even Napoleon (though he was considered to be the paragon of what they sought to become) but rather about the Tricolour, the idea of France (hence the national guard and whatnot). Also check out the Restoration, where the major idea is to restore legitimacy (something the American left is now evoking all over the place what with the stolen elections) as well as the idea of the soverign as the nation.

Also, look at who is driving the movements. On the right it is a mixture of the exceedingly wealthy working with the exceedingly poor to consolidate a power base and use that as their populist basis, while the left is largely skilled workers and the educated (the kind of people that would have been in Turner societies and fraternities back in the day).

[Xunzian]

Attila wrote in a PM (that he allowed me to reprint) the following:

Xunzian,

I think that the historical analysis is a little far-fetched:

1. The idea of nationalism started with France under Louis XIV who promoted the unity of territory, government and language with the establishment of the court in Versailles. German nationalism could not take this route and established the idea of nationalism based on culture and language. Arab nationalism adopted the German model as did many other ethnic groups after the break up of the Empires after WWI (see Bassam Tibi’s collected work on this subject).

2. You are taking caricatures of French and German “values” as the starting point for your analogy. If you look and summarize the philosophical traditions of Britain, France, German and Russia you may be able to find a penchant for the political in Britain (modern political theory is by many attributed to Hobbes), France as a birth ground for sociological thinking (Auguste Compte), Germany for psychology (Helmholtz and then Wundt etc.) and a meta-political vision as expoused by Kant, Hegel, the right-Hegelians, the left-Hegelians, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, and finally Russia with its emphasis on the existential (Dostojewski, Puschkin etc.)

3. The inneramerican political divide is a genuinenly American phenomenon and best understood within the context of the evolution of the American experience with modernization, and particularly the ideological divides of the past 20 years. I think the time horizon that you propose is way too long to explain the current political divide in the US. Germany and France have, in my opinion, little to no bearing on the two-party system in the US and the ideologies of a Kristoff etc.

[Xunzian]

My response:

1. I disagree with your definition of nationalism in this context. Louis XIV’s nationalism had little to do with the idea of ‘France’ and much more to do with the idea of the Bourbons. He tried to unify the two (claiming to be the state) but the loyalty was still very much with the crown. Compare that to Fredrick II’s “Ich bin der erste diener des Staates!” for an example of a nationalism that is seperate from the crowned head, which comprises modern nationalism. Post-French Revolution the idea of nationalism ceased to be loyalty to the crown and became loyalty to the fatherland (patrie).

2. I agree that they are largely generalizations, but I do feel that they are apt starting points within the discussion (I will explain this in more detail in a bit).

3. Given the rise of public education in America which was more-or-less concurrent with the Restoration and the backlash of the '48 revolutions, I don’t think that such a connection is unreasonable. Couple that with the similarity between the issue of peasants/serfs with slavery and you have an America which (while distinct from Europe) is going through many of the same problems.

So, largely what I get from the French Revolution is first-and-foremost a strong emphasis on liberal economic policy (which is very much a part of modern American conservative thought) coupled with the omnipresent fear of counter-revolutionaries (both real and invented manifested most plainly in the terror but maintained for a long time – indeed, Napoleon used those threats as a justification for his converting the French Republic to the French Empire. I think that parallels can be quite easily drawn between McCarthyism and the Terror) and a strong, strong allegiance to the state.

On the other hand, you have the German Conservative tradition (largely stemming from Restoratio-era politics). First-and-foremost here is the idea of control and balance, between states and individuals. It also attacks the issue of populist philosophy from the opposite end – where an authoritarian state grew out of a populist desire in post-Revolution France, in the German states the autocracy was bolstered and supported by the population at large (one of the major reasons why Bismark gave universal male sufferage and if he his legacy isn’t an echo of the Restoration I don’t know what is!). This is largely because in the German countries, post-Restoration, created huge civil beaurocracies which served both as a medium for social advancement (or at least the illusion of it while actually keeping it quite controlled) as well as creating the benevolent image of the State.
This ties into the fundamental contradiction in both Revolutionary France and American Conservatism: an extreme distrust of the State coupled with a strong nationalist tendancy. Unfortunately, the American liberalism and Germanic Restorationism offers little better as the State is viewed in a very positive light, but the ideas are pan-nationalistic.

Also, look at the constituency of both groups, something which I’ve already addressed.

[Attila]

I am still struggling with the analogy between American “right” and “left” and French Revolution and German Restauration.

The first question is: what do we call “right” and “left” in the US? The second question then is how does the reality of the current splits and divides between and within each of these “ideologies” relate to the fundamental changes that occurred in the 19th century in central Europe?

There are two parties each with several platforms, and then some fringe movements such as the ecological movement, libertarians and then of course extreme right-wing ideologies.

What is becoming obvious in the current elections is to what degree the Republican Party is split on key dimensions such as economic policy, cultural values, and national defense policy (roughly speaking you have three groups):

1. The old-and neo Reagonomists with an idea of small government, large tax cuts and a realist notion of geopolitics a la Baker, the old Bush, Kissinger etc., they did not support the Rumsfeld doctrine of “doing more with less”, support the Powell doctrine and in general are not in favor of using American military power to promote democracy. They are also in favor of the peace process as opposed to large-scale regime changes in the Middle East. This faction of the party is currently in a serious infight with the third group and we will see it really come to the forefront if the Democrats win the house.

2. The Bush regime with its vision of America as a “benevolent tyrant” (Joffe calls it Ueberpower) with an ideologiy shaped by a view of geopolitics whose goal is to democratize the world (Wolffowitz, Kristoff etc.), coupled with the idea that the government should be run like a business (see Rumsfeld’s failed attempts at restructuring the army and at the same time winning the war in Iraq by giving up on the Powell doctrine), and a belief that fiscal deficits don’t matter (It smells like Reagan, but Reagan was after all a realist in international matters).

3. The evangelical fraction with its emphasis on culture war, and an almost neurotic fascination with the decline of the Roman empire as interpreted by Gibbons (see Buchanan). What is also becoming clear is that Rove uses this group effectively, giving lip service to that group and supporting symbolic acts such as the Friday night drama of Congress passing legislation regarding the Shivao affair, but in the end, they are only marginally important to the Bush regime’s core beliefs. This group half-heartedly supports the Bush regime more because its view on international politics is shaped by a black and white ideology of good and evil effectively utilized in the rhetoric of Bush at the beginning of his democratization campaign, rather than an understanding of international politics.

My question then is: How do these three fractions relate to the German restauration? I simply don’t see the parallels to the era of German restauration (1815 - 1848) as defined by the classical textbooks on German history.

On the left, it is much more difficult to even find clear groupings and delineages, which is what has made the Democrats so vulnerable to the attacks by Rove and Co. to the effect that Democrats don’t stand for anything and have no positive program. If anything you can find that in regards to

1. Economic policy, you have the fair-traders (Clinton) and the protectionists (unions),
2. In regards to geopolitics, you have the multilateralists and some realists.
3. And in regards to cultural values you have those who support a liberal agenda and those (particularly in the South) who are weary of touching the issue (see Ford in Tennessee who came out in support of state-legislation regulating marriages and civil unions, which means that he doesn’t want to take a clear stand prior to the elections).

My question here again is: How do these fractions relate to the French revolution?

To what degree is the divide between French nationalism and German Pan-Nationalism relevant to parallels between the two historical time periods? How does individualism vs. autocracy relate to it? How does French mercantilism relate to neo liberal notions of international political economy as espoused by the Clinton team of economic advisers and most likely the foundation for future economic policies of a potential Democratic president in the 2008 elections? The irony is also that while Reagonomists support small government, Bush through his acts creates huge government. The current Homeland Security Department, for example, dwarfs event the size of any of the infamous Soviet supra-ministries.

At this point I am not in a position to corroborate or falsify the thesis because I don’t know what is related to what. What I see so far is an oversimplified view on the current American realities (see your first post) and a force fitting of these realities into the realities of 19th century Europe. However, if it is to be valid and useful, it needs to explain the full spectrum of realities of current American political, economic and cultural life.

I am looking forward to hearing your and others’ responses.