[lbo-talk] WFB, again

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Wed Feb 27 09:36:06 PST 2008


Buckley's death sent me back to Corey Robin's Lingua Franca article from 2001. The conclusion:

<http://linguafranca.mirror.theinfo.org/print/0101/cover_cons.html>

THE DEFECTIONS of Luttwak and Gray suggest just how unkind the end of the Cold War has been to the conservative movement. It is increasingly clear that the fragile coalition of libertarians, traditionalists, and free-market enthusiasts once held together by the glue of anticommunism will no longer stick. The end of the Soviet Union "deprived us of an enemy," says Irving Kristol, the intellectual godfather of neoconservatism. "In politics, being deprived of an enemy is a very serious matter. You tend to get relaxed and dispirited. Turn inward." Notorious for his self- confidence, Kristol now confesses to a sad bewilderment in the post- communist world. "That's one of the reasons I really am not writing much these days," he says. "I don't know the answers."

One might think the triumph of the free market would thrill right- wing intellectuals. But even the most revered conservative patriarchs worry that the market alone cannot sustain the flagging energies of the movement. After all, Reagan and Thatcher summoned conservatives to a political crusade, but the free-market ideology they unleashed is suspicious of all political faiths. The market's logic glorifies private initiative, individual action, the brilliance of the unplanned and random. Against that backdrop, it is difficult to think about politics at all—much less political transformation. William F. Buckley Jr. says, "The trouble with the emphasis in conservatism on the market is that it becomes rather boring. You hear it once, you master the idea. The notion of devoting your life to it is horrifying if only because it's so repetitious. It's like sex." Kristol adds, "American conservatism lacks for political imagination. It's so influenced by business culture and by business modes of thinking that it lacks any political imagination, which has always been, I have to say, a property of the left." He goes on, "If you read Marx, you'd learn what a political imagination could do."

But if conservatives are struggling to find a vision, can the ex- conservatives do much better? Unlike Kristol, who fled the left and launched the neoconservative movement, Luttwak and Gray have not formulated coherent alternatives, philosophical or political, to their former creeds. As Luttwak puts it: "Instead of proposing a whole counter-ideology, what I simply propose is society consciously saying that certain things should be protected from the market and kept out of the market." This, despite the fact that Luttwak remains temperamentally enamored, in his way, of the revolutionary impulse. "I prefer 'The Marseillaise' to the Mass," he says, "Mayakovski to the cross of St. George." He adds, "Revolutions are wonderful. People enjoying themselves. I was in Paris in 1968.... There was a wonderful feeling of possibility." But though Luttwak may long for a transformative politics, it remains beyond his reach, an object of nostalgia not just for him but for most intellectuals.

Except, it turns out, for William F. Buckley Jr., the original bad boy of the American right. At the end of our interview, I ask Buckley to imagine a younger version of himself, an aspiring political enfant terrible graduating from college in 2000, bringing to today's political world the same insurgent spirit that Buckley brought to his. What kind of politics would this youthful Buckley embrace? "I'd be a socialist," he replies. "A Mike Harrington socialist." He pauses. "I'd even say a communist."

Can he really imagine a young communist Bill Buckley? He concedes that it's difficult. The original Bill Buckley had the benefit of the Soviet Union as an enemy; without its equivalent, his doppelgänger would confront a more complicated task. "This new Buckley would have to point to other things," he says. Buckley runs down a laundry list of left causes—global poverty, death from AIDS. But even he seems suddenly overwhelmed by the project of (in typical Buckleyese) "conjoining all of that into an arresting afflatus." Daunted by the challenge of thinking outside the free market, Buckley pauses, then finally says, "I'll leave that to you."



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