I read Corey Robin's book after I listened to Robin's interview with Doug, which I thought was one of the best interviews Doug has ever done. I thought the book had a lot of promise, but some defects. One defect was that it was one chapter spun several different ways, and that's not my idea of a book. The other defect is that his argument is entirely set in a political context. He talks about political consciousness in the aftermath of the French Revolution; but it would make a lot more sense if he would talk about this consciousness in the context of the growth of capitalism. I also think that what he calls the reactionary mind is not so much reactionary as it is the form of political consciousness that is essential to capitalism and is, for this reason, the most powerful political expression of the psychological deformation caused by capitalism to date. But its anthropomorphic abstraction does seem to push buttons, so I'll refer to it as RM going forward. Here's what I take Robin to be saying (even though he does not talk about RM in the context of capitalism, but in the context of the reaction to the French Revolution.)
Capitalism is a dynamic system that, in its founding and expansion, destroys social connections, replacing the social nexus of obligations and duties with the exchange of money. It is solely within the context of the circulation of money and the formation of capital that social identity and mobility is defined. And man's desires are achieved at best indirectly through participation in that circulation.
As a man-made dynamic system, capitalism displaces sclerotic regimes based on inherited birth-right and destroys social hierarchies justified by religious models; in doing so, it is perceived as a liberating force. To the extent that it reduces the mass of humanity to equally interchangeable possessors of labor power, it intimates the possibility of social equality. At the same time, the uprootedness and alienation of the worker under capitalism is the source of a feeling of emptiness and devastating loss of self (which is always socially constructed).
The project of stable power relations and the justification of such relations under capitalism poses an especial problem because it must revitalize and recreate power relations in the absence of any natural order and within the context of a dynamic, man-made society. Nevertheless, capitalism depends to a great extent on political stability. This is the problem that RM seeks to solve by positing the elite as a group constituted "again and again, through struggle and contest." RM teaches man to see the vitality of a society not in terms of its nurturing of human life and human capacity, not in terms of the enlightenment of human consciousness, but in terms of its participating in an eternal war, a war which is inescapable "because without it, the life of the individual has no purpose." [193] RM seeks and celebrates "the fecundity of destruction" , the only principle of fecundity under capitalism.
In place of beauty, RM chooses the sublime: "Great power should not aim for beauty, but for the sublime" [48] (pain, danger, terror...shock and awe). In the absence of social identity or of the self constituted through work that contributes to the social good, only the sublime can diminish or magnify us, and the generative experiences of the self become pain and danger. "When we experience the sublime, we feel ourselves evacuated, overwhelmed by external objects of tremendous power and threat. We also feel heightened, aggrandized, magnified....the savage swing from being to nothingness makes for an intense experience of selfhood [224] One might add, it makes for the only possible experience of selfhood in a society that is gradually emptied of meaningful human relations and meaningful work. A society in which we see one another either as burdens (dependents) or competitors.
The RM is a form of political consciousness that is engendered by capitalism. It seeks to justify a power elite in the absence of a natural hierarchy and it recognizes that for this system to survive, it must be as ruthless to that elite as it is to the slaves that serve it. This its "revolutionary" promise: not the rule of law and due process, but a democratic cruelty and bloodletting for all. (Whether it is as cruel to the 1% as to the 99% is doubtful, but that is its promise.) Its understanding that participation in the sublime is generative of identity makes it an extraordinarily powerful and effective political strategy.
There are other details and use cases to fill out the picture. But I think this is the gist. It certainly helped me understand why liberalism is an inadequate counterforce.
Robin has good insight into this form of political consciousness, and I do think it would be worth everybody's time to read the introduction and a chapter or two.
Joanna
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