A heavily (overly?) synthesized summary of German-speaking, central European lands from the French Revolutionary era to the start of World War II. ‘Germany’ failed to coalesce around liberal, popular leadership in 1848, ushering in fealty to indebted Prussian Junkers who were able to claim a national mandate but lost control of events. The conflict between greater and little Germany (e.g., with or without Habsburg Austria, or Polish and Bohemian Slovak peoples), the successes and failures of individuals (even Bismarck) is generally subjected to a clever but somewhat pat trajectory of inexorably class-driven events. Better read as a complementary work than a standalone monograph.
Political development
19. Turner, The Frontier in American History (6 Dec 2016)
The American frontier was settled by rough-hewn individuals and families migrating in search of the best free land to homestead, wanting to get away from coastal or regional elites. Settlement typically created a new type of American, as descendants of Puritan New England, Germans from Pennsylvania, and Scotch-Irish Presbyterians from the Piedmont South merged together into communities which were helpful to one another, but ultimately individualists who did not much trust government. Jacksonian democracy, with its eponymous hero, was its first political expression. Settlement of the old Northwest and Midwest of the country — roughly, Big 10 country — was the most significant phase as the region first tipped the balance between north and south toward the free soil, then produced the greatest generals and politicians (including Lincoln) of the age, and finally yielded the great resources for America’s industrial rise. Interestingly, the far Great Lakes and upper plains states (eg, Wisconsin, Minnesota, the Dakotas) were often heavily peopled by immigrants — Germans and Scandinavians. Free land served as a natural outlet for low-wage earner of the cities. By the time the frontier closed in 1890, the migrants had switched to favoring government intervention to protect individuals from the economic power of consolidating industrialists. Another important outlet was the Midwest’s rise of the state university, to cultivate the talents of the new citizen.
1. Beer, To Make a Nation (7 Jan 2017)
The origin of American federalism lays in the English Commonwealth, specifically the work of John Milton and James Harrington. The latter’s
- Oceana
most completely broke from the hierarchic, corporate views embodied in Thomas Aquinas and carried on up through the aristocratic Edmund Burke (the work’s antihero). Colonial- and Revolutionary-era Americans faced the task of justifying an expansive republic governed by popular sovereignty, in contradistinction to the classical small republic (as advocated by Montesquieu) or parliamentary sovereignty. Here James Madison and then James Wilson come to the fore, the former for overturning the prejudice against small states by asserting conflict rationally resolved prevents tyranny of the majority, and the later (the unexpected hero) for explaining how the people would come to love their federal government. Ben Franklin also is to be admired; Alexander Hamilton is slighted. The work is particularly strong in showing how the people are simultaneously to be in control of and benefit from the administration of government; but there is ever the hint of viewing the Constitution as a ‘living’ document, which would seem to unsettle all of its theoretical underpinnings and equipoise.
3. Fukuyama, Political Order and Political Decay (20 Feb 2017)
Examines the expansion of democratic government since the French Revolutions and evaluates reasons for its decay. Building on
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Origins of Political Order
, Fukuyama shows how the sequencing of a strong (capable) state machinery, rule of law, and accountability influence the course of progress toward democracy and also national history, contrasting the US, an earlier adopter of manhood suffrage without developed machinery, Italy (machinery suffused with ‘partrimonialism’), and Germany (lack of accountability). Although Britain extended the franchise relatively late, its strong rule of law and accountability gave it a more credible democratic government than clientelistic America, which conquered the problem only with the rise of Progressivism, heralded by Pinchot’s Forest Service(!). After reviewing the influence of geography and economics (e.g., natural resources), the author turns to democratic governance in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Fukuyama remains an advocate of Asia’s strong state model, even though few countries have reached full democracy. Then comes corruption in democracies, and recidivism. The final chapters consider the possibilities of America’s surmounting its rule-bound bureaucracy and ‘repatrimonialism’. Because he contends that ideas are products of events, Fukuyama continues to overlook ancient Greece, even though America’s founding fathers staked much of their thinking on classical political thought. Another thorough work, evidencing the same teleological shortcomings.
14. Plumb, England in the 18th Century (4 Aug 2017)
An opinionated survey of the 18th century which ever seems to anticipate the coming of the 20th. Plumb divides the years 1714-1815 into three eras, those of Walpole, Chatham, and Pitt the younger, while elucidating the incipience of the Industrial Revolution from 1750. At the start of the era, for all the excitement of the closing of the revolutionary era, the country was decidedly premodern. Improved social organization emerged through local administrative reform. So too politics were personal rather than based in the party: Walpole sought to marginalize Tories but was too engaged in courtly intrigue to be a master statesman; his usage of patronage enabled the Duke of Newcastle to establish the Whig ascendancy at the expense of the Hanovers; the landed gentry became the opposition. Chatham, taking power in 1756, surmounted the French but shortly England lost the American colonies as England under George III failed to recognize they had come of age. But she gained immense wealth and power from India. The now-familiar enclosures of the English countryside were taking shape, while towns began turning from administrative centers into early industrial hubs centered around the mill or mine (instead of the feudal castle). Social organization improved with still more local administration, and in combination with improved medicine and public health, helped the poor live longer and so create a rising commercial elite — who bumped up against the squirearchy. Burke’s campaign for economic reform (of the monarchy) trumped association reform (of parliament), which had to wait until 1832. Also in the second half of the century, Bohemian romantics abjured aristocracy and classicism, and embraced the French Revolution, as did Fox, whose break with Burke split the party for a generation. Most of the nation rallied behind Pitt (supported by George and the City of London) against the French threat, initially by sea power alone, and then to the standard of Wellington. The English emerged justifiably proud but also arrogant.
15. Wood, Radicalism of the American Revolution (10 Aug 2017)
The American Revolution exhibited none of the socioeconomic conditions classically associated with political upheaval, yet was a time of thoroughgoing change. Spanning 1740-60s (i.e., before the French and Indian War) to the Jacksonian era, Wood narrates a series of transformations in colorful detail, emphasizing social phenomena. For example, vertical connections of patronage were replaced by egalitarianism, as paternal authority began melting away. Leisure became a suspect trait of residual aristocracy; property transformed from a source of authority to merely another economic interest. Superior virtue was seen to derive from common moral sense, sharpened by participating in society (not government), rather than educated reason. In this way, the emergent middle class fused the gentility of the upper class with the bona fides of the working class to create a distinctly American ‘moral hegemony’. In the economic sphere, commerce which had been predicated on trust (credit) became more purely transactional, while the colonial ‘trading society’ predicted on business with England grew aware of its internal market and thus potential self-sufficiency. Servitude — save for slavery — all but dissolved. In the Federalist era, the granting of private charters became commonplace, such that not every purpose was publicly oriented, thereby raising questions of property rights; so judges became arbiters of public power versus private rights. Politically, government office went from an obligation to a source of social standing. Proto-group rights (first manifest by anti-Federalists), replaced disinterest as the defining standard of decision making. Then the first avowed political parties gook hold as the expression of loyalty to common interest and advancement. The Jacksonian age further restored monarchical characteristics under the cloak of popular rhetoric, such as the spoils system. Wood concludes: the revolution was about deciding who are America’s proper sociopolitical leaders, elsewhere noting the founders died depressed as the new society zoomed past republicanism into democracy. Deeply researched, the author’s taste for anecdote works to crowd out military, economic, and political events (context). Oddly, there is little discussion of Turner’s social mobility in migration, nor much regional color — although the author displays humility in allowing the character of local histories will require adjustments to the main narrative. A major question left unanswered is why the resultant concentration of wealth and broader inequality did not foster increased political instability?
20. Lewis, The Crisis of Islam (14 Sep 2017)
An extended essay on the place of Islam in the global sphere, generally recurring to three themes: sources and consequences of theocracy, Islam’s historical relationship with the West, and Islam in the 20th and 21st centuries. In contrast to Judeo-Christianity, Islam can be seen as a religion subdivided into nations; Christian clergy haven’t enjoyed equivalent social authority in at least three centuries. There are chiefly two political traditions, quietism in authoritarian society and radical activism, both borne of Mohammed’s life (and of course several schools of legal interpretation). As regards the West, the Crusades were unimportant to contemporary Ottomans. The end of the expansionary era (as marked by Lepanto and Vienna) was more significant. Most important, Islam was already superseded by European technological and economic progress, such as Atlantic maritime trade, and well closed to foreign intellectual currents — since the 9th century, only 100,000 Western books have been translated in Arabic, the equivalent of a year’s production in Spain. Muslims never saw their expansion as imperial, but in the modern era, which began with the coming of Napoleon, fundamentalism has required an enemy. In 20th-century Arabia, Wahhabism allied to Saudi nationalism presented themselves as keepers of the holy land; with the decline of pan Arabism — only Palestine didn’t succeed in creating a nation-state — nationalism and fundamentalism have blurred. The Iranian revolution was a fundamentalist coup d’etat, and the author asserts the hostage crisis was a response to improving US ties. Similarly, first Sadat’s accord and then the collapse of the USSR forced Palestinians to talk with Israel. Latterly, terrorist bombings violate the Islamic prohibition against suicide (which is not proof of martyrdom), more evidence that fundamentalism has come to ignore its origins.
24. Thomson, England in the Nineteenth Century (20 Nov 2017)
A dense yet lively account of the United Kingdom from 1815-1918, identifying the overarching themes of piecemeal reform, the political economy in the world’s first industrial power, and the rise and fall of Liberalism. Key points:
Reform
• Political reform followed significant economic change, and was initiated by Parliament-appointed commission
• The 1832 Reform Bill was the first big event, although it maintained the ascendancy of property over population. Over the long run, industrial concerns won ground at the expense of landowners, while religious disabilities were continually eased
• Implementing the new Poor Law (of 1834) and criminal justice (police work) catalyzed elected local bodies (municipal councils) and simultaneously built conduits for central (Parliamentary or Whitehall) direction
• British government was transformed in the 1840s: ordinary citizens gained civil and economic rights, sacrificing some freedoms
• Gladstone’s first ministry (1868-74), which simplified taxes and also government finance, laid the basis for the 20th-century state by reforming the civil service, military, and judiciary through introduction of competitive exams
• The schools reform of 1870, which the author says was required by continuing extension of the vote (furthered in 1884-85 and reaching full suffrage by 1918), set up local boards to monitor quality and attendance of public schools
• The curtailing of the House of Lords, the arrival of Labour as the Conservatives’ principal opposition, and the suffragette movement together heralded a more violent politics
• Poor relief transformed into demand for ‘social security’, notably through the 1909 Beveridge report, the Insurance Act of 1911, and the establishment of a Labour ministry in 1916
Political Economy
• Toward the start of the century, Commoners came to be the cabinet equals of peers, while Radicals were coequals with Liberals (Whigs) and Conservatives (Tories), through the limited franchise delayed Parliamentary recognition
• Durham’s response to Canadian riots presaged the Commonwealth and allowed for ‘responsible government’ while binding the colonies to the metropole
• Palmerston represented a pre-reform (of 1832) outlook, and acted as a brake up to 1865
• Trade unionism gained momentum after 1870, when economic growth was checked by the US (hitherto expanding westward) and united Germany. The balance of trade was now negative, most food was imported, and money once invested (and reinvested) in colonial enterprises now became vital domestic income
• Britain opted out of the de facto international system in the first half of the 19th century, largely avoiding foreign wars, but could not halt the convergence of Ottoman and Habsburg decline and the dynamics of the German naval race
Liberalism
• Social hardship entered public consciousness when it was no longer taken for granted
• Britain’s sovereign Parliament was more adaptable than continental monarchs
• Each of the Victorian era’s three phases grappled with rapid, broad changes in the country’s political economy. Mid-Victorian complacency (Palmerston, Macaulay, Russell) produced its own reaction (Dickens, Arnold, Carlyle). But reformist zeal sometimes produced overbearing results for the working classes — loss of freedom
• Bentham’s ‘greatest good’ principle animated each era of reformers. Although associated with Liberalism, there was no intrinsic connection. Separately, Liberalism viewed the state as a negative force: laissez faire worked so long as the economy was expanding
• ‘Socialized liberalism’, a fusion of archetypal utilitarianism and an activist state, took root after the panic of 1873
• Reforms often came not from Liberals but Radicals or Tories. Liberals focused on ‘adequate’ moral values; Christianity checked Victorian complacency. The Liberals sought to promote voluntarism and Radicals vied for better elections (faith in democracy); the Tories were paternalistic
• Britain’s sense of historical community and faith in its institutions was challenged in the last phase, most obviously by Home Rule, as progress through conflict turned to a zero-sum worldview
• Yet the Liberal residue in latter-day socialism tempered confrontational instincts — Marx and Engels played little role in England — and set it apart from the continent
22. Craig, Germany 1866-1945 (13 December 2021)
United Germany, though evidencing the thirst for liberty and flourishes of superlative culture, succumbed to the seduction of power and consequences of political failure to embrace liberalism, its people transformed from a Kulturvolk to a Machtvolk. Responsibility stems from Bismarck’s nationalism, which excluded simultaneous transition to popular sovereignty; Hitler’s cataclysm made it newly possible; but Craig’s account overlooks the historic loss of Prussia.
After the Austrian war, Bismarck conciliated liberal opinion in order to coopt the southern Catholic states (opposed to agrarian Prussian aristocrats) which had blocked the Zollparlament in 1868; Bismarck had overestimated the economy’s integrative capacity. No politician dared oppose the chancellor after 1870, yet still he reserved local prerogatives including education, policy, and revenue generation to the lander (especially Bavaria). The constitution, meant to be efficient vis-à-vis provincial rivalries without curtailing the Prussian monarchy or aristocracy, acknowledged 18 states plus Alsace-Lorraine; it contained no bill of citizen rights. Politics did not attract capable men and competing interests were seen to undermine the superior purpose of the Hegelian state. The Kulturkampf set Germans against one another, damaging the authority of civil courts and more generally liberalism. Simultaneously, the Grunderzeit kindled modern anti-Semitism. Foreign policy was defensive, but Bismarck’s manhandling the foreign service undermined its professionalism and his machinations (more so than his overt character) were responsible for his fall. At the end of his career, he had no answers other than threat of violence – a tactic which would tragically persist.
The country’s position deteriorated under the feckless Wilhelm II, who never read the constitution, holding to divine right and direct rule. With von Holstein he sought and failed to draw closer to Russia, seeking like all German elites recognition as a great power, when it would have been better to pull back and redress social imbalances. Bernhard von Bulow hoped an aggressive foreign policy would disarm the left; Bethman Hollweg succeeded to debt and a military which saw itself as an increasingly necessary independent actor. In these 1890s, trade unions sought for social democracy and responsible government, but were demonized by elites, while the parliamentarians had no experience of using supply to leverage the executive arm. Effectively blocked by parties organized on the basis of economic class and so averse to coalition, Bethman become reliant on military influence as well as reserves of power in Prussia, the Conservative Party, the Pan German league, and the agricultural and industrial lobbies. Aside from Wilhelm II himself, Bulow and Tirpiz were the most reckless ministers, the latter converting the Bismarckian policy into grasping Weltpolitik. The arms race with Britain, the imperialism evident in the Baghdad railway, and the exclusion of Russian grain (at behest of Prussians) as well as the social Darwinism of conservative Germany professoriate guided the country toward World War I
In 1914 the problem was to survive a protracted conflict with inferior resources, industrial organization, and sea power. Food was an immediate liability: prewar Germany had imported one-third of supply. Ludendorff’s appointment was a political revolution: power was overtly transferred to the high command. The shocking terms of Brest-Litovsk aroused Western antagonism as well as resistance among Eastern nations which saw the nature of German aggression.
Normalcy persisted During the Berlin commune: ‘most don’t bother to participate in the political events which shape their lives’. The Kiel mutinists were liberals not Bolshevisks. Ebert, facing anarchy, decided to side with the military, at first understandably, over time less plausibly. Weimar ministries came to exist at the sufferance of parties or factions. Conversely, since federal law did not supercede the lander, Weimar’s true (anti-democratic) enemies exploited the gaps. Inflation was rooted not in the government fiscal policies but the wartime administration, which relied on loans not tax. Arts and culture were second to none in Germany history: poetry, novels, Expressionism, Bauhaus. But the bohemians, disappointed by 1918 and opposing contemporary ministries for their military affinities, did little to defend the political order. The universities remained conservative. The ‘average’ German resorted to glorifying war as an outlet for tragedy: the German sin is to take refuge in destiny; the ideal German resists politics, when submitting to the necessity, he works via force.
At the end of Weimar, the Mittelstand was disillusioned with Bruning’s reliance on Socialists, but industrialists did not rush to help Hitler (as often supposed). Conducted under the rubric of Gleichschaltung (‘putting into the same gear’), the Nazi takeover entailed dissolving state government and the Reichsrat, purging the civil service, abolishing political parties, and coopting trade unions and eventually (in 1938) the army. But in 1933’s preparations for purging the Brown Shirts, Hitler claimed revolutions should become evolutions.
Mein Kampf established Hitler’s aggressive foreign policy – but Russia was always the goal. The early success of Hitler’s foreign policy obscured the anarchy of competing planning agencies and willy-nilly commissions. Only SS terror prevented collapse. Germany could have been brought to heel by its balance of payments. Industry shifted from western lander to south central states. Wages kept pace with inflation (although the author notes 20 percent went to taxes!). The giant industrial concerns most benefitted from Jewish confiscation. Following America’s entering World War II, Germans blamed the Fuhrer, remembering the prior conflict. After 1942’s African reverses, Hitler descended from daring strategist to meddling tactician, prohibiting for example retreat from Stalingrad on grounds of morale.
Early on, Nietzsche is given commanding effect: military victories are not political wins; proficiency does not equal virtue or morality. While undoubtedly advanced by recent scholarship, a masterful telling.
10. Beer, Modern British Politics (23 Jun 2018)
Traces the development and practice of British politics from the late 19th century to the 1950s, highlighting the consolidation of government and economic production and consumption in the ‘collective era’. Beer first describes four premodern mindsets: old Tory (hierarchic, corporatist), old Whig (which transposed executive power to the cabinet), liberal, and Radical. The Enclosure Acts of the 1700s indicated the introduction of group politics (albeit aristocracy, the balanced constitution, and mercantilism remained dominant), in a long-term transition from patronage to party. In the 1800s, the primary distinction between liberals and Radicals lay in the theory of representation, one favoring liberty to act one’s conscience (the ‘masterless man’) and the other the ‘will of the majority’; Radical politics nonetheless incompletely utilized party to express class and ideological ends, according to later Socialists. The collective era, which reached its height in the 1950s, introduced or reified corporatist forms of a managed economy in combination with the welfare state. Beer then analyzes the workings of the Labour Party since the 1890s. Socialist doctrine held that party program reflects class interest, and all important decisions were to be taken before reaching Parliament. In 1907, the party formally voted itself power to instruct its MPs, although Radical views of the state’s role in alleviating evil and creating good persisted until the 1920s. The miners union’s joining the Trades Union Congress in 1909 was initially seen as a setback, until its commitment to nationalization during World War I. In 1917, Labour broke with David Lloyd George; in 1918 it committed to state ownership of the means of production, a which was unchallenged until 1951. Beer writes that Labour had to do so to differentiate itself after the ‘entente cordial’ with Liberals in 1907. On taking power as a minority government in 1929, Ramsay MacDonald faced the choice of ideology or pragmatism. Needing Liberal support, he along with Snowden, Thomas, Henderson, and Webb chose the latter. By 1931, absent a clear answer to the depression, MacDonald was forced to accede to 10 percent cut in unemployment benefits in order to win loans from New York banks. Allowed to play a large role in Churchill’s wartime government, Atlee executed the Socialist nationalization program over 1945-51; however, pressed by increasingly negative balance of payments and simultaneous demand for domestic goods, the party-government determined to steer workers into export trades or production of popular goods. The problem became closing the ‘manpower gap’ and reducing volatility of demand, finance being secondary. But after the TUC’s 1946 opposition to wage restraint, Hugh Dalton was replaced by Stafford Cripps, who returned from physical controls to market manipulation – a shift which included manufacturers accepting reduced prices and profits. The deal fell apart in 1950 (following 1949’s devaluation of sterling), at which time the unions asserted a measure of independence from Labour, in order to directly participate in collectivist bargaining. This was crucial in forging the new social contract, the paradigm of the managed economy, which Beer dates to 1940 (not 1945, because it was then workers accepted sacrifices to win the war). Henceforth, class was again not inherently political and determinist. In the 1950s, commitment to nationalization and its residual class image came to hurt Labour (Beer notes that 1/3 of the working class consistently voted Conservative throughout), presaging party change. The Fabians counterattacked but the Parliamentary leadership along with the TUC, which provided more than 50 percent of party revenue, prevailed. Turning to the Conservative party, Beer revisits the old Tory and Disraeli’s ‘Tory democracy’ mindsets: belief in hierarchy; that society is an organic unit with a traditional (not rational) social ethic; that politics isn’t the highest calling but rather is an obligation in service of society; that the governing class leads by virtue of talent; that voters choose leaders, not policy, because of the leadership’s being in tune with changing circumstances, tradition, interest groups, and of course electoral calculation. Thus, in the 1930s the less ideological, more adaptable Tories converted to monetary expansion, mercantilism, and industrial and agriculture ‘rationalization’, thereby abandoning gold and free trade. Tariff ‘reform’, headed by Chamberlain, was an important step toward the managed economy. Trade associations, rising in response to unions (and in contrast to US antitrust doctrine), were the gateway to producer group representation. By the 1950s, the Conservatives too were ready for collectivism, in which 1) the managed economy relied on bargaining with producer groups and 2) the welfare state accommodated consumer interests, as represented by party-government bidding for votes. In the collective era, government couldn’t be separated from production and consumption: ‘consumer sovereignty’ trumped popular sovereignty, Beer concludes. Yet differences remained: Labour focused on equality of outcomes, the Tories, who presumed inequality because of hierarchy, on distribution of power. Thus the question of morality – the just distribution of power to rule – persisted: voluntarism, the view that human wishes are the basis of legitimacy, conflicts with rationalism, a theory of fair ends. Apart from Beer’s framework, collectivism was upended by the reemergence of supply-side economics, that prices communicate demand and so the allocation of resources and rewards.