United Kingdom

1. Beer, To Make a Nation (7 Jan 2017)

by kurto

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)

by kurto

Examines the expansion of democratic government since the French Revolutions and evaluates reasons for its decay. Building on

    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.

12. Butterfield, George III and the Historians (26 Jun 2017)

by kurto

Assesses the historiography of George III’s early reign — how he intended to govern from 1760-63, and whether it constituted a significant break from his Hanover predecessors. The contest between neo-historicist Whig and more overtly partisan Tory interpretations culminated in Whig ascendancy, until the arrival the Namierite school of ‘structured analysis’, which asserted behavior is explicable according to classifiable political types (i.e., MPs). Burke, as a contemporary naturally belonged to the Whigs, although he was ‘satisfied’ with subsequent reform and so able to turn against the persecutors of the French monarchy. Butterfield asserts history is ‘both story and study’ (pp. 294-295): readers shouldn’t be able to guess the outcome. Meanwhile, an individual’s deeds are to be assessed in the context of the ideas then held, and primary sources are valuably supplemented by external evidence and evaluation. As to the historian, he is to be diligent in search of new or novel evidence, responsible in the use of evidence, and the best presenter of it. No amount of learning can surmount deficient imagination.

13. Hamburger, Macaulay and the Whig Tradition (12 Jul 2017)

by kurto

Thomas Macaulay, conventionally seen as a Whig, was in fact a trimmer, primarily concerned to reconcile opposing politicians in order to preserve civil order. Danger lay both in ultra Tory reaction or democratic or religious radicalism. Macaulay followed Burke in holding that respect for tradition creates a political environment safe for debate. ‘Noiseless’ revolutions point to correct decisions, and to be too late to make generous concessions is a cardinal policy error. To productively transform a ‘conjuncture’ (i.e., a revolutionary situation) into reform is high statesmanship. Macaulay gained notoriety for interpreting the Great Britain’s constitutional struggles of the 17th and 18th centuries, so as to make them a common (i.e., public) possession; however, his intellectual glosses and programic reading of history reduced his academic stature. Further, his temperament was unsuited for trimming, and although a believer in induction, he also held the progressive’s belief in ends justifying the means. History has no intrinsic use, but ought to be mined for precedent and instruction; more particularly, contra Burke revolution ought to be judged by the consequences, not the substance of events.

14. Plumb, England in the 18th Century (4 Aug 2017)

by kurto

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.

22. Jones, Burke and the Invention of Modern Conservatism (22 Oct 2017)

by kurto

A problematic monograph studying Edmund Burke’s establishment as founder of British conservatism. Burke’s supple yet vociferous politics left the Georgian / early Victorians to decide whether he was a great statesman and who were his heirs: neither the Whigs nor the Tories could claim the whole of him, Peel and Disraeli making no overt appeals to his legacy. So too were they unsure of his Irish heritage. By mid century, however, in part because his contrasting the English constitution with French tumult, he was seen as a conservative genius — the author ignores Blackstone or Bagehot! — while Matthew Arnold and others acclaimed him a literary prodigy. Later, he became generally fashionable as an aphorist, a kind of Mark Twain. Amid constitutional reform of the 1860s, Liberals couldn’t accept his prior opposition; however, revisionist appraisals by Leslie Stephens and especially John Morley helped bring him into the Irish Home Rule debate of the 1880s. Gladstone was his foremost Liberal supporter, the Liberal Unionists used him the most. The author asserts Irish conflict, in combination with the Unionists transition to the Tories, was the turning point. When it became evident the Liberals would not reconcile, the question of who truly succeeded Burke reached its final phase, ironically echoing the split between Fox and Burke over the French Revolution. Yet there were two additional dynamics at work. Burke’s oeuvre was reduced to body of political theory, notably by Hugh Cecil, son of Lord Salisbury, in which he was recognized as a pioneer of applying historical method in deriving just politics. Separately, he was widely studied in schools as a paradigm of English rhetoric as well as the English state (in contradistinction to the French Revolution). Sensibly organized but poorly written and occasionally conceptually muddy, the work is irredeemably undermined by both a rushed ‘epilogue’ citing a David Bromwich quote as evidence Burke is not in fact at conservative at all, and more importantly failing to deliver on the title’s promise, British political conservatism being nowhere treated in the whole.

24. Thomson, England in the Nineteenth Century (20 Nov 2017)

by kurto

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

3. Millard, Hero of the Empire (19 Jan 2018)

by kurto

Narrates Winston Churchill’s Boer War capture and escape, which launched the immodestly ambitious young man into his Parliamentary career. Following an election loss, Churchill secured a journalism commission but acted as a (very brave) combatant during a Natal reconnaissance mission. Held in Pretoria, his escape from the Transvaal countryside turned on the good fortune of seeking help from an English-born mining manager and smuggled transport in the rail car of a compatriot wool exporter. Although generalizations weigh down the outset, the main tale is well told and the book holds some insight into Churchill’s personality. However, the attempt to connect every thread is too ambitious – and Jan Smuts is left out!

4. Keegan, Winston Churchill (23 March 2022)

by kurto

Sketches the life of Britain’s foremost 20th-century statesman, whose wartime leadership merely punctuated his vision and achievements as a journalist and in office. Despite little formal schooling, Churchill mastered English rhetoric and consequently a romantic telling of British history, centering on a patriotism borne of personal freedom, the sanctity of (common law) justice, and limited government. Such principles colored his political leadership. A solder and student of warfare, he never forgot its consequences for the common man. An aristocrat who held to Tory democracy, he is little appreciated for championing the early welfare state (Lloyd George wrongly getting the credit for the People’s Budget). An imperialist, he sympathized with the Boers and Michael Collins’ Ireland but not Gandhi’s India – for the latter did not lead a warrior caste. In the 1930s, Gallipoli, opposition to Indian self-rule and support for Edward VIII, and obnoxious habits kept him from office and influence. Yet rightly seeing the perils of airborne war and Nazi Germany, he set the agenda for World War II and the subsequently the anti-communist Cold War.

10. Beer, Modern British Politics (23 Jun 2018)

by kurto

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.