…you can’t say he’s not interesting.
First of all there’s this letter in response to this article.
It stirred up some discussion on the theological blog scene.
Personally, I’m of a somewhat ‘Red Tory’ persuasion myself, in that I’m not in favour of capitalism but I’m ‘conservative’ on most cultural and social issues. I found it a little odd that some people seemed to take his letter as a sort of lurch to the ‘right’ as if Milbank hadn’t previously espoused views that were ‘conservative’. The scare quotes around his use of ‘the family’ also struck me as rather strange: what exactly do people, including it seems some Christians, have against ‘the family’? It is clear that Milbank is no leftist turning ‘neo-conservative’ as Hitchens did; if he’s a Tory, then it’s a Tory of the old school like Ruskin and Thomas Carlyle and he makes it clear he still retains his (Christian) socialist allegiance.
It’s also important to read the letter in the context of the article he’s responding to. Thus his reference to “principled elites” is probably a reaction to the article’s hysterical aversion to the Church having any influence in society whatsoever (we should all be guided by Science, you see).
Anyway, following on from this, there’s a new interview with Milbank in The Other Journal (I was alerted to it on Inhabitatio Dei). The interview tackles the ‘new atheism’ (Dawkins, Hitchens and their ilk) and touches on other subjects such as sex and politics. He once again references ‘Red Toryism’ and argues that Christians need to start taking their Christianity into the political realm in a more self-conscious and explicit manner. I found this quote particularly amusing (no doubt it’ll serve as further ‘proof’ that Milbank is a ‘fascist’ – a ridiculous claim):
We need now to celebrate instead the faithful legacy of peasants, learned, honourable and paternalist aristocrats, Christian warrior kings like Alfred the Great, yeomen farmers and scholars. Péguy is the man for the hour. William Cobbett also. Chesterton and Belloc likewise.
On a serious note, I would love for someone to present a practical blueprint for how this sort of political vision would work. It’s all very well issuing these clarion calls, but what does it actually amount to in the context of British politics? Phillip Blond seems to think David Cameron is perhaps taking some steps towards this, but I don’t think it goes anywhere near far enough (and I’m sure he’d agree). So how exactly is Red Toryism or Traditionalist Socialism meant to impact the political scene? And in what sort of changes would it manifest itself? Perhaps Blond’s upcoming book on Red Toryism may go some way towards making this clearer.
I think you’re misunderstanding the difference between a family and the concept of the family. There are plenty of resources readily available to help you with that.
Regarding the cultural conservativeness, why should that go unchallenged? I find it difficult to reconcile views on sex like the one espoused in that interview with, well, reality as I understand it.
Could you expand a bit on what you mean, Anthony?
Then perhaps you’d be so kind as to direct me towards some of them?
Nathaniel,
Would you change your mind if I did? Serious question.
djw,
Same question to you.
You could always look at Engels, of course, and Deleuze and Guattari in Anti-Oedipus, but I get the impression “cultural conservatism” is more a dogmatic position than a rational one.
I found my way to the interview via Inhabitatio as well. Really brilliant stuff–his re-imagining of Christendom and the political landscape seemed just as revolutionary as his opening to Theology and Social Theory.
One thing I’ve wondered up to this point is if the RO guys on the other side of the Atlantic have a slightly more paternalistic view of the State than some Americans. Cavanaugh and Long, for instance, seem to have drunk more of the anarchist strains of their Catholic Worker and Anabaptist traditions.
But perhaps a Red Tory re-imagination of the political landscape can maintain a healthy suspicion of the State as well…
Davey,
Milbank in fact does state in the preface to Jamie Smith’s Introduction to RO that “the British members of RO (including myself) are less hostile to the institution of the state tout court than are the American ones, even though this is a matter of degree.”
So I think you’re correct in your supposition and likewise that they’d still want to maintain a healthy suspicion towards the state.
“Would you change your mind if I did?”
Well, I don’t know and I can’t know until I hear what you have to say. Possibly we agree already, who knows. And it’s also possible, of course, that nobody ever actually changes their mind about anything.
At any rate, my question was meant to be directed specifically at your statement that “I find it difficult to reconcile views on sex like the one espoused in that interview with, well, reality as I understand it.”
I’m simply unsure what that means in all honesty. Clearly, however, your experience of “reality” must in some sense lead you to associate “cultural conservatism” with some kind of anti-rationalist dogmatism which must mean then that you see a stance of that sort as ultimately inapplicable to “real life”, presumably because the stance is too broad and unnuanced. But to presume this seems as much a generalization to me. So what am I missing in your argument?
Yes, cultural conservatism with regard to sexual issues strikes me largely as irrational and dogmatic, rooted in a gender essentialism (regardless of how often one sites Luce Irigiray) that makes explaining parts of reality that don’t accord with that essentialism impossible. One also gets the impression, as with the First Things crew, that this morality is for the plebs while the clever ones do what they will. So, in short, its irrationality is witnessed to by the fact that they don’t even believe it enough to do what they say.
This is probably a generalization, but it is a comment box and time is limited. If you want to explain to me why cultural conservatism should be the default position you can go ahead.
Davey said:
“One thing I’ve wondered up to this point is if the RO guys on the other side of the Atlantic have a slightly more paternalistic view of the State than some Americans. Cavanaugh and Long, for instance, seem to have drunk more of the anarchist strains of their Catholic Worker and Anabaptist traditions.”
I think that if one is going to be a Red Tory (and I have to confess that I found the vision Milbank lays out in that interview viscerally quite compelling) it’s extremely important that one be a Tory Anarchist (following Tolkien, Waugh, etc.) as well.
In fine, one cannot revive the sorts of organic, tangled-hierarchical social bonds that Milbank and Blond are interested in strengthening and re-creating (through which “principled elites” could acquire and exercise authority, but not power and dominion) via the wielding of state power, except perhaps negatively: by urging the elimination of the various ongoing taxes, subsidies, regulations, and other policies which have been used to simultaneously promote the atomization and dislocation of individuals, the creation of collosal business concerns, the accumulation of capital in fewer and fewer hands, and the centralization of political power.
Cheers,
Araglin