Wednesday, April 8, 2020

Strange Bedfellows?


After Foucault made his pact with the devil in 1975, he began teaching Austrian School Economics….

-          E. Michael Jones

This got my attention, so I went looking (including asking a couple of people much more knowledgeable on this relationship than I am). 

There are some hints at this relationship, for example by Nick Gillespie at Reason, who writes: “Foucault gave a generally appreciative series of Paris lectures on classical liberalism….”  What I am coming to find is that those engaged in this conversation see an open border between Austrian Economics and liberal political thought; in other words, the two are almost treated as the same thing – clearly not correct, but understandable.

I am going to split this analysis into two posts.  In this first one, I will examine the reasons, if any, for the common ground Foucault finds with Austrian and liberal thinkers.  In the second, I will examine some comments that make clear that the culturally left see very clearly the value to their objectives of a liberalism without a traditional, objective, ethic (Christianity and natural law) undergirding it.

First, from an essay (with no obvious attribution):

…no one else has seriously engaged with the theories and literature that underpin the “neoliberal” tradition (which most people might identify as neoclassical economics), which is to say with people like Hayek, von Mises, Friedman, etc.

I am not sure what is meant by “no one else” and “seriously engaged.”  What I do take away from this is that it is considered that Foucault did seriously engage with these theories.

Further, a piece published in Portuguese (but with an abstract in English), in the Mises: Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy, Law and Economics:

In this article, I offer a conceptual clarification regarding the place occupied by central Austrian Liberal authors, Mises and Hayek, in the thought of Michel Foucault, in what concerns the gestation of the (neo)liberal biopolitics and governmentality.

The issue at hand is a series of lectures given by Foucault, which were subsequently translated and offered in a book: The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978--1979. 

From the book description at Amazon:

The Birth of Biopolitics continues to pursue the themes of Foucault's lectures from Security, Territory, Population. Having shown how eighteenth-century political economy marks the birth of a new governmental rationality--seeking maximum effectiveness by governing less and in accordance with the naturalness of the phenomena to be governed--Michel Foucault undertakes a detailed analysis of the forms of this liberal governmentality. In a direct and conversational tone, this book raises questions of political philosophy and social policy that are at the heart of current debates about the role and status of neo-liberalism in twentieth century politics.

From this, we see that Foucault engages with what we know as the classical liberalism of the eighteenth century (“seeking maximum effectiveness by governing less”), and continuing his examination in the twentieth century of what is labeled “neo-liberalism” – the category in which he places Mises and Hayek.

For some further background, Mark Kelly would write of these Foucault lectures, noting that two of these were dedicated to an “Austrian-inspired American neoliberalism”:

Here it’s clear we are dealing with a different beast, an ideology not of the state administrators as in France and Germany, but of anti-state opposition. Rather than promising to use statecraft to support the fragile market mechanism, the American neoliberals apply the market as a grid of intelligibility for all human affairs, including politics. As has been said, they are indeed market fundamentalists.

But we still haven’t seen what, if any, connection or sympathy there is between Foucault and the liberal thought of Mises or Hayek.

I do not plan to buy the book, so I will make do with several secondary sources.  I will emphasize: unless clearly indicated otherwise, anything I write of Mises or Hayek and their views on economics or liberalism is taken from the noted sources – I do not mean to suggest that these views are accurately portrayed.  What I am after is what at least some people see connecting the thought of Foucault to that of Mises or Hayek – that they are right or wrong about the connection is a separate discussion. 

To get at the connection, the relationship, I had to rely on the Jacobins:

Neoliberalism, being more open to pluralism, seems to offer a less constrictive framework for the proliferation of minoritarian experiments.


In the strictest sense, this is what liberalism offers.  Value is subjective in economic markets, and value is subjective in ethics.  Traditional or objective values have no defender in liberalism.

I would say, more than “complementing” Hayek and Friedman, the problem with Foucault is that he implicitly embraced their representation of the market: that of a less normative, less coercive, and more tolerant space for minoritarian experiments than the welfare state, subject as it is to majority rule.

While embracing Hayek and Friedman, Jacobin offers a “tsk, tsk.”  They don’t see the market in this “less coercive” light.  One can certainly understand this criticism in the crony capitalism of today (and in some of Friedman’s work); I don’t think it is true for Hayek – and certainly not for Mises to my understanding.  Yet it is clear that many make this connection.

A further clue is offered in Michel Foucault, Political Economy, and Liberalism, by Jean-Yves Grenier and André Orléan:

Security, Territory, Population and The Birth of Biopolitics constitute a project that is continually in search of itself, and in which the author is led to undertake many rearrangements, to explore many false paths and even contradictions—all of which makes it difficult to achieve a coherent perception of the whole.

However, in The Birth of Biopolitics, Foucault goes further. On the occasion of this course he takes another step, in a certain sense an ultimate step, in his rejection of sovereignty. He does so on the basis of a thesis inspired in part by Hayek’s thought: “The market economy escapes any totalizing knowledge.”

The rejection of sovereignty, taken from the market and applied in all spheres (as the thinnest of liberalism does with the sovereignty of the individual).  Here again is the idea of applying the individualization of the market to any idea of ethics.

Continuing: Liberalism without Humanism: Michel Foucault and the Free-Market Creed, 1976–1979, Michael C. Behrent:

This article challenges conventional readings of Michel Foucault by examining his fascination with neoliberalism in the late 1970s. Foucault did not critique neoliberalism during this period; rather, he strategically endorsed it. 

…this article contends that Foucault’s brief, strategic, and contingent endorsement of liberalism was possible precisely because he saw no incompatibility between anti-humanism and liberalism—but only liberalism of the economic variety.  Economic liberalism alone, and not its political iteration, was compatible with the philosophical anti-humanism that is the hallmark of Foucault’s thought.

So, there may be different interpretation about what, exactly, Foucault was getting at.

Finally, from the abstract of Neoliberalism Through Foucault’s Eyes, by Serge Audier and Michael C. Behrent:

Michael Foucault's 1979 lectures at the Collège de France on the birth of biopolitics are increasingly read as the most lucid introduction to neoliberal policies. This article invites us to be cautious about such claims by exploring one rather obvious point: these lectures also—and perhaps most important—reflect Foucault's very distinctive and contemporary preoccupations.

Conclusion

Here we get some idea of what attracted Foucault to Austrian Economics, albeit it appears at least some people saw the connection more with liberal political theory or a mix of the two.  Next, we will look at how well the left understands the value to their objectives of subjectivity in ethics.

22 comments:

  1. Austrian Economics starts with the fallacy that saving funds investment. It doesn't. Investment is funded by credit creation, and brings forth its own saving. When a businessman borrows money for investment, the bank creates a matching deposit liability, which we call saving. There is no need for anyone's saving beforehand and banks do not lend out deposits. Banks are NOT financial intermediaries somehow intermediating between savers and borrowers. Nothing could be further from the truth and that's just not how banking works.

    Saving equals investment (S = I). This is an accounting identity true by definition and not open to debate. Keynes showed that if was true that saving funded investment, then for a time, saving would have to accrue to be available for investment, in which case saving would be greater than investment for that period of time (S > I).

    But that is impossible given that saving must always be equal to investment, to the penny.

    From an interview of Milton Friedman:

    EPSTEIN You were acquainted with the Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek and also are familiar with the work of Ludwig von Mises and his American disciple, Murray Rothbard. When you were talking about bad investments, you were alluding to Austrian business-cycle theory. A certain concept that has pretty much gone into our parlance and understanding fits in with what you said about what happened in Asia. There can be times and conditions in which the stage can be set for malinvestment that leads to recession.

    FRIEDMAN That is a very general statement that has very little content. I think the Austrian business-cycle theory has done the world a great deal of harm. If you go back to the 1930s, which is a key point, here you had the Austrians sitting in London, Hayek and Lionel Robbins, and saying you just have to let the bottom drop out of the world. You’ve just got to let it cure itself. You can’t do anything about it. You will only make it worse. You have Rothbard saying it was a great mistake not to let the whole banking system collapse. I think by encouraging that kind of do-nothing policy both in Britain and in the United States, they did harm.

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    1. Your comments gain no traction with me. One cannot spend effort producing a capital good unless he, or someone else, has first produced enough consumption goods to sustain the capital good producer for the duration of the capital project.

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    2. Austrian economists like Robert Murphy use the example of a Robinson Crusoe economy saying that Crusoe has to first build up a stock of consumption goods (e.g., fish and coconuts) before he can set about building capital goods like a fishing net for example to improve his productivity.

      Except that we don't live in a Robinson Crusoe economy. We actually make both consumption goods and capital goods at the same time, a guns and butter economy if you will. (A Robinson Crusoe and Friday economy.)

      Think of a group of factory workers making capital goods who go to a diner for lunch. The food they eat came from the work of a farmer. That farmer might that same day be buying capital goods from the output of those capital workers.

      It so happens that the workers who produce consumption goods make enough for themselves and some extra. That extra they trade for capital goods. The capital goods workers trade their output for consumption goods. All this happens in near real time.

      "has first produced enough consumption goods to sustain the capital good producer for the duration of the capital project."

      Imagine a group of workers who are building a nuclear plant that will take ten years to complete. By your logic, they can't start building that plant until the farmers have produced and stored ten years worth of food for them.

      We know that's not how it works. The farmers sustain those capital goods workers in real time which is why the building of that plant can begin immediately. And we don't call the farmer's output saving but rather production.

      Saving is the claim that those farmers and others have on that nuclear plant. This because the nuclear plant is investment and saving equals investment (S = I). Society is richer by exactly that addition of that nuclear plant to its capital stock, less any depreciation of that capital stock.

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    3. I am not Murphy, and I didn't use this example.

      You are the one who should "think." No one can make capital goods unless someone first produced an excess (called "savings") of consumption goods for the capital-good producer to live on. No one can eat capital goods.

      This is so obvious on its face that it normally takes Ph.D economists to screw it up.

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    4. Perhaps we have a different understanding of the word "savings" (or saving). I'm using the word "saving" as is commonly understood by economists.

      In order for something to be considered saving, it must persist into a future accounting time period.

      Say a farmer produces 10 bushels of wheat and consumes 10 bushels, all in the same year. There is no saving and there is no investment of wheat.

      Say a farmer produces 10 bushels of wheat, consumes 9 bushels and puts 1 bushel in a grain silo to be available as seed or food for the next year. In this case, there is 1 bushel of wheat saving and this is 1 bushel of wheat investment.

      Say a farmer produces 10 bushels of wheat, consumes 9 and the remaining bushel of wheat is consumed by a capital goods worker, all in the same year. In this case, there is no saving of wheat and no investment of wheat. We know this because in the beginning of the second year, no wheat exists, having all been consumed in the previous year.

      In this case and from a macro perspective, the only thing at the beginning of the second year is the capital good that was produced in the first year. Both the producer of the consumption goods and the producer of the capital goods lay claim to that capital good. That claim is what is called saving. That claim is what is also called investment. It is the macro perspective that is the correct one, not the farmer's perspective. The term "saving" is an aggregate term for the whole economy as used in the national accounts.

      Now you could argue that what an economy does is convert consumption goods into capital goods in a a roundabout way, and I would agree with you there. The only thing I would ask is that we be consistent in how we define economic terms.

      As an aside, economics is like religion, everyone sees things differently. For the record, I'm a follower of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) and the Post-Keynesian schools of economics. I also take good ideas from other schools of economics where I find them.

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    5. Goodness gracious, Ahmed. You are thinking like a bookkeeper, as if an artificial period (year-end) means anything to human action.

      The capital goods producer consumed the savings of the farmer - you said it yourself.

      But, thank you for your last paragraph. I now fully understand your confusion.

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    6. "But that is impossible given that saving must always be equal to investment, to the penny."

      So when I save cash under my mattress, what am I investing in exactly? Or are you saying that when I bury gold in the back yard (in the midst of fake burial sites with booby traps...), somewhere, someone else is investing the same exact dollar amount into the economy?

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    7. You can just create credit, ex nihilo. We must be gods!

      To BMs point, there is no real differnce between consumption and capital goods. Consumption goods is the break I eat today. Capital goods are just the bread I haven't eaten yet. I either keep it to allow support myself in the future or I lend to someone else for them to do the same thing.

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    8. A Texas Libertarian,

      "So when I save cash under my mattress, what am I investing in exactly?"

      You're not investing in anything. The cash you hold is a record of a previous investment that has already taken place. When a new investment is made, that gives rise to new saving. We know this because when a bank makes a loan, its balance sheet expands with a new deposit liability. That deposit belongs to the person who got the loan. When that person makes a payment to someone else, the bank marks down their deposit balance and marks up another person's deposit balance, in that or some other bank.

      As for saving equals investment...

      Assume a closed economy with no government. The economy produces two types of goods: consumption goods (C) and capital goods (I). (I is investment aka capital formation).

      GDP = C + I

      There are only two things you can do with production: consume it (C) or save it (S).

      GDP = C + S

      Equating:

      C + S = C + I

      That leaves:

      S = I

      Bear in mind that this is an identity, not an equality. There is no need to prove how S ends being exactly the same as I. In point of fact, and to drive the point home, it is sometimes written as:

      S ≡ I

      The triple bar here is used to stress the point that this is an identity and to stop people from wasting time trying to equate them or imagining that they could somehow be different.

      It's just math.

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    9. "It's just math"

      It's tautology. It begs the question of what GDP is in the first place. Austrians don't accept that consumption is wealth. It is a sign of past capacity to produce wealth.

      If you sneer at "Crusoe economics"... if you can't even accept the excruciatingly obvious fact that wealth must be produced before it can be consumed... and that this basic thing doesn't change, no matter how complex the system gets... then you're a lost cause.

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    10. cosmic dwarf,

      I didn't say that consumption is wealth, you did. I said consumption is part of GDP (Gross Domestic Product).

      "If you sneer at "Crusoe economics"..."

      I don't live in a one-person economy so I don't use a model that uses one person. Crusoe and Friday, that I can use. Friday collects food for the both of them and Crusoe makes capital goods.

      "if you can't even accept the excruciatingly obvious fact that wealth must be produced before it can be consumed..."

      Now you're just stating the obvious. Where in my comments did I even suggest that a person could consume what hasn't been produced yet?

      It's just how we tally up GDP. It's like if you buy a TV, we know that someone produced that TV. So for that reason, consumption is a part of production. (The rest being capital goods).







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  2. Bionic, I'm starting to notice something funny: from reading Barzun's Dawn to Decadence, and even more so from reading these posts on Foucault and the Austrian School, I'm driven more and more towards the notion that it is ultimately fashions and moods - largely cyclical and whimsical - that determine the intellectual landscape of a society, and not the other way around.

    Maybe I'm reading it wrong. I haven't reached the end of the book yet. But Barzun is very good at showing the emotions underlying every cultural/intellectual movement, and how they're driven by a desire to outgrow the perceived shortcomings of previous movements - he actually uses the word "boredom" quite often to describe the animus that makes a new generation toss out the ideas of the last one.

    From that point of view... intellectual consistency, analysis and derivation become something of a parlor game for brainy types. The effect of ideas on the "real" world is largely determined by how those ideas mesh with the prevailing mood. They can be influential, obviously - massively so - but for that to happen the time, place and manner of presentation need to be just right.

    What's my point, you ask? Well, originally I wanted to say that working on society's "mood" is more important than trying to get ideas *exactly* right. But honestly... I'm not sure. I guess this whole "killer flu" POS has worn me down to the point where I don't expect anything better than herd mentality from the overwhelming majority of people. This being so, seeking out finer points of truth, such as the exact nature and impact of Mises's ethical subjectivism seems... rather quaint. Or maybe it's just that I think looking for clues in leftist writing, of all places, isn't bound to be very productive. I'm very sleepy and have good reason to despair of humanity's reasoning ability right now.

    Perhaps you'll recall that I questioned the explaining power of Hoppe's argumentation ethics outside a world of civilized, rational debate that almost never occurs in reality? Well, this insane stampede is a great example. Most people - even many who seemed perfectly reasonable at one point, I'm sure we've all gone through that recently - have no qualms about dropping reason and argumentation altogether, in their eagerness to follow along with the tide and signal to everyone else that they are Compliant. Not surprisingly, this kind of attitude from "normal" people is turning out to be a great boon to those who would implement a Soviet-style centrally planned society. Thus twistedly vindicating Hoppe's point that argumentation implies private property, because right now we have neither.

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    1. Cosmic, Barzun’s book is interesting in this way. He tells history as a story and he tells it in story form. The left has always been good at this, albeit in a damaging way when compared to Barzun.

      A couple of years ago, Hoppe wrote of the necessity for a libertarian grand narrative (and presented his grand narrative). He is right – it isn’t an argument on ideas that will win the day – man lives in a story.

      https://mises.org/wire/libertarian-quest-grand-historical-narrative

      There was also a talk at the Mises Institute last year, about the cost of the enlightenment. This could be considered further narrative. (also touched on is a comment regarding Hoppe’s argumentation ethics, similar to your point)

      https://mises.org/wire/cost-enlightenment

      For me…I don’t think I am after getting ideas “exactly” right – just directionally right. On this question of Mises’s subjectivist ethics, society (and many libertarians) are exactly wrong – not just directionally wrong. Worse, it is precisely the church leaders that are failing totally on this issue of the necessity for objective ethics – and this is presented to us in narrative form with the closing of churches during Holy Week.

      Without Christian leaders carrying this torch, I see little hope for a move toward liberty. What a heavy torch: they support warmongering in the Middle East, to bring on the Rapture or whatever, they support torture, they support the drug war, they do nothing meaningful about abortion. The list is endless. And now they close their church doors.

      So “quaint” may be a good word to use…what difference does it make, especially seeing this current hysteria around us? Yet, someone has to do it (and fortunately, many “someone’s” are). Are you familiar with Isaiah’s Job, by Albert Jay Nock? There is a remnant, and they are out there.

      https://mises.org/library/isaiahs-job

      I don’t know what else to do. I am not ready to do nothing. I do recognize that I won’t likely see the fruits in my lifetime.

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    2. You're quite right, of course, that doing nothing is unacceptable. It's also true that very little can be done directly at this point. I'm sorry to have bent under pressure like that. Personal issues.

      Still, it strikes me as most unlikely that Mises's subjectivism could have been a critical piece of post-modernist "thought", such as it is.

      I think what you're trying to get at is... if I may be so bold... that Mises may have played a part in making the civilization destroyers see the market not as an enemy but as another useful institution to be co-opted?

      That's an interesting idea. I'll follow your thoughts on the matter.

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    3. cosmic,

      What initially interested me in this connection was the same thing that I finally figured out about libertarianism absent a proper cultural (call it traditional, Christian, natural law) grounding. Left libertarians - whether they know it or not - employ the same means as the socialist left: no ethical boundaries other than the NAP.

      But, somehow, these left libs believe that even though the means are the same, the ends will be different.

      So I see Mises's view of subjective value - in markets and in ethics - in a similar light. Perhaps, in the end, what I was looking for is not more complicated than this. With subjective value in ethics, there is no way liberty wins - it cannot happen.

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  3. "the most lucid introduction to neoliberal policies."

    A post-modernist is the most lucid read of neo-liberal economics?

    This reminds me of a great essay by Rothbard entitled, "The Hermeneutical Invasion", where he specifically addresses the utter incomprehensibility of folks like Foucault (and he does mention Michel by name).

    "Indeed, a crucial point about the hermeneuticians is that, for them, incomprehensibility is a self-fulfilling prophecy... Even in a profession — philosophy — not exactly famous for its sparkle or lucidity, one of the most remarkable qualities of the hermeneuticians is their horrendous and incomparably murky style. Stalactites and stalagmites of jargon words are piled upon each other in a veritable kitchen midden of stupefying and meaningless prose. Hermeneuticians seem to be incapable of writing a clear English, or indeed a clear German sentence."

    Schopenhauer's rebuke of Hegel, which Rothbard quoted, could be, I'd wager, equally applicable to Foucault.

    "a flat-headed, insipid, nauseating, illiterate charlatan, who reached the pinnacle of audacity in scribbling together and dishing up the craziest mystifying nonsense. This nonsense has been noisily proclaimed as immortal wisdom by mercenary followers and readily accepted as such by all fools, who thus joined into as perfect a chorus of admiration as had ever been heard before."

    The Hermeneutical Invasion

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    1. ATL, I am not after demonstrating that all of Foucault's work is of value. My objective is simple: what, if any, connection is there in his comments and "the Austrians"?

      It will be worth understanding the answer to this, because it could lead to an understanding of a dangerous outcome.

      Or Foucault (and the others I cite) might just be all wrong about any connection. That's OK, too. But it is only on this point that the discussion is meaningful to me.

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    2. I'm interested to see where the thread leads. I'm guessing it will point back to the association of libertarianism and communism as radical ideologies against the conservative constitutional order of the West (itself considered 'radical' just a few hundred years before).

      I'm very keen on trying to discover and keep to the right tracks of thought on culture and it's various sub-components: politics, economics, sociology, manners, and of course religion. I think it is important to root out the enemy within and among us, perhaps more so than the enemy without and around us.

      Jesus, after all, showed the most frustration not with the Romans, but with the corrupt Jewish priests of the Temple who were using it like a sacrificial supermarket. It was the only time He used force while here on earth.

      You are searching for the association between Foucault and the Austrians the right way with respect for the Austrians and their accomplishments and with intellectual discipline. I don't think E. Michael Jones did the same sort of diligent research before coming to him conclusion.

      Don't get me wrong. I like E. Michael (I would probably fight and die beside him), but the guy can be a bit kooky at times.

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    3. ATL, my post yesterday will be the last in this current series, so it goes no farther for now. As for Austrians (and libertarians), I hold in highest regard those associated with the Mises Institute; most of the rest I have learned to ignore.

      If I have offered you any of these links before, forgive me. I believe these all precede your commenting here:

      The Spanish Civil War, told through a novel - that my Spanish friend told me captured better the story of that war on a personal level than any non-fiction book written. Why do I include this? Communists and anarchists fought on the same side:


      http://bionicmosquito.blogspot.com/2014/01/you-say-you-want-revolution-keep-it-non.html

      My first deep dive into the history of left-libertarianism.

      http://bionicmosquito.blogspot.com/2015/07/left-libertarians.html

      Finally, Antonio Gramsci - the same means as many left-libertarians condone; obviously Gramsci had a different end in mind and history has proven him correct:

      http://bionicmosquito.blogspot.com/2015/07/antonio-gramsci-libertarians.html

      What am I getting at? The Enlightenment freed man from tradition and custom - meaning Christianity. Inherently, this meant the left - including the left in libertarianism - would always have the upper hand.

      It was this connection that I saw in this analysis of Foucault and the Austrians: subjective value in ethics is always to the benefit of the left.


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    4. "I hold in highest regard those associated with the Mises Institute; most of the rest I have learned to ignore."

      Same.

      "Communists and anarchists fought on the same side:"

      Yeah, I was aware of this. It just goes to show you that culture is what people fight and die for, not politics.

      "subjective value in ethics is always to the benefit of the left."

      This reinforces my working definitions of liberalism and conservatism.

      Liberal

      *Key Word: Reason
      *Radical: Yearning for Social or Political Change (How much better can life be?)
      *Tolerance or Affinity for Foreign Cultures ('Open Borders!')
      *Man is Either Angel (Rousseau) or Devil (Hobbes, Luther)
      *Moral Relativist: Morality is Defined by the Social Contract
      *The Individual is the Primary Building Block of Society
      *National or International Allegiance (George H. Thomas)
      *Liberty as Universal Rights Emancipated from any Fixed Moral or Religious Restraints
      *Traces Lineage to the American and European Enlightenment and Heretical or Counter-Cultural Elements within Latin Christendom and the Reform Spirit in Christianity.

      Conservative

      *Key Word: Tradition
      *Reactionary: Resistance to Social and Political Innovation (How can we preserve or regain what is or was good in life?)
      *Protective of One's Own Culture ('Build That Wall!')
      *Man is Neither Angel nor Devil (Catholicism, Burke)
      *Moral Absolutist: Morality is an Immutable and Universal Given
      *The Family is the Primary Building Block of Society
      *Local or Regional Allegiance (Robert E. Lee)
      *Liberty as Self-Determination Bound within the Customary Moral and Religious Framework of the West: Christianity
      *Traces Lineage to Latin Christendom, along with Elements of Ancient Judea, Classical Greece and Rome.

      I'm enjoying the posts you linked. I may have read them before, or perhaps similar ones.

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    5. "It just goes to show you that culture is what people fight and die for, not politics."

      I think it is this, and more (but maybe this is inherent in your statement).

      This: both were against Christianity and the Catholic Church.

      More: both were against hierarchy of all types - but again, perhaps you included this in your idea of "culture," which, now that I have typed out my thoughts, seems likely.

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  4. "both were against Christianity and the Catholic Church"

    Yup. The reason von Haller converted to Catholicism was because he came to believe that the French Revolution was a necessary outgrowth of the Protestant Reformation.

    In so doing, he burnt all the bridges he was making for himself with powerful German conservatives (mostly Protestant). He spent the rest of his life writing against the spirit of the times.

    "both were against hierarchy of all types"

    I didn't mention it, but yes, and this falls in line with my working definitions of left and right.

    Left

    *Key Word: Equality or "to each the same"; (from each according to his ability; to each according to his need - Marx)
    *Aims at Artificial Order of Social Uniformity.
    *Idealistic or Utopian
    *Emphasis on Public Property, and the Public Provision and Exchange of Resources
    *Governance by Will of Common Majority - Mediocracy as Manifested by Democracy, Socialism, Communism, Fascism, Syndicalism, and Anarchism
    *Structure of Governance: Centralized Monopolistic Authority
    *Gains Political Power through Revolution (French Revolution)
    *Primary Virtue = Solidarity
    *Built on Monastic Model - Equal Lack of Authority Under One Supreme Authority Encouraging Strict Obedience

    Right

    *Equity or "to each his due"; suum cuique
    *Accepts Natural Order of Social Stratification.
    *Realistic or Anti-Utopian
    *Emphasis on Private Property, and Private Provision and Exchange of Resources
    *Governance by Will of Competent Minority - Meritocracy as Manifested by Monarchy, Aristocracy, Kingship, Confederacy, and Private Law Societies
    *Structure of Governance: Polycentric Rivalrous Authority
    *Gains Political Power through Secession (American Colonial War of Independence)
    *Primary Virtue = Responsibility
    *Built on Familial Model - Multiple Layers and Heads of Authority All Encouraging Autonomy from the Lower Ranks over Time

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