REV CON

"Surely 'revolutionary conservative' is a contradiction in terms!" (Ron Carrier, November 1, 1997)

Is not being a revolutionary incompatible with with being a conservative, since it involves innovative changes that can only be destructive? I do not think so. The conservative revolution certainly cannot take place simply by destroying the mangerial society. The anarchist may think that the destructive urge is necessarily creative, but the revolutionary conservative cannot agree with him. Nor can the conservative revolution simply create social and political institutions out of thin air. That would be innovation, since these institutions would have no roots in the history and practices of the people.

However, the revolutionary conservative is not thereby left without resources, intellectual or material. For while the managerial revolution has defeated capitalist and pre-capitalist social, political, and cultural institutions, it has not yet extirpated them (though not for lack of trying). This is why I wrote that conservatism is a defeated force and not a spent one. There is life yet in the family, in the church, in all the associations made on the basis of region or ethnicity, in individually owned businesses tied to these, and in local governments. The revolutionary conservative must cherish these, encouraging them to flourish and to recover control of those social functions that have been stolen away from them by a managerial elite that has nothing but contempt for them.

This will, in the nature of things, bring these local efforts at conservative change into conflict with the managerial elite. To resist the managerial elite, they must have some means of coordinating themselves so that they can constitute a common struggle against the elite and its institutions. In my view, these should be confederal and not centralized, and they should as much as possible operate outside the framework of managerial institutions. What is needed is not another mass political party, but institutions that as much as possible do without presently existing political parties. And of course, those involved need to have a clear view of the situation and of the conservative principles to be brought to bear in the situation. In other words, they must be statesmen.

Above all, the conservative counterrevolution will come to nothing if it dispenses with its first and most basic principle, the affirmation of a transcendent order. There will be no liberation from the tyranny of the managers and their anti-traditional principles without what can only be called a religious vision. Transcendence must break in upon us, as it has broken in upon our ancestors, and grant us the knowledge by which we may live in accord with it. The conservative counterrevolution is in need of the gift from above by which traditional life may be renewed and restored. It cannot be forgotten that it will be a gift, and not something that we can manufacture for ourselves. Tradition is lifeless unless the knowledge of the transcendent order upon which it is founded is woven into the most basic understanding of the world as a whole; and this understanding, which is as mysterious and worthy of piety as what it knows, can never be fully grasped and mastered, let alone abstractly formulated and inculcated.

The counterrevolutionary cannot fashion for himself the gift of tradition, but he can and should make himself ready to receive the gift. He can prepare himself for it. But how? Not primarily by allying himself with the "Religious Right." This is because, as [Sam] Francis argues in the essay "Religious Wrong," the religion (or, better, religiosity) at work is neither the driving force behind the movement designated by this term, nor of sufficiently broad and penetrating vision to reveal fully what is wrong. Francis thinks that any religious perspective on current difficulties constitutes "false consciousness," but he is least persuasive when he most gives in to Marxist habits of thought. However, the religiosity of the "Religious Right" is worrisome to the counterrevolutionary, since it is to a large extent a form of religion that has evacuated itself of any reference to the transcendent.

The counterrevolutionary conservative must rather look to the reappearance of religious life that is genuinely traditional. Here, as the case of the "Religious Right" illustrates, not any form of religion that comes down the pike can do. How can an authentically traditional form of religion be recognized, though? It can be recognized because we have knowledge of what it is and involves. The researches of the Traditionalist school of comparative religion, to which belongs such people as Rene Guenon, Ananda Coomaraswamy, Julius Evola, and Mircea Eliade, have recovered for the counterrevolutionary an awareness of the world of Tradition and of the metaphysical principles toward which it was oriented. Whether it be through a revival of existing forms of religion through a return to their Traditional roots or through the revelation of Tradition in a new religious form, conservatism will be recovered as a dominant force in human life when traditional religious knowledge once again becomes real for the whole of society.

PJ is this what you meant by revolutionary conservative? Posted by Orrin Judd at May 2, 2003 9:20 PM