The Reactionary Mind

Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Donald Trump

By: Corey Robin

Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain

In The Reactionary Mind, Robin traces conservatism back to its roots in the reaction against the French Revolution. He argues that the right was inspired, and is still united, by its hostility to emancipating the lower orders. Some conservatives endorse the free market; others oppose it. Some criticize the state; others celebrate it. Underlying these differences is the impulse to defend power and privilege against movements demanding freedom and equality - while simultaneously making populist appeals to the masses. Despite their opposition to these movements, conservatives favor a dynamic conception of politics and society - one that involves self-transformation, violence, and war. They are also highly adaptive to new challenges and circumstances. This partiality to violence and capacity for reinvention have been critical to their success.

©2011 Oxford University Press, Inc. (P)2018 Tantor

Critic reviews

"The Reactionary Mind has emerged as one of the more influential political works of the last decade." (Washington Monthly)

Very instructive.

Cory Robin examines a broad range of conservative thought and finds the thread running through each apparently new and shifting ethos. Each time, Robin says, conservatives learn from the left, adapt, and recast their belief in hierarchy in the terms used by the left.

Conservatism is counter-revolutionary, but it is not an attempt to turn back the clock. If anything, conservative counter-revolutionaries have contempt for the old regime that grew soft and allowed itself to be overthrown, But conservatism again and again invents new ways to sell hierarchy to a new age.

If the divine right of kings is abandoned, they portray monarchy as the most rationale system. If freedom is what people want, they complain about the tyranny of the poor and dispossessed, who are taking away the freedoms of the silent majority.

If it’s no longer acceptable to assert white male privilege, they recast racism and sexism as religious beliefs in private (white) schools and the right of women to stay at home and be cared for by men. If violence is no longer fashionable, they talk of business as a kind of war and entrepreneurs and CEOs as generals who must have obedient troops, and countries who have a patriotic duty to support businesses and business leaders.

Samuel Johnson once said Republicans want to level down so they are equal to the King, but they don’t want to level up so they are no better than their servants. So the key to making conservatism popular is to convince people that true enforced equality will hurt them by leveling up more than it helps them by leveling down.

Equality will hurt their freedoms more than it helps. It’s better to be a favored subject of benevolent rulers than to be reduced to the level of the lowest of the low. That’s the sales pitch, anyway. And it’s the reason millions of people who are not highly educated or affluent, the people Democrats think they are helping, are voting Republican.

the historical linage of the right

amazing well organized timeline of the right's history. an important thing to understand the world we live in.

intersting

reminded me of graduate seminar in history of political thought, not much fun and agenda driven.

Brilliant author, slowish text

I love political philosophy and this book is full of it, but it dwells for a long time on Burke and his conception of the sublime, which I found too poetic and abstract for my taste. I vastly preferred the more modern analyses in the final chapters, particularly covering the last 50 years, since I know the history better, and the philosophy was more tangible, I would love to see another book from Robins that focuses more on the parallel between modern conservatives and their counterparts from centuries past, rather than deep dives of the earlier thinkers whose history I’m not as familiar with (and would take a much longer book to put into context). I love Robins’ appearances to talk about this book on YouTube and podcasts, where he does an excellent job of distilling down its main points.

Interesting, a bit disorganized

This books responds to a need. What's been needed is a theoretical elaboration of political conservatism. There have been plenty of those but, for the most part, they have been provided by conservatives so they were partisan and they were attempting to redefine the movement.

What Corey Robin provides is a survey of conservative theory and some practice. In chronological order, Robin takes his survey through Hobbes, Burke, Nietzsche, Hayek and Austrian school, mid-century American reaction, Ayn Rand, Bush-era neocon warmongering, Scalia, and Trump. Robin posits a unifying definition of reaction throughout.

The biggest shortcoming is the episodic nature of the survey. As this plays out throughout the book, the chronology is not as clean as it should be and the consistency of the episodes changes throughout the survey. For instance, after moving on from Burke, Robin circles back to him in subsequent chapters for additional excursions. This time and space would have been better spent flushing out one of the main premises of the second half of the book, where Robin posits two strains of reactionary types, following in the lineage of Nietzsche and the militaristic type on the one hand and on the other hand the Austrian school and the captain of industry entrepreneur type.

Despite these shortcomings, it is still an enjoyable book. Robin was responding to a need and he contributed to the literature on conservatism and reaction by do so. While he didn't write the definitive guide to conservatism and reaction, he did provide an edifying and at times stimulating tome.