Mammon's Revolution: A Review of Peter Hitchens' "The Cameron Delusion"

 I recently breezed through Peter Hitchens' The Cameron Delusion (its US title, but called The Broken Compass in the UK). The book is good at diagnosing problems, but I don't think he quite ties the various strands together. A self-professed Burkean conservative, at war with modern Toryism, Hitchens takes issue with the truly radical social transformation that 1968 ushered in. Noting that many Blairites and other Labour apparatchiks were former Marxists or Trotskyists (the significance being about how apologetic they were towards the USSR), Hitchens blames them for implementing a radically leftist regime. Destroying the social basis for the family, non-state entities or convictions, and national sovereignty, the leftist revolution has succeeded, even assuming control over the flaccid facade of Toryism. Hence the title of the book: Cameron is just a Tory Blairite, a media-creature who can continue the reform through confirmation. Having a viable alternative, with parties switching back and forth in an implement-sustain dialectic, allows the change to cement through the decades.

Hitchens' analysis can seem, from a far off glance, a screed against "cultural Marxism" or some other neo-Bircher histrionic. But such isn't the case. Either because Hitchens is more perceptive, more independent minded, or "sceptical to a fault" (as he says), he avoids this simplistic trap. Unlike most "cultural marxist" screeds, he doesn't end with a reluctant rally for the Conservatives. He is not a naive pragmatist, thinking he is effective by plumping for the least worst option. Instead, Hitchens attacks decades of Tory foolishness and empty-headed power mongering.

But it's in this ruthless criticism that he grasps the deeper connection between Blairites and Thatcherites. Hitchens considers them both, fundamentally, "left-wing" because of relatively equal commitment to cultural revolution. These neoliberals were equally committed to massive privatization, the introduction of a Europeanist (if not globalist) laicite, the mediocritization of education for most Britons, and dissolving national sovereignty. Both are opposed to any attempt to defend national sovereignty, economic populism/socialism, or defense of British dominion. Hitchens notes how Labour turned against Ken Livingston, the red mayor of London, opening the spot to the Tory contender, Al "Boris" Johnson. Why would Labour sabotage their own chances? Why would Labour permit supportive "center-left" media to lampoon the frumpy bureaucratic style of Gordon Brown, opening the door to David Cameron's flash (and empty) media blitz?

Before returning for an answer, Hitchens' independence should be noted. Throughout the book, Hitches notes that "the Left" was not wrong about everything. Hitchens is in favor of women's social/political rights and repealing laws that criminalize homosexuality (though he rejects promoting it at the expense of the family, a serious political evil). He also notes that the old Left were keen to defend the death penalty, rejected European integration as deleterious for labor, and were not keen to normalize all social deviancy. The issue is, fundamentally, not "left" vs. "right", which ultimately means nothing (hence the title "Broken Compass"). The similarity between Blairites, Thatcherites, and western Marxists is a commitment to revolution. Hence Hitchens sees the real options as revolution vs. conservatism. Either one defends the historically grounded nation-state (which possesses imperium to govern itself) or one opts for global revolution. The latter, while often taking the guise of Trotskyism and international communism, melds well with a commitment to global capitalism and its transformation of the world. The Trots opted for revolution and dropped socialism. They preferred kulturkampf, following Marcuse and Gramsci. Capitalism is an endless revolution, a wheel always turning, always crushing. Whether one is a right-liberal or a left-liberal, the reduction of all things to a commodity exchange erodes the very human basis of society. Mammon spreads its wings.

It might seem odd to think that "leftists" are radical allies to capitalism, since many often criticize "capitalism". But the reality is to the contrary. Marshall Berman, a western Marxist, understood the fundamental dilemma quite well. Within Marx's historical analysis there was a tension. While capitalism was monstrous and extremely destructive, it was a destruction that opened up space for the future. In a capitalist society, Marx noted: 

"all fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind."

It was from this quote that Berman titled his essays All that is Solid melts into Air. Berman straddles this simultaneous horror and excitement, the anarchic destruction and radical openness. The bourgeois revolution uprooted all the forces of aristocracy, creating the crisis of alienation. Workers were stripped of all historical ground, reduced to the sheer nakedness of their labor. It was precisely in this radical alienation, where they were reduced to the 99%, that they would unite and overthrow their masters. When all cultural divisions were obliterated through an increasingly extractive economy, workers had only their chains to lose. But does this revolution only have one logical end? What if the revolutionary energy is redirected into false consciousness? Drawing on imagery from King Lear, what if the king and pauper naked in the rain do not find equality? What if it leads to naked egoism or cynical reentry into the system? Nothing, hence why all the New Leftists and Trotskyists formed the basis of the neoliberal managerial class or became esoteric neocons. Successful Marxist revolutions all reified into red bureaucracies, technocratic oligarchies that serviced the party's court. Capitalism's revolutionary energies destroyed and rebuilt, without ever reaching the stateless utopic commonwealth of the plebs.

Berman's alternative, which is similar to many radical-liberal leftists, was to ride the tiger. Communism was rejected for dialectical whiggery, working towards progress through guiding the revolutionary potential of capitalism. Destroying the basis of society, people could be remade through commodities. Capitalism intensifies, but is directed towards cultural projects of minority rights. Social libertinism replaces socialism, what Blair called his "ethical socialism" or essentially neoliberalism with multicultural characteristics. Libertine capitalists and radical-liberals then lock ranks against those who resist their lives being uprooted and their mores obliterated. The managerial-professionals who make up the base of the radical-liberals take their place as technocratic oligarchs.

It was this modus operandi that Hitchens, as an ex-Trotskyist, was familiar with. Stalin's regime was unveiled, in all its horror. Hitchens and his fellow Trots denounced the USSR as a betrayal of its revolutionary origin, a state-capitalist engine of iniquity. But it was this attempt to channel the terror and failure. The USSR failed the revolution precisely in that it tried to get control of itself. Lenin's NEP was a pragmatic attempt to keep his regime alive. Stalin rejected the NEP in the main, but utilized parts of it to ramp up his rapid industrialization (the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact had an economic component, exchanging raw Soviet goods for finished German tech). Stalin's red court, with its nightmarish elements, gave way to the degenerate red bureaucracy. The USSR, and its satellite states, became fetid, as a cruel and rapacious oligarchy plundered the country. The same only intensified as the vestige of public order (the Soviet state) collapsed in 1991, with these oligarchs unleashed as gangsters and vultures in a new wave of neo-feudalism. The problem wasn't that the revolution was betrayed, but the only way to save it (and the people it ostensibly tried to liberate and uplift) was to abandon it. The result was to empower a new oligarchy of social-scientific managers, lacking any sense of aristocratic restraint. Instead, the country was their petri-dish and the spoils of success were theirs to skim. Berman knows all of this failed, but he believes the only way to salvage the revolution is to never let it stop. Such means a functional alliance with the socially libertine elements within capital (mainly finance, capitalism in its original, purest, and most destructive state). As all elements of society are freed, all things solid melt into air, then revolutionary potential (to slouch towards Progress) is open.

It was this financial capitalization, with its social and religious effects, that is the true revolution. Contra Weber, we don't live in an iron-cage of industry but a ghostly prison of alchemical finance. The notion of "factory" for a place of manufacturing and industry flows from the "factor", a quantified book keeper entry for a ship laden with goods. It was these interests that turned means of production (whether land or industrialized workshops) into quantified capital. This mode of operation did not begin among Protestants, but before the Reformation. The Fuggers and Medici originated European capitalism, bankrolling trade expeditions to the east. Fugger didn't earn money to splurge, but to make Charles V kneel. Quantified capital was liquid power, having all monarchs in debt. Protestant successors in Amsterdam and London only continued the tradition (many of whom were, mainly for social reasons, Jews or radical Protestants who had larger Continental connections). The liberal political order became increasingly important for many of these financiers as it provided a firmer defense of property, a political-economy where the state serves the market, and an increase towards free trade (which meant turning the engine of state towards ramming surplus goods into various nations, flooding efforts towards native industry). Enfranchising the bourgeois and petit-bourgeois helped stabilize political society for a time, but as working people were enfranchised, the formally democratic system became more unstable. The new liberalism of technocratic revolution became the means to simultaneously control and radicalize. The disoriented and rootless offer little opposition, mostly as they struggle to grasp the issues at play. The alchemical wizard, changing one thing into another, a complex charade of mystification, became the new clerical class of social managers and planners.

Uprooted, all social forms and organizations are stripped of their significance. Instead they're modeled on market forms (which better integrates them). Churches become businesses, with hierarchy mirroring the boardroom. Religious experiences are sold through ministries. In crude pentecostal form, they might sell literal miracles or ask for properity-gospel "seed money" donations. In middle-brow evangelical form, they sell an endless torrent of self-help books. Jesus is pitched as the best CEO of a business or NGO. The workplace is simply obliterated. Guilds and unions have become vehicles for machine party politics, which feed into commodification and capitalization. Jobs are shipped overseas and sprawling mega-corporations crush small businesses and attempts at self-ownership. Toll-booth vampires like Amazon offer their internet highways for a fee, strangling independent manufacturers. The family is gutted, as marriage loses its raison d'etre to raise children. Instead, children are simply investments and family relations operate like contracts. Uprooted from familial love and procreation, sex becomes a commodity. Forms of entrepreneurial whoring proliferate across the internet. The revolution keeps rolling and rolling and rolling. Berman has hopeful expectation, but it only seems to be getting worse and worse. The humanity of mankind seems to wane in this age of relentless vampirism. Capital's revolution is an endless pilgrimage to Babylon, the haunt of all unclean spirits.

It's all of the above which Hitchens condemns as the leftism of Blair and Cameron. Their problem is not really their "leftism" (an empty word), but their revolutionary commitment to the destruction and remaking of society. They think history will see them through if they pursue this radicalization all the way down. It's the logic behind Hardt and Negri's theory that a spontaneous global proletariat revolution will happen once the forces of globalism proceed far enough. It's accelerationist to the core, even as average voters are lured to support each wing of an increasingly single party apparatus. The reality is that the capitalist weaponize this kulturkamf. Destruction means more opportunities to sell, to own, to quantify and financialize, to conceptualize a new world. Identity politics, of the right or left, simply becomes neoliberalism (or as Mark Lilla colorfully put it: Idpol is the Reagan revolution for lefties). It's all part of the same system.

It's in this vein that I think Peter Hitchens is absolutely right. The alternative to this drive for revolution is to hit the brakes. He calls it conservatism, but it might be called tory socialism.The dialectical contradiction between nature and artifice, between past and future, finds synthesis in the human. Society exists for man, not man for society. The forces of technology, of quantification are emptied of ultimate significance. For God made man a priest of creation, to uplift holy hands and bless the world. Man was not made to erect gods with monstrous faces. The commonwealth, the social, the public good subordinates private extreme and the forces of capital. History is not mystified or rejected, but grounded as the means of our reason. Families, work-spaces, churches, the concrete and real become the foundations for freedom and individual flourishing. Revolution destroys all of these and can't be stopped, driven forward by the liquid forces of capital (and not traditioned public authorities). The revolutionary is the whisper of mammon, the call of this serpent, a motionless movement, a purposeless constellation of dark stars that illumine the sickly golden hue of Carcossa. All things become simply means, with no end or good. We are collectively blind to it because the architects of this system have broken the compass. Hitchens helps us see this sick reality.

Even the Son of God can be sold for 30 pieces of silver. sic