How is Contemporary Political Conservatism Possible?
Juan de Flandes, The Nativity. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
In his reply to Rustem Vakhitov’s “Why Conservatism in Today’s World Has to Be Left-Wing,” philosopher Yuri Pushchaev finds areas of agreement, but even larger areas of disagreement. Both authors, to be sure, believe conservatives can find common cause with elements of the Soviet past, but they differ sharply about the meaning and implications of the revolutionary ideology that created that Soviet past. Despite these significant philosophical differences, Pushchaev manages to maintain throughout a respectful and even friendly attitude toward his ‘esteemed opponent,’ Vakhitov.
For Pushchaev, conservatism has two key elements: 1.) skepticism about ‘natural man’ left to his own resources, in other words, conservatism rejects the (Feuerbachian) exaltation of man; and 2.) the desire to slow down, or even halt, if possible, that march toward freedom that Hegel considered historically inevitable. It is the first of these two elements that generates Pushchaev’s animus against Marxism - Leninism. In the Soviet Union’s willingness to embrace hierarchy and authority, however, he sees something potentially, if inadvertently, positive.
Once again, we express our sincere gratitude to Russkaya Istina for granting us permission to republish Pushchaev’s essay in our English translation. – The Editors
In his article “Why Conservatism in Today’s World Has to Be Left-Wing,” my friend and colleague Rustem Vakhitov poses the most important question: how is conservatism today possible? While I welcome the posing of this question, I cannot agree with most of the author’s reasoning nor with his article’s ultimate conclusion.
Nevertheless, the question is relevant and pressing, and the root problem here is obvious. Indeed, how in our modern, ‘advanced’ world is it possible to remain a true, non-fake conservative without ending up an escapist and/or marginalized? How can a conservative influence today’s politics without immediately scaring off all the so-called moderns because of one’s stated position?
……..
Half an hour later I was standing at the doorway saying goodbye to him. I was holding three books by Vasily Rozanov under my arm and trying to insert a paper cork into my bottle of hemlock.
— He is, of course, an inveterate reactionary? — You can say that again! — As fanatical as they come? — Impossible to be more so! — Is there anyone more odious and hard-core than him? — Nope, no one. — How utterly charming! I suppose he’s a total obscurantist? — Indeed, he is. ‘From the top of his head to the marrow of his bones,’ as the girls say.
— They say he ruined his whole life chasing religious phantoms.
— Indeed. Ruined it completely, may he rest in peace.
— What a perfect darling. Of course, he must have dabbled in Black Hundreds stuff, pogroms and all that sort of thing?...
– Well, to some extent, yes …
— What a magician to have managed it all! But only to the extent, I suppose, that he had enough bile and nerves and free time … And not a single real thought in the entire course of his life?
— Nothing but fabrications, and even those of an exclusively spiteful kind.
— And he never managed to get famous, neither while he was alive nor afterwards?
— No, no fame; just un-obscurity.
— Venedikt Erofeev, Vasily Rozanov Through the Eyes of an Eccentric [1]
Having agreed with Vakhitov’s formulation of the question, let’s for our part talk about a certain paradox concerning how the ideology of conservatism has developed in our country. Today, as if by default, it is believed that our official government policy is conservative in nature, and that conservatism is for all intents and purposes the ruling ideology. United Russia has declared conservatism its official ideology. At the same time, in reality, this official conservatism is still fragmentary in form and to some extent semi-imitative.
On the other hand, there is the non-official conservatism of Alexander Dugin and [the TV channel – trans.] Tsargrad. The provocative hype and media focus surrounding this type of conservatism arouses strong suspicions, and these suspicions apply with particular force to Dugin. It is startling, by the way, that modern academia in the social sciences and humanities has yet to produce a calm analysis of Dugin’s thought that would allow us simply to understand what it is all about, and what ideas his thinking is grounded in. This is needed in order to separate the substance of his writings (assuming that there is such, we note in parentheses, since this is a question that has yet to be resolved) from the provocations and media attention.
Demand for conservatism in Russia grew even greater both in response to and as a consequence of the Special Military Operation (SMO), which brought Russia into a head-on collision with a Ukraine serving as a Janissary detachment of the militant neoliberal West. Even so, as far as any real maturation of conservatism as a public philosophy or thoughtful practice is concerned, practically nothing has changed. In my view, incidentally, this is a consequence of all of us in our society still being saturated by the modernist trends and values we experienced both in their Soviet and liberal-Western versions. As sad as this may be for radical conservatives of the Dugin/Tsargrad variety, this is something that must be recognized, because otherwise we will be stuck with the Sickness Unto Death a la Kierkegaard.
Indeed, some conservative escapists I personally know (who will remain anonymous here) believe that we are already living in post-history. Normal history has ended and from the conservative perspective the classical world has disappeared, possibly forever.
However, something else that is obvious also strikes the eye (we live today at the intersection of painfully contradictory ‘obvious things’). We are alive (“This is our reward: We are still alive,” as goes the song by Yulia Chicherina). Our children, new generations, are being born. Especially after February 24, 2022, sound and fury once again are sweeping across the stage of history. This means that history is continuing, that man and society continue to exist. And this means as well that there is still something there to preserve and protect. To be sure, these may, from a consistently conservative point of view, be seen as rearguard battles, but that makes only the more valuable the position of today's conservatives -- the last surviving Romans.
But let’s return to Vakhitov and to his paradoxical belief that today the only true and effective conservatism possible is a leftist conservatism. Dividing conservatism into a political aspect (the importance of the monarchy, the class structure of society, religion associated with the state a la “the union of altar and throne”) and a cultural aspect (recognizing as valuable and important the philosophy and art of the pre-modern era, including its leading creators, from Homer to Balzac), the author wishes to convince us that only the cultural aspect still remains viable. After all, according to Vakhitov, the enduring value of classical works of art through which conservative precepts were expressed was defended mainly by left-wing politics and philosophy, and he cites the examples of Lenin and Mikhail Lifshits to support this thesis. Vakhitov also believes that if one looks at things soberly, it becomes obvious that the “ … reconstruction of state and society according to the forms of the pre-modern world (and precisely this is the project of conservatives and political ‘traditionalists’) is obviously a utopia.”
There is, certainly, much to be said for Vakhitov’s position here. The examples that Vakhitov offers to the reader are plain to see and seemingly speak for themselves. It suffices to recall the impotent dénouement of the Russian monarchist ‘Black Hundreds’ or the similar fate of ‘Action Française,’ to say nothing of the circus-like and laughable efforts at reviving the monarchy in Russia of the 1990s. And other such examples could be cited. It is for this reason that Vakhitov believes that, today, “a supporter of authentic traditional ideas and values in the field of politics (and this pertains by the way not only to Europe, but also to Russia) inevitably looks at best like an eccentric or a lonely romantic dreaming of the irrevocable; but more likely such a person will be viewed as something of a “village idiot.” It supposedly follows from this that today’s conservatism can aspire to nothing more than the preservation of classical values in the sphere of culture; at any rate, this is the limit of its aspirations if it wants to be authentic and have a future, as opposed to just playing a role. And among the extant political forces of the modern world, it can coexist (albeit not without conflict) only with the left. In support of this thesis, the author points to the cultural policies of the USSR, the attitude toward classical art expressed by Marx and Lenin, and to Soviet Marxist philosopher Mikhail Lifshitz’s philosophy of culture.
Vakhitov summarizes his argument as follows:
… left-wing conservatism is, today, the only possible, authentic conservatism (and I mean by this not the movement of communists to the right, something which also occurs, but in the sense of the movement of conservatives to the left). Supporting the socialist movement (the real one with roots in Marx and Lenin, not the post-Marxist, left-liberal one which has renounced the idea of social justice in favor of a culture of support for exotic minorities) is quite logical for anyone who values the classics and tradition. Such support for socialism does not imply merging with it to the point of indistinguishability … A conservative makes his own assessment of socialism, and takes into account not only its merits, but also its shortcomings … [H]e is aware that capitalism is leading all of humanity into the abyss of a postmodern new barbarism, and it is this that puts the conservative in sympathy with that central line in the movement of socialism which ‘consciously associates itself with the highest achievements of human culture’ … If the choice we face is between ‘socialism or else a consumerist, postmodern capitalist barbarism,’ then the position to be taken by the true conservative is obvious.
An Unjustified Logical Leap
It seems to me that Rustem Vakhitov has made in his reasoning an unjustified logical leap. From the fact that certain strands within Marxism valued classical art highly, it does not follow that those who did so themselves became conservatives who strove in a principled and conscious way to slow down history’s headlong race towards its terrible if inevitable end, or that they set themselves the goal of “freezing Russia.” Their appreciation for classical art might well have stemmed from entirely different considerations, as indeed it did. They valued classical art and its “absorption by the broad masses of the people” because this served progressive ends, because it would bring closer the fulfillment of world history and man’s blossoming within it as the pinnacle of creation in the Universe and the “sovereign king of nature.”
It’s a different matter, though, if one notices an aspect of the left-wing worldview and movement – an aspect that the left itself fails to recognize and of which it is unconscious – that brings the left in this aspect closer to classical, authentic conservatism. Konstantine N. Leontiev (1831-1891) took the position that socialism, without recognizing the fact, is a “feudal reaction of the future.” But the author does not pose the question in this way, because then he would have to elevate these unconsciously conservative features of the left-wing ideological and political spectrum to their true source and form, seeing in them only a kind of transformаtion of the latter.
It seems to me that, in expressing his ideas in this article, Rustem Vakhitov was too driven (I will speak frankly) by his personal sympathies for the leftist worldview, and was therefore in too much of a hurry to drive the final nail in the coffin of conservatism as an active political force. Left-wing political practice, and even more so left-wing political theory, is openly and militantly anti-conservative, and short of ceasing to be leftist in both its theoretical foundations and its practical consequences, this feature cannot be eradicated. And this concerns not only its position towards religion and the Church.
Incidentally, I want to ask my respected friend the following question: what kind of conservatism is he referring to when he says that it needs to be left-wing? For whom is this conservatism?
For Russia? Given Rustam Vakhitov’s views on the national issue, which is a topic that I have discussed with him on several occasions, that seems unlikely.
Is it for ‘the Russian Federation’[2] as a whole abstracted from any particular culture or people? That seems too vague. There is no such thing as conservatism in general, as a universal category. Every nation has its own species.
There is no such thing as conservatism in general, as a universal category. Every nation has its own species.
__________
And yet, Vakhitov is right in many respects. The social ground, the soil that undergirded traditional Russian conservatism has long since disappeared! If by this ‘soil’ we understand the monarchy, Orthodoxy as the dominant religion, and the rural peasant world, then this is obviously the case. The general formula of Russian conservatism is precisely the famous Uvarov triad of “Orthodoxy, Autocracy, Nationality [народность]." But these principles have not existed as dominant social forces for more than a hundred years.
Or … perhaps they have not altogether disappeared? Could it be that these principles, for the most part unrecognized, and only in fragmentary form, continue their life, continue even today to exert their strong influence even if in transformed, eclectic, and reduced forms? Seen in this light, the huge body of modern Russia would have long ago disintegrated and scattered to the winds, and would be devoid of life, if its soul (these same three principles) had not continued to animate and at least partially direct our social matter – our territory, population, culture, etc. -- in the struggle against nonindigenous (инородные) principles.
Is It Easy Being a Conservative?
Being a conservative is very difficult today -- oddly enough, it is even more difficult than it was before, primarily because its social basis in the modern world is no longer obvious, whereas the truth of conservatism is eternal if we admit that the old European order was (broadly speaking) grounded in Christianity. And elementary intellectual honesty obliges us to admit that classical conservatism, whether Russian or European, in its origins and basis has always been, firstly, monarchical. And secondly, religious. And thirdly, it has always had a pronounced class and therefore anti-democratic character. It was always against equality and egalitarianism, but for social hierarchy and the stratification of society into the different social estates. And there can be no other classical, rationally conceived conservatism!
…the truth of conservatism is eternal if we admit that the old European order was (broadly speaking) grounded in Christianity …
__________
But is it possible today to conceive of a politician who is in any way successful while openly speaking about his anti-democratic beliefs and aims? In today’s Russia it is possible and even advantageous to declare one’s opposition to liberalism, but not one’s opposition to democracy. Despite these, by the way, being closely related phenomena. But having loudly declared step “A”, it is impossible to also openly declare step “B” -- because that is simply unthinkable today. The “electorate” will not accept it. Even though this same electorate is in accord with the actually existing party in power, and in this sense, of course, we do not have democracy.
But the undemocratic political content of today’s Russia (a circumstance which is not the result of someone’s evil or good intent, but is simply dictated by reality, and by historical and social conditions) is clothed in democratic forms in accordance with the spirit of the times and with our society’s existing political and anthropological modernist content. The result is a glaring contradiction that generates a clash and disharmony within the social and political system, such that it seems that the authorities are deceiving the people and deciding in their place, at the same time, once again, that this situation is objectively given and the result of historically imposed factors. The authorities are forced to democratically formalize a monarchical content that is alien to the democratic form, and which for this same reason becomes something quasi-monarchical.
Similarly, it is already unthinkable today to openly defend gender and generational inequality, although both are salutary for the family as a social institution. And yet expressing such a view means to almost automatically end up marginalized and considered an “obscurantist.” Equality between men and women, understood democratically, is destructive for family life.[3] The epidemic of divorces and family breakdowns all over the world, and not just here, is a direct consequence of the victory of the ideas of democracy and equality in family relationships.
You don't want a patriarchal family? Then in the end you will have no family left at all, no founding “social unit of society” and strong social institution.
‘But why,’ they will ask me, ‘is this obscurantist and backward conservatism of yours needed by anyone?’ I reply: ‘So as to delay the emancipatory race of history towards its ineluctable end.’ The point where earthly freedom in history reaches its maximum, and when democracy and human rights are likewise at their maximum, that point will coincide with the end of the world. The same Rustem Vakhitov, my friend and worthy opponent, wrote something in this vein in another article, and here I completely agree with him: “This is why the lot of the conservative is sad. Whether we like it or not, history, as Hegel noted, moves toward emancipation, toward the reduction of authoritarian pressures on society, and the increase in the sum of freedoms for individuals and social groups. First the bourgeoisie was emancipated, then the proletariat, then women, then racial and sexual minorities. A conservative is like a warrior who constantly fights from a position of retreat, abandoning first one line and then another. For a conservative (as for the Christian worldview in general), history is an involution: a movement from order to chaos, toward the ‘end times’ ”[4] And after all, in their founding design and purpose the leftist movements -- communism, socialism -- are also quite powerful socio-political forces of emancipation. Which means that, to the extent that they continue to insist on a program of universal emancipation, to this same extent the conservative must wage his struggle against them as well.
In short, a political conservative still today has things to do: the same work of putting up obstacles in the path of history’s race towards its inevitable end. European conservatism actually arose as a set of theories and political practices trying to erect such barriers to counteract the ideas and influence of the French Revolution of 1789. Its founders are the great Frenchman Joseph de Maistre and the Englishman Edmund Burke.
One must have courage to give voice to unpopular but truthful points of view, to speak up about what one honestly believes. As the American conservative William Lind said some thirty years ago, “What choice remains for us? To be unfashionable, of course.”[5] A true conservative does not have faith in mankind in the sense that he believes that if people are given the freedom to act without any restraint, they will bring about great troubles and perish under the burden of their own passions and intoxications. The root of this mistrust is the Christian doctrine of original sin, the belief that natural man is fallen and hopelessly corrupt.
As is now evident, the experience of history, especially of recent times, confirms this. It has been eighty years since humanity “progressed” in its scientific technology to the point where it can easily destroy itself by a nuclear war. As de Maistre once said, “you can say about the sciences exactly what one of the greatest writers of antiquity said about precious metals: ‘One knows not whether heaven has endowed us with them in its favor or in its wrath.’ ”
Аccording to de Maistre, the sciences are all too reminiscent of fire – it is a good thing when kept in the hearth, but it will burn down the house if given free rein. Just as today we can all perish in the nuclear flame created and kindled by modern science.
An Obligatory Eclecticism and Obliqueness
Today, emancipatory processes have gone too far, fewer and fewer barriers remain. Modern political conservatism is reduced to fighting rearguard battles while finding itself in a protracted retreat. During this retreat, it is possible to enter into alliances (“beggars can’t be choosers”), including with leftist forces to the extent that they are open to such alliances against the common enemy — global neoliberalism and imperialism. Moreover, for political action of a conservative nature to be successful, such alliances must be concluded. In Donetsk, I personally spoke with foreign journalists and communists from Venezuela and Portugal who came to Novorossiya in 2022 because, in their view, this was the front line in a hot war against aggressive global neoliberalism. Moreover, they emphasized that they were not particularly fond of Putin and of the Russian political regime, which, from their perspective, is an example of state capitalism. And yet they viewed it all the same as clearly more humane than militant neoliberalism and appreciate that Russia has found itself on the front lines of the struggle against neoliberalism. So why not count them at least as allies, such leftists?
…[I]t is possible to enter into alliances (‘beggars can’t be choosers’) … with leftist forces to the extent that they are open to such alliances against the common enemy -- global neoliberalism and imperialism
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But if we do this, modern political conservatism, which is manifested today as an amalgam of varied trends, will inevitably be, firstly, eclectic. Various ideological and political forces, entering into alliances of one sort or another, will be forced to sacrifice their ideological integrity and purity. In order not to remain fruitless, they must join forces to attack the common enemy from their different columns.
What is more, today, in the context of the Special Military Operation and the resulting virtually existential struggle with the West, Russia is successfully returning to anti-colonial rhetoric and attracting to its side African countries that remember the selfless help they formerly received from the USSR. All this is reasonable and correct.
But Rustem Vakhitov, in the article under discussion, in a sense treats as a settled matter what in fact constitutes a major philosophical, political, historical and historiosophical problem. When you come right down to it, which of the leftists, and to what extent — not just historically but also today — can be considered to some extent bearers of conservative values? This is a serious, multifaceted problem.
Yes, at certain times, or along certain sections of the spectrum, leftist movements of various eras have indeed gravitated in one way or another toward conservativism. Such, for example, was the case during the partial Stalin-era conservative turn of the 1930s. And yet, in every such case we must act very carefully and, without getting carried away determine sine ira et studio [‘without fear or favor’ – Latin, trans.] what exactly it was in leftist actions that made them substantively conservative. With some of the contemporary left, with those who are patriots of the Soviet system, conservatives can be united on the basis of opposition to capitalism and support for the state. On the other hand, traditional conservatism advocates hierarchy and the existence of social estates; it finds a value in various social inequalities as a manifestation of the ebullience of life and of blossoming complexity; and it finds in them as well the social equivalent of the virtues of humility and patience. How can all this be combined with a principled left-wing commitment to egalitarianism and revolutionism?
All the same, in my view, authentic conservatives should support the left to the extent that the latter’s egalitarianism leads to consequences that for them are completely unexpected and bring about the opposite result. In other words, they should support the left primarily where the left, without being cognizant of it, puts in place a feudal reaction. Thus, the Soviet state, contrary to its original plans and intentions, unexpectedly and after its own fashion reproduced the rather rigid pre-revolutionary social structure while creating a kind of social hierarchy of its own. If the state as a whole is built around a single “cause” it will inevitably give rise to its own social classes and hierarchy, albeit not of a completely traditional type.
Furthermore, and as we have already noted, it is impossible today to directly express anti-democratic ideas. The overwhelming majority of modern conservatives, even in their public declarations, strangely enough (from the classical point of view), voice support for elections and majority rule. In their words they are democrats. But their political practice is at odds with their declarations. In actuality they advocate the existing uncontested power vertical. In this sense -- and here we come to its second feature -- modern political conservatism in Russia is obliged to be largely indirect in nature. Without directly declaring some of one’s conservative goals and orientations (rejection of democracy in the family, for example), the conservative nevertheless puts them forward and defends them, partly in alliances or through other rather heterogeneous combinations of forces. At the same time, anti-abortion policies or support for the family as a union of a man and a woman can be pursued in Russia through direct political means and methods.
In this sense, modern political conservatism, in comparison with the classical conservatism of the 19th and early 20th centuries, is forced, in keeping with the historical situation, to have a weakened, attenuated character. Modern society and modern man is no longer capable of accepting the solid food of the earlier conservatism. The decline into old age, like infancy, requires being fed with milk and soft food.
Thus, in our opinion, modern political conservatism has today the following characteristics:
Compared with classical incarnations of conservatism it is attenuated in character;
It is essentially eclectic;
It takes, to a great extent at least, an indirect approach.
What we have then, if we want to remain honest, is the following formula: of necessity, modern political conservatism today is possible only in the form of a reduced, eclectic, and largely indirect form of socio-political action which, moreover, is of a rearguard nature.
About the author: Yuri Pushchaev, Ph.D., is research scholar in the faculty of philosophy of Lomonosov Moscow State University (MGU).
NOTES
[1] The author of this story, Venedikt Erofeev (1938 – 1990), is better known for his ‘prose poem’ Moscow-Petushki, a Soviet-era samizdat novel written in 1969-1970. Vasily Rozanov Through the Eyes of an Eccentric, like Erofeev’s better-known Moscow-Petushki, has a ‘post-modern’ quality to it that undermines categorization or, indeed, easy interpretation. Both works ridicule Soviet reality and Soviet cliches, while at the same time displaying apparent interest in the philosophical and religious dimensions of a human existence which, from the perspective of the narrator, has been abandoned by God. Erofeev’s actual position toward Rozanov (as expressed in Vasily Rozanov Through the Eyes of an Eccentric) is unclear from a close reading of this text, but it is possible that his irony here is being directed more toward the interlocutors than toward Rozanov (though possibly it is toward both). It is perhaps worth noting that the narrator is contemplating suicide – hence the allusion to the bottle of hemlock at the opening of the passage quoted. Vasily Rozanov (1856 – 1919) was a Russian philosopher, author and literary critic. His views were in some respects conservative, and he regularly published in turn-of-the-century conservative Russian publications, and yet in other respects he was a radical and idiosyncratic. His essay on Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor (1894) first brought him to public attention. He is best known today for his later aphoristic writings (Fallen Leaves, The Apocalypse of Our Time) in which he promotes the sacred character of the family and of sexual love between husband and wife, and subjects Christianity to a sharp critique for failing to promote a metaphysics of sexuality. – Trans.
[2] The word used here in Russian – Rossissky – is difficult, in English, to differentiate from the word Russky (Russian). The essential difference, at least in the present context, is that Rossissky is used to refer to everyone living in the Russian Federation in the purely legal sense, whereas the word Russky (Russian) is used when designating, for example, Russian literature, or Russian art, etc. One never, in Russia, hears someone refer to ‘Rossissky art’, or the Rossissky language, etc. – Trans.
[3] Although Pushchaev does not mention the support Hegel provides for the point he is making here, it seems worth noting (as D.C. Schindler has pointed out) that Hegel held that a discussion of family expressed in terms of the rights of the individual members means already to presuppose the dissolution of the family. In his commentary on this passage, Schindler expresses the view that “liberal rights concern only external behavior … precisely as dissociated from any considerations of internal nature and moreover in relation to other external behavior posited as potential threat or intrusion. Rights thus require opposition in principle to exist …” D.C. Schindler, Freedom From Reality: The Diabolical Nature of Modern Liberty (Notre Dame, Indiana: Notre Dame University Press, 2017), 183.
[4] R. Vakhitov, “O klassicheskom konservatizme i o konservativnom sovetskom: skhodstava i razlichiia [On Classical Conservatism and Soviet Conservatism: Similarities and Differences], Ocherki konservativnoi mysli v SSSR // Ortodoksia [Ортодоксия]. 2022. № 4. С. 17.
[5] William Lind, “What is cultural conservatism?” Cultural conservatism in the USA (Perm: Perm University, 1995). 26