How to Get a Free Book

If anyone is connected to a journal, and would like to review my book, Bourgeois Liberty and the Politics of Fear, drop me a line and I can ask OUP to send you out a copy for free (except for the price of reading & reviewing it, obvs).*

Also, I could do this kind of thing, but I think I had better not. But if you would like to post up a warm Amazon review, I'd be far from complaining.


* This offer does not apply to anyone who hates me and wishes me excoriation and public humiliation.

First, Short Draft of my Book.

Well, today's 4 October 2012, and my book Bourgeois Liberty and the Politics of Fear: From Absolutism to Neo-Conservatism is officially published. Yay!!!

It's had a long gestation. In fact, the first inkling of a serious work emerged way back in 2006 when I delivered a professedly light-hearted talk to St Catherine's John Simopolous Dinner.

This is a bi-annual event designed to get students and tutors of the college chatting to each other across disciplinary boundaries. Over posh grub, students of all the subjects we teach are commingled - so a Historian sits beside a Chemist, a Lawyer beside a Physicist. You get the picture.

Someone gives a brief talk relevant to their specialism, but accessible to everyone. It was my turn to give this talk, and I came up with an ironic discussion of what George W. Bush owed to revolutionary Marxism.

Only gradually thereafter did I decide that, actually, I should write a book on this theme. It's much more of a survey of two centuries, and much less of a jokey riff. Still, I think the original talk can still be found therein.

Anyway, here's the VERY FIRST DRAFT of the book, if you like. It's some 175 times shorter than the final product.

(As a reminder, if you'd like the real thing for 20 percent off, drop me an e-mail, facebook message, of a comment in the blog, and I'll tell you how. It's very easy).

Simopoulos Talk – 16 November 2006

Traditionally, I’m told, the John Simopoulos address is an iridescent display of wit and learning lightly worn. It is supposed to be funny.

Such a higher form of stand-up is beyond my meagre abilities. I propose, therefore, to advance an absurd thesis so that, if you are not inclined to laugh with me, you may at any rate laugh at me.

I shall argue that our world is being run by zealous revolutionaries, a cadre of the insurgent middle class.

Now, the respectable middle classes, it was long remarked – from 1848 to our own time - had abandoned their heroic role as vanguard of the fight for liberalism. As Marx had noted as early as 1848, fear of Red Revolution inhibited the middle classes, led them to collude with reaction, and thus aborted the democratic revolution of that year and since.

For much of the nineteenth century and most of the twentieth century, it is certainly the case that bourgeois commitment to democracy was markedly attenuated by their fear of the socialist, communist or simply turbulent masses. For a period and for some respectable burghers, even fascism seemed preferable to democracy as a bulwark against communist subversion. During the Cold War, the USA again and again preferred for its client states solidly anti-communist dictatorships to the perils of democratic self-determination.

John F. Kennedy's famous commitment to "support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty" was obviously an argument for supporting despotic regimes and opposing revolutionary movements if doing so furthered the cause of the ‘Free World’ in the global Cold War.

But the story has taken a new turn. The roll-back of popular socialism and the collapse of communism have restored many of the conditions of the French Revolutionary era. As the US Neocons have concluded, democratic revolution can be encouraged in the sure knowledge that socialist revolutionary movements will not be sparked amongst the mobilised working class. From the Philippines to Ukraine, it has been the Statue of Liberty rather than the Red Flag that inspires the masses. We live in a "climate of revolution".

There is something not only revolutionary but even really quite Marxist about Neo-Con language. It’s an almost self-consciously bourgeois Marxism.

On 6 November 2003, for example, George W. Bush, addressed the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) on its twentieth anniversary. No doubt ventriloquising his speech-writer, Bush celebrated the 1982 ‘Westminster Speech’ of his predecessor, Ronald Reagan. This speech, Bush said, conjoined US foreign policy in solidarity with ‘revolutionary’ forces subverting communist dictatorships. This is seen by Bush as epochal: the establishment of a kind of Bourgeois Comintern, funded by Washington, rather than by Moscow Gold.

As an aside, a Congressional audit only now being completed has found NED monies set aside for the anti-Castro struggle in Cuba being spent on leather coats and gameboys for the activists. Perhaps not so unreasonable if consumer goods are indeed the artillery of liberal free-market democracy.

The context of the NED’s establishment was a generalised revolutionary crisis (we might say, a bourgeois 1917 – 21): the ‘third wave’ of democratisation beginning with fall of Mediterranean dictatorships in the 1970s, spreading to East Asia, Latin America, the Communist bloc and in the 1990s, Africa. “In the early 1970s”, Bush remarked, “there were about 40 democracies in the world. … As the 20th century ended, there were around 120 democracies in the world … We've witnessed, in little over a generation, the swiftest advance of freedom in the 2,500 year story of democracy.”

Now, why did this happen? First, says Bush, there was the pre-eminent geo-political position of the US which “created the conditions in which new democracies could flourish”. (This is similar to the logic behind the at times universal solidarity on the left with the USSR against its bourgeois critics; it was objectively the ‘fatherland of international socialism’, its fall would hurl back the world’s socialist movement).

So the USA is the bourgeois Soviet Union. But Bush also identified a ‘revolutionary class’:

“Historians will note”, he argued, “that in many nations, the advance of markets and free enterprise helped to create a middle class that was confident enough to demand their own rights.”

Secondly, he pointed out that this class could act as the vanguard of the ‘nation’. It had been found that “the prosperity, and social vitality and technological progress of a people are directly determined by extent of their liberty. Freedom honors and unleashes human creativity -- and creativity determines the strength and wealth of nations.”

So there is a revolutionary class, whose self-emancipation liberates all society. Non-market economies produce their own grave-digger. But it’s the bourgeoisie, not the proletariat.

The process, Bush argues, is teleological. In China, for example, the Communist leadership had realised that “economic freedom leads to national wealth”. They must inevitably conclude that “freedom is indivisible”. There’s that Marxist notion of total revolution, not reform.

However, if democratisation since the 1970s had been the work of ‘national’ forces, inspired by the example of the US and protected by the over-arching stability of its global hegemony, now America has a “new policy, a forward strategy of freedom in the Middle East”

This was most evident in the forced regime brought about in Iraq. “The establishment of a free Iraq at the heart of the Middle East”, Bush insisted, “will be a watershed event in the global democratic revolution.” Indeed: it has been Leninist America’s Soviet-Polish War.

Doesn’t all this sound like a kind of bourgeois Marxism? Even Bush (meaning his speech writer) seemed to see the parallel. The President defined democratic revolution as ultimately the “plan of Heaven” rather than (carefully chosen words) “some dialectic of history”.

Others have been less circumspect: Stephen Schwartz of the US think-tank ‘Western Policy Centre’ has described the neo-conservative strategy in the Middle East as the promotion of “bourgeois revolution.”

Now, however, the United States may be rowing back from the Bush Doctrine of supporting democratic revolution in the Middle East.

President Bush these days is regularly advised by Henry Kissinger, the consummate realist and admirer of Metternich.

Just over a year ago, Condoleezza Rice gave a major speech in Cairo signalling the watershed in US foreign policy. Past US pursuit of stability in the Middle East at the expense of democracy had, she said, achieved neither. Rice added: "We are taking a different course. We are supporting the democratic aspirations of all the people."

One year on, though, and back in the Middle East, the US secretary of state is talking less about democracy and more about the "forces of moderation". The forces of moderation, of course, are the pro-western authoritarians; perhaps now even Syria and Iran.

Bolshevik Neo-Conservatism may have run its course: it remains to be seen – to mix my revolutions – what form the Neo-Conservative Thermidor shall take.

To end: I heard at 6.25 this evening, by the way, that the eminent economist and apostle of audacious capitalism – Milton Friedman – has died aged 94. This talk is therefore, I suppose, dedicated to him – if a little ironically.

Marc Mulholland

16 November 2006

Above: Me talking, around 2006.

Get in Touch for a Book Bargain!!!

Though official publication date is this Thursday, my book Bourgeois Liberty and the Politics of Fear is now available from the Oxford University Press website. If you'd like to buy it there for no less than 20 percent off, drop me an facebook message, email, or comment at my blog, and I'll tell you how. It's easy!

Then you can sit in cafes debating the book.

Marx Quotes you might expect to find, but won't ...

Here are two quotes you might expect to find in my book, but you won't. They're both from the Communist Manifesto:

First: 'bourgeois liberty':

The fight of the [ the liberal movement] against feudal aristocracy and absolute monarchyn ... became more earnest.
By this, the long-wished for opportunity was offered to 'True' Socialism of confronting the political movement with the Socialist demands, of hurling the traditional anathemas against liberalism, against representative government, against bourgeois competition, bourgeois freedom of the press, bourgeois legislation, bourgeois liberty and equality, and of preaching to the masses that they had nothing to gain, and everything to lose, by this bourgeois movement.

 This, Marx said, was "silly" because

To the absolute governments, with their following of parsons, professors, country squires, and officials, it served as a welcome scarecrow against the threatening bourgeoisie.

It was a sweet finish, after the bitter pills of flogging and bullets, with which these same governments, just at that time, dosed the German working-class risings

While this “True” Socialism thus served the government as a weapon for fighting the German bourgeoisie, it, at the same time, directly represented a reactionary interest, the interest of German Philistines.

(Interesting this. Marx here is defending 'bourgeois liberties'. However, he also seems to suggest that they will be transcended, and that their primary value is in helping the workers movement. It's maybe a one-all draw in the 'was Marx a democratric constitutionalist' debate).

Second: 'politics of fear':

A spectre is haunting Europe — the spectre of communism.

To find out what did get in the book, buy it at Amazon, or if you're in town you can now find it in the Oxford University Bookshop.

World, meet Book. Book, meet world.

Though official publication date is 4 October, Bourgeois Liberty and the politics of Fear: From Absolutism to Neo-Conservatism is now available from Amazon.

Why not see what you make of it?

Price Swings

Reflecting who knows what process, Bourgeois Liberty ... on Amazon is no longer 30 percent off, but now five percent off.

On Book Depository, on the other hand, it has gone from full price to 25 percent off.

Anyone understand pre-publications price gyrations? Presumably it's all computerised?

I have flyers from OUP offering 20 per cent off. If you would like one, feel free to get in touch.

Searching the Book

I'm back again, and find that my book is now searchable on Amazon. This brings to mind: what odd words might one find there? Not too many, really. I can only think of 'Germani kaput!' and 'helluva'. That's if you don't think that terms like 'bourgeois liberty' and 'proletarian democracy' are not themselves odd and quaint. One might well think that, and so I've tried to justify myself in the preface, now readable.

If you think you might be in the acknowledgements, now's the time to find out. Apologies if I forgot you!

A Cheap Book, and its Cover

Amazon is now offering my book with no less than a 30 percent price reduction. This is all to the good, of course, though I do hope not to be the first author to have a book remaindered before it's even published!

Perhaps now is a good time to explain the image on the book cover. It's a detail from a painting by Franz Schams (1823–1883). Schams was an Austrian genre painter, whose stock in trade was this kind of thing:

Or there's this, 'A Moonlight serendade':

As you can see, it's all quite cutesey. The image I use for the cover is a detail from Schams' 'Students' Guard Room in the Aula of the Universiy of Vienna, 1848'. This is unusual for Schams: a pretty much contemporary painting of political affairs, and from a revolution to boot.

You can't see the whole oil-painting on-line I'm afraid (though there is a black and white reproduction in Eric Hobsbawm’s, Age ofRevolution (1962)). Some idea of the entire scene is apparent from Schams' preparatory cartoon:

I first came across the painting in the the Vienna History Museum a couple of years ago (I hadn't clocked the reproduction in Hobsbawm's book). A couple of things appealed to me about it. First, the young men depicted - armed students in insurgentVienna - are the very epitome of bourgeois revolutionary liberalism. They're wielding arms, chatting, reading nespapers, debating, and drinking. All good fun!

Artisans and workers were those who generally took to the barricades, rather than the middle class as such, though businessmen might well collude in the street fighting of their employees. Students, however, often established ‘academic legions’ to join the fighting, and they were particularly important - and radical - in Vienna

What I particularly liked about the painting was the detail in the background. Through an open door, we can see two older gentlemen walking by - perhaps they're businessmen. They're out in the street, amidst the  common people. An old women peers at them from a window, while a young buy is trying to sell them a (revolutionary?) publication. They walk beneath a revolutionary liberal tri-colour.

The taller of our two gentlemen is staring fixedly ahead, his face set grimly, while his friend glances at him with a knowing rise of the eyebrows.

This seems to capture the youthful revolutionary enthusiasm of the student bourgeoisie in the foreground, in the back ground an emergent and more tumultuous plebeian radicalism, and on the faces of our two gentlemen a growing distance from the revolution, and a concern about where it might all lead to. In all, I think it summarises the themes of my book nicely.

Here's the cover:

It looks quite dark on screen. I think the hard copy will be a bit brighter.

The Politics of Fear and Mitt Romney

In the introduction [PDF] to my book (already up at the OUP website), I give two versions of the thesis that forms the backbone of the following study of modern history. (Two contrasting discourses on the same argument? How frightfully postmodern, dear!)


Here the 'rightwing' version of the argument:

Civil and political liberty is natural for a modern, market society. As a country struggles to modernize, however, the structures of traditional society disintegrate and there emerges a rootless, impoverished proletariat, understandably jealous and resentful of the rich and successful. ... [So] at least until a country has sufficiently modernized to build up a prosperous middle class and [to] give the working class a stake in capitalist society, sufficient order must be valued above generalized liberty.

Of course, there were / are lots of variations on this argument. One constant, pretty much, is a strong preference for reform from above rather than upsurge from below. Ludwig von Mises was clear: ‘the violence of war and revolutions is always an evil to liberal eyes . . . when revolution seems almost inevitable liberalism tries to save the people from violence, hoping that philosophy may so enlighten tyrants that they will voluntarily renounce rights which are opposed to social development’.

[Ludwig Von Mises, Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis, trans. J. Kahane (Auburn, Alabama, 1951, 2009), 74.]

We can see another version from a couple of days ago in the interview given by Mitt Romney to a friendly Israeli newspaper. He's asked about the 'Arab Spring', a wave of revolution not exactly welcomed with open arms by an Israeli establishment which is understandably anxious about any seismic shifts in the region:

Romney was asked:

“How do you view the Arab Spring and the way in which the U.S. responded to the uprisings in those Arab states?”

He answered:

Clearly we’re disappointed in seeing Tunisia and Morocco elect Islamist governments. We’re very concerned in seeing the new leader in Egypt as an Islamist leader. It is our hope to move these nations toward a more modern view of the world and to not present a threat to their neighbors and to the other nations of the world.

“The Arab Spring is not appropriately named. It has become a development of more concern and it occurred in part because of the reluctance on the part of various dictators to provide more freedom to their citizens. President [George W.] Bush urged [deposed Egyptian President] Hosni Mubarak to move toward a more democratic posture, but President Obama abandoned the freedom agenda and we are seeing today a whirlwind of tumult in the Middle East in part because these nations did not embrace the reforms that could have changed the course of their history, in a more peaceful manner. [My Emphasis]

We can see what George Bush II's 'Freedom Agenda' involved here (address to the National Endowment for Democracy, 6 November 2003). Condaleeza Rise was still promoting it in a speech in Cairo in 2005 but, contra Romney, she had clearly changed her mind the following year. Frightened by the Iraqi debacle, the Bush Administration switched back to supporting pro-US authoritarian regimes. The concern now was that rapid democratization would benefit political Islam (as, indeed, it largely has). It's true that Obama finessed the Bush Administration post-Freedom Agenda, though he did actually continue to criticize past-US mistakes in backing friendly dictators.


What's interesting is Romney's re-casting of the 'Freedom agenda' to denude it of its worryingly revolutionary content. Behind the hand-waving, chat about gently persuading dictators to play nice is back to a much more traditionalistist support for sons of bitches, as long as they're sons of bitches friendly to US interests (and, in the Middle East, Israeli security).

Book Cover!

There's picture of the cover of my book up at Amazon (but not - oddly - up on the on-line OUP catalogue).

You'll see that there's a funny line running through the Amazon pic. Hopefully it'll not be there on the real thing!

Worth noting too that UK Book Depository offer the book at 25 percent off. What a bargain!

Here's the Blurb to the New Book

The bourgeoisie, wrote Heinrich Heine in 1842, was ‘obsessed by a nightmare apprehension of disaster’. An ‘instinctive dread of communism’ sapped bourgeois commitment to liberal freedoms. Theirs was a ‘politics motivated by fear’.

Over the next 150 years, the middle classes were repeatedly condemned by the Left as betrayers of liberty. For fear of the masses, the bourgeoisie colluded with the strong-armed state. Failure of the liberal revolutions in 1848, the rise of authoritarian nationalism from the 1860s, fascist victories in the first half of the twentieth-century, and brutal repression of national liberation movements throughout the Cold War – all these fateful disasters the Left blamed squarely on bourgeois timidity and treachery. For their part, conservatives accused the insidious Left. They insisted that leftist demagogues and fanatics exploited the desperation of the poor to subvert liberal revolutions, leading to anarchy and tyranny.

With the collapse of Communism, bourgeois liberty once again became a crusading force. The armed forces of NATO became instruments of ‘regime change’, seeking to destroy dictatorship and to build free-market democracies. President George W. Bush boasted the invasion of Iraq in 2003 as a ‘watershed event in the global democratic revolution’. Neoconservatives hailed the bourgeoisie as the truly universal class which, in emancipating itself, emancipates all society. Such middle class triumphalism was not to last. The debacle in Iraq and the Great Recession from 2008 revealed all too clearly that hubris still invites nemesis.

Bourgeois Liberty and the Politics of Fear uncovers this remarkable story, and the fierce debates it occasioned. It takes in a span from the seventeenth century to the twenty-first, covering a wide range of countries and thinkers. Strikingly original, and broad in its scope, it presents a clear set of arguments that shed new light on the creation of our modern world.