Radical Conservatism and the Future of Politics

by Goran Dahl

• ISBN13: 9780761954149
• ISBN10: 0761954147
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1999-05-17
• Publisher: Sage Publications Ltd

Summary

7 What is radical conservatism? 7 What are its connections with right-wing populism?Over the last 20 years the post-war centre-ground which recognized the welfare state, the funding of education, protection of the environment and the management of capitalism as the proper business of the state, has fragmented. The New Left of the 1990s is more conservative than the Old Left of the 1960s and 70s.Emphasis on the freedom of the individual and the proper limitations of state power has changed the climate of everyday life. For Dahl, the genocide in the former Yugoslavia and the bombing in Oklahoma City, each bear the traces of the new 'radical conservatism'. Even countries in the former socialist bloc have witnessed a conservative revolution. This book locates the roots of radical conservatism in the writings of Nietzsche, Dostoyevsky, Heidegger, Junger and Schmitt. It documents the radical conservative worldview and points to limitations in its perspective. Dahl asserts that we should be wary of considering radical conservatism as a singular phenomenon and discusses the divergence in belief and policy between different nation states in Europe, North America, the Middle East and Asia.Radical Conservatism and the Future of Politics provides a timely and penetrating understanding of the most pronounced political phenomenon of our time. It will be invaluable to students of political science and political sociology.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	vii
Introduction	1	(12)
PART I `RADICAL CONSERVATISM'	13	(48)
Conservatism and politics	15	(36)
Karl Mannheim's sociology of knowledge and the logics of conservatism	16	(24)
The dynamics and dilemmas of conservatism	40	(11)
Conservatism and radical conservatism	51	(10)
Intellectual roots: Nietzsche and Dostoyevsky	54	(2)
Carl Schmitt, Martin Heidegger and Ernst Junger: decisionism	56	(5)
PART II THE WORLD ACCODING TO RADICAL CONSERVATISM	61	(80)
Reflexivity and spontaneity	63	(18)
Reflexivity and anti-reflexivity	63	(2)
Nietzsche and reflexivity	65	(2)
The nouvelle droite in France	67	(2)
The new culturalism	69	(2)
Technocratic conservatism	71	(2)
Proto-fascism and the conservative revolution	73	(1)
Schmittian radical conservatism	73	(3)
Sacrifice	76	(2)
Pathological hyper-modernism and hyper-reflexivity	78	(1)
Life-world or system?	79	(1)
Reflexivity	79	(2)
Politics and theology	81	(6)
The critique of `one-world civilization' and the nation	87	(8)
Ethnos- and Demos-freaks - some illustrations	92	(1)
On `centrism'	93	(1)
Ethnocentrism or Demokratur?	93	(2)
Forms of radical conservatism - an attempt at an international perspective	95	(30)
Germany	98	(6)
Austria	104	(2)
France	106	(1)
Russia	107	(5)
USA	112	(5)
Canada	117	(1)
Libya	118	(1)
China	119	(6)
New political constellations?	125	(16)
Retrogardism, Zivilisationskritik and radical conservatism	125	(12)
Nationalism and socialism	137	(4)
PART III CONCLUSIONS	141	(10)
Radical conservatism, the sociology of knowledge and the future of politics	143	(8)
References	151	(10)
Index	161