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Abstract
The neoconservatives have fallen out of favor among Washington policy-makers under President Obama as well as among conservatives themselves. However, neoconservatives’ impact on contemporary political discourse remains significant. This article is about the evolution of neoconservatives’ thinking about capitalism. Specifically, it is about neoconservatives’ ideological journey from right-wing critics of capitalism to one of its most ardent defenders. At the heart of their writing about capitalism are two distinct, but related cultural critiques of capitalism. In their view, capitalism creates a culture that is decadent, effeminate, and preoccupied with immediate gratification. This culture threatens the Protestant ethic and the heroic virtues of patriotic self-sacrifice. The Protestant ethic legitimizes capitalist accumulation and inequality, while the heroic virtues made the US a global superpower. Through supply-side economics and American empire the neoconservatives sought to recover both, the cultural foundations of capitalism located in the Protestant ethic and the heroic virtues of a global superpower. Neoconservative writings on capitalism are key to understanding the shift in the discourse on the economy, the welfare state, and foreign policy over the last thirty years.
Notes
1 In reference to Mitt Romney's affiliation with Bain Capital, Texas Governor Rick Perry suggested that, “there's a real difference between venture capitalism and vulture capitalism. Venture capitalism we like. Vulture, no.” On the same point but more descriptively, Newt Gingrich stated, “I think there's a real difference between people who believe in the free market and people who go around, take financial advantage, loot companies, leave behind broken families, broken towns, people on unemployment.” Quoted in, Peter Dreier, “Is Capitalism on Trial?” Dissent (January 2012), < http://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/is-capitalism-on-trial>.
The author wishes to thank James E. Freeman, Corey Robin, Michael J. Thompson, and Isa Vasquez for their insightful comments. Additionally, the author would like to thank Nancy S. Love and Mark Mattern and the anonymous reviewers of New Political Science for their constructive feedback.
2 As Lisa McGirr notes, pre-World War II conservatives were “far more flexible in their ideas about the economy.” Lisa McGirr, “Now That Historians Know So Much About the Right, How Should We Best Approach the Study of Conservatism?” Journal of American History (December 2011), p. 769.
3 The history of conservative intellectuals’ critique of capitalism is detailed and intriguing. Unfortunately, for reasons of space it is not possible to pursue it here.
4 Irving Kristol, Two Cheers for Capitalism (New York: Basic Books, 1979); see also Daniel Bell, The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (New York: Basic Books, 1996 [1976]). It must be noted that Daniel Bell, unlike other thinkers, has never accepted the neoconservative label. In the 1978 Foreword to his Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism he maintained that he “is a socialist in economics, a liberal in politics, and a conservative in culture.” Nevertheless, he is widely considered to be an original neoconservative thinker.
5 J. David Hoeveler, Jr., Watch on the Right: Conservative Intellectuals in the Reagan Era (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991), p. 94.
6 James Piereson, “Investing in Conservative Ideas,” Commentary (May 2005), p. 51.
7 Walter Goodman, “Irving Kristol: Patron Saint of the New Right,” New York Times Magazine, December 6, 1981, p. 90; see also Bruce Schulman and Julian E. Zelizer (eds), Rightward Bound: Making America Conservative in the 1970s (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), pp. 160–161.
8 Gary Dorrien, “Benevolent Global Hegemony: William Kristol and the Politics of American Empire,” Logos 3:2 (2004), < http://www.logosjournal.com/dorrien.htm> accessed July 12, 2011; see also, Robert Kagan and William Kristol, “What to do about Iraq: For the War on Terror to Succeed, Saddam Hussein Must be Removed,” Weekly Standard, January, 21, 2002, < http://www.weeklystandard.com/print/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/000/768pylwj.asp>.
9 There have been many neoconservatives who have been intellectually and politically influential including Francis Fukuyama, Nathan Glazer, Gertrude Himmelfarb, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Seymour Martin Lipset, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Norman Podhoretz, James Q. Wilson, Paul Wolfowitz, among others. However, I focus on the thought of Daniel Bell, Irving Kristol, William Kristol, Robert Kagan, and David Brooks. I focus on Bell because his Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism is the clearest and most thorough expression of the decline of bourgeois virtues. Irving Kristol is prominent because he not only popularized neoconservative thinking, but he is also considered to be the founder of neoconservatism. Finally, I focus on William Kristol, Kagan, and Brooks for their influence in the media and policy circles, especially, in the administration of George W. Bush and the “war on terror.”
10 George H. Nash, The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America: Since 1945 (Wilmington, DE: Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 1996); see also John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, The Right Nation: Conservative Power in America (New York: Penguin, 2004); and Elizabeth Price Foley, The Tea Party: Three Principles (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2012).
11 Michael J. Thompson (ed.), Confronting the New Conservatism: The Rise of the Right in America (New York: New York University Press, 2007); see also Patrick Allitt, The Conservatives: Ideas and Personalities Throughout American History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009); and Michael Lind, Up From Conservatism: Why the Right is Wrong for America (New York: The Free Press, 1996), p. 56.
12 Paleoconservative publications include Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture and The American Conservative.
13 Corey Robin, The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism From Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011).
14 Allitt, The Conservatives, p. 5.
15 See Gary J. Dorrien, The Neoconservative Mind: Politics, Culture, and the War of Ideology (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1993); see also Shadia B. Drury, Leo Strauss and the American Right (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997); Anne Norton, Leo Strauss and the Politics of American Empire (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004); Jim Mann, Rise of the Vulcans (New York: Viking, 2004); and Stephen Halper and Jonathan Clarke, American Alone: The Neo-Conservatives and the Global Order (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
16 Michiko Kakutani, “Historian who Influences both Obama and Romney,” New York Times, February 13, 2012, < http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/14/books/the-world-america-made-by-robert-kagan.html>.
17 Daniel Bell, The Cultural Critique of Capitalism (New York: Basic Books, 1996 [1976]).
18 Kristol, Two Cheers For Capitalism, pp. 128–130.
19 Bell, Cultural Critique of Capitalism, p. 82.
20 Kristol, Two Cheers for Capitalism, p. 247.
21 Irving Kristol, “Capitalism, Socialism, and Nihilism,” in Neoconservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea (New York: The Free Press, 1995), p. 100.
22 Bell, Cultural Critique of Capitalism, pp. 61–62.
23 Bell, Cultural Critique of Capitalism, pp. 61–62, xx.
24 Bell, Cultural Critique of Capitalism, pp. 61–62, 21, 293; see also Kristol, Two Cheers for Capitalism, p. 82.
25 Bell, Cultural Critique of Capitalism, p. 66.
26 Bell, Cultural Critique of Capitalism, p. 66, 293.
27 Hoeveler, Watch on the Right, p. 95. For the role of advertising in creating a consumer culture, see Stuart Ewen, Captains of Consciousness: Advertising and the Social Roots of the Consumer Culture (New York: Basic Books, 2001 [1976]).
28 Kristol, Two Cheers for Capitalism, p. 82.
32 Kristol, Neoconservatism, p. 103, 128.
29 Bell, Cultural Critique of Capitalism, p. 338.
30 Kristol, Two Cheers for Capitalism, p. 82.
31 Kristol, Neoconservatism, p. 103.
33 Hoeveler, Watch on the Right, p. 104.
34 Irving Kristol, “Pornography, Obscenity, and the Case for Censorship,” in Irwin Stelzer (ed.), The Neocon Reader (New York: Grove Press, 2004), pp. 169–180.
35 Kristol, Neoconservatism, p. 103.
36 Kristol, Two Cheers for Capitalism, p. 83.
37 Kristol, Two Cheers for Capitalism, p. 83, 3–22.
38 Hoeveler, Watch on the Right, p. 101.
39 Frank Meyer attempted to resolve the tension in conservatism between laissez-faire capitalism and a morally conservative traditional society in what he called “conservative fusion.” Frank Meyer, The Conservative Mainstream (New Rochelle, NY: Arlington House, 1969). Fusion became the conservatism of William F. Buckley and the National Review. Traditionalists such as Russell Kirk were never persuaded by “fusionism” and remained skeptical of the compatibility of laissez-faire capitalism and a traditional society. See Lind, Up From Conservatism, p. 54.
40 Elizabeth Arens, “Review: The Anxiety of Prosperity,” Policy Review (December 2000/January 2001), pp. 75–82; see also Tod Lindberg, “Neoconservatism's Liberal Legacy,” in Peter Berkowitz (ed.), Varieties of Conservatism in America (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 2004), pp. 144–145. To the contrary, Bell, in his 1996 Afterword to The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism continued to argue that the decline of the Protestant ethic remains a central cultural problem for capitalism and the contradiction has only been aggravated since the mid-1970s when the book was first published.
41 Bruce Bartlett, “The Origin of Modern Republican Fiscal Policy,” New York Times, March 20, 2012, < http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/20/the-origin-of-modern-republican-fiscal-policy>.
42 Irving Kristol, “The Death of the Socialist Idea,” Saturday Evening Post, March 1979.
43 Irving Kristol, “A Conservative Welfare State,” in Irwin Stelzer (ed.), The Neocon Reader (New York: Grove Press, 2004), p. 145.
44 Irving Kristol, “The Two Welfare States,” Wall Street Journal, October 19, 2000.
45 Irving Kristol, “The Two Welfare States,” Wall Street Journal, October 19, 2000
46 Conservative author George F. Will made similar arguments regarding the role of the state in the formation of the character of its citizens. George F. Will, Statecraft as Soulcraft: What Government Does (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1983).
47 Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes; Roy Rosenzweig, Nelson Lichtenstein, Joshua Brown, and David Jaffee, Who Built America? Working People and the Nation's History, 1877–Present (New York: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2008).
48 For a discussion of racial and gender discrimination in New Deal programs see, Ira Katznelson, When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America (New York: W.W. Norton, 2005); see also Suzanne Mettler, Dividing Citizens: Gender and Federalism in New Deal Public Policy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998).
49 Martin Luther King, Jr, Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2010 [1968]), pp. 5–6.
50 For how African Americans were deliberately excluded and marginalized from New Deal social programs see Ira Katznelson, When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America (New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 2005); see also Jill Quadagno, The Color of Welfare: How Racism Undermined the War on Poverty (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994); and Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward, Poor People's Movements: Why They Succeed and How They Fail (New York: Vintage Books, 1978).
51 Jefferson Cowie, Stayin’ Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class (New York: The New Press, 2010).
52 Pete Hamill, “Wallace,” in Alexander Bloom and Wini Breines (eds), Takin’ it to the Streets (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 348–351; see also Michael Novak, “Why Wallace?,” Alexander Bloom and Wini Breines (eds), Takin’ it to the Streets (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 352–354.
53 Irving Kristol, “The Neoconservative Persuasion,” in Irwin Stelzer (ed.), The Neocon Reader (New York: Grove Press, 2004), p. 35.
54 Irving Kristol, “A Conservative Welfare State,” in Irwin Stelzer (ed.), The Neocon Reader (New York: Grove Press, 2004), p. 145.
55 Irving Kristol, “A New Look at Capitalism,” National Review, April 17, 1981, pp. 414–415.
56 Lindberg, “Neoconservatism's Liberal Legacy,” p. 145.
57 David Brooks, “A Return to National Greatness: A Manifesto for a Lost Creed,” Weekly Standard, March 3, 1997.
58 Francis Fukuyama, “Francis Fukuyama Says Tuesday's Attack Marks the End of ‘American Exceptionalism,’” Financial Times, September, 15, 2001.
59 David Brooks, “Facing Up to Our Fears,” Newsweek, October, 22, 2001.
60 Irving Kristol, Reflections of a Neoconservative: Looking Back, Looking Ahead (New York: Basic Books, 1983), p. 29.
61 Tod Lindberg, “Valor and Victimhood After September 11,” in William Kristol (ed.), The Weekly Standard: A Reader 1995–2005 (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2005), p. 267.
62 Irving Kristol, “The Lost Soul of the Welfare State,” Wall Street Journal, February 3, 1997.
63 Corey Robin, “Endgame: Conservatives After the Cold War,” Boston Review (February 2004), pp. 26–30.
64 Brooks, “A Return to National Greatness.”
65 Robin, “Endgame.”
66 William Kristol and Robert Kagan, “Toward a Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy,” Foreign Affairs (July/August 1996), p. 27.
67 Not all neoconservatives were as melancholy about the prospect of peace at the end of the Cold War. Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote of some of his neoconservative colleagues, “they wished for a military posture approaching mobilization; they would create or invent whatever crises were required to bring this about.” See, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Pandaemonium: Ethnicity in International Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 36.
68 Irving Kristol, “A Post-Wilsonian Foreign Policy,” AEI Online, August 2, 1996.
69 Robin, “Endgame.”
70 Kagan and Kristol, “What to do About Iraq.”
71 Hart Seely, “The Poetry of D.H. Rumsfeld,” Slate, April 2, 2003.
72 Kristol and Kagan, “Toward a Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy,” p. 31.
73 Lindberg, “Valor and Victimhood After September 11,” p. 258.
74 Barak Obama, “Nobel Peace Prize Speech,” New York Times, December 10, 2009.
75 There have been moments when President Obama has repudiated, at least rhetorically, the narrative of American exceptionalism. For example, “I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism. I'm enormously proud of my country and its role and history in the world.… Now, the fact that I am very proud of my country and I think that we've got a whole lot to offer the world does not lessen my interest in recognizing the value and wonderful qualities of other countries, or recognizing that we're not always going to be right, or that other people may have good ideas, or that in order for us to work collectively, all parties have to compromise and that includes us.… And so I see no contradiction between believing that America has a continued extraordinary role in leading the world towards peace and prosperity and recognizing that that leadership is incumbent, depends on, our ability to create partnerships because we create partnerships because we can't solve these problems alone.” Barak Obama, “News Conference by President Obama,” The White House: Office of the Press Secretary, Strasbourg, France, April 4, 2009, < http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/news-conference-president-obama-4042009>.
76 “Little Change in Public's Response to ‘Capitalism,’ ‘Socialism,’” Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, December 28, 2011, < http://pewresearch.org/pubs/2159/socialism-capitalism-occupy-wall-street-libertarian-liberal-conservative>; Dreier, “Is Capitalism on Trial?”