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There appears to have been a mild resurgence of Hlynkaism on the forum. This is concerning, because I believe that the core tenets of Hlynkaism are deeply confused.
@hydroacetylene said:
It's not entirely clear what's supposed to be the determining criteria of identity here. Are wokeism and the DR the same because they're both revolutionary, or are they the same because they only differ on who gets the cushy sinecures? At any rate, I'll address both points.
Revolution (defined in the most general sense as rapid dramatic change, as opposed to slow and gradual change) is a tactic, not an ideological principle. You can have adherents of two different ideologies who both agree on the necessity of revolution, and you can have two adherents of the same ideology who disagree on the viability of revolution as a tactic. Although Marxism is typically (and correctly) seen as a revolutionary ideology, there have been notable Marxists who denied the necessity of revolution for Marxism. They instead wanted to achieve communism through a series of gradual reforms using the existing democratic state apparatus. But does that suddenly make them into conservatives? Their tactics are different from typical Marxists, but their core underlying Marxist ideological principles are the same. I doubt that any of the Hlynkaists on this forum would look at the reformist-Marxists and say "ah, a fellow conservative-gradualist! Truly these are my people; they too are lovers of slow, cautious change".
"Tradition above all" is an empty formalism at best, and incoherent at worst. If tradition is your sole overriding source of moral truth, then we just wind up with the old Euthyphro dilemma: what happens when the tradition that you happened to be born into isn't worth defending? What if it's actively malicious? "Support tradition" is a formal principle because it makes no mention of the actual content of that tradition. If you are living in a Nazi or communist (or whatever your own personal avatar of evil is) regime whose roots extend back further than living memory, are conservatives obligated to support the existing "traditional" regime? Perhaps they're allowed to oppose it, but only if they do so in a slow and gradual manner. You can understand why this response might not be appealing to those who are being crushed under the boot of the regime. And at any rate, you can only arrive at the position of opposing the regime in the first place if you have an alternative source of substantive ethical principles that go beyond the formal principles of "support tradition" and "don't change things too fast".
As for the assertion that wokeism and the DR only differ on "who gets the cushy sinecures"; this is simply incorrect. They have multiple substantive policy disagreements on LGBT rights, traditional gender roles, immigration, foreign policy, etc.
Hlynkaism to me represents a concerning abdication of reflection and nuance, in favor of a self-assured "I know what's what, these radical Marxist-Islamo-fascists can't pull a fast one on me" attitude. This is emblematic of much that is wrong with contemporary (and historical as well) political discourse. The principle goal of philosophical reflection is to undermine the foundation of this self-assuredness. Actually, you don't know what's what. Your enemies might know things that you don't; their positions might be more complicated and nuanced than you originally thought. Undoubtedly the realm of political discourse would become more productive, or at least more pleasant, if this attitude of epistemic humility were to become more widespread.
And as a tactical choice it is itself a ideological commitment. It’s not merely ‘rapid change’- it requires an acceptance of top down impositions, rationalism, the idea of de novo societal shifts implemented by a vanguard party. I reject all of that ideologically. Western trads should seek to weaken state capacity where possible, capture institutions available for capture, and in other situations focus on building parallel institutions and weakening those institutions which cannot be captured. In so doing it is possible to build a functional society which envelopes and digests the rotting hulk of modernism.
I admit this is an exaggeration. However, there is a kernel of truth- a mere commitment to political incorrectness does not a social conservative make. I agree with much of the DR that gays are perverts who shouldn’t be allowed near kids, that women shouldn’t vote, etc. But my reasoning and therefore implementation of these ideas is very different.
You are right to point out that the distinction between tactics and principles is not as clean as I made it out to be. But I'm skeptical that recourse to revolution is always indicative of the deep ideological commitments that you portray it as having. Whatever it may entail ideologically, I don't think it's a good criteria for cleaving the global ideological space at the joints.
The American Revolution was, by most accounts, based on the principles of classical liberalism; principles that I imagine Hlynka and his fellow travelers would endorse wholeheartedly. Was there something ideologically objectionable about the American Revolution just because it took the form of a revolution? Does it have to be denounced? Were the founding fathers necessarily committed to a certain "top down rationalist" view of human nature that true Red Tribers would have to reject?
Or consider the Iranian Revolution of 1979, which instituted an Islamic theocracy. They certainly claim to be following a conservative tradition of some kind; it might not be your preferred tradition, but it's a tradition. Are they too committed to an Enlightenment rationalist view of human nature? Does Islamic theocracy share a deep philosophical affinity with Marxist communism that has hitherto gone unnoticed? And the American Revolution too?
The most reasonable conclusion, on my view, is not that revolutions are a result of people having a deep ideological commitment to the idea of a top down rationally organized society. Revolutions are a result of people wanting power, and having the means and opportunity to seize it. This is universal to left and right, old and new.
Would you be willing to elaborate on this? I'm just curious.
I would argue that the thing which we call the “American Revolution” was not in fact a revolution. In something like the French Revolution (ann actual revolution) the King of France was deposed and later killed. There was no more French monarchy; it no longer existed as an institution. Ditto for the Iranian Revolution, which completely removed the Iranian monarchy.
Contrast this with the state of the world after the American War of Independence. The British Monarchy was very much still intact and continue to be a powerful and geopolitically relevant institution for another century and a half. The American colonists were no longer under its power, and therefore they had to create new governing institutions for themselves from scratch; in that sense, the aftermath resembles the aftermath of a revolution. But the institution being rebelled against was never destroyed, nor even especially weakened.
The Revolutionary War was a separatist rebellion. It could also have been a revolution within the American colonies, but by and large wasn't - the major social/political developments in the colonies had already occurred and to a significant degree the cause of the rebellion was attempts by the British government to roll them back/redefine the relationship. The post-war social order wasn't identical to pre-independence, but it was pretty similar.
Contra your follow up remark, I would say that the Haitian Revolution was a real revolution, in that it totally upended the Haitian social order, in addition to being a separatist revolt against France.
Very much agreed. The American War of Independence made only minor incremental changes in the domestic institutions of the individual Colonies/States, and apart from a few Loyalists being exiled there was no change in the local elites running those institutions. The Haitian Revolution involved the (sometimes literal) dismemberment of the French local elites running Haiti and their replacement by a new Creole elite, as well as complete reboot of the institutions.
If there is a true American Revolution (and the Founding Fathers thought there was - hence Novo Ordo Saeculorum etc.), it is an ongoing process (similar to the analogous but slower development of Parliamentary Democracy in the UK) of forming new, unprecedentedly democratic and republican institutions which continues through and beyond the signing of the Constitution.
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I feel like this is a highly unusual definition of revolution, and not the primary criteria that most people use to judge that term.
There are dozens of examples, but what about the Haitian revolution? The Irish revolution/Independence movement? The Dutch Revolt, where the Netherlands seeded from Spanish control? Most post-colonial histories?
It's like defining surgery as the procedure by which someone cuts off a limb or an organ. If an organized group rebels against a dominant force, and either replaces them wholesale or at least forces them to concede defeat, that's the working definition. I see no reason to postulate anything else, at best it's a sub-category.
None of the things you named are revolutions, in my opinion. They are revolts, certainly, but not revolutions. An independence movement simply secedes from an existing institution, while a revolution dissolves that institution. After the Russian Revolution there were no more tsars, and almost certainly never will be. Mao’s revolution in China totally dissolved the traditional governing institutions of China. I think you absolutely need to have some way to distinguish that sort of process from the far more common secession of smaller units from a larger political whole.
You're making a perfectly reasonable distinction, but my objection is that this is a non-standard use of existing terminology and you'd be better served coming up with a new word. Maybe call them "replacement revolutions" versus "secessionist revolutions", or something catcher.
There are plenty of examples, what's the difference between a rebellion and a revolution? Largely whether the rebels were victorious (even temporarily) and thus had the opportunity to rebrand.
According to Wikipedia, some gentleman named Charles Tully already subdivided revolutions into:
He drew a line between a "revolt" and a "great revolution", a concept that matches your "revolution" but even then, he said that they were subtypes of revolution as a whole.
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The new governing institutions were mostly not created from scratch, though- they were assemblies and expansions of preexisting governing institutions. The American revolution largely left quite literally the same people in charge of the day to day running of America before and afterwards- assemblies elected by landowner suffrage were very much not new and most of the founding fathers had had positions in colonial government beforehand.
Yeah people forget that the original theoretical question of the American Revolution was if the British Parliament in England or the British Parliaments in America could govern the Englishmen in America.
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