Towards a Conservative Left: Book Review

Towards a Conservative Left: Selected Writings of Jean-Claude Michéa is an excellent addition to Vauban Books’ library of dissident literature, expanding on a tradition begun by George Orwell, that of “Tory Anarchism” or what others, like Michael C. Behrent, have called “left-conservativism.” Jean-Claude Michéa is a high school philosophy teacher, raised by a mother and father who were communist partisans in the French Resistance. His perspective is distinct, shaped by his early childhood life in a socialist movement that was ideologically and personally committed to the working class. He lives in a rural village in France of 400 people, where he farms and teaches.

The book begins with a famous essay by Michéa, published initially for a small community of French anarchists, discussing George Orwell’s Tory Anarchism, which frames Orwell’s socialist and conservative instincts, as well as Michéa’s own. Michéa’s essays borrow heavily from Orwell. Orwell and Michéa view common decency among working people as the foundation of a better, more socialist, or anarchist world. To both men, common decency must be preserved from capitalism, which encourages a culture of narcissism and egoism. Anarchism and socialism are incompatible with narcissism. So conservatism is necessary for socialists and anarchists to oppose capitalism and build a better world. For Michéa, the popular leftist idea that capitalism will inevitably lead to socialism is deranged and psychotic. Every day, capitalism warps further the foundations of humanity that could be the building blocks of a better life. Time is not on our side. Time is our enemy. Conservation of common decency is the only stance that offers any hope of resisting liberalism's relentless shriving of the human soul into radiant, gleaming humanity, empty of any “ism,” infantile and innocent, free to be preyed upon, commodified, genetically modified, and perfect.

Michéa’s key contribution is to argue that cultural liberalism and political or economic liberalism, popularly known as “neoliberalism,” are not separate trends, but mutually reinforcing pillars of one vast reconstruction of mankind. Capitalism requires the destruction of the family and community as much as capitalism needs new markets. The free market does not want us to be religious; the free market wants us to be selfish and narcissistic. The villain, despite leftist caricatures, is not Christianity or the conservative right; the villain is Charles Dickens’ Ebenezer Scrooge, who ignores beggars as much as he ignores his family. Amazon destroys traditional book sellers, community retailers, grocery stores, and arts and culture, with an equal disregard for traditional culture and working-class dignity. Pissing in bottles at work, for example, is not very traditional, common, or decent. Amazon is also stupidly convenient, which is perfect for selfish people.

After framing the unity of liberalism, he moves on to what prevents leftists from understanding that their opposition to capitalism is misguided and surface-level. Michéa’s life as a teacher is evident in his writing style, which is both pleasant and straightforward to read. When Michéa introduces more abstract ideas, like Zizek’s discussion of the maternal technique of authoritarian control, he explains the idea clearly and keeps his detour into psychology brief. Father tells you to go to Grandma’s, even if you don’t want to; Mother asks, “Why don’t you want to go to Grandma’s? Are you a bad child?” Paternal authority is direct and easy to rebel against. Maternal authority is insidious, identifying the subject with authority. Michéa sees this as liberalism’s totalitarian technique of control, which cultivates narcissism and an avoidance of conflict in the human animal. He discusses the psychological techniques of control to explain liberalism’s tendency to make people narcissistic and teach them to doublethink in his chapter, “Modern Society’s Unconscious.” Helpfully, the same thing that makes the left politically inconsequential is the same thing that makes for perfect consumers: docility and selfishness.

For Michéa, speaking of liberalism is speaking of capitalism. One cannot separate economic liberalism from political liberalism. For Michéa, liberalism’s dream, like Scrooge’s, is for an unbiased, business-like accounting of facts. For liberalism, political and cultural, common decency can only ever be an enemy. To identify something as uncommon or indecent would be to introduce antagonism into society. Antagonism disrupts the flow of commerce, opening a door for dangerous “isms” to thrive. Or, in Michéa’s words, political liberalism, reeling away from moral judgments after the wars of religion, inevitably becomes free-market liberalism because to avoid moral judgments about the good life, the state must recede, adopting the maxim, “live and let live.” To remain faithful to itself, political liberalism steps aside, and the visible hand of the state abandons its unresolved problems to the invisible hand of the market. Political liberalism, or cultural liberalism, thus always becomes free market liberalism.

Although I raise Scrooge (who was no conservative; he would have said “Happy Holidays” to put a damper on Christian cheer) as the archetypal villain, Michéa is more interested in the figure of Robert Macaire, whom he raises throughout his essays as the great foe of anarchism. Towards a Conservative Left is as much about liberalism and capitalism as it is about a political alternative. Robert Macaire is a character who emerged from French plays of the early 19th century, Robert Macaire is a bandit, a financial schemer, a ragged tramp, and a dapper gambler, all at the same time. For an American parallel, think Patrick Bateman meets Jordan Belfort. Robert Macaire’s opportunistic schemes, in politics and economics, undermine common and decent people when they organize themselves. Democracy becomes the game of who gets who elected and how votes get bought. For Michéa, the figure of Robert Macaire—driven by ego and ambition to manipulate others—explains who dominates common and decent people and why they do so. For cynics who view anarchism with a twisted, wistful gaze, Michéa's defense of the possibility of anarchism and the causes of anarchism's failure is compelling, although, in my view, marred by a fantastical and recurrent interest in prehistoric and primitive societies, a romanticism typical of idealists. This is most evident in his essay, “Can Common Decency be Universalized?”

Yet, the reader should take Michéa seriously anyway. Orwell, who himself was influenced by Charles Dickens heavily, once wrote about Dickens’ heroes that, “…there is nothing he admires except common decency... Really there is no objective except to marry the heroine, settle down, live solvently and be kind. And you can do that much better in private life.” One could almost imagine Orwell writing this about Michéa, who has embraced rural village life, farming, and teaching high school, though with his name and reputation, he could surely aspire to more. Why should he, though? Michéa's entire point is that “aspiring to more” is the thing that leaves humanity with less, replacing our common decency with egotistic dreams of being better than others. That Michéa lives a simpler life reinforces the legitimacy of his writing about anarchism: he is not a Robert Macaire himself; in fact, in his writings, he wants to teach us to watch out for those like Robert Macaire, like Dickens wanted us to watch out for (and not become) Scrooges.

Turning to why the “left” has become so estranged from its working class roots, so allied with the forces they supposedly oppose, Michéa deploys Orwell’s concept of doublethink in a short essay after his discussion of egoism. For Michéa, the left abandoned the working class, instead allying itself with cultural liberalism. As to why, the answer goes back to Robert Macaire. Leftists, being professors, academics, and elitists, benefited more from the long con of replacing the church than defeating Scrooge. Leftists, though they believe they are in opposition to capitalism, applaud the transgression of every boundary, cultural and moral limit, as if this were a subversion of capitalism: they are in denial that the same thing that makes workers at Amazon factories piss in bottles is the same thing that is normalizing polyamory; neither of these things are common or decent.

For Michéa, “doublethink,” in addition to egoism, explains these paradoxes. The left celebrates abortion, homosexuality, and mass migration, while proclaiming itself the champion of working people, who are generally cautious about abortion, unenthusiastic about homosexuality, and opposed to mass migration. Leftists, with arrogant, naive hearts—infantile as they are, immature psychologically, like Robert Macaire—are incapable of being honest with themselves. In Michea’s writing, narcissism and doublethink come together as dark tools that hide the unity of political and economic liberalism from its supposed leftist opponents, who, being arrogant like Robert Macaire (it's the height of arrogance to defraud common people, after all) in the end only con themselves into serving as the footsoldiers of their enemies.

James Burnham and Machiavelli make regular appearances in Michéa’s work as philosophical foils. Readers of Curtis Yarvin should consider picking up Towards a Conservative Left as a sharp negation of Machiavellianism in defense of common man’s essential goodness, grounded not in liberal naivete, but in the practical reality of rural and traditional life, which cultivates common decency.

In the 21st century, we find ourselves in cascading collapse driven by waves of mass migration, warfare, and economic turmoil. In the context of decline, two camps of argument have emerged, fires glimmering in the night. On one side, we have the Machiavellians, represented by Burnham and Yarvin, who believe that the desire for power is inherent to human beings. On the other side, we have the Dickensians, represented by Orwell and Michéa, who believe that humans do not naturally desire power over others. Both camps are united by a conservative critique of liberalism that goes beyond neoconservativism, and the great writers of both camps are leftist defectors and dissidents. Yet they differ entirely in their vision of the good life and human nature (in an interesting inversion of the 20th-century debate between Chomsky and Foucault, it is now the Americans who are cynics and the French who are humanists). The stakes of the debate are great. On the contemporary right, one can see both fires brightly burning; here and there, seeds of revolt: coup, resistance, purge—beyond that valley, a little farm and raw milk—and swarming to the fires, deplorables, glad to be common, decent, and hated. What are we to do? Michéa has an answer.

Towards a Conservative Left is a timely and unintentional rebuttal to conversations we are having today about populism and conservative politics which can often forget (because there are so many Robert Macaires talking about these values) that freedom and common decency are real and exist in the world of common and decent men. For liberal readers, Towards a Conservative Left is a reminder to be honest with yourself, to ask if you are being a Robert Macaire, and to reflect upon your occasional doublethink.

A well-meaning leftist reading this work may be inclined to ask, “How conservative does a conservative left have to be?” and they may have hopeful, bright eyes, thinking they can get away with saying men are men and women are women. To them I’d say: if you are uninterested in considering how Obergefell may have been a mistake, and if you are incapable of using the words “mass migration” let alone “remigration,” you will likely find Michéa too traditional. Nonetheless, Towards a Conservative Left is worth your time: this is a story about you.

I enjoyed Michéa's essays because he gave me language I had forgotten I had to write about my flyover family in Utah, Montana, and Louisiana: of their common decency, and decency’s anarchistic, conservative inclination towards wild freedom, honor, and neighborly good-charm. For Michéa, this is the only thing we have to build a better world upon, where people are free of power, free to live common and decent lives, of less but better, and so more. For a socialist, Towards a Conservative Left is a must-read. Michéa is asking us what our home is built upon. There is a rock. There is a pile of sand. Time works against us as the rain comes down.

Towards a Conservative Left is worth buying and reading. The book should appeal to people interested in anarchism, socialism, and conservatism, and who may already be fans of great writers who have touched on these topics before, like Orwell, Dickens, and Christopher Lasch. The writing itself is beautiful. For $24.95, this is an easy buy. Each essay is short, ranging from 6 to 25 pages, so they can be read in a spare afternoon or evening. His writing is sometimes indirect; in this collection of selected works, there are almost no direct mentions of current controversies, such as Islam in the West, mass migration, and LGBT issues. The book will thus have a timeless quality. His essays are far more interested in philosophy than in professing a series of contemporary beliefs. The book is more than a collection of selected essays. The writing comes together as a holistic, incisive critique of modern society in defense of long-held values, ending with optimism, hinting that we can be more than human animals, if only we revive more archaic, common, and decent ways of living.