Neocon Philosophy and Politics

Benjamin Ross, in Dissent Magazine, discusses the historical intellectual roots of neoconservativism. Though originally a collection of views set in the teachings of Leo Strauss and Max Shachtman (deriving also from Plato, Hobbes, Machiavelli, and Trotsky), Ross concludes that neocon-ism is more politics than philosophy, a conclusion I discussed in an earlier post.

Many things unite today's neoconservatives. They share a facility with argument, a taste for debate, an appetite for influence, a talent for networking, a desire for gainful employment, and perhaps some hard-to-pin-down psychological predispositions as well. What they lack in common is an animating ideal. The arrival of two philosophical brotherhoods, the Straussians and Shachtmanites, at the same end point owes much to their resemblance as brotherhoods and very little to their widely disparate philosophies.

Although neoconservatism has had an immense influence on the tone of contemporary conservatism, its substantive effect on the actions of government has been much smaller. The claim that the behavior of the Bush administration derives from neocon principles does not stand up, because principles are not what gathered the neocons themselves together. Their purposes are not to be found in philosophies, but in politics.

The ideas of George W. Bush's Republicanism accommodate prevailing interests and justify the accumulation of power; they do not inspire policy. The interests at stake at home - the enrichment of the wealthy and the protection of the privileged - are easy to identify. The wellsprings of what is done abroad are harder to sort out, a topic for another day and another author. But philosophy is not the place to look. Who searches for the intellectual roots of George W. Bush searches in vain.

See also a review by Tony Judt in the NY Review of Books on "The New World Order."