Communitarian Conservatives and the Communitarian Left

Rod Dreher is honored in David Brook’s column this morning. The column tells the bittersweet story of the death of Dreher’s sister and the outpouring of support her fight against cancer drew from the small  town in which she lived. Dreher and his wife were so touched by the experience that they decided to move to the town, St. Francisville, Louisiana.

In a sense the move fit with Dreher’s philosophy. Dreher is a communitarian conservative in the tradition of Russell Kirk (who, among other things, emphasized the importance of small towns). Dreher believes that the communitarian aspect of conservatism has been underexplored. He writes for the The American Conservative, a magazine devoted to that proposition. I think the differences and similarities among communitarian conservatives and communitarians on the left have been underexplored as well.

One of the main differences is that communitarian conservatives emphasize the importance of respecting tradition; communitarians on the left emphasize the importance of criticizing tradition. Partly because of their respect for tradition, communitarian conservatives have decried the ravages of materialism and capitalism; for different reasons, so, of course, have communitarians of the left.

One of the principal criticisms of President Obama coming from the left has been that he surrounded himself with Wall Street luminaries. Dreher has a similar criticism coming from the right. It is worth reading. Check it out here.

 

Comments

[Julien Peter Benney]

The criticism of materialism has always united many cultural critics: the “crunchy con” movement Dreher identified about half a decade ago actually has many links with the counterculture of the 1960s - when the similarities you identify were noted within the Beat movement in particular, and still had roots as late as the middle 1970s before punk largely removed the communitarian or “personalist” emphasis of the Sixties.

[Steve Shiffrin]

Thanks for the comment. I think you are right and would add that
this form of criticism stretches back most powerfully to the
romantic movement in the late eighteenth century. By the way, I like
your comments on architecture and Dreher on your own blog.

[Marc DeGirolami]

Steve, terrific post. I agree that the criticism of modernity along these lines can be found in the counter-Enlightenment tradition beginning in the late-18th century -- a sensibility you describe very well in your book on Romanticism. On the conservative side, one of the important roots is Burke. Whom would you say is a strong progenitor on the liberal side of this genre of critique?

[Steve Shiffrin]

Thanks for the nice comment Marc. I interpret your question to focus on communitarians on the left who are critical of materialism and aspects of capitalism. I dont think there is an obvious single candidate as there is on the conservative side. There are quite a few traditions to draw from (republicanism, Marxism, and Catholicism - from the encyclicals to Dorothy Day and Commonweal). I drew primarily on Emerson in my first book for first amendment and democratic purposes; I see him as a romantic, but not as a communitarian; nonetheless, I think many of the left writers in the republican, Marxist, and Catholic traditions have been influenced by romantic communitarians even though many of those communitarians were quite conservative.