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Perspectives on Politics (2004), 2:121-122 American
Political Science Association
Jacobins and Utopians: The Political Theory of Fundamental Moral
Reform. By George Klosko. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003.
216p. $35.00 cloth, $17.00 paper
The subtitle of
George Klosko's book accurately represents his concerns. The author focuses
on important theoretical statements from classical Greeks through Lenin about
how to effect fundamental moral reform. So his perspective differs from
utopian scholars who study the vision to be established and political
historians who look at revolutionary activity. Klosko focuses on means, or
rather, theorizing about means and strategies, not on ends. Klosko develops his
themes historically, through an analysis of important figures in the history
of fundamental change. Very quickly the central analytic categories surface.
He begins with Plutarch's lives of Lycurgus and Solon. He finds in Lycurgus
one important and recurrent model for fundamental moral reform, a model that
Klosko labels “educational realism”: Lycurgus uses political power (backed by
violence if necessary) in order to educate the citizens to virtue. By
contrast, Solon is a reformer: He changes laws and constitutions, but does
not attempt to transform social and educational relations. Presenting another
alternative model, Socrates attempts fundamental moral reform not through
force but by persuasion of individuals; any society-wide transformation
incited by Socratic questioning requires spontaneous interactions among those
whom the gadfly has stung and changed. Educational realism
and individual persuasion leading to spontaneous social transformation are
Klosko's two central themes; Solon's reformism concerns him little here. This
book was originally a course and then a series of lectures, and Klosko uses
those origins to his advantage. As befits a course, he examines major
theorists (like Machiavelli and Marx), as well as theorizing activists
(notably Robespierre and Lenin), always from the
perspective of realizing radical change; so thematically the book involves
seeing famous figures from an unusual angle. The original lecture form means
a clear and comprehensible presentation, no matter how recondite the topic. For instance, Klosko
sharply distinguishes Socrates from Plato: Whereas Socrates tries to
transform individuals only through argument, Plato sees Socrates' mission as
a failure and so in the Republic seeks to define the conditions, no
matter how extreme, under which radical moral transformation could occur. In
presenting his views, Klosko navigates through a series of interpretive
issues, from grouping the Socratic dialogues to opposing the Strauss-Bloom
reading of the Republic; but he does so lucidly, rapidly, and with
good arguments. Other pairings and
interpretations may be less controversial but no less interesting. Unusual
when ideal societies are under consideration, More plays a bit part here—as
an advocate of persuading rulers with arguments and without force.
Machiavelli enters because of two practical insights: It takes a bad man to
seize power but a good man to rule well; and unarmed prophets fail. Marx
joins Fourier and Bakunin as theorists of spontaneity. Less surprisingly, Robespierre (with St. Just) and Lenin (at least Lenin
from late 1918 onward) appear as the leading Jacobins: Like Lycurgus and
Plato, the Jacobins are educational realists who see the need to use state
power to transform education and society if people are to be made virtuous.
Klosko probes their thought to discern seven major components of Jacobin
thinking. Because of Klosko's
focus on strategies for change, his book is a welcome additional perspective
to studies of fundamental change. The author's conclusions complement Karl
Popper's famous argument (The Open Society and Its Enemies, 1945) that
utopian blueprints lead to “dictatorial societal disasters” (p. 52). For
Klosko, those who advocate spontaneity or persuasion are unable convincingly
to explain how such changes will occur; and modern educational realists find
themselves giving the state extraordinary power without being able—as was
Plato in the Republic—to establish checks on the abuse of that power. Any book covering so
much material in such a brief space will lead its readers to questions and
further issues. I raise three. Klosko's range from
Lycurgus to Lenin is impressive and gives insights, but—given his criticisms
of those trying to generate fundamental moral reform—I wish that he had also
examined Hannah Arendt's On Revolution
(1972). In Klosko's terms, Arendt criticizes the Jacobins—they undercut or
stifle revolutionary energy and novelty—and she appeals to the experiences of
modern revolutions since 1776 to show that spontaneity and persuasion can
generate new modes of interaction and institutions. So her conclusions stand,
I think, opposed to Klosko's and need examination. Klosko happily
avoids many of the definitional quibbles that can stall or divert scholarly
analysis, especially of ideal societies. But in at least two places,
definitional problems exist. He states that the Jacobins, like many utopians,
have a “plan or blueprint” (p. 92) of their utopia, and their utopia is “a
human condition that is totally new by any standard” (pp. 4, 172). On both
counts, the Jacobins differ from reformers, who, like Popper, pursue
“piecemeal social engineering” (p. 52) aimed at specific and limited changes
(not “totally new” ones). I think that Klosko (following other scholars) here
is setting up dichotomies that hide continuities among many reformers from Popperians to Leninists—they usually have a vision of a
good society and a sense of how it connects to contemporary society. As
Klosko's discussion of Machiavelli suggests, his book could be profitably
reread as an exploration of problems faced by many different types of
reformers, from Solon through John Stuart Mill to the present. Third, and in part
because Klosko analyzes the usual suspects in the modern world—the
Jacobins—he does not ask about “right-wing” equivalents to the Jacobins,
theorists and actors whose “new state of being” for a future “without the
problems and strife of existing society” (p. 172) is either global free trade
with assured property rights or social and religious conservatism, and some
of whom, in order to bring their vision into existence, are willing, indeed
eager, to use state power to inculcate the proper virtues, even if citizens
are uninterested or recalcitrant. Although Klosko does not ask directly about
colonialism and neocolonialism, his analyses' “unsettling implications” (p.
173) about fundamental moral reform may be relevant when a state occupies and
tries to transform the population and institutions of another state. But criticism also
comes full circle. My questions ask for an expansion of Klosko's scope, and
much of the value and enjoyment of Jacobins and Utopians lies in the
author's explorations of dilemmas of fundamental moral reform and his
uncovering of the ways in which many major theorists discovered and grappled
with (or found themselves unable effectively to grapple with) those dilemmas. |
