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The Neglected (I) Carlyle’s Political Philosophy: Towards a Theory of Catch‐ All Extremism*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Jonathan Mendilow
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Extract

IT IS A TRUISM TO STATE THAT ALL AGES ARE AGES OF TRANsition, and that the clash of tradition and experiment never ceases. Nevertheless, there are periods when history seems to collapse in on itself, and the time-span of change so contracts that revolution, not only political, becomes almost a norm. Since the Industrial Revolution many writers have dealt with the ideological reaction to the predicaments of rapid social change. J. S. Mill described the English public of his day as caught between two warring camps of the ‘Men of the Past’ and the ‘Men of the Present’, those who wish to return to the certainties of an earlier age, and those who wish to hasten change in the hope of a better future. Such a division is clearly simplistic, but it expresses the sense of bifurcation in society. ‘Past’ and ‘Present’ serve in this context as omnibus terms for multi-dimensional complexities which allow ample scope for individual selection, organization and evaluation.

Type
Original Articles
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 18 , Issue 1 , 01 January 1983 , pp. 68 - 87
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1983

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References

1 Mill, J. S., The Spirit of the Age, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1942, pp. 1–17 Google Scholar. ‘Present’, in this context, refers to the readiness to adapt to the rapid changes overcoming society.

2 See Kirchheimer, O.. ‘The Transformation of the Western European Party System’, LaPalombara, J., Weiner, M. (eds), Political Parties and Political Development, New Jersey, Princeton University Press, 1966, pp. 177–200 Google Scholar.

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4 The writings on Carlyle’s ideas are so numerous that one can only cite here a few examples from the nineteenth century, the first half of the twentieth and one or two recent publications. McCrie, G., The Religion of our Literature, London, Hodder & Stoughton, 1878 Google Scholar, described him as an atheist. At approximately the same time Wilson, J., Thomas Carlyle, the Iconoclast of Modern Shams, Paisley, Alexander Gardner, 1881 Google Scholar, presented him as a religious reformer. Coffer, D. B., Saint Simonism in the Radicalism of Thomas Carlyle, Austin, Van Boeckman Jones, 1931 Google Scholar, saw him as a bourgeois revolutionary, whereas Hamilton, E. G. M., Thomas Carlyle, London, Leonard Passons, 1926 Google Scholar, admired him as a pioneer of the welfare state. Schapiro, J. S., ‘Thomas Carlyle, Prophet of Fascism’, The Journal of Modern History, 2, 06 1945, pp. 97–115 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and a host of others insisted he was a proto‐Fascist, while Cassirer, E., The Myth of the State, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1945 Google Scholar, maintained he was a spokesman for conservatism. Gascoyne, D., Thomas Carlyle, London, Longmans, 1952 Google Scholar, declared that only a blind man would not recognize him as the precurser of modern egalitarian democracy, and more recently Rosenberg, P., The Seventh Hero: Carlyle and the Theory of Radical Activism, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1974 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, claimed that he was dissatisfied with democracy as not going far enough; what he wanted was a political system run by activist masses.

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9 Carlyle, Works, I, pp. 157, 31. See also II, p. 217; V. P. 22; X, p. 7.

10 The image reflects the Saint‐Simonian influence on Carlyle, see Enfantin, P., Oeuvres de Saint‐Simon et d’Enfantin, Paris, E. Centu, 1865–1878, Vol. VI, esp. pp. 91–2Google Scholar.

11 The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, C. E. Norton (ed.), Boston, Houghton & Mifflin, 1896, Vol. II, p. 163.

12 Cf. Chadwick, E., Report on the Sanitary Conditions of the Labouring Population of Great Britain, Flinn, M. E. (ed.), Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 1965, esp. pp. 289–336 Google Scholar.

13 Froude, J. A., Thomas Carlyle: A History of his Life in London 1834–1881, London, Longmans, Green & Co. 1886, Vol. I, pp. 285 Google Scholar, 79.

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19 Blatchford, R., The New Religion, Clarion Pamphlet, 20, 1897, p. 3 Google Scholar; see also pp. 4–10; Blatchford, R., Merrie England, London, William Reeves, 1894, pp. 19, 107–71Google Scholar.

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21 Huxley, L., The Life and Letters of T. H. Huxley, New York, Macmillan, 1913, Vol. II, p. 310 Google Scholar; Ruskin, J., The Works of John Ruskin in 39 Volumes, Cook, E. T., Wedderburn, A. (eds), London, Longmans, Green & Co. 1903–1912, Vol. III, p. XXIV; Vol. XXXVI, p. 75Google Scholar.

22 Huxley, Life, I, p. 320.

23 Ruskin, Works, XXVIII, pp. 20, 737–739.

24 Huxley, Life, I, p. 318.

25 Tyndall, J., Fragments of Science, New York, D. Appleton, 6th ed. 1892, Vol. II, p. 96 Google Scholar.

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28 See, e. g., Carlyle, T., The Love Letters of Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle, Carlyle, A., (ed.), Edinburgh, Ballantyne, 1909, Vol. I, pp. 68–9Google Scholar; Carlyle, Works, I, pp. 151, 189.

29 A similar interpretation of Napoleon’s nationalism was anticipated by Southey, Robert who, however, regarded him as ‘the Lucifer of the Age’ see his ‘Parliamentary Reform’, The Quarterly Review, XV, 10, 1816, pp. 131–2Google Scholar.

30 See, among others, Kulstein, D. I., Napoleon III and the Working class, a Study of Government Propaganda under the Second Empire, N. Y., Anderson, Ritchie & Simon, 1969 Google Scholar, esp. ch. 1. For an interpretation stressing the democratic elements in the Second Empire see, e. g., Guerard, A., Napoleon III, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1953 Google Scholar; for an interpretation stressing the conservative and authoritarian elements, see, e. g., Namier, L., Vanished Supremacies, London: Hamish Hamilton, 1958 Google Scholar, and Artz, F. B., ‘Bonapartism and Dictatorship’, South Atlantic Quarterly, XXXIX, 01 1940, pp. 37–50 Google Scholar; for an interpretation stressing the ambivalance in the Napoleonic regime see, e. g., Thompson, J. M., Louis Napoleon and the Second Empire, N. Y., Noonday Press, 1955 Google Scholar.

31 For a sample of such comparisons see Geyl, P., Napoleon: For and Against, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1949, esp. pp. 7–77 Google Scholar; Grierson, H. J. C., Carlyle and Hitler, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1933 Google Scholar; Seaman, L. C. B., From Vienna to Versailles, N. Y., Harper, 1963 Google Scholar.

32 Quoted in Waite, R. G. L., ‘Adolf Hitler’s Anti‐Semitism: A Study in History and Psychoanalysis’, Wolman, B. (ed.), The Psychoanalytic Interpretation of History, N. Y., Basic Books, 1971, p. 222 Google Scholar.

33 Childers, T., ‘The Social Bases of the National Socialist Vote’, Journal of Contemporary History, 4, 10 1976, p. 31 Google Scholar. See also Stokes, L. D., ‘The Social Composition of the Nazi Party in Eretin 1925–32’, International Review of Social History, 1, 01 1978, pp. 1–32 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

34 Winkler, H. A., ‘German Society, Hitler and the Illusion of Restoration 1930–1933’, Journal of Contemporary History, 4, 10 1976, p. 1 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. It was suggested by several historians that the persecution of Jews, gypsies and other ‘inferior’ races may have served as a surrogate for the class and social hostility which the new‐found national unity had claimed to eliminate. See, e. g., Nolte, E., Three Faces of Fascism, N. Y., Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1965, p. 318 Google Scholar.

35 Roganski, R., ‘The Gauleiter and the Social Origins of Fascism’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 4, 10 1977, pp. 399 ff.Google Scholar