(P/B) THE RHETORIC OF REACTION

Παρουσίαση

With engaging wit and subtle irony, Albert Hirschman maps the diffuse and treacherous world of reactionary rhetoric in which conservative public figures, thinkers, and polemicists have been arguing against progressive agendas and reforms for the past two hundred years.
Hirschman draws his examples from three successive waves of reactive thought that arose in response to the liberal ideas of the French Revolution and the Declaration of the Rights of Man, to democratization and the drive toward universal suffrage in the nineteenth century, and to the welfare state in our own century. In each case he identifies three principal arguments invariably used - the theses of perversity, futility, and jeopardy. He illustrates these propositions by citing writers across the centuries from Alexis de Tocqueville to George Stigler, Herbert Spencer to Jay Forrester, Edmund Burke to Charles Murray. Finally, in a lightning turnabout, he shows that progressives are frequently apt to employ closely related rhetorical postures, which are as biased as their reactionary counterparts. (From the publisher)

"A BRILLIANT and beautifully written book. It is breathtakingly simple, yet deep with implications ... Hirschman provides a kind of Reader's Guide to Reactionary Culture." (STEPHEN HOLMES, University of Chicago)
"IT IS a marvelously intelligent and original and provocative volume, marked by Hirschman's usual qualities of intellectual playfulness and deep commitment to liberal values ... The reader has a sense of being in the presence of a brilliant mind and of a writer at the top of his form." (STANLEY HOFFMANN, Harvard University)

Περιεχόμενα

Preface
One. Two Hundred Years of Reactionary Rhetoric
Three Reactions and Three Reactionary Theses
A Note on the Term "Reaction"
Two. The Perversity Thesis
The French Revolution and Proclamation of the Perverse Effect
Universal Suffrage and Its Alleged Perverse Effects
The Poor Laws and the Welfare State
Reflections on the Perversity Thesis
Three. The Futility Thesis
Questioning the Extent of Change Wrought by the French
Revolution: Tocqueville
Questioning the Extent of Change Likely to Follow from Universal Suffrage: Mosca and Pareto
Questioning the Extent to Which the Welfare State "Delivers the Goods" to the Poor
Reflections on the Futility Thesis
Four. The Jeopardy Thesis
Democracy as a Threat to Liberty
The Welfare State as a Threat to Liberty and Democracy
Reflections on the Jeopardy Thesis
Five. The Three Theses Compared and Combined
A Synoptic Table
The Comparative Influence of the Theses
Some Simple Interactions
A More Complex Interaction
Six. From Reactionary to Progressive Rhetoric
The Synergy Illusion and the Imminent-Danger Thesis
"Having History on One's Side"
Counterparts of the Perversity Thesis
Seven. Beyond Intransigence
A Turnabout in Argument?
How Not to Argue in a Democracy
Notes
Acknowledgments
Index