Course on Russell Kirk: week 9 (second post)

Welcome to the second post of the ninth week of our course on Russell Kirk. Links to previous posts may be found on our Russell Kirk page here.

This post deals with Kirk's eighth principle of conservatism:

Eighth, conservatives uphold voluntary community, quite as they oppose involuntary collectivism. [...]
For a nation is no stronger than the numerous little communities of which it is composed. A central administration, or a corps of select managers and civil servants, however well intentioned and well trained, cannot confer justice and prosperity and tranquility upon a mass of men and women deprived of their old responsibilities. That experiment has been made before; and it has been disastrous. It is the performance of our duties in community that teaches us prudence and efficiency and charity.

Reading:

Russell Kirk: 'Learn to love the little platoon we belong to' here

Edmund Burke: Extract from Reflections on the French Revolution here

Ben James Taylor: 'The "Big Society" and the politics of paternalism' here

Critical discussion:

Edmund Burke is one of the key figures in Kirk's understanding of politics and society. (I would suggest as others T S Eliot, Marcus Aurelius and Christopher Dawson.) Burke is important to Kirk not only in his sense that the organic growth of society must be respected, but also in his famous remarks on the importance of the 'little platoons' of society.

This emphasis on small communities is reflected in the Catholic Church's teaching on subsidiarity. But both in the way this teaching is sometimes presented and in Taylor's critical essay (above) on the elements of paternalism in the application of Burke's ideas, there is often an undue emphasis on the creation or support of such communities from above (ie from the central government of a State). In it origins, however, 'subsidiarity' acknowledges the real bonds of community that form below the State and indeed are prior to the State. It is the State's job certainly to support such communities, but, most importantly, not to stand in their way: such communities do not so much need to be created as to be allowed to grow naturally.

Although Kirk can be a bit of a name dropper in his writings, and certainly enjoyed the company of 'the aristocracy', my own impression is that this is much more part of his enjoyment of eccentricity and the odd survival of past ages than of any relish for power and social prestige. His emphasis is much more on resistance to centralising power than to a celebration of older forms of it. Although there is clearly a great deal that could be said on the subject, the differences between Kirk's American conservative celebrations of local sources of community and British conservatism which has itself long controlled centralising institutions needs to be borne in mind here.










[Details of image: Edmund Burke by Joshua Reynolds. Full details here.]