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In Praise of Decadence

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Jeff Riggenbach's thesis in this book is a pretty straightforward one: that libertarianism is the real legacy of the 1960s, and that periods of "decadence" (really, disrespect for traditional authorities) are the most creative and inventive in history.

He makes it stick, too. Oh, there are parts I'd have handled differently, and I wish he'd ridden a couple of _my_ favorite hobby horses (the influence of science fiction being one subject to which I wish he'd devoted more space). But I learned to live long ago with my disappointment that not everything will fit into one book.

And what _is_ in the book is pretty uniformly excellent. Riggenbach begins, for example, by locating libertarianism/anarchism in U.S. history, correctly naming e.g. Emerson, Thoreau, and some of their contemporaries as examples of this tradition. And he has a fine chapter on Ayn Rand that goes far toward explaining why hippies liked her so much better than she liked them. (He notes -- correctly, in my opinion -- that Rand never really got around to writing any serious philosophy. He treats her, though, as a brilliantly incisive essayist and polemicist, which I think is partly true but too kind by half.)

I could disagree with bits and pieces of it. (I think, for example, that Riggenbach tends to exaggerate the allegedly rightward turn Murray Rothbard took in later life.) But it's all very well done.

At any rate, Riggenbach supports his thesis well; libertarianism is indeed the hippie/counterculture legacy, at least in its political aspect. Be warned, though: since I so largely agreed with him before I read the book, I may not be a fair test of how persuasive he is.

Jeff Riggenbach's superb book, _In Praise of Decadence_, is many things: a historical exploration, an overview of the sixties and the Libertarian movement, a polemic for liberty, and a meditation on the nature of freedom and spontaneous order. Describing decadence as, at base, a desirable reawakening of individualism that flows from a breakdown in cultural authority, Jeff's discussion smoothly traverses the past and present, dropping gems of information along the way -- for example, the influence of anarchist William Godwin on one of America's Founding Fathers of liberty, Thomas Paine -- gems that serve both to inflame interest and to dash whatever simplistic preconceptions we might entertain about our philosophical heritage and the development of classical liberal thought.

In dissecting the popular notion of "decadence," JR points out that periods traditionally awarded this epithet were in fact characterized by extraordinary outpourings of creativity and technological accomplishments. (For example, the "Gay Nineties" saw the "invention of the airplane, the automobile, the motion picture, radio, and color photography, [and] also the discovery of mechanics and relativity which have revolutionized modern physics.")

What *was* in decline in the 1890s and 1920s, Jeff argues, was not productivity or creativity or the quality of life in general, but rather the "overall decline in the influence of authority *as such*."

Jeff then turns his acute eye on the "crisis of civility," where he finds that the attempts to legally address the issue of manners has had the unintended effect of supplanting civility with governmental rules of force -- in effect destroying the object of the cure.

In my opinion, JR's analysis of the demise of civility and its causes is masterful and thought-provoking -- and one my favorite pieces in the book. It's hard for me to imagine how anyone who believes that government is the cure for bad manners could come away it without a severely altered perception of that hypothesis.

Jeff concludes his book, far too soon for my taste, with a discussion of the current state of affairs in this country, arguing that the predominantly libertarian views of the sixties are still present in shaping society today.

Being an ethical egoist, I'm not one to sing praises of "social consciousness." But it's this that I've always felt Baby Boomers lacked. They spent their youth as drug-crazed hippies (Note: I think Riggenbach deals with this issue quite adequately, discarding it as a myth); then became straight-laced going into the 70s, and made scads of money through the 80s and 90s. They've always seemed driven by political apathy (to the extent that apathy is at all causative). Their general failure to vote has allowed the political seesaw to rock back and forth, from Johnson to Nixon/Ford to Carter to Reagan/Bush to Clinton to Bush again. If they really had the conviction they came across as having in the 60s, you'd think the U.S.'s highest political office would reflect a bit more the principles held by the body politic.

But if it's true that the Baby Boomers are essentially libertarian, then their non-participation in the political process appears to be more an act of civil disobedience than the residue of apathy. Not even civil disobedience: a sort of unilateral expression of laissez-faire. "We have better things to do with our precious lives than attempt to choose the 'lesser of two evils.' We'll pass, thanks." This, in part, is what I think Riggenbach means by "decedance": if so, I'll join the chorus.

If this is true, then perhaps baby boomers have more of a "social consciousness" than they seem at first glance. For in order to be socially conscious, one must first be conscious of one's individuality; second, of the individuality of others. What's society, if not oneself living in some relation to other individuals?

As a Generation-Xer, I was left with a surprising optimism. Baby Boomers, as they age into the "senior" tranche, will become the "voting generation." As such, perhaps THEY will become the motive behind a libertarian reform, making explicit the implicit libertarianism of their youth and middle age.

Jeff Riggenbach's In Praise of Decadence is a wonderful book.

Written in a style that combines Ayn Rand's clarity with Gore Vidal's turns-of-phrase and H. L. Mencken's acerbic wit, In Prasie of Decadence is both a compact introduction to libertarianism and anti-authoritarian cultural analysis. I can't think of any other libertarian book that could be better marketed to Gen-X and Millennial students.

A great book! I hate to say it, but a lot of books about ideas are dull as a wet stick -- this one's not. I loved his take on the decay of authority that periods like the 20s and 60s have brought about in our culture -- not the decay of order, but the decay of cultural rigidity which tells you what to think, what to wear, what to smoke, what music to listen to, how to have sex. He has some wonderful roastings of the media. There's a whole great section, also, on the early anarchists, nonvoters and other libertarians -- I love a book that gets me excited about a slew of other writers to explore. There are a few lines in there on Leonard Peikoff that will make any libertarian and at least some objectivists roar.

Jeff Riggenbach defies the authority of "conventional wisdom" in his 1998 book IN PRAISE OF DECADENCE. He claims that the "baby boomer" generation was "more Libertarian than anyone expected" (which explains the phenomenon of "Deadhead stickers on Cadillacs"). Tracing the history of libertarian thought, Riggenbach explains that the unrest of the Sixties was not monolithically Leftist, but co-opted, and that the disenchantment of a growing number of boomers with both the New Left and the YAF, combined with the collapse of the Objectivist movement, provided the motivation to start the Libertarian Party.

Riggenbach goes another step, however, arguing that the boomers embodied a spirit of decadence in contradiction to "conventional wisdom;" not simply decay, but the decay of authority, and that decadence historically has led to vitality in various fields. This is a tempting theory for any liberty-minded person to embrace. But then Riggenbach then takes this to make his case for anarcho-capitalism, arguing for "spontaneous order" over "central planning." Basing his arguments on the theory of natural law described by Adam Smith as "the invisible hand," Riggenbach celebrates the "welcoming attitude" of the baby boomers towards "diversity and eclecticism," or "doing your own thing." This is where Riggenbach's argument crashes into Ayn Rand, who he both damns and praises, and her philosophy of Objectivism, which argues against totalitarianism but rejects the celebration of the eclecticism and hedonism associated with the so-called "vitality" of the hippy lifestyle. Riggenbach argues that there were two perceptions of Rand, the minarchist and the anarchist, that influenced the boomers (an argument mirrored in the 2009 biography Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right). This is just a microcosm of the larger schism of minarchism and anarchism and the claims by Rand that Libertarianism is a plagiarization of her ideas in a pragmatic pursuit of political short-cuts.

But confined to its own arguments, the praise of "decadence" fails to convince on its own terms. In the absence of an integrated philosophical system (or, more often than not, the failure to recognize reality), that "spontaneous order" did not lead to the "Dionysian" utopia of Woodstock but to the "Orphic dismemberment" of Altamont. It's notable that Riggenbach has to condemn certain aspects of the eclecticism and hedonism associated with the Sixties generation while admitting that the "conventional wisdom" of authority is often there for good REASON. In doing so, Riggenbach is in danger of making Rand's arguments against eclecticism (Rand anticipated the hippies with her portrayal of the "pseudo-individuals" portrayed in THE FOUNTAINHEAD.) Simply put, the advancements from people associated with the hippie movement, such as Steve Jobs, were accomplished via reason and following the facts of reality, in spite of the hedonism and eclecticism. (This undercuts Riggenbach's choices for what he considers the fountainheads of "decadent" heroes; for example, Marie Curie accomplished scientific feats, while James Joyce gave us gibberish.)

But what place is there for reason in Riggenbach's argument? Quoting Hayek, among others, who defined "spontaneous order" as "the product of human action but not of human design," Riggenbach seems to argue from a teleological viewpoint of final causation: "the natural order of human society, with which rulers and planners tinker at their peril." This simply replaces the authority of "God" or "the State" with the dictates of "human nature" (an "ecological" conception.) While there is the maxim that "nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed," Hayek's formulation eliminates the reasoning mind with blind action, which is no guarantee of freedom. (A full analysis of Hayek's nuanced views on reason are beyond the scope of this review, but one notable comparison between Hayek and Rand and their view of reason is found in Chris Matthew Sciabarra's Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical.) And although Riggenbach celebrates human creativity and technology, "human action without human design" does not lead to innovation, but to the retrogression found in Rand's analysis of the New Left's "Anti-Industrial Revolution."

To use Riggenbach's own arguments demonstrates the limitations of "spontaneous order" in human relations. I give Riggenbach credit for his historical identification of the various makeup of the baby boomer generation, and his insight into his targets that would inhibit freedom and creativity. (His argument against centralized government and the danger of unchecked statist growth is a constant thorn in the minarchist/Objectivist side, and for good reason: "Who watches the watcher?" The very question has created something of a "Mobius Strip" in the issue, preventing neither side from claiming total victory in the argument.) It is his philosophical underpinnings FOR freedom that I find weak; his arguments against oppressive authority were better met by Ayn Rand, who provided a way to navigate through creative matters without the perils of decadence. And a specific parallel to Riggenbach's thesis can be found in Leonard Peikoff's The Ominous Parallels: A Brilliant Study of America Today - and the 'ominous parallels' with the chaos of pre-Hitler Germany, which, in contrast, identifies the decadence and philosophy of Berlin and the Weimar Republic in relation to the rise of the Third Reich, and the similarities found in the United States that have led to the current economic and political turmoil.

Riggenbach's idea is not without merit, however. True, in order for one to apply "design" to one's own life, one must learn by trial-and-error, so experimentation should be encouraged, and that will require "deviation," which may be categorized as "decadence." (In fact, I think Riggenbach would have been better served by the interchange of terms; a similarly-themed book appeared under the title The Deviant's Advantage: How Fringe Ideas Create Mass Markets. "Deviation" is one of those words that immediately conjures negative connotation, but can be read more plausibly in the positive way that Riggenbach tries to use "decadence," without the stigma of personal decay that Riggenbach tries to rationalize away with his dismissal of the "conventional wisdom."

Truly there is material in this book which will both delight and dismay folks from all over the political map. Mr. Riggenbach has an inaccurate reputation as a conservative, but he is really a staunch libertarian. Even libertarians will find chapters in Decadence that disappoint, or at least lack a good sense of taste! So be it, though. The chapters lead one into the other in an agreeable way, making the book hard to put down. Before starting it would be wise to bring the bowl of snacks, well stocked, to the table.

Everyone will find their "favorite" chapters or passages, even conservatives and liberals. Probably the best one has to do with big cities [chapter 16, "The Deaths and Lives of Great American Cities], as it shows how choice is king. Given a choice among cities which are favorable to modern growth, instead of cities which fight growth, people will largely choose the "favorable" as places to spend their lives. This is far different than what most urban planning advocates preach.

Almost as good, but likely more controversial, is chapter 7, "Neither Left nor Right," an argument for the 1960s producing libertarian adults in quantity. The common view is that the 1960s created a leftist generation. His argument is well reasoned, and would cause a lively discussion in any group. In any case, any 12 people will give 15 opinions on this book, making it worthwhile to read.