Customer Reviews

The Southern Tradition : The Achievement and Limitations of an American Conservatism

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Eugene Genovese must be the most interesting writer inAmerica. This New York-born professed Marxist analyzesconservatism more thoroughly and respectfully than many conservatives do. And one cannot grasp the antebellum South, which he treats just as respectfully, without him. In this little book, Genovese effectively argues that Southern conservatism is different from, and occasionally hostile to, what most people think of as conservatism. Southern conservatives are conservatives of community and tradition rather than Limbaughian market worshippers. Essential.

~The Southern Tradition~ by Eugene Genovese is a captivating, objective examination of southern conservatism and the southern tradition. The first chapter, The Lineaments of Southern Tradition, examines southern culture and conservatism in the Old South. The American South's currents such as traditional Protestant Christianity and its affinity for localism and agrarianism are all discussed in this first chapter. Genovese points out that southern conservatives accept "hierarchy and stratification as natural, necessary and proper," at the same time resisting a tendency toward sponsorship of a self-aggrandizing elite or artificial aristocracy. The interplay of political and constitutional principles with the southern way of life is examined in the second chapter. It may be the boast of southerners that the first avowed conservatives in the U.S. were southern democrats. Southern luminaries like John Taylor of Caroline and John C. Calhoun stood opposed to Jacobin egalitarian leveling, and the materialism wrought out in the Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution. For nineteenth century southerners, their constitutional order allowed for the peaceful coexistence of antithetical systems of property. Genovese disavows the contentions by those who dismiss states' rights as nothing more than an instrument for preservation of slavery. He recognizes that the states' rights constitutional hermeneutic is by no means peculiar to the south, as states' rights doctrine arguably had its expression intensely felt in the northern section in the early nineteenth century. Likewise, the Hartford Convention and Pennsylvanian William Rawle's commentary affirming the constitutional right of secession demonstrates regional particularism; and goes a long way to vindicate this last point. Genovese elaborates on John C. Calhoun's theorizing about "concurrent majorities" coupled with his reform-minded activism which hoped to ameliorate the crisis of the federal system. Through constitutional reform, Calhoun endeavored to essentially make the polity more federal, and thus stave off an impending sectional crisis but striving for sectional equilibrium. The essence of federalism has always been a diffusion of powers and subsidiarity. Among Calhoun's proposals emanating from his doctrine of concurrent majorities was the idea of a sectional triple presidency. With an absolute veto for each section which would effectively bar a numerical majority from oppressing and expropriating a minority.

Genovese rightly rejects simplistic reductionism perpetrated by biased political theorists and sociologists who itinerate the dubious notion that southern conservatives are in fact quasi-fascists. Genovese further notes this to be a "charge by those who know nothing about southern conservatism or fascism. Those who study both honestly will be surprised by how little fascism and southern conservatism share." The Fascist State is repugnant to parochial minded southerners. Likewise, provincial southerners with their penchant for localism are repulsed by centralism and overbearing statism.

Genovese further probes into southern conservatism's manifestations in the twentieth century discernible in the agrarian thought of Herb Agar, John Ransom, Allen Tate and Richard Weaver. These figures all seemed to recognize that corporate centralization and big government go hand in and hand. The agrarian critique of crass Yankee capitalism scolded it for monopolistic tendencies and its de facto destruction of private property while supplanting it with an irresponsible system of managerial and bureaucratically managed collective property just as socialism does. Such a collectivist economic system has a tendency to run roughshod over the individual and is destructive of traditional culture and institutions. Southern conservatives were increasingly cognizant of finance capitalism's capacity to degenerate into socialism. Big government and big business went hand in hand, and it acted as a solvent dissolving social bonds and smothering an organic, traditional civil society.

All the things considered, Genovese does an excellent job capturing the history, politics, culture and lineaments of the Southern Tradition. His objectivity for having come from the Marxist Left is to be commended. Having endured Marxist CRITs from college and their "trashing" tactics, I find it commendable and honest scholarship. Genovese arguably explains southern conservatism perhaps with more clarity, sympathy and honesty than a southern conservative could ever do. I understand, however, that more recently Genovese and his wife have found the Christian faith and drifted towards the culturally conservative Right.

This book changed by perspective of conservatism and after reading this book I began reading many of the books cited as references. It is very hard to find that the modern neoconservative has much in common with men such as John Randolph of Roanoke but now when you scratch a little below the surface of many modern conservative they are not rooted in classical conservatism. Since reading this book I have little interest in modern talk radio or Fox television and find elections and modern politics particularly frustrating.

These essays were originally a set of lectures delivered by Genovese in 1993. Genovese has written on the antebellum South for decades. In these essays he is trying to seperate the intellectual wheat from the racist chaff in a tradition of Southern conservatism. I kind of think the other reviewers missed the point on this. Genovese is very clear about certain things. 1. The origins of Southern conservatism celebrated the fact that their ideas were based on a system of property,i.e., slavery. 2. The revival of this tradition in the early 20th century that Genovese sees in the Agrarians tried mightily to divest their thought of this racial foundation. They more or less failed. Or, at least, they were not successful.
Genovese's efforts are best seen as a continuation of that project of reclaiming what is deeply human and insightful from this tradition and placing it squarely on a nonracist foundation. He doesn't claim to have done more than to suggest some of the ways that that might be done.
Ryan Setliff's review speaks to one of the main conundrums that plagues the Southern conservative tradition. Yes, the Southern conservatives saw "hierarchy and stratification as natural, necessary and proper," while "at the same time resisting a tendency toward sponsorship of a self-aggrandizing elite or artificial aristocracy". The problem is that every hierarchy ever suggested by any political tradition at any time can be shown to be artificial or self-aggrandizing. The only real way out of this theoretical dead end is to either justify it by(or hide behind) a particular religion or to move on to some other form of social and political organization. Genovese is no more successful then any one else in thinking his way out of this issue.
Genovese is very good at identifying the major issues. He understands that what has always egged on the Southern tradition has been the challenge of democracy. Their way of thinking has mostly been a national minority way of thinking and is likely to remain so. So the issues has always been (since the times of Jefferson, Madison, John Taylor et alia)how do you protect the rights (or beloved way of life) of a minority community from being swept aside by centralizing institutions, international capital or numerical majorities. This is as important a problem as the justification of authority. What the Southern tradition and related thinkers like Genovese are trying to do is to conserve as much local community control as is possible. Some of the thinkers that Genovese discussed tried to do that on the sectional level (Calhoun), some were more interested in the state level (St. George Tucker) and some proposed doing this on the county or ward level (Jefferson).
Genovese' books is full of insights for the student of American history. He does a good job of explicating Calhoun's ideas about concurrent majorities (and hints at some of its fatal flaws), he demonstrates some of the tensions between this tradition of thought and that of Jefferson and he grounds these thinkers clearly in their religious history.
It is nice to see someone coming from such an opposing tradition of thought (Marxism) explore the strengths of another tradition. It is nice to see someone like M.E. Bradford taken seriously (contemporary historians tend to give short shrift to the work of previous generations of historians). And it is nice to see someone confront honestly the racist foundation of a thinker like John Taylor of Caroline. I just cannot help but feel that the whole endeavor, while insightful, is ultimately futile. I don't think we are going to be able to think ourselves out of our present troubles and challenges by piecing together insights from many traditions. Genovese knows this as well as I do.
On the other hand, I suppose that seriously listening to each other is a good start. Genovese has been doing that for years. It is definitely worth the time reading him.