Robert Nisbet : Communitarian Traditionalist

Rating:
Summary: Brothers In Arms
Review: Brad Stone has provided an adequate introduction to the ideas of Robert Nisbet, a sociologist known for his conservative defense of the social group against the encroachment of statism.

I was surprised to see Stone align Nisbet with Richard Weaver in the notion that ideas were the motive force behind human behavior. Much of Nisbet's work revolved around the social group, the formation of which often had little to do with ideas about politics or anything else. Of particular importance was Nisbet's experience in the Second World War and the camaraderie and community felt among soldiers. The terrible irony was that from out of misery there arose bonds which were stronger than those that awaited them in the peacetime, workaday world. To my knowledge, Nisbet never elaborated in print on his war experience, but I believe the memory of it and lessons from it informed much of his work on the quest for community.

Nisbet agreed with Russell Kirk-as one of the very touchstones of conservatism-that man is guided more by emotion and feeling than reason and intellect. Although Nisbet wrote that "man is what he thinks" in Twilight of Authority, he emphasized the "pre rational emotional attachments to certain habits, beliefs and practices" fifteen years later in his book, Conservatism.

I don't know whether to attribute this contradiction to Weaver, Nisbet, or Stone. That is, to what degree do intellect and ideas influence our behavior? All of them thought that ideas have consequences, but I believe Nisbet understood better than Weaver that it is not only ideas that have consequences. When it comes to determining "what man is," man is also guided by what he feels. If we agree with Alexander Pope that the proper study of mankind is man, then we must include man's feelings and any field of study that purports to deal with them.

Another reservation I have is when Stone tries to apply Nisbet's ideas to the issues of the day. While I understand the need to separate Nisbet from such statist communitarians as Robert Bellah, Stone's analysis in the last chapter digresses from the business at hand. I have little confidence in a sentence that begins, "His first observations today would no doubt be..." I would have preferred less intrusion by the author in order to let the reader draw his own conclusions.

Still, Stone demonstrates a familiarity with a large body of work that should whet the appetites of readers discovering Nisbet for the first time.

Rating:
Summary: Profiling a great twentieth-century social thinker
Review: ~Robert Nisbet~ is a biographical sketch about the life and essentially the ideas of this influential twentieth-century sociologist and social thinker. Sociology has long been the mainstay of statist liberals and radical collectivists, and Nisbet is definitely out of touch with the quixotic or authoritarian mindset of most sociologists. Brad Lowell Stone's research is highly recommended and an excellent overview of Nisbet's social thinking. It is prudent to read Nisbet's books in tandem with Stone's biography. Stone points out some of Nisbet's influences, which are rather fascinating. Nisbet was weaned on the writings of Southern Agrarians like Crowe, Ransom and Tate who penned _I'll Take My Stand_ in the 1930s. Nisbet also gain insight from the late conservative luminary Russell Kirk, having read his book _The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot_ in 1953. Since his assent in the 1950s, the late Robert Nisbet has not been ignored by those on the Left or Right. Today his appeal is primarily with those on the Right whether neoconservatives or libertarians. Nisbet's sociological thinking is aloof from the statist sociologists who often fail to distinguish between state and community. Essentially Nisbet made a dichotomy between monism and pluralism. The thought of Plato, Hobbes, Compte, Rousseau and Marx embodied monism, while Aristotle, Burke, and De Tocqueville represented the pluralist camp.

Nisbet achieved notoriety for his groundbreaking manuscript, entitled _The Quest for Community_. His thesis therein was remarkable, for he asserted that the preoccupation with community was a result of the dissolution of the intermediary institutions between the individual and the state-whether the family, neighborhood, church, voluntary and civic associations. The dissolution and displacement of these institutions so vital to civil society and the subsequent obsession with community was precipitated by the activities and structure of the modern state. The state has attacked the natural bonds and allegiances of civil society. Much of the later twentieth century social pathologies, dependency, poverty, and rampant crime perhaps owe to authentic community being grinded in the millstone of central state authority.

Nisbet is well versed in the classics and history. Gleaning valuable lessons from history, Nisbet recognized the impact of war and how much of a solvent total war was on natural allegiances and those intermediary institutions between individual and state. Nisbet speaks of Roman History, as being "one long sage of conflict between established patria potestas, the sacred and imprescriptible sovereignty of the family in its own affairs, and the imperium militiae, the power vested in military leaders over their troops." As the imperium (empire) supplanted the republic, the traditional kinship society was weakened. Nisbet notes, "...the once proud Roman family had been ground down by the twin forces of centralization and atomization." History seems to repeat itself. Nisbet shows the harmonious relationship between the war state and the welfare state, and how they feed and nurture one another. War has a democratizing tendency bringing about not only universal suffrage but also conscription. Not surprisingly, Nisbet laments, "Democracy, in all its variants, is the child of war." The synthesis is the so called "welfare-warfare state" that libertarians fuss about. History has proven when alienated individuals lose their community than they often seek a "national community." Totalitarian states like Nazi Germany deliberately laid waste to the remaining intermediary institutions between the individual and the state, and sought to create such a community. Stone notes, "[a]s communities wane, the desire for communal fellowship leads straight to the extension of state power-further eroding the communities that mediate between the individual and the state. It is a melancholy fate." Nisbet was a pluralistic communitarian who never confused authentic community with allegiance to a centralized power structure. The appellation of communitarian itself can be a misnomer, since Nisbet stands alone, and most avowed communitarians are simply statists hoping to tether back broken bonds and broken communities under the auspices of the central state.

Nisbet has called for a "new laissez-faire," which is a "form of laissez-faire that has for its object, not the abstract individual, whether economic or political man, but rather the social group or association." Today, Nisbet would probably eschew radical libertarianism, and see them as peculiar reactionaries. Nisbet recognizes the symbiotic relationship between individualism and statism. The hyperatomized cogs that individuals have become owes to the twin perils of atomization and centralization. Alienation from the lost of community, often compels the masses of hyperatomized individuals to seek deliverance from the aggrandizing of state power or a "national community." Much of Nisbet's theorizing hearkens back to the medieval principle of subsidiarity, which emphasized localism, regional cultural diversity, "plurality of association, and the division of authority." Subsidiarity is a precious gem that has been vanquished, if not lost, and it is among the vital remnants for restoring civil society.