The Rhetoric of Reaction

Perversity, Futility, Jeopardy

Albert O. Hirschman

• Publisher: Belknap Press
• Year: 1991
• Print ISBN: 9780674768680, 9780674768673
• eBook ISBN: 9780674417786
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

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: (1) the perversity thesis, whereby any action to improve some feature of the political, social, or economic order is alleged to result in the exact opposite of what was intended; (2) the futility thesis, which predicts that attempts at social transformation will produce no effects whatever—will simply be incapable of making a dent in the status quo; (3) the jeopardy thesis, holding that the cost of the proposed reform is unacceptable because it will endanger previous hard-won accomplishments. 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. For those who aspire to the genuine dialogue that characterizes a truly democratic society, Hirschman points out that both types of rhetoric function, in effect, as contraptions designed to make debate impossible. In the process, his book makes an original contribution to democratic thought.

The Rhetoric of Reaction is a delightful handbook for all discussions of public affairs, the welfare state, and the history of social, economic, and political thought, whether conducted by ordinary citizens or academics.

Index

Action, 8, 14, 152, 153. See also Consequences; Reaction; Side effects

Adams, John, 8

Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), 40–41, 62

Alice in Wonderland (Carroll), 44

Ampère, Jean Jacques, 47

Ancien Régime et la Révolution, L’ (Tocqueville), 46, 49

Aristotle, 52

Aulard, Alphonse, 49

Bagehot, Walter, 100, 107, 108

Bentham, Jeremy, 30, 82n

Berdyaev, Nicolas, 148n

Berlin, Isaiah, 87

Beveridge Report, 111

Bias for Hope, A (Hirschman, 1971), 153n, 184n57

Bill of Rights, British, 89

Bismarck, Otto von, 132, 147

Bonald, Vicomte Louis-Gabriel-Ambroise de, 48, 165

Bright, John, 96

Burckhardt, Jacob, 21

Burke, Edmund, 35, 134n; and reaction to French Revolution, 4, 14–15, 46, 48, 161, 162, 163; and perverse effect, 12–15, 154; agreement with Adam Smith’s economic views, 14; on class distinctions, 20–21; criticism of Poor Laws by, 28; and “Cult of the British Constitution,” 90; and personality foundation of democracy in France, 106–108

Burrow, John, 182n34

Butler, J. R. M., 90

Calderón de la Barca, Pedro, 154n

Candide (Voltaire), 42

Canning, George, 91

Capital (Marx), 156, 158

Carroll, Lewis, 44

“Case Against ‘One Thing at a Time,’ The” (Hirschman, 1990), 131n

Cité antique, La (Fustel de Coulanges, 1864), 103

Civil rights: development of, 2, 3; reaction to development of, 4, 12–13

Class distinctions: European tradition of, 20–21, 90–91, 92; and futility of universal suffrage, 51, 52, 55–56, 59, 71; in Italy, 52, 53; in socialism, 53; in oligarchies, 57, 71; and futility of welfare reform, 61–62, 63–64, 65, 68–69; in unemployment compensation, 66–67, 68–69

Claudel, Paul, 154n

Clausewitz, Carl von, 169

Club of Rome, 32

Cobban, Alfred, 13

Colombia, land-tenure reform in, 33n

Communist Manifesto, 55

Consequences, unintended: development of concept of, 36–38; undesired, 38, 40, 81, 83–84, 167; welcome, 39, 40, 41; absence of, 39–40; balance bet...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• One. Two Hundred Years of Reactionary Rhetoric
• Two. The Perversity Thesis
• Three. The Futility Thesis
• Four. The Jeopardy Thesis
• Five. The Three Theses Compared and Combined
• Six. From Reactionary to Progressive Rhetoric
• Seven. Beyond Intransigence
• Notes
• Acknowledgments
• Index