Introduction

We are worried. Brexit, Trump, Populism shake our faith. Can we continue to believe that the path ahead leads ever onwards from darkness to light, nourishing us with the manna of enlightenment? Obstacles appear. Progress has stopped. The problems are not sought in institutional failures but found in malignant cultural growths. The analysis proceeds by way of adjectives. Individuals or groups are identified as ‘right-wing’, ‘neo-reactionary’, ‘fascists, ‘deplorables’. This is a welcome aid in sorting the ‘goodies’ from the ‘baddies, the right-thinkers from the deluded. And, of course, naming a disease reassures: we are in control and can anticipate a cure. The approach, however, explains nothing and the cures it implies are implausible or unpalatable. Are we to suppose that those so labelled will be shamed into joining the orthodox? Unlikely. Once we have identified our enemies, what should we do? Shun their company, maybe, but silence them? banish them ? 

The analysis of the commentariat and their academic back-up is understandable but it does nothing to advance understanding of our predicament. In finding enemies, it unites the anxious and restores their confidence. The analysis is, as the modern jargon puts it, ‘value laden’. This is not a problem. It is impossible to think of a useful analysis of politics that does come from a perspective on what is good or bad in matters political. The problem is that the ‘load of values’ is put beyond question. What we have is an evasion of understanding by those who, for whatever reason, do not what to put their basic assumptions to the test in confronting reality. 

I propose an analysis of Brexit based on the play of two distinct orientations to politics found in the history of democracy. The distinction comes from Charles Peguy [1873-1914] whose writings attract increasing attention. Admired, for example by Giles Deleuze and Bruno Latour, some claim that his insights into the dynamics of modernity merit a place alongside those of Nietzsche. His accounts of history, politics and the culture  of his time, emerge from his political engagement as a socialist, republican, nationalist and catholic convert, first in fighting the wrong done to Dreyfus, then as the editor, and contributor, to his own fortnightly journal. Reflecting on the Dreyfus campaign, what inspired it and how it was betrayed he distinguished between ‘mystique’ and ‘politique’. I spell out how I understand the distinction below. I suggest the supporters of Brexit are motivated by mystiques, conservative and socialist, while the remainers are committed to politique. The problem is that the mystiques are atrophied, relicts of a lost politics, still with the power to motivate, but incapable of addressing the realties of a globalising, late capitalism. One important point: I certainly do not think mystique good, politique bad. Mystiques may be good or bad; history provides examples of pernicious ones. I am inclined to think that democracy is, at the very least difficult, without mystique. If this is so, then our problem is not ‘deplorables’ but our inability to restore mystiques to our politics

Mystique and Politique.

Mystique emerges as Peguy looks back to, and reflects on the struggle to right the injustice done to Dreyfus. While a miscarriage of justice had to be righted, more was at stake. The Republic and the good to which it aspired had to be vindicated. The case was resolved but in the process, and the subsequent behaviour of the politicians who had championed it, the cause was betrayed. It was infected by, and then overcome by the calculus of power. Mystique was betrayed by politique.

Alasdair MacIntyre’s distinction between the internal and external rewards of a practice help identify what is at play in this distinction. Let the game chess stand as an example of a practice. Mastery of chess both develops and displays intellectual and psychological capacities. These are good in themselves. They are not good for anything; they do not require justification. The goods of chess are not immediately accessible. They require some minimum level of competence. They cannot motivate the novice player. So the parent encourages the child to play with the promise of a treat [perhaps, the parents time and attention]. She will deliberately lose so as to allow the child the satisfaction of winning. As her mastery increases, these external rewards diminish in importance, displaced by the internal rewards. The neophyte is furious if she discovers her teacher deliberately losing- she has been cheated. While the grand master relishes the internal rewards, he also enjoys the external rewards -the fame, the cash- that come with his success. 

With his notion of mystique, I think it fair to say, Peguy envisages politics as a practice; power, office, popularity, its external rewards. To assert that mystique has been betrayed by politique is say that the practice has been corrupted by these rewards. 

Nicholas Boyle’s distinction between languages of ‘production’ and ‘consumption’ also help. Languages of production draw us together into a common purpose, more important than our individual preferences or convenience that wins our loyalty. Languages of consumption speak of our interests and rights, demanding that these be acknowledged and respected. Boyle argues that a healthy politics requires both: when languages of production dominate, totalitarianism looms, in their absence we live, at best, in a cold war of all against all. While Peguy might not recognise his distinction in these terms, he would find it difficult to articulate his Republicanism and Socialism in terms of a language of consumption. His contrast between mystique and politique was part of his larger effort to understand why ‘languages of production’ were being crowded out while making clear the injuries that this inflicted.

To conclude, while mystique invites us to take up the task and accept the sacrifices of advancing the common good, politique encourages us to take on the projects that advance our interests, assert our identities and liberate us from the bounds that others would impose on us.

Mystiques and opposition to Brexit

I propose that those who voted leave were prompted by allegiance to a mystique, They recognised, correctly, that the EU is a ‘Hobbesian’ settlement, a politique without a trace of mystique. Anecdote is not, I know, the singular of data. Nonetheless, it can illustrate. Some years ago, we travelled to Warwick were our daughter was graduating with an MA. After the ceremony we adjourned for refreshments to the house where my 4daughter lodged with other students. I fell into conversation with a father whose son had been awarded a PhD for his study of Piero Sreffa, a left-wing economist and one of Wittgenstein’s valued interlocutors. We discussed the EEC. He was opposed to Britain’s membership. The solidarity with its demands for a better future, developed over the years as a trade union official and labour party activist was threatened. He could see no way forward for his socialist aspirations within its confines.( I learnt recently that his son, now an academic, had voted Brexit. He left the labour party shortly after Corbyn’s elevation to leadership.) 

Dismissed by Blair and his ‘modernising’ chums, the socialist mystique lives on in the collective memory, still strong enough to resist the dominant narrative? The marginalised, the left-behind, are more likely to appreciate a politics that allows recognition of mutual dependence, the articulation of a just social order and a common good than those who suppose that they have good chance of winning the game as presently constituted. Excluded from the dominant narratives, they welcome the opportunity to vote against its promoters. There is a left-wing case against the EU.

There is also a conservative mystique. Michael Oakeshott was among its most cogent exponents. He was prominent in the camp of those who would remind us of the limitations of ‘instrumental reason’. Why should we suppose that the reasoning processes ascribed to ‘homo economicus’ are the only ones available to us as we attempt to live ordered lives? Oakeshott reminds us of the importance of the tacit knowledge that is embedded in the way things are done. It cannot be abstracted from practice and transcribed into a technical manual. Cook books do not teach you to cook, anymore than a rule book teaches you to play a game. We learn by doing. There are circumstances where we identify ‘core values’ and set out to find the means that optimise their satisfaction. But, more often than not, we find what is worth pursuing, the good we aim at, in the activity. The distinction between internal and external rewards is relevant here. Instrumental reason guides our pursuit of the latter, while the reasoning examined by Oakeshott belongs to practices.

What are the consequences of these considerations for politics? We should not think of politics as techniques to attain ends or ‘core values’. As Oakeshott puts it: In political activity, then, men sail a boundless and bottomless sea; there is neither harbour for shelter, nor floor for anchorage, neither starting-place nor appointed destination. The enterprise is to keep afloat on an even keel; the sea is both friend and enemy; and seamanship consists in using the resources of a traditional manner of behaviour in order to make a friend of every hostile occasion. [p127]

The essence of the conservative mystique is its trust and regard for the ‘resources of a traditional manner of behaviour’. The British should value their way of doing things. It is their ‘ship’ and a tolerable, decent abode. To join the EU is to ‘abandon ship’. For what? 

Response to the Warwick Eurosceptic

In response to the Warwick Eurosceptic, I observed how recently modern European nation-states were constructed. Two themes dominate 19th century European political history. The displacement of the aristocratic order by democracy and the ‘clunking’ together of diverse and often divided territories into modern nation-states. While the unification of Germany and Italy are well worn topics, we forget, for example the diversity of the French ‘hexagon’. Eugen Weber reports in Peasants into Frenchmen that ‘…French was a foreign language for a substantial number of frenchmen, including almost half the children who would reach adulthood in the last quarter of the century’ (ie the 19th). The implications of this become clear when we remember that a dialect is a ‘language without an army or a navy’. The unification came at a cost as people were uprooted from the particulars of their time and place, their histories discounted in the new national narrative.  The railways that allowed and secured the process, illustrate the benefits.  They opened up markets for local produce while the national labour market provided an escape route from limited opportunities and poverty.(I could not resist pointing out that the British State had failed where the French succeeded. The French State brought Brittany on board while the British failed to incorporate the Irish.)

 The process that occurred at the level of the nation was now at work at a trans-national level. The same economic imperatives drove the move to a common market whose rewards were the expansion of trade and the growth of employment opportunities. Rather than resist the logic and deny ourselves the rewards, we should ensure that were commensurate with the costs. Certainly, both socialists and conservative mystiques would weigh these differently, but surely both had the resources, as well-founded, traditions to do so? But they did not, do not, have them.

Failing mystiques

Why did both the conservative and socialist mystiques that together secured British democracy and delivered, at least by the standards of this world, a decent society, fail to find a way forward? Why did they turn their back to the future, incapable of saying anything but no?

Though the question is difficult, the answers complex, a few remarks must  suffice.

Marx’s analysis of the globalising dynamic of capitalism is one of his incontrovertible contributions. Capitalism depended on its partnership with the nation-state which provided the laws, and the rule of law; the foundations of a market economy. It paid its dues by respecting the politics and policies that contained the conflicts that inequalities in wealth and power provoked. Capitalism was tethered to the state and bridled by it. Globalisation loosens the tether and makes the bridle irksome. Neo-liberalism, aptly described as the ‘disenchantment of politics by economics’ is accepted as the best guide in this new circumstance.  The resources of a ‘traditional manner of behaviour’ are of little use when that ‘manner of behaviour’ no longer aligns with the interests of those who had gained the most from it.

The socialist mystique proved hardly more resourceful. Why? Marx again provides the clue. The socialist mystique bears the impress of his critique of capitalism that demonstrates how it produces an unequal and alienated world where those with capital live at the  expense of those without. This cannot be denied. The problem is that the prognosis is found in economic analysis. Once we understand the laws of economics that predict the inevitable collapse of capitalism we can expedite its demise and live as equals, free of alienation. The true mystique is communism and the path to its realisation is politique (eg Dictatorship of the Proletariat). Pseudo-mystiques distract us. We should recognise them for what they are- garlands of flowers thrown over the chains that bind us. Marx was disenchanting politics with economics long before the Neo-liberals. His legacy weakens the socialist mystique. How can it successfully challenge a Neo-liberalism whose basic assumptions it shares?

Democracy without mystique.

There are differences between then and now. Not all the unifying states were democracies, most were democracies-in-the making and their authoritarianism facilitated the use of force to ‘clunk’. (Perhaps it was the advanced state of British democracy that inhibited the use of force to keep Ireland in the UK. That the British State was a theocracy, unlike other successful, secular states did not help.) The states in the EU are, de jure, democracies and it is unimaginable that the union would be advanced, or sustained, by marching armies, draconian laws, or coercive policing. What happens in the EU happens with the consent of the governments of member states. Dissatisfaction with the EU, its policies and perceived lack of democracy, should surely, in the first instance, direct attention to the democracies of the member states and their failings. 

Political parties are an essential feature of our design for democracy.  To recognise their importance, recall the anxiety with which liberals, despite their commitment to democracy, greeted the prospect of universal suffrage. The middle classes had property and position which gave them a stake in society. They had the education to judge what was in their interest and how that stake could be protected. What would happen if those who shared  neither their education, nor their interests and who had little or no stake in the existing order, got the vote ? Surely demagogues would exploit the masses, feeding their resentments, and threatening the states quo. How could democracy survive universal suffrage? How could it survive without it? 

History provides the answer. Political parties emerged, winning the support of large segments of the citizenry with competing accounts of how the nation could be defended and its welfare advanced. Mystiques need institutions and political parties were the institutions that gave mystiques a presence and a motivating force in politics. 

 Our culture discounts institutions. On the rare occasions when we spot them, the judgements are negative. We decry bureaucracy, we distinguish between spirituality [good] and institutional religion [bad]. To be institutionalised is to be in a very,very, bad way. And so on. 

This is very odd. After all, we do not enter world as fully formed individuals ready to assert our will in taking on its challenges. We are instituted in our families, our schools, the relationships available to us. We do not enter institutions as autonomous, fearful to preserve our autonomy, we emerge from them as autonomous and our autonomy is exercised in our engagement with their terms and conditions.

So the question is ‘what are the characteristics of an institution that that ‘institutes’ a mystique? Knowing my attachment to a mystique, you might ask me what are my ‘core values’ ? While a mystique certainly evaluates, the question is off target. The better question is ‘to what are you committed ?’ The answer comes in three parts; one tells of actions, one of interpretations, and one of membership of a group. The actions find their justification in the interpretation of the world view that unites the group. To put it another way: I could point to the body of knowledge that tells me how things are in this or that aspect of the world, to the authority that teaches and advances that knowledge, and to the consolation that comes from finding my bearings in communion with others.  Knowledge, authority, the sense of who and where I am, should not be understood as static achievements. Certainly, they are givens, but they are given in a process of learning, reflection and discovery. This dynamism would clearly be impossible without an institution whose hierarchy provides the authority which collective learning requires while adjudicating and orchestrating the diverse actions through which the mystique engages with the world.

Parties won the loyalty of their supporters with their mystiques that gave them their bearings, the consolation of belonging to a common world and a account of what their interests were and how they could be defended. They did this despite the constant pull of politique. This operated at two levels. The parties compromised with their competitors while the disparities in power that are inseparable from hierarchy distorted their internal workings.

 Political parties have changed their role. Membership of political parties decline. The number of loyal supporters who vote for their party, election after election, come what may declines. Fewer and fewer citizens look to political parties for instruction  on what is their interest. Once markers of social identity, political parties represented the people to the state, now brands, drawing on the latest marketing techniques, they spin in competition for the privilege of representing the state to the people The design for democracy is losing a vital linkage bringing citizens together with each other and their government. The seriousness of this ‘dismediation’ attracts increasing attention. Citizens of a democracy expect that their governments will be accountable, responsive to individual citizens and capable of delivering effective policies in line with general agreed values. This dismediation impacts on how all these expectations are expressed and met. I focus on the last of these.

Hobbes puts the problem well:

For all men are by nature provided of notable multiplying glasses [that is their Passions and Selfe-love] through which every little payment appeareth a great grievance, but are destitute of those prospective glasses [namely Civil and Moral science] to see farre off the miseries that hang over them, and cannot without such payments be avoided

With the transformation of political parties and the departure of mystiques, we lose an important contribution to ‘those prospective glasses’. To  understand the loss consider that when interests clash there are two paths to agreement. I want you to divert from the direct path to your goal in order to assist me reach my goal. I can persuade you or I can convince you to go along with my wishes. Waving a big stick or offering a bribe might persuade you to recalibrate your interest. Or, I can attempt to show that the course I propose is in both our interests. We should seek to ‘merge our horizons’ and find our particular interests in this common horizon. To convince is to be open to reassessing  our interests in the light of an emerging common purpose.  Three steps are essential . We must be prepared to change our minds as to what is, indeed, in our interest; we must recognise our interlocutors as ‘others’ who like ourselves are ‘ends in themselves’ not to be diminished by being treated as means to our ends; we must acknowledge an ‘objective’ reality. It is in the process of convincing that mystiques emerge. As mystiques fade out of the picture, convincing becomes more and more difficult and persuading dominates which is to say that we now have only politique. 

 Perhaps, we will come to admire the particular qualities that enable political leaders manoeuvre in this new landscape. I am too old; I opt out of finding virtue in Trump or Johnson, or indeed Varadkar, Martin or Kenny.

Will democracy survive the loss of mystique or shall the liberal middle classes call an end to a chaotic democracy that is at odds with their interests? Will we find the resources to recover mystiques? God knows.

Note on reading.

The fundamental source of Peguy’s distinction between ‘mystique’ and ‘politique’ is Notre Jeunesse an English version of which can be found Charles Peguy, Temporal & Eternal, translated and introduced by Alexander Dru, London, The Harvill Press: 1958.

Useful discussions of the distinction are to be found in:

Annette Aronowicz Jews and Christians on Time and Eternity. Charles Peguy’s Portrait of Bernard -Lazare. Stanford studies in Jewish History and Culture. Stanford, Calif. Stanford University Press 1998.

Matthew W. Maguire Carnal Spirit. The revolutions of Charles Peguy. Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press 2019.

For Peguy and modernity see Glenn H.Roe The Passion of Charles Peguy. Literature, Modernity, and the Crisis of Historicism. Oxford, Oxford University Press: 2014.

Alasdair MacIntyre develops the notion a practice in After Virtue. Notre Dame, Indiana: 1981.

Nicholas Boyle elaborates the distinction between ‘languages of consumption’ and ‘languages of production’  in Where are we now? Christian Humanism and the Global Market from Hegel to Heaney. NotreDame, Indiana, University of Notre Dame Press: 1998

The quote from Michael Oakeshott can be found in Michael Oakeshott Rationalism in politics and other essays, London, Methuen & Co Ltd: 1962 p127.

For information on linguistic diversity in 19th century France, see Eugene Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen. The Modernisation of Rural France. Stanford, Calif. University of Stanford Press: 1976.