No good but self-interest?

My original post on white nationalism has led to a discussion of fundamentals. I made the point that white nationalists often see politics as an expression of racial self-interest. I suggested instead that traditional ethnic nationalism could be better upheld on the basis of arguments about the nature of man and the nature of the good.

I wrote a follow up post trying to clarify the point I was making, to which a reader responded as follows:

The notion that values can transcend people and be defended in a disembodied form sound pretentious to me, and Platonist. There is no dichotomy between self/collective interests and what is considered 'good'. i.e. throughout human history, the 'good' has been constantly redefined to advance self/collective interests. This is just reality stripped of all self-serving pretensions, such as 'transcendent values', 'the good', etc.

I found this thought provoking and replied to it in the comments thread. But I'd like to add some further thoughts. The first is that if there is no definable good in life, then how can there be a self-interest? The term "self-interest" implies that there is some good in life that it is in our interest to obtain for ourselves. But if we refuse to recognise that such a good exists, then how do we make sense of the idea of self-interest?

This is something of a problem for various versions of liberalism. Liberals want people to pursue rational ends, but what can they be if there are no objective goods in life? Sometimes liberals resort to vague, nice sounding formulations like "human flourishing" as an ultimate, rational end. Classical liberals usually go for more tangible, material and quantifiable ends, such as property and physical security. At the collective level, the rational ends are thought, similarly, to be GDP growth, infrastructure and diplomatic power. This, though, represents a radical narrowing of the "rational ends" of life.

Marxism has a similar issue. Marx too thought, like my reader, that "the good has been constantly redefined to advance self/collective interests." He claimed for instance that in a capitalist society there was a bourgeois morality which advanced the interests of the bourgeoisie at the expense of the proletariat. The idea then is that the proletariat revolts and asserts its own class interests under the dictatorship of the proletariat. But from there the point is to remove all possible sources of "other" morality. So there is a withering away of the state (no government). No more nations. No families. Just the individual no longer subject to any sort of "false morality" by which individuals might serve the interests of others.

But what then? How does the individual live rationally absent an objective good in life but without some other interest imposed upon him? It's perhaps no accident that Marx famously wrote little about this, though he did suggest that individuals would choose to engage in a variety of activities as they had a mind to do.

To get back to my original point, talking about self-interest usually presupposes some sort of good that it is in our interest to secure. So things become difficult if the idea of objective goods is denied. What then might the vision of "morality as self-interest" be?

Some might perhaps think it acceptable if the "good" was a basic, biological one, such as the instinct to self-preservation, i.e. to "life" whether of the individual or the race. Others might not name a specific good, but see things in terms of a contest of "who predominates," i.e. of who has the power to enact their will, whatever it might be (the left often seems to assume this kind of motivation, and it is embedded in leftist identity politics).

The traditionalist view is, in comparison, rich in goods. My reader is concerned, though, that "The notion that values can transcend people and be defended in a disembodied form sound pretentious to me, and Platonist".

I think it true of religious traditionalists that we do have a sense that the goods that we perceive have a meaningful, spiritual or sacred character - they are "transcendent" in this higher sense.

But I don't see why goods cannot be asserted in a more mundane way. If, for instance, you have ever observed the way a mother gazes on her newborn, and the response of the infant to her, then it is difficult to deny that this kind of mother love is a good in life. It can be asserted as a good strictly on its own terms, i.e. that it is inherently good as an act that has beauty and love embedded within it. It can also be asserted as a good in consequentialist terms, as being significant to the psychological development of the child.

And nations? You do not need Platonic forms to assert that traditional ethnic nations provide a deeper sense of belonging and identity for individuals, that they motivate social commitments, that they provide diverse and unique expressions of humanity, and that they connect people closely to a particular tradition, landscape, history and culture - to the point that they inspire the love and loyalty of those born into them.

I would argue, too, that the human mind is able to grasp abstract moral qualities, such as honesty, or courage, or nobility. We can talk about these intelligently because we know the quality being referred to and we recognise these as moral qualities regardless of whether they serve our interests or not.

Clarifying white nationalism

My post on white nationalism drew quite a number of comments. There was one in particular that I thought it useful to reply to. It was from a long-time reader who usually has no issue with my posts, but this time thought differently:

You have missed the boat here. Any time you argue that Whites have no interests as ethnic and racial groups, no right to demand those interests and be organized to ensure they are promoted, you have gone off course.

You are basically justifying by clever rationalization the past 40 years of anti-White policy. That leads to White genocide in action.

The comment made me think that I had not made my position clear enough. The reader and I both want our ethnic groups to survive into the future. Where we differ is on the "legitimating principle" for pursuing this aim. He takes the white nationalist position that the legitimating principle is a right to pursue one's own collective interests. For me as a traditionalist, the legitimating principle is that it is a defence of the good. As I wrote in my original post:

We would argue that the ties of ethnic community form a deep part of human identity and provide a deep sense of belonging. That it connects us to generations past, present and future and also to the land and to the urban and rural landscape we inhabit. That it powerfully motivates our social commitments, including a willingness to commit to a stable family life.

We would also see these ethno-national traditions as having an inherent good in representing a unique expression of humanity.

This raises the question of whether we should defend our ethnies on the basis of promoting our collective self-interest (white nationalists) or on the basis of defending the good (traditionalists). The pursuit of self-interest does have some points in its favour. It is direct and straightforward. It also plays into an important strain of political thought that is part of the American tradition, namely the classical liberal tradition which emphasises the idea of man being free to pursue his self-interest (albeit an individual self-interest in the market rather than a collective self-interest). In other words, it is more "modern" in seeing value as residing in what people desire or seek rather than in a good that transcends these desires.

There is also a positive aspect to the emphasis that white nationalists put on the pursuit of a collective self-interest rather than an individual one. Once you make a collective existence legitimate and its furtherance a political principle, then other things follow. It is more likely that a healthy family life will be supported and that arts which aim to demoralise people will be rejected.

But there are problems too with a pursuit of a self-interest principle. As I mentioned in my previous post, there are few moral limits built into this principle. Nor is there much reason to extend the same goods that you claim for your own group to others.

And you also have the same general issues that come with modernist philosophies that lack a transcendent good. If it is just about self-interest, even a collective self-interest, then you put yourself at risk of the intellectual class falling at some point into an existential crisis that breeds rancour or perhaps extreme ("vitalist") strategies to assert a meaning to individual life or national life. This is not as likely if the intellectual class has a powerful sense that they are serving a meaningful, transcendent good.

On white nationalism

The alt right is made up of a number of different political movements, such as traditionalism, identitarianism, orthodoxy and neoreaction. Arguably the most influential element, at least in the U.S., is white nationalism. Given its prominence I thought it useful to try to delineate the politics of white nationalism.

There is clearly some overlap in the political positions taken by traditionalists and white nationalists. But one clear difference is that many white nationalists take as a starting point the principle that politics is an expression of racial self-interest.

There is, of course, some truth to this. Racial self-interest does sometimes lie behind the political positions that people take. And the aim of many white nationalists is the perfectly reasonable one of wanting white Americans to remain the historic majority and to avoid the negative consequences of falling into minority status.

The idea that politics is organised around racial self-interest does, however, have a more problematic side. It means, for instance, that politics will be seen less as a contest between political movements (say, traditionalism vs liberalism) and more as a contest between races or ethnies. So there is considerable emphasis amongst some white nationalists on the Jewish question - on the idea that the core battle line is one between white Americans and Jews.

It is undoubtedly true that Jews in America have a disproportionate influence in the media and that secular Jewish intellectuals are often committed to leftist causes that harm the white American majority. However, seeing politics as a racial or ethnic conflict has its limitations.

First, it often underplays the agency of the class of white intellectuals who are also committed to leftist causes. If politics is about racial self interest, then why aren't these white intellectuals promoting the interests of their own race? A WN might answer that they have fallen under the sway of Jewish influence, but this is of dubious historic accuracy, given that the WASP elite in the U.S. was committed to open borders for much of the 1800s or that serious traditionalist intellectuals like T.S. Eliot thought that English culture was hopelessly liberalised as long ago as the 1930s. You would have to argue that a tiny number of Jews had captured the minds of vast numbers of non-Jewish intellectuals for some hundreds of years. I know quite a number of white intellectuals and I don't believe that their problem is that they have been "captured" by a foreign influence - there are better explanations for why they are committed to a transgressive politics.

Second, although it is true that secular Jewish intellectuals often set themselves against the historic white majority, they are not alone in doing so. I have already mentioned our own white intellectual class, which has swung hard left for generations. But you could add to the rainbow coalition the women's movement, the LGBQT movement, the BLM, unmarried females, the greens, the trade unions and so on. So the dividing line is not just a racial or ethnic one, but also one organised around sex, sexuality and family status amongst others. (You could also add to all this the role of the big economic corporations and the managerial class.)

A third problem with organising politics solely around the idea of racial self-interest is that it hinders the establishment of political alliances. They may be a minority within their groups, but there do exist black conservatives and Jewish conservatives who do recognise the harm done by leftism, both to their own groups and to the larger society. The distrust of Jewish conservatives is especially marked amongst some WNs.

Also, if politics is thought to be organised around racial self-interest, then it opens the way for the idea that a future state should be organised around race rather than around the historic regions or nations or peoples. In other words, it can lead to a belief that the traditional ethnostate is too limited in scope, compared to a new pan-racial state. Richard Spencer seems to have gone down this path:

Then there is the issue that there are no moral limits to a politics based on racial self interest. In theory, if something is in the interests of your race it is morally justified. Nor is there a basis in principle for extending the goods you claim for your own race to other races. If there are moral limits they would have to come from elsewhere, for instance, from a religious tradition existing within the racial group or from the personal character of those upholding the focus on racial self-interest, but the principle itself does not set limits.

Finally, and most controversially, there is some potential overlap at the edges between white nationalism and national socialism. On the one hand, few WNs seem interested in ideas of racial supremacy or superiority, which sets them apart from the national socialist tradition. However, both movements do have a focus on the Jewish question and on organising politics around race. And there does exist a corner of the alt right where there is an interest in national socialism, though it is hard to tell how serious this is and it is sometimes described as "larping" (live action role playing), i.e. as more playing around with it rather than a serious commitment. Nonetheless, it is a pity to observe an interest in a failed politics from the past.

In trying to draw out the differences in the principles of white nationalism and traditionalism I have had to make a number of criticisms, so I'd like to restate more positively that there is much that we agree on, including a support for ethnonationalism rather than civic nationalism.

Which raises a question. If traditionalists do not start with the idea of politics as the expression of racial self-interest, on what grounds do we then support ethnic community?

The answer is that it is our understanding of the nature of man and the nature of the good that leads us to support a traditional ethnic nationalism.

We would argue that the ties of ethnic community form a deep part of human identity and provide a deep sense of belonging. That it connects us to generations past, present and future and also to the land and to the urban and rural landscape we inhabit. That it powerfully motivates our social commitments, including a willingness to commit to a stable family life.

We would also see these ethno-national traditions as having an inherent good in representing a unique expression of humanity. Solzhenitsyn put it this way:

In recent times it has been fashionable to talk of the levelling of nations, of the disappearance of different races in the melting-pot of contemporary civilization. I do not agree with this opinion, but its discussion remains another question. Here it is merely fitting to say that the disappearance of nations would have impoverished us no less than if all men had become alike, with one personality and one face. Nations are the wealth of mankind, its collective personalities; the very least of them wears its own special colours and bears within itself a special facet of divine intention.

Individuals often have a sense of this transcendent good embedded within their ethno-national tradition and it can inspire a love of country, culture and people and a desire to serve the tradition by adding positively to it. It can also lend a certain kind of enchantment to life, as well as a "rootedness" - of having what the Germans call a "Heimat" - a place that is felt to be one's home.

It is not just traditionalists who have knowledge of this. Professor Robert Manne described himself as belonging to "a group that I would call the pro-Labor social justice liberal intelligentsia." He defended the existence of traditional Aboriginal communities in terms similar to Solzhenitsyn:

... if the traditional communities are indeed destroyed, one distinctive expression of human life - with its own forms of language, culture, spirituality and sensibility - will simply become extinct. Humanity is enriched and shaped by the diversity of its forms of life. It is vastly impoverished as this diversity declines. If contemporary Australians allow what remains of the traditional Aboriginal world to die, we will be haunted by the tragedy for generations.

It is thought permissible within the terms of left-liberal social justice to recognise this truth for Aborigines. But logically if it is true for them, it is true for us as well.