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The Politics of Faith and the Politics of Skepticism - Part 2
by Elizabeth Campbell Corey
Elizabeth Campbell Corey is Assistant Professor of Politics in the Honors Program at Baylor University. More information is available at her department website. She is the author of Michael Oakeshott on Religion, Aesthetics, and Politics, 2006, Columbia: University of Missouri Press, from which the following excerpts are taken. This appears with permission and is the second of two parts.
The Politics of Individuality
In a series of lectures Oakeshott gave at Harvard in 1958, now published as Morality and Politics in Modern Europe, he casts the faith/skepticism distinction in the terms of collectivism versus individuality, even going so far as to call these categories (as he does faith and skepticism) "the poles of the modern European political character." Collectivism postulates a common good that is chosen by government for the individuals who compose a society. This good is "preferred above all other possible conditions of human circumstance" and is believed "to be at least the emblem of a 'perfect' manner of human existence."22 In other words, it is the politics of faith.
The politics of individuality, on the other hand, springs from an entirely different conception of the role of government. Indeed, it has no "vision of another, different and better, world," but takes its bearings from observation of "the self-government practiced . . . by men of passion in the conduct of their enterprises." It calls not for great concentrations of power, but for an authoritative "ritual" that can minimize the chances for great collisions between individuals. The government is thus merely "custodian" of this ritual, called "law." Government's functions, on this reading, are to minimize circumstances in which violent collisions of interest are likely to occur. It provides redress for those who have been wronged, maintains sufficient power to carry out its functions, and protects itself and its subjects from foreign threat.23 But unlike collectivism, the government of individuality is not in the business of generating grand visions that would guide an entire people.
In Morality and Politics in Modern Europe, Oakeshott brings the somewhat abstract conceptions of collectivism and faith into sharper relief by giving examples from political history. He identifies three distinct versions of collectivism and describes the kinds of "perfection" they pursue: religious, productivist, and distributionist. The religious version, he believes, was exemplified in Calvin's Geneva, in which government's purpose was to channel every human activity into the pursuit of "righteousness." Calvin's design was to "impose upon the citizens of Geneva an exclusive and comprehensive pattern of activities from which no divergence was to be allowed." Moreover, government was oriented toward achievement of a substantive purpose: to guard the glory and honor of God and "to be the execution of God's will as displayed in the Scriptures."24
Oakeshott's discussion of Calvinism as the quintessential example of the "politics of faith" is well worth reading in full. But the most striking part of the discussion in these pages is his analysis of Marxian politics as part of this same religious idiom. Oakeshott also locates Marx's politics in other versions of collectivism, but the essential features of Marxism seem to stem from a religious origin. It is worth quoting Oakeshott's analysis at length to see how a supposedly secular theory can be interpreted as fundamentally religious:
Like the millenarian sectaries of the seventeenth century, the Marxist believes that a new age is emerging (a third epoch in world history) in which the dominion of "earthly" (that is, "capitalist") governments will be superseded by the rules of the Saints (the proletariat) over the Reprobate (the bourgeoisie), who have no rights save the rights to be ruled and who cannot be "saved" because they are not among the Elect. . . . [The Elect] must claim the right to propagate their beliefs ("the truth") without hindrance, and they will absolve themselves from all promises, contracts, engagements, treaties, oaths and debts. . . . [Soon] a "perfect" condition of human circumstance [will arise] about which little is known except that there will be no place in it for governing as a specific activity and that it cannot be established anywhere with certainty until it is established everywhere. In short, there is scarcely anything in the mythology and the anthropology of Marxism which does not have its counterpart in the writings of the seventeenth-century Puritan sectaries. The religious version of the politics of collectivism, the first version to appear in modern Europe, has survived almost unchanged . . . into our contemporary world in the political theory of Marxism.
It is worth noting that this analysis has much in common with Eric Voegelin's analysis of Marx's political theory. In Science, Politics and Gnosticism, Voegelin makes a similar case for Marx as a gnostic who wished to replace the true constitution of being with a "world-immanent order of being, the perfection of which lies in the realm of human action."25 Indeed, Voegelin and Oakeshott agree that Marx's political theory, with its focus on the mundane search for perfection, is a distortion of religious impulses.
However, the "religious" version is only one type of collectivism. And the other two types Oakeshott identifies have assumed a dominant place in Western political thought over the past several centuries. The second kind of collectivism he considers is "productivist," which is a particular understanding of human purpose and association that emerged in the sixteenth century and finds its clearest expression in the writings of Francis Bacon. In brief, this is a view in which government directs its citizens not toward salvation (as in the religious version of collectivism), but toward economic prosperity. Work is the "preeminently proper occupation of mankind," and all other activities should be subordinated to it. Government thus ought to aim at maximizing productivity: it ought "to promote research, to supervise industry and trade, to regulate prices and consumption, to distribute wealth where it might be most usefully employed," and so on.26
The third version of collectivism is "distributionist." Here the focus has shifted from economic prosperity to a vision of perfection that is distinguished by its emphasis on the ideas of "security" and "welfare." Its desired state of perfection is one in which every person is fundamentally equal to everyone else, in which the immense quantity of goods and wealth that "productivism" yields are required to be divided up fairly among all people. The desired outcome is not merely legal equality, but a "real" equality, that is, equality of condition.27 This version of collectivism emerged in the nineteenth century in those countries (such as France and England) that had the most wealth to distribute.
These three types of collectivism are illustrations of what Oakeshott meant when he described the politics of faith. As I have emphasized above, the politics of faith posits a uniform condition of mundane perfection, as well as a government that leads the way to achieving it. In the religious version of collectivism the desired perfection is salvation that is to be worked out in the world. In the productivist version it is economic progress. And in the distributionist version it is equality of condition. In each of these a "single road" to perfection is chosen by government and imposed on a society. But each kind of perfection is a kind of idolatry, a Tower of Babel in which individual choice is stamped out in favor of what is supposed to be a greater good. As in the Tower of Babel story, dissent and disobedience are punished "not as troublesome conduct, but as 'error' and 'sin'. Lack of enthusiasm will be considered a crime, to be prevented by education and to be punished as treason."28
But perhaps the greatest irony of all, given that these political systems aim at achieving human perfection, is that they produce not happiness, but a creeping dissatisfaction that cannot be remedied. For the promised perfection — religious, productivist, distributionist — lies always in the future and thus always out of reach. The politics of faith is preoccupied, indeed obsessed, with the future. The imbalance of contemporary politics, Oakeshott remarks, "springs from the preoccupation with the future which has been pressed upon it by the politics of faith."
Just as Nimrod attempts to pacify his subjects in Babel, who are becoming impatient for their great reward, so governments of faith say to their subjects, "The pursuit of perfection is an arduous undertaking. You must not only expect to forego delights which those who will come after will enjoy, you must also expect to suffer the pains and deprivations inseparable from the enterprise." Present happiness is sacrificed to promises of even greater future happiness; but this, as Oakeshott makes clear throughout his work, is a fundamental misunderstanding of morality translated into a misunderstanding of politics. For Oakeshott believed that fulfillment in life comes only in living, so far as possible, in the present. If we postpone fulfillment to the future, when we expect finally to have accomplished our greatest works, most likely "death or disease will rob us of our harvest, and we shall have lived in vain."29 The future, as Oakeshott is wont to remind us, is remarkably uncertain.
To sum up, Oakeshott's three related formulations of a particular kind of politics (Rationalism, "faith," and collectivism) all express a certain view of moral character and the kind of government appropriate to this moral character. The morality they presuppose is Oakeshott's least favored type, which I characterized in the previous chapter as "servile" rather than creative or "liberal." It is morality as the reflective application of ideals or rules. Just as servile morality imagines that it can achieve goodness by following rules, or "cribs," so the Rationalist in politics imagines that he can achieve political excellence by adhering to an ideology, and by sticking to principles. Servile morality is oriented toward ideals, and thus toward an ever-receding future; governments in the style of "faith" imagine that they can postulate a state of perfection for their societies, and this too is an endeavor that looks explicitly toward the future.
To put it plainly, Rationalism, "faith," and collectivism spring from a faulty understanding of the character of human beings. These views of politics depend on the "servile" morality I have identified as dissatisfied, faithless, future-oriented, proud, and overconfident. It is the morality of the impatient and irritable, of those who are oriented solely toward accomplishment, and of those who do not value things as ends in themselves. 
[This is the second of two Parts. Part 1 may be read HERE.]
NOTES
22. Michael Oakeshott. Morality and Politics in Modern Europe, Ed. S. R. Letwin. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993, 110, 91.
23. Ibid., 49, 50.
24. Ibid., 93.
25. Ibid., 96—97; Eric Voegelin, Science, Politics and Gnosticism, in Modernity without Restraint, Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, Vol. 5. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2000, 262 ff.
26. Morality and Politics in Modern Europe, 103.
27. Ibid., 107, 108.
28. Michael Oakeshott. The Politics of Faith and the Politics of Scepticism, Ed. Timothy Fuller. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996, 29
29. Ibid., 86 (see also his discussion on p. 96), 98;"Religion and the World," in Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays. Ed. Timothy Fuller. Indianapolis: Liberty Press, 1991, 32.
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