As the early 2020s give way to the late 2020s, Hamiltonianism is already beginning to establish its own “Political Right” and “Political Left” elements. It is now possible to speak of a “Right-Hamiltonianism” and a “Left-Hamiltonianism” that have yet to coalesce into a new “Political Center.” Ideas from Left-Hamiltonianism inform Right-Hamiltonianism and vice versa, providing a coherent perspective worthy of challenging the hegemony of Jeffersonianism.
Hamiltonianism on the American Right: Right-Hamiltonianism
As its name suggests, Right-Hamiltonianism emerged from the American Right in response to the Great Recession, the War on Terror, and the contradictions of the Fusionist consensus behind American Conservatism. For those who do not know, “Fusionism” refers to the old Cold War Ideology that once characterized American Conservatism after 1945. It was a motley collection of Social Conservatives and Traditionalists whose fragile alliance with Anticommunists and Classical Liberals were driven out of an unfathomable fear of the Soviet Union.
Since Woodrow Wilson, the Jeffersonians have long sought to bring Russia, whether Czarist Russia, Soviet Russia or Post-Soviet Russia, under their ideological influence. The old geopolitical reasoning went that whoever controls Eastern Europe vis-à-vis Russia controls the Eurasian landmass. A great power like Russia would pose a serious complication to their long-term ambitions of imposing the Empire of Liberty on the Eurasian landmass. When the German Reich, Imperial Japan and Fascist Italy were defeated in 1945, the Jeffersonians did everything to establish economic and military strongholds in as many countries bordering the Soviet Union as they could.
To gain the support of the American Right, the Jeffersonians had to frame the Soviets as convenient scapegoats to distract Social Conservatives and Traditionalists. It meant convincing them that it was the Soviets, not the Democratic-Republican Party, who were the real threats to America. Thus, Fusionism was conceptualized to bring the American Right to embrace the flawed assumption that free markets can somehow further the interests of family, community and tradition. The Fusionist propaganda was only as effective for as long as the Soviet Union, CMEA (Council for Mutual Economic Assistance) and the Warsaw Pact continued to exist. Once they were gone, Fusionism could no longer sustain itself in the 21st century without finding new enemies, new diversions for the American Right to fixate on. The Jeffersonians found those new enemies in the forms of the so-called “Axis of Evil,” convincing the American Right that they had to support the mission of spreading Neoliberalism to all of humanity at any cost. The Afghanistan, Iraq, Libyan, and Syrian Wars are merely the fruits of this endeavor.
The Fusionist propaganda, thankfully, collapsed under the weight of its own contradictions. The futility of the Afghanistan, Iraq, Libyan and Syrian Wars, the continued destruction of entire families and communities, the growing irreligiosity of young Americans, the Great Recession and Deindustrialization all planted growing doubts on the American Right. After the Great Recession, it gradually became tenable to criticize and condemn that old Cold War consensus.
The rise of the Trump Presidency coincided with a fundamental rift within the American Right between those who still supported Jeffersonianism and those who yearn to find a new unifying Ideology and Worldview that would someday replace the Fusionist consensus. The Trump Presidency saw the Jeffersonians successfully maintain their hegemony on the American Right, preventing Conservatives and Traditionalists from realizing that they have always been part of Hamiltonianism and that they do have parallel goals with Hamiltonianism on the American Left.
Currently, the forefront of Right-Hamiltonianism is American Affairs, a quarterly policymaking journal founded by Julius Krein. The central arguments of that publication since its establishment have been to advocate for a stronger governmental role in the US economy on Hamiltonian grounds, from Reindustrialization to Protectionism. American Affairs was started to provide an intellectual backbone to Right-Hamiltonianism, attracting the support and contributions of other Right-Hamiltonians such as Michael Lind and Oren Cass. Gladden Pappin, an associate of Krein, wrote an insightful article in American Affairs in favor of American Corporatism and how it could become relevant to the US and Right-Hamiltonianism in particular.
When taken to its logical conclusions, as evident by various articles written over the years, it becomes evident that Right-Hamiltonianism fundamentally differs from Left-Hamiltonianism in its promotion of Corporatism. In essence, create a “Federalist Corporatist” economy where the Federal government, Organized Labor and Corporate America exist in an arrangement comparable to that of Congress, the Presidency, and the Supreme Court. The powers of one branch of this new US economy would be tempered by the other two branches. No one branch would be able to overpower the other without the other two branches working to keep the third in balance. For Organized Labor to check the powers of the Federal government and Corporate America, there needs to be an institutional framework for everyday Americans to participate in the US economy beyond casting ballots and buying products. Special institutions would be maintained in this Federalist Corporatist economy to set prices and wages and coalesce whatever remains of America’s various labor unions into a unified body.
There is another important limitation to Right-Hamiltonianism that any genuine Left-Hamiltonianism must take into consideration at all times. Right-Hamiltonianism has no intention of replacing Parliamentary Democracy with Council Democracy. It is more focused on challenging the economic and social aspects of Jeffersonianism, leaving too much of the political aspects inadequately addressed at times. Despite that significant issue, Right-Hamiltonianism is still capable of demonstrating itself as being a viable alternative to Neoliberalism on the American Right. All it needs is a Left-Hamiltonianism to provide the necessary support.
Other Factions of Right-Hamiltonianism
Right-Hamiltonianism has other vocal proponents among two strands of political-economic thought, both of which are an Americanization of trends in recent British political thought. These two strands are called “Post-Liberalism” and “National Conservativism.”
The National Conservatives seek to realize a non-Jeffersonian conception of American Nationalism rooted in the British-American people’s community. They reject the idea that Americaness represents an interesting synthesis of British and German ideas, beliefs, concepts and values, instead pivoting toward a purely British-American emphasis. Their support for Hamiltonianism is motivated by an understandable position that the Federal government should be given a stronger role within the US economy to further the strategic interests of the Union. To achieve that end, American Conservatism must be reclaimed from Jeffersonianism and imbued with this peculiar Anglocentric conception of American Nationalism.
The American Post-Liberals share a common cause with their British counterparts in their theologically-driven criticisms of Neoliberalism. They argue that the Economic Liberalization and Social Liberalization brought on by Neoliberalism did not just destroy labor unions and eviscerated local communities. Neoliberalism has also undermined the integrity of the family and the religious congregation as part of the broader alienation and atomization of the Self. Anyone who thinks that the free market could somehow be reconciled with the family and the religious congregation is either a fool or a liar. Driving much of American Post-Liberalism are Patrick Deneen, Adrian Vermeule, and Chad Pecknold, all of whom are university intellectuals.
It is notable that American Post-Liberalism is being spearheaded by university intellectuals, given the predominantly political origins of its British counterpart. In the UK, Post-Liberalism emerged after the Great Recession in response to the excesses of Thatcherism among the Tories and Blairism among Labour, which are equally responsible for so much of Britain’s recent economic difficulties. The realization of British Post-Liberalism was achieved through the conceptualizations of “Red Toryism” and “Blue Labour.” Red Toryism and Blue Labour share the same consensus that Neoliberalism has been destructive to Great Britain and that a new political-economic order needs to be created. A similar strain of thought is discernible in the writings of the American Post-Liberals, favoring a “Conservative Social-Democratic” arrangement imbued with Catholic social teaching.
Hamiltonianism on the American Left: Left-Hamiltonianism
If the overarching aim of Right-Hamiltonianism is to confront Economic Liberalization on the American Right, then the overarching aim of Left-Hamiltonianism is to confront Social Liberalization on the American Left. In the contemporary American Left, there has been a growing interest in revisiting Pure Socialism, from the existing Scientific and Artistic Socialisms to attempts at trying to redefine American Socialism. This endeavor should be distinguished from the repackaging of European-style Social-Democracy as “Democratic Socialism.”
Left-Hamiltonianism, unlike Right-Hamiltonianism, represents a philosophical, theoretical and conceptual frontier that has yet to be tamed. The experience is in many respects akin to the old western frontier east of the Mississippi, when it became apparent that a centralized Federal government was necessary to bring the Union together after the Revolutionary War. Compared to its counterpart on the American Right, Left-Hamiltonianism has a smaller and less pronounced on the American Left and efforts to change that are fairly recent.
The pursuit of a Left-Hamiltonianism is driven by the conviction that the Culture Wars have distracted the American Left from addressing the socioeconomic issues that plague everyday Americans. By fixating too heavily on identity politics, the American Left has neglected the importance of nationalizing Solidarity and Class Consciousness for way too long. Of course, it would be naïve to think that everyone on the American Left went along with the Social Liberalization on the American Left that coincided with the Economic Liberalization from the American Right. If there are people on the American Right who oppose Economic Liberalization vis-à-vis vying to replace the Fusionist consensus, then some similar endeavor has to be occurring on the American Left. They could be Progressives interested in its earlier Nationalist legacy as opposed to its more recent Neoliberal one, disillusioned Democratic Socialists who have found Social-Democracy to be impossible to sustain in contemporary America, or Marxists willing to view Social Liberalization as the new opium of the masses. Said Marxists would have to be open to the idea that Proletarian Internationalism could not exist without a corresponding Socialist Patriotism. Seriously, as long as Left-Hamiltonianism does not have a foothold on the American Left, the possibilities are almost endless.
It is for this reason that Compact Magazine was founded in 2022 by Sohrab Ahmari, Edwin Aponte, and Matthew Schmitz as a sort of rallying point for Left-Hamiltonianism. Compact differs from American Affairs by trying to find common cause between the American Left and the American Right and their opposition to Neoliberalism. Aponte, despite eventually leaving the publication he cofounded, was what gave Compact its Socialistic edge. The Magazine still continues to exhibit that tendency in spite of his absence, however.
Another flagbearer of Left-Hamiltonianism worthy of mention is Sublation Magazine, founded by Doug Lain and Spencer Leonard. Whereas Compact was founded to provide a point of contact between the American Left and American Right, Sublation was established to give all American Socialists a publication that challenges what it perceives as the disorientation and depoliticization of the American Left by the Jeffersonians. In the early months of Sublation’s publication, Lain once stated in an interview that there should be an attempt at synthesizing Sublation and Compact Magazines with the sort of “Millennial Socialism” of the more well-known Jacobin Magazine. This was Lain’s way of insinuating that there are elements within the American Left who are open to the idea of working with the American Right to combine Left-Hamiltonianism and Right-Hamiltonianism into a “Conservative Socialist Council Democracy.” Given the Hamiltonian tendencies of Compact, there is no doubt that the “Conservatism” in this Conservative Socialism is literally Hamiltonian Federalism.
Furthermore, Sublation was also founded with other principles in mind. Like the broader Political Left in the Western world, the American Left has been plagued for decades by senseless appeals to Social-Democracy, the absurdities of Trotskyism and its religious-like sects, and the now deplorable state of academic publishing by the New Left. For Sublation and its writers, the American Left is in dire need of a new purpose that does not involve retreading what the Progressives are pursuing or fixating too heavily on identity policies and the Culture Wars. That is arguably where Sublation from Compact and Jacobin: the desire to go beyond Americanizing European conceptions of Social-Democracy and being more specific about wanting to realize a genuine All-American Socialism.
Problems of Left-Hamiltonianism and Right-Hamiltonianism
The best way to summarize the problems of the movement in its Left-Hamiltonian and Right-Hamiltonian tendencies is to evaluate them holistically. In essence, the Right-Hamiltonians deviate from the Jeffersonians on economic issues, whereas the Left-Hamiltonians deviate from the Jeffersonians on social issues. They know that Neoliberalism operates in terms of Economic Liberalization and Social Liberalization, but they have yet to envisage how to properly overcome the Political Liberalization that ultimately controls Economic Liberalization and Social Liberalization. Overcoming Political Liberalization coincides with the overcoming of Kapital and Schuld, sparking the changeover from Jeffersonian America to Hamiltonian America.
For the Right-Hamiltonians, they need a political alternative to Parliamentary Democracy. For the Left-Hamiltonians, they need a financial alternative to the Post-Bretton Woods Debt Standard. While Council Democracy could provide what the Right-Hamiltonians are missing, the Left-Hamiltonians are left without any options on how to overcome the Post-Bretton Woods Debt Standard. Since the Gold Standard, Cryptocurrencies and MMT are all out of the question, the only obvious alternative left is of course the Work-Standard.
Categories: Compendium
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