The second half of “Hamiltonianism in Contemporary America” is currently being worked on as of this writing. The purpose of this Update post is to provide a preview of what I have been able to discover thus far. Yesterday, I had to gather as much information as I could on the rest of this movement to make sure that I did not miss anyone or anything. I am convinced that it is possible to determine the existences of a “Hamiltonian Right” and a “Hamiltonian Left” based on two publications that I have mentioned on The Fourth Estate in previous posts: the former is best embodied by American Affairs, the latter by Compact. Staunchly critical of Liberal Capitalism, Right-Hamiltonians favor American Corporatism, whereas Left-Hamiltonians support American Socialism. Even though there are some more willing to settle for some kind of American State Capitalism, the consensus appears to gravitate somewhere between Corporatism and Socialism.
Now, when I say “American State Capitalism,” I am referring to a Reformist type of American Capitalism that is driven not by Wall Street and Corporate America, but by the Federal government and the American people. It may not Lenin’s NEP (New Economic Policy) or even the Market Socialism of Richard D. Wolff, but at least it is a step in the right direction. Its official designation is called “‘Common Good Capitalism.’”
Besides our Left-Hamiltonians and Right-Hamiltonians, I should mention that aspects of Hamiltonianism do resonate with people who are neither Hamiltonian nor Jeffersonian. Post-Liberal and National Conservative involvements within our corner of political-economic discourse are in many respects the Americanization of a uniquely British phenomenon.
Following the Great Recession, an ideological rift began to occur among certain Tory and Labour members, as “Red Toryism” and “Blue Labourism” rose to challenge the pervading Neoliberal consensus forged by “Thatcherism” and “Blairism.” Skeptical of both Economic Liberalism and Social Liberalism, Red Tories and Blue Labour sought to steer the direction of those two parties away from their Neoliberal consensus. Here in America, the Post-Liberals and National Conservatives are trying to pursue a similar project, except they lack enough supporters on the American Left to achieve comparable results. Consequently, this resulted in them latching onto Hamiltonianism in order to be relevant in this country.
As one could probably tell by my own descriptions, I was actually hard-pressed to find the “Hamiltonian Left.” Seems like Compact and this Blog are the only examples, and it is not like The Fourth Estate was a particularly popular publication to begin with. Trying to ascertain the reason behind the minuscule existence of the Hamiltonian Left in comparison to the Hamiltonian Right, I consulted two articles from last year to find my answer. After all, Compact appeared around the same time as those two articles.
The most obvious answer from the Blue Labour-Red Tory coterie in Britain is that America lacks a true “Left Post-Liberalism” to complement its “Right Post-Liberalism.” If the American Right’s Post-Liberalism has been a sort of National Conservatism and Catholic Integralism, then what exactly would the Left Post-Liberalism be? This has been the conclusion of the British political economist Adrian Pabst, who is one of the foremost proponents of that milieu in the UK. His argument is that the absence of one is due to the fact that the English-speaking world is waiting for the emergence of a “new social theory” that would redesign the gains of Post-Liberalism into something palatable to the any conceivable Political Left.
From Pabst’s perspective, any true Post-Liberal Left cannot and should not try to embark on a program of synthesizing the economic system of Dengist China with the political system of contemporary Poland and Hungary. If any genuine Left-Hamiltonians were to implement such a synthesis, we would end up becoming Liberal Reactionaries. The Socialist Market Economy, a low-tier Planned Economy was just that–a Chinese birdcage that should not be recreated elsewhere as a compromise. As for the inverse, promoting the Market/Mixed Economy with appeals to Social Conservatism does not distinguish the Post-Liberal Left in any meaningful way.
“While words like ‘solidarity,’ ‘relational,’ ‘place,’ ‘community,’ and ‘common good’ suggest common cause with the political theorists of the postliberal right mentioned above, Pabst also indicts some of the same politicians and movements these figures hold up as part of a nascent postliberal politics. Hungary and Poland, we are told by Pabst, are not really postliberal, because these states rely on ‘fiscal dumping’—a term used to denote the (supposedly) temporary boost to economies that lower their tax rates below neighboring nations to attract foreign investment. Such tactics, Pabst argues, demonstrate the subservience of Law and Justice in Poland or Fidesz in Hungary to the exigencies of global capitalism.”
Back in America, Julius Krein did write another article for American Affairs in the Fall 2022 issue, entitled “The Other Realignment.” In it, he mentioned that there are intellectual currents among American Progressives to simultaneously reject the excesses of Social Liberalism and Economic Liberalism, but their views are a tiny minority among the broader Progressive movement. Some, I feel, come across as being a little too Jeffersonian for my liking, as if they are trying too hard to appeal to the Democrats and failing at it. After all, it seems like these intellectual currents would prefer the Democrats rekindling its earlier New Deal and Great Society past, which they had abandoned after the 1984 Presidential Election.
The actual American Left, meanwhile, is stuck between whether to continue being dominated by Jeffersonian thought or whether to deviate from the Democrats and begin adopting Hamiltonianism. A serious and coherent program has yet to be envisaged by them, a program that would envisage them working together with the American Right. It remains to be seen if there will ever be a genuine realignment of priorities on the American Left, especially those who are uninvolved in the affairs of the Democrats.
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