Republicanism and Bourgeois Radicalism: Political Ideology in Late Eighteenth-Century England and America

Rating:
Summary: Seek out this book.
Review: This book is one of the best books I have read on the ideology of the revolutionary and constitutional periods in American history. It deserves to be read alongside the works of Gordon Woods, J.G.A. Pocock, Joyce Appleby, Bernard Bailyn and all the others who have done so much to reveal to us the full complexity of that marvelous period of time.
This period of our history has undergone an extended period of bitter contestation in the last few decades. At one point, the predominant interpretation of this period was that it was one of Lockean liberalism. The theory was argued by historians as different as Leo Strauss, C.B. Macpherson and Louis Hartz. Then came the extraordinary work of Woods, Bailyn and Pocock as well as Carolyn Robbins, Douglass Adair and others. This work suggested that the American Revolution was perhaps best seen as the last act of a renaissance political philosophy- the republican politics of civic humanism.
Whitehead once suggested that the history of philosophy could be seen as a series of footnotes to Plato and Aristotle. Perhaps the historiography of the American Revolutionary and Federalist Periods for the last thirty or so years could best be seen as a series of footnotes to Hartz and Pocock.
Kramnick seems to me to suggest the best answer to this debate: everybody's right. The founding fathers and mothers were extraordinary people and we do them a disservice if we see them as single minded ideologues. We want to use them as trump cards in current political and ideological debates but they are more, much more than that.
Yes, many of them were Whigs who saw the politics of their times in terms of the corruption of political or civic virtue. But many of these same were Protestants and budding capitalists who were starting to define virtue in terms of the industriousness, the abiltiy and talent of the individual. Kramnick is an excellent guide to the interplay of these diverse ideologies. He wants to reassert the importance of Locke. I think he is right to do so. It is hard to read the writings of those times and not hear the echos of Locke. One can hear it in the writings of Jefferson, of Madison, of Paine, of Hamilton, of James Burgh.
This book is a sure and fair minded guide both to the historigraphical debate and to the period in question. Kramnick is to be congradulated on his modesty. Unlike many intellectuals, he seems to know that his ideas have limits and that others may be as good or better guides to some of the issues he discusses.
It is a shame that this book is out of print and only available as a used book. If you love this period of our history, if you are fascinated by the intersection of political philosophy, practical theory of governance, assertion of the primacy of individual liberty (usually by slave owners), the protection of class and property interests, by all the wild contradictions that this period offers, this book is for you. Read it alongside Woods, Adair, Pocock, Powers and all the others who are trying to lay out for us that wonderful and strange brew that is the history of those times.
p.s. I thought it might be useful to give y'all a Table of Contents:
Preface
1. Liberalism, the Middle Class and Republican Revisionism

Part One
Bourgeoise Radicalism and English Dissent
2. Religion and Radicalism: The Political Theory of Dissent
3. Joseph Priestley's Scientific Liberalism
4. Children's Literature and Bourgeoise Ideology
5. Tom Paine: Radical Liberal

Part Two
Republican Revisionism and Anglo-American Ideology
6. Republican Revisionism Revisited
7. James Burgh and "Opposition" Ideology in England and American
8. "The Great National Discussion": The Discourse of Politics in 1787.
9. "Then All the World Would Be Upside Down"

Index