The following review is part of RealClear Books and Culture's symposium on Patrick Deneen's 'Regime Change.'
A hundred years from today imagine the United States looks something like this: to accommodate a growing population, the lower chamber expands to some 1000 elected representatives and our electoral process switches from a primary to a caucus-based system. Our nation’s federal reserve board includes seats designated for wage earners, and the remaining farmers and small business owners; a countervailing force to an institution typically dominated by elite former investment bankers. Domestic manufacturing is achieved at whatever cost. Atrophying private sector labor unions reverse course and are supplemented by large private firms acquiescing to European models of works councils. Instead of being concentrated in Washington, D.C., federal agency headquarters are spread across the United States, providing the opportunity for a new generation of public servants who don’t have to uproot their entire lives and relocate to serve their country.
In return, every United States citizen once they reach adulthood, is obligated to spend a year of their lives serving their country in the military. Higher education financing reforms are adopted: for the vast majority of college students who attend public institutions, federal funding rates are increased with the expectation that faculty and administrators are restrained from engaging in activism. College students at elite institutions are nudged to pursue careers outside finance, consulting, and white shoe law firms, with the incentive of generous student loan forgiveness programs for lower-paid, but valuable local and regional professional vocations.
In this world, pornography is banned. Illegal immigration is curtailed, not only by deterrence and enforcement strategies, but by a “moral media” which shames employers for hiring illegal immigrants. Social programming is shepherded by a cabinet-level official in the federal government, a “family czar,” who advises other bureaucrats on whether the government is practicing a “common-good conservatism,” for example, intentionally crafting social policy which promotes heterosexual nuclear family units. Imagine a conservative version of Ibram X. Kendi’s call for a “Department of Anti-Racism.”
This is the future Patrick Deneen offers to Regime Change’s narrowly targeted audience: America’s liberal ruling class. He defines this class as a mixture of progressive and classical liberals, best understood as an amalgamation of left and right-wing professionals, who manipulate “abstract data” for maximum efficiency in whatever domain they labor in. These two groups, typically understood as antagonistic with competing interests, Deneen says, are partners in the liberal project.
Classical liberals—the Mitt Romneys and Bill Clintons of our era—are the progenitors for the source of economic dislocation. Meanwhile, progressive liberals, Deneen says, are manifestations of what the political philosopher John Stuart Mill called “experiments in living,” those whose existence departed and rejected custom. In other words, gender and sexual fluidity in all their various forms. Liberalism’s social and economic wings, according to Deneen, are not in conflict, but are self-reinforcing and iterative projects.
Despite obviously being written for an elite audience, the only viable vessel Deneen sees that can actualize his ideal society is the New Right. He gives a nod to leftists from a previous era, but sees them today ultimately as unqualified to usher in a postliberal order for two main reasons: they will never compromise on social and cultural issues—which is true. But Deneen’s other revulsion against leftists reveals more about the political life he imagines, than about the leftists he finds annoying.
While Deneen admires the Marxian instinct of identifying the working class as a source of power, he sees Marxism’s requirement of class consciousness among the masses as another shade of the liberal project’s conception of “progress.” This time, in the form of revolution. If you spend time with contemporary socialists, it’s clear that most venues in life are opportunities for organizing, whether that takes shape as tenant, labor, or direct-action efforts. Beyond material circumstances, each has the broad goal of class consciousness.
This is unacceptable for Deneen. The masses should not be engaged in perpetual revolution. Instead, he believes the working class craves stability and continuity, which can only be marshaled by carrying forward the customs and practices from premodern institutions he says have eroded under liberalism: the church, family, and localized communities.
Deneen rejects damn near everything liberalism has touched, including how time itself is understood. Meaning that liberalism’s belief that the only path forward is the future, which by definition is infinite, is another example of the ideology’s insistence on continuous progress. The point is pedantic, yes. But it makes sense as Deneen laces the book with insights from the American environmentalist Wendell Berry, known for his insistence on humanity’s inherent limits.
Deneen’s illustrative example of this new hegemony takes place in Indiana. In 2015, the state passed a religious freedom law modeled after various federal and state laws. Critics of the religious freedom bill painted it as a greenlight for Indiana businesses to deny services to LGBT individuals. Meanwhile, its proponents said the bill promoted religious liberty. At the same time, high-profile cases involving bakers and photographers who refused services for same-sex marriages were underway. Deneen explains how national political leaders and major corporations such as Apple and Salesforce condemned Indiana for passing the bill, while in some cases, even some critics had similar religious freedom laws on their books.
Deneen’s point here is that liberal social goals got the ball rolling and turned Indiana into a national controversy. The next thing that happened, when major corporations threatened to pull back their economic presence in the state, was only possible because of the former. It was a feature of capitalism, not a bug.
Furthermore, Deneen uses this example to explain the differences between “enlightened corporate policy” versus the “vilification of a small family-owned business that found itself on the other side of the approved narratives.” He’s essentially digging at the liberal elites who fawn over corporations who nominally share their social politics. The disdain and discomfort Deneen says the liberal elite share toward the masses is real. It was a common refrain just a few years ago to hear about people cutting off contact with family members for voting for Trump. Of course, not every person who triggered a short-sighted family feud is a member of the ruling class.
But Deneen has his finger on the pulse of how mass culture under liberalism simultaneously promises maximal freedom and individual expression, sacrificing traditions and customs from previous generations.
Taken together, Regime Change is frustrating because we do have what feels like a pathetic ruling class doing everything possible to preserve its status from critique, in the name of “diversity, equity, and inclusion.” But I’m not convinced that sexuality or gender fluidity are why we cannot have nice things. And my inner-Marxist tendencies tell me that even as Deneen cites various decreasing quality of life indicators, the only way out of this is through mass politics, which requires raising class consciousness—not a restrained, passive working class whose noble vibes rub onto the elites ruling over them.
In the end, the programmatic solutions Deneen offers in the book’s final third feel tacked on for the sake of providing some sort of clean-cut conclusion. Yes, it’s a blueprint for the New Right. And it’s impactful when “important” people in Washington take notice of your work. But it’s hard to imagine how a marginal group of Republicans will take power in Washington long enough to remake society in Deneen’s image.
Jarod Facundo is a reporter for the policy and politics magazine The American Prospect. He covers politics, business, and labor.
Oliver Bateman's contribution to the symposium: Yearning for Collapse | RealClearBooks
Emmet Penney's contribution to the symposium: The European Obsession | RealClearBooks
