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The Liberal Tradition in America
Hartz’s influential interpretation of american political thought since the Revolution. He contends that americanca gave rise to a new concept of a liberal society, a “liberal tradition” that has been central to our experience of events both at home and abroad. New Introduction by Tom Wicker; Index.
348 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1955
About the author
Louis Hartz
11 books8 followersAmerican political scientist and influential liberal proponent of the idea of American exceptionalism.
Hartz is best known for his classic book The Liberal Tradition in America (1955) which presented a view of America's past that sought to explain its conspicuous absence of ideologies. Hartz argued that American political development occurs within the context of an enduring, underlying Lockean liberal consensus, which has shaped and narrowed the landscape of possibilities for U.S. political thought and behavior. He attributed the triumph of the liberal worldview in America to its lack of a feudal past, and thus the absence of a struggle to overcome a conservative internal order; to its vast resources and open space; and to the liberal values of the original settlers, who represented only a narrow middle-class slice of European society.
Hartz was chiefly concerned with explaining the failure of socialism to become established in America, and believed that Americans' pervasive, unthinking consensual acceptance of classic liberalism was the major barrier. Hartz rejected Marxism, indeed turned it upside down, finding in the power of an idea the explanation of that inexplicable nonevent for Marxists, the absence of socialism in America.
In The Founding of New Societies (1964), Hartz developed the idea that the nations that developed from settler colonies were European "fragments" that in a sense froze the class structure and underlying ideology prevalent in the mother country at the time of their foundation, not experiencing the further evolution experienced in Europe. He considered Latin America and French Canada to be fragments of feudal Europe, the United States, English Canada, and Dutch South Africa to be liberal fragments, and Australia and English South Africa to be "radical" fragments (incorporating the non-Socialist working class radicalism of early 19th century Britain).
Hartz is best known for his classic book The Liberal Tradition in America (1955) which presented a view of America's past that sought to explain its conspicuous absence of ideologies. Hartz argued that American political development occurs within the context of an enduring, underlying Lockean liberal consensus, which has shaped and narrowed the landscape of possibilities for U.S. political thought and behavior. He attributed the triumph of the liberal worldview in America to its lack of a feudal past, and thus the absence of a struggle to overcome a conservative internal order; to its vast resources and open space; and to the liberal values of the original settlers, who represented only a narrow middle-class slice of European society.
Hartz was chiefly concerned with explaining the failure of socialism to become established in America, and believed that Americans' pervasive, unthinking consensual acceptance of classic liberalism was the major barrier. Hartz rejected Marxism, indeed turned it upside down, finding in the power of an idea the explanation of that inexplicable nonevent for Marxists, the absence of socialism in America.
In The Founding of New Societies (1964), Hartz developed the idea that the nations that developed from settler colonies were European "fragments" that in a sense froze the class structure and underlying ideology prevalent in the mother country at the time of their foundation, not experiencing the further evolution experienced in Europe. He considered Latin America and French Canada to be fragments of feudal Europe, the United States, English Canada, and Dutch South Africa to be liberal fragments, and Australia and English South Africa to be "radical" fragments (incorporating the non-Socialist working class radicalism of early 19th century Britain).
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
January 26, 2012
The uniqueness of the American political experience is that, lacking an ancien régime, we never had a social revolution, says Hartz, following de Tocqueville; we were "born equal." (I know, forget about slavery.) Unlike in Europe, there was no old structure for Americans to rebel against and destroy. This is why socialism never took hold in America. Our "national liberal faith," our "colossal liberal absolutism" (rooted in Locke), obviated the need for it.
This is a very fine-grained analysis of American political philosophies from colonial days up through the New Deal. About 75% of it sailed over my head, because Hartz presumes a working knowledge not just of Locke and a few other big names, but also dozens of smaller theorists, as well as knowledge of American and European political history. He name drops like crazy: Maistre, Filmer, Beard, Guizot, Fitzhugh, Babeuf, Bellamy, Mahan, Otis, just to mention a handful. If their names don't summon up the corresponding philosophies, good luck to you. He analyzes, but he doesn't explain. Though his writing style is engaging and his language clear, this is a work packed with allusions, for someone who already has a deep familiarity with the subject matter.
This is a very fine-grained analysis of American political philosophies from colonial days up through the New Deal. About 75% of it sailed over my head, because Hartz presumes a working knowledge not just of Locke and a few other big names, but also dozens of smaller theorists, as well as knowledge of American and European political history. He name drops like crazy: Maistre, Filmer, Beard, Guizot, Fitzhugh, Babeuf, Bellamy, Mahan, Otis, just to mention a handful. If their names don't summon up the corresponding philosophies, good luck to you. He analyzes, but he doesn't explain. Though his writing style is engaging and his language clear, this is a work packed with allusions, for someone who already has a deep familiarity with the subject matter.
March 4, 2015
This is a really difficult book that would probably work better as an essay. Still, the main idea is really interesting. Hartz is trying to understand why the liberal tradition has been so dominant in American politics and culture and why Americans never developed a genuine socialist or fascist movement (i.e. politics between the 40 yard lines). Hartz does a disservice to his readers by not defining the liberal tradition, but he basically means that American politics has always followed the basic ideas of Locke, and all major parties have been within his classically liberal ideas. This separates America drastically from Europe, which has a far wider political spectrum. The task of the book is to explain this difference.
Hartz argues that the key to America's exceptional political tradition is the lack of a feudal past. As de Tocqueville says: "The great advantage of the Americans is that they have arrived at a state of democracy without having to endure a democratic revolution; and that they are born equal, instead of becoming so." The basic condition of male equality (leaving out women, slaves, and indentured servants, of course) meant that there never had to be a social revolution to even out the class structure, as most European societies experienced. Even if America wasn't liberal from the beginning, it became so rather quickly, and liberalism became an almost reflexive creed that Americans could hardly recognize in themselves because it was so ingrained. The lack of a feudal past and the basic condition of equal citizenship meant that the class consciousness on which socialism could rise was absent. Hartz says this is the ultimate reason why socialism never took hold in the US, even in terrible economic downturns such as the Great Depression. Europe, in contrast, had a far more class-driven politics because of its feudal past and the persistence of aristocratic power well into the late 19th century.
While the ideas in this book are fascinating, most of the book is really confusing. Hartz just name drops a lot of philosophers and political figures in a way that only a few experts could understand. His intellectual snobbery seemed to have prevented him from writing an intelligible book. If you want to get Hartz's argument, I recommend finding some readings about it rather than actually reading it.
Final comment: This and other books (especially Hofstadter) are in both the consensus and American exceptionalism schools of history. Having read these books, I've come to the conclusion that there are 2 types of exceptionalism: dumb and empirical. Dumb exceptionalism is the idea that America is just so special and awesome. Most politicians kowtow to this idea whether or not they actually believe in it because most American people except it. However, too many historians write against exceptionalism and don't take the more empirical version of exceptionalism seriously. Hofstadter, Hartz, and Wood have shown that American history really did develop in a very different direction than Europe and the rest of the world. The lack of a feudal past is a plausible way to think about this difference, as is the presence and impact of the frontier. They are hard ideas to prove, but they should be read and wrestled with rather than dismissed out of hand because (let's face it) they are not the most politically palatable ideas at the moment.
Hartz argues that the key to America's exceptional political tradition is the lack of a feudal past. As de Tocqueville says: "The great advantage of the Americans is that they have arrived at a state of democracy without having to endure a democratic revolution; and that they are born equal, instead of becoming so." The basic condition of male equality (leaving out women, slaves, and indentured servants, of course) meant that there never had to be a social revolution to even out the class structure, as most European societies experienced. Even if America wasn't liberal from the beginning, it became so rather quickly, and liberalism became an almost reflexive creed that Americans could hardly recognize in themselves because it was so ingrained. The lack of a feudal past and the basic condition of equal citizenship meant that the class consciousness on which socialism could rise was absent. Hartz says this is the ultimate reason why socialism never took hold in the US, even in terrible economic downturns such as the Great Depression. Europe, in contrast, had a far more class-driven politics because of its feudal past and the persistence of aristocratic power well into the late 19th century.
While the ideas in this book are fascinating, most of the book is really confusing. Hartz just name drops a lot of philosophers and political figures in a way that only a few experts could understand. His intellectual snobbery seemed to have prevented him from writing an intelligible book. If you want to get Hartz's argument, I recommend finding some readings about it rather than actually reading it.
Final comment: This and other books (especially Hofstadter) are in both the consensus and American exceptionalism schools of history. Having read these books, I've come to the conclusion that there are 2 types of exceptionalism: dumb and empirical. Dumb exceptionalism is the idea that America is just so special and awesome. Most politicians kowtow to this idea whether or not they actually believe in it because most American people except it. However, too many historians write against exceptionalism and don't take the more empirical version of exceptionalism seriously. Hofstadter, Hartz, and Wood have shown that American history really did develop in a very different direction than Europe and the rest of the world. The lack of a feudal past is a plausible way to think about this difference, as is the presence and impact of the frontier. They are hard ideas to prove, but they should be read and wrestled with rather than dismissed out of hand because (let's face it) they are not the most politically palatable ideas at the moment.
December 17, 2015
Fascinating one of the best modern american philosophers who is vastly undervalued in my opinion.
November 1, 2022
OG American exceptionalism boi - argues that it's the unique combination of lack of feudalism and liberalism that made America exceptional; that its status as the museum hall of Europe (to quote George Steiner), by monumentally unifying it under liberalism, made it such that a socialist movement had until then (1955, at the time of writing) never appeared in the U.S. This last claim is so patently wrong that I can't help but feel like I'm misreading Hartz (who's brilliant), for this is the same country in which Eugene V. Debs got 6% of the vote while running as a socialist from prison, and if there's a reason socialism hasn't taken heed in America it seems likelier to me that it's because of the McCarthyism and the repression, not some theory about the ur-make up of the polity.
January 18, 2018
don't read this unless you have a relatively extensive background in history. it refers to many thinkers without discussing the content of their ideas. hard to read.
April 17, 2016
Definitely a book for specialists. Hartz writes for other faculty in the common room or gentlemen in the club (the utter absence of women from the text is just one striking thing about it). Here's a sample of the prose: "Jackson was not another edition of Flocon, Jefferson another version of Ledru-Rollin." Grammatically, such a sentence is fairly clear; in terms of content, it is opaque to anyone who doesn't have a fairly thorough understanding of the political careers of a (now) obscure republican anti-monarchist and a man of the people journalist in nineteenth-century France AND can intuit the corresponding _lack_ of parallels that Hartz wants to insist on here. In other words, here be dragons. Having said all that, someone should make a present of this to Thomas Frank. All his impassioned handwringing and head-scratching about why his fellow middle- and lower-class Kansans continue to vote against their economic interests for the Republican party is answered by the general terms of Hartz' thesis, viz., Americans labor under an (often) unconscious allegiance to the writings of Locke, producing a liberal consensus that eviscerates attempts to generate strong ideologies from the left or the right. There's more to it than that, of course, but that's the basic argument. Hartz wrote partly in response to Charles A. Beard and other historians who wished to provide a more economically-oriented reading of American history and, in general terms, Hartz won the argument. The terms of the Lockean liberal consensus he saw has, in the view of many, eroded. Nevertheless, it would be fascinating to think through what Hartz might make of the reshaping (or shaping) of American political ideologies in response to the perceived threat of terrorism—the so called Islamo-fascist angle hawked in some quarters. One suspects (or perhaps just hopes) that he would put paid to the shriller and more hysterical versions of this argument. In any case, this book is not recommended for general readers unless they are prepared to take a crash course (more than a mere Wikipedia summary can provide) of a host of writers from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
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October 4, 2014A 'consensus' historian deeply concerned by American consensus. Suggests that because America did not experience feudalism, it knows only liberalism, yet is unconscious of its Liberal tradition. For Hartz, "the basic ethical problem of a liberal society" is "not the danger of the majority, which has been its conscious fear, but the danger of unanimity." (11). Due to our lack of real liberal or conservative traditions (there is no true conservatism, as American 'conservatism' seeks to 'conserve' a document—the Constitution—that in its essence seeks to undermine conservatism), American disagreements have tended to be surface, between people who do not realize that they essentially agree on every point. In times of crisis or times of external threats (here Hartz was thinking of the Cold War, though this insight is applicable to any number of periods of American history), America "transforms eccentricity into a sin." (12). Ultimately, the real threat comes from our unconscious liberal consensus, leading to placidity and docility.
July 15, 2008
Not what it sounds like. Kind of a hard read, as it references a ton of other sources casually and without background info, making it difficult to follow. But a VERY interesting political perspective that redefines (or rather, accurately defines) what the liberal tradition is. Hint: it has nothing to do with Democrats or Republicans.
August 12, 2015
A comparative look at "Americanism" that shows that Americanism is difficult to compare with. Hartz writes a beautiful in-depth analysis on a nation that was - in the words of Tocqueville - born equal.
December 16, 2007
Smart guy, good writer, offbeat thesis.
August 26, 2008
a masterpiece...
January 16, 2009
A dry read, but one with significant points as to the contradictory nature of America's creation; one without true revolution or its consequences.
August 12, 2011
This book was rather eye-opening. Hartz may not be popular now, but he has not been wholly disproven either. Offers an excellent counter to the republican craze of recent historians.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews