Suicide of the West: An Essay on the Meaning and Destiny of Liberalism

Suicide of the West: An Essay on the Meaning and Destiny of Liberalism by James Burnham. Hardcover: 320 pages.

Suicide of the West: An Essay on the Meaning and Destiny of Liberalism by James Burnham is a trenchant critique of modern secular liberalism, which Burnham characterizes as the ideology of Western suicide. "Liberalism," observes Burnham, "is the ideology of Western suicide." Why? Liberalism presents a false anthropology of human nature, seeing mankind as essentially good, but in need of liberation from social problems rooted in tradition, prejudice and ignorance. Liberalism appealed to the politics of guilt. Its ideological nostrums of egalitarianism and social justice meant the suicide of the West, he postulated, and the inevitable contraction of Western culture, power and social stability.

Burnham was apt to invoke the pessimism of Alexis de Tocqueville in his nineteenth century work Democracy in America, in which he presciently foresaw democracy's deterioration: "After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp, and fashioned them at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community." And here we find Tocqueville's prototypical critique of the managerial state: "It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided: men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting: such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd." Such a view animated Burnham's critique of the managerial state.

Burnham himself was a political pessimist who had abandoned the doctrinaire Marxism of his youth to become a conservative stalwart, and ironically his youthful flirtation with Marxist ideology nonetheless profoundly colored and shaped his perception of reality. His historiography was itself gripped with the notion of a vigorous struggle between the beleaguered West and vigorous communism. Burnham respected communist ideology, not for its merits or virtue, but for the spirit of self-sacrifice embraced by its most zealous adherents. The West had lost its virtues of heroism and self-sacrifice so vitally requisite to contain and overwhelm communism, he held.

The virus in the West was according to Burnham, liberalism, which was an ideology in complete capitulation to communism, for it disarmed the West of its core values needed to engage communism on cultural, economic, intellectual, moral, political and social fronts.

For Burnham, communism as an ideology, despite the misery it wrought, had appeal to the intellectual class, for it incited virtues of self-sacrifice, mobilized the masses, and gave history significance in manner that liberal democracy simply could not accomplish.

Burnham despite his notorious political pessimism esteemed a civic republicanism and cherished freedom, individualism and private property. Liberalism to Burnham represented disfigured values of the West, and its brand of individualism was a crass selfish sort that naturally yielded to collectivism.

Despite the intellectual, moral and political collapse of communism as a viable ideology, Burnham's spirited critique from the post-WWII era is still worth reading over for political conservatives. It's not flawless by any stretch of the imagination, but the analysis is worth considering nonetheless. It reflects the insecurities of the Cold War era, and offers a prescient vision of society in capitulation to liberalism. To be sure, Burnham may have been right to perceive liberalism as a greater threat to the West than communism. Communism never held a grip on the West; whereas, liberalism has the West in a stranglehold.