In politics, two main paths of thought have emerged. The first is reality-oriented: seeking the best possible solution in the light of our circumstances and experience. The other path considers politics in the light of perfection: it is not concerned with what is but with what ought to be. This famous distinction between paths or approaches is associated with Aristotle and Plato—and, since antiquity, they have defined political science as either analytical/descriptive or normative/prescriptive.
Both approaches fit with a basic characteristic of human nature: the first seeks to make a viable choice in the face of given conditions, while the second strives for perfection. There are pitfalls involved with both mindsets: the realist can easily become an opportunist, reconciling himself with evils that he should perhaps stand against. He can consciously close his mind and give up the need to improve the status quo. The idealist, on the other hand, is often accused of not taking reality into account: he sets goals that are guaranteed to lead to failure. Both realism and idealism are inherent impulses in our psyche, and together they constitute human wholeness, since we need one or the other, whether in politics or in other areas of our lives.
Most of the work of the Hungarian philosopher Thomas Molnar (1921-2010) was about false forms of idealism. In his view, the idealist commits a grievous error when he does not keep the good, the true, and the beautiful firmly in mind, and instead adheres only to a copy or imitation of them—such as, for example, human reason (instead of divine wisdom), ideology (instead of religion), and the welfare society (instead of the Kingdom of Heaven). His work is fundamentally important precisely because he touches on all these themes.
Last year, another important book by Molnar was posthumously published in Hungarian: Az amerikai életforma: Az ideális állam kritikája (The American Way of Life: A Critique of the Ideal State). The book is an edited version of a long lecture he gave on the search for the ideal state in the United States. It deals with two forms of false idealism—and is written with such clarity and precision, that the reader immediately recognizes their present-day forms. In the text, Molnar presents the historical background for the perennial search for the ideal state and describes the development of this ideal state in the U.S., specifically, where he spent much of his life. In the course of this, he asks: how did such utopian thinking develop—and how does it relate to its theological and philosophical antecedents?
Molnar’s thesis is that the push to create a paradise on earth is, simply put, a political heresy. His other works describe this phenomenon in great detail. In The Decline of the Intellectual (1961), he provides a history of its social morphology. In Utopia: The Perennial Heresy (1967), he focuses on the political-theological context of the phenomenon. The nature of power, the relationship between the state and the divine sphere, and the interaction between the state and the church are all also recurring themes in his many works—especially in Twin Powers: Politics and the Sacred (1988), The Pagan Temptation (1987), The Church: Pilgrim of Centuries (1990), Authority and Its Enemies (1976), and The Counter-Revolution (1969). But it is a central undertaking in The American Way of Life: Critique of the Ideal State.
In all these works, Molnar recognizes that the fundamental questions of political philosophy have remained the same since Plato: Whence does power come? Who holds it? And on what basis? Of course, during the Age of Enlightenment, we saw the dawn of explicitly anti-Christian political theologies. But the most influential and corrosive of these was Comte’s positivism, which was at once a scientific program, a political ideology, and a religious sect. Molnar summarizes these various intellectual developments in the following way:
We have seen a spreading torrent, whose early philosophers still mix the language of the past and the future, of science and prophetism. Saint-Simon writes at the beginning of the 19th century that henceforth mankind will work consciously towards the goal which it has hitherto pursued only vaguely. This line points towards industrialisation and a scientifically organised state, which will soon abolish the old hierarchy of princes and bishops, a vain and useless class of men, and replace them all with industrial entrepreneurs and engineers. In order to achieve this, Saint-Simon and his former disciple Auguste Comte proclaimed a ‘new Christianity’ based on science and mysticism. … Slightly ahead of Saint-Simon and Comte … [was] Condorcet [who] wrote a [summary] history of the development of the human spirit, dividing it into ages, like Joachim of Fiore’s work six centuries earlier, with philosophers increasingly as effective leaders. Let us note that Joachim intended monks to be leaders, while Condorcet intended philosophers and Saint-Simon to be industrialists! In other words, social planning has increasingly become laicized—although its theme remains the same: to organise the state in such a way as to ensure the greatest possible happiness. Happiness here is already synonymous with material efficiency, with technical preparedness.
From this trajectory, one sees that the Enlightenment, partly as a result of scientific discoveries, has led to the birth of the ‘civil ideology’ of liberalism. This new ideology saw absolutism—as well as the social and political influence of the Catholic Church—as the main problem to be ‘eliminated.’ It is worth noting that in Molnar’s works, the ‘civil society’ that embodies that civil ideology refers not to natural, grass-roots communities, foundations, associations, sports clubs, or spontaneous associations of citizens but to the powerful agents of capitalism.
Liberalism—having given greater value to the idea of freedom and religious tolerance (thus undermining the Church’s social authority)—then had to face myriad consequences. One of these was socialism, which came to the fore with the promise of holding together a rapidly disintegrating Western society. By this time, the only new opponent of liberalism was the totalitarian state. Molnar, however, characteristically considered such reductionist terminology misleading, arguing with greater nuance that:
[t]he communist state is not in fact a state but a party regime that has appropriated society and has encroached on its very foundations. Criticism of totalitarianism tends to favour those who want to defend civil society against the abuses of the state and at the same time to keep the state within narrow limits.
The other branch or product of the civil ideology of liberalism, says Molnar, is one that seeks to impose a fiction quite similar to communism—that of equality, usually identified with justice. This has produced the egalitarian society, of which the U.S. is an exemplary exponent. Molnar, quoting Tocqueville, explains that egalitarian societies
place as much weight on the individual, on originality, on diversity, as the totalitarian state. In the former, of course, there is no one-party system and no party monopoly; but there is constant pressure, all the more irritating because it is anonymous, hidden, its sources not always identifiable. In this way, it could be said that, unlike the total system, proponents of the ideal society want to usurp state power by replacing it with a general bureaucracy without any ideology. This is to be done apparently more gently than in a totalitarian systems, but in essence the neoliberal society also suppresses—or at least seeks to exclude—dissent.
A third consequence of liberalism is construction of the ‘world state,’ of which the U.S. is a model. In the world state, the nation-state ceases to exist and its responsibilities are reduced to the merely symbolic. It thus is no longer relevant whether the Marxist state devours society or whether civil society absorbs the liberal state. Both aim to establish and perpetuate an ‘ideal’: a unified collectivist system. This, however, is only possible if the system acts with a total, religious claim. As Molnar points out:
The aim is to eliminate time in such a way that it is not saturated with unforeseen events and that absolute power over time can be exercised. It is essential that passions be removed from man, or at least limited and controlled, since passion is the main source of the unforeseeable. There are two great passions that utopia seeks to regulate above all: sexuality and the desire to get rich.
In all his works, Molnar prophetically anticipates many of the trends we are living with today (such as transhumanism). He argues that as science has spread its findings and gained unprecedented authority through mechanisation, the impatience of its users with natural limits has grown. They believe that scientific interventions—such as medical interventions—can ensure both physical and mental transformations (and improvements). They believe that such interventions can also transform the soul: if new organs can be implanted in the human body, it should also be possible to create an entirely new personality according to a comprehensive, well-thought out plan. (Such large-scale human experiments are now taking place in the U.S., a country where Molnar himself lived most of his life.) At the same time, there has been a radically levelling of differences between peoples, religions, and sexes.
So, why is the history of American society unfolding in this way? What is the reason for this? The answer, according to Molnar, lies in the unique history of the U.S. and its imperial ambitions. An empire, Molnar has written, can only perpetuate its power over subjugated territories if it can establish and spread its own culture there. If that culture is stable, rule over others can endure and conquered peoples can even be assimilated. But if it is unstable—if its resources are not plentiful, if its intellectual-sociological contours are not clear—then rule will be precarious, and will be at the mercy of military and economic factors. It will also need constant justification because the conquered will not identify with it internally. The present cultural transformations in the U.S. are, therefore, an exercise in power. But it is not yet clear what the real purpose is.
According to the late American thinker Russell Kirk, just as the Roman Empire was the culmination of antiquity, the United States represents the synthesis of Western civilisation. In other words, the U.S. is the most successful attempt to reconcile freedom, order, and justice. And this has been possible because the ‘roots of American order’ (the title of Kirk’s classic 1974 work) are also the roots or pillars of Western culture: the theological tradition of the Bible, the ancient philosophy of the Hellenes, the Roman patriotic and imperial myth, and British high culture in its entirety (i.e., its legal and institutional traditions, its literature, educational system, etc.). On these foundations stands a great empire—the last bastion of the old order, Christendom—which was shattered in 1914.
In sharp contrast to this understanding, Molnar argues that American society does not rest on any ancient subsoil. On the contrary, he argues that it has broken away from that tradition summarised by Kirk. In fact, for many decades now, its most important feature has been the uncertainty resulting from the constant renegotiation of the social contract, underpinned by an absolute cult of equality. In addition, the constant pursuit of egalitarianism entails a constant redefinition of the concept of democracy—which is a challenge for elected politicians (and a source of anxiety for social scientists).
Because of this, Molnar sees the sociologist as the unofficial legislator of American society. He has a huge responsibility in shaping American policy, as the sociologist seeks out, identifies, and finds new ‘disadvantaged’ groups to integrate into society. The sociologist, says Molnar, is an undemocratically elected spiritual leader of American society, and one of the most important formulators of political tasks (of what needs to be done). And, according to Molnar, in the U.S. these roles are permanent (though the scenery changes incessantly). This can be seen readily in the products of mass culture, which in the U.S. become obsolete as quickly as everything else: manners, taste, or political views. All of this, however, is hidden from the eyes of Americans by intellectual fashions dictated from above.
The American settlement is thus regulated by unwritten norms, says Molnar, who calls such norms ‘formulae.’ It is these formulae that maintain American society “at once excited and monotonous,” as Tocqueville—one of the Molnar’s main inspirations—put it. American lives are dominated by automatisms, which can be seen in gestures, slogans, figures of speech, shopping, and dressing habits. Such automatisms pervade the organisation of science as well as many aspects of our social lives—and act as unwritten rules that bind the mind.
Molnar argues that these aspects of American society stem from an ideological undercurrent of puritanism. Its most important characteristics are a sense of exceptionality, a sense of purity, a sense of mission, and a rigid regularity resulting from some kind of ‘bad conscience.’ All of these are distorted and secularised features of Christianity, of course, which ultimately produce a caricature-like ersatz religion. The dogmas of such a religion are constantly changing, but its formal characteristics and its coerciveness never do. Thus, the form of the current American ideology is the only valid one; and the content of democracy currently in force in every other country in the world is now the norm (though they all lag behind the U.S.). Maintaining such a dynamic, however, requires a constant reinterpretation of history. So, everything that was valid yesterday is now characterised as obsolete, outdated, or based on error.
Given the above, Molnar also has things to say about the trope of ‘American freedom,’ which is highly relative. He observes that American citizens live their lives on very thin soil, on a prefabricated scenery. The most important realm for them is business, which is the most profound expression of the American way of life. It is a system that creates individual and social values. People born in America even think of religion in the language of business. It is no wonder that neither the university nor any other institutions of the cultural sphere can escape its totalitarian influence. Businesses and corporations—with their utilitarian and metrics-driven approach—are in league with managerial democracy, and wherever U.S. influence prevails, it shapes everything. Molnar describes this very process in his L’Europe entre parenthèses (1990), where he describes how the whole world has been Americanised—especially subjugated, re-colonised Europe.
American civilisation has always had icons who personified the fashion of the moment. In the 1950s, they were businessmen, who they were placed at the head of the country’s universities. But they were soon supplanted by progressive intellectuals and then, much later, by ‘social justice warriors.’ This transformation was accompanied by the permanent cultural revolution of the 1960s. As a result, everything that was valuable yesterday is now a symbol of oppression. This has resulted in a radical transformation of school curricula, communications, politics, and American culture. Molnar presciently noted that “[t]he new norm is nothing less than a revolt against the ‘white man’ and ‘white culture,’ for the third world, for feminism. A rebellion against Plato, Pascal and Kant, for the so-called minorities, which now include people with AIDS and drug addicts!”
We may ask ourselves where all this leads. ‘To our destruction,’ one might reply. But the very purpose of the mechanisms that have been constructed is to avoid destruction. It is meant to seek a constant, radical correction so that the rule of the elite may be maintained—an elite which, like the Soviet elite of the 1980s, has long since stopped believing in its own slogans but is nevertheless prepared to put on any kind of mask (even a progressive one). And the elites will do precisely this if, in so doing, they can win the sympathy of the masses and stabilise their position.
Thus, one can argue that the ambitions of today’s progressive power centres in the U.S. are global. (Molnar recognized this.) So are the ambitions of the political mainstream they manage. On the face of it, they all believe that technological supremacy allows them—gives them the right—to shape the ‘rules of a game’ in which the fate of the world is at stake. But equally important is the question of the fate of national culture. One has to wonder if, given the constant renegotiation of the ‘social contract,’ can national culture remain rooted in the intellectual and spiritual tradition of the West—the tradition identified and outlined by Russell Kirk?
Throughout its history, the U.S. has always proclaimed equality before the law, although it has often fallen short of achieving it. So, for centuries, it discriminated against black and native populations. But the 1960s saw a turnaround. A few decades later, and the period following the turn of the millennium can be seen as the age of hypercorrection: a period which saw the discrimination of white, Christian middle-class people in favour of previously ‘oppressed’ social groups. But earlier groups of the oppressed have been followed by other new groups of ‘victims’—and today there is a competition of sorts to protect the interests of these fictitious groups of victims. This phenomenon—called by some ‘positive discrimination’—is affecting the lives of millions of people.
Reliably objective equality before the law is still a long way off. In the meantime, a new phenomenon has emerged, one that is even more significant for the survival of American culture: a comprehensive policy of dismantling freedom and responsibility. The neo-Marxist ideology that has taken over American universities has identified that having a society structured around individual achievement is the original sin. At the same time, the new Left has denied individual responsibility, saying that any faults lie with existence of oppressive structures—with systemic faults. This line of thought is now being pursued with great zeal by many people who are using—instrumentalizing—the oppressed (i.e., minority groups). But the aim is still the same: to discipline and eventually punish the majority by imposing a dominant ideology that is capable of perpetuating the intellectual and political domination of a narrow elite.
The stakes today are very high. And at the moment, the themes glossed over above are among the most pressing questions of political philosophy. And in this, Thomas Molnar’s insights have proven to be timeless; and three decades on, they are nearly incontestable. His incisive critiques in his many works can today help us to see the dangers of our time more sharply than ever. And just as Tocqueville explained the main features of an emerging United States to French and European readers in the first half of the 19th century, Molnar—a kind of Hungarian Tocqueville—has created through his prolific writings an exceptional opportunity for today’s reader. In Az amerikai életforma in particular, he illustrates, clearly and cleverly, the historical, religious, and philosophical connections between ‘the American way of life’ and the ‘ideal state.’ And he does so as a French-educated Hungarian—at a time when it is evident that the real challenge of our time is to maintain a classical, European, and Western culture in the face of dark forces that seek to destroy it.
Rooted in Hungary, Molnar’s works reflect a global outlook. He challenges today’s intellectuals to choose between their own self-deceit and self-destruction or the universal vocation of preserving the spirit of Western civilization. Whether or not his prophetic words are heeded remains to be seen. After all, habent sua fata prophetiae: “Books have their destinies according to the reader’s capabilities.”
This article is an expanded version of the author’s Afterword to the book, Az amerikai életforma, part of ‘The Collected Works of Tamás Molnár,’ published by Ludovika University Press in Budapest. It appears in the Winter 2024 issue of The European Conservative, Number 33:103-107.
