Roundtable on Aurelian Craiutu’s “Why Not Moderation?”–Michael Behrent

Today, Tocqueville 21 publishes the first of four reviews of Aurelian Craiutu’s Why Not Moderation? Letters to Young Radicals (Cambridge University Press, 2024). The first contribution is by Michael Behrent. In subsequent days we will publish reviews by Ewa Atanassow, Matthijs Lok, and Tanguy Pasquiet-Briand, as well as a response by Craiutu.

Tocqueville 21 Forum on Aurelian Craiutu, Why Not Moderation? Letters to Young Radicals (Cambridge University Press, 2024).

Review by Michael C. Behrent, Appalachian State University.

Aurelian Craiutu has devoted his scholarly career to making moderation appealing again. His most recent book, Why Not Moderation?, makes a particularly succinct, topical, and persuasive case for moderation’s relevance at a time when polarization is subjecting democratic institutions to a perilous stress test. While the book the presents itself as a faux epistolary exchange between two student radicals—one on the left, the other on the right—and their moderate professor, it often reads like an old-fashioned lecture—and I mean this as a compliment. Craiutu may be talking to the kids, but no one would mistake his book for a social media post or a podcast. His goal is to show that radicalism, fanaticism, and ideology can endanger the liberal democratic framework that makes them possible and that moderation, in addition to being an often-overlooked political tradition, might serve as an antidote to the most troubling tendencies of contemporary public life.

Craiutu’s argument is convincing and compelling. Yet some of his claims would be even more persuasive, on their own terms, if they were strengthened and further fleshed out. While I admire Craiutu’s thought and sympathize with his views, I will devote this review to three reservations I have about his case for moderation. First, he does not sufficiently grasp the nature of the problem to which moderation is the solution, namely radicalism. Second, he defaults to a narrow conception of politics and, consequently, does not address the full range of problems that moderation might be called upon to address. Finally, Craiutu wants to upgrade moderation to a comprehensive political outlook—comparable, say, to progressivism or conservatism—rather than recognizing moderation’s relationship to politics as necessarily more limited and tangential.

My first reservation concerns Craiutu’s portrayal of political radicalism. When addressing this topic, he comes across a bit like a priest warning of the dangers of sexual promiscuity. As such, his lessons are perfectly sound. But how much of his knowledge is first-hand? He knows the vocabulary of the phenomenon he decries, competently describes the precarious situations to which such behavior can lead, and makes clear why he thinks it is a bad choice. Yet for better or worse, his perspective on radicalism comes across as that of an outsider. Since Craiutu’s core premises are 1) that radicalism is the political problem that moderation seeks to resolve and 2) that left-wing and right-wing politics are radical in similar ways, he is compelled to offer a kind of character study of the generic radical. Radicals, he claims, are convinced of their own moral clarity, leading them to act like “new Puritans,” be “[o]verconfident in their power, good intentions, and expertise,” and become “intoxicat[ed]” with their ideas (82-83). They see politics as the pursuit of war by other means, which, in turn, gives rise to a Manichean worldview, in which political opponents are the “embodiment of evil” (98), and “total victory” (91) is the only acceptable outcome. Finally, they consider “compromise” a “dirty and dangerous word” (103).

Craiutu’s description of the dominant traits of political extremism strikes me as largely accurate. He is rightly concerned with the wear and tear that radicalism places on democratic institutions. But the deeper wisdom about human affairs on which Craiutu founds moderation should allow for a more empathetic understanding of the radical personality. Embracing a cause gives many a people a profound sense of empowerment. Instead of feeling subject to social and political forces beyond their control, political commitment suddenly makes people feel like they have a capacity to create the kind of world where they would want to live. Radical politics does indeed give rise to an intransigent sense of moral clarity. Yet many people struggle in their daily lives to find a moral compass. When politics offers one, it can be experienced as a lightning bolt of moral certainty. Achieving such a perspective is an understandable human longing. It cannot be reduced to a haughty need to finger-wag. While equating political struggles with warfare is unquestionably dangerous, war is tied to intense feelings of comradeship and solidarity. In the same spirit as the saying that “every problem begins as a solution,” one can, I think, postulate that radicalism occurs because it satisfies fundamental human needs. It can indeed become pathological, as Craiutu makes clear. But it is important to be mindful of the all-too-human sentiments on which radicalism draws.

My second reservation relates to Craiutu’s conception of politics. He tends to understand political conflict on the model of a debating society, in which two teams debate controversial social and ethical questions with a view to determining who is right. Craiutu’s favors moderation precisely because he wishes to minimize the debilitating shouting matches to which ideological disagreement can lead. The problem with this view is that there is more to politics than debating the merits of controversial issues. At minimum, it also consists in the adjudication of interests and claims to power. While Craiutu is convincing about how moderation can tone down contentious political debate, he is less clear about how moderation can settle conflicts over interest and power.

Consider Craiutu’s analysis of Maximilien Robespierre, whom he presents as a kind of patron saint of fanaticism. While acknowledging that Robespierre was committed to the ideals of liberty, equality and virtue, Craiutu argues that, particularly during his brief period leading France (1793-1794), Robespierre embraced a Manichean vision that underwrote his reign of terror. For Robespierre, one “was either on the side of virtue, defined as a total commitment to the cause of revolution, or that of evil, defined as any form of opposition to the latter” (95). This intolerance informed, Craiutu maintains, the disastrous politics of the Jacobins, who sought “to set the house ablaze to save it from the plague of tyranny, corruption, and injustice” (96). The case of Robespierre is thus a cautionary tale about the dangers of winner-take-all politics. “Through its apocalyptic and alarmist tone, the politics of Manicheanism inhibits negotiation and prevents necessary concessions to one’s political opponents. It warns people that the impure ones …. will eventually sell them out, when given the opportunity to do so” (102).

Craiutu’s conclusions about Robespierre (which are consistent with a longstanding liberal critique of Jacobin ideology) are reasonable. The problem, however, is that Craiutu does not sufficiently consider the circumstances in which Robespierre was operating. Revolutions are moments when political power and social interests are dramatically redistributed. Such events cannot be understood as analogous to a debate over controversial issues. For instance, one of the key events that paved the way to the French Revolution’s radical phase was the decision by a coalition of Austrian and Prussian forces to invade France in the summer of 1792, with the goal of restoring King Louis XVI to his former powers. The coalition’s military leader, the Duke of Brunswick, issued a famous manifesto in July in which he instructed the people of Paris “to submit at once and without delay to the king,” warning them that if they threatened the royal family, his forces would “inflict an ever memorable vengeance by delivering over the city of Paris to military execution and complete destruction, and the rebels guilty of the said outrages to the punishment that they merit.” This threat was definitive of Robespierre’s brief passage on the historical stage. Was it so unreasonable for Robespierre, in such circumstances, to be “apocalyptic and alarmist”? When a hostile power threatens to lay waste to your capital, should one plead for “negotiation and … necessary concessions to one’s political opponents”? It is worth recalling, too, that the king, after appearing to accept a constitutional monarchy, had attempted to flee France and throw himself into the arms of the Habsburg monarchy. In 1793, Dumouriez, the French general leading the Army of the North, defected to the Austrian side. Is it irrational, in such instances, to fear “that the impure ones …. will eventually sell them out”? Historians will note that many of the situations I have mentioned were arguably made worse by the radicalism so many revolutionaries embraced. But this in no way mitigates the precariousness of the circumstances in which they were acting.

In his study of Robespierre, the political philosopher Marcel Gauchet offers a nuanced assessment. He argues that Robespierre’s sense of the moment’s urgency paid off: “The fact is that [the Jacobins] saved the republic from foreign invasion and internal dislocation,” but “they saved it only to reveal themselves as incapable of making it function”—that is, to rise to the task of self-government.[1] Gauchet thus acknowledges that Robespierre, for all his faults, got something right about revolutionary politics and the measures required to counter the old regime’s refusal to relinquish power. But he also does not deny the fanaticism that Craiutu finds so disturbing. The reason, I believe, is that Gauchet has a broader understanding of politics, recognizing that it involves interests and the desire for power as well as ideology, whereas Craiutu primarily confines his case for moderation to ideological conflicts.

The narrowness of Craiutu’s understanding of politics is also evident in his chapter on compromise. As one might expect, Craiutu sees compromise as a major goal of moderate politics, and the rejection of compromise as a hallmark of radicalism. What is curious is the way that he omits any reference to some of the major and much discussed compromises that occurred in American history: the three-fifths compromise (1787), the Missouri Compromise (1820), and the Compromise of 1850. It is hard to deny that these compromises exemplify the political moderation Craiutu seeks to promote. “The moderates,” he writes, “are willing to sit down with all their political opponents committed to democratic norms to identify shared interests and try to find common ground. They are bridge-builders, not fence sitters, and believe in the importance of …  putting country first” (106). The problem with the three compromises mentioned above—as readers will have immediately noticed—is that they all concern slavery. I am not making the absurd point that compromise is somehow inherently racist. My question is, rather: why do these compromises not represent the very politics that Craiutu advocates? All three were based on attempts to identify “shared interests” and “common ground” between groups committed to slavery and groups that sought to end it. Moreover, these compromises were specifically about “putting country first.” In his examination of the slavery question in the early republic, Joseph J. Ellis highlights the role of James Madison, who believed that slavery “was an explosive topic that [had to] be removed from the political agenda of the new nation” and that “more than any other controversy, [slavery] possessed the political potential to destroy the union.”[2]

It is unclear, from the very principles that Craiutu defends, why Madison’s position would not be considered an exemplary form of moderation. Craiutu does maintain that compromise can only be between “political opponents committed to democratic norms.” In practice, however, this point is question-begging. Slaveholders found no difficulty in arguing that they were defending democratic norms (the three-fifths clause, after all, was placed in a section of the constitution devoted to electing the House of Representatives). And if compromise is premised on all parties acknowledging democratic norms, then every leftist radical is a moderate: once every (presumably) anti-democratic MAGA Republican has been excluded from the negotiating table, they would have little problem compromising with whomever remains. I by no means reject compromise; it is just that I do not see how Craiutu thinks moderation provides a roadmap for resolving conflicts over vital interests and power claims—particularly when foundational issues (“democratic norms”) are in dispute. Maybe moderation can help, maybe it can’t. My verdict is: “not proven.”

My final reservation concerns Craiutu’s desire to establish moderation as a full-fledged political position—to assert that there is such a thing as a “politics of moderation.”  So convinced is he that there exists a moderate politics that he can even call for a “radical moderation” and declare moderation a “fighting creed” (3).  This claim seems inconsistent with the stronger case that Craiutu makes for moderation. Moderation, it seems to me, is inherently transitive. It must have an object. It has to moderate something. Progressives may have a comprehensive vision of a social justice, and national populists a program for ensuring that the nation protects its people. By Craiutu’s own account, moderation’s goals are more limited. It is concerned primarily with the tendency of politics to give rise to fanaticism—and the dangers that the latter pose to society and political institutions. It may be that moderation is generally a worthwhile virtue, as Craiutu says. But its political significance is inseparable from high levels of political passion. Moderation is needed when passions risk rendering politics dysfunctional and destructive. This is why it cannot just be another political position alongside others. Moderation has a transversal relationship to politics: it is not another option on the ballot, but a kind of political first aid—a set of tactics and maneuvers to be followed when extremism threatens the polity’s survival.

Such an understanding of moderation is captured perfectly by the conservative philosopher Michael Oakeshott who, in a passage quoted by Craiutu, asserts that the task of government must be “to inject into the activities of already too passionate men an ingredient of moderation; to restrain, to deflate, to pacify and to reconcile; not to stoke the fires of desire, but to damp them down. And all this, not because passion is vice and moderation virtue, but because moderation is indispensable if passionate men are to escape being locked in an encounter of mutual frustration” (quoted, 61). Moderation is necessary, in Oakeshott’s view, not because it is virtuous, but precisely because, humans being what they are, political passion is inevitable. Why Not Moderation? mounts a robust defense of political moderation at a time when it has become alien to our political instincts. But one wonders if Craiutu has ceded too much to the Zeitgeist in making a passionate case for moderation. Perhaps even the taste for moderation must be moderated.

[1] Marcel Gauchet, Robespierre. L’homme qui nous divise le plus (Paris : Gallimard, 2018), 120.

[2] Joseph J. Ellis, Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation (New York: Vintage Books, 2002), 115.