Integralism is the principle that the Catholic faith should be the basis of public law and public policy within civil society. As with everything political, there is debate as to when the concept was born, but modern integralism as a genuine political movement has its roots in the 19th century. For obvious reasons it has been limited to those countries with a large enough Catholic population to make integralism plausible. That means the Latin countries of Europe like Spain and Italy.
Over the last decade, integralism has become a topic of conversation, largely due to Harvard Law professor Adrian Vermeule. He is a critic of modern liberal democracy as well as the conservative movement that operates within it. His main work is in the area of administrative law, but his embrace of the integralism concept has attracted others from the traditionalist wing of conservatism. Matthew Schmitz, Sohrab Ahmari, and Patrick Deneen are the notable converts.
In fairness, what is forming up to be American integralism is not what Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre had in mind at the Second Vatican Council. The thinkers and writers coming to the integralism banner share Vermeule’s disgust with modern conservatism and its role in enabling progressivism. Sohrab Ahmari called it David Frenchism, a performative traditionalism that is weak and conciliatory toward the Left. They imagine themselves creating a new Right similar to old European Right.
To be fair there are some serious people within this space thinking hard about how to re-center politics within the Western Christian tradition. To be even more fair, there is no chance of this happening, at least not peacefully. Liberal democracy comes with its own religion and moral code. It cannot tolerate alternative morale codes and it cannot exist within the moral framework of Catholicism. We will need a revolution to go from liberal democracy to some new moral order.
Therein lies the main problem with all modern political philosophy. It assumes a blank sheet of paper where the deciders get to decide the type of society they will create and impose on the world. They spend their time working out the political theory and then imagine how it would work, assuming a fresh start. It is the game of imagining your dream home in some idyllic setting. The plausibility of the house and the process to make it happen is just assumed.
Libertarianism is probably the most egregious example. As Hans Hermann-Hoppe explained many years ago, it is not possible to go from modern societies to a libertarian society within the constraints of libertarian theory. Further, there is no way to maintain a libertarian society, assuming you solve that first problem. Despite this obvious reality, libertarianism persists. The adherents are content to imagine themselves living in the Shire with the other hobbits of libertarianism.
Integralism has a strong whiff of this same sort of escapism. Instead of being yeoman farmers trading sheep for shoes, the integralists imagine themselves riding out to face the black knight of liberal democracy in defense of the faith. There is not much thought given to how we could turn back the clock. It is just assumed that something will happen, the current order will fail and this alternative will become the obvious alterative to the crisis of liberal democracy.
In fairness to the libertarians and integralists, they are not outside the bounds of normal political debate with this approach. The post-Marx culturalists who now dominate the American Left believe they just have to destroy the current cultural institutions and from the rubble will rise the egalitarian paradise. The old civic nationalists believe we just need a blank piece of vellum onto which we can copy down the original constitution and America becomes a republic again.
A curious feature of this age is that almost all political discussion operates in the world of forms to the exclusion of practical concerns. This is true in outsider politics on the Right, which has largely been centered on re-fighting the 20th century. Some want to re-fight the 1960’s while others want to re-fight the 1930’s. There is little self-examination about why those fights were lost the first time and no consideration for how re-fighting those old failures will change anything in the present.
The fact that this sort of idealism is popular on the Right suggests that maybe right-wing political theory in a liberal democracy is not supposed to be a serious counter to the prevailing orthodoxy but is a safe harbor for dissent. Historically, the Right exists as a counter to ideology, not as an alternative ideology. The man of the Right is the one throwing cold water on the dream of immanentizing the Eschaton. He focuses on what is possible, not what is desirable.
This is where integralism can contribute. All human societies need a source of authority to justify the rules of the society. “This is how we do things” must be supported with “this is why we do things this way.” Catholicism fused tradition with the supernatural to provide a basis of authority for medieval Europe. The Roman empire had to rely on force to impose its will abroad, but at home it was the traditions and customs of the Roman people that provided the moral authority.
Every human society has an authority. In theory, the authority in a liberal democracy is the will of the people, the consent of the governed. In reality, fifty percent plus one is a fickle master and easily exploited by unscrupulous actors. The crisis in the modern West is rooted in the fact that the system is easily manipulated to profit a ruling class that operates in the shadows of the political order. The gods of democracy are tricksters who revel in the frustrations of the people.
An alternative to liberal democracy must first deal with this reality and propose an alternative authority upon which to base the moral order. That new authority is unlikely to be medieval Christianity, but it will have to be something similar. Some combination of nature, nature’s God and the civilizational interest of the West will be the authority for a new political model. Perhaps some form of techno-feudalism is in the cards for what comes after liberal democracy is thrown into the dustbin of history.
Of course, this means moving from the safe harbor of political escapism into the world of practical solutions to present problems. The real damage done to the American constitutional order has been the deification of the Founders. Their ideas have been turned into holy writ. In reality, the Constitution was a practical solution to present problems hammered out by practical men. It was a political compromise, not the foundation for a political cult.
Whatever comes next will have to start from the same basis. What sort of civil society is possible in the world as it is demographically, technologically and materially? Is a civil society even possible under present conditions? If not, then what must be done, no matter how unpleasant, in order to create the conditions that will make a civil society possible in a post-democracy world? Whatever comes next will not be the work of dreamers, but of practical men solving practical problems.
That is the value in boutique political movements like integralism. It is not a solution, but rather the starting point for a necessary critique of the current order. From that will flow the necessary debate to conjure a plausible alternative. Integralism can be a hammer to crack the walls of modern conservatism, which in turn exposes the soft realty of the liberal democratic order it protects. Integral to an alternative moral philosophy is a rational critique of the present order.
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At some point outcome begins to matter less than just seeing a change. The innate gambler takes over and damn the consequences, at least these pricks enjoying power now will have some real worry in their life. And if it all crumbles… well it was probably going to anyway. So friends, let’s embrace our inner Pareto and let the dice roll.
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I had left the Catholic Church before Vatican II, and that false Council merely confirmed my choice. Like many former Catholics, there can be no return to the Faith unless traditional Catholicism, that of Pius XII and other previous Popes is restored. It is not just a matter of the Latin mass. The mass is a symbol for a whole doctrine and practice. Until, and unless, there restoration occurs, Integralism is empty and will not happen.
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A funny thing is you can follow the trajectory of dissident thoughts in Church life as well as American life in almost a linear trajectory.
The idea that the FBI would orchestrate mass killings would make your average American recoil in horror, and now he takes it as matter of fact. The same goes with VII, that it was considered untouchable except by those crazy SSPX people 20 years ago, and most educated Catholics now know that it was plagued with chicanery.
As institutions, whether the Vatican of U.S. Government, deteriorate and become incapable of self-correction, they lose control of the narrative and begin draconian measures to keep power. Believe it or not, the Vatican, while having far more power on paper, is even more stupid than our government. They will try to stamp out dissident trads, but they will fail, as trads understand the game now.
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>”We will need a revolution to go from liberal democracy to some new moral order.”
You say that as if it’s an impossibility, instead of an inevitability. Our enemies are not giving up without a fight, so our choices will eventually be to either fight, or live under their increasingly cruel, depraved, and intolerable domination forever.
>”There is not much thought given to how we could turn back the clock.”
That’s a leftist phrase, and like everything they say, it’s meaningless. Clocks only go in one direction, but that doesn’t mean that liberal democracy is inevitable, any more than communism turned out to be, or that ditching it in favor of a sane alternative is impossible. Vladimir Putin is, essentially, a Tsar of Russia, and has re-embraced the Church as the moral center of Russian life. Anyone who, in 1980, suggested that this might ever happen would have been called a madman. But it happened anyway, mad or not.
>”Whatever comes next will not be the work of dreamers, but of practical men solving practical problems.”
Speaking of Putin. But again, even he, hard-nosed and cynical as any old KGB hand, understood that man does not live by practicality alone. Nobody ever jumped out of a foxhole and charged an enemy bunker shouting: “For moderate tax rates and sensible trade policies!!!” The things that get a man to do something like that are faith, blood, and soil. That’s why, especially in troubled times, leaders need to evoke a deep, visceral appeal to those, and not just give the public sterile talk about practicalities.
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I could see a Third Great Awakening happening, based on the rejection of consumerism. For one thing, it’ll be making a virtue out of necessity — every day brings more examples of GloboPedo deliberately destroying the “economic base” that makes the “ideological superstructure” of GloboPedo possible. When you can’t afford to buy anything, and there’s nothing to buy anyway, a spiritual renewal by rejecting materialism makes a lot of sense.
Another virtue-by-necessity is extreme localism. Leftist morality depends on virtue signaling to screen names on a smartphone. If you run across an SJW in real life, you can reduce xzhym to a screaming meltdown just by saying “Uh huh, whatever” and walking away when xzhey start posturing (make the “twirling your finger around your ear” crazy gesture for extra effect). When Leftie *has to* go down to the farmer’s / black market to get food, interacting with real live humans is unavoidable.
Anti-materialism, self-reliance… I can’t think of a “new” spiritual movement that those weren’t the core of. And the GloboPedos are making it happen for us. Shine on, you crazy diamonds.
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In the past, I have compared these spasms of progressive radicalism to the Great Awakening. This current one started with the 2000 election. It is showing all the signs of petering out now. The prior one, which started in the fifties with the Civil Rights crusade ran out of steam after 20 years. These are moral panics, even though they manifest as tantrums against conventional morality.
Anyone who has been in the inside of a basic Catholic Church in the last 30 years can see how neutered the institution is. This isn’t even going into the Diocesan bureaucracy and Bishops. Even the good people in these roles are generally incapable of good governance, as there are a multitude of Catholics who will gleefully stab them in the back for secular praise. The idea of a Catholic state is a dumb LARP, regardless of how prestigious the Universities these people came from operate.
There’s a de-facto cold war in Catholicism between trads and the Vatican, and the Baptists and other denominations have the same issue. If they can’t even get their house in order, it’s pointless talking about getting political power. Their ideals are good, but there’s no path from Y to Z based on the conditions on the ground.
Instead of talking about morality from the pulpit or activism to get X legislation, they’d be better served by giving prestige to the values they hold dear. They should be giving medals and fanfare to women in stable marriages with 4+ kids. They should be giving Wife of the Year awards to the Church lady who cooked for every funeral. They should be giving “profiles in herosim” awards to men who defended their faith and friends in hostile situations. They need “instructor of the year” awards for men who teach young kids basic survival skills.
People follow the morality of what is deemed high status. Being a good wife and husband, volunteering in the local community as opposed to some third world hole, and supporting local leadership is seen a low status and beneath a good portion of the population. This needs to change to create a cultural ground for any sort of political victory.
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Rather than argue separation of church and state or other issues as I typically do, I propose another perspective. In normal times it is natural to debate the most trivial, arcane details. Is it racism to arrest Blacks, even if they crime out of proportion to other races? Should [more] support be given to gays, to transgeneders, the latest economic migrant from a shithole country, etc? Should we support the Ukraine side, and in what ways? Vote Republican or Democrat in the next election? What do nearly all these have in common? They are what are termed “luxury problems.” By that I mean that we only worry about these matters in normal times, when times are relatively good. I define that to mean that everyone, or nearly so, has food, shelter, clothing, tolerably good health, and all the other infrastructure that makes normal life enjoyable or even possible. Take away any of those and one rapidly descends down to bare survival. It is not until a person, a family, a tribe or a nation is plunged into hard times, that hard-nosed, practical survival considerations will come to the fore. In fewer words: right now we live in a version of the mouse utopia; all our needs are met; and as a result, mentally and perhaps morally we are wandering about in the tall grass or building castles in the sky. Now, I’m not saying that we can’t have legitimate higher pursuits, even if that is just singing in the choir or baking cookies for the next kid’s fundraiser. But it’s only in a survival crisis situation where people are forced to learn what the really important things are and equivalently, what the correct morals, rules, values are for that time.
What’s called The Great Reset or post-American globalism may fit the bill. Too many people for the world’s permissible resouces to sustain. AI replacing white collar professions. Techno-feudal selfdom as you say. The mass of the American people, descending into poverty and forming the new American peasantry divided and ruled by race, gender and other provincial identities, would well suit the designs of a growing international elite.
From these Marxian-type material conditions a new moratlity and ethics may emerge that, from today’s perspective, may be ghastly but from tomorrow’s, who knows.
Of course there’s the Tower of Babel factor that may await whatever the New Order may come to be. But I can easily see us becoming the Borg of Star Trek fame, existing in a hive mind (“You will think nothing and be happy…”) minus the physical implants.
The post-Marx culturalists who now dominate the American Left believe they just have to destroy the current cultural institutions and from the rubble will rise the egalitarian paradise
I used to believe this but realized that there’s bo evidence supporting it.
The left never talks about their utopia. What it will be like and how awesome it will be. Maybe they used to believe, back in the mists of time, that some better place would be achieved by tearing down the system. But they’ve long lost that vision. Generations ago.
At this point, it’s a zombie nihilistic movement. The only thing motivating them is hatred, most likely of themselves.
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