Leviathan and Its Enemies

These are some investigations of a great mind into the meanagerial elites of the 21st century. This is vital reading for honest minds who care about our current situation.

An incisive review of the correlation of cultural and political forces at work in the US and beyond during the 20th century, updating and re-formulating the path-breaking analysis of James Burnham.

A little wordy and repetitious, yet interesting and thought provoking.

Sam was the wisest political observer of his time. Trump might just be the Middle American Radical revolution that he predicted.

excellent

This is not a book someone would expect a socialist like me to like, or even be Samuel Francis is hot-button even for diehard paleo-conservatives, and this was unedited and unfinished manuscript where Francis picks up on both the work of James Burnham and Carl Schmitt. Particularly on the shift from bourgeois power to managerial dominance of bourgeois power. If this sounds a bit Marxists for a man considered to be an ultra-conservative, it is because it is. As an unedited and incomplete manuscript, it is a little rough on readability: much of it is repetitive, and some of the evidence needs to be expanded upon, which is a problem for a manuscript that is already somewhat sprawling.Francis's theorizing of how managerialism would lead to xenophobic nationalism is sounder than many people would expect, and it's something I wish fellow socialists would really look at. What is interesting is that Francis thinks racial nationalism is more or less doomed in the United States, and this is not what one would expect from a man ostracized for what people thought were essentially racialist views.What is amazing about this is the description of Trump supporters and a turn of anti-politics in 20015, Francis was outlining over two decades ago. Francis was onto the how managerial focus of neo-liberal period (a word he does not use to my recollection) of capitalism would undo a lot of the what he saw as bourgeois virtues and how it would use progressive inclusiveness highly cynically.Francis also sees that the reaction that will be inchoate and often conspiratorial, filled with lumpen elements and declasse individuals hurt or displaced by managerial organizations of the economy. If Francis is a racist, and there is little reason to believe he isn't here and definitely from his actual late work, he is well-read and smart enough to deliver a theory of why it would have an appeal even if it was essentially a doomed movement .This is a long book and not an easy read, but it does provide a framework that is somewhat mechanistic and class aware that talks about both managerial neo-liberalism and the inability of the left to really answer it. Some of the truths in here are ugly, but even people who value a pluralistic and open society need to understand some of the dynamics Francis was talking about. Before last year, it would have seen highly unlikely to be taken seriously, but hindsight does make insights of the past much more clear.

Leviathan is a posthumous publication of the late Samuel Francis, a massively erudite historian and political philosopher. In its essence, the work is a devastating critique of our contemporary ruling "managerial class", exposing it as a "Wizard of Oz" whose operators perpetuate the illusion of a benevolent and progressive march to social perfection behind an ideological screen that covers an entirely self-interested and self-perpetuating intellectual managerial class. Unlike the "hard managerial" regimes of the early 20th century (Bolshevik and Nazi) that depended on militancy and coercion, our current "soft managerial" regime operates with sophisticated tools of manipulation (marketing, consumerism, promotion of life-style hedonism). Francis draws upon a array of political philosophers and sociologists (primarily James Burnham and Gaetano Mosca) and an analysis of recent American political history to construct his metapolitical critique of our ruling class, a remarkable piece of eclecticism -- part Max Weber, part Vilfredo Pareto, part Karl Marx).To get through the book, unfortunately, requires maximum reader effort -- it is a slog. It is very long, with dense, irritating jargon-saturated paragraphs that after a time numb the reader. It suffers badly from the lack of an editor to provide relief from, at times, stultifying endless repetition that diffuses the insight and dulls the impact. The book is a posthumous publication and one gathers that Sam Francis would have produced a final draft free of at least some of these short comings.

Samuel Francis was ahead of his time in anticipating something that has only become visible at large since the 2016 presidential campaign: the collapse of support, among conservative base voters, for the trade and immigration policies favored by global managerial elites. Consequently, what formerly seemed a small rift in the Republican Party has torn open wider, revealing a gulf between: (a) wealthy establishment types, like the Koch brothers and their representatives (including alliances with global-minded Democrats), who favor transnational policies to ease the movement of (cheaper) labor and goods across national borders; opposed now by (b) conservative base voters, who find now that their own self-interests do not align with the former, and that a reinvigorated nationalism may be their only defense against the disintegration of the traditions and norms which had made their nation work.

Leviathan and its Enemies is a vital book for understanding the history and mindset of the ruling elite. It acts as a great continuation to Burnham's Managerial Revolution, but draws on many other political theorists too. The book can be a little repetitive, but it is a easy read and will not take long to get through even though it is 600 pages long.The book is good quality with a good print.