Edmund Burke always claimed that his 1756 defense of anarchism, A Vindication of Natural Society, was intended satirically, and most Burke scholars have agreed.
In a 1958 article, Murray Rothbard argued that Burke’s youthful anarchism was sincere, and that his later repudiation was politically motivated. But few Burke specialists were swayed. (Readers with JSTOR access can see one reply.)
But in his 1977 Burke biography, Isaac Kramnick offers some evidence in at least partial support of Rothbard’s interpretation – for it turns out that some of the allegedly ironic passages in the Vindication have close parallels in Burkean texts generally agreed to be sincere.
Check out the relevant excerpts from Kramnick.
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I can’t believe it’s a satire. The book is amazing and sounds quite sincere. I got my virtual copy here :
http://oll.libertyfund.org/?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=850
There’s a blurb on that page saying it’s indeed a satire – When I read that blurb I though that whoever wrote the review didn’t get it. And I still think that’s the case.
This is a fascinating book. However, it has long been my belief that the discussions surrounding the message and overall content of the book have been entirely misguided.
As a prescriptive, positive statement of anarchy, or “natural society”, the book fails miserably. In fact, little more than a few pages is actually assigned to an outline of what the author believes a natural society would look like, and little effort is there made to definitively “vindicate” it. For example, one passage states that natural society is superior because in such a state there would be no wants, causing people to live simpler and consequently happier lives.
The brilliance of the book consists in a systematic and wholly persuasive critique of “political” or “civil society.” Every major war of western civilization is attributed to some trivial political objective. Burke concludes his brilliant analysis of the state with these words, “I charge the whole of these Effects on political Society. … [T]hat Political Society is justly chargeable with much the greatest Part of this Destruction of the Species.”
This book is not so much a blueprint for the joys and benefits of establishing, or reinstating a natural society, as it is a positive and systematic critique of the political state.
Writing has changed over time. Writers of older generations tended to be more verbose, descriptive, and use phrasing that the modern reader can find dull, inefficient, and long-winded. I’m not entirely sure if that’s simply a phase of writing as it developed, if they were more sophisticated in their writing, or if the modern writer simply has more “shortcuts” to rely upon, or what, but it does make the older writers harder to read and understand. I prefer more concise writing, but sometimes more detailed exposition is necessary for understanding. Even Mises had a strange way of describing counter views which the careless reader may interpret as Mises’ view.
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