From neo-liberalism to religious conservatism:

The ideological journey of public intellectuals in Romania

Dragoș DRAGOMAN

Abstract: Public intellectuals played a significant role in Romania during the post-communist transition. By their ideological liberal and neoliberal position and their intellectual legitimacy, they managed to support right-wing parties in opposition to former communist successor parties. Right-wing intellectuals successfully balanced the incipient weakness of those parties, until they managed to win their first parliamentary and presidential elections. Intellectuals virulent anti-communist critique also helped neo-liberalism to become the only game in town, largely shaping Romania economy and society. The critique of the modern world, done by the same public intellectuals in Romania two decades later, is an avoidance of a real critique of neo-liberalism and its social and cultural consequences. Trapped in the logic of defending neo-liberalism by severely attacking left-wing ideas, right-wing public intellectuals have to indirectly confront to the neo-liberal consequences by using a strategy. The strategy unraveled by the Critical Discourse Analysis used in this article is to condemn the by-products of harsh neo-liberalism under the disguise of a religious and conservative critique. This is the way found by right-wing intellectuals to avoid embracing a left-wing oriented critique, but still condemn the selfishness, irresponsibility and irrationality on post-communist individuals, which undermine the solidarity of a traditional community.

Keywords: intellectuals; anti-communism; neo-liberalism; conservatism; post-communist Romania.

The intellectuals played a signi­ficant role in Romanian politics following the demise of communism in 1989. Despite their modest role in publically criticizing the communist regime during its long reign, intellectuals became very active in both accusing the previous communist rule and pleading for a new democratic trajectory. Contrary to their fellow intellectuals from Czechoslovakia, Hungary or Poland, who openly raised against the communist rule and faced coercion, but seriously eroded the legitimacy of communist elites,¹ Romanian intellectuals only gained visibility with the sudden and violent collapse of the communist regime. This time gap between the political action of public intellectuals in Romania and other countries from Central Europe may explain both Romania’s difficulties during the democratization period and the tremendous influence of the intellectual elites in the first couple of decades after 1989. On the one hand, lacking a round table facing communist and anti-communist elites pushed towards open violence when the communist rule was finally contested in the streets. On the other hand, public intellectuals engaged in a fierce ideological debate and political competition,² managing to politically balance the rule of the post-com­munist left-wing parties in power and to ideologically emphasize neo-liberalism as the only game in town.

With the consolidation of demo­cracy and the accession to power to right-wing parties, which put in place harsh economic and social reforms at the end of the 1990s, their public influence began to fade away. They started to face the same diminishing role in society as it was the case in countries from Central Europe in the early 1990s.³ This is not to say that their critique of the socialist ideology and of the communist society was not effective, as neo-liberalism replaced socialism as dominant ideology. But to underline the shift in their discourse with regard to the condition of the modern man. After successfully combining anti-communism with the vigorous promotion of capitalism as the natural economic framework for civil and political rights, many prominent public intellectuals turned into serious critiques of the modern world. Their critique however is not sensible to more economic aspects pertaining to class, system of production, inequalities and injustice, as by-products of the capitalist development. Their rejection of the main consequences of modernity avoids systematically to tackle those sensitive issues and to acknowledge that the modern man they seriously put under scrutiny is by no means separated by the economic system to which he integrates to. Therefore, the main aim of this article is to trace the discursive trajectory of public intellectuals from their initial standpoints embedded in the critique of the communist ideology and practice, their strong support for neo-liberal ideas, ending by the strong critique of the modernity.

Anti-communism as intellectual legitimation

 

One cannot fully understand the role played by public intellectuals in the early 1990s with no reference to the respective political and social context. As emphasized here, the lack of a genuine political opposition to the left-wing communist successor parties⁴ forced the public intellectuals to adopt a right-wing political position and to fully engage in ideologically supporting liberalism. In fact, one cannot easily differentiate between discursive anti-communism, neo-liberalism and political activism for right-wing, self-defined “democratic opposition”. The context we describe here is mainly the outcome of a specific post-communist trajectory in Romania, where post-communist successor parties, and especially the Romanian Party of Social Democracy (Partidul Democrației Sociale din România – PDSR, later on the Social Democrat Party, Partidul Social Democrat – PSD), managed to win the first democratic elections.

Contrary to their Central European counterparts,⁵ the Romanian social-democrats managed to win the first elections to be held following the demise of communism. As post-communist successor party, PSD was constantly under the fierce attack of right-wing opposition parties, backed by organized groups within civil society, who expressed their discontent with the outcome of the 1989 revolution and the core political role played by the post-communist successor parties.⁶ By expressing their anti-communist critique, public intellectuals assumed the political role of organizing and strengthening the opposition to PSD and, by this, turning PSD into a political and ideological enemy. In a way, public intellectuals were symbolically recovering a solid contestation against a political regime that they soon labeled as “neo-communism”.⁷ By turning PSD into a hybrid political-ideological enemy, public intellectuals were making proof of their ability to fight against an authoritarian, illegi­timate, ideologically monstrous regi­me, months after the real regime ceased to exist. This virulent anti-communism might explain why anti-communism was by far the most important cleavage in Romanian politics for decades, combining the ideological condemnation of the previous communist regime with attempts to put in place transitional justice measures.⁸ As emphasize by Rusu,⁹ the communist past was both politically criminalized and symbolically demonized. The anti-communist cleavage was so deeply rooted in the logic of the Romanian political confrontation that it left smaller room to other cleavages, as that produced by ethno-nationalism, which swept the region in the aftermath of the communist regime collapse. As secondary cleavage, ethno-nationalism was associated in Romania and other post-communist countries with left-wing, post-communist successor parties, but this is mainly due to the influence of the previous regime type.¹⁰ Especially in Romania, nationalism played a key role in supporting the communist regime in its later ruling period, preventing the abrupt erosion of its legitimacy.¹¹

When it comes to assess the role played by public intellectuals in the early years of the post-communist transition, one cannot ignore the importance played by their class prospects. Although class talk undergone a steep decline in post-communist Europe with the spectacular career of the idea of “middle class”,¹² public intellectuals used their anti-communist critique in order to legitimize politically. Especially due to political oppo­sition’s weakness, intellectuals turned into a special class from civil society, working for the general democrati­zation, westernization and liberali­zation of the society. In a way, they were continuing what Konrád and Szelényi conceived as the domination of a class that includes intelligentsia, pitted in a long-term battle against the working class.¹³ The discourse analysis of prominent anti-communist public intellectuals, which we emphasize below, is much telling about the way those intellectuals imagined the distribution of power within the post-communist society and the role intellectuals are called to play.¹⁴ Moreover, as underlined by Eyal, Szelényi and Townsley,¹⁵ the project of the intelligentsia, both former mid-level party technocrats and opposition-oriented intellectuals, to seize state power has in a way succeeded. Their cultural and educa­tional capital propelled many of them into dominant positions in both state and business, making them largely benefit from the new capitalist orga­nization.¹⁶

Intellectuals legitimation through anti-communist critique had an impact both upon their political carriers and upon the consolidation of the neo-liberal ideology. Although appealing, the examination of their post-com­munist personal trajectories largely exceeds the scope of this article. What we intend here, as emphasized earlier, is to unravel the change in public intellectuals’ discourses from neolibe­ralism to conservatism, by avoiding any refe­rence to changes brought in by the massive neo-liberal restructu­ring of both economy and society. Despite the overall accuracy of their judgment regarding modern society, their con­servative perspective disables a fair critique of the mecha­nisms that produce the condition of the modern man. By accusing modernity as a state of mind and fact, they don’t want to destroy the intellectual articulation of the neo-liberal economy. Before turning to the critique of the modern world, let us emphasize the intel­lectuals’ efforts to coming to terms with the post-communist transition and to strongly promoting neo-liberalism as the only game in town.

Anti-communism as a fuel for (neo)liberalism

The remarkable aspect of the intellectual critique of former commu­nism is its obsession with coming to terms with its consequences and with the building of a radically new social prospective for the future. This ob­session for combining evaluations of the past and future projects at social scale is deeply rooted in the intellectuals’ discourse. On the one hand, a quasi medical approach in condemning communism as a spiritual disease was calling for radical action against any chance for the survival, under any form, of the so-called disease. Condemning communism as a criminal regime and ideology was an essential task of public intellectuals and an essential part of the imagined protocol for healing the Romanian society. On the other hand, con­demning past ideas and practices of the former communist regime would be of little use with no political, social, economical and cultural transfor­mation for the future. Attacking left ideas and left-wing parties, labor unions and voluntary associations¹⁷ would be a guarantee that the future would be radically different from the past they condemn.

As mentioned before, a medical approach was adopted in the early years of post-communism for assessing the seriousness of the “infection” and the protocol to adopt in order to “heal” from this disease brought in by the Soviet invasion of 1945. In this vein, Gabriel Liiceanu,¹⁸ a prominent right-wing public in­tellectual made an appeal to all former communist party members and former and current intellectual Marxists, taken for ‘scum people’, to step out from their political and administrative functions and keep away for a while, in order to purify and heal Romanian society. The ‘medical’ mission, as cited by Tănăsoiu,¹⁹ sounds like this: “The path we chose [. . .] cannot be one of material gain, but of a mission, a difficult path, noble and risky; this mission is of healing, during the years to come, the spirit of a society emerging from the dark of history.”

From this medical perspective, com­munism is a crime against huma­nity. While Marxist ideology cannot be successfully separated from crime, as it is its very origin, one should use the penal code when dealing with communism, alongside Nazism, as political ideologies.²⁰ That is why condemning communism as criminal ideology is to be seen as the final point of the unfinished 1989 anti-communist revolution.²¹ The push for the official condemnation of com­munism finally ended in 2007 with the endorsing by the Romanian president Traian Băsescu of a report issued by a Presidential Commission for the Analysis of the Communist Dictatorship in Romania (the so-called ‘Truth Commission’), which was headed by Vladimir Tismăneanu, another prominent right-wing anti-communist intellectual.

The official condemnation of communism was rather a symbolic act of moral purification from past repression and the ‘empires of lies’ of the communist regime.²² However, no supplementary action was taken by the president Băsescu, a former top communist official working in the state foreign trade apparatus, and by the majority he disposed of in parliament. Back in 2004, then the presidential candidate of a right-wing coalition, Băsescu rhetorically asked during a televised debate why the Romanian people were cursed with having to choose among two former communists, namely himself and the outgoing prime minister and PSD leader, Adrian Năstase.²³ Condemning communism as a criminal ideology was taken for a sufficient guarantee by right-wing intellectuals and worked as a powerful anesthetic for any serious attempt to contain the EU post-accession democratic backsliding provoked by right-wing populists in power.²⁴ This perspective sheds light on the weakness of the civil society in Romania, where left-wing intel­lectuals have been brought to silence in the early 1990s and never caught up since then, leaving the room for the unrestricted expression of neo-liberalism.²⁵

The consolidation of liberalism and finally of the libertarian and neo-liberal ideas as replacing the fading official communist ideology is easily traced by the publishing process in the 1990s, where the prominent liberal authors have been extensively pu­blished in order to intellectually support right-wing political ideas pro­moted by politicians. As mentioned earlier, the weakness of the right-wing political opposition during the early transition period was compensated by the full engagement of right-wing public intellectuals. The mixture of intellectual discourses and partisan proposals is to be seen in the publication list of the most prominent publishing house that endorsed this ideological and political task to promote liberalism. Humanitas Publishing House was seen from the very beginning, in the first years of the post-communist transition, as a publishing platform for liberal and democratic values, in an attempt to fill the enormous gap between a young democracy and more consolidated Western democracies. Ironically enough, the new publishing house was build by Gabriel Liiceanu on the foundation of a previous communist one, used for printing and publishing various propaganda items, including books criticizing the Western society.

Its initial plan was to publish those authors who have been banned by the communist regime and to catch up with their essential writings, which were still published in Western countries. By translating and pu­blishing Eliade, Cioran, and Ionesco, for example, the new publishing house was engaging in a moral reparation of the wrongs of the totalitarian regime and worked for the preservation of the memory of valuable intellectuals who strongly influenced the Romanian culture. In parallel, Humanitas publishing house began to publish liberal and neo-liberal authors, as a cure to the disgraceful disease that infected the society during the previous regime. The list counts numerous liberal eco­nomists, philosophers, historians and moralists, ranging from J. St. Mill, Besançon, Popper, and Berlin to Hayek and Nozick. A historical criti­que of the communist regime was set to accompany this stream of publi­cation, entitled the “Trial of Com­mu­nism”, and including Robert Con­quest, Stéphane Courtois, Richard Pipes, Boris Souvarine, Edward Behr, Timothy Garton Ash, Vasily Grossman, Arthur Koestler, Czeslaw Milosz, Jean-François Revel and many others.

The right-wing intellectuals en­dorsed the liberal ideas and promoted them extensively by combining them with the critique of communism. The free market, the private property, large scale privatization and the diminishing role of the state, the liberal com­petition and the reward of prosperity and success, those were the ideas expressed by the intellectuals publi­shed by Humanitas.²⁶ Despite the initial elitist and intellectual approach, the publishing house slowly began to serve as a platform for right-wing candidates and politicians, journalists and writers,²⁷ turning into a pillar of the right-wing opposition against successor post-communist parties. Since then, Humanitas publishing house is used by writers and jour­nalists to attack left-wing ideas, parties and governments. This is the case especially when right-wing parties are in opposition. Then they are backed by right-wing intellectuals and journalists.²⁸

From liberalism to conservatism: a discourse analysis

Many of the liberal authors published in the 1990s and 2000s are to be found as conservative critiques of the modernity. This is especially true for Horia-Roman Patapievici, but he is not alone in this ideological journey. Although this critique might be well founded in many cases, the critical discourse is constructed as to avoid confronting the problem brought in by capitalism. The full marketization ended not only in reshaping the overall structure of the economy, but it eroded the very bases of social, moral and religious values, as they are pointed out by the conservative intellectuals. Moreover, large scale privatization not only helped capital accumulation, it seriously affected the community ties, with individuals retrenching behind high fences, investing in the private space and abandoning the public space. In the end, by strictly pursuing their private interests and despising the public sphere, individuals have no longer grip on a common reality. The sense of justice, fairness and equity is therefore put in great danger in a scattered reality, invaded by fake news, fear and sorrow.

The discourses we analyze here are taken from articles and interviews published by right-wing intellectuals in Idei în dialog (Ideas in dialogue – I&D) a special review founded in 2005 and edited by Patapievici in order to stimulate the critical approach when dealing with modern ideas, which became a flagship publication for conservative ideas. Very soon after its foundation, the review witnessed a mixture of neo-liberal, anti-Marxist critique and a new, conservative perspective on the modern world. In a way, the review was echoing the development of Humanitas publishing house, which was making efforts to preserve the memory and work of Orthodox Christian and radical right intellectuals from the 1930s, who have been banned by the previous communist regime. In this effort, Humanitas published some of the most prominent religious authors, including Solovyov, Shestov, Florensky and Berdyaev, alongside Romanian nationalist intellectuals who inspired the Romanian fascist movement of the Iron Guard in the 1930s and 1940s.²⁹ Those authors are accompanied by translations of Western conservative intellectuals, ranging from Guénon and Schuon to Titus Burckhardt and Julius Evola.

The corpus of articles selected here were published by I&D in 2009 and forms a significant sample of conservative right-wing ideas. By selecting a higher number of articles does not turn out analysis into a quantitative analysis. It rather helps avoiding relying on a peculiar article, however telling it would be. The method of investigation we use here is a Critical Discourse Analysis, aimed at unravelling the logic of the critique against the modern world, by avoiding any reference to the weaknesses of the new capitalist system which has been implemented and largely consolidated in Romania. This type of discourse analysis has been developed since the 1970s in many distinct ways, since discourse analysts have increasingly attempted to integrate various aspects of argumentation theory and analysis into linguistic frameworks and political scientists have succeeded in adapting specific approaches to argumentation to their needs.³⁰ However, this is not an approach focusing on linguistic frameworks. It rather is an attempt, as one done by Fairclough, Mulderrig and Wodak, to give accounts of the ways in which and extent to which social changes are changes in discourse, and the relations between changes in discourse and changes in other, non-discursive, elements of the social life.³¹

The conservative nomination strategy: us and them

In a special issue of the I&D review, the editor expresses his concern with the weak connection between the Romanian debate on anti-communism, tradition and modernity, and the ongoing debate that takes place in the United Stated, which is largely neglected on the European continent, submerged by the socialist thought.³² The list of themes put forward by the editor of the special issue defines the nomination strategy. Thus the conservative side, when facing the ideology of the modernity, is defined by the importance granted to the private property, family, cultural heritage, Christian religious tradition or to the natural order that prevails in the world (by making a clear distinction between saints and villains, smart and dumb, educated and gregarious people).³³ Moreover, other issues are to be added when defining conservatism, namely the rejection of revolutionary utopias, the support for democratic representation, the confidence in the inner creativity of individuals carved by tradition, the fear raised by modernism, as it is promoted by progressivism, the fear of modern urban Babylon, the caution in all human relationships, the pursuit of profit through capitalism etc.

By citing Gustave Thibon,³⁴ a contributor to the I&D review emphasizes the dichotomy between right-wing conservative and left-wing individuals. Whereas the first, by suffering the contradiction between the misery and the disorder of human nature and the clear appeal to purity, tends to make a clear distinction between real and ideal, the latter, disposing of a less clear mind, tends to confuse them.³⁵ By emphasizing the superiority and the difficulty to access the ideal, the first will chase the disorder provoked by modern ideals. In the meantime, by despising difficult aspirations and eager to put in practice his ideals, the latter will be prone to idealize disorder.³⁶

The opposition is that taking place between those who support the private property and those who wish to replace it by various state controlled mechanisms. This opposition is essential, since private property is not an invention, but it exists through the very essence of the human nature.³⁷ Far from being artificial or purely accidental, it cannot be replaced by any other means of action. In fact, the market economy is the natural state of the modern society. Artificial is only the state intervention, which induces economic unbalance and obstacles to the efficient use of resources. The state interferes with economic rules and the natural order of a reality ruled by universal laws. The consequence of this means conflict and exploita­tion, poverty and spiritual disorder.³⁸

Marxism, on the other side, is a pure utopia. By promising to deliver working people from social slavery, it also promises to erase dehuma­nization. This state of mind and society comes from the alienation of those working people not only from the benefit of their work, but from their human nature. The promise made by Marxism is so seductive because it gets rid of any metaphysical fear for the future and for the afterlife. Thus Marx and Engels use a scientific framework in order to foster a much more radical utopia that any previous one.³⁹ The effort made by Leszek Kołakowski, former virulent Marxist, is to expose the wrongs of the left ideologies and, by this, help curing people from seductive disease. This is the only outcome Kołakowski ima­gined as possible, since he realized that communism cannot be funda­mentally revisited. Despite the political defeat of socialism in the late 1980s, its intellectual premises are still in place. That is why one must to embrace the ideal of Good and to understand the Evil.⁴⁰

The predication strategy: the wrongs done on the progressive side

The predication aims at labeling ideological actors more or less depre­catorily or appreciatively, positively or negatively, by the means of stereotypical, evaluative attributions of specific traits, or by implicit and explicit predicates. The predication aims here at evaluating the impli­cations brought in by the progressive ideology, especially when it focuses on the conditions of equality. The initial wrong done on the progressive side is the rejection of inequality and of strict hierarchy.⁴¹ This hierarchy is by no means irrational. By the contrary, this is the authoritarianism of reason that founds the aristocratic principle of democracy, as it was identified by Tocqueville in his seminal writings. The principle of hierarchy should dominate the human order, and especially the argumen­tative logic, with opinions issued by different individuals ranking in an order given by their own rationality. This was the way classical political order survived for three centuries, until the 20th century, by reckoning the central idea of social hierarchy based on excellency, which has been largely accepted by the majority of people. Therefore, classical demo­cracy is rather an aristocracy, empha­sizing the autonomy of the indivi­dual.⁴² The transfer of sovereignty, as it is thought to be operated by free elections in modernity, is an illusion, since non-autonomous individuals have no sovereignty to let. Largely driven by emotions, ordinary people who do no longer accept a rational-based hierarchy could only transfer their remaining power to individuals epitomizing the majority. Those individuals are to be seen as the ultimate expression of modernity: largely gregarious, arrogant due to their lack of respect for the divine monarchy or the moral law, and finally immoral, because they reject rationality as the central principle of public life.⁴³

Even the main argument of the leftist, pinpointing at the capitalist crisis, in general but especially that which has swept between 2008 and 2010, is to be attributed to wrong ideas spread out by left-wing authors and put in place by left-wing politicians. The occasion has been used by left-wing critiques to question the capacity of the neo-liberal policies to automatically foster economic growth and welfare.⁴⁴ The critique is irrational, since it does not take into account the essential function of the economic bankruptcy, which is the key element in regulating efficiency on the market. Moreover, the eco­nomic crisis is aggravated by defective state policies aiming at controlling the free market.⁴⁵ The politicians tend therefore to distribute losses across the population of common individuals, while covering the wrongs done by their policies that triggered high public debts, deficits and inflation, price control, salary rigidity and state led credits.⁴⁶ In a way, by neglecting the free compe­tition mechanisms and emphasizing state control, those politicians only consolidate the illusion of the reigning capitalism, covering the effective rule of state-driven decision mechanisms.⁴⁷ With the difficulties of the markets in decentralized coordination in times of crisis, the critiques from the left side look for fresh arguments for state intervention. This is an ongoing error, influenced by Keynesian ideas, which proves that errors are harder to eradicate in social sciences that it is the case for natural sciences. One should look to the tragedy represented by the communist experiment in order to notice that not all Marxists, despite the evidence, changed their views.⁴⁸ There are not such things as “savage capitalism”. Only socialism is savage, since it has been born by violence, constraint and nationalization of the private property, and has killed dozens on millions of people in the name of utopia.⁴⁹

The argumentation: the powerful leftist ideology

The argumentation strategy ge­nerally focuses on various justifica­tions for the constructions of in-groups and out-groups, the inclusion or the exclusion, the discrimination or the positive evaluation done by social actors. This is by no means irrelevant how conservative right-wing intel­lectuals define this strategy. For instance, by using a reversed argu­ment, those public right-wing intel­lectuals blame the expansion of leftist ideas with the help of the powerful intellectual establishment that largely promotes political correctness. The statement that current American writers do not qualify for Nobel nominalizations, attributed to the Secretary of the Swedish Academy, triggers the conservative argument of a progressive ideologically oriented practice of the Swedish Academy.⁵⁰ This kind of practice, although politically correct, is by no means supported by the strong intellectual environment from Egypt, Nigeria, China, Santa Lucia or South Africa, which could somehow justify awarding the prestigious Nobel prize to writers as Naguib Mahfouz, Wole Soyinka, Gao Xinjian, Derek Wolcott, Nadine Gordimer or J. M. Coetzee.⁵¹ The Swedish Academy has awarded such a distinction to unimportant, risible, American writers as Sinclair Lewis or Pearl Buck or to those writers prone to emphasize the American sorrow (O’Neill, Steibeck, Toni Morrison), and refused the distinction or at least the nomination to essential authors as Capote, Allen Ginsberg, Kerouac, Nabokov, Brautigan, Pynchon, Philip Roth, John Updike, Don DeLillo, Cormac McCarthy, Paul Auster or William Vollmann. In fact, the strategy of the Swedish Academy echoes the self hatred of the American academic intellectuals, a guilt complex induced by the powerful political correctness ideology that pushed Americans into a defensive position.⁵²

The leftist ideology proves to be an obstacle for deeply understanding capitalism and the beneficial role of economic crises in correcting miscal­culations and other wrongs, in generating economic discipline and triggering rationality efforts. Instead of looking at the real economic mechanisms, the intellectual and political left has forged and conso­lidated an anti-capitalist mythology.⁵³ They continue to emphasize economic freedom and unbound capitalism as the inherent causes of all economic crisis. They tend to ignore that current Western capitalism ceased to have any connection to really free markets and, in addition, they abandoned any hope in the inherent self-regulating force of the free market. With over 50% of the annual GDP in France and Germany turned into public budget and redistributed on arbitrary, political targets, could one still pretend that we deal with “market economy”?⁵⁴ While attacking the logic of the free market, leftist should pay attention to the real mechanism of the economic crisis, where the markets have responded to stimuli produced by state authorities themselves. Through self-regulated and very helpful inner mechanisms, markets have got rid of all inefficient loans to risky economic actors, in order to correct the artificially stimulated consumption and exag­gerated crediting, by revaluing the savings and emphasizing the bene­ficial capital accumulation.⁵⁵

Following the strategic silence of the early 1990s, the theoretical and more practical critique of the free market has returned in the 2000s. Using the context of the global economic crisis that started in 2008, the leftist theory concerning the wrongs of the free market now emphasizes the political and economic conditions that favor the application of harsh neoliberal measures, namely the shock produced by severe economic crises.⁵⁶ The example used by those critics, and more especially by Naomi Klein,⁵⁷ is the visit Milton Friedman paid to the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet in March 1975. Far from being a courtesy visit, Friedman used the invitation to give two lectures at the university and to discuss with the Pinochet regime officials about the economic crisis in Chile, conso­lidating the diagnosis put previously by a distinct team of experts, namely to proceed to a shock therapy.⁵⁸ It was the left-wing orchestrated propaganda that led to the open protests in Stockholm in 1976, when Friedman was awarded the Nobel Prize for economics. In the end, Friedman offered a similar advice to the political leaders in former Yugoslavia and USSR, with no protests from the left-wing intellectuals.⁵⁹

The same progressive ideology in the Western countries managed for many years to cover up the com­munist mischiefs in Eastern Europe, by presenting them under the label of the theory of the “converging systems”.⁶⁰ The domination of leftist ideas has only been challenged in the United Kingdom by the Salisbury Review, edited by Roger Scruton, and publishing authors undermining socialist ideals and defending capitalism, as Michael Oakeshott, Karl Popper, Friedrich Hayek or Leszek Kołakowski. As hard as it could be to imagine today, in the 1980s the people of good will in the United Kingdom had a bad im­pression about anti-communism, thus making the progressive intellectuals and the communist harsh dictators to be on the same side of the barricade.⁶¹ Even the Western governments considered the anti-communist oppo­nents in Eastern Europe as a headache, as voices that undermined the close relationship between US and communist leaders. The same was in the case of Western diplomats, who despised the liberal and conservatory ideas used by dissidents in Eastern countries in fighting communist dominant ideas. But even among those British critical intellectuals against the communist oppression, many nourished critical ideas against their own liberal political system, avoiding to encourage Eastern dissidents in supporting the military strategy initiated by the US president Ronald Reagan or the economic policies of the UK prime-minister Margaret Thatcher.⁶²

The power of leftist ideology is visible in the condemnation of the position adopted by Pope Benedict XVI when he estimated that AIDS spreading in Africa cannot be tamed solely by publicity informing campaigns and the large distribution of anti-conception means.⁶³ In fact, the Pope did not necessarily attack the use of condoms, although this fact only makes the problem worse, but the precarious and indiscriminate sexuality, by making an appeal to a humanized sexuality and to a spiritual renewal, both demanding personal limitations and sacrifices. The Pope was preaching an elevated perspective on the human being, detached from the very basic instinct and elevated to a more refined communication. By contrary, the leftist discourse defines sexuality as a common good, prone to a universal distribution. It cannot accept anything that cannot be re­duced to a basic common value, as well as it cannot accept the perspecti­ves of its rivals.⁶⁴

Perspectivation: the crisis of the modern world

The origin of the crisis of the modern world in manifold. One could look on the structural or on the more ideological and cultural changes. For Petrișor,⁶⁵ the very origin is to be found in the destruction of indivi­duals’ autonomy. Therefore, the sovereignty of the people is the most grotesque error of the modern culture. With the lack or rationality brought in the public sphere, anarchy seems to have slowly colonized the contem­porary society, as the Slavs have imperceptibly colonized the Roman Empire. The result is a new Early Middle Ages, transposed in our IT&C times. The excellency survives exactly in the IT&C domain, which reject any irrationality, but has deserted the political realm.

By contrary, the public space is now dominated by the egalitarian ethics, a force aimed at simplifying and reducing the complexity of the reality.⁶⁶ The logic of the market, meaning large publicity and profitable selling is not enough to explain this logic. What has to be added is the idea that in order to be valuable, something has to be shared by many people, by all people if possible, through all disposable means. This is why so­meone willing to keep away, refusing to adopt the common, popular and democratic values, makes him to appear as selfish and despiteful, whereas it should rather be taken as a reluctance adopted in front of a noisy and ignorant crowd, a crowd which pays no respect to issues it cannot understand.⁶⁷ The same is to be seen in the market strategies of a very important domain as the publication of books. Whereas the old principle of editing valuable books by the way of short-lived, fast selling, ordinary books was functioning for a period, the current trend is to give up to the quantity and to abandon all quality concerns, replacing them by the logic of media visibility.⁶⁸ Despite the apparent abundance of fresh new titles, the democratic respect for all authors, regardless of their inherent value, generates an almighty uniformity. Moreover, due to the democratic access to the quality of author, even the prestige given by literary awards slowly begun to be weighted by the quantity of items sold.⁶⁹ Not to mention the market strategies of highly ranked visual artists, who turned from real painters and sculptors into “visual artists” in order to sell cultural goods. The conversion of such artists, hand in hand with the bureaucratically driven “cultural industries”, cover the actual lack of profound artists and genuine culture.⁷⁰ Turning the culture into a public service, as it happened in France with the institutionalization of culture, largely favored consumption, but also fueled reproduction and inhibited production, moving from “culture for everybody” to “culture done by everybody”.⁷¹

In the end, the alliance between libertarianism and conservatism is possible. The contradiction between the objective morality that is praised by conservatory people and the respect for individual liberties is a fallacy. This is mainly due to the fact that the principle of moral actions must rely on a previously stated liberty to take action.⁷² Moreover, since the basic principle of libertarianism, which is the sacro-saint private property, works as a minimal threshold, the true conservatory should be a „libertarian plus”. It means that it cannot use the state coercion for restoring by force valuable traits of civilization (family, community, heterosexuality), which require a free and profound consent.⁷³ The freedom of rationally re-founding the very bases of society following the wrongs done by modernity is the final alliance between conservatory people and libertarians. The issue is not yet practical in Romania, since the country severely lacks the minimum variants of classical liberalism, liberta­rianism and conservatism, as it is engulfed by dominant social-demo­cracy.⁷⁴

With the classical values gone, it is not surprising to see how the new barbarians occupy the public space. Those are the by-products of the modern society, which fosters and supports irresponsibility as a way of life. The modern crisis of moral values and standards inhibits the clear distinction between true and false, between really important and futile, between reality and illusion.⁷⁵ This is the way leading to a mass economic consumption based on credit, where the economic growth and social welfare promised by politicians are financed by toxic bank loans, and where both bankers and consumers are satisfied on the short run by soaring profits and the unrestricted access to much desired goods, respectively.⁷⁶ The new barbarianism is fueled by the dismantling of solid values, by denying the ideals which support those essential values. As long as people’s lives have been driven for centuries by the Christian ideal of eternal life, the ideal implied God’s almighty power, the freedom of consciousness and the equality of all humans in front of God. Since the material goods turned into effective goals into modernity instead of being only means supporting human life, the consequence is a force turned against life itself and against human vitality.⁷⁷ Instead of fostering the ideal of eternal life, favoring freedom and respon­sibility, the modern society fostered the ideal of material gain, personal will, utility and the quick satisfaction of basic needs. Moreover, since life is lived here and now, there are no personal consequences and no moral constraints. Selfishness is the only game in town and all other humans the perfect instruments for attending individual purposes. With no common sense, no discrimination between true and false, an economic crisis triggered by a widespread irresponsible beha­vior is always possible.⁷⁸

Conclusion

Following the breakdown of the communist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe, liberalism has become the major ideological vehicle for the new projects aimed at reshaping society. In Romania, anti-communism not only became a legitimation strategy of the new right-wing post-communist elites, but it turned into a political force that shaped the essential choices made by political elites in various domains. Re-connecting with the Western tradition more often meant adopting the ideal of the free market as guidance for subsequent deep social and economic change. This was quite visible in the type of intellectual imports during the initial phase of the post-communist transition, when neo-liberal authors began to dominate the public space. This unbounded domination of neo-liberal ideas had a serious impact on the public policies put in place by right-wing parties in power, leading to the current full privatization and mar­ke­tization of the Romanian economy.

The inherent dissatisfaction with the shortcomings of the social and cultural changes promoted by full marketization forced the (neo)liberal intellectuals in Romania to adopt a critical rhetoric against the modern world as a monolithically and indestructible force rigged against more traditional and religious values. The turn from neo-liberalism to more religious conservatism does not want to say that there are no religious conservative intellectuals in the early 1990s and no more neo-liberal intellectuals at the end of the post-communist transition, at the end of the 2000s. The article intended to shed light on the strategy used by promi­nent public intellectuals, and espe­cially by Horia-Roman Patapievici himself, to avoid confronting to a lucid critique of neoliberal capitalism and its undesired consequences. Instead of underlining the ideological mechanism that turned neo-liberalism as the only game in town, silenced left-wing intellectual critiques and transformed the Romanian society and economy under rigid neo-liberal guide­lines, right-wing public intel­lectuals turned into critical conser­vative observers of the modern world. By focusing on the critique of widespread materialism, agnosticism, and relativism in accepting norms and values, they managed somehow to defend their initial propensity towards neo-liberalism. On religious grounds, they are posing now as defenders of the tradition and faith, in a society eroded by neo-liberal values. The responsibility for this erosion is to be found, however, not on the right-wing, but on the left-wing, progressive side. Their propensity towards equality, political correctness and positive discrimination goes hand in hand with their agnosticism and anti-clericalism. They are event to be blamed for the economic crisis, because they have inspired all the political and social mechanisms that have undermined the logic of the free-market, enabling public governments in many Western countries to interfere with purely economic mechanisms. They have encouraged politicians to artificially boost economic growth and apparent welfare, only to see them crumbling due to the shock of the economic con­traction, stagflation and unem­ployment.

The article does not tackle important issues, which are out of its scope, but which deserve attention. Although it sheds light on the dominance of the right-wing ideas in the 1990s, it does not make an accurate evaluation by using a quan­titative weight. It only opposes the profusion of right-wing intellectual authors, articles and books to the scarcity of articulated left-wing ideas. A new quantitative approach will be useful in assessing the importance of right-wing publications. Moreover, the article left unquestioned the nexus between publicly exposed right-wing ideas and public policies put in place by right-wing parties in power during the post-communist transition in Romania. The same is true when dealing with the special relationship between right-wing intellectuals and the incipient civil society in the 1990s. Although right-wing inspired civil society played an important role in the 1990s by balancing a left-wing powerful post-communist successor party in government, the situation is much different when right-wing populists in power after the Romania’s accession to the EU in 2007 ruled with no civil society critical supervision.⁷⁹ Those issues are essential in understanding the im­portance of political ideas for both political practice and political culture and participation. They are research perspectives that could offer new insights for the complex process of democratic transformation and consolidation following decades of authoritarian rule.

Notes

 

[1] Václav Havel, “The Power of Powerless”, East European Politics and Societies and Cultures, vol. 32, no. 2, 2018, pp. 353-408.

2 Alina Mungiu, “Correspondence from Bucharest. Intellectuals as Political Actors in Eastern Europe: the Romanian Case”, East European Politics and Societies, vol. 10, no. 2, 1996, pp. 333-364.

3 András Bozóki, “Intellectuals in a New Democracy: The Democratic Charter in Hungary”, East European Politics and Societies, vol. 10, no. 2, 1996, pp. 173-213.

4 Grigore Pop-Eleches, “A party for all seasons: Electoral adaptation of Romanian Communist successor parties”, Communist and Post-Communist Studies, vol. 41, no. 4, 2008, pp. 465-479.

5 John T. Ishiyama, “Party Organization and the Political Success of the Communist Successor Parties”, Social Science Quarterly, vol. 82, no. 4, 2001, pp. 844-864; Taras Kuzio, “Comparative perspectives on Communist successor parties in Central-Eastern Europe and Eurasia”, Communist and Post-Communist Studies, vol. 41, no. 4, 2008, pp. 397-419.

6 Vladimir Tismăneanu, “The Quasi-revolution and its Discontents: Emerging Political Pluralism in Post-Ceaușescu Romania”, East European Politics and Societies, vol. 7, no. 2, 1993, pp. 309-348.

7 Grigore Pop-Eleches, “Separated at Birth or Separated by Birth? The Communist Successor Parties in Romania and Hungary”, East European Politics and Societies, vol. 13, no. 1, 1998, pp. 117-147.

8 Lavinia Stan, “Which-hunt or Moral Rebirth? Romanian Parliamentary Debates on Lustration”, East European Politics and Societies, vol. 26, no. 2, 2012, pp. 274-295; idem, “Reckoning with the Communist Past in Romania: A Scorecard”, Europe-Asia Studies, vol. 65, no. 1, 2013, pp. 127-146.

9 Mihai Stelian Rusu, “Transitional Politics of Memory: Political Strategies of Managing the Past in Post-communist Romania”, Europe-Asia Studies, vol. 69, no. 8, 2017, pp. 1257-1279.

10 John T. Ishiyama, “Strange bedfellows: explaining political cooperation between communist successor parties and nationalists in Eastern Europe”, Nations and Nationalism, vol. 4, no. 1, 1998, pp. 61-85.

11 Katherine Verdery, National Ideology Under Socialism, University of California Press, Los Angeles, 1995.

12 David Ost, “Class after Communism: Introduction to the Special Issue”, East European Politics and Societies, vol. 29, no. 3, 2015, pp. 543-564.

13 György Konrád, Iván Szelényi, The Intellectuals on the Road to Class Power, Harcourt, Brace & Jovanovich, New York, 1979.

14 Isabela Iețcu, “Argumentation, dialog and conflicting moral economies in post-1989 Romania: an argument against trade-unions”, Discourse and Society, vol. 17, no. 5, 2006, pp. 627-650.

15 Gill Eyal, Iván Szelényi, Eleanor Townsley, Making Capitalism Without Capitalists: The New Ruling Elites in Eastern Europe, Verso, London, 1998.

16 David Ost, op. cit., p. 552.

17 Isabela Iețcu, op. cit.

18 Gabriel Liiceanu, Apel către lichele, Humanitas, Bucharest, 1992.

19 Cosmina Tănăsoiu, “Intellectuals and Post-Communist Politics in Romania: An Analysis of Public Discourse, 1990-2000”, East European Politics and Societies, vol. 22, no. 1, 2008, pp. 80-113.

20 Horia-Roman Patapievici, Politice, Humanitas, Bucharest, 1996, p. 213.

21 Steven D. Roper, “The Romanian revolution from a theoretical perspective”, Communist and Post-Communist Studies, vol. 27, no. 4, 1994, pp. 401-410; idem, Romania: The Unfinished Revolution, Routledge, New York, 2000.

22 Monica Ciobanu, “Criminalising the Past and Reconstructing Collective Memory: The Romanian Truth Commission”, Europe-Asia Studies, vol. 61, no. 2, 2009, pp. 313-336.

23 Grigore Pop-Eleches, “A party for all seasons…”, p. 466.

24 Dragoș Dragoman, Camil Ungureanu, “The Faces of Populism in Post-Communist Romania”, in Populism in Europe: From Symptom to Alternative, Eckart Woertz (ed.), Barcelona Center for International Affairs, Barcelona, 2017, pp. 65-67.

25 Dragoș Dragoman, “Where Have All Marxists Gone? The Intellectual Left, Ideological Debate and Public Space in Post-Communist Romania”, Studia Politica. Romanian Political Science Review, vol. XV, no. 2, 2015, pp. 229-248.

26 Horia-Roman Patapievici, Politice; Cristian Preda, Liberalismul, Humanitas, Bucharest, 2003; Ionuț Sterpan, Dragoș-Paul Aligică, Dreapta intelectuală. Teorii și școli de gândire ale dreptei contemporane occidentale, Humanitas, Bucharest, 2011.

27 Valeriu Stoica, Dragoș Paul Aligică, Provocări liberale, Humanitas, Bucharest, 2003; idem, Reconstrucția dreptei. Între experimentul capitalist occidental și proiectul național românesc, Humanitas, Bucharest, 2009; Valeriu Stoica, Unificarea dreptei, Humanitas, Bucharest, 2008; Cristian Pătrășconiu, Repere intelectuale ale dreptei românești, Humanitas, Bucharest, 2010; idem, Noua școală de gândire a dreptei, Humanitas, Bucharest, 2011.

28 Cătălin Avramescu, Cum alegem? Un portret al democrației pe înțelesul tuturor, Humanitas, Bucharest, 2016; Angelo Mitchievici, Ioan Stanomir, Comunism inc. Istorii despre o lume care a fost, Humanitas, Bucharest, 2016; Mircea Cărtărescu, Peisaj după isterie, Humanitas, Bucharest, 2017; Radu Paraschivescu, Orice om îi este teamă. Un partid, doi ani și trei premieri, Humanitas, Bucharest, 2018; Ramona Ursu, Noaptea, ca hoții, Humanitas, Bucharest, 2017; idem, Vă vedem!, Humanitas, Bucharest, 2018; Horia-Roman Patapievici, Anii urii, Humanitas, Bucharest, 2019.

29 Alina Mungiu-Pippidi, Politica după communism, Humanitas, Bucharest, 2002; Leon Volovici, Nationalist Ideology and Antisemitism: the Case of Romanian Intellectuals in the 1930s, Pergamon Press, Oxford, 1991.

30 Ruth Wodak, “Argumentation, Political”, in The International Encyclopedia of Political Communication, Gianpietro Mazzoleni (ed.), John Wiley & Sons, New York, 2015, pp. 42-52.

31 Norman Fairclough, Jane Mulderrig, Ruth Wodak, “Critical Discourse Analysis”, in Discourse Studies: A Multidisciplinary Introduction, Teun A. Van Dijk (ed.), Sage, London, 2011, pp. 357-378.

32 Mihail Neamțu, “Argument” (for the special issue Relieful american al gândirii conservatoare), Idei în dialog, no. 53 (February), 2009, pp. 16-17.

33 Ibidem, p. 16.

34 Gustave Thibon, Diagnostic – eseu de fiziologie socială, Echinox, Cluj-Napoca, 2004.

35 Horațiu Pepine, “Stânga și Dreapta”, Idei în dialog, no. 54 (March), 2009, p. 30.

36 Ibidem.

37 Cosmin Marinescu, “Jurnal de criză: capitalism cu prezumție de vinovăție”, Idei în dialog, no. 56 (May), 2009, pp. 25-26.

38 Ibidem, p. 26.

39 Andrei Țăranu, “Apostazia exemplară”, Idei în dialog, no. 56 (May), 2009, pp. 37-38.

40 Ibidem, p. 38.

41 Dorin Petrișor, “Paralaxa liberalismului”, Idei în dialog, no. 53 (February), 2009, p. 15.

42 Ibidem.

43 Ibidem.

44 Gelu Sabău, “O nouă barbarie?”, Idei în dialog, no. 56 (June), 2009, pp. 3-4.

45 Ionuț Sterpan, “Criza mondială. Explicații liberale”, Idei în dialog, no. 56 (May), 2009, p. 12.

46 Vlad Topan, “Către apoteoza socialismului monetar”, Idei în dialog, no. 56 (May), 2009, p. 18.

47 Ionuț Sterpan, op. cit.

48 Radu Nechita, “Criza a fost cauzată de politici inflaționiste”, Idei în dialog, no. 56 (May), 2009, p. 19.

49 Cosmin Marinescu, op. cit., p. 26.

50 Dan C. Mihăilescu, “Multe și (nu chiar) mărunte”, Idei în dialog, no. 56 (May), 2009, pp. 7-9.

51 Ibidem, p. 8.

52 Ibidem, p. 8.

53 Cosmin Marinescu, op. cit.

54 Ibidem, p. 25.

55 Ibidem, p. 25.

56 Emanuel-Mihail Socaciu, “Anticapitalism la bani mărunți”, Idei în dialog, no. 56 (May), 2009, pp. 39-40.

57 Naomi Klein, Doctrina șocului. Nașterea capitalismului dezastrelor, Vellant, Bucharest, 2009.

58 Emanuel-Mihail Socaciu, op. cit., p. 39.

59 Ibidem, p. 40.

60 Horia-Roman Patapievici, “Disidențe răsăritene în oglindă”, Idei în dialog, no. 56 (May), 2009, pp. 54-55.

61 Ibidem, p. 54.

62 Ibidem, p. 55.

63 Horațiu Pepine, “Abolirea sintaxei”, Idei în dialog, no. 55 (April), 2009, p. 30.

64 Ibidem.

65 Dorin Petrișor, op. cit.

66 Horațiu Pepine, “Abolirea sintaxei”.

67 Ibidem, p. 30.

68 Mariana Dumitrescu, “Și totuși, cartea!”, Idei în dialog, no. 55 (April), 2009, pp. 35-36.

69 Ibidem, p. 36.

70 Horia-Roman Patapievici, “Despre moartea culturii franceze. Declin cultural sau transfer de piețe?”, Idei în dialog, no. 55 (April), 2009, pp. 54-55.

71 Ibidem, p. 55.

72 Vlad Topan, “W. F. Buckley Jr. și capcanele pragmatismului politic”, Idei în dialog, no. 53 (February): 2009, pp. 34-36.

73 Ibidem, p. 36.

74 Ibidem, p. 36.

75 Gelu Sabău, op. cit., p. 3.

76 Ibidem.

77 Ibidem, p. 4.

78 Ibidem.

79 Dragoș Dragoman, Camil Ungureanu, op. cit.

 

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