Does Vermeule have a Transition Plan?

Another Reply to Feser

Feser has replied to my response to his review. He makes several different points I need to discuss. My complete reply is around three thousand words. But I cut the post in half to respond quickly to Feser’s central claim in the new post. It is this:

The problem is that Vermeule does not in the first place actually endorse the extreme political program Vallier attributes to him.

Feser agrees that I deny that Vermeule favors violence seven times. We sharply disagree about whether those claims suffice to reject Feser’s claim that I attribute a “ruthlessly doctrinaire and violent ‘Thomist-Leninist’ revolutionary program” to Vermeule.” Neither is his plan “extreme, bloodthirsty, and indeed unhinged.” I can show this, but first, I must answer Feser’s central new point.

I hope we can then answer more important questions, like whether integralism as such has a transition problem.

State Capture Is The Issue

My reading of Vermeule assumes Vermeule wants to get to integralism. That is a widespread belief, even among integralists. Less familiar is my claim that he envisions four stages on the way there (community-building, state-staffing, the collapse of liberalism, and state capture). The critical dispute concerns the last stage: whether Vermeule favors state capture. If there's good evidence that he favors state capture, my interpretation of Vermeule is reasonable. It is not a strawman. My interpretation might be wrong, but that is the risk of any interpretation.

Before I begin my rebuttal, a note on how Feser uses the word "extreme." I assume Feser means my claim that Vermeule aims at state capture, since that is a big deal compared to the other stages. So, I'll explain why I believe Vermeule aims at state capture and has some ideas about how to do it.

Vermeule on State Capture

Why assume Vermeule aims at state capture? First, he has developed views about the preconditions of state capture, namely that liberalism will fall and the right people should staff the state. These preconditions raise a question: once liberalism falls and the right people staff the state, what should they do? The answer, I assume, is to turn the state to the common good, which for Vermeule has a supernatural part.

Consider an analogous claim from late 20^th-century Western liberalism. Some Western liberals predicted that the Soviet Union would collapse. They also hoped that Russians sympathetic to liberalism partly staffed the state. And so, once communism became discredited, Western liberals hoped Russians sympathetic to liberalism would capture the state and make it liberal and democratic. 

I think Vermeule imagines something like this. Maybe that's an "extreme" political program, but it's not silly to attribute it to him. It would be foolish and irresponsible to attribute the consequences to him, but that's not what I do. 

Feser says that most of Vermeule's strategic work focuses on short-run questions. That's also true. But Feser seems to deny that Vermeule thinks long-term, too, or else that Vermeule’s text can’t bear that interpretation. I think Feser believes there's no support for the idea that Vermeule has thought through an endgame. But there is evidence.

Passages On State Capture

Let's go through the passages, most of which I cite in the book. Taken together, they're strong evidence that Vermeule has radical state capture in mind. At a minimum, they make my interpretation reasonable.

1. Integration from Within Supports Radical State Capture

In "Integration from Within," Vermeule says, in the passage Feser cites:

Instead it is a matter of finding a strategic position from which to sear the liberal faith with hot irons, to defeat and capture the hearts and minds of liberal agents, to take over the institutions of the old order that liberalism has itself prepared and to turn them to the promotion of human dignity and the common good.

What does Vermeule mean by "take over the institutions of the old order"? And who should lead the takeover? My reader is that he wants state capture led by people who will "restore a substantive politics of the good."*

I grant Feser’s point that the passage does not say that integralists capture the state. Nor does the passage say that the goal of state capture is integralism. But Vermeule envisions a form of state capture. That's clear.

If not integralism, what sort of state capture does Vermeule envision? Something radically non-liberal. Vermeule agrees with J. F. Stephen’s remark that we must engage in a kind of "warfare" that will root liberalism out "to the last fiber, the place where it grew being seared as with a hot iron."

Let me stress once more the means Vermeule endorses. Stephen's passage favorably contrasts intellectual warfare against liberalism with violent warfare against liberalism. That’s because, on Stephen’s view, intellectual warfare is more effective than violent warfare. And Vermeule next cites Cass Sunstein-like nudges as another example of non-violent social change. But my chapter claims that Vermeule does not favor violence seven times, including once on the chapter’s first page. My point is that integration from within aims at a new state with nothing liberal in it.

So, I assume Vermeule supports some form of radical, but non-violent, state capture. State capture that will entirely snuff out liberalism. The passage also says that Vermeule wants people to "take over the institutions of the old order" to "restore a substantive politics of the good" that is not liberal at all.

So, yes, the article does not name integralism. But it amply supports the claim that Vermeule favors a form of radical state capture. A complete departure from liberalism is a substantial social change.

Nonetheless, I find it significant that "integration" is in the title. What else is "integration" supposed to mean other than integralism? For support, consider how Vermeule uses the term "integration" in #4 below. Deneen, whose book Vermeule is reviewing, only uses “integration” to refer to economic integration. The term is Vermeule’s.

Other passages clarify the goal of the state capture.

Note: Here I could have improved my evidence for non-violence by citing the Sunstein and Stephens’ discussion explicitly.

2. Waldstein’s Account of Vermeule’s Goals Indicate State Capture

I next cite Fr. Edmund Waldstein's remarks on Vermeule. Waldstein distinguishes between types of integralists. He then relays what he takes to be Vermeule's position:

On the other hand, Adrian Vermeule and Catholic integralists, more generally, wish to establish something more like the paleo-Durkheimian arrangement of the baroque confessional state. Or, perhaps even more radically, they want to work towards something like High Medieval Christendom. … Thinkers who promote such an integration do not necessarily want to emulate the Middle Ages in other respects. Vermeule, for instance, argues for further development of a robust administrative state, of a sort that St. Louis IX could never have imagined. But the crucial point is that integralists want an ordered relation of temporal and spiritual power in the deliberate pursuit of the good for human beings.

Waldstein, a friend of Vermeule's, says Vermeule wants to work towards something radical: "something like High Medieval Christendom." Vermeule "argues for a further development of a robust administrative state." I presume that "further development of a robust administrative state" means capturing it.

3. The Famed Empire of our Lady of Guadalupe

Feser wasn't on Twitter for Vermeule's famous "Empire of Our Lady of Guadalupe" remark. I decided not to cite Vermeule's Twitter, but the association began with a blog post of Vermeule’s. Let’s attend to the passage that started it all:

As the superb blog Semiduplex observes, Catholics need to rethink the nation-state. We have come a long way, but we still have far to go — towards the eventual formation of the Empire of Our Lady of Guadalupe, and ultimately the world government required by natural law.

The Empire of Our Lady of Guadalupe phrase links to an article that claims that Mary was America's Foundress. Here, Vermeule endorses a radical goal: to form an empire that Our Lady rules and then press for world government.

I presume that means we want nation-states devoted to Mary. If Mary rules nation-states, I assume Her authority will pass through the Church. The arrangement will look integralist. Or something near enough. At least, that's what everyone thought Vermeule meant. 

4. Vermeule’s Strategy is for Integralism

Let’s turn to my final batch of evidence. In “Ralliement: Two Distinctions,” Vermeule discusses Leo XIII’s political strategy of ralliement, which Vermeule says has several variations, including one Vermeule endorses.

A. Restoring an Integrally Catholic State.

Vermeule favorably cites Waldstein description of his favored “strategic version” of ralliement, whose goal is “the restoration of an integrally Catholic state.” The passage:

In the second, strategic version, Catholics deny that liberalism has any best self to which it might somehow be recalled. They work within a liberal order towards the long-term goal, not of reaching a stable accommodation with liberalism, even in a baptized form, but rather with a view to eventually superseding it altogether. Pater Edmund Waldstein sees this strategic version as the one Leo XIII himself favored:

Waldstein: “For Leo the ralliement was meant as a stage towards an integral restoration of Christendom. That is, Catholics were to work for the common good in the current un-ideal framework of a state that did not recognize the superiority of spiritual over temporal authority, but the hope was that this would lead eventually to a restoration of an integrally Catholic state.”

Vermeule then contrasts his vision of raillement with Ross Douthat’s version, and Vermeule maps his position onto this second, strategic version. Indeed, Vermeule even links to “Integration from Within” as his strategic version of raillement.

B. Pat Smith’s Interpretation of Vermeule

Vermeule then favorably cites a blog post at Semiduplex (run by Vermeule’s friend, the lawyer Pat Smith) that distinguishes between Douthat and Vermeule’s approaches to Catholic strategy. In that post, Smith writes this,

Building on an essay in First Things some time ago, Vermeule argues essentially that integralist Catholics ought to consider populating elite institutions and, occupying positions of power, use their authority “to further human dignity and the common good, defined entirely in substantive rather than procedural-technical terms.”

Smith seems to read “Integration from Within” as concerned with integralist Catholics. Indeed, he says it builds off of “A Christian Strategy,” the essay Feser claims gives a merely defensive strategy. Smith’s post is evidence that “Integration from Within” is about integralism. It is evidence that “A Christian Strategy” is integralist, too!

Note: I did not cite Smith in the book.

C. Vermeule’s Strategy for Eventual Integration

Now, back to Vermeule. Vermeule is talking about integralism in this post. And here’s a great reason to think so:

Hence my own version of ralliement, which hopes for eventual integration effected from within institutions currently extant in liberal-democratic orders, focuses on executive-type bureaucracies rather than on parliamentary-democratic institutions per se.

Vermeule blogged this at The Josias, the central intellectual hub of integralism. Here, no one would mistake "integration" as meaning anything other than "integralism." And, read in context, that is surely what Vermeule means. And, again, he cites passages that say integralism is the long-term goal of his version of ralliement.

There’s Good Evidence Vermeule Supports State Capture

These passages are why I’ve long thought Vermeule supports state capture. I’m not sure why Feser so confidently asserts that I’m wrong. I wonder if Feser wants to interpret Vermeule as affirming Feser’s much less problematic soft integralism.

But let’s step back and review Feser’s main complaint:

The problem is that Vermeule does not in the first place actually endorse the extreme political program Vallier attributes to him.

I have plenty of reasons for thinking Vermeule has a transition plan that involves state capture, indeed integralist state capture. At a minimum, my interpretation is reasonable. It’s not a strawman.

So now I leave it to you, reader. Is it unreasonable to assume Vermeule has the goal of state capture? Indeed, is it unreasonable to think Vermeule aims to reach integralism through state capture? Tell me in the comments.

Moving On?

I should address some other issues eventually, but I needed to respond to Feser’s main claim ASAP.

We should get on to discussing more substantive matters. So, my next post will address the more important question about whether integralism as such has a transition problem.

UPDATE: 12/22/23: three points need stressing. First, I did not cite the Smith piece in the book, just to make that clear. Second, my argument that Vermeule favors non-violent would have been strengthened if I had discussed the Sunstein passage on nudging in the book. Third, while seven passages are enough to vindicate my non-violent reading of Vermeule, I can now add an eighth: integration from within indicates that Catholics “must take over the state and destroy liberalism from the top-down, not so much with coercion, but with other forms of persuasion and soft power. (AKW, p. 15, emphasis mine).

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*Vermeule then cites Joseph de Maistre’s Considerations on France (though without page numbers). Maistre was an integralist (as Sebastian Morello persuasively argues). Maistre’s book, Du Pape, defends an integralist position. (Or, as I read it, something that gives the Pope even more power than integralists would.) Surely, this point is not lost on Vermeule.