How to Honor the Legacy of Michael Brooks

“When it comes to theorizing about cosmopolitan socialism, Michael, unfortunately, passed on before he could spell out the details. However, we can infer much from his criticisms of conservative histories.”

Introduction

Last year, 2020, was a year defined by sadness, with seemingly the entire globe huddled in isolation to weather both the pandemic and widespread social unrest. So much went wrong that it is easy to forget the more conventional tragedies that give a degree of form and texture to ordinary human life. My friend and colleague Michael Brooks’ passing in July—at just 36—was a stinging reminder that life is rarely fair. Fortunately, his legacy has carried on, and there has been an extended series of tributes and examinations of his work, which ensure that his contributions will have a long shelf life. In this brief article, I will discuss some of Michael’s arguments for what he called “cosmopolitan socialism” and situate them in response to the conservative figures he sought to criticize. Because his own reflections on these matters were on the shorter side, I will be taking some license to expand the parameters of the discussion in a manner that I hope (and suspect) Michael would have favored. Ideally, this will help flesh out some of the tantalizing ideas Michael himself would have, undoubtedly, developed had his life not been so wrongly taken from him so early.

Cosmopolitan Socialism and History

Michael discussed cosmopolitan socialism at the end of his first book Against The Web which, as the title suggests, is mainly a critique of the Intellectual Dark Web. His thoughts on this subject have been well-covered, so I will not rehash them here. What we have to ask is why Michael thought it was important to defend cosmopolitan socialism in a book that was, first and foremost, a critique of a small number of reactionary authors. Here, I think there are two points we can draw out.

First, Michael argued that the structure of reactionary discourse tends towards dehistoricizing and decontextualizing. On the surface, this might seem to be an odd claim given that many a conservative author from Burke onwards was keen to criticize precisely the “abstract” thinking of progressive authors, as well as the tendency to appeal to universal principles rather than the wisdom of received tradition. Indeed, Robert Bork once exclaimed that what distinguished liberals and progressives from conservatives was precisely the latter’s respect for “particularity.” What I think Michael was getting at, however, was precisely how the kind of historical outlook that these authors appeal to is always monological and settled. It is often framed as a kind of received wisdom that we are to accept because it comes from mysterious, transcendent sources—the nation, the biography of great men, God, the eternal “tradition”—which is best perceived and reflected only in the few. This naturally lends itself to an elitist veneer, which echoes the roots of conservative thought in aristocratic and monied responses to 18th century revolutionary movements.