"The writings of Burke, an Irish émigré, stand at the fountainhead of the quintessentially English "Culture and Society" tradition, which was to develop his concern with "organic" relations between human beings, and his scorn for a mean-spirited utilitarianism, into a resourceful critique of industrial capitalism. This is not, need one say, to claim this eighteenth-century Whig as a closet Marxist. But few things could be more of an affront to his values than the neo-liberalism of our own day, in which an abstract, universal drive for profit threatens much of what he held dear: the cultural needs of particular communities, the importance of human affections and customary bonds, the sense of history as a living process, the rootedness of men and women in particular places, the preciousness of that which cannot be bought or sold. Modern-day market forces, with their uprooting of whole communities, their severing of traditional bonds, their bogus universalism, their contractual view of society and eradication of history represent in Burkean terms, a virulent new strain of Jacobinism, even if the abstract dogmas in question are now those of Brussels bankers rather than French philosophes. The terms in which Burke censures the French revolutionaries of his time apply with striking specificity to the apologists for the global market-place today."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Members of the Parliament of Great BritainPhilosophers from IrelandPoliticians from IrelandPeople from DublinAnglicans
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Terry Eagleton, 'The Good-Natured Gael', Crazy John and the Bishop and other Essays on Irish Culture (1998), pp. 134-135
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Edmund_Burke
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Edmund Burke
1729 – 1797
irischer Staatsmann und Philosoph
403 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Edmund Burke →
Related Quotes
"I have been told by an eminent bookseller, that in no branch of his business, after tracts of popular devotion, were …"
"Turn over a new leaf."
"With respect to us, Poland might be, in fact, considered as a country in the moon."
"You talk of Paine with more respect than he deserves: He is utterly incapable of comprehending his subject. He has no…"
"To the Deity must be left the task of infinite perfection, while to us poor, weak, incapable mortals, there was no ru…"
"The present state of France was ten times worse than a tyranny. The new constitution was said to be an experiment but…"
"He laid it down as a maxim, that monarchy was the basis of all good government and the nearer to monarchy any governm…"
"...what I look to with seriousness is the Phalanx of Party which exists in the body of the dissenters, who are, at th…"
"France had endeavoured under the specious pretext of an enlarged benevolence, to sow the seeds of enmity among nation…"
"The Leaders have ever since gone...to propagate the principles of French Levelling and confusion, by which no house i…"