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.

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "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." in the context of "Terry Eagleton, 'The Good-Natured Gael', Crazy John and the Bishop and other Essays on Irish Culture (1998), pp. 134-135" to mean that wisdom is timeless.