1Dime Radio Towards a Conservative Left (Ft. Michael Behrent)
Left And Liberalism Are Intertwined
- Jean‑Claude Michéa fuses a left economic critique with skepticism of liberal social progress as a unified problem.
- Michael Behrent says Michéa argues the Left has severed ties with working‑class culture, making cultural liberalism and market liberalism complicit.
Communist Upbringing Shaped Michéa
- Michéa grew up in a Paris housing project with both parents active in the French Communist Party and the Resistance.
- Behrent notes the party formed a communal milieu like a church, shaping Michéa's early sense of solidarity and politics.
Teacher Turned Polemicist, Now Farmer
- Michéa became a high‑school philosophy teacher rather than an academic and later retired to a farm in southwestern France.
- Behrent notes Michéa's writing began accidentally and gained a following despite his dislike of publicity.
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In this week’s episode of 1Dime Radio, I’m joined by Professor Michael C. Behrent to discuss Towards a Conservative Left: Selected Writings of Jean-Claude Michéa, a newly translated collection of essays by one of France’s most fascinating dissident socialists, sometimes described as “the French Christopher Lasch.”
Michéa is a rare kind of left thinker: fiercely anti-capitalist and pro-democracy, but deeply skeptical of the Left’s cultural project, especially when it becomes a substitute for class politics, or when it turns working class “common sense” into something to be morally corrected. We talk about his Orwellian framework (including “Tory anarchism” and “common decency”), his critique of liberalism as both an economic and social ideology, and why these arguments suddenly feel uncomfortably relevant.
In The Backroom (Patreon), we go further into what “conservative leftism” could actually mean today: socially conservative and economically leftist, what that synthesis would look like in practice, and what parts of the modern Left Michéa thinks have become complicit with liberalism.
Timestamps:
00:00:00 The Backroom Preview Culture vs Race, and The Cosmopolitan Delusion
00:04:19 Jean Claude Michéa: The French Christopher Lasch
00:10:38 Towards a Conservative Left: Michéa’s Conservative Socialism
00:14:05 Orwell: The Tory Anarchist
00:17:50 Michéa’s background, communist parents, the Resistance, and patriotism
00:28:01 Why Orwell is the key to Michéa’s synthesis
00:35:57 Orwell’s “common decency.”
00:50:15 Common sense vs left suspicion, and the populist question
00:59:22 The “bourgeois left” & The drift away from the working-class
01:02:45 What “conservative” really means here
01:31:02 A New Political Synthesis (The Backroom Transition)
GUEST:
Michael C. Behrent
• Towards a Conservative Left (Bookshop): https://bookshop.org/p/books/towards-a-conservative-left-selected-writings-of-jean-claude-michea-jean-claude-michea/22912345
• Towards a Conservative Left (Barnes & Noble): https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/towards-a-conservative-left-jean-claude-michi-a/1147813503
• Vauban Books (Publisher): https://www.vaubanbooks.com/
• Behrent faculty page (Appalachian State): https://history.appstate.edu/faculty-staff/profiles
• Behrent’s site: https://sisterrepublic.wordpress.com/about/
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