The Unvarnished Doctrine

The Unvarnished Doctrine

            In his 240-page defense of the Lockean liberal influence on the American Revolution, Steven Dworetz builds a strong levy against the high tide of classical republicanism. This school – originating around the third quarter of the twentieth century – attempted to unseat John Locke as the “prophet” of the American Revolution, relegating his classical liberalism to the margins of Revolutionary thought. In its stead this “revisionist” school sought to place the classical republicanism of “Cato” in the center stage, essentially pitting liberal “commerce” against republican “civic virtue” in an ideological struggle over the soul of the American Revolution. Originally published out of the Duke University Press in 1990, Dworetz claimed to explore a “critical examination of the republican revision” while reasserting the centrality of Locke’s liberalism in the Revolution (7). Quickly admitting that his book is insufficiently exhaustive to provide a final answer to the question of ideological centrality in Revolutionary American thought, his work does provide a valuable contribution to the, sometimes tense, scholarly exchange. This book is certainly not without its weaknesses, but Dworetz’s topics are well researched and his arguments are compellingly articulated. The criticisms that he provides cannot be easily overcome, nor should his questions be quickly dismissed if a rigorous academic investigation into the questions of the American founding is of any consequence.

             Dworetz begins his book by explaining that Western nations have a long history of tolerating – if not celebrating – critical reviews of political doctrine while, simultaneously, warning that this practice can behave as a corrosive force on a nation’s foundational political culture (3). It is precisely this danger that he charges the classical republican school of injecting into the American political discourse with their “revisionist” interpretation of the American founding (4). Claiming that the motivation of the classical republicans to remove Lockean liberalism from the American Revolution – primarily inspired by scholars such as J.G.A Pocock, Leo Strauss and C.B. Macpherson – was anti-commercial in nature, Dworetz subtly paints them with the brush of socialistic ideology (7). At this point, it would not be inappropriate to place these works within a greater historiographical timeline and, hopefully, provide an explanation for their respective points of view. The ideological clash between capitalism and socialism, instigated by the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the member-states of NATO, not only prompted heated political and economic disagreements but also acted as a backdrop for critical new ways in understanding historical events and dramatic social changes. The 1960s and 1970s represented the “high tide” of socialist influence on the historical discipline and, from this, came the revised interpretation of the American founding that unsurprisingly discounted Locke – a champion of commerce and property rights – as a major influence of the period. It is also unsurprising that books like Dworetz’s – books that championed Locke’s bold return as a central figure of the American Revolution – were published in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when the Soviet Union was languishing in the throes of its impending demise and the West was celebrating the triumph of commerce, liberty and freedom. While it would be a mistake to over-politicize the nature of these kinds of research publications, it would also be a mistake to ignore the larger ideological and historiographical context that these books can be placed. Perhaps worse than charging the classical republican scholars with being motivated or blinded by their ideological leanings, is Dworetz’s later accusation that these researchers dismissed Locke out of a fundamental unfamiliarity with his writings, and that they “failed to grasp the very basics” of Lockean political theory (10). Moreover, he claims that the entire school of classical republicanism relied on the linchpin of a hostile interpretation of Locke and “some wishful thinking about Cato”, suggesting that the historians of the republicanism school superimposed a twentieth-century worldview onto an eighteenth-century implementation of Locke’s seventeenth-century political doctrine (12, 31). While these indictments against the classical republican scholars are weighty indeed, Dworetz claims that the true value of his project is in its attempt to reinforce the strong tradition and foundation of American liberalism, an attempt that he hopes will keep a political paradigm shift at bay (38).

            Thoughtfully devoting an entire chapter of his book to both the general methodological challenges of historical studies and critiques of political theory, as well as the interdisciplinary challenges of studying these two fields concurrently, Dworetz makes clear that he fully anticipates and welcomes a thorough critical examination of his research. While this chapter not only introduces the reader to the difficulty involved in the research for his book, it also does an excellent job of reminding his would-be critics that a certain amount of critical latitude must be afforded historians for making the best of what they are given. In this sense, Dworetz adequately reminds his readers that the modern historian bears a remarkable resemblance to a forensic investigator. With regard to The Unvarnished Doctrine, Dworetz relies heavily on political pamphlets, state papers, official documents, newspapers, correspondence, and even “circumstantial evidence” in order to capture the “character of the Revolution” (34, 54, 67). Rightfully suggesting that the most important thing a researcher can do is familiarize himself with the source material and the sources that those writings cite, he also admits that the selection – and, by implication, the exclusion – of one’s sources can go very far in determining the conclusions of a research project (51, 61). This reminder is a curious one since the extensive section of end notes in the back of the book would suggest that Dworetz has done considerable research for this project, whereas the obviously heavy reliance on New England clerical writings in the latter half of the book appears to betray or contradict his own warning on sources.

            By performing a reasonable exploration of “liberal” political theory of Locke in chapter three of The Unvarnished Doctrine, Dworetz establishes the that primary concerns of the colonists in the eighteenth century consisted of taxation, representation, property, consent and liberty – all topics that Locke had extensively written on (74, 98). He continues by arguing that the considerable protests of the American colonists against Parliament’s revenue policies found justification primarily in the writings of Locke and that Locke’s theory of limited legislative government provided a critical validation for resistance against Britain’s Declaratory Act (70, 93). These claims indeed supply a compelling refutation of the classical republican claim that Locke was simply a “bourgeois capitalist” and that his ideas were not influential in the mechanical development of American political theory. In addition to his reiteration of Lockean political theory, Dworetz also invests a considerable amount of space in his book to proving that “Cato” could not have been Locke’s would-be replacement as “prophet” of the Revolution. Not only is there an alarming lack of – what he refers to as “empirical textual evidence” – to suggest that Cato’s writings were important to the Revolutionaries, Dworetz also asserts that Cato would not have resonated with any of the founders and Revolutionary leaders for the following reasons: Cato believed in original sin and claimed that the “making of laws supposes that all men are wicked”, Cato’s political theory is Hobbesian in nature and believed that laws were needed to create terror and instill order, and, lastly, Cato believed that liberty and property were as linked as Locke did, thus making Cato no less of a “capitalist” with regard to liberty and property than Locke (41, 100, 101, 104, 109). While Dworetz does a particularly good job of showing that the writings and ideas of Locke were more in tune with traditional Revolutionary values than Cato, he leaves the overwhelming burden of proof for chapter five where he discusses the relationship between the New England clergy and Locke’s theological and political writings.

            Near the end of chapter four, Dworetz lays the foundation for the next chapter by claiming that Locke was “distinctively a Biblical Christian” (118). While the classical republicans did call into question Locke’s spirituality (and Locke’s religious predilections would certainly have an impact on the general acceptability of Locke’s theological arguments by the host of New England clergy), the suggestion that Locke was a “Biblical Christian” is problematic on many levels. The first question this raises is: what does Dworetz mean by “Biblical Christian”? It would not be inappropriate to suggest that Christianity remains a spiritual tradition without an overriding orthodoxy and yet Dworetz does nothing to qualify that label except to say that Locke believed that God existed and that he, evidently, was a powerful deity. This definition could just as easily describe a devout Jew or Muslim as much as it would a “Biblical Christian”. Unfortunately, this question is not resolved anywhere else in the text and it is upon this basic assumption that Dworetz proceeds to the most important chapter of his book: establishing a relationship between his ideas and writings, and those that would – ostensibly – serve to disseminate them to the public: the New England clergy. This element of Dworetz’s research is, perhaps, the most unique as he branches into the writings of the colonial religious culture to find explanations for the colonial political culture. This method can provide its own challenges, however, as you must first demonstrate that the New England clergy really were representative of the larger intellectual macrocosm in America while, simultaneously, demonstrating that the colonists themselves tended to “take their ministers seriously” (135). Arguing that the New England clergymen boldly broke the overwhelming clerical tradition of preaching “passive obedience” to a doctrine of revolution, Dworetz goes to great lengths to prove that these ministers – among the variety of religious controversies – all basically held that both reason and revelation were legitimate sources of knowledge (138, 159). From this essential foundation, Dworetz works to establish that the change in doctrines of obedience was directly influenced by Locke’s theological interpretation of Romans chapter 13. Linking old Calvinist theological principles such as the limited power of God to Locke’s principle of limited sovereignty in legislative government represents a particularly innovative interpretation in Dworetz’s book but not without the cost of exposing him to a lot of criticism (150, 154).

The connections that he establishes in this book, while excellently researched and convincingly argued, have a number of “moving parts” to them that cannot help but raise questions and inspire critical review. There are a number of places where his findings can break down. Dworetz claims to have found that, among the writings of New England clergy, Locke’s thoughts On Government were quoted more often than any other non-Biblical source, yet he doesn’t quantify this claim with actual counts or percentages, nor does he qualify it by explaining whether those citations were favorable or unfavorable (43). His suggestion that the New England clergy were a fairly representative microcosmic barometer of colonial attitudes and beliefs is not new, but it is certainly not closed off to critical analysis (59). The danger of relying on Locke’s orthodoxy as a “Biblical Christian” was already discussed, but so is his argument that the New England clergy found justification for placing reason and revelation on the same footing in Locke’s writings (147). Despite these weak points in his rousing defense of Locke’s position as vanguard of the Revolution, Dworetz delivers precisely what he aims for: to correct errors in some previous historical works on the American founding political doctrine while not seeking out a completely comprehensive explanation of the American founding (37). It is his parting advice, however, that may provide the most important contribution to this field: to leave the mutually exclusive approaches of the American founding “myth” in the past while seeking out new ways to understand how the formation of “American republicanism in the Revolutionary years was a distinctively liberal republicanism” (191).