Positivist Republic: Auguste Comte and the Reconstruction of American Liberalism, 1865–1920 by Gillis J. Harp (review)

BookReviews 187 suffice. At m1rnmum, in this first-rate study, Fellman has offered an explanation which will be the starting point for future alternative appraisals of this influential Victorian American. To use terms now in vogue in Vancouver and Toronto, Fellman has scored and the ball is now in our court. Bruce White U11iversityalToronto Gillis J.Harp. Positiuist Republic: Auguste Comte andthe Reconstruction of" American Liberalism, 1865-1920. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995. Pp. xvi + 216; appendix and bibliography. Gillis J. Harp gives us a convincing book. Positivist Republic is wellresearched , strongly argued, and organized. If not a pleasure to read, then it is at least surprisingly readable, especially when one considers the impressive amount of careful detail with which Harp supports his argument. Harp offers a composite of the American Comtean tradition. He shows how Comtean ideas were woven into the American progressive and liberal traditions of the Gilded Age, resulting in a definite change in the fabric of American liberalism. The American liberal tradition was, in 1860, defined by classical liberal h1issez-laireunderstandings. By 1920, however, Harp argues that American liberalism had been thoroughly affected by the reformist, interventionist, and more traditionally conservative ideas of the American Comteans. The result was an interventionist liberalism tainted with illiberal and antidemocratic elements: elitism, statism, corporatism, the paternalism of the Whigs, and a faith in progress that came uncomfortably close to welcoming technocracy and bureaucratic rule. Discussion of Albion Small and E. A. Ross's concern with order, and Herbert Croly's emphasis on the role of managerial experts within the liberal social order, convincingly illustrates this thesis. The effects of Comtean thought on Gilded Age religious thought are also covered; Harp suggests that the Americans turned to Comte as a replacement for religious thought, using Comtean concepts to justify a faith in progress and science, and working within the bounds of a positive science driven by religious questions. Harp is at his strongest in carefully delineating the debt of certain American liberal and progressive thinkers to Comte, and showmg the tense and 188 Canadian Reuiew of American Studies paradoxical relationship between Americ~n reform liberalism and Comte's conservative, elitist ideas. The way in which these thinkers used Comtean language and concepts to address the philosophical, social, religious, and political problems of their time is discussed in detail, as is the effects of their thought upon the larger tradition. Harp moves from Henry Edger's largely uncritical turn to positivism as a secular and scientific substitute for religion, to T. B. Wakeman's thorough revision of Comtism, and on to Small's shift away from evolutionary positivism whilst maintaining the conservatism and elitism inherent in Comtean thought. Discussions of Revisionism, Lester F. Ward, Ross, and Croly are no less complete. Harp is at times critical of these thinkers. He implies, for example, that their failure to confront the conservatism definitive of Comte's position effectively "reinforced the restricted vision of the liberal left culture in America" (215). Their avoidance of important foundational questions has led American liberalism toward a naive faith in technocracy and elites, an "unwarranted optimism about human nature," and to "much of the failure of elite-led liberal reform in this century" (215). Harp reveals the way in which America's liberal left was influenced by Comtean conservatism; he also suggests that certain current tensions within and failures of the American left can be traced back to this uneasy relationship between Comte's ideas and reform liberalism. Consistent attention is paid throughout the book to the tension between American reform liberalism and the Comtean tendency to elitist, technocratic , and bureaucratic thought common to the American Comtists discussed within the book. Harp also ensures that the differences within this indigenous band of Comtean thinkers are not glossed over. They are not portrayed as a homogeneous group. At times, Harp mentions what sound like important counterarguments, but fails to argue convincingly against them. He notes, for example, that "Louis Hartz has maintained that Americans such as Ward could never be thorough Comtists because they lacked an authentic conservative tradition to supply an organic and statist foundation for their politics" (114). While it may be true that...