Motus Mentis

I’ve just finished an excellent book by Auron MacIntyre, an up-and-coming voice on the Right. It’s called The Total State, and it is well worth your time.

MacIntyre is emerging as an influential political analyst and public intellectual, with a job at The Blaze and a regular output of podcasts and videos. (His YouTube channel is here.) His book, which is a remarkably concise summary (not an easy thing to do) of the political theory of Bertrand de Jouvenel, Carl Schmitt, Vilfredo Pareto, Gaetano Mosca, Curtis Yarvin, James Burnham, and others, examines the growth and consolidation of power in expanding polities, with particular attention to the effects of scale on the growth of managerial bureaucracies.

There is no substitute for reading and understanding the primary sources that MacIntyre draws on for this book, but this relatively slim volume is, for the uninitiated, an excellent digest of what you need to learn to begin to understand the laws of power that shape the cycles of political history, ancient and modern (and to understand why we’re in the mess we’re in). I’m very impressed indeed by how much meaty and accurate analysis Macintyre has managed to provide in his succinct overview of these complex ideas.

The book is more descriptive than prescriptive; the final chapter, entitled “The Only Way Out Is Through”, correctly explains that the ratchet that centralizes and bureaucratizes State power is not reversible except through inevitable collapse. (This appears to be well underway.) But it’s important, at the very least, to understand why, in order to think clearly about what we might do to survive the deluge.

You can buy MacIntyre’s book here. He’s doing good work, and he deserves our support.