Over at An und für sich in a piece called Does Milbank walk among us? there has been some speculation about what would possess Milbank to pose pseudonymously as Alasdair Maclagan and make comments on blogs and other online fora. Following on from some previous posts (here and here) and especially the now infamous and heated exchange on my post ‘Milbank in Monstrosity of Christ’ – the one in which he was ‘outed’ – a few sober, new year reflections.

To begin with, it’s not absolutely certain it is Milbank, although opinion seems to feel that it is. The style and content is essentially his, as a number have observed, the email attached to Maclagan is Milbank’s and the IP address gives us the region around Nottingham. Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that Maclagan is indeed Milbank.

The nature of the comments falls into two groups. Some posts, such as those backing Philip Blond in The Statesman and Conservative’s Home Platform (also gathered conveniently here) come out vociferously in favour of Blond’s ‘Red Toryism’ via ‘Blue Labour (which become brand names for tired old positions). But others, especially those in response to ‘Milbank in Monstrosity of Christ’, set out to defend Milbank, accuse others of ignorance, insult people and make plenty of typos. For the sake of the record, here they are:

Milbank does not think Vatican II an error in the slightest. And clearly his critique of modernity is directed especially at certain aspects of the Counter-Reformation. He has changed little at all and all his argumentative thrusts you seem to miss. Frankly these comments suggest a complete failure to keep abreast with current thought. I’m not suprized the mist had you so lost.

Anthony Paul Smith appears utterly at sea with British politics. The fact is that Blond is seen in London as the first person seriously to have challenged Thatcherism in British political life by coming up with the glimmerings of an alternative. (This is to agree with Anthony that New Labour is merely Thatcherism continued — weakened in places though actually on the whole made ore extreme.) He is right that a Cameron govt. will likely mean yet more virulent Thtacherism ie neoliberalism. But Blond is the one person who could stop this happenening by weakening the influence of Osborne, the shadow-chancellor. Cameron as all concede has a real one-nation streak. Yet Blond’s ideas on mutualism in welfare have already been massively taken up by labour. Likewise his economic thinking is endorsed by Will Hutton on the left. Together they are trying to sace Cadbury’s from Kraft. Far more could be said. basically Blond lies close to Paul Hisrt’s asscoiationism as does Milbank. ow is tis simply ‘reartionary’? Milbank has been Ruskinian from square one. The fusion of socialism and Toryism was invented by Ruskin. Yet Milbank is clear in print he remains ‘blue labour’ and not ‘red tory’ — close to Cruddas and Glasman on the Labout LEFT. OK its religious wing — but Milbank has always insisted — see his very early Coleridge essay in the Future of Love that Christian socialism is not the same as secular socialism and the ‘tory’ strand is linked to this. He has not changed only become more developed and precise in hs political thinking. Thus he and hs freinds alone — including Zamagni and others near to the Pope — are coming up with real plans to end neo-liberalism. Meanwhile there is no non-liberal left to speak of…

I’ll now leave most of you to your wilfully decadent ignorance where everything is indicator and innuendo and nothing is position and argument. RO is fighting the real war againt liberalism already mutating into a new mode of totalitarianism — out there in the grown-up serious world. Like most people today, when you hear something new, all you can do is wonder which of your assumed eternal categorical boxes it fits into. As a result you’ve missed the way in which the entire terms of poliical debate are changing and the way in which a kind of new synthesis of Marx, Ruskin, Polanyi, Macintyre and Zamagni is generating a critique of capitalism that exceeds that of socialism so far and starts to explain why socialism has been so impotent in the face of neoliberalism. The same synthesis is already generating new practical alternatives. And the crucial mark of its success is that all this is better grasped by practical politicians, journaliss, businesspeople, trades unionists and community activists than it is by academic leftists stuck in sterile — and utterly non-intllectual slogansing. RO, RT and BL show the way out of the triple non-radicalism of ‘emancipatory’ (now such a silly, vacuous term) politics: 1. its seeking of merely small consolatory gains in the face of assumed inevitable tragedy 2. Its seeking of democratic power-balance as a substitute for the naivety of virtue — thereby committing the greater naivety of supposing one can dispense with virtue — of the masses or of the leaders who always re-emerge in any system. (The only non-naivety is to say we need both democratic power balance and virtue). 3. Its confinement to the pathos of seeing all power and inequality as bad and therefore to be limited as far as possible — instead of asking what power and what inequalities can be justified. If one answered — those that further virtue and education into virute, then we could have a far more economically equal society than any so far seen. If any of you find this hermetic then you have to take this as proof that you have no idea of the new political and theoretical horizons in Europe today. Start reading and researching. And talk to Milbank, Blond and Glasman.

S’s M. seems a little confused. Osborne is Blond’s Thatcherite *enemy*. Otherwise, from you lot — a little light social democracy, ecological piety (though to be sure, I share it and I’m sure APS will agree that finitism not infinitism is the metaphysical villain here) and some nostalgic ‘youth’ gestures. (Everyone knows that coralling of the young into ‘youth’ is what capitalism most desires.) I rest my case here. Otherwise much of what APS says is right. And yet, if he dug deeper he would find that the cross-party rise of mutualism goes deeper than the old Giddens-thing and as the power to outlast electoral fortunes. Read eg Jonathan Freedland’s Guardian report on encouragement of social visiting movement where he precisely adopts the insight that the old wish neither to be consumers nor welfare dependents. Or read Bruni and Zamagni’s Civil Economy (not perfect, not left enough, but still more radical than most of the current left) with its real suggestions for how to make economic exchanges also social and political ones realising equity. This is so much more than trains versus planes — though of course, I’m all for that. Over and finally out.

When it turned out that these comments were most likely posted by Milbank under an alternative name, people responded in a number of ways, such as ‘Oh my’ and ‘Fuck me dead’ and a good number of gasps. Why such responses?

I would suggest that the main reason for the surprise is the sort of Jekyll and Hyde it uncovers. It’s a little like knowing a neighbour for many years, thinking you know him or her perfectly well, only to be given an illicit peek into his other side when he doesn’t know you’re looking. At that moment you get a profound shock, for he stamps around, yelling, screaming, abusing, swearing and so on. I would add that the image of someone lurking on the internet, seeking out criticisms and then defending himself through another identity adds to the oddness of the whole affair. A hint, perhaps of …  (deleted, since I’m a civil guy).

As for the content, to return fire, it seems as though Maclagan-Milbank has little awareness of renewed debates in the various traditions of the left – Marxist, anarchists, greens and so on – where some of the most creative work is going on concerning ecology, economics and society. And this comes from activists on the ground, not well-paid professors in university departments. The problem is that Milbank, according to Maclagan, is with a small group of others at the centre of radical change, trouncing the left and demolishing liberalism. Forgive me for being slightly sceptical, but how can a small number of university and church-based theologians, philosophers and newspaper columnists change anything, except maybe the teaching schedule and the toilet rolls in the department? On top of that, there is a strong sense that England, if not Nottingham, is the centre of the globe. I hate to be the breaker of bad news, but the empire collapsed a while back. And then there is the quintessential Milbank move, romanticising the Middle Ages as the source of much that was good and potentially radical. It sounds more like Middle Earth than the Middle Ages.

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