THE NEW WOR.LD OF THE GOTHIC FOX
213
Irving Louis Horowitz:
I
actually saw
The New World oj the Gothic
Fox
in its early stages, when it was sent to Transaction Publishers for
consideration. Our editorial board, with unstinting support, liked the
manuscript a great deaL That said, we lost out on the bidding to the
University of California Press and its director, James H. Clark. They are
to be commended for publishing this provocative work. Claudio has
worked over the materials tremendously during the last fourteen years to
make the final product brilliant in substance and pellucid in style.
Let me segue into Claudio's book by a random recollection of a
conversation I had when I was re-reading the book in its final form.
While in Buenos Aires in the late 1950s, I was walking along Retiro
Plaza with a good friend, Hernan Rodriguez, who served as translator
for my lectures on the sociology of knowledge and scientific sociology
for the Buenos Aires branch of the French publisher, Hachette . We
walked by the statue depicting the departure of the English in 1810 and
the triumph of the national system over the Spanish royalists in 1816. My
colleague said : "Look at this monument.
It
illustrates the great tragedy
of Argentina. We got rid of the Spanish politicians but kept their
corrupt culture. We should have at least kept the English language if not
the British troops. The wrong people were forced to leave ." This bitter–
sweet comment from an Argentine nationalist came flooding back to my
mind in re-examining Claudio's book.
Quite beyond stream of consciousness reflections, Claudio's book is
based on solid research.
It
is an extension of Max Weber's thought
about th e impact of the Protestant Reformation on entrepreneurial
economies; or, if you will, the economic advantages of that
Reformation vis-a-vis other societies that either failed to experience the
rising tide of Northern European development, or more pointedly,
rejected such linkages.
The New World oj the Gothic Fox
offers a crucial
subtext about the inversion of the Marxist notion of economic base and
cultural superstructure. The implication throughout is how cu ltural
formations - from the nature of legal scaffolds to the character of
language - generate the successful accommodation of the social system
to
new structures and new possibilities for change. That Claudio's
preferences are clearly with Montesquieu in law and Tocqueville in
custom does not blind him to the unique position of English empiricism
in philosophy, constitutionalism in law, and utilitarianism in economy.
The evolution of Western Civilization took shape as much, if not more,
because of the British impact than that of Germany, France or Italy. This
pre-eminence grew as industrialism displaced agrarianism. The military
