so, i'm coming to the conclusion that burke was basically hired by a clique of aristocrats to represent them in ways they could not represent themselves. that is to say that the aristocrats he represented realized they didn't have the legal knowledge or rhetorical eloquence (and, perhaps, also, the idle time to lay out legal arguments in rhetorically eloquent ways) to advance their causes, so they hired him to act as a front. it's kind of like a michael ignatieff or late hitchens type thing. more generally, the rich still maintain a clique of lawyers to use to get what they want in private life, they just don't see the use in paying for philosophers any more.

when you put it in context, it's hard to even take him seriously. i mean, he's being paid to provide an argument to advance a desired conclusion. he's the guy the aristocrats hired to argue in favour of aristocratic government, to uphold the status quo, which were their own interests. there's no intellectual integrity in that position. it's the definition of charlatanism.

however, it also sort of turns him into a rube who's just arguing for his own job security.

preliminary thoughts that will no doubt evolve through the course of reading this...

i mean, i realize he was sort of a liberal in some ways, but something i'm going to be focusing on is how his brand of liberalism may have actually led to greater benefits for the aristocracy than the bourgeoisie, or more generally how those two classes merged together - specifically in the context of controlling foreign markets. i've never really been comfortable with the way marxists narrate this because i've seen a lot of empirical evidence that suggests a high level of continuity between aristocracy and bourgeoisie. that is to say that as the aristocracy took advantage of religion to advance it's interests (in complex ways that sometimes backfired, or sometimes led to submission), it also took advantage of "free trade" in a way to extend it's influence. that's leaning more to a theory of class *stasis* and class *metamorphosis* than one of class revolution. or, if you want to think about anthropology, it's a continuity hypothesis.

so, to what extent did burke more or less co-opt liberal economics as a tool for the aristocracy to increase their control, particularly in foreign markets?

i think these kinds of "mercantilist" ideas of "free trade" are still with us, are even the dominant form of global organization. they may not be the same when written out, but the general idea of twisting market theory into a tool to prop up an elite is.

i also think there's a comparison to something like fordism, which used quasi-socialist ideas with a similar goal.

but, the question i want to ask is whether burke had the foresight - and i think it is foresight - to realize that the ideas liberals were promoting would actually work in favour of the aristocracy, and if that was the reason he had this liberal streak.

yeah, it's interesting that he seems to have jumped back and forth from being a spokesperson of aristocrats with shipping interests and being a spokesperson for merchants directly, including large family-run shipping interests in the new york colony.

i haven't read the speech and probably won't but the notes here are interesting:

http://www.econlib.org/library/LFBooks/Burke/brkSWv4c1.html