Philosopher of the Counter-Revolution

Those who have attended the annual March
for Life in Washington, D.C., may have noticed a group of men wearing red sashes and carrying large red banners emblazoned with a golden lion and the words “Tradition, Family, Property.” These men are frequently accompanied by a marching band playing bagpipes, brass, fifes, and drums. They belong to the American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family, and Property (TFP), a conservative Catholic organization deeply involved in campaigning on abortion and other culture war issues.

The TFP, which has over 40 affiliated organizations around the world, was founded in Brazil in 1960 by Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira (1908-1995).

“Dr. Plinio,” as he was affectionately known by his followers, was born into a Brazilian aristocratic family that, in the words of his biographer, Roberto de Mattei, was “a little patch of the Ancien Regime that survived and opposed the floodtide of modernity.” From a young age, Corrêa de Oliveira nursed a desire to restore the traditional Christian principles that have been the basis for the political and social order known as Christendom. He wrote:

When still very young I marvelled at the ruins of Christendom, gave them my heart, turned my back on all I could expect, and made of that past full of blessings my future.

With this intent, Corrêa de Oliveira became involved in Brazil’s Catholic Electoral League and was successfully elected as a candidate to the 1933 Constitutional Assembly, where he helped form his country’s new constitution. At 24 he was Brazil’s youngest congressman. At the instigation of Corrêa de Oliveira and his colleagues, a number of conservative social and religious principles were enacted in the constitution, including the indissolubility of marriage, the right to religious instruction in schools, state assistance to large families, and protection of the Christian Sunday.

His role in the Constitutional Assembly was only one of a number of distinguished roles that Corrêa de Oliveira filled during his lifetime. Trained as a lawyer, he would later hold the chair of Modern and Contemporary History at the Pontifical Catholic University of Brazil. He also served as the editor of two newspapers, O Legionário and Catolicismo. He was the author of 15 books and over 2,500 articles. 

By far his most famous and influential book was Revolution and Counter-Revolution, published in 1959. It would become the inspiration for the founding of the Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family, and Property, founded by Corrêa de Oliveira the following year. The book lays down what is essentially a heavily traditionalist philosophy of history. Corrêa de Oliveira saw the major battle of modern times as a titanic fight between two forces: revolution, representing disorder, and counter-revolution, the restoration of order. 

For Corrêa de Oliveira, the revolution had three stages: the Reformation, the French Revolution, and Communism. He called these the three great revolutions, each of which progressively advanced toward an ideal of liberal egalitarianism. At the core of the revolution were the vices of pride and sensuality. Writing in Revolution and Counter-Revolution, Corrêa de Oliveira stated:

Pride leads to hatred of all superiority and, thus, to the affirmation that inequality is an evil in itself at all levels, principally at the metaphysical and religious ones. This is the egalitarian aspect of the Revolution.

Sensuality, per se, tends to sweep aside all barriers. It does not accept restraints and leads to revolt against all authority and law, divine or human, ecclesiastical or civil. This is the liberal aspect of the Revolution.

Corrêa de Oliveira analyzed in detail these two aspects of the revolution. The egalitarianism promoted by the revolution was both “radical and metaphysical.” It consisted of a belief in absolute equality. This belief included but was not limited to “equality between men and God.” He wrote:

Secularism is a form of atheism and, therefore, of egalitarianism. It affirms that it is impossible to be certain of the existence of God and, consequently, that man should act in the temporal realm as if God did not exist; in other words, he should act like a person who has dethroned God.

When the principles of equality are applied to the political realm:

Monarchy and aristocracy are to be proscribed as intrinsically evil regimes because they are anti-egalitarian. Only democracy is legitimate, just, and evangelical.

An egalitarian regime must also eliminate anything that stands between the individual and the state. “Among the intermediate groups to be abolished, the family ranks first,” he wrote. “Until it manages to wipe it out, the Revolution tries to lower it, mutilate it, and vilify it in every way.”

All of the “exterior aspects of existence” must, in the end, be regulated by egalitarian regimes, since “variety easily leads to inequality of status,” he wrote. “Therefore, variety in dress, housing, furniture, habits, and so on, is reduced as much as possible.”

Even the quality of individual souls must submit to egalitarian leveling through the administration of state propaganda.

Propaganda standardizes, so to speak, all souls, taking away their peculiarities and almost their own life. Even the psychological and attitudinal differences between the sexes tend to diminish as much as possible. Because of this, the people, essentially a great family of different but harmonious souls united by what is common to them, disappears. And the masses, with their great empty, collective, and enslaved soul, arise.

No distinction in hierarchy or authority can be allowed to remain “between grown-ups and youngsters, employers and employees, teachers and students, husband and wife, parents and children.” 

Within nations, the revolution tends to centralize power and do away with any sort of wholesome regionalism. Corrêa de Oliveira also presciently observed that the revolution necessarily takes on a globalist and transnational character and advocates for open-border policies. Just as egalitarians cannot abide inequity between individuals, inequity between nations must be eliminated and sovereignty cast aside. He wrote:

Once we admit the idea of a people, whose characteristics distinguish it from other peoples, and the idea of sovereignty, we are perforce in the presence of inequalities… This is why the Revolution, which is fundamentally egalitarian, dreams of merging all races, all peoples, and all states into a single race, people, and state.

Corrêa de Oliveira thought that, at its root, liberalism is driven by a desire for unrestricted sensuality. He noted that when the revolutionaries talked of liberty, they really meant liberty to do evil and to engage in transgressive sexual acts rather than the freedom to do good and moral actions.

When the Revolution proclaims absolute liberty as a metaphysical principle, it does so only to justify the free course of the worst passions and the most pernicious errors… This inversion—the right to think, feel, and do everything the unrestrained passions demand—is the essence of liberalism… On analyzing them, one perceives that liberalism is not interested in freedom for what is good. It is solely interested in freedom for evil. When in power, it easily, and even joyfully, restricts the freedom of the good as much as possible. But in many ways, it protects, favors, and promotes freedom for evil.

This can be seen in our day, when abortion and LGBT lifestyles are held up by the left as morally virtuous, and their opponents are vilified and even sometimes imprisoned. Writing in 1959, Corrêa de Oliveira noted the rise of what he called the “rock and roll generation,” which emphasizes the “predominance of fantasy and feelings over the methodical analysis of reality.” He also proposed that liberalism and socialism were essentially secular religions, the former being based on the “immaculate conception of the individual” and the latter on the “immaculate conception of the masses and the state.”

In opposition to the revolution, Corrêa de Oliveira proposed a counter-revolution. Its purpose is the restoration of Christian civilization, which he described as “austere and hierarchical, fundamentally sacral, anti-egalitarian, and antiliberal.” 

The counter-revolution, Corrêa de Oliveira said, needs to be focused on opposing the revolution as it manifests itself today, not as it was in previous forms, since the revolution is always changing and finding new fronts of attack. The counter-revolution must support a “sound and living tradition,” not “a false and narrow traditionalism, which conserves certain rites, styles, or customs merely out of love for old forms and without any appreciation for the doctrine that gave rise to them,” he wrote.

He called counter-revolution “conservative,” but only in the sense that it was seeking to conserve “something of the present that is good and deserves to live,” but not insofar as being conservative would mean “keeping the revolutionary process at its present stage, while remaining immobile like a statue of salt.” Corrêa de Oliveira was no neoconservative. 

Corrêa de Oliveira believed the cultural field was a more important battleground than the political. He wrote:

A counter-revolutionary conception of progress supposes the prevalence of spiritual values over material considerations. Accordingly, it is proper to the Counter-Revolution to promote, among individuals and the multitudes, a far greater esteem for all that has to do with true religion, philosophy, art, and literature than for what has to do with the good of the body and the exploitation of matter.

For many years, Corrêa de Oliveira wrote a column in Catolicismo titled “Ambiences, Customs, Civilizations,” which focused on trends in art, architecture, clothing, language, and customs, all of which he saw as significant reflections on the state of society. He would frequently contrast expressions of counter-revolutionary and revolutionary mentalities, such as the difference between Gothic architecture and modern skyscrapers. He saw civilization as a “psychological and collective whole” in which the smallest details were significant. There was barely any field of modern society that the revolution had not dehumanized.

The typical sounds of the immense modern Babels, the noise of the machines, the brouhaha and voices of men who toil in search of gold and pleasure; who no longer know how to walk but run; who no longer know how to work without becoming exhausted; who are unable to sleep without tranquilizers nor to have fun without stimulants; whose laugh is a frenetic and sad grimace; who no longer knows how to appreciate the harmonies of real music.

So-called elite theory influenced Corrêa de Oliveira’s thinking. He realized that revolutions are made by elites not by the majority. Conservatives and traditionalists would need to foster their own elite to take back the culture.

To the extent possible, the Counter-Revolution should try to win over the multitudes. However, it should not make this its chief goal in the short run. The counter-revolutionary has no reason to be discouraged because of the fact that the great majority of men are not presently on his side. Indeed, an exact study of history shows us that it was not the masses who made the Revolution. They moved in a revolutionary direction because they had revolutionary elites behind them. If they had had elites of the opposite orientation behind them, they likely would have moved in the opposite direction. An objective view of history shows that the factor of mass is secondary; the principal factor is the formation of elites.

Corrêa de Oliveira’s critics charged that his project of restoring Christendom was old-fashioned, out of date, and unrealistic. To these detractors, Corrêa de Oliveira cited historical examples of the achievement of what was thought completely impossible, such as the triumph of Christianity over the Roman Empire and the Reconquest of Spain from Islam over the course of 800 years.

Many will undoubtedly have strong reservations about certain aspects of Corrêa de Oliveira’s thought. His staunch Catholicism and characterization of the Reformation as the first stage in the Revolution leading to secular modernity would undoubtedly be rejected by Protestants and many others. Nonetheless, the TFP has worked with Protestants and other faiths against abortion and to promote Christian and conservative values in many countries of the world. Their American branch is particularly active in countering the left on university campuses. 

For his work in analyzing the revolutionary process and in proposing a counter-process for the restoration of traditional society, Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira deserves to be far more widely known and read.