What is conservatism?

In most Western countries, the modern political divide nominally pitches left leaning social democrats against conservatives on the centre-right. But take a closer look at the politics and it is often hard to spot the differences between the two sides: both believe in a largely privately owned economy combined with interventionist government and an ever-increasing paternalistic welfare state funded by high taxes. This social democratic hegemony has disenfranchised both the hard left and the libertarian right, but with nominally conservative parties in power in many countries – not least Britain, where they have won four consecutive elections – it is perhaps more surprising that actual conservatives are so few and far between in today’s politics. Modern Conservatives (big “C”) have forgotten what it means to be conservative (small “c”) and most people don’t really understand what the term actually means. It is time to remind ourselves: what is conservatism?

Perhaps a good place to start is with what it is not: conservatism isn’t an economic theory but a belief system. This is an important distinction, because while conservatives are broadly assumed to be in favour of free markets and small government, many will argue that there is nothing inherent in conservative thought that leads towards a particular way to look at economics. This is not necessarily correct (as we shall see later), but nevertheless conservatism is exclusively a political idea, which sets it apart from for example Marxism, which is both a political and an economic theory.

Historically, conservatism can be traced back to the Enlightenment and Thomas Hobbes’ (1588-1679) theory of the “social contract,” but it is Edmund Burke (1729-1797) who is commonly regarded as the father of conservative thought. Born in Ireland, he lived to witness major societal change across the world, not least the American Revolutionary War and the French Revolution. Burke opposed both (though he was sympathetic to many of the underlying causes, such as the American resistance to British taxation), and in Reflections on the Revolution in France he criticised the French revolutionaries for their violent pursuit of novel ideas such as liberty and equality. For Burke, the social contract is “between the dead, the living and those yet to be born,” encapsulating his belief that tradition should be respected and change must happen with caution, in acknowledgement of the accumulated wisdom inherited from the past. He agreed with Plato that prudence is a virtue and that statesmen should judge policy by its long-term consequences.

Burke’s emphasis on the value of tradition and recommendation of cautious, incremental change puts his thought in direct opposition to another major political idea to emerge from the Enlightenment: progressivism. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) saw ideas as being in constant conflict, driven by an irresistible progress towards enlightenment and a perfect end state, and his vison of change was not gradual and slow but happening in great eruptions of conflict. The French Revolution was very much in keeping with Hegelian thought and it is to Hegel’s ideas that progressive ideologies, from Marxism to the West’s modern left, can trace their intellectual roots.

So, this is what characterises the progressive left: a belief that societal circumstances can be bettered and that they must seize power to achieve this. Conservatism stands in direct opposition. Conservatives believe that man’s imperfectability means utopia can’t be reached and adhere to custom and convention, both because continuity glues society together and because we should take heed of the achievements and discoveries of our ancestors. But there is no specific set of political ends that can be regarded as conservative, because by its very nature what is conservative must be seen in context of the traditions of a particular time and place. The conservative poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) coined the terms Permanence and Progression, to describe the enduring traditions and ideas that foster stability and the spirit to enact prudent reform to avoid stagnation. Sensible conservatism is found in the reconciliation between the two.

Modern Western conservatism does therefore not necessarily embrace free market ideology wholesale, in the way Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan did (or, said they did) when they ended the left’s political dominance that had lasted since the end of WW2: the great conservative thinker Roger Scruton (1944-2020) criticised Thatcher for her reverence for free market solutions to most societal problems. Conservatives are not libertarians either, emphasising as they do traditional institutions (and therefore those of the state) rather than the individual, as fundamental for societal order. “The individual is foolish […] but the species is wise,” wrote Edmund Burke.

So, is conservatism merely a “disposition,” as Michael Oakeshott (1901-1990) called it, reflecting a reverence for the status quo, whatever that may be? As this renders it rather meaningless as a political philosophy, it is better to think of conservatives as believing in the existence of a natural order which must be defended. The American conservative sociologist Robert Nisbet (1913-1996) argued that traditions worth preserving must have inherent desirability, based on the enduring moral concepts of private property and voluntarily acknowledged authority.

There is therefore every reason to explore common ground between free-market libertarians and conservatives. Many modern conservatives are still cultural traditionalist but have become adherents of the welfare state, as it has emerged as the dominant model of society across the developed world. They further believe, with some justification, that political combination to be a recipe for electoral success. But the Austrian economist and anarcho-capitalist philosopher, Hans-Hermann Hoppe, argues in Democracy: The God That Failed, that the welfare state, which in so many spheres has taken the place of family, community, and personal responsibility, undermines the very fabric of cultural conservatism. As a matter of practical reality, true conservatives must be hard-line libertarians if they want to return society to traditional morality. And just as leftist economic policy and social conservatism can’t coexist, neither can private property capitalism and progressive multiculturalism, because allying with the left on cultural issues has proven to lose, rather than win, acolytes for libertarianism. According to Hoppe, only socially conservative “paleo” libertarians, in the mould of Murray Rothbard, can harbour any hope of success.

And today, with free markets under attack and a culture war raging, a successful conservative movement is needed perhaps more than ever. But it is under siege from a progressive establishment, with media, education, the arts and – increasingly – major corporations all dominated by the left. What’s worse, many (and increasingly, most) self-professed conservatives, from the American founder of the National Review, William Buckley, in the 1950s and 60s, to Britain’s hapless Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, today, have professed belief in big government and adhered to progressive politics, even if they might have attempted to excuse it with the existence of some exceptional circumstance. Conservatism is in crisis because, as a broad political movement, it has lost connection with what it was supposed to be about and has terrible leaders, who focus on power as an end in itself rather than as a means to further conservative causes.

They are not conservatives. Real conservatives laud the achievements of Western civilisation. They emphasise family, voluntary civil association, social hierarchies based on competence, religion, small government, low taxes, and freedom under the law. They want to preserve what is good about society and are very cautious in condemning traditions. Sadly, there are very few left.