Thinking about Conservatism

Ted Honderich wrote a book called ‘Conservatism’ (first published 1990), arguing that conservatism amounts to nothing but self-interest by another name. The common factor that unites all conservatives, he contended, is that they will do and say pretty much anything to protect their own interests. In other words, they are not prepared to sacrifice their privileges in the name of any impersonal principle.

Honderich suggested that conservatives support a ‘weak state’ in terms of regulation to prevent it from intervening in the exploitation of the poor by the rich. His conclusion was that conservatism is at bottom nothing other than selfishness raised to a political ideology.

I read it and thought it intellectually shallow. Indeed, it gave depth a bad name. It was basically just a virulent left-wing rant. Every possible insight into Conservatism was dismissed as “No. It’s just selfishness.”

I was appalled to learn that the book was widely used in UK A-level Politics and Philosophy courses, presumably recommended by left-wing teachers.

Two years ago I published ‘The Philosophy of Conservatism’ as a series of essays on Conservatism and Conservatives. I divide it into small-c conservatism, which is a character trait, ‘a disposition averse from change,’ as Lord Hugh Cecil put it.

The small-c conservatives oppose change because it is upsetting, and because the loss of the familiar is threatening. “Every change is an emblem of extinction,” as Oakeshott expressed it.

Large-C Conservatism is a political tradition, not a character trait. It recognizes that change happens because of new technology, new information and new ideas. But it wants change to come from below, organic, evolutionary and unplanned. It opposes imposed change, preconceived plans. Burke opposed the French Revolution because it tore up the past, and with it the wisdom and value it incorporates.

At the end of his ‘Constitution of Liberty’ (1960) Hayek wrote an ‘Appendix: Why I am not a Conservative.’  He said that because he did not want to ‘conserve’ Socialism, but to undo it and restore liberty. In the ASI’s 1987 tribute book to Hayek, I wrote the final essay, ‘Appendix: Why F A Hayek is a Conservative.’ Opinion and comment has overwhelmingly sided with me.

This is because political Conservatism does not seek to conserve any particular state of society, but to conserve the process of change, to keep it evolutionary rather than revolutionary. And not only do they want to preserve the spontaneity of society, they seek to restore it if it has been lost.

Thatcher was a Conservative who worked to restore a spontaneity lost to decades of socialism by both parties. There was indeed a Thatcher Revolution, but it was a Conservative one. Conservatives seek to conserve a process, not an outcome.

Madsen Pirie