| Why I Am Not a
Conservative
By Nobel
laureate F. A. Hayek
Source:
http://www.fahayek.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=46
In The Constitution of Liberty
(Chicago: The University of Chicago Press,
1960)
"At all times sincere friends of freedom
have been rare, and its triumphs have been due
to minorities, that have prevailed by
associating themselves with auxiliaries whose
objects often differed from their own; and
this association, which is always dangerous,
has sometimes been disastrous, by giving to
opponents just grounds of opposition." -
Lord Acton
1. At a time when most movements that
are thought to be progressive advocate further
encroachments on individual liberty,[1] those
who cherish freedom are likely to expend their
energies in opposition. In this they find
themselves much of the time on the same side
as those who habitually resist change. In
matters of current politics today they
generally have little choice but to support
the conservative parties. But, though the
position I have tried to define is also often
described as "conservative," it is
very different from that to which this name
has been traditionally attached. There is
danger in the confused condition which brings
the defenders of liberty and the true
conservatives together in common opposition to
developments which threaten their ideals
equally. It is therefore important to
distinguish clearly the position taken here
from that which has long been known - perhaps
more appropriately - as conservatism.
Conservatism proper is a legitimate,
probably necessary, and certainly widespread
attitude of opposition to drastic change. It
has, since the French Revolution, for a
century and a half played an important role in
European politics. Until the rise of socialism
its opposite was liberalism. There is nothing
corresponding to this conflict in the history
of the United States, because what in Europe
was called "liberalism" was here the
common tradition on which the American polity
had been built: thus the defender of the
American tradition was a liberal in the
European sense.[2] This already existing
confusion was made worse by the recent attempt
to transplant to America the European type of
conservatism, which, being alien to the
American tradition, has acquired a somewhat
odd character. And some time before this,
American radicals and socialists began calling
themselves "liberals." I will
nevertheless continue for the moment to
describe as liberal the position which I hold
and which I believe differs as much from true
conservatism as from socialism. Let me say at
once, however, that I do so with increasing
misgivings, and I shall later have to consider
what would be the appropriate name for the
party of liberty. The reason for this is not
only that the term "liberal" in the
United States is the cause of constant
misunderstandings today, but also that in
Europe the predominant type of rationalistic
liberalism has long been one of the pacemakers
of socialism.
Let me now state
what seems to me the decisive objection to any
conservatism which deserves to be called such.
It is that by its very nature it cannot offer
an alternative to the direction in which we
are moving. It may succeed by its resistance
to current tendencies in slowing down
undesirable developments, but, since it does
not indicate another direction, it cannot
prevent their continuance. It has, for this
reason, invariably been the fate of
conservatism to be dragged along a path not of
its own choosing. The tug of war between
conservatives and progressives can only affect
the speed, not the direction, of contemporary
developments. But, though there is a need for
a "brake on the vehicle of
progress,"[3] I personally cannot be
content with simply helping to apply the
brake. What the liberal must ask, first of
all, is not how fast or how far we should
move, but where we should move. In fact, he
differs much more from the collectivist
radical of today than does the conservative.
While the last generally holds merely a mild
and moderate version of the prejudices of his
time, the liberal today must more positively
oppose some of the basic conceptions which
most conservatives share with the
socialists.
2. The picture
generally given of the relative position of
the three parties does more to obscure than to
elucidate their true relations. They are
usually represented as different positions on
a line, with the socialists on the left, the
conservatives on the right, and the liberals
somewhere in the middle. Nothing could be more
misleading. If we want a diagram, it would be
more appropriate to arrange them in a triangle
with the conservatives occupying one corner,
with the socialists pulling toward the second
and the liberals toward the third. But, as the
socialists have for a long time been able to
pull harder, the conservatives have tended to
follow the socialist rather than the liberal
direction and have adopted at appropriate
intervals of time those ideas made respectable
by radical propaganda. It has been regularly
the conservatives who have compromised with
socialism and stolen its thunder. Advocates of
the Middle Way[4] with no goal of their own,
conservatives have been guided by the belief
that the truth must lie somewhere between the
extremes - with the result that they have
shifted their position every time a more
extreme movement appeared on either wing.
The position which can be rightly
described as conservative at any time depends,
therefore, on the direction of existing
tendencies. Since the development during the
last decades has been generally in a socialist
direction, it may seem that both conservatives
and liberals have been mainly intent on
retarding that movement. But the main point
about liberalism is that it wants to go
elsewhere, not to stand still. Though today
the contrary impression may sometimes be
caused by the fact that there was a time when
liberalism was more widely accepted and some
of its objectives closer to being achieved, it
has never been a backward-looking doctrine.
There has never been a time when liberal
ideals were fully realized and when liberalism
did not look forward to further improvement of
institutions. Liberalism is not averse to
evolution and change; and where spontaneous
change has been smothered by government
control, it wants a great deal of change of
policy. So far as much of current governmental
action is concerned, there is in the present
world very little reason for the liberal to
wish to preserve things as they are. It would
seem to the liberal, indeed, that what is most
urgently needed in most parts of the world is
a thorough sweeping away of the obstacles to
free growth.
This difference
between liberalism and conservatism must not
be obscured by the fact that in the United
States it is still possible to defend
individual liberty by defending
long-established institutions. To the liberal
they are valuable not mainly because they are
long established or because they are American
but because they correspond to the ideals
which he cherishes.
3. Before I
consider the main points on which the liberal
attitude is sharply opposed to the
conservative one, I ought to stress that there
is much that the liberal might with advantage
have learned from the work of some
conservative thinkers. To their loving and
reverential study of the value of grown
institutions we owe (at least outside the
field of economics) some profound insights
which are real contributions to our
understanding of a free society. However
reactionary in politics such figures as
Coleridge, Bonald, De Maistre, Justus Mser,
or Donoso Corts may have been, they did show
an understanding of the meaning of
spontaneously grown institutions such as
language, law, morals, and conventions that
anticipated modern scientific approaches and
from which the liberals might have profited.
But the admiration of the conservatives for
free growth generally applies only to the
past. They typically lack the courage to
welcome the same undesigned change from which
new tools of human endeavors will emerge.
This brings me to the first point on
which the conservative and the liberal
dispositions differ radically. As has often
been acknowledged by conservative writers, one
of the fundamental traits of the conservative
attitude is a fear of change, a timid distrust
of the new as such,[5] while the liberal
position is based on courage and confidence,
on a preparedness to let change run its course
even if we cannot predict where it will lead.
There would not be much to object to if the
conservatives merely disliked too rapid change
in institutions and public policy; here the
case for caution and slow process is indeed
strong. But the conservatives are inclined to
use the powers of government to prevent change
or to limit its rate to whatever appeals to
the more timid mind. In looking forward, they
lack the faith in the spontaneous forces of
adjustment which makes the liberal accept
changes without apprehension, even though he
does not know how the necessary adaptations
will be brought about. It is, indeed, part of
the liberal attitude to assume that,
especially in the economic field, the
self-regulating forces of the market will
somehow bring about the required adjustments
to new conditions, although no one can
foretell how they will do this in a particular
instance. There is perhaps no single factor
contributing so much to people's frequent
reluctance to let the market work as their
inability to conceive how some necessary
balance, between demand and supply, between
exports and imports, or the like, will be
brought about without deliberate control. The
conservative feels safe and content only if he
is assured that some higher wisdom watches and
supervises change, only if he knows that some
authority is charged with keeping the change
"orderly."
This fear of
trusting uncontrolled social forces is closely
related to two other characteristics of
conservatism: its fondness for authority and
its lack of understanding of economic forces.
Since it distrusts both abstract theories and
general principles,[6] it neither understands
those spontaneous forces on which a policy of
freedom relies nor possesses a basis for
formulating principles of policy. Order
appears to the conservative as the result of
the continuous attention of authority, which,
for this purpose, must be allowed to do what
is required by the particular circumstances
and not be tied to rigid rule. A commitment to
principles presupposes an understanding of the
general forces by which the efforts of society
are co-ordinated, but it is such a theory of
society and especially of the economic
mechanism that conservatism conspicuously
lacks. So unproductive has conservatism been
in producing a general conception of how a
social order is maintained that its modern
votaries, in trying to construct a theoretical
foundation, invariably find themselves
appealing almost exclusively to authors who
regarded themselves as liberal. Macaulay,
Tocqueville, Lord Acton, and Lecky certainly
considered themselves liberals, and with
justice; and even Edmund Burke remained an Old
Whig to the end and would have shuddered at
the thought of being regarded as a Tory.
Let me return, however, to the main
point, which is the characteristic complacency
of the conservative toward the action of
established authority and his prime concern
that this authority be not weakened rather
than that its power be kept within bounds.
This is difficult to reconcile with the
preservation of liberty. In general, it can
probably be said that the conservative does
not object to coercion or arbitrary power so
long as it is used for what he regards as the
right purposes. He believes that if government
is in the hands of decent men, it ought not to
be too much restricted by rigid rules. Since
he is essentially opportunist and lacks
principles, his main hope must be that the
wise and the good will rule - not merely by
example, as we all must wish, but by authority
given to them and enforced by them.[7] Like
the socialist, he is less concerned with the
problem of how the powers of government should
be limited than with that of who wields them;
and, like the socialist, he regards himself as
entitled to force the value he holds on other
people.
When I say that the
conservative lacks principles, I do not mean
to suggest that he lacks moral conviction. The
typical conservative is indeed usually a man
of very strong moral convictions. What I mean
is that he has no political principles which
enable him to work with people whose moral
values differ from his own for a political
order in which both can obey their
convictions. It is the recognition of such
principles that permits the coexistence of
different sets of values that makes it
possible to build a peaceful society with a
minimum of force. The acceptance of such
principles means that we agree to tolerate
much that we dislike. There are many values of
the conservative which appeal to me more than
those of the socialists; yet for a liberal the
importance he personally attaches to specific
goals is no sufficient justification for
forcing others to serve them. I have little
doubt that some of my conservative friends
will be shocked by what they will regard as
"concessions" to modern views that I
have made in Part III of this book. But,
though I may dislike some of the measures
concerned as much as they do and might vote
against them, I know of no general principles
to which I could appeal to persuade those of a
different view that those measures are not
permissible in the general kind of society
which we both desire. To live and work
successfully with others requires more than
faithfulness to one's concrete aims. It
requires an intellectual commitment to a type
of order in which, even on issues which to one
are fundamental, others are allowed to pursue
different ends.
It is for this
reason that to the liberal neither moral nor
religious ideals are proper objects of
coercion, while both conservatives and
socialists recognize no such limits. I
sometimes feel that the most conspicuous
attribute of liberalism that distinguishes it
as much from conservatism as from socialism is
the view that moral beliefs concerning matters
of conduct which do not directly interfere
with the protected sphere of other persons do
not justify coercion. This may also explain
why it seems to be so much easier for the
repentant socialist to find a new spiritual
home in the conservative fold than in the
liberal.
In the last resort, the
conservative position rests on the belief that
in any society there are recognizably superior
persons whose inherited standards and values
and position ought to be protected and who
should have a greater influence on public
affairs than others. The liberal, of course,
does not deny that there are some superior
people - he is not an egalitarian - bet he
denies that anyone has authority to decide who
these superior people are. While the
conservative inclines to defend a particular
established hierarchy and wishes authority to
protect the status of those whom he values,
the liberal feels that no respect for
established values can justify the resort to
privilege or monopoly or any other coercive
power of the state in order to shelter such
people against the forces of economic change.
Though he is fully aware of the important role
that cultural and intellectual elites have
played in the evolution of civilization, he
also believes that these elites have to prove
themselves by their capacity to maintain their
position under the same rules that apply to
all others.
Closely connected
with this is the usual attitude of the
conservative to democracy. I have made it
clear earlier that I do not regard majority
rule as an end but merely as a means, or
perhaps even as the least evil of those forms
of government from which we have to choose.
But I believe that the conservatives deceive
themselves when they blame the evils of our
time on democracy. The chief evil is unlimited
government, and nobody is qualified to wield
unlimited power.[8] The powers which modern
democracy possesses would be even more
intolerable in the hands of some small
elite.
Admittedly, it was only
when power came into the hands of the majority
that further limitations of the power of
government was thought unnecessary. In this
sense democracy and unlimited government are
connected. But it is not democracy but
unlimited government that is objectionable,
and I do not see why the people should not
learn to limit the scope of majority rule as
well as that of any other form of government.
At any rate, the advantages of democracy as a
method of peaceful change and of political
education seem to be so great compared with
those of any other system that I can have no
sympathy with the antidemocratic strain of
conservatism. It is not who governs but what
government is entitled to do that seems to me
the essential problem.
That the
conservative opposition to too much government
control is not a matter of principle but is
concerned with the particular aims of
government is clearly shown in the economic
sphere. Conservatives usually oppose
collectivist and directivist measures in the
industrial field, and here the liberals will
often find allies in them. But at the same
time conservatives are usually protectionists
and have frequently supported socialist
measures in agriculture. Indeed, though the
restrictions which exist today in industry and
commerce are mainly the result of socialist
views, the equally important restrictions in
agriculture were usually introduced by
conservatives at an even earlier date. And in
their efforts to discredit free enterprise
many conservative leaders have vied with the
socialists.[9]
4. I have already
referred to the differences between
conservatism and liberalism in the purely
intellectual field, but I must return to them
because the characteristic conservative
attitude here not only is a serious weakness
of conservatism but tends to harm any cause
which allies itself with it. Conservatives
feel instinctively that it is new ideas more
than anything else that cause change. But,
from its point of view rightly, conservatism
fears new ideas because it has no distinctive
principles of its own to oppose them; and, by
its distrust of theory and its lack of
imagination concerning anything except that
which experience has already proved, it
deprives itself of the weapons needed in the
struggle of ideas. Unlike liberalism, with its
fundamental belief in the long-range power of
ideas, conservatism is bound by the stock of
ideas inherited at a given time. And since it
does not really believe in the power of
argument, its last resort is generally a claim
to superior wisdom, based on some
self-arrogated superior quality.
The difference shows itself most clearly in
the different attitudes of the two traditions
to the advance of knowledge. Though the
liberal certainly does not regard all change
as progress, he does regard the advance of
knowledge as one of the chief aims of human
effort and expects from it the gradual
solution of such problems and difficulties as
we can hope to solve. Without preferring the
new merely because it is new, the liberal is
aware that it is of the essence of human
achievement that it produces something new;
and he is prepared to come to terms with new
knowledge, whether he likes its immediate
effects or not.
Personally, I
find that the most objectionable feature of
the conservative attitude is its propensity to
reject well-substantiated new knowledge
because it dislikes some of the consequences
which seem to follow from it - or, to put it
bluntly, its obscurantism. I will not deny
that scientists as much as others are given to
fads and fashions and that we have much reason
to be cautious in accepting the conclusions
that they draw from their latest theories. But
the reasons for our reluctance must themselves
be rational and must be kept separate from our
regret that the new theories upset our
cherished beliefs. I can have little patience
with those who oppose, for instance, the
theory of evolution or what are called
"mechanistic" explanations of the
phenomena of life because of certain moral
consequences which at first seem to follow
from these theories, and still less with those
who regard it as irrelevant or impious to ask
certain questions at all. By refusing to face
the facts, the conservative only weakens his
own position. Frequently the conclusions which
rationalist presumption draws from new
scientific insights do not at all follow from
them. But only by actively taking part in the
elaboration of the consequences of new
discoveries do we learn whether or not they
fit into our world picture and, if so, how.
Should our moral beliefs really prove to be
dependent on factual assumptions shown to be
incorrect, it would hardly be moral to defend
them by refusing to acknowledge facts.
Connected with the conservative
distrust if the new and the strange is its
hostility to internationalism and its
proneness to a strident nationalism. Here is
another source of its weakness in the struggle
of ideas. It cannot alter the fact that the
ideas which are changing our civilization
respect no boundaries. But refusal to acquaint
one's self with new ideas merely deprives
one of the power of effectively countering
them when necessary. The growth of ideas is an
international process, and only those who
fully take part in the discussion will be able
to exercise a significant influence. It is no
real argument to say that an idea is
un-American, or un-German, nor is a mistaken
or vicious ideal better for having been
conceived by one of our compatriots.
A great deal more might be said about the
close connection between conservatism and
nationalism, but I shall not dwell on this
point because it might be felt that my
personal position makes me unable to
sympathize with any form of nationalism. I
will merely add that it is this nationalistic
bias which frequently provides the bridge from
conservatism to collectivism: to think in
terms of "our" industry or resource
is only a short step away from demanding that
these national assets be directed in the
national interest. But in this respect the
Continental liberalism which derives from the
French Revolution is little better than
conservatism. I need hardly say that
nationalism of this sort is something very
different from patriotism and that an aversion
to nationalism is fully compatible with a deep
attachment to national traditions. But the
fact that I prefer and feel reverence for some
of the traditions of my society need not be
the cause of hostility to what is strange and
different.
Only at first foes it
seem paradoxical that the
anti-internationalism of conservatism is so
frequently associated with imperialism. But
the more a person dislikes the strange and
thinks his own ways superior, the more he
tends to regard it as his mission to
"civilize" other[10] - not by the
voluntary and unhampered intercourse which the
liberal favors, but by bringing them the
blessings of efficient government. It is
significant that here again we frequently find
the conservatives joining hands with the
socialists against the liberals - not only in
England, where the Webbs and their Fabians
were outspoken imperialists, or in Germany,
where state socialism and colonial
expansionism went together and found the
support of the same group of "socialists
of the chair," but also in the United
States, where even at the time of the first
Roosevelt it could be observed: "the
Jingoes and the Social Reformers have gotten
together; and have formed a political party,
which threatened to capture the Government and
use it for their program of Caesaristic
paternalism, a danger which now seems to have
been averted only by the other parties having
adopted their program in a somewhat milder
degree and form."[11]
5.
There is one respect, however, in which there
is justification for saying that the liberal
occupies a position midway between the
socialist and the conservative: he is as far
from the crude rationalism of the socialist,
who wants to reconstruct all social
institutions according to a pattern prescribed
by his individual reason, as from the
mysticism to which the conservative so
frequently has to resort. What I have
described as the liberal position shares with
conservatism a distrust of reason to the
extent that the liberal is very much aware
that we do not know all the answers and that
he is not sure that the answers he has are
certainly the rights ones or even that we can
find all the answers. He also does not disdain
to seek assistance from whatever non-rational
institutions or habits have proved their
worth. The liberal differs from the
conservative in his willingness to face this
ignorance and to admit how little we know,
without claiming the authority of supernatural
forces of knowledge where his reason fails
him. It has to be admitted that in some
respects the liberal is fundamentally a
skeptic[12] - but it seems to require a
certain degree of diffidence to let others
seek their happiness in their own fashion and
to adhere consistently to that tolerance which
is an essential characteristic of
liberalism.
There is no reason
why this need mean an absence of religious
belief on the part of the liberal. Unlike the
rationalism of the French Revolution, true
liberalism has no quarrel with religion, and I
can only deplore the militant and essentially
illiberal antireligionism which animated so
much of nineteenth-century Continental
liberalism. That this is not essential to
liberalism is clearly shown by its English
ancestors, the Old Whigs, who, if anything,
were much too closely allied with a particular
religious belief. What distinguishes the
liberal from the conservative here is that,
however profound his own spiritual beliefs, he
will never regard himself as entitled to
impose them on others and that for him the
spiritual and the temporal are different
sphere which ought not to be confused.
6. What I have said should suffice to
explain why I do not regard myself as a
conservative. Many people will feel, however,
that the position which emerges is hardly what
they used to call "liberal." I must,
therefore, now face the question of whether
this name is today the appropriate name for
the party of liberty. I have already indicated
that, though I have all my life described
myself as a liberal, I have done so recently
with increasing misgivings - not only because
in the United States this term constantly
gives rise to misunderstandings, but also
because I have become more and more aware of
the great gulf that exists between my position
and the rationalistic Continental liberalism
or even the English liberalism of the
utilitarians.
If liberalism still
meant what it meant to an English historian
who in 1827 could speak of the revolution of
1688 as "the triumph of those principles
which in the language of the present day are
denominated liberal or constitutional"
[13] or if one could still, with Lord Acton,
speak of Burke, Macaulay, and Gladstone as the
three greatest liberals, or if one could
still, with Harold Laske, regard Tocqueville
and Lord Acton as "the essential liberals
of the nineteenth century,"[14] I should
indeed be only too proud to describe myself by
that name. But, much as I am tempted to call
their liberalism true liberalism, I must
recognize that the majority of Continental
liberals stood for ideas to which these men
were strongly opposed, and that they were led
more by a desire to impose upon the world a
preconceived rational pattern than to provide
opportunity for free growth. The same is
largely true of what has called itself
Liberalism in England at least since the time
of Lloyd George.
It is thus
necessary to recognize that what I have called
"liberalism" has little to do with
any political movement that goes under that
name today. It is also questionable whether
the historical associations which that name
carries today are conducive to the success of
any movement. Whether in these circumstances
one ought to make an effort to rescue the term
from what one feels is its misuse is a
question on which opinions may well differ. I
myself feel more and more that to use it
without long explanations causes too much
confusion and that as a label it has become
more of a ballast than a source of
strength.
In the United States,
where it has become almost impossible to use
"liberal" in the sense in which I
have used it, the term "libertarian"
has been used instead. It may be the answer;
but for my part I find it singularly
unattractive. For my taste it carries too much
the flavor of a manufactured term and of a
substitute. What I should want is a word which
describes the party of life, the party that
favors free growth and spontaneous evolution.
But I have racked my brain unsuccessfully to
find a descriptive term which commends
itself.
7. We should remember,
however, that when the ideals which I have
been trying to restate first began to spread
through the Western world, the party which
represented them had a generally recognized
name. It was the ideals of the English Whigs
that inspired what later came to be known as
the liberal movement in the whole of
Europe[15] and that provided the conceptions
that the American colonists carried with them
and which guided them in their struggle for
independence and in the establishment of their
constitution.[16] Indeed, until the character
of this tradition was altered by the
accretions due to the French Revolution, with
its totalitarian democracy and socialist
leanings, "Whig" was the name by
which the party of liberty was generally
known.
The name died in the
country of its birth partly because for a time
the principles for which it stood were no
longer distinctive of a particular party, and
partly because the men who bore the name did
not remain true to those principles. The Whig
parties of the nineteenth century, in both
Britain and the United States, finally brought
discredit to the name among the radicals. But
it is still true that, since liberalism took
the place of Whiggism only after the movement
for liberty had absorbed the crude and
militant rationalism of the French Revolution,
and since our task must largely be to free
that tradition from the overrationalistic,
nationalistic, and socialistic influences
which have intruded into it, Whiggism is
historically the correct name for the ideas in
which I believe. The more I learn about the
evolution of ideas, the more I have become
aware that I am simply an unrepentant Old Whig
- with the stress on the "old."
To confess one's self as an Old
Whig does not mean, of course, that one wants
to go back to where we were at the end of the
seventeenth century. It has been one of the
purposes of this book to show that the
doctrines then first stated continued to grow
and develop until about seventy or eighty
years ago, even though they were no longer the
chief aim of a distinct party. We have since
learned much that should enable us to restate
them in a more satisfactory and effective
form. But, though they require restatement in
the light of our present knowledge, the basic
principles are still those of the Old Whigs.
True, the later history of the party that bore
that name has made some historians doubt where
there was a distinct body of Whig principles;
but I can but agree with Lord Acton that,
though some of "the patriarchs of the
doctrine were the most infamous of men, the
notion of a higher law above municipal codes,
with which Whiggism began, is the supreme
achievement of Englishmen and their bequest to
the nation"[17] - and, we may add, to the
world. It is the doctrine which is at the
basis of the common tradition of the
Anglo-Saxon countries. It is the doctrine from
which Continental liberalism took what is
valuable in it. It is the doctrine on which
the American system of government is based. In
its pure form it is represented in the United
States, not by the radicalism of Jefferson,
nor by the conservatism of Hamilton or even of
John Adams, but by the ideas of James Madison,
the "father of the
Constitution."[18]
I do not
know whether to revive that old name is
practical politics. That to the mass of
people, both in the Anglo-Saxon world and
elsewhere, it is today probably a term without
definite associations is perhaps more an
advantage than a drawback. To those familiar
with the history of ideas it is probably the
only name that quite expresses what the
tradition means. That, both for the genuine
conservative and still more for the many
socialists turned conservative, Whiggism is
the name for their pet aversion shows a sound
instinct on their part. It has been the name
for the only set of ideals that has
consistently opposed all arbitrary power.
8. It may well be asked whether the
name really matters so much. In a country like
the United States, which on the whole has free
institutions and where, therefore, the defense
of the existing is often a defense of freedom,
it might not make so much difference if the
defenders of freedom call themselves
conservatives, although even here the
association with the conservatives by
disposition will often be embarrassing. Even
when men approve of the same arrangements, it
must be asked whether they approve of them
because they exist or because they are
desirable in themselves. The common resistance
to the collectivist tide should not be allowed
to obscure the fact that the belief in
integral freedom is based on an essentially
forward-looking attitude and not on any
nostalgic longing for the past or a romantic
admiration for what has been.
The
need for a clear distinction is absolutely
imperative, however, where, as is true in many
parts of Europe, the conservatives have
already accepted a large part of the
collectivist creed - a creed that has governed
policy for so long that many of its
institutions have come to be accepted as a
matter of course and have become a source of
pride to "conservative" parties who
created them.[19] Here the believer in freedom
cannot but conflict with the conservative and
take an essentially radical position, directed
against popular prejudices, entrenched
positions, and firmly established privileges.
Follies and abuses are no better for having
long been established principles of folly.
Though quieta non movere may at
times be a wise maxim for the statesman it
cannot satisfy the political philosopher. He
may wish policy to proceed gingerly and not
before public opinion is prepared to support
it, but he cannot accept arrangements merely
because current opinion sanctions them. In a
world where the chief need is once more, as it
was at the beginning of the nineteenth
century, to free the process of spontaneous
growth from the obstacles and encumbrances
that human folly has erected, his hopes must
rest on persuading and gaining the support of
those who by disposition are
"progressives," those who, though
they may now be seeking change in the wrong
direction, are at least willing to examine
critically the existing and to change it
wherever necessary.
I hope I have
not misled the reader by occasionally speaking
of "party" when I was thinking of
groups of men defending a set of intellectual
and moral principles. Party politics of any
one country has not been the concern of this
book. The question of how the principles I
have tried to reconstruct by piecing together
the broken fragments of a tradition can be
translated into a program with mass appeal,
the political philosopher must leave to
"that insidious and crafty animal,
vulgarly called a statesman or politician,
whose councils are directed by the momentary
fluctuations of affairs."[20] The task of
the political philosopher can only be to
influence public opinion, not to organize
people for action. He will do so effectively
only if he is not concerned with what is now
politically possible but consistently defends
the "general principles which are always
the same."[21] In this sense I doubt
whether there can be such a thing as a
conservative political philosophy.
Conservatism may often be a useful practical
maxim, but it does not give us any guiding
principles which can influence long-range
developments.
Notes
The quotation at the head of the Postscript is
taken from Acton, Hist. of Freedom, p. 1.
1. This has now been true for over a
century, and as early as 1855 J. S. Mill could
say (see my John Stuart Mill and Harriet
Taylor [London and Chicago, 1951], p. 216)
that "almost all the projects of social
reformers of these days are really
liberticide."
2. B. Crick,
"The Strange Quest for an American
Conservatism," Review of Politics, XVII
(1955), 365, says rightly that "the
normal American who calls himself 'A
Conservative' is, in fact, a
liberal." It would appear that the
reluctance of these conservatives to call
themselves by the more appropriate name dates
only from its abuse during the New Deal
era.
3. The expression is that of
R. G. Collingwood, The New Leviathan (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1942), p. 209.
4. Cf. the characteristic choice of
this title for the programmatic book by the
present British Prime Minister Harold
Macmillan, The Middle Way (London, 1938).
5. Cf. Lord Hugh Cecil, Conservatism
("Home University Library" [London,
1912], p. 9: "Natural Conservatism . . .
is a disposition averse from change; and it
springs partly from a distrust of the
unknown."
6. Cf. the
revealing self-description of a conservative
in K. Feiling, Sketches in Nineteenth Century
Biography (London, 1930), p. 174: "Taken
in bulk, the Right have a horror of ideas, for
is not the practical man, in Disraeli's
words, 'one who practices the blunders of
his predecessors'? For long tracts of
their history they have indiscriminately
resisted improvement, and in claiming to
reverence their ancestors often reduce opinion
to aged individual prejudice. Their position
becomes safer, but more complex, when we add
that this Right wing is incessantly overtaking
the Left; that it lives by repeated
inoculation of liberal ideas, and thus suffers
from a never-perfected state of
compromise."
7. I trust I
shall be forgiven for repeating here the words
in which on an earlier occasion I stated an
important point: "The main merit of the
individualism which [Adam Smith] and his
contemporaries advocated is that it is a
system under which bad men can do least harm.
It is a social system which does not depend
for its functioning on our finding good men
for running it, or on all men becoming better
than they now are, but which makes use of men
in all their given variety and complexity,
sometimes good and sometimes bad, sometimes
intelligent and more often stupid."
(Individualism and Economic Order [London and
Chicago, 1948], p. 11).
8. Cf.
Lord Acton in Letters of Lord Acton to Mary
Gladstone, ed. H. Paul (London, 1913), p. 73:
"The danger is not that a particular
class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit
to govern. The law of liberty tends to abolish
the reign of race over race, of faith over
faith, of class over class."
9. J. R. Hicks has rightly spoken in this
connection of the "caricature drawn alike
by the young Disraeli, by Marx and by
Goebbels" ("The Pursuit of Economic
Freedom," What We Defend, ed. E. F. Jacob
[Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1942], p.
96). On the role of the conservatives in this
connection see also my Introduction to
Capitalism and the Historians (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1954), pp. 19
ff.
10. Cf. J. S. Mill, On
Liberty, ed. R. B. McCallum (Oxford, 1946), p.
83: "I am not aware that any community
has a right to force another to be
civilised."
11. J. W.
Burgess, The Reconciliation of Government with
Liberty (New York, 1915), p. 380.
12. Cf. Learned Hand, The Spirit of Liberty,
ed. I. Dilliard (New York, 1952), p. 190:
"The Spirit of liberty is the spirit
which is not too sure that it is right."
See also Oliver Cromwell's often quoted
statement is his Letter to the Assembly of the
Church of Scotland, August 3, 1650: "I
beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it
possible you may be mistaken." It is
significant that this should be the probably
best-remembered saying of the only
"dictator" in British history!
13. H. Hallam, Constitutional History
(1827) ("Everyman" ed.), III, 90. It
is often suggested that the term
"liberal" derives from the early
nineteenth-century Spanish party of the
liberales. I am more inclined to believe that
it derives from the use of that term by Adam
Smith in such passages as W.o.N., II, 41:
"the liberal system of free exportation
and free importation" and p. 216:
"allowing every man to pursue his own
interest his own way, upon the liberal plan of
equality, liberty, and justice."
14. Lord Acton in Letters to Mary
Gladstone, p. 44. Cf. also his judgment of
Tocqueville in Lectures on the French
Revolution (London, 1910), p. 357:
"Tocqueville was a Liberal of the purest
breed - a Liberal and nothing else, deeply
suspicious of democracy and its kindred,
equality, centralisation, and
utilitarianism." Similarly in the
Nineteenth Century, XXXIII (1892), 885. The
statement by H. J. Laski occurs in
"Alexis de Tocqueville and
Democracy," in The Social and Political
Ideas of Some Representative Thinkers of the
Victorian Age, ed. F. J. C. Hearnshaw (London,
1933), p. 100, where he says that "a case
of unanswerable power could, I think, be made
out for the view that he [Tocqueville] and
Lord Acton were the essential liberals of the
nineteenth century."
15. As
early as the beginning of the eighteenth
century, an English observer could remark that
he "scarce ever knew a foreigner settled
in England, whether of Dutch, German, French,
Italian, or Turkish growth, but became a Whig
in a little time after his mixing with
us" (quoted by G. H. Guttridge, English
Whiggism and the American Revolution
[Berkeley: University of California Press,
1942], p. 3).
16. In the United
States the nineteenth-century use of the term
"Whig" has unfortunately obliterated
the memory of the fact that in the eighteenth
it stood for the principles which guided the
revolution, gained independence, and shaped
the Constitution. It was in Whig societies
that the young James Madison and John Adams
developed their political ideals (cf. E. M.
Burns, James Madison [New Brunnswick, N.J.;
Rutgers University Press, 1938], p. 4); it was
Whig principles which, as Jefferson tells us,
guided all the lawyers who constituted such a
strong majority among the signers of the
Declaration of Independence and among the
members of the Constitutional Convention (see
Writings of Thomas Jefferson ["Memorial
ed." (Washington, 1905)], XVI, 156). The
profession of Whig principles was carried to
such a point that even Washington's
soldiers were clad in the traditional
"blue and buff" colors of the Whigs,
which they shared with the Foxites in the
British Parliament and which was preserved
down to our days on the covers of the
Edinburgh Review. If a socialist generation
has made Whiggism its favorite target, this is
all the more reason for the opponents of
socialism to vindicate its name. It is today
the only name which correctly desribes the
beliefs of the Gladstonian liberals, of the
men of the generation of Maitland, Acton, and
Bryce, and the last generation for whom
liberty rather than equality or democracy was
the main goal.
17. Lord Acton,
Lectures on Modern History (London, 1906), p.
218 (I have slightly rearranged Acton's
clauses to reproduce briefly the sense of his
statement).
18. Cf. S. K. Padover
in his Introduction to The Complete Madison
(New York, 1953), p. 10: "In modern
terminology, Madison would be labeled a
middle-of-the-road liberal and Jefferson a
radical." This is true and important,
though we must remember what E. S. Corwin
("James Madison: Layman, Publicist, and
Exegete," New York University Law Review,
XXVII [1952], 285) has called Madison's
later "surrender to the overwhelming
influence of Jefferson."
19.
Cf. the British Conservative party's
statement of policy, The Right Road for
Britain (London, 1950), pp. 41-42, which
claims, with considerable justification, that
"this new conception [of the social
services] was developed [by] the Coalition
Government with a majority of Conservative
Ministers and the full approval of the
Conservative majority in the House of Commons
. . . [We] set out the principle for the
schemes of pensions, sickness and unemployment
benefit, industrial injustices benefit and a
national health scheme."
20.
A Smith, W.o.N., I, 432.
21.
Ibid.
|