Why I Am Not a Conservative
By Nobel laureate F. A. Hayek
In het Nederlands
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 Möser, or Donoso
Cortès 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.
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