CONSERVATISM
Conservatism is an ideology which opposes significant change to the social,
economic and political system. Conservatives wish to conserve aspects of the existing
system – property, status, power, their way of life. Not surprisingly, conservatives
tend to be those with power, wealth and status in society. They also tend to be people
who fear change.
Essential elements of conservatism
There are five essential elements of conservatism.
The first is resistance to change. Conservatives do not oppose all change, but they
do challenge it and question it. They believe that a system which works is better than
one that has never been tried.
Conservatives also revere tradition, and believe that the longer an institution has
existed, the more important it is to preserve it. They reject the notion that reason
should be used as the arbiter of social change. Reason can be deceptive, they believe.
Decisions that are solely based on it can lead to a worsening of the human condition
rather than an improvement.
A third element of conservatism is a distrust of the state. Conservatives reject the
use of state power to improve the human condition, and in this they have much in
common with classic liberals. However, they differ from the liberals in that they are
quite happy to use state power to limit individual freedom, by imposing strict moral
standards. In other words, conservatives support the use of government power when it
suits their interests, but oppose it when it does not. In general, however, they oppose
the notion that government policy can make life better for people, since they believe
this leads to dependency. Instead, they believe that the human condition can best be
improved when people look after themselves.
Conservatives believe that limitations should be placed on individual freedom, so as
to preserve order in society. In particular, they believe people should follow a strict
moral code, which usually has religion as its source.
Finally, conservatives oppose egalitarianism, believing that some people are simply
better than others. Those morally and intellectually superior people are deserving of
greater power and authority, and form society’s elite. Hence, society works best, they
believe, when it is organised hierarchically. Radical democracy, they fear, only
“sacrifices nobility to mediocrity; it pulls down the aspiring natures to gratify the
inferior natures” (to quote the conservative writer Russel Kirk). Conservatives accept
that people are separated by class, intellect, nationality and race, and these that things
can never be eradicated.
Classic conservatism
Classic conservatism emerged in reaction to the perceived excesses of the French
Revolution of 1789. Following the overthrow of the old regime, the Jacobans
introduced radical change into French society. Virtually all the old ideas were
challenged by the new rationalism. There was even an attempt to abolish religion.
The ruling classes in all the European states saw this as a dire threat to their own
power, and to the continuation of their regimes. On the continent, this resulted in
harsh persecution of those demanding liberal reforms. In England, however, it led to
the rise of conservative ideology, as a justification for maintaining the status quo.
The founder of classic conservatism in England was Edmund Burke (1729-97). He
began his career as a liberal, but was sickened by what he witnessed in France
following the revolution. In his book Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790),
he extolled the sanctity of law, authority and tradition, and warned of the dangers of
extending popular participation in government.
Politically, it was English Prime Minister William Pitt who took conservatism to
heart following the French Revolution. Initially, Pitt had been unconcerned by events
on the Continent, however, he became increasingly concerned that radical liberals in
England might seek to emulate the ideas and policies of their colleagues in France. He
responded by banning their writings as seditious.
The French monarch, Louis XVI was executed in January 1793, and England soon
found itself at war with France. Pitt reacted by introducing a bill suspending habeas
corpus. This meant that citizens could now be arrested without charge and held
without appearing before a court. Many radical liberals were arrested and charged
with sedition. Tom Payne managed to escape to America, but many others were
imprisoned. For a time, conservatism ruled unchallenged in England.
Classic conservatives saw society as being like the human body – that is, requiring a
strict hierarchy of its constituent parts in order to function successfully. Just as the
brain is a more important organ than the tongue, and the tongue more important than
the appendix, so the king was seen as more important than the town crier, and the
town crier more important than the beggar. As such, notions like equality and liberty
were seen as destructive to social harmony, since they challenged this natural
hierarchy. Instead, classic conservatives spoke of ‘rights’ and ‘liberties’, which they
believed derived from the maintenance of social stability. Unlike liberals, who
believed such rights to be inherent to all people and deriving from rational principles,
conservatives of the 18th and 19th centuries saw them as a consequence of specific
institutional and legal arrangements that had evolved over long periods of time. Any
challenge to those arrangements could challenge the existence of those rights.
Of course, not all individuals were deserving of the same rights, according to classic
conservatives. Rights and material benefits were determined by one’s contribution to
society, which was largely determined by one’s place in it – which in turn was largely
determined by the luck of one’s birth.
For classic conservatives, the most important institution in a society was its
Constitution, which set in place the laws that maintained the system. It was the
document “which binds the whole of the citizenry to its rulers, and the rulers to the
citizenry within the nation.” Although this sounds similar to John Locke’s notion of
the ‘social contract’, it is in fact a distinctly different concept. Classic conservatives
opposed the notion that society and government were the creation of the people, and
could be changed if and when the people desired. Instead, they saw the existing
system as shaped by history and tradition, and therefore too precious to alter other
than at the edges. Thus, change, when it came, would be slow and well thought out –
thereby preventing disaster. In Burke’s words, “wise prejudice”, developed over the
centuries, was “better than thoughts untried and untested”. For this reason,
conservatives in England resisted the rapid extension of the franchise to the lower
classes. They saw themselves as a dampener on change rather than a bulwark against
it, letting it occur in a slow, ordered way.