Conservatism as organic change
Michael Freeden’s take
Before I provide independent analysis of what contemporary American conservativism might mean, it will be helpful to continue our foray into the more pure academic debates and look at Oxford political theorist Michael Freeden’s criticism of the Samuel Huntington paper I outlined last week.
Freeden places Huntington as the leading champion of the “chameleon” theory of conservatism, whereby conservatives oppose anything new. There is no ideational core, and the conservative animal changes its color depending on the prevailing progressive group ; all they share, under this view, are those few Burkean principles that can defend an existing institutional structure (e.g. man is a religious animal, and religion is the core of civil society; man is a creature of instinct and emotion as well as reason; the community is superior to the individual, etc.).
Freeden offers two central criticisms. First, he argues that the chameleon theory assumes falsely that timeless and culture-independent responses would be “intellectually and politically adequate” as opposition to varying radical views in varying cultural contexts. Secondly, and more importantly, he argues that conservatives do not all share the Burkean commitments; some value religion and some don’t, some are paternalistic and others support a free-market. What conservatives defend at one point, but not others cannot form part of their ideological core.
Freeden counters that conservatism has two core components.
The first is a commitment to “organic” progress. It doesn’t want to halt all societal movement, but rather to promote “natural” or “organic” change. In Rationalism in Politics, famous conservative theorist Michael Oakeshott writes that “innovation entails certain loss and possible gain…the more closely an innovation resembles growth (that is, the more clearly it is initiated in and not merely imposed upon the situation) the less likely it is to result in a preponderance of loss.”
This is the belief that beneficial societal change can only be the product of the natural growth of existing institutions, which are grounded in tradition and history. Artificial and forced change, designed by humans in opposition to or in ignorance of our experiential knowledge of how society works, runs the great risk of creating chaos, or of creating a strange and cruel social order. Soviet communism, and its eventual move to Stalinism, is a case-in-point.
The second core component of conservatism, tied to the first, is a belief in the “extra-human” origins of society. It is the belief that society was created independent of human will. The extra-human component could be any number of forces-God, history, biology, and science, explains Freeden, have been considered the origin of various social orders. In the nineteenth century, conservatives viewed social stability as the product of the “natural” hierarchy; whereas, in the early part of the twentieth, conservatives discovered “psychological” facts of human nature, such as the desire to compete, which explained the genesis and movement of society, and the necessity of property holdings. More recently, conservative have appealed to “scientific” economic laws leading to the free market. To ignore the “natural” rules of society-that extra-human origin and dictating force-would be to promote inorganic change, and to put the society at grave risk. Politics, for conservatives, according to Freeden, is merely maintenance of and respect for the extra-human rules that protect that social order and guarantee organic change; one must respect the rules and leave them to do their work. In contrast to liberal and socialists and their “purposive” to optimize certain values, Freeden continues, conservatives do not search for new rational solutions to social problems.
But conservatives still promote certain policies, and in this regard, Freeden argues, they serve as a ‘counter-movement’ to progressive elements. Freeden refers to the “mirror-image” component of conservatism. Conservatives develop antitheses to progressive core concepts, and then tie them to their own core ideological structure.
This explains the great variety of conservative “core” concepts (i.e. hierarchy, property, individualism, statism); they are not the truest part of the core-they are merely second-order beliefs or principles used to buttress their first-order commitment to organic societal change. In response to calls for universal human rights in Victorian England, conservatives respond with the ideas of paternalism and class responsibilities, and natural hierarchies. In response to socialist doctrines in the nineteenth century, conservatives respond with the notion of property rights as the anchor of a civil society. In response to communism, they respond with the idea of basic political liberties, the free market, the family, and traditional moral beliefs. In response to the welfare state, they return to individual liberties.
What remains consistent about conservatism throughout, argues Freeden, is its concern with and defense of organic change. Its definition of the extra-human forces in play may change (organically?)-from hierarchies to markets, for example-but its ultimate concern is preventing unnatural societal change, and in that regard it has been a relatively steady, coherent political philosophy.
Freeden is working from a British perspective. Does his theory apply to American conservatives, almost all of whom view themselves as the philosophical bedfellows of the Founding Fathers, who were the radicals of their day? If American conservatives aren’t about opposition to change, as Huntington argues, are they-at their core–about organic change, as Freeden argues? More to come.
-Jake
Related posts:
- Conservatism ctd.: responses to Freeden
- Conservatism
- Populism and the future of conservatism
- Obama’s change: minor or major?
- Mt. Vernon Statement
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[...] meaning of American conservatism. I look forward to hearing your own perspective in the future. In your last post, you outlined Michael Freeden’s definition of conservatism as 1) commitment to organic [...]