Conservatism ctd.: responses to Freeden
Jake,
Thanks for continuing your examination into the origins and current 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 progress and 2) belief in the extra-human origins of society. While I know you have not endorsed Freeden’s perspective, I wanted to offer a few critiques to his argument.
Focusing on the second factor, I wonder how “conservative” the natural order of society ends up. Marx’s argument was not necessarily that political institutions should institute a radical change in their social order; rather, Marx argued that the natural order of society pointed inevitably towards the collapse of capitalism and the institution of common ownership over the means of production.
Certainly Freeden would disagree with Marx’ analysis, but that’s exactly my point. There’s strong debate over the proper definition of “natural orders,” and no guarantee that an analysis of that order will suggest traditional conservative policy goals.
Focusing on Freeden’s first factor, the commitment to natural evolution of policy seems questionable when faced with contemporary problems. Climate change, for example, demands radically new methods of market regulation and social organization. While the gradual destruction of the environment would eventually make “organic” change inevitable, climate science reminds us that once the costs of climate change are apparent, it will already be too late to act. Modern science can point to radically new needs and solutions that Burke could not possibly have anticipated. While organic change may generally be good policy, the exceptions that must be made are both urgent and radical. Perhaps this is why the modern American conservative movement has sought to deny climate change science.
Finally, I wanted to discuss the underpinnings of your project as a whole. Are the goals of this project to define a forward direction for American conservatism? If so, is the project bound solely on finding the most beneficial path forward from a normative perspective? Should our definition of conservatism include questions of political expediency? By this, I mean if we establish Oakeshottian conservatism as the normative ideal, who would vote for it? Certainly not the religious right. Would normatively coherent conservatism require a third party?
-John
Related posts:
- Conservatism as organic change
- Conservatism
- Strains of modern conservatism
- Is social conservatism a new religion?
- Populism and the future of conservatism
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The project, if it can be called that, is more descriptive than normative. By interpreting the conceptual structure of American conservatism, we can better elucidate and analyze the conceptual cleavages between it and American liberalism, which tends to get more philosophical attention, at least in academic circles. It should be noted that this is more or less Freeden’s own concern, at least as it relates to that chapter on conservatism. He’s not a conservative himself, for whatever it’s worth.
-Jake