To what extent is there continuity between traditional Conservatism and the New Right? (45 marks)
To what extent is there continuity between traditional Conservatism and the New Right? (45 marks)
The New Right, a school of conservatism endorsed by both Thatcher and Reagan during the 1980s, was developed through the thinking of New Right pioneers such as Hayek (in his work The Road to Serfdom) and Friedman, who was largely responsible for the economic policies proposed by the New Right. Theorists of the New Right saw flaws in traditional conservatism, and attempted to amend these by reform it. These flaws resided mainly within society, the economy and the role played by authority in an efficient and coherent society.
Both the New Right and traditional Conservatism agree fundamentally on the human condition - that is, humanity is intellectually limited, psychologically dependent and innately selfish. For traditionalist, romantic and paternalist conservatisms, humanity has a limited capacity for altruism, usually extending to family, neighbours and friends. We are naturally but not exclusively selfish, and our acquisitive instincts make us potentially corruptible, yet our laziness and liking for the tried and tested tends to limit the reach of such corruption. These flaws are intrinsic to the human condition but the differences between these two strands of conservatism stem from how best to accommodate these imperfections. Whilst both agreeing that society is a natural, inevitable and desirable feature of human life, classical conservatism believes that the best way to protect the individual and society from the flaws of the individual are through authority and strict law and order. They believe negative freedom, subscribed to by liberals, is a recipe for chaos.
Therefore, a gemeinschaft, a term first coined by German sociologist Ferdinand Tonnies, is implemented, in which society is sustained by a complex web of interpersonal relationships arising from common experience, cultural background and psychological dependency - all factors which contribute to our need for society. This society is one which is expected to evolve and learn, and opposes the liberal notion of a gessellschaft, in which negative freedom, the right to do what you want as long as it doesn't impose on the rights of others, reigns supreme. Conservatives on the whole see negative freedom as a licence ...
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Therefore, a gemeinschaft, a term first coined by German sociologist Ferdinand Tonnies, is implemented, in which society is sustained by a complex web of interpersonal relationships arising from common experience, cultural background and psychological dependency - all factors which contribute to our need for society. This society is one which is expected to evolve and learn, and opposes the liberal notion of a gessellschaft, in which negative freedom, the right to do what you want as long as it doesn't impose on the rights of others, reigns supreme. Conservatives on the whole see negative freedom as a licence for anarchy, especially as the context of the development of the New Right (the age of individualism) could lead to profound global social unrest if society was not kept in check. The New Right, however, rejected the idea of a gemeinschaft as naïve, with the belief that not everyone has the ability to fraternise sufficiently in order to sustain the model. They inherited the traditional fear of negative freedom too, and instead decided to adopt an automatic society, based on Game Theory - an idea which came about during the Cold War, in which it is better to expect the worst and be proved right; the basis for the pessimistic view of society. Automatic society was one in which society was able to keep itself in check. It still adopted the same view of hierarchy as more traditional conservatism, in which hierarchy was inevitable and desirable, due to the unequal distribution of skills, and the masses' need to be informed by those who know. We can see that as far as society is concerned, there is little continuity between traditional conservatism and the New Right other than that traditional conservatism sees society as a vehicle for progress, rather than the New Right's more liberal take in which society is a framework for self-realisation - the basis for Thatcher's (in)famous "there is no such thing as society" speech.
With the implications of such a view on society, a strong authority is required to temper both the individual flaws and the idea of an organic society. Both classical conservatism and the New Right agree that authority is inevitable and desirable, but here the similarities end. Traditional conservatives see authority as a means of engineering and then sustaining the all-important gemeinschaft however possible. Therefore authority must be beneficent, and checks on the authority are made by the limitations of tradition. The New Right, however, sees notions of a benign authority as open to abuse, as is a contractual authority, as proposed by liberals, in which authority is a necessary evil and its legitimacy is based on consent. In Hayek's The Road to Serfdom, he identifies the problems with positive freedom, and distrusts authority. Even if authority has the best interests of society at heart, any attempt to micro-manage society is bound to fail and will give rise to excessive central power. The New Right's solution to this dilemma is a neo-conservative social policy, in which society as a whole is macro-managed, allowing the automatic society to manage itself whilst authority strives for stability, which is achieved by eliminating the factors which cause stability, namely diversity, pluralism and individualism. These are all reasons for the tough authoritarian policy implemented by New Right governments, as they believe a didactic social policy is the only way to keep in check the desires of a potentially corruptible individual, going as far as accepting use of a 'noble lie', claiming the difference between esoteric and exoteric truth to be the key. Despite there being a vague semblance of similarity in that both schools of conservatism are keen on authority, it is clear upon closer analysis that there is a large diversion between the two from there on.
Economics is the issue in which there is perhaps the most disagreement between traditional conservatives and members of the New Right. Classical conservative economics was founded on the thinking of John Maynard Keynes, who believed in a Robin Hood-style form of redistributive economics. This is a clear attempt to engineer society through economic policy. Whilst the New Right doesn't quite subscribe to the liberal belief in Adam Smith's school of laissez-faire economics, it tends to steer more towards Smith than Keynes. Milton Friedman, the father of New Right economics, saw a problem with the liberal view of the economy, arguing that such freedom would lead to chaos. Equally, however, he disagreed with Keynes' view, and said an attempt to micro-manage economy was bound to fail, as Hayek believed with society. Therefore the New Right adopted a neo-liberal take on economic policy, in which similarities to the 'automatic society' can be seen. He proposed a macro-management of the economy, again striving for stability whilst the economy manages itself. Economic uncertainty was the cause of instability in the markets, and Friedman believed eliminating this possibility, twinned with encouragement of economic efficiency, would lead to a more stable economy, which would help society thrive.
In society, authority and the economy, we can see a huge divergence between the theories of more traditional Conservatism and the New Right, which leads me to believe there is very little continuity between the two, as evidenced by the factors mentioned in this essay.
