"At the heart of New Right thought, lies the paradox of libertarian and authoritarian belief". To what extent do you support this quotation?

Authors Avatar

“At the heart of New Right thought, lies the paradox of libertarian and authoritarian belief”. To what extent do you support this quotation?

The New Right is a form of conservatism which formed in the 1980s and took a very different view of elements of society such as family, education and crime. In the United Kingdom, New Right more specifically refers to a strand of Conservatism that the likes of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan influenced. Thatcher's style of New Right ideology, known as Thatcherism was heavily influenced by the work of Friedrich Hayek (in particular the book, The Road to Serfdom). Margaret Thatcher said in her 1995 memoirs, The Downing Street Years; “The most powerful critique of socialist planning and the socialist state which I read and to which I have returned so often is F.A.Hayek’s ‘The Road to Serfdom’”. They were ideologically committed to neo-liberalism as well as being socially conservative. Key policies included deregulation of business, a dismantling of the welfare state or ‘Nanny State’, privatisation of nationalised industries and restructuring of the national workforce in order to increase industrial and economic flexibility in an increasingly global market. The paradox of New Right thought is that it combines both liberal views and conservative views into one coherent ideology. As the New Right supports both these views it is hard to decipher what role the state should play within the political regime.

Libertarianism is a view that upholds the principle of individual liberty. Libertarians believe that all people are the absolute owners of their own lives, and should be free to do whatever they wish with themselves or with property, provided they allow other people this same freedom. Broadly speaking, there are two types of libertarians: rights theorists and consequentialists. Rights theorists hold that it is morally imperative that all human interaction, including government interaction with private individuals, should be voluntary and consensual. Rights theorists disagree with the idea of using force in order to get something achieved, even if they do not use force, the threat of this force is a violation, in their opinion. Consequentialist libertarians do not have a moral prohibition against this ‘initiation of force,’ but they do believe that allowing a very large scope of political and economic liberty results in the maximum well-being or efficiency for a society, even if protecting this liberty involves some initiation of force by government. However, such governmental actions are limited in the consequentialists vision of the free society. This type of libertarianism is often associated with Milton Friedman, Ludwig von Mises, and Friedrich Hayek, the libertarians to whom Thatcher is fond of and is therefore linked to in her liberal thinking in the New Right. Some libertarians such as Robert Nozick and Murray Rothbard view the rights to life, liberty, and property as Natural Rights, i.e., worthy of protection as an end in themselves. Their view of natural rights is derived, directly or indirectly, from the writings of Hobbes and Locke. Libertarians such as Friedman, von Mises, Hayek justified these rights on pragmatic or consequentialist, as well as moral, grounds. They argued that individual freedom leads to economic efficiency and other benefits, and is thus the most effective means of promoting or enhancing social welfare. They accept the use of some initiation of force, such as a State that violates the non-aggression principle by taxing to provide some public goods and some minimal regulation. Some writers who have been called libertarians have also been referred to as classical liberals, by others and themselves. Libertarians generally defend the ideal of freedom from the perspective of how little one is constrained by authority, that is, how much one is allowed to do, which is referred to as negative freedom. As Hayek is well thought of by Margaret Thatcher it is not surprising that libertarian views existed in the theory of the New Right. Some of the key libertarian themes in the New Right are ideas such as having a free market, and having a minimal government. Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan trusted the Adam Smith (liberal) view of economics that the only way the market will ‘fix’ itself is if left alone, free from government intervention, and so they allowed for unemployment to rise to extremely high levels.

Join now!

Thatcher and Ronald Reagan were also partly authoritarian. Whilst Thatcher was economically liberal, as far as social values within the New Right were concerned she was anything but. Margaret Thatcher wanted a return to Victorian values and therefore never supported gay or lesbian relationships. Thatcher and Reagan encouraged censorship in both the United Kingdom and the USA (from anything from pornography to TV to speeches made by Gerry Adams). The New Right also presided over a severe decline in race relations with large race riots occurring in 1981. It is also often claimed that the UK’s (Thatcher’s) stance towards South ...

This is a preview of the whole essay