To what extent is there continuity between traditional Conservatism and the New Right?

To what extent is there continuity between traditional Conservatism and the New Right?

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 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.