Conservatism

I

Introduction

Conservatism, tenet of those displaying a temperament instinctively adverse to innovation, especially when the pace of change seems dangerously rapid, and hence to threaten the survival of traditional values. Conservatism strives rather for balance and order within society as an organic unity, accepting the need to adapt to changing circumstances while avoiding extremes. It is to be distinguished therefore from “reaction”, which would resist all change and even seek to revert to a golden age by then in the past.

It is vital to distinguish between conservatism as a political and social attitude (where the word has no initial capital letter) and Conservatism as the creed of a Conservative Party and of Conservatives who belong to that party (mainly in the United Kingdom, where the Conservative Party has been one of the two major groups competing for power over the past two centuries). Though Conservatives have generally been politically active in parties that valued tradition more highly than modernization or other types of change, their parties’ policies have not invariably been conservative in the broader sense; Margaret Thatcher, for example, pursued mainly radical, non-conservative policies, while successfully leading the British Conservative Party between 1975 and 1990.

Originally, conservatism as a coherent political standpoint arose in reaction to the rationalist assumptions of the Age of Enlightenment in the 18th century. Conservatives advocated belief in faith over reason, tradition over free enquiry, hierarchy over equality, and collective values over individual rights; they prized divine or natural law over secular law. At any one time in a given society, conservatism therefore emphasizes the merits of the status quo and endorses the prevailing distribution of power, wealth, and social standing. Political conservative thought, however, has reconciled itself with constitutional democracy and individual rights, as well as with prudent and orderly social and economic change. That adaptability, the recognition that it is frequently necessary to accept some change in order to conserve values and associations inherited from the past, has enabled the conservative idea itself to retain its significance, and conservative parties to remain influential, through two centuries of unprecedented social and technological modernization.

II

Origins

Conservatism received its classic formulation in the works of the British politician and philosopher Edmund Burke, notably in his Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), in which he rejected reformers’ resort to first principles during the French Revolution and offered readers an alternative philosophy of society and politics. Burke viewed society as an organic whole, with individuals performing interdependent roles and functions, but with the “little battalions” of families, villages, voluntary societies, and towns having as important a role as the state and as nationality. In Burke’s society, a natural elite—by virtue of birth, inherited wealth, and education—naturally provides the leadership; nature itself, including human nature, is, he noted, a “natural” ally of conservatives, who view things as they are, rather than as they would prefer them to be. The community is held together by venerable customs and traditions. Gradual changes should be made in order to conserve the basic structure of hierarchy and order, but only when new ideas have gained wide acceptance.

Burke rejected outright the principles of equality, representation by election, and popular sovereignty. He also rejected the universal franchise and majority rule (the notion that a numerical majority of the citizenry should be empowered to make decisions for all). He advocated order, balance, and cooperation in society; restraints on government; and, above all, the supremacy of law in all its forms—natural, divine, and customary. Burke did allow for limited governmental controls calculated to avoid malfunctions and frictions among the various groups within a nation, and so to moderate economic strife and competition. He was particularly anxious to avoid wide differences—extreme wealth on the one hand and poverty on the other—since that would in itself lead to irremediable frictions, social tension, and the danger of revolutionary change.

III

The Conservative Party in Great Britain

Burke was claimed as the intellectual ancestor of both a conservative tendency of mind, shared by Whigs as well as Tories from the 1790s onward, and of British Conservatism as a party doctrine. British conservatism and the Conservative Party that evolved during the third quarter of the 19th century each remained attached to parliamentary and constitutional democracy. Gradual extension of the franchise, ameliorating social legislation, and better cooperation between the poor and the rich became part of the conservative tradition, classically highlighted in the novels of Benjamin Disraeli, whose Sybil (1845) identifies the danger of there being “two nations” within one country: the rich and the poor.

During the 20th century, the Conservative Party accepted and even initiated economic control by the state, and broadened the social responsibility of the state to intervene in matters of health, education, and economic security, as well as in national defence. After World War II, the Conservatives went so far as to accept the nationalization of key industries that had been instituted by the socialist Labour Party and to endorse fully the tenets of the welfare state. Only after 1979 did the Conservative Party begin to reconsider the practice of state controls, welfare measures, and nationalization, in a re-evaluation which became influential in many other countries.

IV

Conservatism in Europe

Conservative movements and groups have flourished widely in continental Europe, but few conservative parties similar to the British model in organization, doctrine, mass membership, and attachment to parliamentary democracy ever developed. European conservatives, until the end of the 19th century, generally rejected democratic principles and institutions, including, in some cases, participation in elections and the universal franchise. They opted instead for monarchies (as in France, 1814-1848) or for authoritarian government (as with Bonapartist France, 1799-1814 and 1851-1870, and in imperial Germany, after 1871). With economies later to industrialize than Britain’s, conservative parties often acted as the mouthpiece for agricultural interests and the tariff policies that such interests demanded, hence a resistance to modernizing and urban, economic forces. Some continental conservative movements ultimately gave their support to authoritarian and totalitarian movements—fascism in Italy and Spain, Nazism in Germany—between 1920 and the end of World War II in 1945. Conservative, authoritarian governments existed in Portugal and Spain until the 1970s.

A dominant conservative doctrine in many European countries, notably in France, Italy, Spain, and Portugal, has been “social Catholicism” and corporatism. This was inspired by the social doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church expressed in two papal encyclicals, Rerum novarum (1891) and Quadragesimo anno (1931). In the name of social justice and order, corporatism advocates a close collaboration between employers and workers under the direction of the state, in all matters regarding conditions of work, wages, prices, production, and exchange. Its aim is to substitute collective considerations for the free play of the market and to restrict competition. After World War I, corporatism was institutionalized by the state in various forms in Spain, Italy, and Portugal.