The Contradictions of Conservatism

A favorite pastime among social philosophers is reflecting on revolutions, and of course the juiciest have been the French Revolution and the 1848 Revolution (that’s the one that Les Miserables is all about.)    There is something about carnage in the streets, when viewed from a distant, musty office, that stirs the blood.  Even Hegel called Napoleon, "History on horseback."  In my student days, Burke’s and Marx’s and DeTocqueville’s reflections on those revolutions, along with Weber’s more abstract Religion and the Rise of Capitalism and Adam Smith’s The  Wealth of Nations were required reading, so the free-for-all they started in my head is still bouncing around in there fifty years later.  The benefit is that one sees patterns of thinking not that obvious from reading any one of them in isolation.  For example, that conservative thought is based on a profound skepticism about the future, while liberal thought is equally skeptical about the past.  And that overvaluing either one of those is, as Adam Smith observed, liable to lead to social turmoil.

Edmund Burke, whose Reflections on the Revolution in France was the original conservative Bible, was quite explicit in his view that it can seldom be right to sacrifice the present for an uncertain future.  To his opposite, Marx, the past and present were all sacrifice which must make way for a glorious future.  While DeTocqueville was somewhat more optimistic about the future of democracy, he regretted in advance its failings when compared with his aristocratic past.  Burke’s skepticism led him to advocate progress as a cautiously incremental experimentation with change, always alert to unintended consequences. That is why it is a misnomer in some ways to credit the current sequestering and push for austerity to conservatism, for the Great Conservative himself would have probably repudiated them.  That current enthusiasm for present sacrifice to make way for a glorious future is far closer to Marx.  As is the economic determinism.  Burke would never have “thrown out the baby with the wash” by deliberately turning happy, prosperous workers into the unemployed to advance an uncertain future golden age of balanced budgets.

The elderly of course are those with the shortest future, so sacrificing their present for a future uncertainty should by all rights be anathema to conservatives.  Yet, trimming Social Security cost of living increases and forcing public retirees out of their current health insurance into uncertain insurance pools are all part to the austerity proposals of the current “conservatives” in the Congress.  In the words of Alexander the Great, they should change their ways or change their name.

And they should lift their visions higher.  A current principal villain for conservatives is Keynesian economics.  They regard Keynesian economics as the source of impetus for stimulating the economy at the risk of future deficits and as the cause of all deficit ills.  Social conservatives deride Keynes as not caring about the future because of his homosexuality.  Apparently Keynes' essay "Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren" bears no weight.  Yet Keynes himself, according to his biographer Robert Skidelsky, writing in the Washington Post, based his economic views on  Burke’s principle of not sacrificing the present for a radically uncertain future.  And his willingness to stimulate the economy was confined to "transition periods" of major economic change.  For that reason, Keynes could not tolerate long term mass unemployment in such transitional periods when something could be done about it. 

And of course, the present that should not be sacrificed includes the abundant opportunities to invest in startup industries that will reshape the American, and global economy.  We are indeed in a transitional period when old technologies are withering and the new technology sectors that will drive the future are being born.  One thing that is certain about that future is that other nations will take advantage of the changes if we don’t.  We are at a turning point for our economy where true conservative and liberal economic interests should coincide, where what is good for manufacturing is good for the country.  What is lacking among conservatives is the courage not to waste the present for a stale and gloomy fear of the future.  Instead, they are caught up in a paper chase after chimaeric financial products at the expense of constructing new industries and new infrastructures to support them.  Building "cash" is now the name of the game. 
According to conservatives, the great perceived danger of Keynesian stimulus is that it will baloon the money supply and devalue their treasure troves.  But to avoid it, they are sitting on their "cash", balooning currency through endless creation and circulation of derivatives.  The eventual implosion of that bubble will leave them with little of value, and the lives of countless others in shambles.  They contradict themselves.