Conservatism, as a set of concepts, can be viewed as a counter-ideology to progressivism. It is sometimes seen (in the view of its ideological contestors) as motivated largely by fear and self-interest. It is often defined as an antithesis to progressivism. It views progressivism as a set of mistaken beliefs, including that:
That view of progressivism often takes a more pointed form in the language of conservatives. Noel O’Sullivan, in his article “Conservatism” from the “Oxford Handbook of Political Ideologies” [Freeden 2013, p. 294], provides a second set of statements to describe the conservative's view of liberal beliefs:
He might have added a common conservative claim that progressives believe we are “perfectible.” In the view of liberals that O’Sullivan attributes to conservatives, the intensifications render a caricature of modern progressivism. I have, however, heard such statements about liberals both from politicians and private individuals, both conservatives and liberals.
Important historic episodes do suggest that beliefs like the second set are dangerous. Consider, for example, twentieth century communism and fascism. The Soviets plunged with great gusto into theoretically justified social arrangements which had little historic precedent and were based on false hopes and doomed to failure. Hitler and Mussolini both spoke of the “new man” they intended to create. Certainly ample cause for caution is spoken by these historic events.
The French Revolution was part and parcel of the birth of Western democratic liberalism. That revolution’s devolution into barbarism, followed by nationalistic aggrandizement of despotism (ironically, followed also by despotically enforced liberal reform), will endure as a byword. It was a major influence on English politics and political philosophy. The American Revolution provided a contrasting example with different motivations, goals, and outcomes. European commentators have been hesitant to consider the American revolt as a counter-example to the French.
These examples, which clearly aren’t examples of conservative thinking, aren’t examples of liberal thinking either.
The first view of progressivism above (the first set of bullets) is more difficult to dismiss out of hand than is the second. The first seems to raise useful and answerable questions, such as “What are the conditions within which we can live comfortably?” or “Are there negative conditions that we can change?” Yet the extreme second view of progressivism persists among conservatives. Ideology is, after all, about framing, contrasting, and contesting.
Nevertheless an ideology can’t just be negative. It must provide a positive face for itself, a positive motivation, which must be complementary with the negative face.
There may be many components in the positive conservative worldview. Analysts have had some trouble in pinning down what they are, as described further in the section below, “A Model World.” Its central tenets can be summarized in a number of ways. I find it convenient to consider its positive face as comprised of four elements:
By “social arrangements” I mean to include all of our practices that are of any mutual concern. This can range from customs and manners, to private and public institutions, to laws or constitutions. The qualifier “social” is meant to be very broad, and may even be superfluous. All of these arrangements are a matter of interest for those involved in them. Different individuals can see particular arrangements as either social or private and this itself seems to be a frequent point of political contestation.
At one end of the range, consider the norms of social behavior among individuals who share a social space. Norms (expectations or rules, in this case often informal and unexpressed) exist about how we interact. There are norms about how close we get to one another, when and how we touch, how loudly we speak, whether we spit or belch, how we clothe ourselves, what odors are welcome or unwelcome, where we sit, who gets which chair, and on and on. These rules are different in different environments and in different company. They often operate outside of our conscious awareness and aren’t usually stated, except to children or others who aren’t expected to know the rules, or to transgressors. If such a rule is stated to you, it probably means that you have violated it. I’ll call these “natural” or “informal” rules.
At the other end, consider rules of social behavior that are adopted through a community process and are stated verbally, publicly, and formally. Such rules are obligatory and can legitimately be enforced, within certain limits, using the coercive powers of the community. Included within this class are traffic laws, property laws, tax laws, and laws which guide and control the provision of medical care, the armed forces, and other complex institutions. You are presumed to know any such rules that apply to you. If such a rule is stated to you by a representative of the community, you’re either in trouble or on your way into it. I’ll call these “engineered” rules, while recognizing that the term “engineered” may overstate the amount of planning applied when they were adopted. In any case, engineered rules have been adopted by the community by some formal or informal process.
In between natural rules and engineered rules are what I’ll call “traditional” rules. These are rules that exist because they have existed. They may have existed time out of mind. The process by which they were adopted may be unknown and unnoticed, or there may be legitimizing narratives that explain their origin and purpose. Such rules tend to persist so long as they serve a purpose. They may or may not be explicit, and may be enforced informally or explicitly. An example is rules for weddings, some aspects of which are legal, others customary and flexible. Rules for other social rituals are informal within some groups but formal in others.
As the examples of traffic law and tax law illustrate, engineered arrangements very commonly have particular and practical salience within our individual and social lives.
Conservatism in social arrangements can apply broadly to the entire spectrum of these arrangements. Any change has costs. Not all the costs are economic. At a minimum, everyone affected has to learn about the change and then learn to act appropriately within the new arrangements. Any change has its risks. These include the basic risk of acting inappropriately for the new rules. Another risk involves system stability. While it may be known from experience that the old arrangements are durable, stable, and compatible, this is often not known of new arrangements.
Conservatism about social arrangements may be encouraged by further characteristics of many changes. For example, any change may be, or may be seen as, a move from stability toward loss of order. While advantages of the new arrangements may be unclear or may reveal themselves only over time, disadvantages may be obvious and apparent at once. Those who are comfortable with the current arrangements may be a different group than those who may benefit from the change.
History is densely littered with changes that mistook or entirely ignored effects on human values and human communities. We’re all, I think, currently aware of how awkward it is to keep a friend or loved one at arms' length, hidden under our masks.
I still recall fifty years ago reading an ethnography about the aboriginal inhabitants of Australia shortly after first contact with European traders. A stone axe was a mighty tool then, made and used by males only, a traditional rule. Its manufacture and use were limited by ritual. These axes were valuable because of their economic utility, and conferred a certain status and a certain usefulness on their male owners. When the traders arrived, the women suddenly had access to steel axes, throwing the men into a long-lasting state of dysphoria. (I realize that this can be read as a cautionary tale about patriarchy, but I’m still unconvinced that a subsistence economy can afford such luxuries. Besides, does anyone know what value the women provided to the traders in exchange for the steel axe-heads?) But this is meant to be a story about unintended consequences of change.
The immortal gods in their providence have so designed things that good and true principles have been established by the wisdom and deliberation of eminent, wise and upright men. It is wrong to oppose these principles, or desert the ancient religion for some new one, for it is the height of criminality to try and revise doctrines that were settled once and for all by the ancients, and whose position is fixed and acknowledged.
This is taken from a decree by the Roman Emperor Diocletian, 302 CE. He is arguing against the innovation of Christianity. [Freeman 2005, p. 79] In 313 AD, Constantine declared the Edict of Milan, which declared toleration of all cults including Christianity. [Freeman 2005, p. 69]
Engineered or designed changes present aspects which amount to a number of additional attractions for the status quo. Some of these derive from the need to decide about change. Some derive from the apparent organic or necessary nature of arrangements that exist, versus the apparently voluntary nature of chosen changes. Others derive from the nature of the conservative’s vision.
A simple general argument against almost any change refers to the costs and risks of change. Answering this simple and general-purpose argument immediately and directly increases the cost of the change. At issue are the costs and the benefits; who may be advantaged or disadvantaged; whether the proposal is even worthy of consideration; whether the effects can be accurately foreseen.
There are also more subtle risks and costs.
Any proposal for a change seems to imply that there is a defect in the existing order of things, which calls into question the validity or goodness of the existing order. The proposal may challenge widely-accepted legitimizing narratives, which are often held as articles of faith. It may challenge the rightness of those who have accepted the narratives and those who have been satisfied under the existing arrangements.
Major change leads to major effects. Any modest proposal is selective, affecting some in positive ways, others in negative ways, some not at all. There tend to be winners and losers, hence it tends to be redistributive. Changes of limited scope tend to direct attention from the larger community to subgroups and raise issues about why those subgroups merit special attention. Interventions often seem to be in opposition to concepts of equality, and are obviously in opposition to the concept of non-intervention, that is, of non-favoritism in community actions.
Change proposals can be criticized on the basis that they are motivated by base motives, or that they are being justified falsely or hypocritically. That is, the change might represent social cheating. We are vigilant about such transgressions.
Deciding upon changes creates moral hazard. That is, resolving a proposal requires decision makers to decide upon issues in which they have a personal stake that is separate and often different from the community interest.
There are issues of bounded rationality associated with many changes. Do we really know what the effects will be? The answer to that question can have a different answer for each person concerned in the question, as each looks at it through the lens of his own knowledge and intellectual skills. In light of uncertainty about both expected outcomes and motivations, it is difficult to maintain trust within the community in this context. Shared understandings are needed to support trust, and the greater are the changes, the more elusive a shared understanding is. The argument in favor of a change is often not intuitive. (If it were, presumably either the change would already have been made or it wouldn’t be proposed.)
To decide about changes and at the same time maintain community trust requires that stakes and interests be discussed. This is often uncomfortable, especially when existing arrangements are seen to advantage some relative to others. Social norms often dictate that we not favor our personal interests over the abstract interests of the community, or even over the interests of other groups. Discussion of stakes may be made more difficult by this norm. Other norms regulate the conditions under which inequality of resources is justified.
When such discussions occur, they expose differences within the community about values with respect to our personal and community interests. This can be disruptive and uncomfortable, even within communities of voluntary affiliation. We tend to judge the desirability, safety, and attractiveness of others based on the similarity (or expected similarity) of their ideas and actions to our own. (See Susan Fiske’s “Envy Up, Scorn Down” [Fiske 2012] for modern understandings about this.) There are social and psychological incentives to avoid such discussions. Such discussions can easily be disrupted unilaterally.
Any such discussions take place in an ideological context, and often within social communities that are ideologically-based, whether they are physical groups (groups that meet), virtual, or entirely abstract and anonymous. The ideology then takes a role in the deliberation. Ideology often provides the vision of what is good and what isn’t. While we seem all to largely agree about what is good and bad in simple one-on-one interactions (stealing is bad, lying is bad, murder is bad, muggings are bad, the owner is liable when his ox gores his neighbor’s ass), ideology seems to be called in especially with respect to the sort of complex, multi-effect social arrangements that are the targets of change proposals.
There is much evidence that people of like ideologies tend to affiliate. When discussions occur about change proposals in an environment in which ideological conformity is an important value, one or both of two things is likely to happen. First, the discussion occurs within the terms of the group’s orthodoxy. This affects how the proposal is appraised. As a simple example of this, if the ideology says that certain types of arrangements are bad, discussion won’t extend much beyond that. An ideology provides categories and concepts that are used in making such judgments. It both expedites and channels the discussion. Whether it aids understanding is a different question. Second, thoughts that violate the orthodox ideology tend not to be expressed.
One effect of these two phenomena is that a change proposal may not be heard clearly when it is debated in a group with a different ideology than the group which advocated the proposal. Another effect is that discussion of a change proposal provides an opportunity for ideological disagreements to be made apparent. This has costs for both group and members which can’t occur if the proposal is never discussed.
Conservative ideologies commonly contain certain features that discourage entertaining change proposals. Conservative ideologies often refer, explicitly or implicitly, to some past state of affairs as an ideal to be emulated. (For example, “Make America Great Again.”) When this is accepted, any proposal to entertain some unfamiliar arrangement is a movement away from the ideal.
Conservative ideologies often emphasize self-reliance. Any proposal that would help specific classes of people can be seen as opposing this value.
Conservative ideologies often place a high value on freedom, and in some varieties of conservatism the emphasis is on economic freedoms. Proposals intended to regulate markets and especially to change the distribution of income are often seen as incompatible with these values.
Above and beyond the costs and risks involved in considering changes are costs around the implementing of changes. Each change has particular costs which can be recognized in decision-making. There are other costs that accrue to many changes but aren’t often acknowledged.
When change is seen as externally imposed, it can be very disempowering (experienced as coercion) to those subject to the changes, particularly to those unconvinced that the change is a positive one. This situation is almost built in to the functioning of governments, although it can happen within voluntary organizations. It is especially evident under democratic systems, where change normally is publicly discussed.
Change can be felt as a cultural intrusion and a moral violation.
Changes can shift control from traditional and voluntary institutions (such as church or family) to institutions that are politically controlled.
The implementation of change always seems to imply or require more extensive external supervision.
Conservatives tend to include economic arrangements within their general preference for the conservation of existing arrangements. They tend to have fairly strong preferences about economic arrangements beyond this:
This combination of beliefs has gone under a number of names at different times and in its different varieties. I’ll call it “laissez-faire economics.” (The phrase is French, the pronunciation is “lay-zay-fare.” It means, roughly, "Let it be.")
Without claiming to read minds, I can’t claim to know just why different people have these beliefs, or to what extent their beliefs are supported by empirical evidence. I can, however, point out that many of these beliefs are beliefs about the way the real-world economy runs, or of how it could run. They can therefore increasingly be empirically tested. In the section of these essays entitled “The Claims,” I elaborate and evaluate some of these beliefs in the form of ideological claims made by conservatives.
Although these beliefs rub up against the workings of the great economic machine, they also rub up against other of the moral claims of justice.
The first belief above, that economic productivity is a good (that is, that more $$ are better), carries a claim that the value of the gross economic product dominates other, sometimes conflicting values. Since such a claim is clearly both contestable and contested, it follows that economic issues are rarely just economic issues. (That is, the economic system is not separable from the rest of our shared world, but a linked part of it.)
The second belief, that personal responsibility is a dominant concern or a dispositive consideration in economic issues, is another belief with a broad moral shadow. Most importantly, it is incompatible with the Golden Rule (“Do unto others....”) unless certain strong conditions are met. One of these is that sufficient economic opportunity be available to support each economic unit. Another is that such opportunity be in reality accessible to each unit, given the characteristics of its members and the characteristics of the markets. And, as is true for the first belief, it ignores that not all human value is encompassed within the markets.
The third belief I listed above, the belief that “free markets = freedom” again ignores the fact that much of value occurs outside of the markets, but it also ignores the equally obvious truism that one person’s freedom is another’s jeopardy.
I’ve described the essential conceptual foundations of the conservative vision: Change should not be imposed through governmental action, barring pressing circumstances that demand it. Economic output should be maximized, and this will happen through laissez-faire economic management that retains and enhances personal economic responsibility.
Individual conservatives and conservative groups will have refinements and alterations to make to these statements, but these are the basic planks in a conservative platform. There is, however, much more.
In his book “The Blank Slate,” neuroscientist Steven Pinker understates: “Conservatives...tend to be more authoritarian, conscientious, traditional, and rule-bound.” [Pinker, p. 283] Put in a different order, conservatives tend to conscientiously follow traditional rules. Their authoritarianism means that they tend to be willing to enforce adherence to traditional rules, including paradoxically through governmental action.
The arguments supporting and explicating these claims about conservatives are complex, and are described in some detail in the set of essays “The Mark and the Draw.” For present purposes, the open question is, “What traditional rules earn their adherence?” A minimal answer to this is that each conservative adheres to his own traditions, but the reality is more constrained than that answer suggests. First, conservatives tend to be group-affiliated and adhere to shared norms as a group activity. Second, the traditional rules and values that earn their adherence are “conservative” rules and values. (Again, “The Mark and the Draw” describes the characteristics of rules that are attractive to conservatives.)
In our country today the prevalent tradition of conservative rules and values is that of conservative Christianity. An alternative or supplementary collection of values and norms, with a less secure claim to real traditionalism, is secular, political, and spans a spectrum of narratives ranging from old-fashioned GOP political ideas to Breitbart/Steve Bannon “alt-right” ideas, to “Trumpism” to militia/“patriot” or “paleo-conservative” ideas.
So, the conservative vision includes basic shared beliefs about the role of government and the desired nature of the economy, as well as much more elaborate and constraining beliefs centered around a religious and/or political vision for our shared world. (Some of my thoughts about conservative Christianity as a social vision are contained in the essay “God On Our Side.” Some description of elements of “Trumpism” can be found in the essay “Conservative Rhetoric.”)
In “What’s an Ideology?” I will present the idea that an ideology is, among other things, a model of reality. An ideology must be plausibly consistent with the world as it is understood by the ideologue, and the vision offered by the ideology must also seem tangible, plausible, and desirable.
There are any number of points at which the ideology may intersect with the real world. As an example, consider the conservative ethos that personal responsibility should be strengthened, not weakened, by our system for management of economic resources. This belief must be supported by some theory or theories that link behavior to economic rewards and punishments.
An important area for world/ideology congruence is what psychologists call “theory of mind.” A person’s theory of mind is a set of beliefs he or she has about how the human mind works. Such a theory is an essential acquisition for each of us, because it allows us to reason about others’ reasoning; to infer their intent, predict their behavior, gain feedback to regulate our own behavior. Two- and three-year-olds show evidence of having theories about the motivations and feelings of others.
We each have our own theories of mind, and the world’s psychologists have professional theories of their own, which are often much at odds with what they sometimes call our “naive” theories. Theory of mind is an especially important belief with respect to ideology because it covers things such as human motivations, mental abilities, perceptions of the world and the accuracy of those perceptions, our sense of right and wrong, our judgments of what is desirable and what is to be avoided. These last items have been of such importance that they consistently show up as central elements in our religious traditions. Our naive theories of mind come easily to us and we often sense them as natural and self-evident, one of the reasons that they have been of interest to psychological thinkers.
A number of plausible hypotheses can be formed about knowledge in relation to ideological belief on the basis of the simple observation that there is a need for some consistency between the two. For example:
Each of these hypotheses is consistent with scientific evidence about conservatism. (“The Mark and the Draw.”)
As with all ideologies, conservative ideology mustn’t conflict with theory of mind. A group which agreed that people in general are highly motivated to contribute to the common welfare and are uniformly able to do so wouldn’t have many of the concerns that conservatives share. Conservative theories of mind may in ways be more realistic than theories held by some liberals. These often over-emphasize freedom of will, the role of culture, and developmental plasticity. Nevertheless the theory of mind underlies the political theory, usually implicit and largely unexamined. As with other aspects of ideology, the requirement is not absolute consistency. The requirement is that contradictions not be obvious.
It is at least arguable that the conservative worldview has different theories of mind for different groups.
The widespread view among conservatives that morality is handed down from a legitimate authority entails a view that morality is taught and learned, and so it is learned well or poorly depending upon characteristics of the learner. (This is the clear subtext of the Pentateuch, that is, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Sin originated in a taste of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Whose idea it was to bite the apple isn’t the important point.) If the moral tone of all creation depends on adherence to the Law, that is indeed a weighty thing.
From this view radiate a rather complex set of strands, including the argument that the reality of human nature (what is) should be separate from moral standards (what ought to be). The view directly opposite to this, that what is “natural” is ipso facto good, has earned itself a name and a reputation, viz., “the naturalistic fallacy.” That fallacy, were it accepted, would lead to some obvious sub-optimizations. However, rejection of the naturalistic fallacy doesn’t logically imply that we should follow standards regardless of how “unnatural” they may be, or that we should order our lives in ways that ignore our fundamental comfort in the world. The alternative views, that we should or shouldn’t consider the utility of decisions are, if I understand correctly, what some mean by “moral relativism” and “moral absolutism.”
Cultural diversity is a fraught proposition in a context of moral absolutism. If your moral sense tells you that your brother’s behavior is ucky, can he be allowed to do it anyway? More problematic, perhaps, what do you do if your brother’s moral sense tells him that your behavior is ucky?
Another under-appreciated aspect of a naive theory of mind is the belief that human behavior is motivated by intention. While this has a “common sense” feel to it, it importantly implies that actions taken by any of us reflect differences in values (motivations) rather than differences in abilities, options, perceptions, or consequences. (Some researchers consider that the claim of “common sense” invites scientific scrutiny. [Trivers 2013])
The conservative vision tends to be moralistic rather than utilitarian. Actions are good or bad in terms of their compliance with accepted standards, rather than in terms of their effects. We all can find examples which demonstrate that “the ends don’t justify the means.” But, this doesn’t address the effects of making choices without consideration of all their consequences.
If conservatism is, as it seems, a reaction against liberalism, then the abstraction “liberalism” should take the role of conservatism’s opponent, as conservatives have already decided without my input. “Liberals” form the mass of the enemy in concrete form, along with anyone who is seen as carrying the messages of liberalism.
Those seen as benefitting from liberal policies, then, should be seen as clients of the enemy.
To the extent that knowledge of the world is seen as actually or potentially contradictory to elements of conservative ideology, the developers and messengers of that knowledge should be seen as collaborators and facilitators.
Next: What's an Ideology?
© 2021, Ross A. Hangartner