[lbo-talk] Conservatism

[SA]

I don't think conservatism is as contradictory as you think. It doesn't 
require genuine tradition, it only requires authority. Legitimate 
authority was once conferred by birth, now it's conferred by wealth. 
Conservatives just transferred their allegiance from one criterion of 
authority to another. And I don't think this line about capitalism 
leading to secularization holds water. That's what social scientists 
thought 40 years ago, but they've mostly been forced to admit that it's 
wrong, for obvious reasons. Piety and fundamentalism have been growing, 
not shrinking, in Islam, Judaism and Christianity. The political 
salience of religion is much greater now. Daniel Bell's book was written 
almost 40 years ago. He wrote it precisely because capitalism seemed to 
be in trouble and he wanted to find a cultural explanation. But 
capitalism experienced a remarkable turnaround in the intervening years, 
you might have noticed, so it doesn't make much sense trying to find a 
cultural explanation for its debility, and it certainly doesn't make 
sense to zero in on a "religion in decline" explanation in an era when 
religion in on the upswing.

Bethany Morton's book on Walmart workers and protestant fundamentalism 
(Doug had her on his show) is a good entry point for considering how 
compatible capitalism and religion can be, and how coherent the 
conservative view therefore is.

SA

farmelantj at juno.com wrote:
> Well many of the more serious
> thinkers on the right will concede
> that the free market is destructive
> of tradition and traditional values.
> Yes, many of them look to religion
> to religion to provide a check
> on the destructive effects of the market.
> The problem is that capitalism does
> seem to promote tendencies towards
> secularism: religion being one of
> the traditions that capitalism undermines.
> That's one example of what Daniel
> Bell, many years ago, called the
> "cultural contradictions of capitalism."
> Capitalism, in his view, depended on
> the cultural inheritance of religion
> and other cultural traditions in
> order to maintain the values and
> attitudes (like the work ethic)
> that are necessary to capitalism to
> thrive.  But in his view, capitalism
> over time promoted a hedonistic ethic
> that undermined those very traditions
> that had sustained capitalism.
>
> Bell's argument was not too different
> from the ones that Joseph Schumpeter
> gave in his writings like *Capitalism,
> Socialism, and Democracy*.  Both men,
> were of course, not unfamiliar with
> Marx's analysis of this situation too.
>
> Of course there are many conservatives
> who will deny that there is a problem
> here, but as I said before, contemporary
> conservatism is pretty much brain dead,
> so no surprises there.
>
>
> Jim Farmelant
>
> ---------- Original Message ----------
> From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com>
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Conservatism
> Date: Mon, 14 Sep 2009 14:44:19 -0400
>
>
>
> On Sep 14, 2009, at 2:30 PM, farmelantj at juno.com wrote:
>
>   
>> There was among other things the
>> obvious thing that a full throated defense
>> of free market capitalism is incompatible
>> with the defense of traditionalism, since
>> capitalism itself is the greatest force
>> for undermining and destroying time hallowed
>> traditions as Marx noted long ago.
>>     
>
> Of course you could deny that the market destroyed tradition and say  
> instead that you need the moral inheritance of religion to act as a  
> check on market passions. Or you could argue, as do many of our  
> fundies, that the market is a wonderful mechanism of reward and  
> punishment to keep us fallen humans in line, with worldly success as a  
> kind of visible measure of virtue.
>
>
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