[lbo-talk] Conservatism

Mike Beggs mikejbeggs at gmail.com
Mon Sep 14 16:32:45 PDT 2009


Yeah, I think conservatism has a pretty easy ideological job, because it's not really obliged to change anything; its main role is to snipe at the left, which is why we call it 'reactionary'. Conservatism has been successful in Australia not by driving anything in particular but by continually arguing that regular people don't care about politics or history and that anyone who does is an ideologue. As John Howard put it, generating a phrase that resonated across his time at the top ('relaxed and comfortable'):

"...by the Year 2000 I would like to see an Australian nation that feels comfortable and relaxed about three things: I would like to see them comfortable and relaxed about their history; I would like to see them comfortable and relaxed about the present and I'd also like to see them comfortable and relaxed about the future." http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/content/2004/s1212701.htm

So get out of the way and let the technocrats do their thing. There's a division of labour on the right between the full-blown conservatives, who shout down the left, and the technocrats, who run things. Sometimes, though, the conservatives get above their station and interfere with the technocrats, to whom they're an embarrassment. I think this happens in the US pretty regularly, for whatever reason, and it is a real contradiction.

Cheers, Mike scandalum.wordpress.com

On Tue, Sep 15, 2009 at 5:27 AM, SA <s11131978 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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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