The failed conservatism of the Conservative party
American columnists speak at the moment of conservative “epistemic closure” to describe the debasing of modern conservatism’s glorious legacy, first used in this context by libertarian writer and Economist blogger Julian Sanchez as short-hand for “ideological intolerance and misinformation”. The idea is to show that conservatism has hit a wall and is appealing to low, base politics of xenophobia or ad hominem attack, as opposed to its rich, great tradition.
British conservatism has had a fair deal of “epistemic closure” in recent years also, and it’s something for the left to consider when we vent our criticisms on the right wing. When we think of conservatism today we might erroneously think of Thatcher and Major – but they were merely leaders of the conservative party.
Those in the conservative camp of the Conservative party who believe the primary lie of neo-liberal capitalism – that it opens up a space for us all to become a little bit rich, and turns the fixed triangle shaped class system into a flexible circle of freedoms – would’ve hated what Thatcher was doing by listening to those woolly Austrian and Chicago-school libertarians.
We know now they had little to worry about.
But the Thatcher/Major legacy, truth be told, will be less seen in the scheme of things as expressions of conservatism, and seen more as a new and epochal means to counter working class empowerment and intolerance of the foreign other.
For this reason I had some respect for Respublica and Phillip Blond. Aside from all bloated, first year philosophy course, flower eating nonsense that he talks about on virtue and politicians, what Blond did succeed in doing was to show that conservatism in this country was not the sum of the Thatcher/Major epistemic closure, but something that could be committed to community and civic participation, and not simply at the beck and call of the markets (which is rightly seen as a perversion of conservatism of the type Disraeli would have aligned himself to).
Cameron was keen to pal-up with Blond in the early days, with that timeless gag about voting blue was to go green. Though with Blond to vote blue was to go “red”. With Blond’s hat-tipping to one nation conservatism, and Cameron’s “progressivism” (by which has always meant an emotional relationship with the NHS, and therefore informing the decision to keep it) the Tories had the chance to sweep up the centre ground and remain Europhobic enough to keep the right from joining the UK Independence party. In short, drop the nasty party image. Cameron had five years to do that before the election – and he failed.
The right wing of his party, Redwood for example, might be silent now, but give it time.
If I was interested in politics to score points then I, as a Labour supporter and socialist, would not care a hoot about conservatism. But this is not the case. Conservatism is not the sum total of xenophobia, big business and nastiness; this is its own expression of epistemic closure. But what almost five years of David Cameron as leader of the opposition and leader of the Conservative party has shown is that the return to real conservatism has botched. And this does not bade well considering the conditions in which that project was tested – 13 years out of office, a melee of leaders of all shapes and sizes, a global recession, and still they couldn’t exploit this enough – to think everyone in their camp assumed it would be a walkover.
Very interesting take, and links.
Perhaps you could unpack this sentence a bit, as I’m not clear:
“Those in the conservative camp of the Conservative party who believe the primary lie of neo-liberal capitalism – that it opens up a space for us all to become a little bit rich, and turns the fixed triangle shaped class system into a flexible circle of freedoms – would’ve hated what Thatcher was doing by listening to those woolly Austrian and Chicago-school libertarians.”
Are you really saying that the ideological takes of Friedman/Hayek imported from the US by Keith Joseph and the rightwing think-tanks were anathema to some kind of homegrown capitalist belief? I can see why it should have been alien to the one nation conservative tradition, but ‘those in the onservative camp’ that you describe – indeed I’d have thought it’d be quite the reverse.
More generally, I find the idea of ‘epistemic closure’, whether or not it be an inappropriately borrowed term in the first place, interesting as a description of where Conservatism is now, but not convincing.
I’ll come back to this perhaps in a full reply, as I was quite coincidentally thinking through another angle to explain the possible direction of the current coalition towards a renewed Bullpittian ‘dual polity’, but in brief I think I’m not convinced because there’s too much of an emphasis on the ideational driving (or in this argument) ceasing to drive for a while) policty change; I tend to posit a more complex relationship between ideational and material change, where the ideational often follows what happens through both the intended and unintended consequences of policy implementation. That’s what I think may be starting to drive a lot of Conservative policy making (including the ‘back of an envelope stuff’ that’s starting to happen).
I’m a bit tired of assessing cut after coalition cut – lots of blogs are doing that and there’s nothing much standout left to say before the actions mooted become actions actual – and I think this is partly why the blog is in a lull at the moment. A new direction around exploring what’s really going on behind the Tories’ developing programme may refresh the parts other blogs cannot currently reach.
Paul: I think (though I am only guessing) that the point is that the conservatives of the Conservative party would have disliked the intellectualism of Austrian and Chicago thought. That is the only way I can make sense of the structure of the post, going from the general of epistemic closure to the specific of Thatcher/Major. But maybe it is the other way around – Chicago/Austria being those guilty of epistemic closure…but that is absurd.
I’m not sure what the next sentence means either, but I would guess it is meant to show that those two schools of thought either a) came to the same conclusions as the epistemically closed conservatives, or b) was itself a manifestation of epistemic closure.
A) wouldn’t fit with the preceeding para, but b) is obviously absurd – whatever one makes of Hayek and Friedman they were hardly anti-intellectual.
Raincoat: is this post deliberately ironic? You use a term which has been coined to describe a “tendency to engage in fantasies” and people who are “worryingly untethered from reality” and then use it in your article to denote specifically the quality of “ideological intolerance.”
And then you embark on what is, to be frank, a glib trot through Conservative intellectualism of the last thirty years, dismissing them as xenophobes, fantasists, philosophical illiterates (though I may have some sympathy with your view on Blond) without any examination of evidence. Your conclusion is to equate Thatcher and Major with Rush Limbaugh and Glen Beck. I would normally apologise for being rude, but quite frankly that is pathetic.
Thanks for your comments and criticisms, I’m thick-skinned enough to want to take them all on board.
Paul;
The traditional Tories, if they weren’t scornful of exporting Austrian/Chicago school of economics, then they should have been. Not only were they not British ideas, proud and strong, they necessitated cheap foreign imports and cheap foreign labour, which I imagine opposition to would run through traditional British conservatism (since by traditional conservatism I choose to designate a strong state based on hierarchies supposedly manifested through divine right).
Further to that though, those Austrian/Chicago schools of thought created global systems, whereas old school Tories, who were still far more free market than protectionist in their economic outlook, wanted to match this with values of strong nationhood.
I’ve chosen to utilise the term “epistemic closure” to designate a deviation of this conservatism, from strong nationhood and free market with certain values, to a generally stupid form of right wing nuttery associated with the Daily Mail and Richard Littlejohn in particular, which has managed to be manifested into something crassly called conservative.
This might otherwise be called a little Englander, but this term is too limiting I feel, and as far as I can work out is not always particularly political. I will risk saying that the political characterisation of this wing nuttery is conservative epistemic closure, since for some reason it is a set of values that can more often than elsewhere be found within the Conservative party.
As for the complex relationship between ideational and material change, if I get this correctly, of course as a principle ideas follow material change, but in this sense do you suppose that conservative ideas follow from implementing conservative policy, and this in turn informs what conservatism is, or what it is popularly regarded as in modern society?
Barney;
You say rude, I say frank, now let’s shake hands and make up.
Sorry about the style, that about sums me up. I think you’re partly right in your analysis. My point would be this: conservatives would’ve loathed the intellectual laissez-faire ideas of the Austrian/Chicago school for reasons I’ve tried to explain above, and if they didn’t they should have because they are worlds apart, also explained above in this comment.
What I recognise, though I may be wrong, is that Thatcher and Major chose to contain views which were xenophobic, big business oriented and nasty, base and low, and from here I think a sea change developed in conservatism (or at least what we might designate as conservatism).
This is my charge; that the base politics Thatcher and Major contained has since molded into what we today designate as a type of conservativism, and that for me is the genesis of what I have called the UK’s conservative epistemic closure.
So, following from that, you’re right when you say “Hayek and Friedman they were hardly anti-intellectual” but Thatcher created the conditions in which epistemic closure developed in the conservative party.
Finally, “Thatcher and Major with Rush Limbaugh and Glen Beck,” of course this is not like for like, but the former two contained in their governments base politics that I designate as conservative epistemic closure, since little Englander doesn’t quite cut the mustard, whereas the latter two are base political commentators whose shock jockery doesn’t resemble conservatism, and yet they are characterised as conservative people.