polsci

• Conservative reaction to the Enlightenment and the French Revolution

  Less structured than that of other ideological and political movements
• Events in the last hundred years

  Tended to support conservative attitudes to human nature, society, the economy, and the importance of law and tradition
• The British Conservative Party


  Reflected the conservative intellectual tradition to a degree
• Conservatism is one of the major intellectual and political strains of thought in Western culture over the last two centuries
• Conservatism originated as a reaction to the radical, liberal and, later, socialist movements during the early period of industrialisation in Britain and Europe
• Conservatism remains a powerful ideological force in Western societies today
• Considerable attention is given to the historical experiences of conservative parties, especially in Britain, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, experiences that have been at least as significant in the development of conservative ideology as particular individual thinkers
• Edmund Burke: 'Society is indeed a contract . . . but it is not a partnership in things . . . of a temporary and perishable nature. It is a partnership in all science, a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection . . . As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership between . . . those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are yet to be born.'
• Conservatism


  Less a political doctrine than a habit of mind, a mode of feeling, a way of living
• Franklin D. Roosevelt: 'A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learnt to walk forward.'
• The connection between the Conservative Party and conservative thinkers is tenuous in Britain
• Edmund Burke, who is generally regarded as the greatest early conservative thinker, was a 'Whig'
• Many modern 'conservative' thinkers have little or no connection with the Conservative Party
• The meaning of 'conservatism' has shifted over time
• European or American conservatism is not the same as British conservatism
• Some conservatives have argued that the British Conservative Party has a distinctive way of thought, including its 'common-sense', realist and non-ideological or pragmatic nature
• William Hague: 'We're not claiming to have an ideology; the Conservative Party is not based on ideology, it is based on doing what is best.'
• Cynics point to the electoral success of the British Conservative Party during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as evidence that it is simply the political instrument of the 'haves' against the 'have nots', a fact that it has successfully obscured
• Conservatism, like socialism, and to a lesser extent liberalism, comes in many varieties and there is considerable tension between rival schools, and, of course, within contemporary 'conservative' parties
• Even if it lacks the universal scope and intellectual coherence of other ideologies, conservatism has characteristic ideas and values
• In Britain these ideas and values continue to have an impact on modern conservative thought and the contemporary Conservative Party
• It is especially important to look at the historical roots of conservative thought given the emphasis on tradition and the historical roots of society
• Systematic forms of conservative thought can be attributed to fear of domestic political radicalism, as for instance developed in reaction to the American and French revolutions
• The revolutionary consequences to British society (and its later manifestations in Western Europe) of the agricultural and industrial revolutions also called for some sort of conservative analysis of resistance and accommodation
• Conservatism arose and developed as an ideology in response to the claims of other, radical, movements: liberalism, at first, then nationalism, socialism, fascism, feminism, environmentalism, all of which sought change, massive social 'improvement', reform and the removal of 'old', 'discredited', social orders, institutions and ways of life
• Conservatism sought, and still seeks, to resist such change, to retard change, arguing for reflection, reassessment, and a willingness to consider the possibility that reformers might be mistaken
• They believe that one should be very cautious about removing or radically changing old and long-lasting institutions and ways of life
• Edmund Burke


  Almost the 'founding father' of British conservatism
• Burke was a distinguished parliamentarian and fully involved in the controversies of his day
• Burke was not a reactionary thinker; for example, he showed considerable sympathy for the American rebels
• Burke's ideas fed into existing traditions and political debate, to have a profound and enduring impact
• The crucial trigger for the revolutionary changes of Burke's own time was the cultural and intellectual movements (known as the 'Enlightenment') which swept Europe and the American colonies in the late eighteenth century and culminated in the French Revolution (1789)
• Burke's political philosophy was based on a critique of the Enlightenment and its consequences
• Enlightenment


  Assumption, founded on a particular understanding of Newtonian physics, that human society was like a machine, and that this machine could be rationally understood, composed of discrete elements and could be dismantled, reassembled and radically improved by men in the light of reason
• Burke's understanding


  Human society was 'organic'. It was like a living being, highly complex, with a distinctive history and nature. Arbitrary interference in the natural course of social development would be, metaphorically speaking, 'fatal' to that society. The intellect of any one man, or even the knowledge of any particular epoch, is inadequate to grasp the complexities of a society. The accumulated wisdom of the centuries (what Burke called 'prejudice'), experience, tradition, custom should be brought to bear and any adjustment should be made with the greatest caution
• Attempts to base society on abstract principles, such as the French Revolution's 'Liberty, Equality, Fraternity', were particularly dangerous and would have, as the Revolution clearly demonstrated, calamitous results
• During the nineteenth century, while conservative thinkers in Europe tended to stress monarchy and authoritarian government, bolstered by strong conservative nationalism, British conservatism followed its pragmatic approach to social and political affairs
• Sir Robert Peel sought new links between the landed gentry and the rising manufacturing classes around principles of free-market economics, principles of which conservatives were deeply suspicious during the early part of the century
• Benjamin Disraeli dealt with the political consequences of the growth of a skilled industrial working class and demands for extension of the franchise to include them
• One-nation conservatism


  A strand in conservative thought going back to the nineteenth-century Conservative politician Benjamin Disraeli, which emphasises reform as an instrument of preventing social conflict and uniting the nation