Two conservatisms

The death of Sir Roger Scruton reminds us of an overlooked fact, that there is a massive difference between the sort of conservatism he championed and free market economics.

Scruton defined conservatism as the “instinct to hold on to what we love, to protect it from degradation and violence and to build our lives around it.” The creative destruction of the free market economy, however, often endangers what we love. It is always threatening to destroy traditional communities and industries. Coal miners and steel workers in the 80s, protesting against pit and plant closures, were conservatives on Scruton’s definition but certainly not Thatcherites. And Patrick Minford’s vision of a post-Brexit economy in which manufacturing disappears is surely alien to the Scrutonian love of tradition.

Scruton himself was of course awake to this. The Times obituary quotes him as saying that “Thatcher was completely indifferent to our kind of conservative philosophy.” And at many points, he opposed modern-day capitalism: in his antipathy to big housebuilders with their ugly and shoddily-built boxes; in his defence of high culture against marketized “pop” music; in his claim that supermarkets are “not only poisoning the world with packaging, they’re also destroying the ability of communities to survive without central distribution”; and in his critique of “absentee capitalism.”

All of this, though, raises a question. Why is there not more hostility between Scrutonian and free market conservatives? Why is there not the vicious bitterness we see in the Labour party between Corbynites and their critics?

One reason, I suspect, is that disputes about thought are often less rancorous than those about power or personality. This is especially true for people who are wise enough, as many Tories are, to know that politics isn’t everything.

Also, Scrutonian and free market rightists have much in common. They share a scepticism of top-down state intervention and reverence for unplanned emergence – for what arises from the market in one case, and from tradition in another. Both believe, with some justification, there’s more unstated wisdom in emergent orders than there can be in conscious top-down direction.

Some of you might add a corollary to this, that both wings of Tory thought are united by a love of freedom. I’m not so sure. Whilst Scruton undoubtedly incurred cost and jeopardy in supporting dissidents in the old Soviet bloc, many Tories have been less enthusiastic about freedom and much more selective in whose liberty they have championed: that of Chileans and South Africans (and for many years women and gays in the UK)  had a lower priority than east Europeans’.

But perhaps there’s something else. A while back, Bryan Caplan coined the phrase “the libertarian penumbra” to mean a set of beliefs which, whilst strictly not constitutive of libertarianism are in fact widely shared by libertarians. There is perhaps also a Tory penumbra, at least for those Tories who never bought into Cameronism. Things like a love of fox-hunting, a search for a genetic basis for inequality, hostility to climate change activists, hatred of the EU, or a perceived victimhood in the face of “wokeness” are perhaps not essential features of Toryism. But plenty of Tories share them – enough to create sufficient fellow-feeling as to compensate for what would otherwise be a large ideological gulf between conservatives and free-marketeers.

The flip-side of homophily, though, is exclusion. A love of “home” (a key element of Scruton's thinking) can easily spill into animosity towards immigrants; a defence of Christianity can tip into Islamophobia; and support of “high” culture can become a poncy snobbery.

Herein, I think, lies the reason why so many leftists hated him. Many – especially immigrants, ethnic minorities and even (despite Scruton’s own humble origins) those of us from working class backgrounds - sense that we don’t just belong among Scrutonian Tories. We fear that what also unites free market and Scrutonian Tories is, as Corey Robin said, a love of hierarchies – ones in which people like us are at the bottom.

Which raises a paradox. If we take Scruton’s definition at face value, almost all of us are conservative (just as almost all of us are working class on Marx’s definition!) The difference between us and Tories lies in what we love. People who value UK membership of the EU, or fear that VAR is ruining football are all Scrutonian conservatives. So too was the Communist Ewan MacColl when he tried to defend and revive English folk music in the face of commercial pressures for its decline. One of my favourite blogs, Jonathan Calder’s Liberal England, combines a reverence for English countryside and culture with Lib Dem politics. And one can argue – as Hilary Wainwright does – that Jeremy Corbyn is heir to an English tradition of radical dissent.

England has many traditions and customs, loved across the political spectrum. Tories who claim a monopoly on the love of tradition are adopting a very partial and reified notion of Englishness. Scruton himself saw this. In England: An Elegy (a book whose very title is anti-Thatcherite) he describes how his father blamed the Tories for the “desecrated townscape of High Wycombe.” Scruton pere was a conservative, not a Conservative. As are many of us. Which makes it all the sadder that Scruton himself was so sectarian and divisive a figure.

Comments

[Roger__McCarthy]

Ralph McTell's a communist?

Sure you don't mean Ewan MacColl? (an actual member of the CPGB).

[harry b]

Ewan MacColl, not Ralph McTell (the latter no doubt a much more admirable person, but not as central to the folk revival).

[Dave Timoney]

Surely the common interest that "Scrutonians" and free-marketeers share is the primacy of private property.

[Jim]

"All of this, though, raises a question. Why is there not more hostility between Scrutonian and free market conservatives? Why is there not the vicious bitterness we see in the Labour party between Corbynites and their critics?"

Easy, no one on the Right thinks themselves morally superior to everyone else. They may think someone is wrong, deluded or stupid, but not morally inferior. Thats the Left's position - they are morally right and all their opponents (even others on the Left) are thus morally wrong, and therefore actively evil. They have turned politics into religion.

[Grant]

Er Jim, Roger Scruton said that society should be brought up to be revolted by gay people. If that's not claiming a moral inferiority, I don't know what is.

Moreover, when you're done patting yourself on the back there, you might want to take a look in the mirror and realise "all THOSE people on the Left think they're morally superior, whereas we on the Right are pure and innocent" is a pretty obvious example of you claiming moral superiority: "we're better than them because they do the bad thing and we never do" said no humble person ever.

[Scratch]

"Thats the Left's position"

I don't think that's true - it's the "left" liberal position. Neophytes apart (we've all been there) I don't think they even believe it themselves.

From Cobden, through Pinkerton through the eugenicists to academia to Silicon Valley and so on they do like the self-exculpatory narratives that utterly monstering their class enemy du jour provides though.

[Jim]

"Moreover, when you're done patting yourself on the back there, you might want to take a look in the mirror and realise "all THOSE people on the Left think they're morally superior, whereas we on the Right are pure and innocent" is a pretty obvious example of you claiming moral superiority:"

There's a difference between thinking you are right (ie correct) and thinking you are morally superior. The Right do the former not the latter. You don't get 'Labour Scum' posters when the Labour Party conference come to town.

The difference is that on the Right one assumes that the Left want to help the poor etc but just are deluded as to the best way to do it, the Left assume that the Right are devils who wish evil on the poor etc. The Left assume that those who oppose their policies (or implement ones they oppose) are actively seeking malice on their fellow man.

[Paul Walker]

Scruton was a true Conservative, never a classical liberal. The question I would have liked to ask him would have been, Hayek wrote his essay on "Why I'm Not a Conservative", what would your counter essay "Why I'm Not a Classical Liberal" have said?

[Paulc156]

Jim confers sainthood ...on himself!
Plenty of reason to think those on the right frequently want nothing to do with helping the poor. Whether it was the Irish famine of the 18thC or the Indian one of the 20thC the attitude was always to look the other way. 'The poor will always be with us' so why try to fight what is natural?
Whether it was Norman on yer bike Tebbit or Maggie no such thing as society Thatcher yesteryear or more recently in the austerity directed at those in most need whilst taxes were reduced for the wealthy. Callousness or indifference suffused much of the right's actions and comments. It was ever thus.

[chris]

@ Roger, Harry - thanks. I'm mortified by that error. Correction made.

[Jim]

And Paulc156 makes my point for me. The Right are evil personified, and the Left are the Good Guys.

Its just religion masquerading as politics.

[Bloke on M4]

"Scruton himself saw this. In England: An Elegy (a book whose very title is anti-Thatcherite) he describes how his father blamed the Tories for the “desecrated townscape of High Wycombe.”"

The problem with conservatives like this is that they were always plenty rich enough to not care about architecture being efficient. They were rich enough to afford a good lifestyle while shopping in small shops and so were up the Maslow's pyramid where beauty of buildings mattered.

They've always been awful in the Conservative Party, because they're out of touch with the floating voters who want things like towns to be more efficient, to allow them a better life than the one they have.

[Anarcho]

"whilst strictly not constitutive of libertarianism are in fact widely shared by libertarians."

In reality, the authoritarian ideology which calls itself "libertarianism" has little in common with the ideas of actual libertarians:

http://anarchism.pageabode.com/afaq/160-years-libertarian

"We fear that what also unites free market and Scrutonian Tories is, as Corey Robin said, a love of hierarchies – ones in which people like us are at the bottom."

Anarchists and other libertarian socialists have been saying that for far longer than Robin when it comes to the right-"libertarians." But, yes, propertarians love the hierarchies associated with wealth and power, conservatives with those of tradition -- which generally also involve wealth and power. The overlap is significant -- and neither has much to do with liberty.

[georgesdelatour]

A pretty fair assessment of Sir Roger. Terry Eagleton, who’s a Catholic Marxist, frequently debated Scruton. At the time of those debates, Eagleton was fighting a bitter war-of-words against the “four horsemen” of New Atheism - Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, Hitchens. It’s clear Eagleton massively preferred the company of Scruton to any of those classical liberals. He would try and tempt Scruton to the economic left (not the cultural left), pointing out that unrestrained capitalism was far more destructive of tradition than Attlee-style socialism.

And now the nitpicking.

1. “A defence of Christianity can tip into Islamophobia.”

The Christians with the most apprehensive view of Islam tend to be the ones who come from an Islamic milieu. Michael Nazir-Ali has often been called an Islamophobe. Rowan Williams took a favourable view on Sharia Courts, which got him into trouble with the “One Law for All” campaign, run by Communist ex-Muslim Marayam Namazie.

Here is Sir Roger in amiable discussion with American Muslim scholar Hamza Yusuf:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iawSzFZg-vw

Yusuf perceives - rightly, in my view - that Islam is inherently right wing.

2. “A love of “home” (a key element of Scruton's thinking) can easily spill into animosity towards immigrants.”

Here is well-known American conservative, Bernie Sanders, arguing forcefully for immigration restriction:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vf-k6qOfXz0

[georgesdelatour]

More nitpicking:

“…support of “high” culture can become a poncy snobbery.”

Have you ever read Adorno? He makes Sir Roger seem like Danny Dyer. He despised all pop culture, from jazz to Hollywood movies. He even thought most classical music was insufficiently highbrow.

A serious follow-on:

I think there are two interesting American thinkers of an earlier generation who combined a left-wing analysis of class and economics with a conservative view of culture: Daniel Bell and Christopher Lasch. Maybe it’s time to consider their work again.

[Steven]

You tweeted:

"Blairism was a continuation of Thatcherism in some senses (eg low top tax rates, relaxed about growing income share to the 1%, similar share of govt spending in GDP), but not in others (eg NMW, tax credits). Why is this so difficult?"

I suggest you look at this graph if you think Blairism and Thatcherism's views on govt spending as a % of GDP were somehow similar:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ENXrApcW4AEqyhT.png

[Towerbridge]

Steven - your graph shows change not rates. So, it could be that Thatcher thought there was too much but Blair too little and because of the history just before their respective rises to power, they end up in the same place.

[Towerbridge]

Jim - You have been taken to the cleaners here. I hope you can see that and perhaps make a few introspective observations.

[Simon]

Thanks for the article Chris - told me a lot I didn't know, as always.

Would be interested to know in what way you think Scrutonians have a reverence for unplanned emergence? I would have thought this was one of the key differences, not similarities, with free marketeers? Emergence is a nightmare if you're trying to preserve the existing hierarchy and your position in it, which is surely the defining priority of a small-c conservative mindset?