Why I Am Not a Conservative by F. A. Hayek - The Diigo Meta page

• 08 Feb 09
  

  Charlie Gibbons

  political philosophy

  • Conservatism
    proper is a legitimate, probably necessary, and certainly widespread
    attitude of opposition to drastic change.
  • Let me now
    state what seems to me the decisive objection to any conservatism
    which deserves to be called such. It is that by its very nature
    it cannot offer an alternative to the direction in which we are
    moving. It may succeed by its resistance to current tendencies in
    slowing down undesirable developments, but, since it does not indicate
    another direction, it cannot prevent their continuance. It has,
    for this reason, invariably been the fate of conservatism to be
    dragged along a path not of its own choosing. The tug of war between
    conservatives and progressives can only affect the speed, not the
    direction, of contemporary developments. But, though there is a
    need for a "brake on the vehicle of progress,"
  • 14 more annotations...
  • • There has never been a time when liberal
      ideals were fully realized and when liberalism did not look forward
      to further improvement of institutions.
    • In looking forward, they lack the faith
      in the spontaneous forces of adjustment which makes the liberal
      accept changes without apprehension, even though he does not know
      how the necessary adaptations will be brought about.
    • This fear
      of trusting uncontrolled social forces is closely related to two
      other characteristics of conservatism: its fondness for authority
      and its lack of understanding of economic forces. Since it distrusts
      both abstract theories and general principles,[6]
      it neither understands those spontaneous forces on which a policy
      of freedom relies nor possesses a basis for formulating principles
      of policy.
    • In general, it can probably be
      said that the conservative does not object to coercion or arbitrary
      power so long as it is used for what he regards as the right purposes.
    • Since he is
      essentially opportunist and lacks principles, his main hope must
      be that the wise and the good will rule – not merely by example,
      as we all must wish, but by authority given to them and enforced
      by them.
    • What I mean is that
      he has no political principles which enable him to work with people
      whose moral values differ from his own for a political order in
      which both can obey their convictions.
    • It is for
      this reason that to the liberal neither moral nor religious ideals
      are proper objects of coercion, while both conservatives and socialists
      recognize no such limits. I sometimes feel that the most conspicuous
      attribute of liberalism that distinguishes it as much from conservatism
      as from socialism is the view that moral beliefs concerning matters
      of conduct which do not directly interfere with the protected sphere
      of other persons do not justify coercion.
    • the conservative position rests on the belief that in any
      society there are recognizably superior persons whose inherited
      standards and values and position ought to be protected and who
      should have a greater influence on public affairs than others. The
      liberal, of course, does not deny that there are some superior people
      – he is not an egalitarian – but he denies that anyone
      has authority to decide who these superior people are.
    • I do not regard majority rule
      as an end but merely as a means, or perhaps even as the least evil
      of those forms of government from which we have to choose.
    • Unlike liberalism,
      with its fundamental belief in the long-range power of ideas, conservatism
      is bound by the stock of ideas inherited at a given time. And since
      it does not really believe in the power of argument, its last resort
      is generally a claim to superior wisdom, based on some self-arrogated
      superior quality.
    • Though the liberal certainly
      does not regard all change as progress, he does regard the advance
      of knowledge as one of the chief aims of human effort and expects
      from it the gradual solution of such problems and difficulties as
      we can hope to solve.
    • Personally,
      I find that the most objectionable feature of the conservative attitude
      is its propensity to reject well-substantiated new knowledge because
      it dislikes some of the consequences which seem to follow from it
      – or, to put it bluntly, its obscurantism. I will not deny
      that scientists as much as others are given to fads and fashions
      and that we have much reason to be cautious in accepting the conclusions
      that they draw from their latest theories. But the reasons for our
      reluctance must themselves be rational and must be kept separate
      from our regret that the new theories upset our cherished beliefs.
    • Though quieta
      non movere may at times be a wise maxim for the statesman it
      cannot satisfy the political philosopher. He may wish policy to
      proceed gingerly and not before public opinion is prepared to support
      it, but he cannot accept arrangements merely because current opinion
      sanctions them. In a world where the chief need is once more, as
      it was at the beginning of the nineteenth century, to free the process
      of spontaneous growth from the obstacles and encumbrances that human
      folly has erected
    • I doubt
      whether there can be such a thing as a conservative political philosophy.
      Conservatism may often be a useful practical maxim, but it does
      not give us any guiding principles which can influence long-range
      developments.

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