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October 25, 2005
I've always been a bit sceptical of the intellectual grunt of the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA). I see them as little more than hardline market liberals bounded by the horizons of the self-organizing market, as it is understood by market fundamentalists. So they are in favour of the Howard Government's proposed Industrial Relations Law. But how do they understand the opposition to these reforms by conservatives? How do they understand conservatism?
The IPA crowd have usually been in a political muddle about this; often failing to connect those moral conservatives against abortion and euthanasia (pro-life social conservatives) with those fighting of global, anti-Western Islamicism in the war on terror ( the foreign-policy neoconservatives); those who uphold the core elements of the Western tradition at home and the isolationist One Nation conservatives. Are these not strands that are part of the conservative movement?
Ken Phillips, the director of the work reform unit at the IPA, has an op. ed. in The Australian, which will soon go behind a paid wall. It is entitled 'Culture of conservatives' fear' and we can use it to gain an insight into how Australians understand conservatism. Phillips says that:
Since the 1950s Australian conservatism has shifted heavily. Now the conservative institutions are largely controlled by the ageing children of the post-war baby boom. What principally defines this conservatism is a longing for the centralised power of the state to protect us from everything and anything. At the core of this conservatism sits the Australian Industrial Relations Commission.
Phillips then says that:
The consequence has been that over generations Australia has institutionalised an industrial, business, political and cultural settlement. The settlement holds that a diverse range of business and community leaders can arrange business affairs and through the AIRC achieve social fairness. The pay-off for some businesses is that the system secures favoured business deals for inside players and protection for those players from potential competitors.
The proposed significant downgrading of the AIRC and awards by the Government appears to tear this understanding apart. Most important, it threatens the inside position of the institutions and individuals who have heavy influence over the settlement process. This is radical for Australia and explains why the Government faces well-organised opposition .
That suggests that conservatism is seen as a resistance to change to the established order of things---' the settlement'--- established by social democracy as a part of a deal between capital and labour in the early 20th century. Fair enough. That is how a market liberal would see the settlement. But conservatism is more than resistance to change through deregulating the market.
Phillips does go further however than the simplistic account of understanding conservatism as resistance to change. He tacitly suggests that conservatism is also a political philosophy as he also characterizes conservatism in terms of power to control change and anti-individualism. On the first he says:
Supporters of the present system want to be the controllers of change through the AIRC and work agreements. They believe emphatically that individuals do not have the capacity, intellect, knowledge and power to control work change. Their message is: Be fearful of individual capacity.
And conservatism stands for a fear of individualism:
In this respect the Howard Government's proposals are truly radical because the stark alternative offered is a belief that individuals do and can have the capacity to control their work futures. This individualism assaults the Australian conservative settlement. We have a cultural battle, between a belief in the self and a cultural fear of the self.
So conservatism is anit-liberalism. Well, we knew that. That suggests Phillips doesn't begin to grapple with the problem.
John Howard, the Australian Prime Minister, also says that he is a conservative as well as being a market liberal. He mixes Adam Smith’ economics and Edmund Burke's ’traditionalism. Conservatism must mean something more than power to control ch'ange and anti-individualism. What about political realism, prudence, community, tradition, localism, etc. associated with Burkean conservatives? For some intellectual grunt on the issue of what conservatism means today, see Russell Arben Fox's post over at In Media Res.
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Are the IR reforms really about individualism, or is it just Fraserian (sp?) economics? Keeping inflation low by limiting government spending, and stopping unions (collective labor bargaining anyway) from increasing wages.