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November 22, 2006
Two main currents in neoconservatism are the neoconservative critique of capitalism and the neoconservative revitalization of anticommunism during the Cold War. The latter is explored at public opinion Though the former is not mentioned much in Australia it is there in the policies of the Howard Government and in policy proposals of the free market think tanks---the IPA and CIS.
The neoconservative critique of capitalism is briefly explored by Todd Lindberg in an article entitled Neoconservatism's Liberal Legacy in Policy Review. He says:
The neoconservative critique of capitalism11 drew heavily on Max Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. In the neoconservative view, capitalism ----salutary though it was with respect to the efficient allocation of goods and services and accordingly unparalleled as a means for the advancement of people's material prosperity ---was in crisis. The source of this crisis was the deficiency of self-propulsion of capitalism itself. Capitalism, in this view, required something neither contained within nor perpetuated by its system of market economics. This "something" was, in effect, Weber's Protestant ethic: a set of virtues or habits of character ----including thrift, industry, temperance, patience, persistence, and so forth----whose origin and sustenance came from religious faith and the expectation of salvation as a reward for right earthly conduct. In the absence of these virtues, capitalism could not flourish. Yet capitalism itself did nothing to encourage the virtues upon which it depended. On the contrary, in certain respects, capitalist consumer society worked to undermine those virtues. The example he gives is that whereas once Americans thought it morally praiseworthy and necessary to save money for future consumption, with the arrival of installment credit in the early twentieth century, the habit of deferred gratification gave way to a demand for instant gratification. Consequently, in the long run, the demand for instant gratification would subvert properly functioning markets and the long-term time horizon required for the success of capitalism.
The response by American neo-conservatives, such as Irving Kristol, ,to this contradiction was to celebrate bourgeois values. The bourgeois, after all, were the living repository of the "values" or virtues that enabled the capitalist system to persist. The bourgeois type needed to be defended so as to allow for the "moral capital" of capitalism to remain sufficient for the operation of the system. One way to address the decline of moral capital was to prevent able-bodied people relying on the state for sustenance---hence the polcies associated with welfare to work.
It was limited response as the new "bourgeois ethic" was less and less Protestant in character and more and more entrepreneurial, ie., one involving the acceptance of risk in exchange for the prospect of reward.
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