This weeks Counterpoint on the ABC had a discussion on Australian conservatism. Given the revival of conservatism in Australia this programme is a chance to distinguish conservatism from classical liberals and conservative liberals I thought; and an opportunity to identify the conservative critics of modernity and their philosophical roots.

The question that was posed was: just what does conservatism stand for these days. The initial answer by Greg Melleuish was along the lines of conservatism was a disposition and a way of looking at the world: it is one of not being all that keen on change, wanting to preserve the traditions of the past, but quite happy to make reforms so long as those reforms are in line with those traditions. Ray Evans then took too this further:

In my view, conservatism in the English-speaking world was defined by Edmund Burke back at the end of the 18th century. I don't think anybody since him has done any better to tease out what it means to be a conservative. And, as Greg has pointed out, Burke was very keen on history, on custom, he was very much opposed to the concentration of power, he was very much in favour of the small platoons as opposed to the big battalions, and he opposed change for the sake of change. And above all he was strongly opposed to schemes of moral salvation imposed by political means... if you want to know what a conservative is you have to understand what Burke wrote, and it seems to me that if you look at the history of Australian conservatives, which is part of the English-speaking world of course, you'll find that it is in the federation debates and in the debates in the high court in the first half of the last century where you find these things being debated most effectively.

Evan's argument about the significance of Burke resonates with Russell Kirk's claim in The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Santayana (1953) that the American conservative tradition was fundamentally Burkean. Kirk's six “canons” of conservatism are:

A belief in a transcendent order, which Kirk described variously as based in tradition, divine revelation, or natural law;
An affection for the "variety and mystery" of human existence;
A conviction that society requires orders and classes that emphasize "natural" distinctions;
A belief that property and freedom are closely linked;
A faith in custom, convention, and prescription, and
A recognition that innovation must be tied to existing traditions and customs, which entails a respect for the political value of prudence.

Kirk's text is considered the cornerstone of the modern conservative movement and is the classic synthesis of the American conservative tradition (eg.,John Adams, John C. Calhoun and George Santayana) and its English roots. Inthe text Kirk also lists five of the major opponents of conservatives:the rationalism of the philosophes;the romantic emancipation of Rousseau and his allies; the utilitarianism of the Benthamites; the positivism of Comte's school; the collective materialism of Marx and other socialists.

Australia does not have an equivalent text and its conservative tradition is largely unknown.Surrprisingly,no mention was of Michael Oakeshott, the 20th century Engish political theorist and philosopher. He critiqued “rationalism in politics”, by which he meant any ideology that proposes the wholesale reconstruction of traditional social institutions, customs, and morals on the basis of some theoretician’s fantasy. Such an effort will never succeed because abstract principles cannot by themselves generate a concrete practice. However, attempts to force a society to fit some abstract mold are likely to do significant damage to traditions grounded in centuries of practical experience.

Ray Evan's attempt to make a synthesis of the Australian conservative tradition and its English roots is based on his argument that being opposed to the big battalions means federalism in Australia. Federalism, he says, has been a bedrock plank of the Liberal Party ever since its formation in 1944, and is what the constitution is based on. This means diminishing the power of the central government in a federation. However, as Greg Melleuish points out:

I'm not too sure that if we're using the word 'conservative' that it necessarily means the diminishing of power. There have been conservatives who have been centralisers and, again, one way I would see it, there's different traditions of what it means to be a conservative, and some conservatives are advocates of accumulating power, and other conservatives, particularly in the American tradition, are in favour of the splitting of power, splitting it up. So Margaret Thatcher, for example, could be described as a conservative of sorts but she was in the mould of someone who, again, like Howard, was quite keen on perhaps centralising more on the basis that you can only get change if you get centralisation. To many conservatives that would seem to be a mistake, that that's the wrong way to go, that in fact if you try to centralise power all you'll end up doing is eventually handing, as Ray says, that power over to another group who will happily use that power for policies that you don't approve of.

Conservatism, as it is understood in Australia, has gone through a transformation, with the religious dimension becoming more explicit. If the Australian constitution is a “permanent thing,” a rock of stability onto which people can fasten themselves as whirlwinds of change blow about them, then religion is another permanent thing. Religion here means Christianity but there is a reluctance to talk about the body of natural law or what it means in Australia.

Comments

Posted by: John | September 2, 2009 11:36 AM