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Which 20th century classic of American conservative political thought has held up best?
We discussed this question over a group dinner Tuesday night. I opined that none have held up particularly well, mostly because they underestimated the robustness of the modern world and regarded depravity as more of a problem than it has turned out to be.
By stipulation, this universe of books does not include Milton Friedman or pure economics. It does include Russell Kirk, John Flynn, Richard Weaver, Robert Nisbet, and William F. Buckley, among many others. You can nominate grumpy Brits and Europeans who settled in the United States, so yes Road to Serfdom is a contender, even though its main empirical point (socialism leads to loss of political freedom) would seem to be refuted. You can try Albert Jay Nock or Eric Voegelin but Rothbard and Rand do not count as conservatives. Your answer cannot come before the 20th century, so no Federalist Papers and no Tocqueville.
Leave your answer in the comments and also say why. At some point I'll offer up my pick as well.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on February 28, 2008 at 07:42 AM in Political Science | Permalink
Comments
Michael Oakeshott seems to be gaining popularity lately. But he doesn't have a blockbuster work. Regardless, I nominate "Rationalism in Politics".
Posted by: thehova at Feb 28, 2008 7:49:32 AM
"You can count grumpy Brits and Europeans who settled in the United States..."
I apologize on my pick. tough question.
Posted by: thehova at Feb 28, 2008 7:53:33 AM
Great question, but it is wrong to include Hayek or Nock. Neither was very religious or concerned over whose penis was going where.
Posted by: Daniel Klein at Feb 28, 2008 7:56:35 AM
I think Mr. Klein has "conservative" and "reactionary" confused in his head (again?)...
That being said, I would nominate Kirk's "The Conservative Mind" for that honor. Maybe Barry Goldwater's "A Choice, Not An Echo" as a particularly powerful piece among conservative grassroots (although not so much the Washington establishment).
Posted by: Michael Fisk at Feb 28, 2008 8:15:59 AM
Rationalism in Politics.
Posted by: John Goes at Feb 28, 2008 8:20:42 AM
I have to say that Oakeshott, and thus Rationalism in Politics, does not count as American...
Posted by: Tyler Cowen at Feb 28, 2008 8:47:08 AM
The most relevent conservative writer today is: George Will.
Posted by: Travis Walker at Feb 28, 2008 8:47:57 AM
Two nominations: Anarchy, State and Utopia and everything by Richard Epstein
Posted by: Jonathan at Feb 28, 2008 9:01:37 AM
Anything by Murray perhaps?
Thomas Sowell's "Cultures and Conquests" is like "Guns Germs and Steel" with MUCH better analysis and written earlier, but not really conservative.
Posted by: michael vassar at Feb 28, 2008 9:01:49 AM
I just have to nominate this one, just for the heck of it ;)
None Dare Call It Treason
by John A. Stormer
or
None Dare Call It Treason... 25 Years Later
by John A. Stormer
Florissant, Missouri: Liberty Bell Press, 1990.
Posted by: ZBicyclist at Feb 28, 2008 9:12:14 AM
I don't think the main point of the Road to Serfdom is that socialism leads to loss of political liberty nor that that point has been empirically refuted. I think the main point of the Road to Serfdom is that socialism leads to loss of civil liberty first and, ultimately, political liberty.
From what evidence do you conclude that socialism DOES NOT lead to loss of political liberty?
Posted by: Kevin Nowell at Feb 28, 2008 9:22:25 AM
Milton Friedman wrote the foreward in the version of the Road to Serfdom that I have. His comment was that in the 70s you could tell the communist countries from the non-communist countries by looking at the border guards: In the non-communist countries, the border guards had their guns pointing outwards, defending the borders from outsiders. In the communist countries, the border guards had their guns pointing inwards, making their citizens virtual prisoners.
Posted by: david at Feb 28, 2008 9:32:02 AM
Road to Serfdom's "main empirical point (socialism leads to loss of political freedom) would seem to be refuted".
Refuted by whom? Castro, Stalin, Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Hugo Chavez? Or by the US and Western Europe growing government control over the economy, but apparently not creating government agencies to regulate the media, regulate free speech and campaign finance, centralizing control over education and curriculum, removing religion from the public sphere, and creating taxpayer-funded marketing/media/propoganda.
As for my pick, Goldwater's Conscience of a Conservative is still very relevant (though if I had liberty to make my own stipulation, I would choose Capitalism and Freedom).
Posted by: Nathan Benefield at Feb 28, 2008 9:42:06 AM
I have not read much conservative literature. I probably would share Tyler's dim assessment. But keep in mind that most of the 20th-century focus of conservatism was on anti-Communism. If that does not hold up well, it is only because Communism has become less interesting. So perhaps we are being unfair in our disparagement.
Or, to put it another way, which left-liberal or progressive classics hold up well?
Back on the conservative side, Jonah Goldberg made a list .
His #1 is George Nash, The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America.
His #2 is Russell Kirk, The Portable Conservative Reader.
I have read almost nothing from Goldberg's list, although I have read some Hayek and some Sowell.
Posted by: Arnold Kling at Feb 28, 2008 9:43:37 AM
How about George Will's Statecraft as Soulcraft? I recall liking it, although that was as a young teenager some 20 years ago.
Posted by: Stuart Buck at Feb 28, 2008 10:04:16 AM
Hayek saw himself as applying Tocqueville's insights, which were developed a century before. There is basically nothing in Road to Serfdom that is not in Tocqueville.
Therefore I nominate Tocqueville as the thinker who made the greatest contributin to understanding the 20th century, or Hayek as a proxy for Tocqueville.
Second choice: Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History. Strauss made the best diagnosis of the characterictic philosophical disease which gave birth to the evils of the century, historicism.
Posted by: Kent Guida at Feb 28, 2008 10:06:36 AM
If it counts as conservative and classic I nominate Virginia Postrel's "The Future and its Enemies".
Posted by: John B. Chilton at Feb 28, 2008 10:14:46 AM
I'd say that several schools of conservatism have held up pretty well.
First, there's Edward Banfield and his students like James Q. Wilson, who have been so entirely vindicated that people forget how revolutionary they initially were.
The same is true of Joseph Schumpeter.
Then you have Leo Strauss and his progeny (Bloom, Jaffa, Mansfield, Fukuyama, Berns, Will, etc..) -- some would say that the jury is still out on this, but much of what Strauss has at least transformed the nature of public debate to the extent that his current supposed opponents have unknowingly adopted many of his premises. Of course, WFB was in no way a Straussian, but the question was about conservatism, and the Straussian movement certainly owes much to National Review for their prominence.
The impact of Eric Voegelin is less celebrated, but no less important.
CS Lewis has been hugely influential in shaping modern American Christianity in a conservative direction.
Whittaker Chambers has certainly been vindicated.
Samuel Huntington's influence has been particularly significant (especially Political Order in Changing Societies after Iraq). He's not really a Buckleyite, but is certainly a Burkean conservative.
And if you're talking about Buckleyite conservatism, Hayek certainly would count within that -- his essay "Why I Am Not a Conservative" explicitly stipulates that he is a conservative in the sense that the term is understood in the US.
Not all of these people were directly pushed by Buckley (Irving Kristol arguably did more intellectually), though he certainly beat a track which made it easier for them to move forward.
Posted by: Chris at Feb 28, 2008 10:15:19 AM
The examples you are looking for I am sure were meant to be non-fiction tracts. However, may I suggest two (related) fiction novels that at least have elements of Conservatism in them; "1984" and "Brave New World". While neither is of course a conservative polemic, both share a concern that underly a basic tenent of conservatism; the corrosive power of state control.
If nothing else, both books have become a party of our own culture in ways that exceed almost any Conservative book I can think of. Who today does not know what someone is refering to when the term "Big Brother" is used?
While "1984" has become the more famous novel, I would argue "Brave New World" is more relevant. The receding threat of Communism diminishes the explicit threat of political control put forth in "1984". The threat posed by "Brave New World" however seems even more pervasive then in 1930's. The corrosive power of consumerism on culture and values is something written about almost everyday in newspapers and books. I understand that today, conservatives are the defenders of the free market that allows such consumerism to thrive. Nonetheless, it is often conservatives who argue today's culture is corrupting our mores and destroying our traditional values (an argument more in line with Buckley perhaps). Just a little curveball to the discussion I guess.
Oh, and has far as influence, name a conservative book more read in high schools across the country more read then either of these two novels.
Posted by: Colin at Feb 28, 2008 10:18:24 AM
My nominations:
(1) "The Conservative Mind" by Russell Kirk; arguably the book that started it all.
(2) "A Program For Conservatives" by Russell Kirk. Kirk's most applied work.
(3) "The Ethics of Rhetoric" by Richard Weaver
(4) "The Constitution of Liberty" by Hayek. The book contains his essay "Why I Am Not a Conservative."
Ironic for this list. But he thought of conservatism in its Middle European sense, not its Anglo-
American sense. He once described himself as a Burkean Whig; so is Kirk.
(5) "Witness" by W. Chambers (Andre Gide told Chambers 'you have not come back from Hell empty handed.'
(6) "Scientific Man Vs. Power Politics" by Hans Morgenthau. (He thought of himself as a liberal, but
this realistic take on modern liberal politics is conservative in effect. He is the anti-Rawls.) Like
so many good books, it is out of print.
(7) "The New Science of Politics" by Eric Voegelin (a refugee from Hitler to the US)
(8) "Natural Right and History" by Leo Strauss (a refugee from Hitler to the US)
(9) "The Death and Life of Great American Cities" by Jane Jacobs. She might not describe herself as
conservative, but this work is a direct hit on moderal liberalism in urban planning and architecture.
James Burnham described himself as a Man of the Right, rather than a conservative. Fair enough.
But he wrote for National Review. I suggest "Suicide of the West."
Posted by: B.H. at Feb 28, 2008 10:28:51 AM
Hayek's The Fatal Conceit is both better and more "conservative" than The Road to Serfdom. The Fatal Conceit does a better job of explaining why free markets are generally superior to centralized planning. In addition, Hayek's treatment of evolutionary psychology has held up well, and I think his appendix on religion shows that Hayek had developed a more "conservative" temperament after the publications of The Constitution of Liberty and The Road to Serfdom.
If our definition of "conservative" is broad enough to include libertarians, then I would say Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia has held up better than even the best of Friedman's non-economic work and Hayek's more libertarian writings.
Posted by: at Feb 28, 2008 10:49:13 AM
I think Tyler's point is well taken -- that modernity has held up better than many thought, particularly given the dire warnings of those writing immediately after WWII, the Holocaust, and the onset of the Cold War. They were understandably morbid but in fact have been proven wrong.
I would argue this is what's wrong with the contemporary conservative movement. They have taken their beliefs and policies largely from the handful of books that have been mentioned (Kirk, Weaver, etc.), but which are in many ways irrelevant and premised on assumptions about modernity that have not proven to be true. Conservatism at its best applies perennial truths and insights about man to new and different political and social conditions. When it doesn't do that (like now), it becomes ossified and reactionary. That none of these books have really held up, and yet they are still "must read" conservative books, says volumes about where conservatism is at.
I only want to add that Oakeshott, even though he doesn't count, would have been my choice (I mentioned this at the dinner in question). Its telling that our smartest and most interesting contemporary conservative, the one most able to adapt to modernity, is Andrew Sullivan, whose dissertation on Oakeshott is sitting here on my desk.
Posted by: Matt S. at Feb 28, 2008 10:57:57 AM
The Fatal Conceit is even more impressive today now given the latest evidence from cognitive psychology, neuroeconomics and evolutionary biology. A masterful work .
Posted by: Sunset Shazz at Feb 28, 2008 11:01:05 AM
Richard Posner's work (collectively) -- I would argue far greater political impact than Hayek or Nozick, though under the radar for most non-lawyers;
Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (as described above);
Samuel Huntington, The Soldier and the State (though "Clash of Civilizations" in Foreign Affairs is looking more and more prescient).
Posted by: M.D. Fatwa at Feb 28, 2008 11:05:00 AM
Okay, Hayek fan-boys, please explain in what way Sweden *doesn't* refute Hayek's thesis.
Posted by: Mark at Feb 28, 2008 11:14:08 AM
