In recent years this tension between these two kinds of conservatism has spread be-yond the United States, leading most notably to a division in the ranks of conserva-tives in Great Britain. In the early years of this century, however, conservaconserva-tives in Europe and traditional conservatives in the United States were united in their attacks on what they called mass society.
Conservatism versus Mass Society
The nineteenth century had been the age of democracy. The franchise had been greatly extended throughout the Western world. The power of the old aristocracy had been broken, and the spread of public education meant that many of the barri-ers to social mobility and advancement were falling. At the beginning of the twen-tieth century, moreover, the rapid development of industrial mass production made it seem as if economic barriers were collapsing as well. Items that once would have been available only to the wealthy few—the automobile, for instance—were now being built for and sold to the masses.
Some welcomed these developments, but not the traditional or classical conser-vatives. From their point of view, this new mass society posed the same threat that democracy had always posed—the threat that the masses would throw society first into chaos, then into despotism. In arguments similar to those of Plato, Aristotle, and more recently Alexis de Tocqueville, traditional conservatives maintained that the common people were too weak and too ignorant to take charge of government. Too weak to curb their appetites or restrain their desires, the people will want more wealth, more property, and more power, like gluttons who ruin their health because they cannot stop eating. And they are too ignorant, too short-sighted, to see the disaster they are bringing upon their society and themselves. Once their unchecked demands have taken society to the brink of anarchy, the masses will then cry out for a strong and decisive leader who will restore law and order—even at the expense of liberty.
This conservative argument against mass society gained credence in the 1920s and 1930s as fascists and Nazis came to power in Italy, Spain, and Germany. To the conservative eye, these brutal movements were the logical result of the democratic excesses of mass society. All the hard-won accomplishments of European civiliza-tion, particularly representative government in parliaments, were in danger of be-ing ground under the boot-heels of Fascist “blackshirts” and Nazi “stormtroopers”
and their dictatorial leaders. Even defenders of liberal democracy like the Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset (1883–1955) adopted a conservative stance in the face of fascism. In The Revolt of the Masses, Ortega asserted that
nothing indicates more clearly the characteristics of the day than the fact that there are so few countries where an opposition exists. In almost all, a homogeneous mass weighs on public authority and crushes down, annihilates every opposing group.
The mass . . . does not wish to share life with those who are not of it. It has a deadly hatred of all that is not itself.18
In response to this threat, conservative critics of mass society maintained that the masses need to be taught self-restraint. This meant that the masses must learn either to curb their appetites and respect the traditional ways or, more likely, to recognize that it is better to entrust their government to the aristocracy or elite—to those, that is, with superior wisdom, experience, and foresight. This view is, of course, similar to the argument Burke made on behalf of his “true natural aristocracy.” The difference is that, by the twentieth century, few conservatives looked to the heredi-tary aristocracy to form the core of this natural governing elite. Still, conservatives believed—and classical conservatives continue to believe—that in every society there will be some small number of men and women who are suited by ability, experience, and temperament to govern, while the great majority are utterly unsuited in one or more of these respects. If we must live in mass society, conservatives say, we should at least be prudent enough to put a substantial share of power in the hands of those who rise above the mass.
Levelling
An abiding fear of mass society explains why so many conservatives, from Burke to the present, have opposed what they call levelling. Conservatives have typically been suspi-cious of attempts to achieve greater democracy or equality because they believe these will “level” society. One can presumably promote equality either by improving the con-dition of people at the bottom of society or by worsening the concon-dition of those at the top. As conservatives point out, attempts to make the people at the bottom better off usually involve taking something away from the top—as in “soak the rich” tax policies.
The problem with such schemes, according to the conservative argument, is that they raise the people at the bottom very little, lower the people at the top a great deal, and in the long run reduce everyone in society to the same low level. In the name of equality, conservatives claim, levelling programs simply promote economic and social stagnation.
Levelling is also culturally pernicious, according to conservatives. In this age of equality everyone is taught that his or her opinions or beliefs are just as good as any-one else’s. Thus we find ourselves in an age of fads and fancies, with fashions chang-ing constantly and the only standards of worth bechang-ing novelty and popularity. Serious literature, music, and art are overwhelmed by the levelling tendencies of mass society.
The quantity of sales counts for more than the quality of the work in this age of “best-selling” books and “blockbuster” movies, all produced according to formulae that ap-peal to a mass audience. Even in colleges and universities, students forsake philosophy, literature, and history to study advertising and marketing—two “disciplines” that are concerned not with truth but with increasing the sales of products of dubious value.
Conservatives have often seen levelling as a threat to society in another way as well.
In addition to its harmful effects in economic and cultural matters, they see levelling as the enemy of social variety and diversity. Drawing on arguments similar to Burke’s praise of the “little platoons” of society, conservatives frequently defend the neighbor-hood, the town, or the region as centers of local variety and diversity—centers that are always in danger of being squashed by the levelling forces of mass society. Within a society, conservatives say, it is healthy to have diverse communities. Diversity, in fact, is a sign of health, for it shows that people at the local level are able to muster the resources they need to meet the challenges of life—challenges that will vary considerably
from one community to another. We should especially hope to preserve communities where people are disposed to follow the customs and habits of their ancestors. Such a disposition, or prejudice in Burke’s sense, inclines people not only to follow the time-tested ways but also to remain loyal to a community that they see themselves sharing with their ancestors, their children, and generations yet to come.
This is the kind of argument offered in I’ll Take My Stand, a collection of essays published in 1930 by a group of writers known as the Southern Agrarians.19 The Agrarians defended the traditional agricultural society of the southern United States against the invasion of industrialism from the northern states. An agricultural society will necessarily be traditional, they argued, for it will necessarily be concerned with property and family. Both literally and figuratively, an agricultural society is con-cerned with roots. Industrial society, however, is rootless, and all traditional loyalties and affections give way in face of the demands for production and consumption that characterize mass society.
From early in the twentieth century, then, conservatives have issued warnings against the excesses of mass society. Mass society threatens to degenerate into an-archy and despotism, or at least to level society into a rootless crowd of consumers who relentlessly seek new name-brand commodities to consume.
Conservatives and Communism
One of the pervasive themes of twentieth-century conservatism is its fear and hatred of communism. This, indeed, is one of the few points on which all conservatives agree.
There are some, like the historian and journalist Garry Wills, who think that conserva-tives have been so obsessively anti-communist that they have mistakenly seen every-thing as part of a fight to the death between communism and Western civilization.20 But even those who share Wills’s concern believe that communism and conservatism are incompatible, and most conservatives will go further and say that the two ide-ologies are implacable enemies. From the Russian Revolution of 1917 to the present, conservatives have been among the most outspoken opponents of communism.
Why are conservatives so united, and so vehement, in their opposition to com-munism? The answer lies in two contrasting views of human nature and freedom.
For conservatives, human beings are fundamentally imperfect creatures who are likely to abuse freedom through their selfishness and short-sightedness. But commu-nists, as we shall see in Chapters 5 and 6, take a more optimistic view. Communists typically argue that the source of social problems is not human nature but social conditions—especially the division of society into social and economic classes based on the ownership and control of property. Once people are freed from these crip-pling conditions, communists say, they will grow and flourish. This belief, of course, is directly contrary to the conservative view.
Out of this general opposition emerge three more particular respects in which conservatives are fundamentally at odds with communism: progress, perfectibility, and planning. In all three respects conservatives reject the communist position. First, following Burke, most conservatives continue to argue that faith in progress is un-warranted. Social change is not necessarily change for the better. Every change car-ries with it certain risks, and the kind of revolutionary changes communists call for are far too risky—and unrealistic—to be taken by prudent persons.
Second, the communists’ faith in progress rests on their utterly unjustified faith in the perfectibility of human nature and society. This faith, according to conserva-tives, runs counter to all human experience. Indeed, some conservatives suggest that belief in perfectibility is a heresy—a view, that is, that contradicts certain religious truths. When communists claim that men and women must free themselves from oppressive social conditions in order to live rich and full lives, they deny original sin and human imperfection. The fact that many communists, including Karl Marx, have been atheists has only fueled the hostility of conservatives of a religious orien-tation. Those conservatives who are not themselves religious attack the communist belief in perfectibility as a dangerous illusion, if not a heresy.
Third, most conservatives dislike the communists’ emphasis on centralized state planning. Like neoclassical liberals, some conservatives believe that such planning is always inefficient; we should instead, they say, leave matters to competition on the open market. Burkean or classical conservatives believe that some planning is necessary and desirable, but only planning on a small scale for gradual, piecemeal social change.
But communists have often called for social planning of the broadest, most compre-hensive sort. They want to survey all aspects of society, according to their conservative critics, in order to anticipate all social needs, to estimate the resources available to meet those needs, and to take action to solve all social problems. Planning on such a grand scale, conservatives claim, places entirely too much faith in human reason. It encour-ages grandiose social schemes that are almost certain to collapse in failure, thereby sinking people deeper in the misery from which the communists had planned to res-cue them.
Moreover, planning of this sort requires that power be concentrated in the hands of a few at the center of society. There is no room for diversity or variety—
no room for freedom—at the local level. The “little platoons” of society are absorbed into the homogeneous mass as everyone in society is “levelled” to a simi-lar condition—everyone, that is, but the few who hold power. The result of grand social planning, in short, is neither progress nor perfection but misery, brutality, and despotism. Instead of freeing people from oppressive social conditions, con-servatives charge, Soviet-style central planning sacrifices freedom to the oppression of communist central planners.
In view of the differences between them, it is hardly surprising that conserva-tives have been so bitterly opposed to communism. This opposition was particularly strong in the years following the end of World War II in 1945. As communist re-gimes came to power in Eastern Europe, Asia, and elsewhere, communism became the chief focus of conservative concern.
Anti-communism (and opposition to the supposedly “socialistic” reforms of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal) became a central pillar of conserva-tism in the United States in the post–World War II era. Whereas earlier conservaconserva-tism tended to be distrustful of ideas and of the intellectuals who espoused them, the new post-war conservatism took ideas and intellectual debate seriously. This intellectual engagement is especially evident in the writings of Richard M. Weaver (1910–1963), Russell Kirk (1918–1994), Peter Viereck (1916–2006), and William F. Buckley, Jr.
(1925–2008). Weaver, Kirk,21 and Viereck were traditionalist conservatives in the Burkean mold. Viereck went so far as to defend the New Deal, which he believed had helped repair the social fabric torn by the Great Depression, and was a strong
supporter of labor unions, which he believed belonged to Burke’s “little platoons.”
A more eclectic thinker, Buckley attempted to combine Burkean conservatism and an anti-authoritarian libertarianism. Buckley used a portion of his personal wealth to establish The National Review in 1955. And, wanting to make conservatism a respectable and mainstream movement, Buckley heaped scorn on far-right groups such as the John Birch Society, whose founder, Robert Welch, harbored various conspiracy theories claiming that the entire federal government had been taken over by Commu-nists and had even called President Eisenhower “a dedicated and conscious agent of the Communist Conspiracy.” Although himself a staunch anti-communist, Buckley, believing that those who knew the most about communism were communists who had turned against their former ideology, included on the National Review’s editorial board the ex-communists-turned-conservatives Whittaker Chambers (1901–1961) and Frank S. Meyer (1909–1972), who coined the term “fusionism” to describe the eclectic conservatism of The National Review. That magazine has since been followed by many others representing a variety of viewpoints within American conservatism.
Despite differences within the broad-based conservative movement, the one is-sue that united conservatives of all kinds was their shared opposition to communism.
As the principal representative of international communism, the Soviet Union ap-peared to many conservatives to be an “evil empire,” as President Ronald Reagan later called it. But with the sudden collapse of communism in Eastern Europe in 1989 and the disintegration of the Soviet Union itself two years later, conservatives have subsequently found themselves in an odd position. They remain very much united in their opposition to communist ideology, but that ideology no longer seems to be a serious threat. Now that their common enemy apparently is vanquished, the question facing conservatives is whether they will find a new reason to make com-mon cause with one another or, failing that, split into quarreling factions.