In recent months, I’ve been attempting to better understand what conservatism means. Much of what I thought conservatism meant, and what conservatives stood for, was challenged if not outright upended by the election of Donald Trump, and the fervency of his support among much of the Republican party. Fortunately, many conservative thinkers have also felt that conservatism needs a restatement, and several books have been published attempting to reiterate conservative ideas.
Among these, one of the most unabashed must be Conservatism: A Rediscovery by Yoram Hazony. Nobody who reads this book will have the impression the author is attempting to water down his message to ensure the broadest possible appeal. Here we find a full-throated advocacy of a distinct vision of conservatism. In another recent book, The Conservative Sensibility, George Will argues that American conservatism is dedicated to conserving the vision of the American founding, which itself was inspired by the liberalism of the Enlightenment tradition. So, to Will and to many others, conservatism is ultimately about classical liberalism. Not so for Hazony. He rejects the liberal tradition altogether to argue for a conservatism which is fundamentally different from the ideas of the Enlightenment.
There is much I could write about the merits and flaws I find in Hazony’s argument and his worldview. But for today, I want to look at one area where I think he stumbles badly, and consider why I think he goes wrong. The topic I have in mind is his comments on free trade. Hazony spends much less time than Will discussing economics, but among his comments we find the following:
[Free trade] policies were supported not only by the desire of private individuals (and, by extension, corporations owned by private individuals) to exercise their freedom in order to earn higher profits. They were also promoted by governments, media, and academics committed to the liberal theory that there should be no state-imposed barriers preventing individuals and corporations from freely buying whatever they want at the lowest price and selling whatever they want to the highest bidder.
This is a policy couched entirely in terms of the individual, the state, and the individual’s presumptive freedom to do whatever he and his trading partners consent to do without state interference. It is blind to the nation, and to the bonds of mutual loyalty that bind nations and tribes together. Indeed, to the extend that bonds of national loyalty are even mentioned in discussions of free trade, they are described as irrational “market distortions” that may cause inefficiencies that make life more expensive – and therefore presumably less free.
One of the biggest weaknesses in Hazony’s book is his tendency to ascribe views to his ideological opponents without ever quoting them. One is left wondering who, specifically, has described bonds of loyalty as “irrational market distortions” – we are left to guess, because Hazony won’t or can’t name names. Particularly odd is his suggestion that state actions which forcibly prevent people from engaging in free exchange lessens freedom in the eyes of free traders because it makes life “more expensive.”
Hazony has badly misunderstood the arguments he is attempting to engage. Those who support free trade and the tradition of classical liberalism don’t believe the least expensive options are somehow the most freedom enhancing. It is the absence or presence of force, not the magnitude of expense, which is relevant to freedom. Nor is buying from the cheapest source or selling to the highest bidder some terminal value, from which deviating constitutes a market distortion. If someone makes their buying or selling decisions out of a sense of loyalty rather than in search of the most favorable price, no economist in the classical liberal tradition will accuse them of irrationally distorting the market.
The classical liberal tradition presents no obstacles to engaging in the kind of economic decision making Hazony advocates. The problem for Hazony, I think, is that while classical liberal economics allows he and his fellow thinkers to operate according to the values he holds, it doesn’t require everyone to do as he wishes.
In Bastiat’s work The Law, he describes a tendency of socialists to assume that any opposition to state enforcement of some ideal must be motivated by opposition to the ideal itself:
And so, every time we object to a thing being done by Government, it concludes that we object to its being done at all. We disapprove of education by the State—then we are against education altogether. We object to a State religion—then we would have no religion at all. We object to an equality which is brought about by the State then we are against equality, etc., etc. They might as well accuse us of wishing men not to eat, because we object to the cultivation of corn by the State.
Hazony suffers from this same misunderstanding. From the fact that classical liberals oppose using the state to force people to behave according to his conception of the “bonds of mutual loyalty,” it must mean classical liberalism is opposed to mutual loyalty and social bonds as such. But he is wrong – and his arguments against liberalism suffer accordingly.
Kevin Corcoran is a Marine Corps veteran and a consultant in healthcare economics and analytics and holds a Bachelor of Science in Economics from George Mason University.
READER COMMENTS
Kevin Corcoran
Oct 27 2022 at 2:55pm
On a totally irrelevant note, my absolute pettiest complaint about Hazony’s book is that the title ruined the ruined the pattern of titles I’d read as part of this project up to that point. Previous books were The Conservative Mind by Russel Kirk, The Conservative Soul by Andrew Sullivan, The Conservative Heart by Arthur Brooks, The Conservative Sensibility by George Will, and then Conservatism: A Rediscovery by Hazony. In fairness, the other authors had covered mind, heart, soul, and sensibility, so I’m not sure what would have been left.
Dylan
Oct 27 2022 at 8:53pm
I would have gone with liver.
Kevin Corcoran
Oct 29 2022 at 12:08pm
I feel like the title The Conservative Liver should be reserved for a biography about Winston Churchill.
Dylan
Oct 30 2022 at 2:39pm
Was kind of hoping someone would finish the thought that way.
Mactoul
Oct 27 2022 at 10:01pm
A critique of Russell Kirk would be fascinating, for to my mind, he is probably the best apologist for old-style American conservativism.
Thomas Lee Hutcheson
Oct 29 2022 at 10:53am
The Conservative fist?
David Seltzer
Oct 27 2022 at 2:57pm
Kevin: Brilliant explication. I recently pointed out to a conservative colleague the distinction between public schooling, which often restricts school choice, and education. If I want to learn, educate myself, about economics, I can go to EconLog, The Grumpy Economist or Marginal Revolution any time or anywhere I choose. As I am opposed to the idea of public schooling in its current form, I embrace the ideal of education. BTW. I’ve learned a bit more to think like an economist from the afore mentioned sources.
Semper Fi.
steve
Oct 27 2022 at 6:20pm
Read the first three but not Will or Hazony. Retiring soon so will read Will’s book then. I dont think the first 3 really apply that much to modern conservatism as practiced. Maybe Sullivan’s part on fundamentalism applies.
Steve
Johnson85
Oct 28 2022 at 12:42pm
Well, I think a lot of the angst people have about current conservatism is that they inflate conservative thought/philosophy with conservative politics. Conservative politics is only tenuously related to conservative thought/philosophy. Just like liberal politics isn’t only tenuously related to liberal thought/philosophy (actually, it’s not a tenuous relationship; it basically means the opposite, which is I suspect why the term “classical liberal” even exists; the political definition became so common and widespread that it was confusing to use “liberal” to describe liberal thought or philosophy).
That said, I also think some of the gnashing of teeth by some conservative thought “leaders” is somewhat pathetic. Conservative beliefs are a minority position. They enjoy looking down their nose at would be allies rather than appreciating that somebody is at least willing to do the work that keeps conservative options alive.
nobody.really
Oct 28 2022 at 5:19pm
I enjoy discussing politics with libertarians both because I share some of their philosophy, and because they HAVE a philosophy—a framework worthy of analyzing. In contrast, as Johnson85 observes, the terms “conservative,” “liberal,” “Democrat,” “Republican” have remarkably vague boundaries.
In Capital and Ideology (2019), Thomas Piketty observes how labor parties throughout the West have become parties of the educated elite. They began as working class parties opposed to arbitrary aristocracy, arguing for meritocracy instead. A generation later, and we now have the party of meritocrats opposed by the working class.
That said, what do Trump Republicans have in common with “traditional” Republicans, other than opposition to Democrats?
nobody.really
Nov 2 2022 at 9:13am
Ross Douthat, NYT: How the Right Became the Left and the Left Became the Right
Phil H
Oct 28 2022 at 11:30pm
This is a good reading, but I think there is a bit of a contradiction, perhaps only on the metaphorical level, in the way economic liberals see the market. On the one hand, it’s just freedom to do what you want; on the other hand, it’s an “invisible hand” and a powerful force. These are (both) just metaphors for describing what markets actually are, but given that both of these contradictory metaphors exist and are deployed by market proponents, it’s not surprising that they sometimes get reflected back in anti-market arguments.
Mark Z
Oct 29 2022 at 12:29am
I don’t see a real contradiction. Proponents of markets wouldn’t say an individual in a free society has meaningfully more control over the price of wheat than he would in a statist society; the freedom of individuals to respond to the market price is of instrumental value in optimising the price, rather than good because it gives each one more power to determine prices. The moral argument for freedom usually relates rather to the personal choice one can make with one’s resources, what to buy, how much to save, what job todo, given the price and wage levels. Perhaps it’s coincidental that libertarians think freedom of individuals is both morally right and conveniently also a useful way to coordinate prices, but it doesn’t seem contradictory to me.
Roger McKinney
Oct 29 2022 at 9:53am
Excellent points! We should keep in mind that Murray Rothbard invented the term libertarian and applied it to pre-WWII conservatives to distinguish them from post war neoconservatives he considered war mongers who wanted a big powerful federal government. Neoconservatism is too close to fascism for comfort.
Thomas Lee Hutcheson
Oct 29 2022 at 10:52am
“to Will and to many others, conservatism is ultimately about classical liberalism.”
And that was a flaw to the extent that it excluded the possibility of public policy that departs from “classical liberalism.” Can be welfare-enhancing.
doctor_zoidbergo
Oct 30 2022 at 6:10am
On some narrow definition of welfare, perhaps, and assuming interpersonal comparisons of utility. Big assumption, that.
But more fundamentally, it’s unclear why you’d have to think that being “welfare-enhancing” is the determining factor of whether a policy is desirable. There’s other, at least equally important considerations. So, it’s unclear whether not endorsing such policies is a flaw in any meaningful sense.
Thomas Lee Hutcheson
Oct 31 2022 at 12:10pm
What do you think is excluded from “welfare enhancing” that should be included?
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