Dieteman v. Goldberg
You’re a liberal, after all.

By David Dieteman, contributing editor for LewRockwell.com, attorney in Erie, Pa., and doctoral candidate in philosophy at The Catholic University of America.
March 6, 2001 11:00 a.m.

espite his great influence on American conservatives, F.A. Hayek is not really a conservative.

In "Why I am Not a Conservative," the postscript to The Constitution of Liberty, Hayek characterizes conservatism as the "habitual resistance to change," and liberalism as the view which cherishes individual liberty (p. 397). Hayek calls his version of liberalism Whiggism — "the name for the only set of ideals that has consistently opposed all arbitrary power" (p. 410).

As Hayek writes:

"[T]he decisive objection to any conservatism which deserves to be called such…is that by its very nature it cannot offer an alternative to the direction in which we are moving. It may succeed by its resistance to current tendencies in slowing down undesirable developments, but, since it does not indicate another direction, it cannot prevent their continuance. It has, for this reason, invariably been the fate of conservatism to be dragged along a path not of its own choosing. The tug of war between conservatives and progressives can only affect the speed, not the direction, of contemporary developments. I personally cannot be content with simply helping to apply the brake. What the liberal must ask, first of all, is not how fast or how far we should move, but where we should move. In fact, he differs much more from the collectivist radical of today than does the conservative. While the last generally holds merely a mild and moderate version of the prejudices of his time, the liberal today must more positively oppose some of the basic conceptions which most conservatives share with the socialists." (p. 398)

Hayek eschews the conservative label because he is fundamentally not seeking to conserve the existing order, but rather to expound the virtues of individual liberty.

Hayek is aware of the terminological confusion presently at issue:

"[In Europe,] Until the rise of socialism, [conservatism's] opposite was liberalism. There is nothing corresponding to this conflict in the history of the United States, because what in Europe was called 'liberalism' was here the common tradition on which the American polity had been built: thus the defender of the American tradition was a liberal in the European sense. This already existing confusion was made worse by the recent attempt to transplant to America the European type of conservatism, which, being alien to the American tradition, has acquired a somewhat odd character. And some time before this, American radicals and socialists began calling themselves 'liberals' (p. 397).

With respect to the American political tradition, Hayek writes that his version of liberalism…

"is the doctrine on which the American system of government is based. In its pure form it is represented in the United States, not by the radicalism of Jefferson, nor by the conservatism of Hamilton or even of John Adams, but by the ideas of James Madison, the "father of the Constitution" (p. 409).

Despite the fact that American conservatives and classical liberals ("libertarians") are often fellow travelers, Hayek sets himself outside of conservatism — even the liberal-minded American variety — when he writes that…

"This difference between liberalism and conservatism must not be obscured by the fact that in the United States it is still possible to defend individual liberty by defending long-established institutions. To the liberal they are valuable not mainly because they are long established or because they are American but because they correspond to the ideals which he cherishes" (p. 399).

Later, Hayek fundamentally distances himself even from American conservatism by writing that,

"What distinguishes the liberal from the conservative here is that, however profound his own spiritual beliefs, he will never regard himself as entitled to impose them on others and that for him the spiritual and the temporal are different spheres which ought not to be confused" (p. 407).

There is a tension in Hayek's thought. He does not wish to impose morality or religion, yet he quotes Lord Acton's statement "that, though some of the patriarchs of the doctrine were the most infamous of men, the notion of a higher law above municipal codes, with which Whiggism began, is the supreme achievement of Englishmen and their bequest to the nation."

Conservatives may wonder, if there is a higher law, how it could be wrong to impose this law? Hayek's refusal to impose morality and religion establishes that he is not a conservative.

Hayek concludes the postscript by doubting the existence of "conservative political philosophy," writing that:

"The task of the political philosopher can only be to influence public opinion, not to organize people for action. He will do so effectively only if he is not concerned with what is now politically possible but consistently defends the 'general principles which are always the same.' In this sense I doubt whether there can be such a thing as a conservative political philosophy. Conservatism may often be a useful practical maxim, but it does not give us any guiding principles which can influence long-range developments" (p. 411).

Hayek also rejected the label "libertarian." But his reasons for doing so differed greatly from his principled rejection of the label 'conservative':

"In the United States, where it has become almost impossible to use 'liberal' in the sense in which I have used it, the term 'libertarian' has been used instead. It may be the answer; but for my part I find it singularly unattractive. For my taste it carries too much the flavor of a manufactured term and of a substitute. What I should want is a word which describes the party of life, the party that favors free growth and spontaneous evolution. But I have racked my brain unsuccessfully to find a descriptive term which commends itself"(p. 408).

In the appendix to Liberalism (available free online here), Ludwig von Mises, who turned Hayek away from Fabianism, notes this terminological confusion, but instead embraces the term 'liberal':

"Just as liberalism must, from inner necessity, eschew every trick of propaganda and all the underhanded means of winning general acceptance favored by other movements, so it must also avoid abandoning its old name simply because it is unpopular. Precisely because the word 'liberal' has a bad connotation…liberalism must stick to it. One may not make the way to liberal thinking easier for anyone, for what is of importance is not that men declare themselves liberals, but that they become liberals and think and act as liberals" (p. 200).

For Mises and Hayek, liberalism is the philosophy which recognizes that individual liberty and private property are not only inseparable, but also the basis for civilization.

Conservatives influenced by Hayek might consider whether they misidentify themselves by the label 'conservative.' Why not retake the term 'liberal' from the Clintons? No one is inclined to let them keep the White House furniture. Why let them keep the title to a philosophical tradition?