An American publisher has recently reprinted the works of Adam Smith and Alexis de Tocqueville, advertising them as “Classics of Conservatism.” Ludwig von Mises and others from the Austrian School of economics are considered in America to be “conservatives.” This labeling makes sense to American intellectuals, because in the United States traditionalists and libertarians co-exist, though not without some tension, under the general heading, “conservatives.” The common enemy—socialism and the provider state —gives the focus for unity.
Nevertheless, a European unfamiliar with American intellectual history would be stunned by this taxonomy. In Europe, conservatism is not libertarianism. Conservatives here, since the French Revolution and the Philosophes, have been more or less the supporters of the memories and values (the reality having long since disappeared) of the Ancien Regime; they have stood athwart history, yelling “Stop.” In the past, the landed gentry and their peasant dependents—with their fixed lives and assets—despised the mercurial manufacturers and bankers. The conservative forces were headed by the monarchy, in uneasy alliance with the aristocracy, the rural interests, and the clergy; they opposed the burgher class of liberal merchants, who gradually increased their power under the intellectual label of the “Enlightenment.” Socialism was, until the middle of the twentieth century, only a weak third party to the liberal-conservative battle. In short, there has always been an anti-capitalist strain in European (excluding British) conservatism, which is understandable in historical and socio-political terms.
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