Conservatism and Racism, and Why in America They Are the Same

Chapter 2. Lockean "Liberalism" as the Conservative Ideology in America

CHAPTER TWO Lockean “Liberalism” as the Conservative Ideology in America The philosophy of John Locke, by any contemporary understanding, postulates an ideology of conservatism. Yet as C. B. Macpherson writes, “Locke has suffered as much as anyone and more than most, from having had modern liberal-democratic assumptions read into his political thought.”1 Locke’s ideology is fundamentally concerned with defending laissez-faire capitalism, limiting the power of the state, and thereby protecting the power and privileges of the wealthy against the claims of the poor. Much of the literature in American thought, however, describes Locke as the quintessential liberal, in some cases even as the philosophical father of liberalism.2 Macpherson avers that Locke’s work invites this confusion because Locke’s writings are confusing and contradictory, blending—perhaps deliberately—in an ambiguous way important liberal principles such as government by consent, majority rule, minority rights, and the moral supremacy of the individual along with conservative ideas about property rights, voting rights, and the limited purposes and powers of government. In order to extract ourselves from this confusion it seems useful to view liberalism in two ways, as a philosophy and as an ideology. Some scholars make this distinction by describing the philosophy as classical liberalism and the ideology as modern liberalism. I think, however, that this distinction only contributes to the confusion by using the label liberalism to describe distinct phenomena, philosophy, and ideology. Of course this to some extent is a mere quibble over words. Hartz, for example, uses the classical-modern distinction in order to make the case for Locke as a liberal and America as the quintessential liberal state. However, he also writes that “there has never been a ‘liberal movement’ or a real ‘liberal party’ ” in America. . . . Ironically, ‘liberalism’ is a stranger in the land of its greatest realization and fulfillment.”3 Douglas Brinkley uses a similar distinction while writing that ‘liberalism’ is a “versatile and controversial term.”4 And in his aptly titled article “The Protean Character of American Liberalism” Gary Gerstle writes of the “malleability” of the liberal tradition in America, which he traces in part to “its use as a 15 16 Conservatism and Racism, and Why in America They Are the Same surrogate for socialism in America.”5 Clifford Girvetz traces the “evolution” of liberalism from the classical to modern, and in his recent work Paul Starr draws a distinction between “constitutional liberalism” (classical) and “modern democratic liberalism” (ideology).6 Although I recognize it risks further confusion, I think for purposes of this study it is more useful to draw the philosophy-ideology distinction than the classical-modern and refer to the American tradition as philosophically liberal (as is the tradition of most of the Western world) and ideologically as conservative, which is not the case for most of the Western democracies. Philosophy is understood as abstract reasoning, rational, systematic thought about the nature of reality or parts of it, and in the case of philosophical liberalism about those parts of reality dealing with the nature of man and the origins and purposes of government or, more precisely, the state.7 Ideology, like liberalism and conservatism, is a contested concept;8 however, generally we may understand it in a broad sense as a set of interrelated ideas and values used to justify a political program and plan of action. A narrower understanding would limit ideology to a set of ideas about the role, purposes, powers and appropriate size of government, particular in its relationship to private property. The narrower sense is the way I understand Locke’s ideology. Liberalism as a Philosophy Locke is frequently referred to as the “philosophical father of liberalism,” but it is Hobbes who is probably more deserving of this honor because he was the first major Western philosopher to introduce the idea that governments have their origins in a contract (he used the word covenant) entered into by free men.9 Subsequently, Locke and Rousseau developed similar understandings, and together these three social contract theorists are considered the architects of the liberal philosophy of the state. Methodologically, Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau reach their conclusions on the basis of the same rational, deductive procedure and claim a universal validity and applicability of those conclusions . Sometimes referred to as “natural rights theorists,” each begins with an assumption about the nature of men: how men think and behave innately or naturally. From this assumption it is logically deduced how life was in the “state of nature,” that...