Michael Oakeshott and the Left

This article examines Oakeshott’s attitude to three different strands of left-wing thought: Marxism and Communism; Fabianism and democratic socialism; and anarchism and the Frankfurt school. The lasting legacy of his early adherence to socialist thought was an adherence to a romantic political individualism. It traces the transformation of his political vocabulary from a discourse of the general will to one of civil association, and argues that while he became increasingly hostile to Marxist and socialist thought, his later conservatism was informed by an enduring romanticism that allowed him to sympathize with anarchism even in his old age.