A Conservative Counter-Revolution?

Robert Clancy

[Reprinted from Henry George News, November, 1951]

A "counter-revolution" has begun in earnest -- or should we call it a "counter-counter-revolution"? I am referring to "conservatism" striking back at "welfare-statism."

The semantic aspect of it alone is quite involved. There are those (including the worthy American Institute for Economic Research) who hold that the real "revolution" was that of 1776 -- our own and Adam Smith's -- when a society of independent equals was proclaimed as against the age-old ruler-serf hierarchy; that the "counter-revolution" was that of 1848 and 1917 -- when Marx and Lenin dressed up the old order in the jargon which is now creeping up on our 1776 revolution. Our old friend, the word "radical," is also being transformed again. The "new radical" is he who harks back to before 1933 -- even before 1913. But it's not all harking back. Fortune Magazine, which stands as the interpreter of this risorgimento, has announced in double-page billboard-headline spreads, "The tycoon is dead!" Meaning that the new protagonist of the 1776 revolution is no longer the storming, speculating people-be-damned type (though he is accorded a historical hat-tip). He is now armed with welfare philosophy and stands ready with education, pensions, security, cooperation and culture. He will do battle with the welfare state using its own weapons. He is even attracting social welfare intellectuals like Sidney Hook and Stuart Chase.

It is surely exhilarating to be on the offensive once more. I wouldn't be surprised to hear the term "conservative" used by the new radical to disparage old-fashioned die-hard New Dealers.

So the lines of demarcation are becoming a bit fuzzy -- which might not be bad, except that the thinking on both sides is also fuzzy.

It is good that the liberty of the individual is once more thought worthy of a crusade. It is good to think of free enterprise as a bold knight on a charger instead of a fat sleepy dragon guarding his loot. It's not so good to see our knight being so impressed by the welfare state as to want to imitate it.

Years ago when protests rose against the "capitalism" of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Henry George and his followers sought to introduce some fundamental thinking into that milieu. But short-sighted emotionalism won out. Now a new atmosphere, congenial to the Georgian philosophy, has arisen. Let us hope...