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...
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