 |
| IMAGES |
|
|
 |
| Uncredited image |
|
Edmund Burke, the father of modern conservatism. (FPinfomart: Restricted, Canada.com: Restricted) |
|
|
|
Did you know Naomi Klein is a conservative? It's true.
The credit for outing the Canadian author of No Logo goes to former NDP
official Leslie Campbell, whose excellent review of Klein's new anti-capitalism
manifesto appears in the current issue of the Literary Review of Canada.
"[Her] hankering for the old days … and suspicion of change are the hallmarks
of true conservatism," Leslie writes. "Klein's admiration of Keynes and the
'mixed, regulated economy that created the New Deal' can sound quaint and
dated…Also, in critiquing selected international economic transitions -- most
notably Russia, Poland, South Africa and Iraq -- Klein occasionally sounds
nostalgic for a past that was, for many people, at least as negative as the
present."
Leslie's got it right: As with many anti-corporate activists, Klein's vision
for the world is essentially old-fashioned and sentimental. She imagines workers
organizing into small-scale collectivist cottage shops of the type that
globalization and technology rendered obsolete generations ago. The economic
model Klein wants for developing nations is essentially the same one our own
grandparents eagerly cast aside when modern capitalism made them rich after the
Second World War.
Which raises a more basic question, one that goes beyond Klein and her book:
Is capitalism itself "conservative"?
Oddly, the answer is no.
I say "oddly" here because of the idiomatic manner in which political labels
are thrown around in 2007. In North America, at least, "conservative" typically
connotes support for free-market, laissez-faire capitalism. The word "liberal,"
on the other hand, suggests a fondness for government interventionism, if not
full-blown Trudeauvian statism. These meanings are widely accepted. Yet history
shows them to be baseless.
The idea of conservatism as a coherent ideology emerged in the wake of the
French Revolution, which Edmund Burke and like-minded thinkers decried as a
catastrophic symptom of Enlightenment ideology gone wild. Burkean conservatives
believed that change should come gradually, and were skeptical of any doctrine
that challenged the Church, the sanctity of the family, the status of the ruling
class, and the elitist cultural values inherited from previous generations.
Classic conservatism, in other words, is essentially about stodginess and
respect for tradition-- which, of course, is the very antithesis of capitalism.
There once was a time, back in the 19th century, when a small group of
plutocratic land-owners and industrialists were able to dominate capitalism for
their own purposes. And the political union they formed in Britain -- the
Conservative Party -- helped lock in the anachronistic meaning of "conservative"
we retain to this day.
But those days are gone. Modern mass-market capitalism is -- to borrow a
famous phrase from economist Joseph Schumpeter -- about "creative destruction."
It is a totally different creature from its staid, oligopolistic ancestor.
In the space of a few generations, capitalism has turned our nation's farms
into tract housing, transformed armies of agricultural hands and assembly-line
workers into computer jockeys, and hooked us all on junk food, cellphones and
the Internet. In terms of sheer revolutionary impact, no Soviet politburo or
Bolivarian dictatorship could hope to produce the economic transformation that
capitalism has wrought.
Capitalism's effects on our social structure have been equally revolutionary
-- and profoundly anti-conservative. The hyper-materialism unleashed by
capitalism has caused us to systematically tear down the architecture of
yesteryear in favour of McMansions and six-lane highways. With mom working to
bring home an extra paycheque, the kids end up in day-care (and grandpa is
shipped from the attic to the nursing home). Cooking is passe. And so the
traditional sit-down family dinner -- the anchor of family life formillennia--
has given way to microwave food consumed in front of the boob tube (which itself
is full of mass-market garbage, profit-seeking media conglomerates having long
ago sunk our cultural standards to the lowest common denominator).
In short, capitalism has enriched us materially beyond anything Edmund Burke
might have imagined. But it has done so by transforming our society into one
that he, and any true conservative of the 18th or 19th century, would find
entirely horrifying.
That is not to say that the term "conservative" is meaningless. Social
conservatives -- who oppose gay marriage, feminism, abortion, no-fault divorce
and all the rest of today's libertine sociological cocktail -- truly are Burkean
in outlook. They see wisdom in preserving society's old-fashioned Anglo-Saxon
(or, in Quebec, French) values and character, even if that means limiting who we
let into this country or rolling back the rights we offer certain groups. But
here in Canada, such true conservatives are few and far between. And ironically,
they're the one group that smug Toronto journalists invariably urge Stephen
Harper to kick out of the "Conservative" party.
Perhaps, then, it's time for more honesty in nomenclature. Naomi Klein sells
herself as something of a revolutionary. I'd say counterrevolutionary is a
better fit. The real revolution in our society is being led by stock brokers,
real estate agents and Internet whiz kids. These people are making all of us
wealthy. But please don't call them "conservative."
CAPITALISM & CONSERVATISM:
Thursday: Peter Foster
Friday: Colby Cosh
Saturday: George Jonas
jkay@nationalpost.com
Illustration:
• Black & White Photo: / Edmund
Burke, the father of modern conservatism.
Idnumber: 200711130131
Edition: National
Story
Type: Column; Series
Length: 846 words
Illustration Type: P
PRODUCTION FIELDS
NDATE: 20071113
NUPDATE: 20071113
DOB: 20071113
POSITION: 1
