Richard Weaver on Conservatism and Libertarianism
One of the most important post-war conservative thinkers would be the great Richard M. Weaver (1910-1963). It is frequently argued that he, Robert Nisbet, and Russell Kirk are the most important scholars in traditional conservative intellectual development. I have to be cautious when I say that, that is why I add the adjective "traditional" to conservative. Since none of them would approve of what passes for "conservatism" today. They, especially Weaver and Nisbet, have been lost to the dustbin of the conservative movement and scholarship (at least, what is left of conservative "scholarship"------ when I think conservative scholarship I do not think of a book by Ann Coulter or Sean Hannity, sorry! haha).
In Defense of Tradition: Collected Shorter Writings of Richard M. Weaver 1929 - 1963, there is an essay of his called "Conservatism and Libertarianism: The Common Ground."
The great Richard Weaver said that his "instincts are libertarian." He also wrote that, and something that I have emphasized before, that libertarianism is a much more strictly confided political philosophy than traditional conservatism. Libertarianism is narrower or more limited. Its attacks are against statism. Beyond that, it has not much more to say. At least, strictly speaking. For this reason there is no reason or objection of why someone could not be philosophically a "conservative-libertarian" or "libertarian-conservative." Someone like Weaver showed that there does not have to be such a gap between some libertarians and some traditionalists. Furthermore, someone that is a "traditionalist" can be profoundly anti-statist.
Who is conservative? Here was Weaver's answer:
It is my contention that a conservative is a realist, who believes that there is a structure of reality independent of his own will and desire. He believes that there is a creation which was here before him, which exists now not by just his sufferance, and which will be here after he’s gone. This structure consists not merely of the great physical world but also of many laws, principles, and regulations which control human behavior. Through this reality is independent of the individual, it is not hostile to him. It is in fact amenable by him in many ways, but it cannot be changed radically and arbitrarily. This is the cardinal point. The conservative holds that man in this world cannot make his will his law without any regard to limits and to the fixed nature of things. [italics deleted]
He said that "radicals" and liberals wish to impose against reality and against this structure of laws. They do not believe that things exist above and beyond the reach of man. That is to say, man can do anything he wants and the laws of the world will bow to any and all desires. Radicals act and promote things in defiance against nature. Weaver reasons that this kind of attitude explains why they hate religion, and other such institutions.
The conservative, he said, "learns to command nature by obeying her." To win dominion over the land, man must learn her. Before man can grow the best farm crops, man must learn the laws of nature.
"The same," wrote Weaver "holds for the moral, social and political worlds." Conservatives learn from the past to look into the future. It is grounded. They search for the laws of the "moral, social, and political."
On the left-liberals and radicals he wrote:
So many of these radicals seem to be persons of disordered personality. ... There is a difference between trying to reform your fellow beings by the normal processes of logical demonstration, appeal and moral suasion----there is a difference between that and passing over to the use of force or constraint. The former is something all of us engage in every day. The latter is what makes the modern radical dangerous and perhaps in a sense demented. His first thought now is to get control of the state to make all men equal or to make all men rich, or failing that to make all men equally unhappy. This use of political instrumentality to coerce people to conform with his dream, in the face of their belief in a real order, is our reason, I think, for objecting to the radical. As an individual he may think about molding the world to his heart’s desire. He may even publish the results of his thinking. But when he tries to use the instrumentality of the state to bring about his wishes then all of us are involved, and we have to take our stand.
The libertarian and conservative stand the same ground here, said Weaver: Libertarianism "is narrower in purview and it is essentially negative [i.e., freedom from government], but this negative aspect is its very virtue."
Thus, there "is a shared political position," but he said it goes beyond that:
Both of them believe that there is an order of things which will largely take care of itself if you leave it alone. There are operating laws in nature and in human nature which are best not interfered with or not interfered with very much. If you try to change or suspend them by government fiat, the cost is greater than the return, the disorganization is expensive, the ensuing frustration painful...
Laws of nature are not just the physical, but also the social and economic. Economic law has its basis in praxeology. "Praxeology," he wrote, "is the science of how things work because of their essential natures." These laws that are deduced out of praxeology are not based on "wishes," he said, but "observing" the actual laws of nature----in this case of economics.*
For this reason conservatives and libertarians are "conservators of the real world."
A conservative and libertarian,
takes his stand on the real order of things and because he has a very modest estimate of man’s ability to change that order through the coercive power of the state. He is prepared to tolerate diversity of life and opinion because he knows that not all things are of his making and that it is right within reason to let each follow the law of his own being. A rigid egalitarianism is to him unthinkable because he appreciates that truth so well expressed by the poet Blake: “One law for the lion and the ox is oppression.”
Richard Weaver said that his "instincts are libertarian, and I am sure that I would never have joined effort with the conservatives if I had not been convinced that they are the defenders of freedom today." In his view, at the time the real enemies were the Marxists and "their first cousins, the totalitarian liberals." There was little debate and that which existed was silenced. He thought there needed to be a good opposition and those were the conservatives.
As I see it, we can argue that this Weaver-conservatism overlaps with Rothbardism to a great deal. For instance, in Hans-Hermann Hoppe's introduction to The Ethics of Liberty, he writes that: "Even given its explicitly limited scope, The Ethics of Liberty had a distinctly old-fashioned flavor and revealed libertarianism as a fundamentally conservative doctrine." One example, says Dr. Hoppe, is Rothbard's systematic development on punishment theory. This punishment theory is distinctively "old fashioned" or rooted into the general beliefs that are rooted in tradition. (The same thing could be argued for Rothbard's development of natural rights, although in this subject many traditionalists would unfortunately disagree.)
As Hoppe also writes:
Much of Rothbard's later writings, with their increased emphasis on cultural matters, were designed to correct ... and explain the error in the idea of a leftist multi-counter-cultural libertarianism, of libertarianism as a variant of libertinism. It was false----empirically as well as normatively----that libertarianism could or should be combined with egalitarian multiculturalism. Both were in fact sociologically incompatible, and libertarianism could and should be combined exclusively with traditional Western bourgeois culture; that is, the old-fashioned ideal of a family-based and hierarchically structured society of voluntarily acknowledged rank orders of social authority.
And, of course, Murray Rothbard was a firm believer in there being an economic order. He was a firm believer in praxeology. Man, Economy, and State is his major treatise on the topic.
(For more on Rothbard's thoughts on cultural and social matters, see this entry to The Paleo Blog.)
Another paper In Defense of Tradition is called "The Prospects of Conservatism." Again, we see Weaver's anti-statism comes across loudly.
He said that there are two sides of conservative thought. He worried that this might create a split, but saw no reason that it should. On the one side is the conservative whose focus on understanding the world is through the understanding of principles that have come through inheritance. The other side is one that "like[s] to examine the roots of things" and "formulate consistent theories." He said he fits more in the latter. Either extreme is bad, he thought, but one must be grounded with the proper balance of both.
Weaver rejected moderation or "middle-of-the-roadism":
Middle-of-the-roadism is too often nothing more than a shying away from all logically clear alternatives...
Fiat paper money he condemned. He also criticized the federal government's authority to "support and defend one billion non-citizens and their lands wherever located on this globe." He blasted its power to "dictate the level of wages, the relations between employer and employee, the hours of work, the ages between which people may engage in gainful employment, and to require employees to submit to the dues, discipline, and control of labor unions."
Only one criticism that one could probably make in regards to this paper. This is his apparent overoptimistic stance on the formation of a conservative movement that would be in opposition to the growth of Leviathan. This movement has been transformed or hijacked into -supporting- the establishment.
But, today, there is a political movement out there for all real conservatives and libertarians. It is called the Ron Paul Revolution.
See Also:
- Dropping the Atomic Bomb --- A War Crime and Unnecessary: Read what Richard Weaver had to say
*I am sure he meant "observing" in a deductive-sense, given that he is talking about the Austrian school. Economics is not an empirical science; anymore than pure mathematics is.
