Hayek’s view of conservatism
From his essay, Why I’m Not a Conservative:
“This brings me to the first point on which the conservative and the liberal dispositions
differ radically. As has often been acknowledged by conservative writers, one of the
fundamental traits of the conservative attitude is a fear of change, a timid distrust of the
new as such,[5] while the liberal position is based on courage and confidence, on a
preparedness to let change run its course even if we cannot predict where it will lead.
There would not be much to object to if the conservatives merely disliked too rapid
change in institutions and public policy; here the case for caution and slow process is
indeed strong. But the conservatives are inclined to use the powers of government to
prevent change or to limit its rate to whatever appeals to the more timid mind. In looking
forward, they lack the faith in the spontaneous forces of adjustment which makes the
liberal accept changes without apprehension, even though he does not know how the
necessary adaptations will be brought about. It is, indeed, part of the liberal attitude to
assume that, especially in the economic field, the self-regulating forces of the market will
somehow bring about the required adjustments to new conditions, although no one can
foretell how they will do this in a particular instance. There is perhaps no single factor
contributing so much to people’s frequent reluctance to let the market work as their
inability to conceive how some necessary balance, between demand and supply, between
exports and imports, or the like, will be brought about without deliberate control. The
conservative feels safe and content only if he is assured that some higher wisdom watches
and supervises change, only if he knows that some authority is charged with keeping the
change “orderly.”
This fear of trusting uncontrolled social forces is closely related to two other
characteristics of conservatism: its fondness for authority and its lack of understanding of
economic forces. Since it distrusts both abstract theories and general principles,[6] it
neither understands those spontaneous forces on which a policy of freedom relies nor
possesses a basis for formulating principles of policy. Order appears to the conservative
as the result of the continuous attention of authority, which, for this purpose, must be
allowed to do what is required by the particular circumstances and not be tied to rigid
rule. A commitment to principles presupposes an understanding of the general forces by
which the efforts of society are co-ordinated, but it is such a theory of society and
especially of the economic mechanism that conservatism conspicuously lacks. So
unproductive has conservatism been in producing a general conception of how a social
order is maintained that its modern votaries, in trying to construct a theoretical
foundation, invariably find themselves appealing almost exclusively to authors who
regarded themselves as liberal. Macaulay, Tocqueville, Lord Acton, and Lecky certainly
considered themselves liberals, and with justice; and even Edmund Burke remained an
Old Whig to the end and would have shuddered at the thought of being regarded as a
Tory.”