Isms as ideologies
Liberals often argue that their values are too coherent and rational to be called
ideological. Here is a belief system (liberals contend) that has a plausible view of
human nature, links this with a wide view of freedom and has become the dominant
set of values in modern democratic societies: how can such views be called
ideological? Certainly liberalism is a very successful ideology, and that has rendered
acute the problem of the variety of liberalisms that confront the student of politics.
This problem afflicts all ideologies, it is true, but liberalism seems particularly
heterogeneous and divided. Old liberalism expresses the belief in a free market,
limited state and an individual free from external interference. New liberalism, on
the other hand, champions an interventionist state, a socialised and regulated market
and social policies that are concerned with redistributing wealth and supporting
collectivist institutions like trade unions and cooperatives. Indeed, in the USA, old
liberalism is confusingly called conservatism and new liberalism identified as a form
of socialism. The ‘L’ word is highly pejorative, and it is a brave politician in the
United States who calls himself a liberal.
Nevertheless, two points can be made about liberalism that bear upon the
question of ideology. The first is that all forms of liberalism have a belief in the
priority of the individual over society even though old and new liberals differ
significantly in how they interpret the freedom of this individual. Second, and
perhaps more importantly, what makes liberalism an ideology is that it is a
movement focused on the state. All liberals feel that the state is necessary to the
well-being of society even though they differ in the kind of state they would support,
and they may champion different movements to achieve their political ends. The
fact that liberalism is a movement that has rationality, toleration and universality
as its key virtues does not make it less ideological than movements that challenge
these values. Liberalism is a belief system concerned with building a particular kind
of society through a particular kind of state – that is enough to make it ideological.
For the same reason, conservatism is an ideology, although some conservatives
strenuously deny this. Ideologies, they argue, ignore realities and existing institutions,
and seek to impose abstract values upon historical facts. Ideologies seek to perfect
the world whereas the truth is that humans are imperfect, and it cannot be said
that people are rational beings who seek to govern their own lives. The fact that
conservatives may even disapprove of explicit political ideas on the grounds that it
is an ill-governed country that resorts to political theory does not make their ‘ism’
non-ideological. Ideals might be identified as abstractions imposed upon a complex
reality, and tradition exalted as a source of wisdom and stability. However, this
does not make conservatism less of an ideology than say liberalism or socialism.
The point about ideologies is they differ – not only from other ideologies – but
internally as well. The relationship of the New Right and Margaret Thatcher’s ideas
and policies to conservatism (to take a British example) is quite complicated: there
is a break from traditional conservatism in some areas that is sharp enough to allow
her critics to accuse her of liberalism or, a peculiarly British term, Whiggism, that
is seventeenth- and eighteenth-century liberalism. But conservatives see the state as
essential even though they are more inclined (than old liberals) to view it as aWhat is ideology? 165