Why Conservatism in Today’s World Has to Be Left-Wing

By Rustem Vakhitov

The following essay by Russian political philosopher Rustem Vakhitov first appeared in Russkaya Istina (Sept. 19, 2023) and is republished here, in our English translation, with the journal’s kind permission. Vakhitov’s mixture of ‘left-wing’ and ‘conservative’ commitments is in some respects evocative of Simone Weil’s thought. The result — as is certainly true in the case of Weil — also in Vakhitov’s case appears to be something uncapturable by ideology, including that of conservatism. — The Editors

“A conservative makes his own assessment of socialism, and takes into account not only its merits, but also its shortcomings, and in this sense a conservative cannot agree with socialism’s left-wing apologists. A conservative, furthermore, has his own perspective on what is meant by progress (whatever one may say about its dialectics) and his own relationship with religion. At the same time, he is aware that capitalism is leading all of humanity into the abyss of a postmodern new barbarism, and it is this that puts the conservative in sympathy with that central line in the movement of socialism which ‘consciously associates itself with the highest achievements of human culture …’ ” — Rustem Vakhitov

What is conservatism?

It is widely believed that to be a conservative means to be a supporter of right-wing views.  Many, in fact, place an equal sign between conservatism and rightism. This is why many perceive the expression “left conservative” as being an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms, like “hot snow” or “dry water.” However, in order to make any meaningful statements on this matter, we need first to decide what we mean by conservatism, and what we mean by left- and right-wing political worldviews.

The emergence of conservatism is associated with the names Edmund Burke, Joseph de Maistre, and René de Chateaubriand.

It was the latter, in fact, who proposed the term itself: "The Conservative" was the name of the newspaper launched by Chateaubriand. All these figures were opponents of the French Revolution. The program of this revolution actually boiled down to implementing the values of a modernist, egalitarian society, and after the revolution’s success, and as a result of that success, that program replaced traditional society in France and throughout Europe (and subsequently practically throughout the entire world except for individual enclaves in countries of the so-called “Third World").  On this same topic the modern Russian scholar of conservatism Arkady Minakov has observed that “the Conservatism which appeared on the scene in the late 18th and early 19th centuries came about as a reaction to the rationalism and individualism of the Modern Age and its theory of progress ... the embodiment of which was the Great French Revolution. It came on to the scene through the works of Edmund Burke and Joseph de Maistre.”

A conservative in the political and ideological sense, then, is someone who views traditional, pre-modern society as exemplary, with European conservatives tending to idealize the Middle Ages and sometimes Greco-Roman or Germanic antiquity, and Russian conservatives tending to idealize pre-Petrine, Muscovite Rus'.

At the same time, one can distinguish political conservatism from cultural conservatism.  The former presupposes sympathy for monarchy, the class structure of society, and religion tightly associated with the state (de Maistre called this “the principle of the union of altar and throne”) The latter, by contrast, emphasizes the value and importance of pre-modern philosophy and art (a category which includes ancient, medieval and, in part, Renaissance and even early-modern European cultural creators -- from Homer to Balzac). Let it be noted that cultural conservatism does not always go hand in hand with political conservatism; however, we will talk more about this later.

What are the worldviews of the political right and left?

Let us now turn to the worldviews of the right and the left.  Once again, the starting point is the period of the French Revolution, but in this case one is obliged to admit that both right and left were products of the revolution, not its opponents. As is well known, they received their names because the constitutionalist supporters of the revolution occupied the right side of the hall in the revolutionary French Convention (the National Assembly) whereas the Girondists, Jacobins and Cordeliers occupied the left side.

Thus, those on the right, strictly speaking, are not exactly conservatives (although they are sometimes very close to being such). Conservatism in the precise sense of the word [1] transcends the distinction between right and left in as much as it refers to a world where such a division was simply absent. Both right and left favor a modernist, post-traditional society -- the distinction between them stems from the former preferring a bourgeois, more or less moderate version of modernity, and the latter preferring an anti-bourgeois or even socialist modernity.

The French Revolution is conventionally referred to as being bourgeois, and this is true in the sense that it was the bourgeoisie that took advantage of its success. But even if the bourgeoisie was the leading, it was not the only class that rebelled against the aristocracy and monarchy. The anti-bourgeois forces of modern society, the left, the socialists and communists, also have their heroes amidst the host of French revolutionaries. Among these number the Cordeliers and the “Enragés” (ultra-radicals)  -- Jacques-René Hébert, Jacques Roux, the first feminist actress “Citizen Claire Lacombe” and, in fact, the communists of the 18th century such as Gracchus Babeuf. They went beyond the demand to establish a republic and seize property from the aristocrats, as was advocated by the Girondins and Jacobins. The “Enragés” demanded the breakup of the large estates, the transfer of land to poor peasants, financial support for the urban poor, power to the Commune, the closure of stock exchanges and the execution of speculators, state regulation of prices, and in the case of Babeuf, approval of a total state socialism reminiscent of the war communism of the Bolsheviks.

In short, the difference between right and left comes down to the opposition between capitalism and socialism. The right stands for private property and the free market; the left stands for government regulation, state and public ownership. It is sometimes said that the right, as a strong and consistent supporter of private property, is also a natural advocate for individual rights and freedoms, whereas the left places the collectivity and its rights above the individual.  In general terms this may be true, but it is equally true that there are democrats on the left and there are authoritarians on the right (after all, Dubcek[2] was a leftist and Pinochet a rightist).

Yes, those on the right formally stand for religion and tradition, but only to the extent that this is allowed for by capitalism …

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All the rest is secondary.  Yes, those on the right formally stand for religion and tradition, but only to the extent that this is allowed for by capitalism, by the free market, and by bourgeois parliamentary secular democracy. Thus, the leader of the modern French ultra-right, Marine Le Pen, protests against public manifestations of Muslim religiosity in French cities, appealing not at all to “traditional Catholic values” but instead to ... the law on the separation of religion and state of 1905. And the leader of the center-right, Sarkozy, directly addressing public prayers by Muslims, states that “This is a terrifying attack on the principles of secularism, on the values of our Republic”[3]

At first glance, it seems that the right, like conservatives, are supporters of the state and of social hierarchy, in contrast to egalitarian socialists. But if we take a closer look at the state, which the right elevates to the category of almost an absolute value, we find that it has little in common with the state as it is understood in the traditional world. It is nothing more than a bourgeois, modernist, bureaucratic state -- a product of the mechanistic thinking of the capitalist age, something which was very well illustrated by Thomas Hobbes in his Leviathan where he compared it to a mechanical monster. Actually, the word “state” itself began to be used in English in its modern meaning of “state as governmental power” only from the 16th century, and again it was Hobbes who was among the the first to use it in this meaning: “that great Leviathan called ... the State (in Latin Civitas).” The word itself traces back to the Latin “status” and indicates the presence in such a society of a universal law that applies to people from all strata, something which was unthinkable in the Middle Ages.

Finally, the right, as we know, are supporters of nationalism, but nations are also a product of the era of capitalism. In the Middle Ages, the word ‘nations’ referred to student communities, and governing bodies (‘states’) took the form of multi-ethnic empires.  The bourgeoisie used the formation of national communities as a weapon in their struggle against the aristocracy.  And the aristocracy, after all, were only to a limited extent divided into French, Germans, Spaniards and so forth, being in essence more of a supranational pan-European social stratum. “Long live the nation!” -- this was the slogan of the French revolutionaries of the 18th century.  Conservativism in the true sense goes back to the ideas of Joseph de Maistre and the French royalist “whites” who fought precisely against the ideology of the nation and the national state in favor of a multinational and multilingual feudal-federal France ruled by the Bourbons, the royal house that also ruled in Spain and Austria-Hungary.

Le Pen, who declares herself the leader of French nationalism, has in essence a much closer relationship with the Jacobins than does the left socialist Mélenchon …

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So Marine Le Pen, who declares herself the leader of French nationalism, has in essence a much closer relationship with the Jacobins than does the left socialist Mélenchon, who declares himself an internationalist (after all, socialist internationalism reproduces, in a new turn of the historical spiral, what amounts to a pre-bourgeois pan-Europeanism)...

As we can see, strictly speaking, the expression “right-wing conservatism” is no less an oxymoron than left-wing conservatism. However, the second, unlike the first, is viable...

Why is right-wing political conservatism a utopia?

If you look at things soberly, it becomes obvious that the reconstruction of state and society according to the forms of the pre-modern world (and precisely this is the project of conservatives and political “traditionalists”) is obviously a utopia. This can be seen from the experience of the 19th and then 20th centuries.

The most prominent European organization of European reactionary monarchists was Action Française. Its history is nothing more than an example of a group’s degeneration into a politically insignificant force. Pope Pius XI condemned Action Française and considered its goal of reviving the French monarchy to be foolishness – this despite its members all being ardent Catholics.  Its leader, Charles Maurras, ended his life in prison as a collaborator.  A hundred years ago Action Française was a powerful force comparable in size to the socialists and the communists. Today it is a collection of noisy weirdos laughed at by the public.

The most famous theoretician of European conservatism, the “black baron” Julius Evola, sought to implement his reactionary utopia by means of an alliance with the Italian fascists.  In his post-war book Fascism Viewed from the Right (which is much less known than his pre-war works!) he wrote critically and with disappointment about the modernism and anti-conservatism of the ultra-right-wing fascist movement in Europe.  As for the Russian Black Hundreds movement, its inglorious end speaks for itself.  The attempts, during the 1990s, to revive the Russian monarchy were so comical and terrible as to not even deserve detailed discussion.

Russian supporters of political conservatism like to recall philosopher Konstantin Leontiev’s aphorism that “Russia must be frozen.” But when he pronounced those words there still remained something which, from the perspective of a conservative, warranted the effort to ‘freeze’: there was still a monarchy, a hierarchically organized system of social estates, and a state church.  Since then, 150 years have passed and Russia, despite everything, has fallen into capitalism (even the Soviet delay of 70 years could not prevent it!). Capitalism managed to corrode the last remnants of Russian society’s traditional foundations. It is not for nothing that there is so much talk today about the need to revive traditional values, although the calls for this revival often come from the kind of people who, back in the 1990s, were doing their best to destroy those same values (just like our present-day heirs of that same 1990s crowd).  This alone shows how serious such calls are ...

In the modern world, a supporter of authentic traditional ideas and values in the field of politics (this pertains by the way not only to Europe, but also to Russia) inevitably looks at best like an eccentric or a lonely romantic dreaming of the irrevocable; and more likely such a person will be viewed as something of a “village idiot.”   What is more, there are also those who seize on the playing of this role as an opportunity to make a buck (the examples of this are glaringly obvious!).  And there is nothing we can do about it.

In essence, all that conservatism is capable of today (in the precise, and not in the ordinary sense of the word) is the preservation of classical values in the sphere of culture. That is, real, vital, and not fake conservatism today can only be cultural conservatism. And here we are faced with an interesting paradox: of the political forces of the modern world, it can coexist (albeit not without conflict) only with the left.

The Classics and Capitalism

That capitalism and classical culture are incompatible with one another was pointed out already by G.W.F. Hegel in his Aesthetics. Of course, Hegel didn’t refer to it as capitalism; he spoke about a “developed state” and “civil society”. But it is symbolic that he characterized this “civil society” as “the kingdom of need and rationality.” This is a society in which the individual, on the one hand, has been separated from the clan, from social integrity and universality, and has been transformed into a “little man” living by his own petty, vulgarized self-interest. On the other hand, in this society, the division of labor in all spheres has reached such vast proportions that “the state is not the concrete action of an individual;” indeed, state and socially-significant activities no longer can be entrusted to “the arbitrariness, strength, courage, bravery, power, and understanding of one person.”

In other words, the state has become a machine, and man has become a cog in that machine. No one asks a cog to demonstrate courage and wisdom. A cog is asked to follow instructions. Therefore, there is no longer any basis for the high classical art which existed in antiquity, and in the Middle Ages, and even during the Renaissance, the latter being the interval between the Middle Ages and the era of capitalism. There are no more heroes to celebrate, only ordinary Joe-blows, the man on the street.

Marx fully agreed with this conclusion, which is why he wrote about the impossibility of the epic form in the age of scientific and technological achievements.  Building on this foundation, Georg Lukács and Mikhail Lifshitz built a whole theory about the uneven development of the economic basis and the spiritual superstructure of society, arriving ultimately at the formula “under capitalism, the degradation of art is inseparable from general societal progress.”

This well-known line which we have just cited is from Lifshitz’s famous essay, “Dialectics in the History of Art.”  True, genuine, classical art, these “Hegelian Marxists” were convinced, was possible only in the pre-bourgeois world -- in antiquity, in the Middle Ages, and in the Renaissance, because these were times when the principle of relativity introduced by commodity exchange did not dominate, and where the market was not yet the reigning institution. That art should undergo a process of degradation is, according to Lifshitz, something inherent to the very nature of capitalism, and in the arrival on the scene of avant-garde art, with its aesthetic of ugliness and anti-realism, he found evidence of the crisis of capitalist art in general. Only socialism, according to Lifshitz, is capable of saving classical culture, whereas the longer humanity remains stuck in the netherworld of capitalism, the deeper will be its degradation and cultural decline. The key to all of this, according to the Soviet philosopher, was the Soviet cultural policy, initiated by Lenin, which came out strongly against futurism even as it supported the widest possible dissemination of works by the classical realists. Appealing to the authority of Lenin, the “Lifshits movement” prepared that “rehabilitation” of Russian culture, and above all of Pushkin and other national pre-revolutionary geniuses, that took place in the USSR during the 1930s.

… the USSR …was one of few countries where the state did its best to inculcate in the people respect for the masterpieces of classical culture.

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Our modern eloquent publicists can sneer as much as they like about the Red “Shvonders”[4] (the label itself, by the way, derives from a literary work by Mikhail Bulgakov, a Soviet, albeit non-communist, writer and “right Smenavekhovets”[5] who was valued by Stalin), but it was the USSR that was one of few countries where the state did its best to inculcate in the people respect for the masterpieces of classical culture. Soviet television treated its viewers not to bar-room brawls and slug-fests, but instead to French language lessons and symphonic music concerts...

Modern capitalism, Lifshitz insisted, will never give birth to something on the level of a Balzac, to say nothing of Shakespeare and Homer; it is capable of nothing more than kitsch and pop culture for the masses. Socialism, as the experience of the USSR has shown us, is the keeper of many cultural treasures created by the traditional pre-bourgeois world, treasures which remain a guiding star for conservatives. Socialism preserves and augments the legacy of the “great conservatives of humanity” (as Lifshits called Plato, Dante, Goethe and Pushkin), at least in the field of art and, to a certain extent, also in philosophy (here we touch on the very complex and interesting topic of the connection between Marxism and classical philosophy, and first of all the line running from Plato to Hegel of which Lifshitz and Lukács wrote).

Clearly, the question of religion is unavoidable in this context. Socialism in its Marxist version had a sharply negative attitude towards religion, and the Soviet persecution of the church is a serious wound for the faithful, and any true conservative is by definition a person of faith. And yet, on the one hand, it does not follow from this that the new socialism will necessarily be the same (after all, history has known socialist regimes that did not have such dramatic conflicts with religion -- for example Castro’s Cuba).  On the other hand, socialism, though it may oppose religion (which feature of socialism, of course, we can only condemn), it nevertheless conserves the ground of religion’s social existence by preserving faith in the Good, in Justice, and in Truth. Meanwhile, capitalism, for its part, sows cynicism, egocentrism, and disbelief in higher values; it everywhere encourages moral, aesthetic and philosophical relativism and in this manner, though without formally banning religion or preventing people from visiting places of worship, it gradually does everything so that people voluntarily stop visiting them.

Conclusion

As we see, left-wing conservatism is, today, the only possible, authentic conservatism (and I mean by this not the movement of communists to the right, something which also occurs, but in the sense of the movement of conservatives to the left). Supporting the socialist movement (the real one with roots in Marx and Lenin, not the post-Marxist, left-liberal one which has renounced the idea of social justice in favor of a culture of support for exotic minorities) is quite logical for anyone who values the classics and tradition. Such support for socialism does not imply merging with it to the point of indistinguishability (for me personally, the best example here can be found in the late A.F. Losev;[6] I have already written more than once about his subtle and dialectical understanding of Marxism.[7]  

“A conservative makes his own assessment of socialism, and takes into account not only its merits, but also its shortcomings, and in this sense a conservative cannot agree with socialism’s left-wing apologists. A conservative, furthermore, has his own perspective on what is meant by progress (whatever one may say about its dialectics) and his own relationship with religion. At the same time, he is aware that capitalism is leading all of humanity into the abyss of a postmodern new barbarism, and it is this that puts the conservative in sympathy with that central line in the movement of socialism which ‘consciously associates itself with the highest achievements of human culture …’ ” (and since, unlike us, the younger generation never studied the writings of Lenin in their universities, it is necessary to explain that this quote is taken from the speech of the leader of the Russian revolution at the Komsomol congress).

If the choice we face is between “socialism or else a consumerist, postmodern capitalist barbarism,” then the position to be taken by the true conservative is obvious.

About the author: Rustem Vakhitov (Ph.D., philosophy) is associate professor at Bashkir State University (Ufa, Russia) and the author of some 200 scholarly publications. His several monographs include The Dialectics of Totalitarianism (2014), an analysis of the phenomenon of totalitarianism from the perspective of the social philosophy of Platonism. His areas of interest include Eurasianism, education, and philosophical anthropology.

NOTES

[1] Not in the everyday sense of the word, according to which a ‘conservative’ is simply a person who sympathizes with the old way of doing things and doesn’t like innovation: in that sense, the communists are conservatives.

[2] Alexander Dubcek was the Czechoslovak leader who initiated the democratization of socialism (what was then termed ‘socialism with a human face’) inside Czechoslovakia, an initiative which led, in 1968, to the Soviet invasion of the country. – trans.

[3] French rightists demanded a ban on Muslim prayers in the streets: https://nikolaevec.livejournal.com/383981.html

[4] Shvonder, in the singular, is the name of a character in Soviet author Mikhail Bulgakov’s novel, Heart of a Dog. The Shvonder character is widely understood in Russia to be the incarnation of all that is mediocre, craven and rigidly ideological.  

[5] The term ‘Smenavekhovets’ derives from a collection of essays, Smena Vekh (Change of Signposts) published in Prague by liberal Russian emigres in 1921. The volume’s title is in conscious counterpoint with the earlier collection, Vekhi (Signposts) published in 1909 by leading Russian philosophers critical of the Russian intelligentsia for its materialism, populism, and ideological rigidity.  The authors of Smena Vekh advocated acceptance of the Soviet regime, a position which stood in contrast with widespread émigré resistance to the new Bolshevik government.  Subsequently, the term Smenavekhovets came to characterize more generally those in favor of reconciliation with or at least acceptance of the Russian revolution.  Adherents to the movement advocated for a policy of return to the USSR and Russia (an idea that presumably appeared more attractive during the relaxation of communism during the NEP period).  Among those Smenovekhovtsy who did return to the USSR, a number were subsequently arrested and eventually killed during the Stalinist purges of the mid-1930s. – Trans. 

[6] Aleksei Losev (1893 – 1988), who authored some 900 scholarly works, received a first-rate education in Czarist Russia. Early on he developed a profound interest in the philosophy of V. S. Solovyov and eventually befriended many of the most important Russian philosopher-theologians of his time, including Fr. Pavel Florensky. His noteworthy early mastery of the classical languages became a signature of his literary and scholarly style.  Despite exile and imprisonment, among other severe trials suffered during the Stalinist period, Losev was eventually able to blossom as a scholar within the USSR, becoming, toward the end of his life, honored and renowned as one of Russia’s greatest scholars in the fields of philosophy and philology.  His idiosyncratic worldview synthesizes a great many influences, including Plato, Hegel, Husserl, and the Neo-Kantian school, among others.  After his death it was revealed that he and his first wife, during the early Stalin years, secretly took vows as monks of the Russian Orthodox Christian church. – Trans. 

[7] See my articles: “A.F. Losev. Integral religious-monarchical conservatism" in the journal Ortodoksia (No. 4, 2022) and "Late Losev and Marxism," in Voprosy Filosofii  (No. 1, 2018).