Traditional Ideologies

What is an Ideology?

Destutt de Tracey used this to define the science of ideas, in comparison to

growing rationalistic natural sciences

Who is the greatest critic of this term?

Marx thought it was designed to obscure reality to benefit upper class

What are the features of an ideology?

Empirical, Normative & Semantic elements

Action-Oriented

Less rigorous/sophisticated than political philosophy

Combines concepts looked at individually by pol. philosophers

Liberalism
What is the most important value?

Liberty

Who are the keys thinkers of lib.?

Hobbes

Locke

Bentham

Mill

Rawls

Nozick

What is the classical tradition?

Traditional Ideologies 1
 With Smith/Spencer: State ought to insure security + enforcement of property
rights.

What is New liberalism?

End of XIXe - adaptation to growing socialists demands

+ positive role for the state

What is the New Right?

Mostly Britain and USA

Following again classical theory - Hayek/Nozick - e.g. Thatcher/Reagan

What’s the main difference b/w libs & communitarians?

Communitarians criticize the liberal social contract tradition which envisages
humans in a pre-social state.

Socialism
Core socialist principles

Optimistic on Human nature

Equality

Believe that we can achieve more collectively than individually

Why Marx’s preceding thinkers as Saint-Simon are not withheld?

Bc they said socialism was ethically desirable but didn’t have a whole system to
come up with

What is the main division inside socialism?

Communism vs Social democracy - Revolutionary vs evolutionary

Chism in 1914 w/ debate

What is the critique of Eduard Bernstein to Marx?

Working class not impoverished as predicted, then wining power through

democracy possible

Disagreement b/w Lenin & Marx?

Traditional Ideologies 2
 Lenin defends the need for a state vs Marx approaches anarchism principles
(decentralized structures)

What are the =/= possibilities for public ownership?

State corporation model

Decentralized workers’ cooperatives

Market socialism model (less important)

How can a socialist utopia can derive into an authoritarian state?

Soc. has to continually to intervene to prevent differential levels of talent and
effort from eroding the socialist distribution of goods

Conservatism
First conservative thinker?
Plato - Philosopher Kings - Rule of the intellectual elite

Main figure?

Edmund Burke w/ his attack on French revolution

How was the British New Right described?

“the free economy and the strong state” - law & order, authority, traditional
values but liberal economy

What’s the Neocons’ ideological line?

“oppose tyranny wherever it is found” - Leo Strauss

Before towards USSR, then against religious fundamentalism

Highest under Bush. Complicated relations w/ Trump

Conservative thought

Anti-rationalism

Human imperfection

Collective wisdom of the past and present is preferable to the abstract

reasoning of a few.

Change should be gradual and moderate

Traditional Ideologies 3
 Nationalism
Faire plus tard si y’a le temps sinon ECS

Fascism
Extreme combination of Nationalism and Authoritarianism
Reject intellectualizing in favor of action, emotion, instinct

What are the main ideological corpuses?

Hitler’s Mein Kampf

Giovanni Gentile

Which theory influenced Italian fascists?

Elite theory of the state

Anarchism
Principal figures

Goodwin (individualist school)

Proudhon

Bakunin

Kropotkin

Views on Human nature?

Intrinsically good vs socially determined

Both think people will be morally correct at the end

Distinction b/w state & government - Hoffman

Traditional Ideologies 4