Classics revisited: The New Right Enlightenment
They were the future once
By Dr Kristian Niemietz
For at least two reasons, The New Right Enlightenment. Young Writers on “The Spectre Haunting the Left” (1985) is an unfortunate book title.
The first reason has to do with timing. According to Google Ngram Viewer, use of the term “New Right” began to take off in the 1960s, exploded in the 1970s, and peaked around the time this book was published. It then declined again, not because interest in the subject waned, but because “New Right” was soon eclipsed by the vastly more successful term “Neoliberalism”. The book would probably have had a longer shelf life, and sold a lot more copies, if it had been called The New Neoliberal Enlightenment instead. (If only because the word “neoliberal” is almost always used pejoratively, so plenty of people on the fashionable side of the argument would have bought a copy by accident, mistaking it for a “cool” book.)
The second reason is that about half of the authors take issue with the term. Or rather, they accept it on an “I know what you’re trying to say” basis, in the way a Scottish tourist abroad might accept being described as “English”. But it is not the label they would have chosen for themselves. As Andrew Melnyk, one of the authors, puts it: “Although I suppose I have to admit to being part of the New Right, it is simply not true that my views are ‘right-wing’.” (Or 39 years later: “I have taken to speaking of the non-Left, because I (still!) refuse to be classified as Right-wing.”)
But whatever the merits of the label: in this book, a collection of authors who were then among the up-and-coming thinkers of the New Right explain their own worldview, and how they got there. It gives us a largely unfiltered impression, because there is a strong element of introspection. These authors are quite clearly writing for an already-sympathetic audience, rather than trying to win over sceptics. Thus, there is no sugarcoating, and no holding back when attacking political opponents.
It is not technically an IEA publication, but it identifies as one. It was edited by the IEA’s then Editorial Director Arthur Seldon; it contains a foreword by the IEA’s godfather Friedrich Hayek; it contains chapters by people who worked at the IEA at the time, and it contains chapters by people who would go on to do so (including two people who I still see around here very regularly – hi Steve and Marc!).
While it is possible to become a classical liberal on the basis of personal experience and values, this was as rare then as it is now. Only one of the authors found liberalism in that way. Classical liberalism is a cerebral worldview, which people acquire by reading and thinking systematically about it, often overcoming some emotional resistance along the way. So I was not at all surprised to see most authors talk about which thinkers, which schools of thought, and which publications influenced them, not which life experiences or which people in their social circles. If there is an equivalent book for the New Left, I am sure that 19 out of 20 authors will say that they have “always felt that way”, and that their political awakening consisted of fining a book which expressed in sophisticated language what they already knew in their heart to be true.
There are different ways in which people can reach classical liberal conclusions, but there is not an infinite number of ways. I was therefore not surprised to see considerable overlaps and recurring themes. The Austrian School of Economics is mentioned in several chapters, as are the Chicago School and the Public Choice School, and in the areas of philosophy and political theory, the works of Robert Nozick and Karl Popper.
What did surprise me somewhat was how little most of the authors had to say about the political situation of the day (the one clear exception being an author who would become an MP two years later). This is remarkable insofar as, if you look at the Wikipedia entry for “New Right” (which is all over the place, and as hostile as you would expect), Margaret Thatcher is one of the first people who are mentioned (alongside Ronald Reagan and – you guessed it – Augusto Pinochet). The section about the UK is little else but a link to the “Thatcherism” page.
The association of the New Right with Thatcherism is not entirely wrong. Several authors acknowledge that, at least in the economic sphere, Thatcherism is an attempt to put some New Right-inspired ideas into practice, to the extent that this is possible given the political constraints. So it is not that they disavow her, or shy away from the association; it is just that they are clearly more interested in more general economic and political theories, not in day-to-day politics, or in the electoral fortunes of any one particular politician. (It is also for that reason that I consider this an IEA publication.)
So if you are looking for an account of the economic policy battles of the Thatcher era as they unfolded, this book is not it. Even the Miners’ Strike, which had then only just ended, is only mentioned in passing. A positive side effect of this aloofness, though, is that The New Right Enlightenment can still serve as a primer about the various strands of classical liberal thought. It is not exactly a “timeless” book: it references several publications that were then still relatively recent, and which an earlier book would have missed. Despite its distance from politics, it also captures something about the political mood of the era. So there is some “retro” experience, but it is not a 1980s theme party.
The New Right does not define itself against an enemy, but they engage extensively with their opponents on various sides. And there is no shortage of those. On a more theoretical level: the names “Marx” and “Engels” appear almost as often as “Hayek” and “Friedman”. Most authors are clearly familiar with Marxist literature, and while they do not try to hide their loathing of it, they take it very seriously. The traditionalist-conservative “Salisbury Group” around Roger Scruton is also referenced repeatedly, with varying degrees of hostility. On a more practical level, the “Tory wets” and the proponents of “postwar consensus”/“mixed economy” policies are also in for a series of thrashings.
What would a modern-day sequel to this book, written by late Millennials and early Zoomers, look like?
It would be a lot messier, is the short answer. For a long time, it was a decent rule of thumb that a classical liberal is someone who is “right-wing on economics, and left-wing on social issues”. That was never exactly right, but for several authors in this book, it works as a starting point. But it only works because for them, “being right-wing on economics” means “being a Thatcherite”, and “being left-wing on social issues” means “being socially liberal”. Neither of those are true today. Today, “being right-wing on economics” means “being a NIMBY”, and “being left-wing on social issues” means “being woke”.
These developments are already foreshadowed in the book, but in ways which are only obvious to the reader who enjoys the benefit of hindsight (i.e. me). One author already says that “Socialists oppose freedom […] not solely in economic matters but to a remarkable degree on ‘social’ issues as well. Leftists now argue ever more vehemently for the censorship of opinions and eradication of […] what they regard as ‘racist’ opinions and ‘sexist’ attitudes.” Another author already identifies the Town and Country Planning Act as a drag on growth. Today, though, both of these would have to be major themes in their own right, rather than isolated paragraphs. Anti-NIMBYism (or YIMBYism) would almost certainly unite the authors of a sequel, but they would probably be divided on “Culture War” issues.
Immigration would loom much larger (in 1985, net migration was just 58,000 people), and it would sharply divide the authors. Some would argue that no bureaucrat should have a right to tell people where they are allowed to live; others would counter that large-scale migration from far less liberal cultures undermines liberalism in the receiving country. Cultish doomsday sects like Extinction Rebellion, Just Stop Oil and whatever their latest spinoffs are called would feature heavily, and, I think it’s safe to say, not in a good way. The role of social media in communicating political ideas – mostly terrible ones, but the occasional good one too – would be a theme that none of these authors of The New Right Enlightenment could have imagined in 1985.
Come to think of it, I might almost be tempted to commission such a book myself, even if the word “young” in the subtitle would, sadly, disqualify me from being one of its authors.