Abstract
The new politics of the 1970s spawned many new political movements and political programmes across the whole political spectrum. The most powerful and influential of these new forces has been labelled the New Right, although many question whether it is new and a few who find themselves labelled ‘New Right’ question if it is right. What the term certainly does not signify is either a unified movement or a coherent doctrine. A wide range of groups and ideas make up the New Right, and there are many internal divisions and conflicts.’ The most important division, which is explored in this chapter, is between a liberal and a conservative tendency.
Surely it is high time for us to cry from the rooftops that the intellectual foundations of socialism have all collapsed.
[F. A. Hayek]
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Notes and references
There is a rich and growing literature on the New Right. See especially Ruth Levitas (ed.) The Ideology of the New Right (Cambridge: Polity, 1987);
Gillian Peele, Revival and Reaction: the Right in Contemporary America (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984);
Norman Barry, The New Right (London: Croom Helm, 1987);
Desmond King, The New Right (London: Macmillan, 1987); and
David Green, The New Right (London: Wheat-sheaf, 1987).
For typical writing on this theme see Robert Moss, The Collapse of Democracy (London: Temple Smith, 1975).
For an initial exploration of this idea see ‘The Free Economy and the Strong State’, in R. Miliband and J. Saville (eds) Socialist Register 1979 (London: Merlin, 1979) pp. 1–25.
One of the best analyses of the internal tensions in New Right thinking can be found in Patrick Dunleavy and Brendan O’Leary, Theories of the State (London: Macmillan, 1987) ch. 3.
See Roger Scruton, The Meaning of Conservatism (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1980).
See Ferdinand Mount, The Subversive Family (London: Jonathan Cape, 1982).
For a succinct summary see Alec Chrystal, Controversies in Macroeconomics (London: Philip Allan, 1979).
For one of the best analyses of the international economic order see E. A. Brett, International Money and Capitalist Crisis (London: HEB, 1983).
See Milton Friedman, Inflation and Unemployment (London: IEA, 1977) and Bosanquet, After the New Right.
See M. Kalecki, ‘Political Aspects of Full Employment’, Political Quarterly, 14 (1943) pp. 322–31.
For the main themes of Hayek’s writings see Norman Barry, Hayek’s Social and Economic Philosophy (London: Macmillan, 1979).
See W. Rees-Mogg, The Reigning Illusion (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1974).
See F. A. Hayek, Denationalisation of Money (London: IEA, 1978).
This has been put forward in a paper by Kevin Dowd, ‘The State and the Monetary System’ (Fraser Institute, 1988).
See the discussion by Bosanquet in After the New Right. A representative supply side text is B. Bartlett and T. P. Roth (eds) The Supply Side Solution (London: Macmillan, 1983).
See the criticism by George Gilder, one of the leading American supply siders, in the preface to the English edition of Wealth and Poverty (London: Buchan & Enright, 1982).
For the inter-war debates on the feasibility of socialism see F. A. Hayek (ed.) Collectivist Economic Planning (London: Routledge, 1935).
Robert Nozick is professor of philosophy at Harvard, best known for his Anarchy, State and Utopia (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1974).
Milton Friedman, ‘The line we dare not cross’, Encounter (November 1976).
For an analysis of the public choice school see Bosanquet, After the New Right, ch. 4, and
Buchanan J. et al., The Economics of Politics (London: IEA, 1978).
Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia. Nozick’s positions are criticised in several of the contributions to J. Paul (ed.) Reading Nozick (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1982).
For the extreme Austrian position see Murray Rothbard, Power and Market (Kansas City: Sheed Andrews & McMeel, 1977).
The analysis of the new class has been developed particularly by the American neo-conservatives such as Irving Kristol. See I. Kristol, Two Cheers for Capitalism (New York: Basic Books, 1978) and Peele, Revival and Reaction.
Representative examples of conservative New Right writing are Roger Scruton, The Meaning of Conservatism; Maurice Cowling (ed.) Conservative Essays (London: Cassell, 1978); and
Rhodes Boyson, Centre Forward (London: Temple Smith, 1978).
The impact of the cold war on postwar politics is emphasised by Phil Armstrong, Andrew Glyn and John Harrison, Capitalism since World War II (London: Fontana, 1984).
Those who moved right in the 1950s included the former Trotskyists such as Irving Kristol, and former Communists such as Alfred Sherman. There was a further wave later among those repudiating social democracy. See, for example, Patrick Cormack, Right Turn: Eight Men who changed their minds (London: Leo Cooper, 1978). The eight included Max Beloff, Lord Chalfont, Paul Johnson, Reg Prentice and Hugh Thomas.
The origins and course of the new cold war are traced by Fred Halliday, The Making of the Second Cold War (London: Verso, 1983).
Moss, The Collapse of Democracy, is a good guide to subversion. See also the publications of the Freedom Association, and Brian Crozier’s Institute for the Study of Conflict. The flavour and tone of this literature can be sampled in Brian Crozier, Socialism: Dream and Reality (London: Sherwood, 1987).
F. A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (London: Routledge, 1944).
Colin Leys in Politics in Britain (London: HEB, 1983) ch. 15, analyses right-wing scenarios of political collapse.
The ideas and politics of the American New Right has been analysed by Mike Davis in ‘The Political Economy of Late-Imperial America’, New Left Review, 143 (1984) pp. 6–38; and
‘Reaganomics’ Magical Mystery Tour’, New Left Review, 149 (1985) pp. 45–66.
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© 1988 Andrew Gamble
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Gamble, A. (1988). The New Right. In: The Free Economy and the Strong State. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-19438-4_2
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