The managerial state has grown from an idea into reality, and the philosophy behind the managerial system of politics is destroying not just our economic structure of society but also, and more importantly, the moral basis of society.

In conservative circles we are mostly very critical on the welfare state, or, as many conservatives call it: the nanny-managerial state. I’m no exception, but I thought it was time to write a philosophical, moral and economic critique against this kind of politics and state structure.

Before I became a philosophical conservative, I was a fiscal conservative who reduced moral problems to economics, so I didn’t question the philosophical basis of the welfare state. Then I began to learn more about conservatism as a consistent political and social philosophy and I began to put more philosophical questions to certain problems, such as "is the welfare state good?"

Since Paul Gottfried published his splendid book, After Liberalism: Mass Democracy in the Managerial State, I became increasingly interested in the problems and the system that in paleoconservative circles has became known as "the managerial state."

As a scholar at the economic think tank, WorkForAll, I’m interested in the problems that Western countries have with respect to there economic system. In Western Europe government control is very strong and Keynes is still alive and kicking.

In this essay I want to write about the socio-economical problems of the Welfare State, but as a philosophical conservative I also want to talk about the cultural and moral problems facing a society in which the government has replaced the role of the classical institution of family.

The philosophy behind the managerial state

I must begin this essay with my idea on what the managerial or welfare state is in philosophical terms. Like Paul Gottfried, I believe the welfare state isn’t just a system of bureaucracy or just a discussion on how big the government should be, with leftist thinkers supporting the big government idea. No, I think the managerial state has grown from just an idea into reality, and that the philosophy behind the managerial system of politics is destroying not just our economic structure of society but also, and more importantly, the moral basis of society.

On the Right there are also supporters of the welfare state system, people who ignore the deeper philosophical and metaphysical problem of the managerial state. The Libertarians tend to detest the managerial system of politics because they detest government control of the economy. That is reasonable but it is not enough. On the other hand, there are neoconservative thinkers who support the managerial system and use it for "un-conservative" social engineering policy.

Against this "great alliance" there are traditional conservatives and libertarians who are fighting a cultural war against the managerial society of centralized government, mass bureaucracy and, as Paul Gottfried puts it, "mass democracy." In my view, you can’t call yourself a conservative if you support the basic elements of the managerial state, and it is those basic principles I wish to talk about.

The philosophy behind the managerial state is in essence the idea that the state must supply complete satisfaction for all its citizens; more precisely, the egalitarian spirit of managing society in a way where government takes control of society and replaces the old institutions of the civil society, like family.

The idea of the managerial system of government includes the belief in mass-welfarism, positive rights and laws prohibiting discrimination. Samuel Francis put it in an other way:

The managerial ruling class, lodged primarily in the state and the other massive bureaucratic structures that dominate the economy and mass culture, must undermine such institutions of traditional social life if its power and interests are to prevail. Disparities between races — rebaptized as "prejudice," "discrimination," "white supremacy," and "hate" to which state and local governments and private institutions are indifferent or in which they are allegedly complicit — provide constant targets of convenience for managerial attack on local, private, and social relationships. Seen in this perspective, as a means of subverting traditional society and enhancing the dominance of a new elite and its own social forms, the crusade for racial "liberation" is not distinctly different from other phases of the same conflict that involve attacks on the family, community, class, and religion.

The welfare state has grown since the 1930’s, when John Maynard Keynes said that government should become more active in economic life. This economic leftist thought found its way into public culture with the student rebellions in the sixties and seventies. Cultural progressivism and economic Keynesianism became the standard of modern Western society and nearly or completely destroyed it.

But the managerial state became ascendant only because the philosophy of progressivism imposed a system of looking towards a state and all its functions through voluntaristic or utilitarian eyes. While conservatives place checks and balances on power, progressives argued that the state had to do "all what would be necessary for the well-being of its citizens;" very beautiful when you read it, but in practice this means that the government can do whatever it wishes, whenever it wishes. Not really a democratic system, it more closely resembles the basis framework of a totalitarian society. Or, to put it in Rothbard terms: “how Bentham created Big Brother.”

Barry Goldwater put it another way in The Conscience of a Conservative:

. . . They reflect the view of a majority of the leaders of one of our parties, and of a strong minority among the leaders of the other, and they propound the first principle of totalitarianism: that the State is competent to do all things and is limited in what it actually does only by the will of those who control the state.

It is this kind of progressive thinking about what a State is and what it’s supposed to do for its citizens that created totalitarianism in the twentieth century, and the very big bureaucratic nursery or managerial state-system. Conservatives therefore defend the notion of limited State-power decentralization of power, along with a reservation of power to smaller communities.

But the managerial state didn't come about solely as a response to the needs of people in the twentieth century; it has in fact a philosophical framework that goes back much further in history, or to be precisely, to Hobbes’ Leviathan.

Positivist view on society and law

Central to the philosophy of progressives regarding what the State must do and what its limits are, is the philosophical positivist idea of science, justice and the State.

The first thinker that is linked to positivism, or used positivism in his philosophy, is Thomas Hobbes. Hobbes argued that if there wasn't something like the State, we would all fall into the basic elements and into the state of nature. That is in fact anarchy, chaos and destruction. To counter this, he proposed a State with massive centralized power. Every form of decentralization, in Hobbes’ view, would lead to further chaos and anarchy.

Hobbes views the individual as driven by “appetites and desires.” Every individual person has interests of his own and wants to achieve them. To achieve them without falling into the state of nature (war, chaos,etc.) it is necessary to make a contract, the symbol of a temporary union between two individuals to achieve their aims (their ‘appetites’ and ‘desires’). If one individual thinks the contract is of no use anymore, he can put an end to the contract and the alliance is broken.

Hobbes claims that there is also a sort of inter-subjective ‘appetite’ and ‘desire’ among all individuals that their contracts will be enforced; therefore there is also an inter-subjective sort of contract between all individuals within a territory that is the basis for the State. The State must do what it takes to insure its primary purpose; namely the quest for stability and order within a territory.

It’s this idea we can also find within the thinking of the later French school of enlightenment, more specifically in Rousseau’s “Du contrat social.” Rousseau saw society much like Hobbes did and he represented the socialistic or radical progressive wing of the enlightenment. Rousseau differed from Hobbes by introducing the idea of the “general will,” or the “general consensus among the people.”

It’s not necessary to indicate the dangers of this manner of thinking; the “general will” can turn rapidly, as De Tocqueville has said, to a tyrannical majority.

The general idea of Rousseau was, in essence, positivist. The idea that there is a separation between justice and the law is indeed a positivist view on law. In Rousseauean thought, judges are simply to obey the ‘general will,’ represented by some sort of parliament.

This can be very dangerous, because justice is defined merely as the subjective resulting power, as opposed to Natural Law, where justice is supposed to be objective and above the general will of the masses.

Conservatives defend the idea of a limited state and to achieve this goal, it is necessary to refute the positivist view on society, morality and law. Conservatives defend the notion of the Natural Law and of equal importance is the Common Law, the “Law of the Land,” as British conservative philosopher Roger Scruton has put it.

The Common Law is a law of the land and tradition, a law that is suitable to concrete and specific situations and cases; as contrasted with the positivist view, where the State can rapidly adjust law to the will of the masses. The Common law is effective in limiting state power because it links its jurisprudence to the traditional way of working within a land or region.

‘Anarcho-tyranny’

Now I would like to write more about the implications of the managerial welfare state on issues such as security and morality. Central to all of this is the term "anarcho-tyranny," which was introduced by the paleoconservative thinker Samuel Francis (and nowadays we can also read about it in the writing of  Theodore Dalrymple). He put it in this way: “we refuse to control real criminals (that's the anarchy) so we control the innocent (that's the tyranny).”

Because of our politically correct attitude towards crime, our policies are designed more to ‘prevent’ crime than to punish it; therefore crime is increasing and criminals are able to escape their punishment.

Policemen, certainly in Europe (I can’t talk about the U.S.), are afraid of being accused of racism or rascism by the progressive elite and bureaucracy. Therefore, they put more effort into public relations (that means promoting progressivism) than doing what they are supposed to do, reducing crime. A very good example of this progressive laissez-faire attitude towards crime and criminals is the following statement of the leader of the Walloon socialists, Elio Di Rupo, speaking to the French socialist party: “une société avec beacoup de police et des cours de justices, c’est une société violente;” “a society with many police and many courts of justice is a violent society.”

While there is more and more state control in economic terms, the state is withdrawing from their most important task: to secure the property and safety of its citizens (within its constitutional boundaries and limits of course). That’s because May of ’68 promoted the ideas of cultural Marxism or progressivism: criminals aren’t responsible for their acts, crime is produced by economic inequality. Therefore, the State intervenes in economic affairs and pushes towards more and more planning, even as it withdraws from its duty to defend law and order. Or, to put it otherwise: the State is regulating the ordinary, respectable citizens, while letting criminals go free from punishment or judgment. It’s obvious that this is a form of anarchy, mixed with a tyrannical system of law, so ordinary citizens are being punished twice.

To solve this problem we don’t need neoconservatives, who would like to fight corruption within the center of power; no, we need a system that upholds the true function and structure of the state, or to be more exactly, an Old Right opinion on what a state should look like and what it should do. The state must return to its specific, limited functions, and that does not include centralized economic planning.

The progressive views are harmful to the middle class, which is under attack from two sides: by criminals who are being pampered as ‘victims,’ and by the State that is intervening and sucking out all economic and cultural resources from communities and its participating individuals.

Message to the Right

To end this essay, I would like to urge all mainstream conservatives and libertarians to turn away from the neoconservative influence and take a firm stand against the social-democratic, progressive worldview, and to take up the real conservative world view, which is very much different from the Great Society-conservatives and libertarians who have ceded the philosophical and moral high grounds to the progressive elites.

The welfare state, or managerial system, gives food to people lacking in personal responsibility; the progressives tell them they aren’t responsible for their own actions, it’s the fault of society that they are acting in a violent and barbaric way. The progressive argues for greater central planning and more state intervention in the economy; otherwise, society will turn into a violent place.  Only through state planning can a "Great Society" be created, a Utopia that would last for a thousand years.

I would ask conservatives to read the books of the fantastic writer and thinker, Theodore Dalrymple, on the subject of violence and criminality.

Mainstream conservatives must not be swayed by that disguised form of progressivism, neoconservative.  If they are, the West will have no way to uphold its culture anymore against the progressive and multicultural elite of the New Left and its politically correct-regime.