Similarities between conservatism and classical liberalism?

[Geoffrey Howe]

I've recently been thinking that there's a good deal of overlap between traditional conservatism as expressed by Burke and classical liberalism.

Burke's big idea, if I can condense it, was that social institutions develop organically, that they represent the sum of human experience and that people - revolutionaries - couldn't remake them anew. Adam Smith - a very important liberal - said he knew of no one who thought more closely to him about economics.

The big idea of Hayek - who saw himself as, and no doubt was, a liberal in the tradition of Tocqueville - was the "spontaneous evolution" of society and the economy: a phrase which could have come from Burke. He argued that no one can know much at all about the billions of human interactions that form the complex modern economy; that it cannot be designed. Hayek argued that knowledge is dispersed, and price signals are the way we glean information from the market.Where Burke was attacking the French Revolution, Hayek was attacking central planning and socialism with very similar arguments. Indeed, Hayek called himself an "Old Whig," Burke's phrase for his version of Whiggery (in opposition, IIRC, to the "New Whig" Foxites who were less hostile to the French Revolution).

So, to my mind, there is considerable overlap between conservatism as enunciated by Burke and classical liberalism as enunciated by Hayek. I think you could make a "spectrum" of these views with one end emphasising conservation and the importance of tradition (perhaps more open to economic intervention) and the other side emphasising markets and freedom from state control. Hayek would obviously be at this end of the spectrum.

Thoughts?

[Statilius the Epicurean]

I'm guessing you've read Hayek's Why I am Not a Conservative? I don't think it's a particularly original observation that Burke is in the same tradition, indeed Hayek himself said as much.

[vitoNova]

There is no overlap, and there are no similarities.

In fact, hostility towards global capitalism and MUHclassical liberalism is the chief reason why Trump won in 2016.

[Tartarus Sauce]

There is no overlap, and there are no similarities.

In fact, hostility towards global capitalism and MUHclassical liberalism is the chief reason why Trump won in 2016.

Trumpism isn't really an expression of Burkean conservatism.