This is a 24-mark Section C ideology essay marked AO1 (8) AO2 (8) AO3 (8). The question is testing the long-running internal disagreement within conservatism between three traditions: Traditional / One-Nation conservatism, and the New Right (which itself splits into neo-liberalism and neo-conservatism). All three are within mainstream conservatism. The disagreement is structural and intellectual, not just political.
The mark scheme rewards answers that work through the strands and the named thinkers. Real-world political examples are illustration only - they do not score on their own.
The strongest line of argument is YES TO A LARGE EXTENT - conservatives are divided in their view of the economy, with the One-Nation tradition supporting a paternalist mixed economy and the New Right (especially neo-liberalism) demanding free markets, low tax and a minimal state.
The 9PL0 specification names five key conservative thinkers. Each has a distinct view of the economic role of the state.
| Thinker | Strand | Economic position |
|---|---|---|
| Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) | Foundational | The state is the Leviathan - its job is order and security, the precondition for any economy. Hobbes is not directly an economic thinker, but his case for a strong state underwrites the conservative defence of property rights and law. |
| Edmund Burke (1729-1797) | Traditional | Society is an organic inheritance; property is held in trust between past, present and future generations. Wealthy citizens have a duty of noblesse oblige. Burke supports state intervention to maintain social cohesion and is suspicious of unfettered laissez-faire. |
| Michael Oakeshott (1901-1990) | Traditional / One-Nation | Pragmatic. Politics is the pursuit of intimations, not utopia. Oakeshott rejects abstract economic doctrines (whether socialist or libertarian) and supports a mixed, evolving economy guided by tradition. |
| Ayn Rand (1905-1982) | New Right (neo-liberal) | Objectivism. Self-interest is morally virtuous; altruism is corrupting. Free markets and absolute property rights are the only just economic system. Rejects redistribution, welfare, and public ownership outright. |
| Robert Nozick (1938-2002) | New Right (libertarian) | The minimal night-watchman state, justified only by the entitlement theory of just acquisition. Taxation for redistribution is forced labour. Free markets without state interference are the only legitimate economic order. |
Traditional conservatism, founded on Burke's reaction to the French Revolution, sees society as a slow organic accumulation in which property and inheritance are bound up with social duty. The economy is part of the social fabric, not an autonomous machine. Government may legitimately intervene to preserve harmony, prevent destitution, and maintain the inherited order.
One-Nation conservatism, named for Disraeli's Sybil (1845) and his metaphor of "two nations" of rich and poor, develops the Burkean strand into an explicit political programme. Society's wealthier classes have a duty to mitigate inequality; an active state is the instrument. Concretely this supports:
Burke and Oakeshott are the key thinkers cited here. Both share scepticism of grand abstract economic theories and a preference for cautious, gradual change. Oakeshott is famously suspicious of "rationalism in politics" - his critique applies as much to libertarian utopianism as to socialist planning.
Brief illustration: the Conservative governments of Macmillan (1957-63) and Heath (1970-74) operated within this strand, accepting the post-war Keynesian settlement.
The New Right is a 1970s reaction against post-war Keynesianism. It rejects One-Nation paternalism in favour of two reinforcing programmes:
Drawing on classical liberal economics (Hayek, Friedman) and libertarian philosophy (Nozick, Rand), neo-liberalism argues:
Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974) provides the philosophical core: the only legitimate state is the minimal state limited to enforcing contracts and protecting property. Anything more is theft. Rand's The Virtue of Selfishness (1964) supplies the moral framework: altruism corrodes; egoism is healthy.
Neo-conservatism is socially authoritarian: strong state on law, order, family, traditional values, foreign policy. Economically it is closer to neo-liberalism than to One-Nation conservatism, but is willing to use state power for traditional social ends in a way pure libertarians would reject.
The two New Right strands sit uneasily together - Thatcherism in the UK was an attempt to fuse them: free markets in the economy, traditional state authority on social order. The internal tension was real: Thatcher's economic liberalism rolled back the state in some areas while strengthening it in others.
Brief illustration: Thatcher's governments 1979-1990 implemented the neo-liberal economic programme - privatisation, deregulation, monetarism, weakening of trade unions.
The cleanest way to organise the answer is to set the thinkers against one another on specific economic questions.
Burke and Oakeshott support a welfare state on grounds of social cohesion and noblesse oblige. Nozick rejects it as forced labour through taxation. Rand rejects it as morally corrupting altruism. The disagreement is fundamental: not how big the welfare state should be, but whether it is legitimate at all.
One-Nation conservatives accept progressive taxation as the price of social cohesion. New Right neo-liberals demand the lowest possible flat or low-progressive tax to preserve incentives. The thinkers split: Burke would tax the wealthy to fund their duties to the poor; Nozick treats redistributive taxation as theft.
Burke and Oakeshott accept regulation as part of the organic management of society. Nozick and Rand see regulation as state coercion violating property rights. Neo-liberalism wants comprehensive deregulation; the One-Nation tradition wants pragmatic case-by-case regulation.
One-Nation conservatives accept public utilities, public health and public broadcasting. Neo-liberals demand privatisation. The Thatcher governments of 1979-90 implemented the neo-liberal preference; the Macmillan governments of 1957-63 the One-Nation preference. Same party, opposite programmes.
The line of argument is YES TO A LARGE EXTENT - conservatives are divided in their view of the economy. The disagreement runs between:
The fair concession is that all conservatives share commitment to private property, markets and a limited state. The shared base is real. But within those bounds the differences have been substantial enough to produce visibly different governing traditions, and the New Right's intellectual ascendancy from the 1970s reshaped the Conservative Party's economic programme.
The internal disagreement also persists in the contemporary Conservative Party - the Tory Reform Group represents the One-Nation strand; the right of the parliamentary party draws on the New Right tradition. (One-line illustration only - the marks are awarded for the thinker and strand argument above, not for current UK politics.)