Not “Has"the left” ever been wrong", but have social conservatives, ever, once, been right, in any country, about any issue, ever?
Maybe that time in 1970’s France when the intellectuals were signing a petition to abolish age of consent laws.
Yes, they regularly have valid critique of neoliberalism. It’s what they want to do about it that’s the issue
Most conservative movements today are neoliberal, or friendly to neoliberalism. I have no idea where you’re getting the idea that they’re not simpatico.
Well two things:
1- this depends if you’re talking about a specific group of conservatives like American conservatives which are just more conservative neoliberals. If these are indeed the conservatives you are talking about, then
2- The ideology of neoliberalism itself has no frame of reference built in for self crit like dialectical materialism, therefore many accurate criticisms of neoliberalism come from hypocritical neoliberals themselves who live through and observe the issues at hand and think more of what they are doing is the solution. Ask any neolib if they want to eliminate poverty, they’ll tell you yes and they may even tell you that capitalism is the issue. The problem stems from them thinking MORE free capitalism can fix poverty. So their critique of capitalism resulting in poverty is correct, their method of addressing it is where they go wrong.
I watched Richard Wolff debate some libertarian on “capitalism or socialism” and the libertarian actually said “we don’t live in capitalism, we live in CRAPitalism” to thunderous applause.
So yeah I agree with your second point.
I think there was a time in the late 19th century/early 20th century when the more socially progressive side of politics was all about eugenics, but I’m not sure if conservatives were opposed to that per se.
But basically no.
The Luddites thought that machines and factories were destroying their traditional way of life and creating hardships for the workers. Wikipedia says they’re radicals but they seem conservative to me.
In Domenico Losurdo’s “Liberalism: A Counterhistory,” the author mentions how advocates for the feudal system spoke forcefully against the brutality of chattel slavery, which exploded in scale after liberal revolutions.
It looks like there are probably a lot of examples where it’s obvious that the nobility and bourgeois are expanding their power and the socially conservative peasants or workers push back. I have a hunch that this sort of thing becomes rarer as the alienation of labor increases but I don’t have the historical backing to back that up.
The Luddites were a bit of a predecessor to a working class movement. They recognized that output was going up but pay was not. Apprentices weren’t actually being taught the trade, they were being put to work on the machines. They were positioned at a point in time where they could remember clearly how things used to work and see clearly how they were changing, but were ultimately too small and specific a group to do much about it.
I thought of another example. The German Peasant Revolt involved peasants revolting because the nobility and bourgeoisie were trying to reduce the peasants to serfs (being a peasant is better than being a serf). It It also involved a lot of other factors and was a political and religious clusterfuck (much like every other historical event in the Holy Roman Empire) so it’s possible to interpret it differently. This is also what Martin Luther was talking about when he wrote “Against the Murderous, Thieving Hordes of Peasants”, despite the peasants being (in some ways) inspired by the protestant reformation.
During WWII some conservatives in Nazi-occupied countries were active in the resistance. Nowhere near as active as the communists and for nationalist rather than anti-fascist reasons. And many other conservatives were Nazi sympathisers. But still, killing Nazis is objectively right.
