ABSTRACT
This chapter explores alternative conservative political tradition that illuminates how some conservatives have not been reflexive cheerleaders for unbridled capitalism, but how they have instead problematized capitalism; and how they ultimately attempted to reconcile capitalism with conservatism. The political thinkers who make up this alternative tradition within conservatism are a diverse lot, and by no means do their criticisms of laissez-faire capitalism or their respective alternative visions form a coherent grouping or linear narrative. In addition to capitalism's threat to conservative values, variously defined, conservative critics of capitalism believed that it also undermined the traditions and institutions of a conservative social order. The reductionism and egalitarianism inherent in capitalism explains its destructive impact on social institutions. Another key feature of the conservatives' cultural critique of capitalism was their belief that capitalist morality and values contributed to elite degeneration—in other words, the destruction of an elite fit to rule.
