ABSTRACT
In the late nineteenth century the scale and scope of the Conservative party’s strategy for coping with the twin challenges of the mass electorate and its ‘rent-seeking’ desires were, at the national level, defined by its leader’s pessimistic assumptions about the relationship between Conservatism and the masses. Socialism was thought to use the power of the State to promote the interests of the propertyless at the expense of the propertied. That Socialism had emerged at the same time as the introduction of mass politics did not come as a great surprise to many contemporary, especially Conservative observers, for they assumed there was an almost necessary correlation between ‘Democracy’ and ‘Socialism’. Salisbury’s view of the future of British politics was almost vulgar Marxist, insofar as he saw the triumph of democracy and radicalism, even Socialism, as almost inevitable. Radical Conservatism thus offered the party a positive platform which could, so it was argued, confront and defeat Socialism on its own terms.
