ABSTRACT
It was socialism, as a signifier of all that was subsumed under the rubric of modernity, that the conservatives primarily assailed themselves against. After such a removal of natural incentives, the only possible encouragement of production was a system of utmost compulsion, and the laissez-faire conservatives thought that socialism would therefore have to degenerate into "economic slavery" where everyone is obliged to work as he is bidden in order to avoid the lash. Quite so thorough a permeation of conservatism did not result in Great Britain, but there, too, the advocates of laissez-faire inequalitarianism and anti-statism had by the twentieth century migrated to the Conservative Party, prompted by the rise of socialism and collectivism. In contradistinction to the arguments of Root, Mallock and Hill, traditional conservatives therefore suggested that socialism implied lack of control and the freeing of primitive and socially disruptive passions and impulses that led to anarchy.
