Liberalism, Socialism, Conservatism: A Beginner’s Guide To Political Ideology

Are you a liberal, socialist or conservative? This course will suggest you’re probably a mixture of all three – just like the major political parties. This is because political ideologies are not conceived in some academic laboratory and then foisted upon gullible voters: they arise from a variety of timeless human instincts, often contradictory, which politicians ignore at their peril. We shall therefore explore how each of these three ideologies emerged and how they view human nature, society, economics and the state. It will examine their various internal tensions (Keir Starmer, for instance, insisted he was a ‘socialist’ - as did Stalin), while demonstrating that each ideology can have different meanings around the world (UK and US liberals, for example, are considered ‘centre-left’; yet the Australian Liberal Party is considered ‘radical right’). 

It will also look at how these ideologies have evolved in response to altered circumstances. The course will duly reference several ‘alternative’ ideologies and offer some surprising suggestions. Populism, for example, will be portrayed as the antithesis of conservatism and far closer to socialism in its origins. Multiculturalism, far from being ‘progressive’, will be depicted as a betrayal of liberalism/socialism and the harbinger of ‘neo-traditionalism’. Feminism, meanwhile, will be deemed perfectly compatible with conservatism, while anarchism will be declared the enemy of socialism.

Finally, we shall ask if we’re approaching ‘the end of ideology’. Can Trump and Putin, for instance, be placed in any ideological box? Are the traditional ‘big three’ ideologies now (to use a Marxist phrase) ‘historically redundant’, soon to be replaced by exciting or disturbing alternatives?

Whatever the answers, this six-week course will prepare us for whatever lies ahead, while providing endless scope for ‘bourgeois dialecticism’, ‘revisionism’, the ‘obliteration of false consciousness’…and lots of other pretentious vocabulary.

Class days vary from Monday to Tuesday:

1. Tuesday 4 Nov

2. Mon 10 Nov 

3. Mon 17 Nov 

4. Mon 24 Nov 

5. Tues 2 Dec

6. Mon 8 Dec

Course Tutor: Richard Kelly BA, MA, MPhil