Conscience of a Conservative - a couple of thoughts

Goldwater's (ghostwritten, per Wikipedia) Conscience of a Conservative is an important read.  Unlike man books that could be said of, it is also concise, clear and brief.  It essentially served as a manifesto for his '64 campaign against Johnson, and despite the latter success in characterizing Goldwater as a dangerous extremist, the book generally reveals a moderate and well considered view of the role of the state in the US and the US in the world.   

In domestic policy, he makes the case for a market economy, and warns against both direct state control and against crony capitalism, or subsidies for private businesses.  He saw a role for unions in the private sector as a necessary counterweight to concentrated corporate power, especially in one industry towns, as often happens, for example with coal mines, but was opposed to public sector unions, correctly seeing them as effectively organizing with politicians against the public.  He opposed both corporate and union contributions to political campaigns.  Though clearly religious and believing the policy should be inspired by faith, he was already critical of the conflation of church and state, a stance which would subsequently become more prominent as evangelicals made inroads into the GOP in coming years.  In foreign policy, Goldwater, not surprisingly advocated a muscular approach.    However, he appears to have either been unaware of or to have not believed in the Sino-Soviet split.  He, like many conservatives, considered the entire communist bloc to operate as a single, entity, which, as for a long time it mostly had.  It would have been pretty far seeing to determine otherwise in 1964, and publicly Chinese and Soviet communists concealed their differences, but within five years there would be border skirmishes between the two.  In less than a decade, Nixon and Kissinger would exploit the split in furtherance of Western interests.

The other criticism is that Goldwater considers his vision to be ultimately a piratical one, in contrast to socialist materialism.  Goldwater is too quick to cede material primacy to the socialists, arguing that their success not withstanding, it is not worth the spiritual costs.   It is true that freedom is good in and of itself, but he underestimates it's economic utility.  Again, in the context of the time the book was written, this is understandable.  It was only 8 or so years since sputnik, and a half-decade before the moon landing.  North Korea was generally seen as the more prosperous and stable of the two.  Khrushchev had recently proclaimed, "we will bury you" banging his (conspicuously well made) shoe for emphasis at the UN.  Yet, over time, it became increasingly clear that the ability of planned economies to mobilize resources could never match the capacity of free economies for generating wealth.  Today, progressives, who address it by emphasizing other priorities, often concede this point.  In other words, Goldwater allowed for socialist material success prematurely, and argued accordingly.

Still, this is a compelling book.  As it nears 50 years old, some allowances need to be made for the era in which it was written, and an understanding of the prevailing perceptions and concerns is helpful.  In all though, title notwithstanding, it provides a compelling vision of a more liberal society.