It is frequently argued that, for good or ill, American political culture is dominated by liberal values. In this talk I want to suggest that, contrary to conventional wisdom, there has long been an important strand of European-style conservatism in the United States. This is particularly clear in the reaction of business elites and their political supporters to industrial conflict in the period from the 1870s to the 1930s. But it can also be regularly observed in both earlier and later periods. In the first part of the talk, I will set out some historical evidence for the presence of a conservative tradition in the United States and identify some of its distinctive features. I will then turn to the contemporary upheaval shaking American politics and offer some more speculative thoughts about what, if any, light this way of viewing American political culture sheds on the extraordinary political realignment that is currently taking place.

Robin Archer is the Director of both the Postgraduate Program in Political Sociology and the Ralph Miliband Program at the London School of Economics and Emeritus Fellow in Politics at Corpus Christi College at the University of Oxford. He is the author of Why is there No Labor Party in the United States? (Princeton) and Economic Democracy (Oxford), as well as works on The Conscription Conflict and the Great War (Monash) and Out of Apathy: Voices of the New Left (Verso).