Conservatism and the dialectic of ideology

This essay applies the dialectical method to the phenomenon of conservatism by putting it into a coherent system of modern ideologies. It draws attention to three groups of dialectical phenomena: the mutual reflection of modern ideologies in each other, which leads to the partial syntheses of their hybridization; the dialectic of form and content that changes situational conservatism into a substantive one, and vice versa, and the historical dialectic of progress and regress that makes conservatism constituent of many modern institutions that otherwise look “progressive.”