Kapitalismus und Konservatismus: Oder, wie konservativ ist die schwäbische Hausfrau?

Judging from the discourse of actually existing conservatism in contemporary Germany (and beyond), one would assume that conservatism and capitalism are natural allies and that the ‚Swabian Housewife‘ is the ideal representative of a set of conservative-capitalist virtues. In this contribution both of these notions will be subjected to critical scrutiny. First, I will provide a brief reconstruction of debates within American neo-conservatism that show that the relation between (contemporary) conservatism and capitalism are more fraught than one might assume. In the following, I will offer a concise conceptualiziaton of conservatism as a two-pronged preventive regime with anti-revolutionary thrust. Based on this I will argue that the combination of balanced budgets and debt brakes in the austere spirit of the Swabian Housewive can hardly be considered an ideal of conservative politics. On the contrary it served as an ideological justification of a deeply un-conservative politics that fed off the substance at the expense of future generations.