Conservatism is usually understood as an ideological movement that was born as a contradiction to the French Revolution and its bourgeois-liberal ideas. In this monumental study, which is translated here for the first time into English, Panagiotis Kondylis illustrates that, on the contrary, conservatism should be understood in a much broader way, as a total ideological and socio-political reaction (from the higher classes) of pre-modern society against its dissolution, which was initially marked by the emergence of the modern centralized state, and later completed by the displacement of the agrarian economy by the industrial-capitalist.

After the definitive disintegration of pre-modern society, the representatives of conservatism ally with their former implacable enemies, the liberals, against radical democracy, which in turn merely radicalizes liberal ideals, while at the same time adapting elements of conservative criticism of capitalism to its own purposes.

Conservatism has long been dead, says Kondylis; it died along with the era and the society that gave birth to it. Thanks to the comprehensiveness of its perspective, the book provides a synthetic historical account of the main ideological and political developments that marked modern times, from their beginnings up to the 20th century.