Liberalism:
from Philosophers to Society?
In my last article,
Liberalism: from Philosophers to Politicians,
I discussed a dozen or so writers on freedom/liberalism, from Lao-Tze (6th
century BC) to Isaiah Berlin. Strands of
economic and socialism crept in, with Adam Smith seen as the father of economic
liberalism, and John Stuart Mill the father of social liberalism. To my mind there is not so much a dichotomy
as a triplet, with civic liberalism often, as with the LibDems, ambiguous
between the other two.
In fact,
social liberalism is not merely non-economic liberalism: it must identify the
social freedoms that economic liberalism violates. In this paper I shall examine philosophers
from the 'alleged' social liberal John Stuart Mill, to the 'alleged'
libertarian socialist Noam Chomsky. I
shall then briefly discuss how liberalism and conservatism differ when adopted
by the ruling classes: basically conservatives appear more progressive when
empire or sphere of influence is expanding, and liberals appear more
progressive when this is contracting.
As I said in
my last paper, John Stuart Mill’s (England,
1806-1873) liberalism coincided with the shift from Whigs to Liberals round
1868, and most of the period of Gladstone’s first of four Liberal
Governments. He is said to be an early
champion of this new Liberalism. But he
was very much a utilitarian, and believed in the pursuit of happiness as the
‘highest normative principle’ rather than a right. Thus he was a utilitarian as well as being
considered the founder of ‘Social Liberalism’ and accepted state intervention
if there were sufficient utilitarian grounds.
We thus see a marriage of utilitarianism and a concept of social
liberalism.
Thorstein
Veblen (US, 1857–1926) was born roughly at the start of Mills’ last 15
years. He was influential to those in
America who saw liberalism as seeking a rational basis for the economy above
competition and seeking of monopoly power.
His central argument was that individuals required non-economic time to
become educated individuals. This
development of liberalism to transcend the economic was parallelled by Isaiah
Berlin (Latvia/United Kingdom, 1909–1997), famous for distinguishing two
concepts of liberty 'positive' and 'negative' liberty which he saw as mutually
opposing concepts. Positive liberty
arouse through state power to ‘liberate’ humankind from its worst aspects and
was in danger of sliding into totalitarianism.
On the other hand, negative liberty required that individuals were given
maximal freedom from external constraints, as long as the like rights of others
were not violated.
These last
two are important in the development of the social factors in liberalism, but
just as Adam Smith had added formalism to economic liberalism, so did the UK
Liberal John Maynard Keynes for Keynesian economics, which was critical for
developing new attitudes in attacking the Great Depression. Those who attacking present-day austerity cite
Keynes, and show how Obama’s policies are working, just as Roosevelt’s did.
Countering
Keynes are Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman, who developed neo-liberalism,
which has crept into much modern economic thinking. It had disastrous results in Chile, which was
set up as a flagship under the then military junta, which eventually abandoned
much of the thinking of Friedman’s
‘Chicago Boys’, Chileans who had studied under Friedman in Chicago.
The prolific
works of Noam Chomsky (USA, 1928- , linguist and philosopher) give a day-to-day
and blow-by-blow account of neo-colonialism.
Now I have
shown how ‘liberalism’ can mask conflicting attitudes of the social and
economic liberals. But the term social
liberalism has been adopted by many in the centre and centre-right, such as
John Major. In fact we note from
wikipedia that:
“Social
liberalism seeks to balance individual freedom and social justice. Like classical liberalism, it endorses a market economy[my italics]
and the expansion of civil and political rights and liberties, but differs in
that it believes the legitimate role of the government includes addressing
economic and social issues such as poverty, health care and education.”
To my mind,
endorsing a market economy is neither social liberal nor indeed utilitarian;
John Stuart Mill had nothing significant to say about the market. But in fact not only is the market an
imperfect tool for social objectives. It
is not even an optimal tool in terms of economic efficiency. Thus:
(i)
The
optimum sum of profits is not the same as the sum of optimum profits across
companies: this is particularly noticeable in the drive to oligopoly and
monopoly.
(ii)
The
optimum sum of profits is not the same as the sum of optimum profits across
regions: in my view, though it is yet to become an important strand of economic
thinking, wealth tends to gravitate towards an economic centre of gravity,
something which increasingly afflicts the EU.
And of course quite notoriously the North-South Divide is notoriously
inefficient for its inequalities.
(iii)
The
optimum sum of profits is not the same as the sum of optimum profits across time:
this is most notable in the tendency of enterprises to exploit resources to
extinction. The air, water, animals (for
example fish) and in many ways, not least humans.
If I had a
wider economic brief here I would discuss ways of addressing these problems. But in the writings of Raymond Plant (UK,
1945-), political philosopher and Labour Peer writes extensively about
neo-liberalism. According to John Gray’s
review (in the New Statesman) of Plant’s Neoliberal
State, “Plant's central charge against neoliberalism is that, when stated
clearly, it falls apart and is finally indistinguishable from a mild form of
social democracy.” I can say no more.
When we move
from philosophies to politics, we move into an area where I believe we must
look into the political adherents’ motivations in terms of their part in
patterns of exploitation. And in the
developed countries, this really means thieves squabbling over the booty from
exploitation of the Third World. This
issue is in no way addressed by social marketers and mainstream social
democrats.
So regardless
of the self-image of liberals and conservatives, I shall briefly express their
behaviour in practice among leading world powers. The liberals value and
develop their skills, and are quite ready to create empires and ‘neo-colonies’,
which take advantage of their targets’ ignorance and often fear. The Tories’ approach, with whom conservatism
is an asset, is frighten would-be supporters into loyalty, playing on ignorance
and fear. This rather than technology is
their power base, but despite its shaky nature, they will resort to force
against their opponents rather than persuasion.
Martin
Prior
The
Philosophy Takeaway Issue 51 'Open Topic'
