Survival Society, Self-Fulfilment Society and Quixotic Society

Well, I have just returned from a Linguistics Colloquium in Spain, where I gave a paper on Description Logic, at the University of Alcalà de Henares, the place of birth of Miguel Cervantes, author of Don Quixote. So why not talk about Quixotism or Quixoticism or perhaps Quixotry for this week’s Issue? Not least when I have only just come back, so having little time to prepare this paper.

Well, in my articles on Liberalism, I was working up to the issue of the freedom to do as one wishes, so long as nobody else suffers. This differs from economic liberalism, which in its extreme form justifies suffering at the altar of the market. In fact a society has to balance the interests of survival and self-fulfilment in an environment where one doesn’t necessarily know how much activities freely pursued causes suffering for others.

We might capture this uncertainty by a risk pyramid: here we show safe risks at the bottom and the more speculative at the top. Some people say that men are expected to take risks while women provide a more secure environment, perhaps a source of role differentiation, for better or worse:

Here we can see that survival will relate to a lower level of risk than self-fulfilment. A right-winger may look at this and say “doesn’t this prove that survival is more important than self-fulfilment?” Well, we might also say that we need security for the weak and vulnerable, not just for major investors.

But along with Tony Blair, we know that there can be a Third Way: and that is of course The Quixotic Society. This is the immediate reaction to events as you choose to see them. And of course this is what the market economy is all about: you are focused on the immediate equation of supply and demand, and for each of these you are free to act according to your whim, whether this is sound or not.

And by satisfying the immediate need to equate supply and demand, one can ignore how much one exhaust resources to extinction. In this regard, windmills need not be at all risky, since they use a renewable source.

Well, to balance all these factors, I shall post here a flow chart which I designed recently, which sort of marries all three considerations. At least, sticking to the flow-chart balances survival and self-fulfilment. And the Third Way tends to break the rule: represented mainly by the amber, it is not a happy medium: it is OUT!

The third choice also leads to the amber light: perhaps it is for those who tilt at windmills knowing they are windmills. They may or may not be Sancho Panzas.

But it is the essence of modern conservatism (and others) to create scapegoats. Tilting at windmills! As the great man himself said to Sancho Panza:

“Fortune is guiding our affairs better than we ourselves could have wished. Do you see over yonder, friend Sancho, thirty or forty hulking giants? I intend to do battle with them and slay them. With their spoils we shall begin to be rich for this is a righteous war and the removal of so foul a brood from off the face of the earth is a service God will bless.”

My bold: in effect, Quixotic Society claims to be opposed to its enemies and what they stand for, but perhaps it is the contrary - it nevertheless needs them.

Martin Prior


From Philosophy Takeaway Newsletter - 57

Liberalism: from Philosophers to Society? - By Martin Prior

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.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_liberalism

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'

Liberalism: from Philosophy to Politics - By Martin Prior

Liberalism: from Philosophy to Politics

In researching this article I decided to look for liberal philosophers, and in Wikipedia some 80 are listed, but I have picked out some dozen to illustrate the development of ‘liberalism’ a word that first appeared in the 1810s.

Let us first look at the Chinese thinker Lao-Tze (6th century BC), founder of Taoist philosophy.  In general, he did not think people deserved or needed freedom: he thought it counter-productive to do otherwise.  Thus his economic views were not by implication laissez-faire, since his maxim ‘wei wu wei’, do without doing implied an objective.

Aristotle is noted for his work Hê politikê, in which happiness is his main objective.  He believed that oligarchy was a ‘good thing’ but too profit-motivated, and democracy was a ‘bad thing’, serving only the poor, and that meritocracy was the best thing only not feasible.  Therefore the best solution was a compromise, the ‘polity’ combining democracy and oligarchy.  Some economic points: (i) note the parallel between oligarchy and modern-day oligopoly, and (ii) Aristotle was a firm believer in private property, thinking it more effective than property-less examples among the ‘barbarians’.

Niccolò Machiavelli (Florence, 1469–1527), the ‘realist’ political philosopher, has been seen by later generations as a cold schemer, who worked in the environment of the many Italian states, principalities and republics, which latter he preferred, despite the name of his most famous work, Il Principe, The Prince.  In general, he argued that that liberty was a central good that government should protect.  In this he conflicted with those who believe freedom requires small government.

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Thomas Hobbes (England, 1588–1679) has been identified by Leo Strauss as the ‘father of liberalism’, but his principle theme was that government was motivated by ‘interest’, an important term which transcends politic and economic.  But he believed that only strong government could restrain unchecked interest.

Before turning to Locke, we should look at Baruch Spinoza (Netherlands, 1632–1677),  a Jew with complete commitment to determinism, for whom freedom could only be the freedom to say ‘yes’.  We must note this issue, since other philosophers discussed here have not notably addressed it.  

John Locke (England, 1632–1704) believed in “man’s” ‘natural rights’, which he considered to be life, liberty and ‘estate’ (property) as well as tolerance.  In economic terms , his theory or property was based on actions rather than inheritance.

John Locke died in 1704, some 70 years before Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations (1776).  But we must take Smith together with Anders Chydenius (Finland (then a part of the Swedish realm), 1729–1803) a Finnish priest representing the clergy in Sweden’s four-estate parliament, whose main output was in 1766, ten years earlier.  He advocated complete economic and individual freedom, which included workers’ rights of mobility, choosing their employer, freedom of speech and trade. And abolition of wage and price controls.  He helped draft Sweden’s 1766 Constitutional Law on the Freedom of Printing, which is the forerunner of many natons’ freedom of information laws.  Along with Adam Smith he had a concept similar to the ‘invisible hand’.

Adam Smith (Great Britain, 1723–1790) was indeed the founder of economic liberalism, though we see its seed with a number of thinkers before him.  His economic liberalism included the abolition of slavery, but he outlined the idea that finite resources will be put to ultimately their most efficient use if people were allowed to get on with it and act in their self-interest.  Smith does of course have his critics and disciples, notably Mrs Thatcher with her apparent tenet that greed is good.

We can take together Jeremy Bentham (United Kingdom, 1748–1832) and John Stuart Mill (United Kingdom, 1806–1873).  Bentham is known as an early utilitarian, and his individual freedoms were far-ranging and well ahead of his time.  They included equality for women, abolition of slavery and separation of church and state.  His economic liberties included free prices, free trade and no restrictions on interest, and the end of colonialism.  But he was an interventionist regarding control of monopolies, pensions and health insurance.

Mills’ 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 the latter.  He believed in the pursuit of happiness as the ‘highest normative principle’ rather than a right.  In this regard he was a utilitarian and has been considered the founder of ‘Social Liberalism’: he accepted state intervention if there were sufficient utilitarian grounds.  We thus see a marriage of utilitarianism and a concept of social liberalism.

Thorstein Veblen (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.

Veblan died in 1926, when Friedrich Hayek (Austria/United Kingdom/United States/Germany, 1899–1992) was starting to develop the philosophies of neo-liberalism, in which the market supplant any concept of social justice.  Neo-liberalism states that the states role is to ploice the free working of the market.  He did in fact predict the Greta Depression, but strongly opposed the views of John Maynard Keynes (Britain, 1883–1946).  Apparently the two became friends as air-raid wardens during WWII.  It was of course the conflicting views of Hayek and Keynes that revealed the conflict between economic and social liberalism.

I could say more about Milton Friedman (United States, 1912–2006, economist) and Noam Chomsky (United States, 1928– , linguist), but I shall conclude with the ideas of Isaiah Berlin (Latvia/United Kingdom, 1909–1997).  He is 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.

I stress this dichotomy because in my own arguments I have used a similar but different dichotomy: freedom from and freedom to.  Strangely freedom-to corresponds almost exactly to negative liberty, without the emphasis on the external.  To my mind this is the essence of Social Liberalism: the freedom to do as one wishes provided that other people’s like freedom is not violated.  To my mind this is part of single-person ethics if one wishes to consider ethics in axiomatic terms.  Freedom-from is generally emphasised by neo-liberals, for who freedom-to is less important.  Freedom-from is in fact in conflict with positive liberty.

If we take the step from philosophers, to my mind, the Whigs and Liberal successors differed from Conservatives in the way they managed imperialism.  Unlike Bentham they were in favour of colonialism.  But liberals knew when to advance and when to retreat.  But conservatives do not really know how to advance, but cling on to what they have  got, even when wisdom counsels retreat.  To my mind part of their motivation lies in the libs having a stronger capital base.

The European liberals are on the advance, mainly in partnership with the Christian Democrats, while British Tories are resisting retreat. So I believe are the Americans, with all their machinations in Latin America, the Middle East and elsewhere.

LibDems are a different animal altogether: they are civic liberals, ambiguous between the economic and the social. People usually talk of a dichotomy between economic and social liberalism, but much of what is called social liberalism is really civic.

I have finished by turning from philosophers to politicians. Many philosophers are also politicians. like Thomas Jefferson and the Finn Chydenius. Many too were close to politicians, like Machiavelli, Keynes and Friedmann.

In this paper, social liberalism is something that is rearing its head: John Stuart Mill and Chomsky are names which might be associated with social liberalism, but this requires a closer examination at some later stage.

Martin Prior

The Philosophy Takeaway Issue 50 'Open Topic'