Liberalism: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) (17 page)

There are two reasons why that supra-political and non-partisan interpretation cannot hold. First, when viewed through the lens of ideological analysis, there is no view from nowhere. Every view embodies cultural, social, and personal predilections. Second, the Supreme Court itself does not assign equal value to all views—it harbours pretty clear ideas for what count as just practices. Ideologies are always expressions of specific preferences for the good life, and consequently they rank what they believe is valuable in social practices and what isn’t. That ranking is always a political act. The argument against neutrality asserts that the Bill of Rights was itself the outcome of a particular constellation of ideas, ideologies, and cultural inclinations, and hence far from being a neutral guarantor of socially valuable goods. On that view, liberalism is a culturally parochial ideology—however attractive—masquerading as a universal one. As a predominantly European and North American cluster of ideas, liberalism has been exported to Latin America and to other countries, but always through local cultural filters. However, that view of liberalism was dismissed by Dworkin and his supporters as a sociological argument, not a philosophical one. In fact, it is neither, but an insight emanating from the comparative analysis of liberal ideologies, a project whose methodological openness is itself liberal.

Philosophical liberals find it hard to conceive of rights to liberty, to equality of respect, or to due process as themselves impositions on the conduct of others, or as a choice of specific values out of a larger pool, because they hold such rights to be the universal, logical, and ethical outcome of social life. That said, neutrality is itself a positive concept that has been promoted in some liberal quarters. Liberals who profess neutrality are far from neutral in recommending it—indeed they can be passionate about neutrality—and in that context advocating neutrality is a contradiction in terms. Better to hope for Supreme Court impartiality—addressing questions of justice and rights without favour or bias. Impartiality may be distinguished from neutrality, as it may be pursued within a framework that is itself non-neutral about the virtue of law and the wickedness of crime. That possibility is nevertheless difficult to sustain when one considers the frequently blatant partisan nature of Supreme Court nominations, even taking into account that the Justices are constrained by the rules and ethos of legal procedure. More broadly, as Herbert Croly noted in the evolutionary language prevalent a century ago, ‘whether in any particular case the state takes sides or remains impartial, it most assuredly has a positive function to perform on the premises. If it remains impartial, it simply agrees to abide by the results of natural selection.’ These problems once again illustrate the considerable tensions between purist, ideal-type, and abstract liberal philosophizing on the one hand and contextual views of liberalism that locate it in a spatial and temporal domain on the other. That domain reflects human design with all its strengths and fallibilities through the mirrors of disparate cultures and varying historical eras. That counter-approach is a rival approach to the philosophical study of political ideas. There is no need to rule on which approach is the more valid or persuasive, merely to recognize the diverse premises that vindicate the one or the other.

The standards of public life

Another theme in contemporary philosophical liberalism diverts it from realizing the long-standing ideological core of liberalism in its various guises. The emphasis switches to developing practices that give politics a good name and that reverse the often dubious reputation with which politics as a whole has been saddled. Liberalism is consequently repackaged as providing strong and specific standards that guide the proper ways those active in the public domain should conduct themselves. Foremost among those public guidelines are the need to display transparency and accountability, to counter corruption and complacency, and to justify public policy in a manner that can reach out to all members of society. All those address liberal core ideas in an oblique manner. The American political theorist Gerald Gaus has identified this as the requirement for public reason that ensures a ‘genuinely liberal political life’, and the British philosopher Bernard Williams as a ‘basic legitimacy demand’—one that insists that the state offer a justification of its power to each subject, although that itself is an impossibly idealist prerequisite. The high premium apportioned by many political theorists to fostering articulate deliberation as the bedrock of democratic practice, and to encouraging public accessibility to conversations among political elites, upholds those approaches. They exhibit a palpable shift from a liberalism whose aim it is to protect the virtues of the private sphere to one whose aim it is to vitalize the public sphere, continuing a process that began well over a century ago but playing down other established liberal ends.

The liberal core concepts of the general interest, of rationality and of limited power still underpin this philosophical dialogue, but more as indicators of decent and civilized conduct than as the distillation of substantive values that direct liberal policy. Notably, as Gaus puts it, the view he represents regards politics as the ‘continuation of ethics by other means’. The problem with this view is that it undermines politics as an autonomous area of human thought and action, and raises expectations of the political sphere as an impartial adjudicating arena of morality and virtue, one that liberalism simply cannot deliver. A more realistically grounded and flexible liberalism, a liberalism both principled and sceptical, might question that. Liberalism, to repeat, has throughout its history actively promoted certain choices and has regarded some features of public life as non-negotiable, dependent neither on consensus nor on adjudication. The bottom line is that no ideology, liberalism included, can forego the self-assumed responsibility of introducing its certainties into political life. Politics always includes that drive to finality on an ideology’s own terms, even when it is doomed to failure or to partial realization.

Liberal philosophical pluralism

There is another form of liberal philosophizing, one of whose leading exponents was the British philosopher Isaiah Berlin (1909–97). Berlin held that values were plural and diverse, and therefore could not be ranked in relation to each other. On the surface this bears some resemblance to the fifth layer of liberal pluralism, but it is in fact an older kind of pluralism. Rather than being based on notions of group identity held by groups themselves, it relates to the moral diversity of human values and of the choices people are entitled to make. The problem with according equal respect to the values held by individuals is that it bypasses the empirical fact that ranking goods is an inevitable feature of political life. Without a means of distributing the significance of values and asserting that ‘this is more important, or worthy, than that’ no political decisions can be taken. As a philosophical observation Berlin’s insistence on the incommensurability of values has some appeal to liberals (though even then most of them safeguard specific values through bestowing on them the finality of rights). As a political characterization, however, it does not represent actual liberalisms, which have to compete for their fortunes in the public arena in their quest to control political language.

Berlin, however, appreciated that conflict was inescapable, and his disdain for totalitarianism and the monism it entailed justified in his view a strong preference for the liberty of each individual to be different, rather than the alternative liberty of converging on universal rational truths and on ethical harmony. Here again a tension is evident: that between the decontested values and preferences that all ideologies exhibit and the desire to open up the range of human expression without hindrance. When liberals express support for the core concepts identified in
Chapter 4
, they try to choose certain conceptions of each concept in a manner that will permit a high degree of compatibility among them. At the same time, their preferences for those particular decontestations, and their dislike of others, shape their views of the political and moral worlds they inhabit. Liberals may be more amenable to the flexibility and adjustability of those conceptual clusters, but not infinitely so. Berlin preached toleration, but even liberal toleration has its no-go areas. Berlin himself, of course, subscribed to his own ranking of values, one in which (negative) liberty was a master concept. He was therefore intolerant of attempts to undermine it. When push comes to shove, a ranking of preferences must be arrived at in each concrete instance of governing and communal living. That is the flipside of liberal philosophers’ espousal of neutrality. Rather, as Berlin insisted, the one-size-fits-all of universal solutions disregards the ‘crooked timber of humanity’. That is why the right to, and capacity for, moral as well as political choice occupied pride of place in his kind of liberalism, even when the actual choices could be misguided.

Philosophical liberalism is a complex field of argument, assessment, and ideational experimentation. No creed can survive and remain healthy without the constant infusion of critical thinking from within. Political philosophers have pushed forward the boundaries of liberalism by subjecting it to intense scrutiny and they have also repeatedly attempted to tackle pressing issues of immense social significance—What has to happen for a political system to be legitimate? When is civil disobedience justified? What makes an individual deserving of rewards in the form of social goods? Should we compensate individuals for misfortune? Which democratic practices are most conducive to sustaining democracy? How do we reconcile cultural and ethnic loyalties with free choice and individuality? Philosophical liberalism has frequently narrowed and defined the area in which answers to questions such as these can—and should—be found. But to the extent that some of its practitioners believe in clear solutions to those issues, they may find themselves crossing the admittedly porous line between liberalism and its challengers—particularly that between the utopias of human perfection and the liberal acknowledgement of imperfection.

Chapter 7

Misappropriations, disparagements, and lapses

Ideologies are precarious and volatile things. They may burst out of their reasonable confines. They may fall into the wrong political hands and be abused. They may suffer from hubris and become an embarrassment to many of their adherents. They may lose touch with political reality. Or they may pull a metaphorical rabbit out of a hat and deliver far more than was expected of them. Liberalism ticks every one of those boxes.

In the debate over the question ‘is liberalism the winning ideology?’ one major issue is obscured. The rhetorical use of the word ‘liberalism’ is common in some circles that are not obviously liberal; all too often, they employ liberalism in a lax, restricted, and particularly tendentious fashion that serves their own ideological purposes. One intention may be to take cover under the umbrella of liberalism in order to sweeten some unpleasant pills those non-liberals are keen for people to swallow. Many right-wing and populist parties have gone down that route in recent years. Another intention may be to create a hostile caricature of liberalism—a foil against which it is easier to argue contrary positions. That route is often taken by Marxists or by postmodern thinkers.

The neoliberal offensive

As alluded to in earlier chapters, one of the most prominent misrepresentations of liberalism has been the introduction of the term ‘neoliberalism’. In this case an ideological variant dons the mantle of a rival in order to clothe itself in rhetorical respectability and even to wrest ground, deliberately or unwittingly, away from established liberal versions. Neoliberals tend to see the world as an immense and potentially unencumbered global market, in which the exchange of goods for profit overrides other aspects of cross-national relations. Individual understandings of neoliberalism will of course differ. But in general terms, being a liberal is understood by neoliberals to characterize the free individual agent, alone or in conjunction with others, as being above all economically assertive. The defining features of that assertiveness are to maintain and develop the economic power inherent in capitalist production and transactions, to open up new areas for investment, and to benefit from the plethora of goods available for consumption. Neoliberals subordinate social, political, and cultural spheres to a professed self-regulating economic market and their principles are supposed to inspire the ways all social activities are run.

In terms of liberal morphology, neoliberals confine the core liberal concept of rationality to maximizing economic advantage. They do away with any idea of natural sociability and minimize mention of human individuality as the end of social progress. State power is mainly marshalled to guaranteeing trade and commerce, not to creating the conditions for human flourishing and well-being. Instead the unfettered power of the market is unleashed, so that the liberal concept of constrained and accountable power is circumvented. It is retained mainly to protect entrepreneurs in going about their business, while sidestepping the aim of a genuinely free market that could unlock the economic energy and inventiveness held to be intrinsic to all individuals. In its most recent forms, neoliberalism champions a world in which huge multinational corporations and mega-banks increasingly control and dictate the way we live, fostering an imposed and conformist managerialism. Instead of regarding economic intercourse as a means to the furthering of political ends such as peace and international solidarity, it sees political institutions as a framework arrangement for securing the efficiency and financial prosperity of the private sector. Liberal universalism has been replaced with neoliberal globalism; the ethical permeation of individuals has been supplanted by the economic ingestion of territory. Even governments themselves are predominantly recast as investors and facilitators of trade, rather than deliverers of welfare or social justice. Only when financial crises erupt do governments make efforts to regulate the world of banking, but that is done with a relatively light touch.