Always at the After Party
“Liberals and Libertarians: Kissing Cousins or Distant Relatives?” That question was debated at a January 13 event sponsored by Stanford University's Program in Ethics in Society and the Cato Institute. Boston Review co-editor Joshua Cohen gave these comments.
In his book Political Liberalism, John Rawls offers a general description of a liberal political outlook. He intends the description to cover views ranging from the classical liberalism of Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman, arguably in the tradition of Locke and Adam Smith, to the more egalitarian liberalism of his own Theory of Justice. Rawls writes, “the content of a liberal political conception of justice is given by three main features:
1. a specification of basic rights, liberties and opportunities (of a kind familiar from constitutional democratic regimes);
2. an assignment of special priority to those rights, liberties and opportunities, especially with respect of claims of the general good and perfectionist values; and
3. measures assuring to all citizens adequate all-purpose means to make effective use of their liberties and opportunities.
These [three] elements can be understood in different ways, so that there are many variant liberalisms.”
Aren’t these just the typically vacuous abstractions that only a philosopher could love? No. Quite to the contrary, Rawls here identifies the common ground shared by classical and egalitarian liberals. And, I think, the common ground occupied by the participants in this discussion.
The abstract description of shared ground is located at the level of principle, not policy, but it is not vacuous at all, and in two important ways.
First, to believe in the equality and priority of basic personal and political liberties; to be skeptical as a corollary about paternalism, moralism, and perfectionism; to embrace an ideal of equality of opportunity and an assurance of adequate resources for all: these mark out a distinctive family of political views. Those three points are not common ground that we political liberals share with fascists; communitarians; traditionalists of various kinds; Stalinists; suffocating, oxygen-depleting moralists; believers in a confessional state (whatever the confession); or adherents to anti-state, anarchist libertarianism. We may be dull, but we are dull from our own distinctive principles.
Second, I think it is common ground among the variant liberalisms that expressing shared principles of this kind is an important part of politics. That is because we all think, anyway I think we all think, that there is something to the ideal of public reason: I mean the idea that politics is not simply about the use of power in pursuit of group interests, but also about drawing on basic principles and ideas of justice and fairness in guiding the exercise of collective power. For us, I think, there is some continuity between political philosophy and politics. And while we all know that politics is not a seminar and a movement is not a counterexample, we think that things have gone badly wrong in a democracy when politics degenerates into endless angling for personal and group advantage, and political “argument” is just another phase in that unprincipled struggle.
That said, we also disagree. And what we disagree about is, among other things, how best to understand those core elements of a liberal political outlook. And to provoke discussion I want to mention four points of disagreement: about democracy, equal opportunity, an adequate level of resources, and the use of collective power to advance political purposes. I am not sure whether our disagreements on these four broad issues are more philosophical or more empirical, or how, as a practical matter, to draw the line. One of the hopes I have for this discussion is that we can make some headway in thinking about why we disagree, despite our shared ground.
First, then, we are all democrats: we think competitive elections are important both for representativeness and accountability of government, and we favor universal suffrage and associated political rights of speech and association. But egalitarian liberals have a stronger ideal of political equality: we object when chances for political influence depend on positions in the distribution of income and wealth. We know that Obama dropped public finance, and are not happy that he did. And our unhappiness goes to something basic in our understanding of democracy. We think of democracy as more than an instrument for good policy. Democracy is also a way that equal citizens use their political rights to bring their sense of justice to bear on collective decisions: “The great glory of American Democracy,” King said, “is the right to protest for right.” Of course people attach different importance to political engagement. But we think that chances for influence should not depend so much on resources, and that means regulating campaign finance.
We see a basic political value at stake here—equality of opportunity—and think it is an appropriate use of powers to tax and spend to make policies in service of this value.
Now, we know (and share) the concerns about intrusive regulations, official distortions of speech, people spending on fancy cars instead of politics, and the troubles with drawing lines between regulable and non-regulable speech, especially in our political culture. But we see all of these concerns as conversation starters, not stoppers. The issue is whether we can figure out a system of electoral finance that would not simply dismiss the value of political equality. That is the question. But when we hear the idea of regulating the flow of money, we don’t assume that it will be perverse, or futile, or ruinous of all that is good (here, and later, I borrow from Albert O. Hirschman’s The Rhetoric of Reaction: Perversity, Futility, Jeopardy).
Second, I think there is a similar story about equal opportunity. Common ground is that we like the idea of people being able to do something with their talents, not being held back by artificial barriers as they are under racial apartheid or with rigid gender rules. And we don’t believe the unbelievable idea that everyone is the same—the ridiculous idea that we egalitarians are sometimes said to embrace. So we know that when people are not held back, they will end up in different places.
But we think that people are held back by lack of resources, and not only by legal restraints on social mobility. We think it is unfair when people of comparable ability, prepared to make comparable efforts fare differently because of their social-class origins. We know that this cannot be completely remedied. Having spent time on earth, we know that much better schools and training, better health care, and less solicitude for intergenerational transfers will not create the world of perfect equality of opportunity. But we see a basic political value at stake here—equality of opportunity—and think it is an appropriate use of powers to tax and spend to make policies in service of this value. And, once more, we don’t suppose that efforts to use political means to further this value will, as is said, be pointless, or hurt “the very people we are trying to help,” or send us down the road to some bureaucratic, rent-seeking swamp of feudal corruption. It might: markets fail, public policy fails. But experience on earth with addressing these issues in democracies is not a record of unbroken failure.
Third, there is the issue of adequate means: the idea that a protection of liberties and opportunities needs to be accompanied by some attention to the distribution of the resources we need to make use of our equal liberties. Assume that law and policy have a large impact on the life chances of members of society, that the distribution of resources is a function of the laws and policies we have adopted, not simply the choices that people make about what to do with their talents. We think that changes in laws and policies—including market-constituting laws about patent and copyright— would yield a different distribution of wealth. We know that some people will always fare less well than others. One response is to remind people that life is unfair. We think, instead, that a democratic society—dedicated to the proposition that we are all equals—must be prepared to explain to those whose prospects are worse why it has not chosen different rules that would make their prospects better.
Fourth: two threads run through all of this. One is about political philosophy. We egalitarian liberals are concerned about equality—political equality, equality of opportunity, equality of resources—in ways that classical liberals are not. But the disagreement also sounds in our positive views about politics, society, and markets: we don’t think that politics is a disaster waiting to happen. Friedman says “equality comes sharply into conflict with freedom; one must choose. One cannot be both an egalitarian . . . and a liberal.” We disagree. We think it is right to be both, and that it is possible to be both, without being naïve.
And that is partly because we have a different picture of politics. We think that politics is more than an unfortunate necessity required by our inability to live together without killing each other. We think it is, can be anyway, an arena in which we work out and pursue, sometimes with notable success, large and constructive purposes. When I think about the history of democracy in the past century, and think about its greatest achievements of domestic policy, the areas of real moral progress, I think of civil rights, women’s equality, and the halting fight against a class society. With respect, classical liberals were in the rearguard in every one of these struggles. And for a simple reason: in each case, the struggle depended on a willingness to fight against inequality, subordination, exclusion through political means, through the dread state. And if you mix your classical liberal values with the classically conservative predisposition to think that politics is at best futile, at bad perverse, at worst risks what is most fundamental, then you will always celebrate these gains when the fight is over: always at the after party, inconspicuous at the main event, and never on the planning committee.
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About the Author
Joshua Cohen is Professor of Political Science, Philosophy and Law at Stanford and Co-Editor of Boston Review.
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What is the word for someone who judges policies by whether they actually, in practice, further the big three liberal principles at the top.
Yes to Bolsa Familia, "no-excuses" KIPP-style schools, "Nudge"-style retirement accounts, Danish-style labor-market flexibility plus safety net, and integrated Kaiser Permanente-style health-care systems.
No to teachers unions, affirmative action, unreformed AFDC, and the Great Society.
That's a pragmatic agenda that liberals of all stripes could support.
Replace all the accomplishments of democracies with their failures, then weight the failures against the successes.
Is it really so bad to be at the after party for the successes if we can miss the whole shindig for the failures?
Anyway: What were the classical liberals and conservatives doing when they weren't obsessing over politics with Deliberative Democrats like Cohen? I guess they weren't doing anything important! But that's just the thing: Deliberative democrats think classical liberals should love politics more than they currently do and be willing to sacrifice other goods on its behalf.
But classical liberals have a different value system, one that places the heart of social life outside of the state. A serious problem for deliberative democrats is that they affirm civic humanism - that an intrinsic good in life is participation in the political process. But that's not liberalism, that's the invasion of perfectionism into liberalism. How can the deliberative democrat respect people who really just don't value political life or who think it corrupts the soul?
The answer is that they can't, not really.
Yes, it is. The list of failures by democracies pales before the list of failures by various forms of autocracy.
"How can the deliberative democrat respect people who really just don't value political life or who think it corrupts the soul?"
The fussiness and messiness of liberal democratic regimes is the price paid to create a society where social life is relatively untouched by the state. It's only in the context of a liberal, interventionist democracy that libertarianism can begin to assert itself politically. In autocracies, right and left, the state intrudes deeply into "apolitical" social life.
A deliberative democrat can respect an individual who doesn't value political life. But who can respect a governing philosophy which does not value political life, or which believes it "corrupts the soul"? Assert individual freedoms all you want, but they're only meaningful when the group works to preserve them. The only way the group can maintain order is to deliberate and compromise.
"the invasion of perfectionism into liberalism"? Libertarianism is the application of perfectionism to democracy. And the perfect is the enemy of the good.
Wasn't it the democrats who filibustered the Civil Rights Act? Wasn't it democrats who enacted Jim Crow to begin with? For that matter, wasn't it democrats who opposed the abolition of slavery? Wasn't it the great liberal hero who interned the Japanese-Americans? Wasn't it Kennedy who started the Vietnam War? Didn't Johnson perpetuate it? Doesn't the One, even now, in 2009, oppose gay marriage?
That is not a history I would go bragging to libertarians about. In fact, the liberals have a huge burden of proof to overcome to convince libertarians that the positive outcomes created by liberals outweigh the crimes they have committed against humanity.
"Yes, it is. The list of failures by democracies pales before the list of failures by various forms of autocracy."
Uh, since when did libertarians advocate autocracy? Since when is the only alternative to the liberal agenda autocracy?
This statement is simply untrue. Libertarianism has, in fact, asserted itself outside that context, so what do you base that statement on?
(2) There is also nothing wrong with deliberation and compromise. On the classical liberal view, however, there are many vitally important civil institutions where this can occur *outside of the state*: the family, the church, the civil association, the market, the non-profit sector and so on.
From what I can tell, Fass, you're simply repeating the error Cohen commits - to see the primary methods of working out social problems and of making social progress as ones internal to statist democratic policies.
This is where the classical liberal stands against you, where we see the core of social life and social development lying *outside* irresponsibly extensive concentrations of coercive power.
For example, I think it's clear that acts of law have had substantial impact on the reduction in racism in the United States. Of course, we still have this problem, and government is certainly a part of it (see: immigration), but if you consider what it was like to be black in America in 1950 versus today, there has been some progress. And the passage of the Civil Rights Act has much to do with it. There is a long way to go yet, but laws guaranteeing civil rights have allowed blacks greater opportunity in many contexts, including interaction with whites, which has in turn altered perception of blacks among whites.
Libertarians are not racists and sexists, but they wouldn't use government to improve their place in life. They would allow society to continue to mistreat them by refusing employment and establishing state and local statues denying their human rights. I mean, separate-but-equal was constitutional after all (until 1957). What would a classical liberal scheme of government have done for them?
Or how about the Americans with Disabilities Act? A libertarian scheme of government would do nothing for the disabled, I suspect. Why would it? Pure meritocracy has no place for the weak. Certainly there are ways in which the ADA could be improved, but look at some of its most basic requirements. Given how relatively few handicapped there are, would businesses and institutions spend the money to serve them by altering physical space to accommodate them? I don't think so.
I am a fan of limited government, but I also see that our economy and society does not treat people fairly, and for no reasons related to their individual natures. Must they be sacrificed?
This is the most bizarre spin to put on the civil rights movement, the movement wasn't fought *through* the state, it was fought *against* the state. To claim otherwise is bizarre given that the movement started in an effort to change laws that were oppressive, not to create laws that would end oppression. The state was the late comer to the party, only co-opting the movement after it had gained enough attention. And what happened after that? Simply a shifting of laws. Separate but equal is struck down while drug laws are ramped up, millions imprisoned but because the legal distinction used isn't based on color many tend to forget what is going on. Libertarians have been on the forefront against drug prohibition for decades while liberals have hemmed and hawed and supported half (to be generous) measures.
In the last 200 years where there is serious oppression there has been a state enforcing it. The women's rights movement fought against LAWS that said they were unequal, not against a vague notion that individual men didn't treat them well enough. The major battles were fought against the institutionalized support of the bigots, not against the bigots themselves.
I'm no academic, but I've got a hard time finding examples of "decentralized constitutional republic with greater limits on democratic authority" anywhere in modern history. As far as I can tell, _all_ modern democracies began with limited suffrage, which was gradually increased to include a greater percentage of the adult population, and pretty much fall outside your definitions.
The only constitutional republics I can find which have limits on democratic power are highly centralized and interventionist: Iran or Egypt, Hong Kong (for now), or to some extent Turkey and Japan.
Until recently, perhaps Nepal fit the definition, but it failed to address social problems within a civil society context. Maybe Vatican City? Where is your non-autocratic classical democracy?
(2) The example of modern governments like the US, India and South Africa show why limited suffrage in the context of a democracy is problematic: a disenfranchised group will attempt to expand their franchise through the democratic process. Nobody looks to fight for a limited, provisional, or hypothetical freedoms in the long term-- to a person without full and equal civil rights, the state already holds "irresponsibly extensive concentrations of coercive power", and they will work so that their gains are enshrined in law.
If the disenfranchised aren't permitted to advocate for their legal freedoms, the expression of discontent in civil society is typically violence, which has the power to undo the state entirely. The origin of the American Revolution, after all, was the assertion of concrete legal rights in the face of a state which relied on paternalism and kinship, instead of suffrage, to cement civil bonds.
I agree that not all civil problems can be legislated against, and that there is a great sphere for discussion, compromise and change that lies entirely outside democratic institutions. But within democratic institutions, it's nonsensical to argue that groups should not be advocating for "intrusive" rights; too many groups have experienced legally sanctioned discrimination to expect otherwise. It's only when rights are found to be practically unenforceable that a purely civil answer is called for.
Yes and no. It depends on which women's rights movement you are referring to. In the case of obtaining the right to vote, women agitated to become equal under the law. In that situation, it was law that prevented their exercising full rights of citizenship and maintained them as subordinate to men (in the civic sphere).
But the women's rights movement has also striven for equal employment opportunity. There have never been laws in the United States preventing women from working certain jobs, yet women have historically been unable to hold the same positions as men and, when they could, receive equal compensation. We now have laws against that kind of discrimination. Those laws make it possible for people once marginalized to pursue important opportunities.
At this point, I expect most employers don't mind hiring women and paying them the same amount they pay men (although studies show that women are still not receiving equal pay), and it is in part thanks to anti-discrimination laws forcing changes in behavior that people have realized that women can work just as well men can. And guess what: that's true. Social pressures were manifestly unjust, unethical, and unreasonable in this case, and an act of law has attempted, with some success, to correct that.
I think Cohen is right that libertarians have been on the sidelines of real movements for freedom. More often than not, their ilk, writing for publications like National Review, have actively opposed those improvements (though I grant that the libertarian mindset today is different from what it was in the 60s).
Again, this isn't to say that government action is always a good thing. #12 is right about drug laws. Egalitarian liberals should be doing far more to bring the drug war to a close. And the work of the Department of Education has been a continual string of disappointments, hamstringing schools and forcing harmful schemes on states and municipalities.
But the classical liberal perspective is, I believe, ahistorical if it holds that all illiberal conditions are the result of state action.
I do believe that politics is "an unfortunate necessity required by our inability to live together without killing each other." As a libertarian, I want to minimize the power of the state; otherwise, someone I disagree with will use it to do things I don't like. The Bush administration perfectly illustrates my fear of a powerful state in the "wrong" hands.
Please allow us to print articles without printing the comments. I do not want to print out 20 pages to ready 10.
Thank You.
Another thing is that more classically minded liberals would not accept Dworkin's old idea of equality as the only liberal value. On the contrary, it seems much more natural to say that freedom is the chief liberal value, but then one must also, as soon as one deviates even the least from the completely minimal state (something which North European liberals, living, after all, in Northern Europe, are more than happy to do) take a somewhat positive conception of freedom. Too often debates between left- and right-liberals bog down into a debate on positive vs. negative liberty which rarely is very constructive.
Anyway, too often I find myself just tuning out of American liberal debate (whether left-liberal or classical) since people just refuse to engage with people on the other side in a way which I find quite alienating. This, on the contrary, was interesting and constructive.