Liberals: be rigorous, not bossy
I propose that soft-left, bossy, green liberals are in a long and wrongly celebrated tradition. Indeed, most non-liberals are almost right to believe that most self-proclaimed liberals propose an ethic of “kindness” which, actually, does more harm than good. Worse even than that: Bossy Liberals have from their mid-19th Century get-go proposed that righting society’s widest and deepest wrongs depends on mandating and funding the state to own and control most of the beneficence in most people’s lives. In the rag-bag of non-liberals who mostly disparage Bossy Liberalism we find many varieties of “conservative”, many nativists, many old people, and some neo-Liberal economists. There are also some demagogues, some of whom confusingly and variously espouse both a large beneficent state and a hands-off economic liberalism.
Most non-liberals are barely aware of the vital, minority strand of liberalism: what I call Rigorous Liberalism.
Contents
Meet the pioneer Bossy Liberals
Rigorous Liberals and reciprocated selfishness
Bossy vs Rigorous Liberals
The role of kindness
It’s tough being a Rigorous Liberal
Meet the pioneer Bossy Liberals
The Bossy Liberals of our time inherit much of theirthinking (and their thoughtlessness) from a trio of public intellectuals: JS Mill (1806–1873), John Ruskin (1819- 1900), and Matthew Arnold (1822–1888). These men were all in full flow and influence in the middle years of their century. They all saw powerful downsides to the new absence of faith, despaired over the rise of rationalist capitalism and industrialisation, and mourned the loss of medieval social certainties. They all reposed great faith in the newly enfranchised citizenry demanding and sponsoring a highly-active, welfarist, state.
Bully for them. Their disquiets were commonplace. The Aesthetes, indeed, in the mid-19th Century and thereafter doubled down on disquiet and made it fashionable, as though investing in the failure of rationalism was the only way forward. As Keats had said, years earlier: “Truth is beauty, and Beauty truth”, and so on. Indeed, the pioneer Bossy Liberals were not stupid in their hopes for the welfarist state. How were they to know that it would become quite so socialist, or have such dire unintended consequences, or become so self-interested that it could not un-wind itself?
Rigorous Liberals and reciprocated selfishness
The Rigorous Liberal is not incredibly rare, but is seldom badged-up as such. I want to rectify that mostly because I think that what is sometimes called Classical Liberalism deserves a chance to argue its corner. At times, this part of the intellectual market looks very like what might be called Decent Conservatism (though not necessarily One Nation Conservatism).
The Rigorous Liberal believes that the creed involves listening to, and aiming to take seriously, any other person’s needs, wants, arguments and points of view. That is not at all the same thing as prioritising the needs of the Other.
The Rigorous Liberal is likely to believe that all human actions are capable of being analysed as selfish. That is as true of any human’s actions as of one’s own. This rather unsentimental view of life allows and perhaps commands one to see that one’s personal life would be extremely uncomfortable unless it could at least co-exist with wider society. One does not have to kowtow to the Other, or even believe his or her rights have precedence over one’s own. But they matter.
In a nutshell, the liberty I seek in society is made possible by society’s multitudes joining me in a joint effort which reconciles everyone’s desire for freedom with everyone’s desire for order. This giant transactional machinery does not depend on love, or kindness, or notions of community. It is simply and bleakly a matter of reciprocal selfish relations, many of them operating through august institutions, and some through simple courtesies and mores out and about.
This view of society underpins almost all liberalisms worth the name. But the Rigorous Liberal is the one who enunciates it unambiguously. Bossy Liberals are likely to meld various rhetorical moral flourishes onto core liberalism. That’s true whether they are conservative or, more commonly, some sort of soft-left socialist fellow-traveler.
The Rigorous Liberal insists that only by seeing things coolly, unrhetorically, undreamily, undogmatically, can one stand much of a chance of building a decent society. Indeed, one could say that the Rigorous Liberal does not really believe that building societies and in particular their polities – their politics and economies – requires a moral stiffening.
The Rigorous Liberal believes that character. In individuals and institutions are the precursors to a decent society. This flows from a belief that an understanding of personal obligation is one of the main bits of the reciprocating relations social machine. To take one’s personal obligations seriously, and to be emotionally and physically equipped to undertake obligations, is what is relevant here
The Rigorous Liberal stresses that reciprocating self-interest is better at building societies than socialism is. It is not the brotherhood of man, or mutual love, or a generalized kindness which creates societies which it is a worthwhile pleasure to live in.
It follows that the Rigorous Liberal is very unlikely to see much merit in socialism’s case, or even in soft-left general inclinations. This is essentially because Rigorous Liberals see politics as matter of transactional tensions between individual, and even class, interests. It is one thing to build an historical political party – such as Labour – on the shared interests of employed workers and tradesmen (though that was a pretty difficult accommodation). It is quite another to suppose that social tensions can be wished away by pretending they don’t exist. Actually, the various broad churches which combine to produce competitive political teams may well transmute pretty dramatically in the future, but the upshot is unlikely to give any greater proof that brotherly love, or any other kind, is what makes politics work satisfactorily.
The Rigorous Liberal’s case tends to be that socialism drains the ability of society’s voluntary institutions and persons to provide welfare. Worse, socialism degrades both the consumer and the putative provider of welfare.
Standard, ancient mantras apply. The Rigorous Liberal sees force in propositions such as, “there’s no love like tough love”, or “life isn’t fair”, or one must learn “to stand on one’s own two feet”. There are old Bossy Liberal predilections based on vague notions about mankind’s “better angels”, or “better natures”, and the much more recent obsessions with kindness which have led to woke puritanism. From its inception, the socialist welfare state produced a widespread tendency which was equally damaging: the feeling that entitlement trumps self-reliance and that a state of cradle-to-grave dependency with no corresponding sense of responsibility is sort of OK. Even its bureaucracy conspires to trap people on benefits.
At a personal level the Bossy Liberals and their state-run socialist welfare state tend to decay the character of the recipients of their beneficence. That is the same as undermining the character of the society, or polity, the welfare state exists to succor. The socialist welfare state also crowds out (or aborts even the conception) of the vast array of voluntary, social, institutions which could by now have responded to the demand for welfare. That includes capitalist welfare enterprises.
Where is kindness in all this?
“Kindness” is a key soft-left liberal Bossy Liberal “progressive” watchword. It is seldom defined but left hanging in the air as an obvious requirement of decency and character. There is an assumption that soft-left social policy, including the socialist welfare state, is a necessary condition of a kind society. The Rigorous Liberal disputes that societies are based on kindness; the Bossy Liberal insist that kindness is the whole point of them.1Fairness is an equivalent weasel word. Would a “fair” society prioritise equality of opportunity or equality of outcome? At what point does “leveling up” meet its opposite number, “leveling down”?
The Rigorous Liberal suggests that liberal progressive thought may not be very effective in helping parents, schools, or universities produce well-adjusted children and adults.
The Rigorous Liberal thinks that that kindness is not so much over-rated as over-played. “Kindness butters no parsnips”, and especially, “One must be cruel to be kind” sort of meet the case. The point is that until one defines terms, “kindness” is empty of meaning (just as its stablemate “fairness”).
The Rigorous Liberal is inclined to think that whilst income or wealth inequalities may underpin wealth creation, and are thus to some extent irremovable virtues, the miseries of poverty in society ought to be dealt with. The “ought” may be purely transactional: a substantial minority of resentful, angry, poor people can make life for the majority unpleasant. To bring the poor into the web and world of reciprocating obligations may be importantly convenient.
But many people and perhaps most people feel a sense of duty toward the disadvantaged. Conscience, not mere convenience, come into play. Rigorous Liberals and Bossy Liberals are alike aware that liberalism involves wondering what it would be like to stand in another person’s shoes. The Rigorous Liberal is well aware that society is built on reciprocated selfish interests, but that doesn’t remotely block or obviate the awareness of the obvious (and even the less obvious) sufferings of other persons.2This is basic starting assumption gleaned from John Rawls’ thinking. Where one takes it may be quite other than the standard view of Rawlsianism, which is leftish.
All liberals admit to an element of fellow-feeling with other persons. The Rigorous Liberal insists that what follows is always well shy of the over-egged claims made for “truly empathic” vague but commanding kindness urged by the Bossy Liberals.
Naturally, people have always wondered what their obligation is to the sufferings of people who are ill, or poor, or homeless or disabled. Even people who are self-interested (that’s all of us) mostly have the promptings of conscience. The question arises: what is the way to discharge that prompting? This is a sharp question when the obvious alternative – massive state intervention – has been proved bankrupt.
It is very hard to imagine a civilized society that does not politically mandate some sort of welfare provision. The Bossy Liberal’s logic merely insists that the state should be as little involved as possible, and that society at large would be a better place to look for useful welfare developments.
Historically, Christianity provided a home for a combination of liberal fellow-feeling and a more purely Christ-derived moral impulse. Anyway, philanthropists, religious orders, local councils and doctors became early actors in organized beneficence. As capitalism developed, insurance and pension systems grew, as did more or less leftist co-operatives and workers’ organizations. Opportunities for profit and socialized (often socialist) virtue were spotted. But even the capitalist opportunists were not necessarily merely canny. The case of 19th Century Five Percent Philanthropy makes the point brilliantly: it was developed as an alternative to high-profit, high-risk enterprise by offering low-profit, low-risk enterprise (which is often called “social entrepreneurship). All these strands of historical association could easily have developed and delivered a system of welfare-for-all which was far less damaging to society and politics that the post-WW2 socialist welfare state we now live with.
The Bossy Liberals have been in command of affairs ever since their 1940s triumph. Conservative governments – even Margaret Thatcher’s – have come and gone without denting the boiling-the-frog leftward march of the socialist welfare state.
It’s tough being a Rigorous Liberal
The casual characterization of Bossy Liberals, is that they rather sweetly try to maintain a leading role for the better part of human nature in society, for kindness, empathy and love. This is mostly humbug. Actually, Bossy Liberals allow themselves the convenience of contracting out their “kindness” to the state whilst simultaneously hugging to themselves an undeserved sense of personal virtue that should only accrue to those who have done some practical good in the welfare field.
The Bossy Liberals are also infuriating because, having shucked off responsibility for working out what good welfare would look like, they can then devote themselves to self-advancement with what they take to be a clear conscience. They can smugly sense their moral superiority; publicly disparage those who don’t share it; and, very often, maintain their physical well-being in performative public athletics – a fitness philanthropy funded by a sort of chugging.
The casual characterization of Rigorous Liberals is that we care more for ourselves than for others, and indeed insist on the role of selfishness in all human affairs.
Actually, Rigorous Liberals.face the onerous task of conceiving and developing alternatives to the state welfarism which has done so much damage to the poor and the polity. Even as that work goes on, the Rigorous Liberal is stuck with the old liberal problem which would make for hard work with or without radical welfare reform.
The Rigorous Liberal is enjoined to accept personal responsibility for the suffering in society. Firstly, he or she or she has failed over 75 years to reform welfare provision. Secondly, most Rigorous Liberals will be painfully aware that they have not been as useful as possible in reducing the sufferings in society, as it is right now.
It is some bleak comfort to the Rigorous Liberal that the Bossy Liberal has been in command of welfare, and failed to deliver it. But it is a constant gnawing issue for Rigorous Liberals that the sufferings of one’s fellow human is at least as sharp a prick on their conscience as it ought to be on that of any liberal.
Footnotes
- 1Fairness is an equivalent weasel word. Would a “fair” society prioritise equality of opportunity or equality of outcome? At what point does “leveling up” meet its opposite number, “leveling down”?
- 2This is basic starting assumption gleaned from John Rawls’ thinking. Where one takes it may be quite other than the standard view of Rawlsianism, which is leftish.
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