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'Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainity and agitation distinquish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones ... All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned.' Marx

liberal tensions « Previous | |Next »
December 23, 2004

This is an interesting article by Jonathan Freedland on liberalism in The Guardian about liberal tensions.You can find some discussion at Normblog.

There are two passages of note in Freedland's text about the conflict of values within liberalism:


"The conflict played out ... is between two values - one that liberals have cherished for centuries and another acquired much more recently. The ancient, almost defining liberal ideal is freedom: of expression, of movement, of protest. The newer value is an approach to society's minorities that aims to go beyond mere tolerance, and reaches for understanding and sensitivity."

In Australia this conflict is of freedom of expression and respect has been played out in terms of assimilation and multiculturalism, in terms of sameness and difference, in terms of national culture and diversity of values. We interpret understanding and sensitivity as a multiculturalist tolerance for difference.

In a multicultural liberal society we want free speech but are put out when someone uses it to demean Arabs and Muslims. So the law restricts freedom of expression where it becomes incitement to racial hatred and/or murder.

Except for cases of defamation.Then freedom of speech is severely restricted. Though the law of defamation is supposed to protect people's reputations from unfair attack, in practice, its main effect is to hinder free speech and protect powerful people from scrutiny. An exception is for members of Parliament speaking in Parliament.

However, the real conflict in Australia as a multicultural liberal society is the recognition of cultural difference of ethnic differences. After 9/11 this means recognition of Arabs and Muslims within the nation states and Arabs and Muslims coming to our national borders seeking asylum as refugees within Australia.

The second quote from Freedland's text refers to the way this value onflict within liberalism is resolved:


"But just as Isaiah Berlin once forced the left to see that freedom and equality were very often at odds, so it is time for today's liberals to be honest - and admit that the ideals they have clumsily bolted together for three decades often chafe badly. Sometimes one of them is sacrificed for the sake of the other. Better to admit it and to decide consciously which value we are preferring in this case or that, than to pretend there is no conflict. Hard-headed liberalism means hard choices."

Respect of the other (as cultural sensitivity) or recogniton is downplayed. This is especially the case with the increasing political presence of refugees and immigrants in recent years from the Midddle East. The recognition of cultural, racial, and ethnic differences has come to occupy a central place in the national politics of exclusion of asylum seekers. Freedom of citizens is preferred and the alien is excluded.

There is a long history of this kind of governance in Australia. As Kim Rubenstein observes:


"Aliens are subject to Commonwealth control by virtue of s 51(xix) of the Constitution, which refers to ‘naturalization and aliens’. This head of power has been used by the government throughout the 20th century, and has been interpreted by the High Court, to give the Commonwealth almost complete control over laws relating to aliens and, now, ‘non-citizens’. This has been an essential device of exclusion, which existed well before the legal term ‘citizenship’ came about. In fact, the difficulties in the distinction between membership and exclusion were reflected by the High Court’s treatment of the area in the first 50 years before citizenship evolved as a legal term. In a range of important and early High Court decisions, we see the first legal expressions of citizenship as exclusion."

This kind of historical exclusion shows that cultural diversity of minorities is recognized as an "add-ons to the existing national form.

Is there a deep seated conflict?

David t over at Harry's Place thinks not. In a liberal society freedom is a right and recognition is a civility. He says:


"Freedom of expression is a foundational principle which is the hallmark of, and underpins, all liberal pluralist societies. It is a principle which, in its purest form, handicaps the state from banning the expression of views. ...However, only the state has the power to ban: be it by enforcing defamation or breach of confidence judgements or by criminalising various forms of speech. The significance of an exercise of state power of that type goes beyond anything that the private sector can muster.

"Not offending people" is certainly a political principle of sorts, but it works at quite a different level from the principle of freedom of expression. I would argue that "understanding and sensitivity" is a civic virtue but - unlike freedom of expression - not a right."


Rawls is used to justify this.

I have interpreted "understanding and sensitivity" is recognition of the other. Is recognition a civic virtue. Or a right? if we turn to the work of Charles Taylor on recogniton we see the conflict being played out differntly between right right and particualar difference. Taylor says:


"With the politics of equal dignity, what is established is meant to be universally the same, an identical basket of rights and immunities; with the politics of difference, what we are asked to recognize is the unique identity of this individual or group, their distinctness from everything else. The idea is that it is precisely this distinctness that has been ignored, glossed over, assimilated to a dominant or majority identity. And this assimilation is the cardinal sin against the ideal of authenticity."

So we want to be treated equally as citizens but then recognized differently for being Arab-Australian citizens.
As Taylor notes:

"These two modes of politics, then, both based on the notion of equal respect, come into conflict. For one, the principle of equal respect requires that we treat people in a difference-blind fashion. The fundamental intuition that humans command this respect focuses on what is the same in all. For the other, we have to recognize and even foster particularity. The reproach the first makes to the second is just that it violates the principle of nondiscrimination. The reproach the second makes to the first is that it negates identity by forcing people into a homogeneous mold that is untrue to them."

This captures the conflict within liberalism better.

| Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 12:35 PM | | Comments (0)
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