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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

liberalism v democracy « Previous | |Next »
January 23, 2007

This post is based on comments I made to a post by Don Arthur entitled Martin Amis and the agonies of ‘wet’ liberalism over at Club Troppo. Though that post was concerned with relativism, it also referred to earlier debate on a post by Don entitled Mad, bad or just plain stupid?, which explored the tensions between liberalism and democracy.

These tensions had been explored by Schmitt in terms of different logics. Schmitt argued that the pluralist logic of liberalism refers to each individual having the freedom to pursue their own happiness as they see fit, to set their own goals and to achieve them in their own way. What is abandoned is the substantive conception of the common good and that of eudaemonia. The logic of identity of democracy refers to the logic of identity between governors and governed, between the law and popular will, that has its basis in the sovereignty of the people.

The two logics joined in the 19th century and they can separate again. When they joined liberalism wasn’t all that keen on democracy and some strands still aren’t. Witness Hayek, or the reduction of democracy to procedures to elect political elites, or market liberals who think that political governance should be constructed on corporate lines with the PM as CEO. The ‘restrict democracy’ is the heritage of liberalism, whether it be the strands represented by J.S. Mill, T.H. Green, F.A. Hayek, or R. Rorty.

Liberals like Ludwig von Mises and Max Weber argued that the social and economic institutions of liberal capitalism were the essence of modernity, could not be transcended, and that there was only one viable form of modernity. that leaves us with Weber’s iron cage , which includes the structures of liberal democratic regime, as in our current political system. which is not really designed to function in a directly democratic way. The combination of representative democracy, the party system, cabinet government, prime ministerial power and the permanent ‘impartial or neutral’ public bureaucracy gives us a curious oligarchic-democratic hybrid, which is specifically intended not to open up ‘genuine substantial power’ to the sovereignty of the people.

Currently liberalism is under attack from conservatives from within the liberal democratic regime, so then we place the emphasis on democracy—its got more potential. The place to begin is to make the liberal democratic institutions more democratic by addressing executive dominance. Don Arthur, in contrast, places the emphasis on liberalism, as do classical liberals and libertarians. Both of the latter, unlike social liberals, want to limit what any democracy can do. As Jason Soon says in the comments to the Mad, bad or just plain stupid?:

Politics is ...the sphere which disproportionately attracts the mediocre and the banal, it is a necessary evil and something everyone should hold their nose doing. Libertarians only enter politics in the hope of eradicating as much of it as possible by substituting voluntarist institutions like markets.

Hence their emphasis on negative liberty to limit the state, the division of liberalism into two camps (classical and social), and the rejection of social liberalism as an authentic or true liberalism .

Introducing morality---individual conscience, autonomy, equality–---into the liberal democratic equation does put into question the libertarian claim that liberalism is based on negative liberty. Once individual freedom becomes an end in itself --as many liberals accept, then the principles of self-determination and self-realization become central, and are used to modify the self-interest foundation of classical liberalism based on the interests (and or rights) of property owners. Individuals as responsible agents and equals lies at the heart of the project of modernity that has developed (evolved?) within Western civilization.

| Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 6:13 AM | | Comments (4)
Comments

Comments

Gary - If we reintroduce a "substantive conception of the common good" and put democracy above liberalism then what?

Unless there's some way of reaching a consensus over rival conceptions of the good then the state becomes a perpetual battle ground. Representative democracy combined with unlimited state power leads to a cycle of shifting coalitions that impose their moral vision on other, unwilling citizens.

It seems to me that there's no way of reaching consensus. We can deliberate all we like but on some issues we'll always disagree.

Liberalism is a strategy for living with this disagreement.

Don,
I do think that a liberal presupposition about different individual ways of life--ie., social and value pluralism---does need to be questioned; namely the presupposition that says value is absolutely subjective and individual . Consequently, it is impossible to have a common good. That is desire is pre-modern.

A plausible account of objective value can be given:--given the sort of creatures that are, then we need certain conditions in order to live a liberal way of life. One of those preconditions is good quality water. What is the point of a liberal way of life in a agonistic democracy if we have no water? That is what we have in common as liberal individuals and what is necessary for us to become liberal individuals. Hence the state should ensure that there is water available so that we citizens can live a liberal life well.

This capability approach strikes me as a pathway to reaching "consensus" and yet retain diversity and difference.

I'm not sure that this commits me to saying that democracy should be given priority over liberalism. What it commits me to saying is that a liberal way of liberal of life presupposes liberal virtues that cannot be deduced from the cutdown ontology of classical liberalism. It's more fleshed out here in relation to education.

As it stands it is an argument for social liberalism through an immanant critique of classical liberalism.

Gary - Even Hayek didn't deny that the government had a role in providing primary goods.

When he was quizzed about the TVA on American radio he said "the principle of flood control and the like's being provided by the government is an entirely legitimate and necessary function of the government."

I think it's possible for liberals to go further with this than Hayek did.

It worries me that leftists have joined with the Straussians and neo-conservatives in a return to an ancient "substantive conception of the common good".

As for Schmitt... where did his reasoning lead?

Don,
by talking in terms of primary goods that are necessary in order to lead a liberal way of life you are pigging backing on the idea of a common good.

You critique the idea of a common good in terms of an appeal to fear (fellow travelling with neo-cons and Straussians on the road to totalitarianism) even though I showed how it can be done within liberalism through a capabilities approach.

The problem is that, by denying the capability approach, you hold to a subjective account of value.Maybe Strauss had a good point about the incoherence and implications of a subjective account of value.

Secondly, Hayek, like most classical liberals and libertarians is incoherent. They agree that a state that's going to create liberty has got to act, has at least got to protect property rights and contracts and have a police force, lighthouses and a fire department. But then why draw the line at that? Why not also say that the State has to create public education and public health has to create the systems of social welfare that makes it possible for people to access health care, unemployment benefits, and so on? If you say no to the latter, then what is your principled way of dividing those different spheres of state action?