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June 8, 2007
Marian Sawer’s The Ethical State? is motivated by concern about the recent erosion of social-liberal political traditions in Australia. She highlights the strong influence in Australia’s political history of social liberalism, which she distinguishes from the classical liberalism (or laissez-faire) formulated at the time of Britain’s industrial revolution.
The ideology of laissez-faire emphasised contracts between atomised individuals in opposition to the state. It is an ideology which has substantially re-emerged since the 1970s as ‘market liberalism’ or ‘neo-liberalism’ or ‘economic rationalism’. By contrast, ‘social liberalism’, Sawer argues, as articulated by the 19th century Oxford academic T.H. Green and as transferred by many of his pupils to Australia at a critical time in this nation’s building prior to the First World War, supported state intervention to promote positive liberty, equal opportunity, and fairness and to enable individuals to actually overcome barriers in the way of their reaching their full potential.
The ethical liberal state' is committed to the 'substantive goal of equal opportunity for its citizens.' (p 116) By equal opportunity, Sawer does not mean the competitive ideal currently in vogue in which each individual is free to compete with all others on a level playing field to reap their own rewards from the market. Rather, by equal opportunity Sawer refers to the social liberal ideal derived from the work of English political philosopher TH Green. Here, equal opportunity means enabling all individuals to realise their full potential and develop their skills and talents through 'wisely directed state action' (p 44) aimed at correcting the injustices and inequalities that an unchecked market creates.
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