The idea that modern conservatism is not conservative, and that the classical liberalism that is modern conservatism leads naturally to socialist liberalism, is absolutely essential to a correct understanding of the modern world.
Their historical connection is visible in works such as J.S. Mill's On Liberty. Mill wrote this book before liberalism had split into classical liberalism and socialist liberalism, and so each can be seen inchoate in its content. Mill speaks about limiting the government's control over anyone, and sounds like a classical liberal; he also speaks of the government fighting the prejudices of the ignorant masses so that minorities are free of unwanted social pressure, and sounds like a socialist liberal. The two had not yet, inconsistently, been separated out into two opposing parties.
Why do I say that the separation is inconsistent? Well, the classical liberal and the socialist liberal both have the same goal: individual freedom.
For the classical liberal, individual freedom is seen as a given--as something everyone already possesses--and so, for government to protect freedom it simply must protect things I own. On the other hand, for the socialist liberal, individual freedom is not seen as a given--one is not free if one cannot pursue happiness effectively--and so, for government to promote freedom it must provide services to the least advantaged members of society.
There are many bad things about both socialistic and classical liberalism, as it is described above--for instance, it tries to promote individual freedom against tradition, community, and church. Similarly, classical liberalism tends to lead to socialist liberalism because the classical liberal idea of freedom is simply false--exposed children are free by the classical liberal ideal of freedom.
But one of the most important things about them is that neither actually promotes individual freedom, if by individual freedom you mean a morally neutral ideal.
This is obvious in the case of socialist liberalism. To provide the services necessary for a meaningful sort of freedom, one needs to decide what a meaningful sort of freedom is. Free condoms for teenagers, a biased education engraining liberal platitudes, and social welfare services for people who decide to act badly are not morally neutral services. So socialist liberalism has a false facade.
Classical liberalism is a bit better, but it's facade still breaks down when you look at it. Consider two huge areas where one cannot draw the line for classical liberalism in a morally-neutral fashion.
1. What contracts / exchanges / arrangements are recognized as legitimate. It is impossible in the United States to be legally married in a recognizably permanent manner; the United States no longer has the legal arrangement of real marriage. This is like not enforcing contracts and expecting business arrangements in one's country to flourish. It means we do not take marriage seriously in the US; it is not morally neutral, but a (perhaps unconscious) way of discouraging and disparaging marriage.
Similarly, whether one recognizes every purely economic contract--prostitution, drug-trades, and gladiatorial combat--is not morally neutral.
2. The duties that the state forces on one. Every state, even your classical liberal state, still has taxation; and the way people are taxed is not neutral. Will you tax the family raising 8 kids in an upright family, and discourage more of the same? Or will you tax the business down the street, or the rich, and discourage enterprise? We've chosen the former--and this has influenced childbearing habits in the US.
Similarly, decisions regarding mandatory schooling, other laws about parental duties, regulations designed for large rather than small businesses, and so on and so forth, are anything but morally neutral. And so government itself cannot be morally neutral.
This means, that as traditionalists, we must abandon the allegiance of the right-capitalists who say they just want to promote freedom. They don't. You cannot promote freedom as such; every freedom that you promote is a freedom for a certain moral ideal. There is a right-capitalist idea of freedom; a left-socialist idea; and an Augustinian-traditionalist idea. The classical liberal and socialist liberal are dishonest in how they act, but there is no need for us to be dishonest. More to the point, we should not ally ourselves with the dishonest.
I think in the future, perhaps in the near future, many of the masks will be taken off. I don't want to be with the people who were trying to deceive themselves and everyone else.
History is quickly forgotten and confusion results. Let's look at what freedom means. Today's libertarians say that freedom is absence of government coercion. At the same time, libertarians are great supporters of contracts. But what meaning does a contract have if the government doesn't COERCE the signers to abide by the contract? Contracts have no meaning without government coercion. In some cases, contracts can completely destroy freedom, as in when one sells oneself into slavery or indentured servitude. The predecessors of liberalism from the Enlightenment actually understood these issues and used the idea of inalienable rights to protect liberty. This is a moral concept has been forgotten by modern libertarianism/liberalism/conservatism. David Ellerman discusses these ideas in The Case for Workplace Democracy. Ultimately, deciding which rights should be inalienable rights is a fundamental moral question that can only be decided based on one's moral code. To give a specific example, modern liberalism gives women an inalienable right to have sex with whoever they want regardless of contracts to the contrary. This is an expression of liberal-feminist morality. On the other hand, freedom of association was considered an inalienable right before liberalism, but now anti-discrimination laws have destroyed this right because liberal morality is against discrimination.
ReplyDeleteI personally like freedom. A society with a sound morality would need far fewer restrictive laws than America has today. For a traditionalist to say that goal of liberalism is individual freedom is a big mistake. Liberals say this because it makes them look good, but this isn't the truth. With modern socialist liberals, this is obvious. But even with classic liberals, the inalienable rights issue makes clear that the kind of capitalism that they favored is based on eliminating some (inalienable) rights. Only the anarchists are consistently for individual freedom, but their system is unworkable and just leads to chaos and is soon replaced by something else. Traditionalist shouldn't cede the issue of liberty to liberals because in fact a sensible traditionalist system is the one that maximizes individual freedom in the real world. America had such a system in its early days, as described by de Tocqueville. Communities had laws to defend their traditions, but communities varied, so the individual was free to live in the community most in sync with his morals. And in practical terms, this is how one maximizes individual freedom.
I am almost sure I posted an earlier comment on this entry. Where did it go?
ReplyDeleteBlogger called it spam for some reason. Fixed.
ReplyDelete"Traditionalist shouldn't cede the issue of liberty to liberals because in fact a sensible traditionalist system is the one that maximizes individual freedom in the real world."
I disagree with this statement, in theory, because it makes it sound like freedom is a homogenous quantity that can be increased in a morality-neutral fashion. But since you also say this:
"America had such a system in its early days, as described by de Tocqueville. Communities had laws to defend their traditions, but communities varied, so the individual was free to live in the community most in sync with his morals. And in practical terms, this is how one maximizes individual freedom."
It seems we agree in practice as to how such a thing might be accomplished, which means the theoretical disagreements would probably be to a great degree simply verbal.