Zach Wendling Is Pretty Much Right
Jason Kuznicki on Jul 31st 2007
…about this:
There’s been quite a bit of back-and-forth on the blogosphere about the Democrats’ rebranding of the Left. The debate centers around how liberal became a dirty word and the propriety of now using this other term, progressive (which Hillary Clinton explicitly favours).
The arguments aren’t important, but they are interesting. On the other side, Ross Douthat notes that this rebranding signals, “an epiphenomenon of a larger conservative ascendancy in American life,” and, “a blow for linguistic precision.” He can say this because, for him, the two terms represent distinct ideologies, and the shift in terms points to the adoption of not only the label but also the legacy of progressivism, which he politely points out has some dirty laundry (other conservatives have been not-so-polite). Jane Galt piles on with more problems the progressives gave us in the 20s and 30s. This rebranding isn’t giving the Left the clean break they want…
So what is this all about? People talking past each other. The key insight here is that conservatives and libertarians are concerned about intellectual legacies and the historic threads of their ideologies. Liberals, not so much. This is why libertarians and their sympathizers are enthusiastically grateful for Brian Doherty’s Radicals for Capitalism on the one hand, and Democrats unabashedly claim Thomas Jefferson as one of their own on the other. Liberalism, or progressivism, will always be more about advancing convenient policies, rather than hammering down a coherent genealogy of political thought. The current collection of left-wing policy proposals have simply been rebranded, as glibly and significantly as an advertising campaign. One really shouldn’t read too much into this.
Caveats:
–There are plenty of anti-intellectuals in every camp.
–In those areas where Zach and Henry may disagree, Henry is right: “The modern liberal position on abortion isn’t rooted in the genetic improvement of the species, or anything like it. It’s rooted in a particular notion of individual rights. That’s why they call it ‘choice’ rather than ‘embrace your genetic duty by destroying imperfect foetuses for the benefit of mankind.’” This is to the credit of the modern progressives, and to the eternal shame of the old progressives. (Why anyone would want to reclaim the old progressives’ mantle is a bit beyond me.)
–In my corner of the political quadrant, we only call ourselves “libertarians” because the “liberals” of today took the word “liberal” from us. We fought them for it, and we lost in the court of common usage. If I had my way, I’d simply call myself a liberal. I think most libertarians who know their history would do likewise.
–Yes, I wince when I hear Democrats claiming Thomas Jefferson as one of their own. Then again, libertarians like to claim John Stuart Mill, which makes us even, I suppose.
–As you can probably guess, I find “progressive” a much, much scarier term than “liberal.” But also a more honest one.
Filed in The Bookshelf
Out of curiosity, why do you dislike Mill? What’s bad about his being claimed by libertarians?
As I used to say in the good old days, that is the subject of another post. I’ll put it in the idea queue.
Per Thomas Jefferson, I don’t think either party can wholly claim him as their own, but whereas he wanted “smaller/weaker” government (supposedly a Republican value), he also wanted redistribution of wealth, minimum standards of living, and radical democracy (way to the left of Democrats). He caved on slavery and manufacturing on pragmatic grounds (e.g., that’s where the Constitution and Hamilton had led the country, so he would work within the system), thereby reneging on the values he’d espoused for nearly 25 years in order to run for President. That’s both Clintonesque and somewhat like George H.W. Bush.
In many ways, Thomas Jefferson defies our simplistic dual-party notion of politics and I’m of the opinion that in his personal values and philosophies (if not in his actions as President), Jefferson was far more radical than either party wants to admit. Like Lincoln and Washington, both parties simply co-opt TJ’s name as a way to make emotional connections to the nation’s past without having to take responsibility for what the man actually believed and did.
Well said Todd O.!!!!
I always find it funny how people try to simplify the complex personalities of our founders.
The pro-choice rhetoric of the 70s and 80s resembled the Progressives by frequently describing the need for abortion in terms of desperate inner-city kids who were unready and unequipped to have yet another child. Of course, the examples did not reflect the reality that most abortions then and now are obtained by white middle class girls and women — which would match the “choice” argument and not the goals of eugenics.
“Liberalism, or progressivism, will always be more about advancing convenient policies, rather than hammering down a coherent genealogy of political thought.”
This seems like a strange (and false) dichotomy. A better division would recognize three branches: practical politics, the history of political thought, and - more importantly - political philosophy itself. (My impression of the latter field is that it is in fact dominated by left-liberal thinkers of various stripes, with the odd libertarian, but barely any contributions from conservatives at all.)
Genealogy aside, the epitome of “coherent” contemporary political thought is arguably found in Rawlsian liberalism. I don’t agree with all of it, of course, but it can hardly be faulted as “incoherent” or insufficiently thought out.
Anyway, I guess this is all a bit tangential, but that claim of Wendling’s just struck me as awfully misguided…
Those on the left who call themselves “progressive” are generally those who are weakest on civil liberties, especially free speech. The historical Progressives were generally hostile to free speech; consider the Wilsonian censorship of World War I. There’s more going on than just re-branding.
I agree that “liberal” has come to mean many things it never was intended to mean, including “libertarian” and “progressive” and “conservative.”
Of course, liberalism is a mere set of political principles to achieve maxim individual liberty with a minimal set of social institutions and laws in order to maintain social order and cohesion. Those principles have evolved over time, as have the institutions and laws. For example, “government neutrality” was once a hallowed liberal principle, as is equality, justice, autonomy, pluralism, etc. But once we understood that no such neutrality is possible, much less desirable, it was a principle that had to be abandoned. Social constructionism shows just how untenable the principle is in theory or in practice, even if conceptually we would like to believe it possible.
Similarly, libertarianism was born out of a reaction to the subterfuge of 18th century semantics into 20th century application. But it’s singular reductionistic mistake is not its liberal principles, but mistaking those principles as “ends” in and of themselves, not the “means” to an end, of which human flourishing is always the objective.
Thus, for example, the freedom to exchange as understood in its laizzes-fare, unfettered, capitalist model of the 18th century cannot work in a modern socially complex environment, in which government has constituted corporations rather than individual entrepenuers as the primary engines of production. That recognition does not obviate the ideal of free markets and spontaneously-demand, rather than collectivist-commend, economies, in maximizing the freedom of exchange, but it does recognize that corporations and large businesses cannot function as the all-governing, all-knowing entrepreneur and moral agent of production as did the individual entrepreneur of the 18th century. “Free” markets are not free when unfair, non-competitive, and “out-sourced” labor of Third World Nations meets structured, highly-competitive, and encumbered infrastructure of First World Nations. The “freedom” to contract is un-free if one party and its cartel imposes non-negotiable conditions in its terms of contract (see, e.g., Wellenkamp Decision, 1979).
The “libertarian,” thus, is not a “liberal,” but an 18th century fundamentalist who mistakes “means” of “ends” and mistakenly imposed archaic categorical imperatives on categories that no longer exist. Rather than being a “liberal,” the libertarian is a literalist fundamentalist reactionary. Having lost sight that the liberal principles are the “means,” not the “ends,” to human flourishing, and that his grotesquely simplistic and reductionistic non-coercion criterion mirrors today’s religious fundamentalists, oblivious to context, hermeneutics, origins, development, and fixating on one verse out of thousands of applicable verses in a myopia of dogmatic falsehoods.
Today’s liberal or Odoliberal recognizes negative liberties are meaningless without basic needs by positive freedoms preceding them. Today’s liberal recognizes the “market” does not serve all of humanity’s needs, and that “demands” to provide social insurances, infrastructure, public education, etc. are not “commodities” the market serves. Today’s liberal still believes quality, service, and product, not just “efficiency,” are values to consumers and society, and which no corporation, only individuals, can provide. Today’s liberal take Schumpeter’s warning to heart: Corporate monopolies will advance collectivism by “other means,” which we see occurring before our very eyes. Today’s liberal recognizes the pernicious, indeed nefarious, effect of “special interests” of non-natural “persons” using puppeteers as their agents of government, and would ban all non-natural persons from the political process as alien and hostile forces. Today’s liberal would require Hayek’s universalization of all laws and regulations, not their abandonment, much less more special interest, ones.
Today’s liberal is distributivist, because he recognizes the benefits of the spontaneous market are not beneficial to every individual, while they are clearly superior and beneficial to most individuals and to society, when they are FAIR. And so far, even unfair markets can be superior to collectivism, but it cannot last. As part of the social contract, those who surplus from the market’s benefits must compensate those who cannot participate similarly, for everyone’s mutual benefit, lest the disadvantaged see only overthrow as no worse than the present. Considering, it “market tithing” for the privilege of profiting from a spontaneous FAIR market. The “rising flood does not raise all boats,” it drowns the disadvantaged, its cartels disadvantage competitors, and its monopolies are in the hands of the elite shareholder rather than the “state,” — a distinction without much difference, its special-interests run the state, and vice versa, and the producers simply relocate if they don’t get what they want by graft. NONE of this was familiar to Adam Smith, who NEVER saw London, much less a factory or knew of corporations, child labor, indentured employment, robber barons, etc. Free-exchange that is UNFAIR ain’t free, and ain’t desirable, and ain’t anything Smith could recognize today.
Finally, most illiberals on the left identify as “progressive,” another appellation of illusion. Progressive Income Taxes, or “progressive” in granting equality to EVERYONE? “Progressive” in more bureaucracy, or progressive in structuring social health insurance? “Progressive” in ending warmongering and hate-mongering, or progressive in following AIPAC to make foreign policy?
Like “libertarians” misuse the appellation “liberal,” quite unintentionally, I am sure, “progressives” are reactionary, and equally dubious. They want to return to “authorities.” They want to “control” and “orchestrate” and “engineer” to their hearts content, to “re-educate” just as Mao, Stalin, and others “re-educated” in their “progressive” schemes. They detest spontaneity; everything must be planned, even contingencies of contingencies. They require dozens of studies, hearings, and all sorts of collectivist measures to pretend they’re doing the “people’s business,” but they are merely serving their own — just as corporations, politicians, and many advocacies.
Just because women’s suffrage was “progress,” it was not progressive, but the belated realization of a “liberal” principle — one person, one vote, because EQUALITY, pluralism, and autonomy are more important than feeding bureaucracies. But since “liberal” has been so tainted by reactionary “libertarians” and collectivists “Great Society” types, we get extremes from Left and Right, but rarely extreme liberalism — other than it was a radical set of ideas in the 18th century — that could have evolved into the prudence of an open, free, pluralistic, liberal, democratic society, if we knew and understood what liberalism really meant. Our monopolistic education system has not a clue, inbreeding collectivism for more than 75 years by its special interests AFT and NEA. Even education is a monopoly, but we still do not teach our kids about the Enlightenment or even about basic economic activities. The dearth of civic knowledge is appalling, given that the whole raison d’etre of public education was to inculcate liberal values for an informed democratic republic.
Stephen,
You write,
I agree that “liberal” has come to mean many things it never was intended to mean, including “libertarian” and “progressive” and “conservative.”
I think, though, that if you were to survey the liberals of the nineteenth century, you would find their prescriptions to be quite similar to the libertarians of today. This is why libertarians rather rarely describe themselves as simply “liberal,” and much more often use the term “classical liberal,” which implies a rejection of much of subsequent liberal thought. For example, I disagree with you when you write,
Thus, for example, the freedom to exchange as understood in its [laissez]-fare, unfettered, capitalist model of the 18th century cannot work in a modern socially complex environment, in which government has constituted corporations rather than individual [entrepreneurs] as the primary engines of production.
While I do not think that markets can solve all problems (indeed, if all problems were solved, then markets as well as governments would be perfectly unnecessary), still, I think that markets on the whole do a better job, and that the government’s only legitimate role in a free society is to establish the conditions in which goods, services, and ideas may be exchanged in security and freedom. This is a characteristic difference between libertarians and modern liberals.
The principal point is that 18th century liberal principles are still 20th century liberal principles, but the 18th century context and 20th century context are no longer the same. Thus, to use 18th century applications in the 20th century is an anachronism.
The subsidiary, albeit more important, point, is the distinction between “means” and “ends.” Not even 18th century liberals regarded their principles as the “ends.” Rather they were the “means” to anti-tyrannical forces that impeded the freedom to choose one’s own way of life (ethos) in a minimally-ordered social cohesion, i.e., human flourishing. Thus the principles served this end.
Libertarians, conversely, take the principles as “ends.” The unfettered free market of the 18th century proto-capitalist type becomes its own raison d’etre, despite the advent of child labor, industrial pollution, Robber Barons, the corporation (its diffused ownership and management), etc., changing the basic assumptions. Capitalism, unfettered, works beautifully in a simple entrepreneurial economy of the mid-18th century, where the manager/owner has global knowledge of all means of production and/or sale. That 18th century context is no longer dominant, in fact, it is very rare. Adam Smith never saw a factory, London, or a corporation.
Whereas liberals recognize that human flourishing is being abused and misused by modern capitalist corporations and special interest hegemony over the political process, and would act to remedy those abuses through anti-trust, fair labor, worker safety, environmental responsibility, etc., laws and regulations, universalized, the libertarian reverts to the 18th century context to apply his liberal principles, a context no longer extant. If “markets” are to operate in a 21st century, the liberal principles have to apply to the present moment, not what was extant two centuries ago. Monopolies, for example, defeat markets, and yet they continue to amass. “Out-sourcing” and “importation of cheap illegal labor” surely drives down consumer prices, increases the bottom line, but only temporarily, if the producer no longer produces with domestic labor to feed consumption, and the consumer is no longer playing on the same “level playing field” to earn an income from which to buy products.
NO LIBERAL would endorse taxpayer subsidies of business, to keep inefficient, archaic business afloat with taxes. He might use Keynsian stimulus occasionally, but the folly of government paying private business to do government jobs is inefficient and expensive to boot. Plus, it undermines the “markets’” own dynamic forces. For the spontaneous market to respond to economic exigencies, the LAST thing is for PUBLIC funds to cause disequilibrium. Stimulus is one thing, transfer-of-payment infrastructure economic security is nuts.
As we all recognize, not every need is or can be met by private initiative, markets, or resources. Healthcare, retirement programs, highways, etc., are examples of a definite need for PUBLIC use to serve individual and social needs. That does not mean that a single monopolistic model has to be universally used. A government-managed social health insurance program could offer various types of plans, as could public education. So government also needs to modernize to offer choices that are substantively equal, but vary according to individual preferences. The “market” in other words should not necessarily be the exclusive domain of PRIVATE use.
Moreover, an “insurance” scheme is not a “transfer-of-payment” scheme, and thus when Social Security was born it was billed as the former, but is actually the latter. Only government could screw something so obvious up. But trust Bush to solve the mess? Not after Bush’s Medicare Part D which prohibits price negotiations, is operated through hundreds of different and incommensurate schemes and insurers, and the taxpayer picks up any shortfalls to the insurer. What kind of nonsense allowed government to create this scam? Special interests, perhaps? A little milk for the elderly, a lot of honey for industry, and more bilking of taxpayers (assuming someone pays at some point).
The 18th century dynamics are not 21st century dynamics, and liberalism’s principles must adapt to the change in dynamics, or else become fodder for exploitation by fundamentalist like Cato and Reason foundation, or abandoned as no longer workable. They are ever valuable and applicable, but only if they are adaptable to changing environments. I realize Darwin came after Smith, but adaptation of the fittest still speaks to social as well as biological phenomena, just not in the same manner.
P.S. What is the liberal principle freedom of exchange fundamentally about? Private markets? Not at all. CHOICE. If government offered choices, or if one producer offered competitive choices, would it matter how the choices arose? Governments, alas, tend not to allow choice. Nor do monopolies, even “private” ones.
The fundamental thesis behind freedom of exchange is not exchange itself, but freedom to choose and negotiate in an exchange. When private lenders engage in a cartel demanding an ubiquitous “due-on-sale” clause, without any choice, are you defending the right of the private markets to cartel the absence of choices? Or do you prize the option of having a CHOICE?
Does the lenders’ hegemony of “due-on-sale” clauses in all mortgage loans even constitute a “contract?” It’s not an option! Can you as an individual borrower request that clause be removed? No way! What kind of “contract” is it where “either you sign as is, or no deal?” All very private market mind you, but not “fairly contracted.” Either/or is not much more of choice than a collectivist offers. Either my way/or no way. Right here in “free market” libertarian Amerika?
Libertarians defend the lenders’ cartel, liberals protest the absence of CHOICE and insist that the inability to negotiate terms and conditions negates the LIBERAL sense sense of “contract.” No CHOICE, no contract. Therein is a perfect illustration between the Cato’s 18th C. abuse of liberalism in defense of its corporate clients and their cartels rather than espousing individual liberty which presume the ability to make CHOICES other than either/or. Take it or leave it ain’t much of a choice.