We think that politics is more than an unfortunate necessity required
by our inability to live together without killing each other. We think
it is, can be anyway, an arena in which we work out and pursue,
sometimes with notable success, large and constructive purposes. When I
think about the history of democracy in the past century, and think
about its greatest achievements of domestic policy, the areas of real
moral progress, I think of civil rights, women’s equality, and the
halting fight against a class society. With respect, classical liberals
were in the rearguard in every one of these struggles. And for a simple
reason: in each case, the struggle depended on a willingness to fight
against inequality, subordination, exclusion through political means,
through the dread state. And if you mix your classical liberal values
with the classically conservative predisposition to think that politics
is at best futile, at bad perverse, at worst risks what is most
fundamental, then you will always celebrate these gains when the fight
is over: always at the after party, inconspicuous at the main event,
and never on the planning committee.
Hat tip is from Henry, who adds commentary and another link.
Well yes, but as we continually read, don’t just look at the benefits and ignore the costs. Shouldn’t activist government take a hit from the experience of murderous regimes all over the world?
This is just a rehash of a tired old trick: Faulting libertarians for not being able to fix problems that they did not create and that would never have arisen under a libertarian government in the first place.
Campaign finance laws (the original focus of the piece) are an especially insolent and hypocritical example. The less government does, the less reason for anyone to try to buy politicians via campaign contributions (and the less incentive for the ultra-rich to try to buy office as a vanity).
As the student of a philosopher who dialogues with Cohen from time to time, let me make a recommendation:
(1) Replace all the accomplishments of democracies with their failures, then weight the failures against the successes.
Is it really so bad to be at the after party for the successes if we can miss the whole shindig for the failures?
What were the classical liberals and conservatives doing when they weren’t obsessing over politics with Deliberative Democrats like Cohen? I guess they weren’t doing anything important! But that’s just the thing: Deliberative democrats think classical liberals should love politics more than they currently do and be willing to sacrifice other goods on its behalf.
But classical liberals have a different value system, one that places the heart of social life outside of the state. A serious problem for deliberative democrats is that they affirm civic humanism – that an intrinsic good in life is participation in the political process. But that’s not liberalism, that’s the invasion of perfectionism into liberalism. How can the deliberative democrat respect people who really just don’t value political life (like me) or who think it corrupts the soul (like me)?
The answer is that they can’t, not really.
It is worth pointing out that Cohen thinks it’s a good thing to be on a planning committee … ; )
Wow! Cohen writes:
When I think about the history of democracy in the past century, and think about its greatest achievements of domestic policy, the areas of real moral progress, I think of civil rights, women’s equality, and the halting fight against a class society.
Notice any issue missing? How about the end of slavery? That’s a pretty big accomplishment. Libertarians and conservatives, plus a few modern “liberals,” were leaders in the fight to end military conscription in 1973. Friedman was huge, as were Walter Oi, Bill Meckling, Allen Wallis, Alan Greenspan, and Martin Anderson. Ted Kennedy fought to the bitter end to retain the draft.
Always good to discuss grand theory; it can appear so objective because positions don’t have to be suported by reality. Moving from there to reality though is where the challenge begins. In application supported by the historical record liberals have not only been at the reargaurd, they were very often the advance elements of reform toward equality and “what is most funadamnetal’ – individual rights, liberty and freedom. This also defines one of the defining characteristics of the American expression of the liberal – conservative devide. Liberals have not been the sole vangaurd leading the way for protection from and reform of the the “dread state”; pursuit of ‘what is most fundamental’ has been the guiding light for both parties. The difference lies in defining what is most fundamnetal and the ways to achieve it. Another distinction lies in the perception of what politics means. In one camp it is defined as a means to create policy for the functioning of rational society through governmental structures and the overarching principles are to keep that structure as small as possible in order to protect what is most fundamnental, and drive the pursuit of the ideals to the lowest possible levels of organization. Within other camps politics is viewed as the means to the end and any actions neccessary within those means are justified; often reflected in strengthening and expansion of central government reach to the power mechanisms that extend subjegation of so called enlightened policy downward over the masses. Liberilsim as a philosophy is little different from conservatism as a political entity. But liberalism as a political party presumes far greater confidence in the ability of strong central governments at national levels to achieve the ideals than conservatives as a poltical party have ever felt comfortable with. The philosophies converge but the political expression of how to achieve the ideals are notably different. One must ask what is surrendered through the means to achieve the ends and the associated costs in terms of liberty and what is fundamental.
Indeed, politics is not the endstate nor is it a “fight”, representing the eternal struggle for what is right. It is a process that is best viewed with skepticism, “…at best futile, at bad perverse,…”, and, “… at worst risks what is most fundamental”. If conservatives are not “at the planning committee”, its because they are seeking mechanisms to achieve the ideal at a lower cost to what is fundamnetal, choosing not to give up to government what they seek to achieve for each individual- what is most fundamental. Narratives that reflect classic revolutionary patterns described by the “fight”, the “planning committee” and the “after party” that takes place after the grand cataclysmic event that elevates to massess to a ‘classless society’ is the kind of rhetoric that scares the bejesus out of liberal philosophers and conservative politicians alike, but it is the hallmark of the liberal politician.
In the areas mentioned — civil rights and women’s equality — laws were changed ONLY after public opinion started to move. The fallacy is in thinking that the state fixed the problem. People acting outside government started the solution rolling, and the state stepped in to take the credit partway through.
Suppose the state will step in to implement the views of a noisy X% of the population. Then the only credit you can give government is to force the remaining (1-X)%. That, perhaps, is an accomplishment I will grudgingly have to concede. Sending in the National Guard to integrate Central High in Little Rock … that’s something that wouldn’t have happened until later without the state.
Still: I’d hold non-state actors (including classical liberals) responsible for at least 90% of progress in civil rights.
Is it just me or do Modern Liberals really, truly not grasp or fully understand the classical liberal/libertarian mindset?
When I read excerpts like Cohen’s, I can’t help but think they just don’t get it as they misapply certain libertarian values to get create a problem that isn’t there.
>”But what was preventing the the integration was … the STATE.”
Then the libertarian argument is a tautology.
– if the state acts to fix a problem with the state, then the problem was the state in the first place.
– if the state acts to fix a problem with the private sector (say, lunch counters at Woolworths), then it had no business doing that because the private sector should be permitted to discriminate.
No matter what the problem, the state either caused it or shouldn’t fix it! So no argument could convince a libertarian.
If, however, you believe that government *should* have legislated against Woolworths, then just change my argument about Little Rock to one about Woolworths.
My point is: government has seldom acted on its “greatest achievements” without a critical mass of the public being behind it. Government will not act except in the presence of a demand for that action. The state is a follower, not a leader.
“n all cases, the unjustice was enshrined in law and enforced by state power and coercion. This was true in the cases of slavery, denial of women’s rights, and Jim Crow.”
You have to do some serious logic-twisting to spin every injustice to be the fault of the state. I’ll grant you the denial of women’s rights and Jim Crow (things that the right tried to save, against the onslaught of the left, by the way) But slavery? Slavery was legal (i.e. the government didn’t intervene), and you’re saying it’s the government’s fault? Yeah–it’s the government’s fault for not intervening and stopping it, but that’s like saying it’s the fault of the police whenever a murder happens.
– if the state acts to fix a problem with the state, then the problem was the state in the first place.
– if the state acts to fix a problem with the private sector (say, lunch counters at Woolworths), then it had no business doing that because the private sector should be permitted to discriminate.
The point is that the state has far more often been a perpetrator of injustice than the remedy of it. And where it has been remedy, it has generally been in the form of ceasing the unjust actions it had previously been carrying out–which is obviously a good thing, but not one which would lead us to celebrate the role of the state as generally acting as a force for justice.
As for Woolworth’s — yes, a weaker state could not have forced the integration of the lunch counters. Left alone, Woolworth’s might have taken a few more years (until, say, a shunning by northern customers made official corporate segregation in the south untenable). But on the other side of the balance sheet, a weaker state could not have perpetrated the far greater injustices that it did (and that it continues to perpetrate to this day).
they realize that just about every action affects others, so the claim that people really are independent does not match reality
It comes down to how much control one wants to exert over others. Within an egalitarian & moral conception of society, wanting greater control over others translates reciprocally to less control over oneself.
But slavery? Slavery was legal (i.e. the government didn’t intervene), and you’re saying it’s the government’s fault?
Slavery being legal means the government endorsed, or atleast condoned, the practice. Hence the government at fault. Murder is illegal and hence the police not stopping a murder may simply be a human logistical limitation. Hence, not at fault, barring the odd tolerated or engineered murder by corrupt/rogue members of the LEO.
In all cases, the unjustice was enshrined in law and enforced by state power and coercion. This was true in the cases of slavery, denial of women’s rights, and Jim Crow.
This is nuts.
Jim Crow laws were a reflection of the wishes of the (white) society. They weren’t imposed on an unwilling populace. They were enormously popular among whites. Further, many segregationist practices were not required by law, but were common anyway. For example, there were few laws requiring discrimination in hiring, yet that was widespread prior to civil rights legislation.
And where were the laws requiring that women be paid less than men, or have a much harder time being admitted to graduate or professional schools?
The fact is that libertarians twist the entire history of discrimination into some sort of unrecognizable multi-dimensional pretzel, because the simple facts – that there was longstanding and widespread discrimination as a result of social attitudes – do not fit their theories.
Cohen’s critique does not appear to be true outside the US. Lots of classical liberals supported votes for women in Britain, Australia and New Zealand. Or supported integrating Aborigines into Australian society. They were against indigenous separatism, but that is a failed strategy.
As for the halting fight against a class society, that rather depends on what you mean. Surely classical liberals were generally very much in favour of eliminating legal privileges based on class. Their connection with the welfare state is more equivocal, but that is hardly surprising.
If Cohen’s critique is fair inside the US, he seems to be picking up on a specifically US issue. Perhaps it is the notion of the American Revolution as a classical liberal/libertarian revolution in the past is a factor. Or an notion of individualism which is very anti-politics and state action.
Bernard, every country in the world has practiced slavery at one time or another, including Africans. Your theory about white Americans doesn’t hold water.
Obviously, you are another guilt-ridden white liberal….
Faulting libertarians for not being able to fix problems that they did not create and that would never have arisen under a libertarian government in the first place.
This ranks very highly on the list of most clueless political statements I have ever read. Way to miss the point.
I think the question of state involvement or responsibility is a tangent. I think Cohen’s real challenge to libertarians is whether it is true that liberals and not libertarians have been in the forefront of bringing changes to society that make it better.
In the mid-1940′s segregation, de facto or de jure, was nearly universal in our country, and the white people in general were OK with it. Racism was more than just widespread, it was largely unquestioned, and led to numerous additional wrongs, such as the roundup of Americans of Japanese descent, and the exclusion of Jews from higher positions in many industries.
Cohen asserts that it was the leadership of liberals that countered and ultimately toppled this status quo, to the point where a still-largely white country elected a black president. Metaphorically, he contrasts Humphrey’s support of desegregation with Goldwater’s alleged support of the existing racist order, and says that the libertarians were content with this evil while the liberals attacked it and destroyed it. Liberals and not libertarians were Freedom Riders, etc. The state has an important involvement in all this, of course, but I don’t think that’s the main point of Cohen’s charge.
I’m not sure what the best response is. One point is that the real responsibility for changing America’s racist attitudes should go to Hitler. Before WW II, liberals were in general about as racist as anyone else – in fact the South had a long tradition of racist populism, and the progressives were eugenics supporters and by and large against Jews, Italians, Slavs, etc.
Another point is that libertarians had other battles – free trade, deregulation, perhaps free speech. They do not seem quite as morally compelling as the struggle against racism.
I guess I just don’t understand the point/function/source of posts/arguments like this. Sometimes it seems like people believe literally that political ideologies exist in some unchanging, independent platonic realm from which they invisibly exert influence upon society, as if conservatism and liberalism were naturally occurring and opposing physical phenomena that are to be analyzed like entropy and the nuclear forces. Its as if politics were a bizzarro-physics in which you make up imaginary systems to explain your custom-made histories in order to enshrine your own personal morality, which is the first variation on the only constant in the equation, your subjective reality. The whole jenga-tower can be built from the ground up in a infinite number ways, simply because the shape of the blocks aren’t subject to any real constraints at all. There need be no agreement about what is moral. There need be no agreement about the motivations of individuals. There need be no agreement about cause and effect. Etc. Most of all: there _is no_ agreement about how to any of these might be established. I suppose that’s why they call it the ‘art’ of politics.
I used to think that political arguments were all a type of signaling. I no longer _completely_ believe that, but on the other hand I haven’t been able to come up with any other explanations.
my comment seems to have disappeared. here it is again
I guess I just don’t understand the point/function/source of posts/arguments like this. Sometimes it seems like people believe literally that political ideologies exist in some unchanging, independent platonic realm from which they invisibly exert influence upon society, as if conservatism and liberalism were naturally occurring and opposing physical phenomena that are to be analyzed like entropy and the nuclear forces. Its as if politics were a bizzarro-physics in which you make up imaginary systems to explain your custom-made histories in order to enshrine your own personal morality, which is the first variation on the only constant in the equation, your subjective reality. The whole jenga-tower can be built from the ground up in a infinite number ways, simply because the shape of the blocks aren’t subject to any real constraints at all. There need be no agreement about what is moral. There need be no agreement about the motivations of individuals. There need be no agreement about cause and effect. Etc. Most of all: there _is no_ agreement about how to any of these might be established. I suppose that’s why they call it the ‘art’ of politics.
I used to think that political arguments were all a type of signaling. I no longer _completely_ believe that, but on the other hand I haven’t been able to come up with any other explanations.
Bernard –
I agree with you. But if discriminatory attitudes are so widespread, then getting democratically elected governments (liberal or not) to do anything about their effects is going to be very hard.
This, I think, is the great paradox of the liberal reforms that Cohen hails. They were only politically possible because people had become less prejudiced. This is not, of course, to say that we don’t need statutory laws against discrimination. It is only to point out that law is more often than not a lagging indicator.
Also, if you have freedom of contract and freedom of association, then those of us who are less prejudiced can benefit by associating with the marginalized group in question, in the process making racism costly (lost business, less able employees). And in fact, Jim Crow laws were imposed precisely because private discrimination was not working as well as the racists wanted it too (see, for example, Roback’s article on segregated street cars in the south).
Babar – but the paradox is that in democratic societies, the government is not going to stop “peoples’ cruelty to other people” unless that form of cruelty is already pretty unpopular. Our democratic government and our solemn judges in robes allowed Jim Crow laws to exist for around eight decades, because most people thought they were all right.
So government turns out not to be so useful, since it can only enforce what most people are already in favor of. If racism were popular enough to be a serious problem in society, the government would not oppose it.
@babar
Are people more likely to smash each other’s heads in with a government or without a government? This is a question that cannot be answered in general, and I find it quite frankly irrelevant. I can only ascertain my position in the world, create a reality around that, and act accordingly. No one can convince me otherwise; how would they possible do so?
It is incredible to me, even as a minority, how enthusiastically middle-class white liberals swoon over their talisman of “racism”. “But, but…at least we solved racism!” – hardly amongst the foremost social ills of today, I would think. But I didn’t live in the Jim Crow era, maybe I can’t appreciate it. The magnanimity of the West will probably be as downfall.
Racism and xenophobia is just another fundamental human constant. Just as government is, despite my libertarian leanings and hopes. I can hardly get the average liberal to even give a good philosophical argument why racism is wrong, especially with the increasing amount of genetic data demolishing the myth of the lack of racial differences. I especially don’t subscribe to the notion that brainstormed “movements” eventually cause social revolutions, another conceit of central planners and “activists” everywhere. Was slavery abolished in the US because of our enlightened, humanistic appraisal, or rather because of the burgeoning industrial capacity of the North? Did the feminist movement arise because a few brave women stood up, or because rapid technological improvements radically reduced the economic burden of housework and child-rearing? But then again how could the morally upright NYC or Cambridge denizen express his self-righteous satisfaction if these social changes were in fact exogeneous?
Both liberals and libertarians are in fact myopic in their understanding of human nature. Liberals are more likely to acknowledge the social mechanisms and institutions ingrained in most human behavior, while libertarians understand the repeated failures of natural political organization in an environment very different from our hunter-gatherer past. But at the same time I feel like much liberal thought grows increasingly infantile in its reasoning and ad-hoc in its framework. Maybe it once a circumscribed list of positive rights, but increasingly it is simply fractured interest groups early feeding at the government through for their pet project. I don’t feel like libertarianism and conservatism has yet allowed that kind of rot to seep into its philosophy.
Further, most of these things “progressives” list as victories of progress, are simply luxuries that have been created by economic progress.
Equality for women? Sure, once lives are long enough that raising kids doesn’t take up most of your lifespan and once amenities and automation reduce the need for physical strength.
Civil rights? Governments instituted the Jim Crow laws…LAWS…don’t ya’ get it? It’s simply a difference of opinion whether it’s better for some knee-jerk bigger tyranny to smash the little tyranny, or to have some patience for a more natural workout solution.
Class society? WTF? They still don’t believe in a classless society of unfettered entry to competition.
Also, if you have freedom of contract and freedom of association, then those of us who are less prejudiced can benefit by associating with the marginalized group in question, in the process making racism costly (lost business, less able employees).
In some circumstances this might be true, but I don’t think it’s generally true, and I specifically think it’s untrue for the Jim Crow south. The extent and intensity of racism was such that economically rational behavior would have involved discrimination even in the absence of segregation laws. Employment, not much governed by those laws, is a good example.
The notion that a racially tolerant employer could gain by hiring more able minority workers suffers from the flaw that it is not ability you want in an employee, but productivity. Productivity is not a function solely of skill and diligence. It also depends on factors outside the employee’s control. If co-workers are uncooperative with minority workers, or customers refuse to buy from them, then they will be unproductive, not through any fault of their own, but as a consequence of the racist attitudes of society. Similar considerations apply to retail businesses. If serving black customers causes you to lose (the more numerous and wealthier) white customers it is economically irrational to do so. One of the benefits of the 1964 Civil Rights Act was that it broke this prisoner’s-dilemma-like equilibrium.
And in fact, Jim Crow laws were imposed precisely because private discrimination was not working as well as the racists wanted it too
I have seen this claim. I have not seen much actual support for it, and suspect that, while there might be an example or two, it is really a major overgeneralization.
I do agree that law can be a lagging indicator, for the reason you cite. But remember that law can also take effect more quickly than social changes, and that there are state-federal issues. What I mean is that nationally social attitudes can change enough to make political action possible at the federal level, while regionally these attitudes have not changed enough to eliminate segregation, even absent Jim Crow laws.
Extending by previous points to the present day. You could consider the current progressive egalitarian enthusiasm for restrictions on trade (read blog posts at the open left website) as very analogous to Jim Crow laws. Progressive are denying jobs and employment to very poor people of other countries to benefit the working class of this country. I would say there is no morally relevant difference between this and Jim Crow (why should the accident of being born in a particular country be any less arbitrary than the accident of being born a specific race). When you consider the incredible poverty of some of the people progressives are denying jobs to, you could argue that it is far far far worse than Jim Crow.
Again progressive are doing this in the name of the working class.
By sheer coincidence I find this article on another blog:
http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/06/teaching-kids-about-alcohol-and-more/
It theorizes that children who grow up in homes with an “open yet modest approach to alcohol” are more responsible about their own alcohol use. If this is in fact true — which is a big “if” — then what it demonstrates is that the libertarian approach, an “open but modest approach” to just about anything, is a perfectly suitable way to increase the lot of society without any of the partisan ideological warfare Cohen for some horrible reason chooses to praise.
It is not that progress is made because of ideology, but despite it. Cohen conveniently forgets that it is not good that one ideology fights for something, but bad that the other ideology unreasonably fights against it. It is not that gay activists are fighting for marriage that gay marriage will arrive (and of course it will). It is that anti-gay activists are fighting against it. Cohen would do well to keep this in mind.
Hal, you’re quite right. It really is quite outre to point out the couple of hundred million people killed by “activist” government last century. No one should mention “the costs” when you are so obviously concerned and caring!
Liberals oppose the death penalty for convicted killers and still support abortion
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