Tag: Modern Liberalism

James Burnham on liberalism and decline

James Burnham’s Suicide of the West: An Essay on the Meaning and Destiny of Liberalism proposes the thesis that modern liberalism is the ideology of a society in decline; its doctrines motivate and justify the contraction of Western civilization and reconciles us to it.

In the chapter “Liberalism vs. Reality” Burnham observes that liberals feel uncomfortable about power and force. Liberals are reluctant to use force against  ordinary criminals (which are, after all, just “victims” of an unjust society) but feel little hesitation to use it against those who are productive and successful.

It is not that liberals, when they enter the governing class…never make use of force; unavoidably they do, sometimes to excess. But because of their ideology they are not reconciled intellectually and morally to force. They therefore tend to use it ineptly, at the wrong times and places, against the wrong targets, in the wrong amounts.

Although Burnham ends his book by considering the possibility of a reversal of modern liberalism, the section that precedes it reads as follows:

Liberalism permits Western civilization to be reconciled to dissolution; and this function its formulas will enable it to serve right through to the very end, if matters turn out that way: for even if Western civilization is wholly vanquished or altogether collapses, we or our children will be able to see that ending, by the light of the principles of liberalism, not as a final defeat, but as the transition to a new and higher order in which Mankind as a whole joins in a universal civilization that has risen above the parochial distinctions, divisions and discrimination of the past.

Classical liberalism without philosophy

In a blog post for the New Republic Alan Wolfe writes: “What my critics call modern liberalism is instead the logical and sociological outcome of classical liberalism.” He further writes in another blog post that “A liberal society, I believe, is one that allows room for free markets, but also allows room for many other kinds of social institutions, some based on love, others on obligation, others on solidarity.”

These statements are far from illuminating. For example, what does it mean to say that modern liberalism is the “logical,” let alone the “sociological,” outcome of classical liberalism? It surely cannot mean that interventionist government is logically implied by minimal government. Perhaps one could argue that in reality modern liberalism is an inevitable consequence of classical liberalism in the sense that as soon as people authorize a government to maintain peace and order, such powers will invariably be used to (further) distribute income, which in turn will generate a subsequent need to produce political philosophical legitimacy for these practices.

There is a sense in which “classical” and “modern” liberalism may be closely related and that is the shared preoccupation with “rights,” “equality,” and “democracy.” Although different liberals offer different interpretations of these concepts, the practice of seeking a society that is guided by these values is shared by most advocates of both  liberalisms. From this perspective both classical and modern liberalism, and even democratic socialism, reflect a tradition in political thinking that attributes values to humans as such and endeavors to move society as close as possible to the realization of these values.

There is an alternative liberalism, however, that cannot be reduced to this kind of reasoning. In this form of (classical) liberalism people do not have “rights” (or deserve respect for their “autonomy”) because there is a philosophical reason for this but because a real world bargain between self-interested individuals produces arrangements that more or less resemble a society that is characterized by respect for individual choice and private property. But such a Hobbesian account of the possibility of liberalism is far removed from the philosopher’s liberalism  that emphasizes values, human rights, and collective choice. It would be the “logical” outcome of practical reason applied to human interaction.

Considering our (evolved) tendency to moralize about the fate of society as a whole, and the widespread obsession with democracy and practical politics, the prospects for this kind of liberalism are even more remote than for either of the two liberalisms that currently compete for attention.


John Rawls and the sin of merit

For those who have always suspected a strong religious undertone in the writings of John Rawls, the following piece by Joshua Cohen and Thomas Nagel will come as a revelation. Reflecting on Rawls’s senior thesis “A Brief Inquiry into the Meaning of Sin and Faith: An interpretation based on the concept of community” they write:

…the moral and social convictions that the thesis expresses in religious form are related in complex and illuminating ways to the central ideas of Rawls’s later writings on moral and political theory.

Most illuminating is the continuity between Rawls’s older and later views on merit:

He sides with Augustine in denying that we can earn salvation by our own merit – by freely choosing virtue, or by works of any kind: “There is no merit before God. Nor should there be merit before Him. True community does not count the merits of its members. Merit is a concept rooted in sin, and well disposed of.

It should be no surprise then that some writers have identified Rawls as a cryptocalvinist:

My contention is that Rawls is not a philosopher, but a minister. Like his Calvinist forebears, he is trying to establish the kingdom of God on Earth. Unlike them, he doesn’t admit it….The great engineering problem of designing a system in which fallible humans can govern each other and get along simply does not exist in Rawls’ philosophy.

In another post the author proposes “the “ultracalvinist hypothesis”:

the proposition that the present-day belief system commonly called “progressive,” “multiculturalist,” “universalist,” “liberal,” “politically correct,” etc, is actually best considered as a sect of Christianity.

This perspective reflects a respectable Nietzschean tradition in which modern liberalism and socialism are not departures of religious thinking but the logical culmination of a religious / communitarian mindset. Perhaps the most striking illustration of this phenomenon is the highly puritan nature of contemporary “political correctness. “

John Rawls is often associated with rationalism but the concept of rationally in Rawls’s work is not that of the classical economist but that of the pre-Hobbesian moralist. His work offers little if any contribution to the scientific study of human nature or human interaction.

HT Marginal Revolution