Your Humble Blogger recently came across a fascinating essay called "The Liberalism of Fear", by Judith Shklar in Liberalism and the Moral Life, edited by Nancy L. Rosenblum, et al (Cambridge : Harvard University Press © 1989). It's evidently reprinted in a collection of her essays called Political Thought and Political Thinkers, edited by Stanley Hoffmann (Chicago: University of Chicago Press © 1998).
I'll present a couple of short quotes for your delectation, along with my comments for your correction. The point of the article, in short, is to contrast the liberalism of fear with the liberalism of hope and then, in a clever rhetorical twist I can't help ruining by pointing out, chooses the liberalism of fear. The fear she talks about is a fear of tyranny, a fear of the abuse of power. The liberalism of fear, then, is a negative-rights based way to avoid Bad Things, as opposed to a positive-rights liberalism of hope, which seeks Good Things. None of this will come as a surprise to anybody who is doing serious study of political philosophy (see, for instance, an entire issue of Social Research based on Shklar and Isaiah Berlin's ideas of positive and negative liberty), but to people like Your Humble Blogger, stumbling into this stuff with only the help of his friends and readers, every idea is like pepper spray to my preconceptions, leaving them weeping, disoriented, and er, there has to be third here, doesn't there? Anyway, on to Sklar.
"The important point for liberalism is not so much where the line is drawn [between the public and the private], as that it be drawn, and that it must under no circumstances be ignored or forgotten." p. 24
Boy, do I agree with this. This is so well-put, in fact, that I will be appropriating it as often as possible. The argument over where the line is drawn is important, but nowhere near as important as the existence of the line. Well done, Prof. Shklar.
"For this liberalism the basic units of political life are not discursive and reflecting persons, nor friends and enemies, nor patriotic soldier-citizens, nor energetic litigants, but the weak and the powerful" p. 27
This is one for david, not that I disagree with him. In fact, I have in myself a tendency to thing of people as discursive and reflecting by their nature (tho' I know many are not, and that discursiveness and reflection are not the only or even the best traits of humanity). Good to be reminded of the resource argument.
"[I]t should be remembered that the reasons we speak of property as private in many cases is that it is meant to be left to the discretion of individual owners as a matter of public policy and law, precisely because this is an indispensable and excellent way of limiting the long arm of government and of dividing social power, as well as of securing the independence of individuals. Nothing gives a person greater social resources than legally guaranteed proprietorship. It cannot be unlimited, because it is the creature of the law in the first place, and also because it serves a public purpose—the dispersion of power." p. 31
We were discussing private property not long ago in this Tohu Bohu ourselves, and I wasn't able to persuade myself of any significant point of view. This, on the other hand, I find compelling as a idea of what private property is, how it should be treated, and why.
I'm not yet saying I choose the Liberalism of Fear over that of Hope, but I am leaning toward it at this point. I'm open to being persuaded though (and, as usual, anybody who doesn't accept liberalism at all should please please make your best argument against it. Like my preconceived notions in the pepper spray of argument, that which does not destroy 'em (and they are destroyed every few years anyway) will make 'em stronger.
Redintegro Iraq,
-Vardibidian.
As always, highly interesting food for thought. It seems to me that “liberalism of fear” and “liberalism of hope” ought not to be two separate political philosophies, but two complementary attitudes of a liberal thinker.
For example, the second quote from Shklar about the basic units of political life being the weak and the powerful is true enough, but its not always the most important aspect of political life. I suppose I might agree that it’s more basic than others because power is always at stake in politics, but I don’t think power should simply be assigned to groups. Political activity is in part about _changing_ power relations. Unions, for example, provide a mechanism whereby those who have felt themselves to be weak discover and build power for themselves. So if one is governed always and only by the fearful side of liberalism, one may overlook or discount possibilities for change.
Shklar’s statements do a better job than I did in making the case for the value of private property for a free society, but I pretty much agree with her position, which is, incidentally, fairly close to that of the Agrarians and Distributists, two related social/economic movements active in the first half of this century whose history and ideas seem mostly forgotten today. They never gained much real influence because they were, in short, a small group of nice, idealistic, unworldly people caught between the mighty opposites of corporate capitalism and socialism, but I mention their work here because they offer a critique of corporate capitalism that is not socialist in orientation. I’m trying to learn more about them.
i also thought the quoted passages were very powerful.
that private property argument, i’ve heard as an argument about incorporation, and never extended it to all property; basically because i’ve been convinced that corporations are artificial, where private property is a reflection of natural territorial feelings. these are background thoughts that don’t work together and need to be reconciled because i think they restrict my thinking.
anyway about weak/powerful, again, lately i’ve been scratching away at my trained tendency to see powerful as irresistable, an ocean, and weak as feeble, a swimmer out in the middle of it. the whole thing is fake, there’s no ocean and no swimmer. i feel like people (which includes me) get tight and reactive when thinking about politics because when we get talking about people’s options, it’s hard to see the difference between “modest” and “limited.”
i find when i think of a person’s options as limited, that stains the person, leading me to think of using power invisibly to “provide.” i tend to forget that nearly everybody is wielding the same kinds of power in their lives. maybe it’s the scope of choices, not their strength or number, that makes one powerful and another weak.
“The important point for liberalism is not so much where the line is drawn [between the public and the private], as that it be drawn”
Would you say that conservatism does not do this? Why is this important for liberalism? Or is it only key for a discussion of liberty? …And how does liberalism differ from leftism> This seems to suggest one of those differnces (but I’m only a beginner at this in so many ways): “Nothing gives a person greater social resources than legally guaranteed proprietorship. It cannot be unlimited, because it is the creature of the law in the first place, and also because it serves a public purpose?the dispersion of power”
“i tend to forget that nearly everybody is wielding the same kinds of power in their lives. maybe it’s the scope of choices, not their strength or number, that makes one powerful and another weak.”
Ooh. Love it when someone comes along and clarifies a vague thought I’ve been having so I can sit and think about it better. Thanks.
I’m not sure that current Conservative thinking does draw the line between private and public. I’d love, as usual, to hear a Conservative talk about this. I do think that traditional Rossiterian Conservatism does draw that line, although it doesn’t place much emphasis on the line itself.
That is, rather than looking at each new or continuing policy and asking which side of the line it rightly belongs on, it asks first whether it appropriately conserves Civilization, or whether it decays or degrades it. For a libertarian, presumably, the first question is whether it protects or endangers the liberties of individuals. For a progressive, presumably, the first question is whether it is progressive or regressive, and for a communitarian the first question is whether it is good or bad for the community. I suspect that for many of us on the left, the first question is whether it is good or bad for the poor.
None of these questions are the final question, mind you, but they are the beginning, the framework within which the details can be examined more closely.
Redintegro Iraq,
-Vardibidian.
I jumped back here from the more recent entry Cruel, Unusual, Punishment and from here followed the link back to remind myself of the discussion of property as a conservative value, and I was reminded of a half-formed thought that I’ve been meaning to submit to this Tohu Bohu for refinement.
In a comment a little while ago on Alas, A Blog (digging… eh, can’t find it), one of the resident conservatives (‘Robert’) encapsulated his decision to vote Republican as a belief that although the Republican agenda affirms some restrictions of liberty that he disagrees with, he believes that the Republican agenda will lead to a greater net increase in liberty than the Democratic one. It was an odd assertion to make in the context of discussing gay marriage, so I spent some time trying to figure out what might be meant by it. Here’s the best I could come up with:
Modern American conservatism constructs ‘liberty’ quantitatively and fungibly, while modern American liberalism constructs ‘liberty’ qualitatively and with an eye towards protecting the irreplaceable.
Examples?
Private property: “The prime importance of private property for liberty, order, and progress” vs. “It cannot be unlimited, because it is the creature of the law in the first place, and also because it serves a public purpose—the dispersion of power.”
Tax cuts: Proponents emphasize that taking money from non-government economic entities is a restriction of liberty. Opponents emphasize that government uses tax money to the benefit of the nation in ways that individual actors would not.
Tax cuts for the wealthy: Proponents measure the injustice of a tax by dollar amounts or by flat percentages of income. Opponents measure the injustice of a tax by its degree of impingement on basic needs.
The environment: Opponents note the cost to business and lost national wealth due to environmental protections. Conservative proponents will talk about things like long-term versus short-term costs. Liberal proponents note that once you break it, it stays broken.
Gay marriage: Opponents assert an overall devaluation of heterosexual marriages and/or religious belief. Proponents assert that the protections of legal marriage are irreplaceable.
Tort restriction: Proponents seek to protect businesses from unpredictable costs. Opponents seek to deter irresponsible corporate behavior whose damages cannot be undone with money.
The death penalty: Proponents cast the choice to commit a crime as a market decision; as such, death and higher penalties like death by torture (c.f. the above-linked entry) are reasonable costs to impose both as ‘financial’ deterrents and as a just approximation of the damage done by the criminal. Opponents criticise it for (among other reasons) being irreversible in the case of error.
All of this seems to tie in closely with the liberalism of fear: that an oppressive government will attempt to replace non-fungible liberties — “civil” liberties, even — with fungible ones, and that fungible liberty, being in the end the same thing as wealth and power, will aggregate to the wealthy and powerful.
I brace myself for the purifying pepper spray of refutation.