Read Liberalism: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) Online
Authors: Michael Freeden
Alternatively, liberals may move the concepts of property, security, productivity, and the rule of law to a position immediately adjacent to liberty. When that pattern prevails, liberty will adopt the contours of protecting the market activities of individuals. It will do so through formalizing ownership rights and clearing paths for economic activity, a morphological cluster at the heart of layer two liberalism. Other ways of teasing out certain interpretations of core liberal concepts relate to the manner in which the core concepts interact. Thus, if we combine rationality, sociability, and limited power we associate rationality with the benefits of mutual human interdependence, whether cultural or economic. Moreover, we indicate that rationality could be stultified by the over-reliance on power in a society. The conceptual permutations seem unlimited, but they are not. In fact they generally settle into the kind of layered patterns explored in
Chapter 3
.
That isn’t the end of the story, however. For once we fine-tune the structure of liberalism even further, we alight on a third band of peripheral concepts. Those are normally less durable components of the ideological field of liberalism, but they are vital in linking the more general ‘inner’ concepts with the concrete political and social worlds that liberals inhabit. Peripheral here indicates two different interfaces. First, the ideas and practices on the periphery of an ideology are less crucial and more marginal in maintaining its headline ideas. Second, an ideology continuously responds to real world contexts that ‘encroach’ on it and assimilates them into its fluid and mutating discourses.
Take for example the issue of immigration into the UK, an issue that has been at the forefront of public debate for a while. The concept of ‘immigration’ impinges on liberal thinking, as it does on other ideologies, but it is not as central to liberalism as it is to some recent populist or nationalist groups. Not counting tourists and people in transit, immigration relates to the entry of foreign nationals into the country and can be categorized into refugees, asylum, job, and benefit seekers. The latter two include both those who have a legal entitlement to enter (e.g. members of European Union countries), and illegal migrants. On the whole liberals have traditionally had a tolerant attitude towards migration for two reasons: as part of the freedom of movement they value; and—in certain cases—as a consequence of humanitarian considerations intended to protect individuals from harm in the form of suffering or persecution in their places of origin. Liberals may also set great store by the economic benefits and skills migrants can bring with them, and appreciate the diversity of immigrant cultures and their contributions to the host culture. The peripheral notion of immigration is consequently channelled through the second band of adjacent liberal concepts such as welfare, humanism, pluralism, interdependence, and prosperity, as well as the core concepts of liberty and sociability. However, some liberals may draw the line at types of immigration such as ‘benefits tourism’, where non-nationals arrive for the sole purpose of making use of the welfare institutions at a society’s disposal; or they may wish to limit the entry of individuals who express extreme hostility and threaten violence towards their new host society.
The concreteness of immigration experiences lends colour and context to the more abstract ideas liberalism promotes. It is often through those ‘broker’ concepts between actual, specific situations and fundamental principles that an ideology begins to make sense and to become politically and socially relevant. Indeed, the core concepts remain vacuous and indeterminate unless they can be attached to lines of association with both adjacent and peripheral ideas. Hence another way of looking at the multiple members of the liberal family is to track the path of each liberal version as it moves from its commonly held but loosely defined core, through slightly more specific adjacent concepts, to the many different peripheries that inhabit and interact with liberalism. And then, of course, we can take the reverse path: from the idea, practice, or event at the periphery of liberalism back through some of its adjacent concepts. Finally, we can gauge their impact on the core, noting how the latter adapts and is re-interpreted in light of being at the receiving end of those selective channels.
Thus, core ideas about liberty and individuality may be diverted into market practices, once adjacent concepts about free exchange, individual initiative, entrepreneurship, and competition are marshalled into position. From there it is another journey towards the periphery of trade agreements between states, or another periphery that relates pay and social status to meritorious work. And a reverse trip from periphery to core may look like this: a medical breakthrough, such as producing a new drug to treat a major disease, might be diverted by some liberals through adjacent concepts such as welfare and public property rights towards reinforcing the core concepts of the general interest and progress. The result could be a form of socialized medicine, free on delivery and financed by the state. But on an alternative liberal path the medical discovery might be drawn into a different trajectory, through the adjacent concepts of private property rights, or pecuniary rewards for individual inventiveness. It could be routed towards a particular interpretation of the core concept of rationality as efficiency, and towards the core concept of liberty as non-intervention in non-harmful activities (in this case, presumably, the production of a safe drug by a private company, competing in a health market). The morphological permutations are legion and the patterns multiple. But they all recognizably fall within the possibilities that the liberal domain has to offer.
The precise and the fuzzy
The morphological approach does not assume that ideologies have essences, or that their concepts have true meanings. That is a view held by some ideologues, ethicists, and philosophers. It relies instead on empirical evidence culled from many different sources to construct repeated and typical patterns of argumentation that can then be grouped together in an ideological family. Through exploring the recurring patterns of liberal language and discourse, we find liberalism emerging as a complex cluster of internal arrangements. The adaptability that follows in the wake of liberalism’s structural flexibility and tolerance is highly advantageous to an ideology engaged in endless competition over its survival in a harsh ideational environment. The permutations of liberalism, however, are filtered through the organizing constraints that the liberal core concepts impose on any of its versions. As with all ideologies, liberalism changes more slowly at its core and faster at its periphery. The former thus appears durable and in focus; the latter sits on shifting sands.
Approaching liberalism as a loose morphological arrangement, albeit one with distinct family resemblances, casts further light on the fragility of liberal boundaries. If liberal concepts are rearranged in different rankings, or if one or two of them are replaced by other concepts, liberalism can mutate into a neighbouring ideology. The boundaries between ideologies are not cast in stone. Ideologies may want to present themselves as unique and clear-cut, but an examination of their morphologies quickly reveals overlaps, shared areas, and mutual permeation. Crucially, it is not the presence or absence of ideas and concepts that differentiates one ideology from another, but the distinct patterns in which such imbricated or common components are assembled.
Another difficulty in analysing the credentials of those aspiring to liberal status is the tendency to inflate one of the core concepts at the expense of others. If liberals run with an attenuated layer two liberalism, emphasizing markets and the power of capitalist entrepreneurship alone but paying little attention to individual development or to autonomous and reflective choice, there is a risk that liberty as freedom to accumulate wealth may occupy too much of the core’s space, emaciating the partner core concepts. That may happen, however, when any core concept crowds out others, and the observer has to make a considered judgement on whether what remains in the core possesses a sufficient critical mass to deserve the label ‘liberalism’. This issue will be addressed in
Chapter 7
.
There exist of course other, nominal, standpoints of scholars, according to which we must accept that anyone who professes to be a liberal needs to be taken at face-value. That is not the position adopted by the morphological approach. Were we to accept self-declared nominalisms uncritically we would have, for example, to categorize the Nazis as members of the socialist community because they called themselves national socialists. That would, to put things mildly, stretch any reasonable understanding of interwar fascism beyond plausible limits. That is why self-definition by an individual or group—though unquestionably paramount in any investigation—must be tested against a range of perspectives that emanate from outside those engaged in labelling their own ideational wares.
Whatever we may think of liberal arguments and which among them is better or worse, the morphological approach is there to sketch the map of liberal possibilities, not to voice a view on the value of their contents. Its role is to assist in understanding the actual characteristics of liberal thinking, not to pass judgement. Passing judgement is of course a ubiquitous element of political thinking, and liberal supporters and detractors engage in it constantly. But that is a theme that we shall investigate in later chapters.
The liberal ‘greats’
The story of liberalism, as that of all ideologies, combines social and intellectual fashions and currents with the contributions of remarkable individuals. I have contended that it is a methodological and factual error to condense the range and complexity of liberal history to that of a few people. But it would be equally wrong to ignore the crucial role these ‘celebrity’ thinkers have played in contributing to liberal discourse and in setting down signposts through which broader publics can acquire access to liberal ideas. Because it is quite common to see the complex liberal semantic field reduced to its ‘heroic’ figures, that reduction has itself had a profound impact on the understanding and reception of liberalism. It is often not what liberalism has actually been that seems to count, but the way general perceptions of liberalism have impacted on the rhetorical and imaginative power surrounding liberalism through its most salient exponents.
That very specialized liberal intellectual tradition has been largely constructed by philosophers and through university courses and ‘classic’ historical and literary texts as part of a canon. But it is also the case that proto-liberals such as Locke have been co-opted into a later liberal tradition, when many of their intentions and concerns would not be recognized as liberal. For that reason Locke does not figure in this chapter, even though such co-optations develop their own logic and play an important part in the re-invention of cultural memory. Accordingly, this chapter explores the views of some major thinkers and philosophers who shaped and refined liberal thinking since the early 19th century, when liberalism emerged as a distinct ideology. Some of their theories began as philosophical exercises in formulating ideal-type liberalisms. However, unlike much recent philosophical liberalism—to be discussed in
Chapter 6
—they became part of liberalism’s historical and empirical trajectories. That was due in no small measure to the way these thinkers engaged extensively with the political issues of their day.
We begin with four British thinkers who between them illustrate a markedly consistent thread in the development of liberal thought, combining aspects of layer one with layers three and four—a thread that was taken up by other liberals, and unravelled by others still. This emphasis can be justified by a common denominator that notably changed the course of liberalism by opening up the broader potential of its ideas. Some would argue that since then alternative versions of liberalism are mostly rearguard and defensive moves, purist attempts to distil an unsullied or ‘authentic’ liberal essence, if not outright usurpations of the label. On the other hand, those alternative versions often decry the proponents of layers three and four as betrayers, or at least distorters, of what
they
regard as liberalism—Hayek, as we shall see, is one such instance.
John Stuart Mill (1806‒73)
In the pantheon of secular liberal saints, the place of John Stuart Mill is assured. Whenever liberal ideas are discussed, sooner or later Mill becomes a major, if not the major, point of reference. Mill, let it be said immediately, was not typical of liberal thinking. If typical implies normal, Mill was exceptional in his acuteness, powers of imagination, dexterity of analysis, and breadth of comprehension. If we seek the normal liberal thinking of the 19th century, we need to look at pamphlets, newspapers, Parliamentary debates, and other conventional writers. If we want liberal thought at its best, Mill is a suitable starting point. He merits investigation both as a producer of complex philosophical arguments and as a disseminator of ideas to a general public that propelled liberal ideology in new directions. If political parties are ideological stragglers, philosophers of Mill’s ilk are ideological trail-blazers. Mill may not be entirely representative of his times, but he was instrumental in giving liberalism a powerful and influential voice well beyond the borders of the United Kingdom.
Mill’s elucidations of liberal thought are manifold. In his famous essay ‘On Liberty’, published in 1859, he stipulated a divide between self-regarding and other-regarding actions, a distinction that highlighted the boundary between the public and private spheres that became one of liberalism’s hallmarks. Self-regarding actions were those with which no one had a right to interfere. Among those, Mill listed decisions about one’s personal safety, one’s tastes and beliefs, and the purchase of drugs and medicines as long as they were clearly labelled. In all those cases, individual reason was to be relied on and, even if people made mistaken decisions, it was always better that they learn from these than that they be directed by others. Other-regarding actions were far more common, given that most individual actions affect others. But they too could be engaged in freely by individuals unless they would cause injury. That rule was known as the harm principle and found in far earlier accounts of natural law and duties, including Locke’s. Mill, however, elaborated on it markedly. Mere inconvenience to others, or offence, were insufficient causes for intervention in an individual’s actions. Intervention was justified only when other-regarding actions were critically detrimental to the interests of other members of a society. Mill’s notion of harm to others was narrow by today’s standards. It comprised physical damage and legal compulsion, or the undue pressure of public opinion, but not psychological, emotional, or historical harms of oppression. In the 19th century the conceptual apparatus for identifying such additional harms as equally dehumanizing was barely available. Still, the harm principle and the integrity of individual space have remained distinguishing features of modern liberalism. And Mill’s commitment to the freedoms of thought, speech, and association as the indicators of a decent, open society, without which neither individual nor society could thrive, remained paramount.