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It's nice to have some stuff to work on that can be a bit drabbly and non-perfect. I might even get most of them done! |
If I were there, I'd nap on you too. |
I am drinking tea! Irish breakfast mixed with mambo. I am all done and going to have to face the fact that breakfast is over. |
It's been ages since I had Irish Breakfast. I should put it on the grocery list. |
I am alternating between plain white grape juice and heavily sugared coffee, and will continue to do so until I reach some kind of caffeine-mania asymptote and start writing fic with titles like "Food Network Caters Your Gay Wedding." |
I'm getting the sugar shakes just reading this. :D You should def write that fic. |
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What is Social Liberalism? |
By David Howarth |
reinventingthestatecover100This article was originally published in Reinventing the State: Social Liberalism for the 21st Century. We are grateful to David for allowing us to reproduce this article. |
Sometime in the late nineteenth century, liberalism began to divide into two different streams. One stream, which came to be called ‘classical liberalism’, confined liberalism’s ambitions to establishing a robust framework to protect individuals from a rapacious and power-hungry state. It aimed to control the size of t... |
Some classical liberals shaded into what ought to be called libertarianism rather than liberalism. They came to view property rights as natural rights existing outside the framework of the state, so that the state may not even redefine property rights without committing a wrong. |
The other stream, which has come to be called ‘social liberalism’ (but which might better be called ‘social justice liberalism’1 ), also valued political freedom, also thought that the state should as far as possible leave us alone to make our own decisions on how to live our lives, also opposed militarism and also bel... |
Fairness can be seen both as a condition for the legitimacy of the state itself (the characteristic ‘social contract’ view as revived by John Rawls) and as a condition for meaningful freedom. In contrast to the views of libertarians and some classical liberals, rights of property came to be seen by social liberals as i... |
In some countries, the division of liberalism eventually led to the creation of two separate liberal parties. An early example was the separation of the Danish Venstre and Radikale Venstre. Later examples include the Dutch VVD and D66 and the division of the French Radical Party into the Radicaux de Gauche and the Valo... |
As a consequence classical liberalism does not have its own political home in Britain. Some classical liberals have ended up in the Conservative Party, but that has never been a particularly comfortable home for them because of the ever-present authoritarian and socially illiberal strands in Conservative thinking. |
The confusion about ‘economic liberalism’ |
Occasionally the idea comes up that some British liberals are ‘social liberals’ whereas others – for example some of the authors of The Orange Book2 – are ‘economic liberals’, and that there is a fundamental difference between them. This is a confused view, which comes about through not understanding the difference bet... |
The confusion comes about because ‘economic liberalism’ is an ambiguous term. One possible meaning is that it is identical with ‘classical liberalism’, with the view that liberals need not be concerned about redistribution or with democracy but only with limiting the scope and activity of government. If that were what ... |
Reasonable social liberals can disagree about the desirability and practicality of specific proposals for delivering social liberal goals. Market mechanisms will always have attractions for liberals, because they decentralise decision-making and encourage innovation – both important liberal enthusiasms – but market mec... |
It is an oddity of British political debate that so much emotional energy is expended on a question that almost certainly has no general or stable answer, namely whether public services should be organised using market or administrative mechanisms – except that no one now disputes that the state should compete for labo... |
The common core of liberalism |
One should not, however, exaggerate the differences between classical and social liberalism. Both begin, and end, with the view that a state that fails to secure political freedom is not legitimate. Both reject the conservative view, for which the main advocate in Britain is the Labour Party of Tony Blair and Gordon Br... |
That is not to say that liberalism denies any significance to security. It is just that it values security only in so far as it contributes to freedom. Tony Blair’s view, in contrast, seemed to be that the only right that matters is the right to life. He would have sacrificed any political freedom if he thought that by... |
Admittedly, to the extent that liberalism is built upon a social-contract view of politics, it cannot ignore existential threats. The social contract is not a suicide pact. But, as Lord Hoffmann has said, aptly but to the fury of large numbers of conservatives in the Labour Party and beyond, the current threat from ter... |
Indeed, if there is an existential threat that creates a need to readjust the basic liberal social contract about what powers we ought to cede to the state, it is not terrorism, but climate change. But even a real existential threat such as climate change does not justify the erosion of fundamental liberties such as fr... |
Nevertheless climate change does pose a challenge for classical liberals who are tempted by libertarianism. If one believes, as libertarians do, that property rights are fundamental and pre-political, one will find climate change a very thorny issue. Libertarians typically deal with environmental problems by saying tha... |
Classical liberals who are not libertarians, however, should have no difficulty with the idea that property rights should be designed by the state so that catastrophic effects such as climate change are avoided. |
Two forms of social liberalism |
Social liberalism moves beyond classical liberalism in two ways – a commitment to redistribution and a belief in democracy. But both are affirmations of liberalism’s attachment to political freedom, not contradictions of it. The fundamental idea is that the over-concentration of power is itself a threat to political fr... |
Stating the basic principle does not, of course, settle how far to take it in particular circumstances. Indeed there is a disagreement within social liberalism about whether the principle that freedom should be safeguarded from the consequences of economic inequality is sufficient in itself or whether it should be supp... |
What is sometimes interpreted as a difference of approach between ‘social’ and ‘economic’ liberals in Britain is often merely a difference within social liberalism between those who recognise supplementary fairness principles (‘maximalist’ social liberals) and those who recognise only the principle that there should be... |
One point, however, tends greatly to reduce the practical distance between minimalist and maximalist social liberalism. Nearly all social liberals accept that the existence of formal political rights cannot be enough by itself to create a liberal society. Citizens need to be in a position to exercise their rights. That... |
Democracy – dialogue, community and localism |
The commitment of social liberalism to democracy, especially to democratic participation, introduces another potential point of tension between social liberalism and markets. Markets are essentially a way in which people can communicate their desires and their abilities to other people without saying very much. Informa... |
Social liberals are drawn to markets because of their ability to disperse power and to promote innovation, but they are often also repelled by their impersonality. Moreover, markets seem potentially to undermine political freedom by undermining political activity. They do this by providing a means for obtaining what on... |
The dangers of replacing political participation with markets are apparent in British society today. It is connected with the rise of consumer politics, in which one’s vote is seen not as a responsibility to choose what is best for all but as an instrument of self-interest. It is one of the factors behind growing disil... |
In contrast, political participation in decision-making (and not only in campaigning – single-issue politics can only be entry-level politics, not the full deal) is an education in political responsibility. It gives an insight into understanding the problem of political value and choice. To govern is to choose, but if ... |
The classical liberal view that all the state should do is guarantee rights and then move out of the way leads to a situation in which politics appears not to be necessary. Social liberals fear that this classical liberal dream is a dangerous delusion, for there never can be a society in which rights are so firmly guar... |
The value social liberals give to dialogue and democratic participation also emerges in another theme of British liberalism, that of community. If one were to read only recent liberal political theory, and ignore the practice of liberal politics in Britain over the past forty years, one might conclude that the idea of ... |
All this explains why localism is a long-standing social liberal commitment. Local government combines all the liberal desiderata, not just some of them. It helps to disperse power and to promote experimentation and diversity, but, in addition, unlike markets, it can facilitate political participation. It has a human d... |
Localism lies at the heart of what social liberals mean when they talk of reinventing the state. If the units of decision-making are small enough, more people will believe that their participation can make a difference and hence they will be more likely to participate. But, even more importantly, they have to believe t... |
Classical liberals might object that the implication of localism is that, as long as the state is decentralised, it should be permitted to displace the market entirely. But this is not the implication of localism, at least for social liberals. Social liberalism’s devotion to localism arises principally from its commitm... |
Because social liberalism supports localism for its political effects, for its contribution to liberty rather than to fairness, it ought to be supported by all types of social liberal, both minimalist and maximalist. The difference between them will be that minimalist social liberals will be satisfied if localism succe... |
Getting the economy out of the state – beyond public choice |
Classical liberalism enjoyed an intellectual and academic renaissance between thirty and forty years ago largely because of the rise of public choice theory.9 The basic premise of public choice theory is that since politicians and public administrators are humans too, their behaviour can be explained in the normal econ... |
Public choice theory has important weaknesses. Its view of what politicians want is very thin, because it ignores the role of political values and ideals. It promotes a view of democracy that is entirely passive – as a marketplace for desires in which votes are expressions of existing preferences, not as a forum in whi... |
Nevertheless public choice theory has a kernel of truth. The theme that political discretion is often dangerous and should be minimised forms part of the intellectual background to policies of all the main British political parties. It crops up not only in the Conservative privatisations of the 1980s but also in the qu... |
There is, however, a problem. Public choice theorists tended towards libertarianism, and therefore tended to downplay the part played by the state in creating and structuring markets. They thought that if state activity were to be replaced by market activity, politics would be less important and we could all sleep more... |
British politics is now dominated by corporate lobbying. Lobbying lies at the heart of the crisis in party funding, for example, and the cash-for-honours scandal. It also contributes to alienation from politics, and ultimately from democracy itself, because the power of big economic interests to get their way demonstra... |
Although we should be wary of the dangers of public choice theory’s libertarian anti-politics, its anti-corporatism remains entirely admirable. Public choice theory’s error lay not in hoping for the end of corporatism but in promoting methods of pursuing that goal that only made things worse. But the anti-corporatist t... |
The role of a social liberal party |
The question remains: how broad a church should a social liberal party be? Clearly there is no difficulty in holding within itself social liberals with different ideas about how to pursue social liberal goals, such as ‘economic liberals’. Almost as clearly, the gap between ‘minimal’ and ‘maximal’ social liberals does n... |
The case of classical liberals, however, is more difficult. Classical liberal adherence to the common core of liberalism, namely the ultimate importance of political freedom, provides a very substantial shared base. But where classical liberalism starts to look like libertarianism, with pre-political theories of proper... |
There is also, and finally, the question of the relationship between the party and personal liberalism. Liberals in politics are often liberals in their own lives as well. Many liberals hold liberalism as a ‘comprehensive’ doctrine – one that offers guidance for all aspects of life – and not just guidance for politics.... |
There are difficult questions here. Comprehensive liberalism has political implications, for example about the extent to which we should tolerate illiberal behaviour within other people’s communities. Should we tolerate communities that do not allow people to leave them, for example? Irrevocable membership violates the... |
If we accept the reality that a social liberal party will always have as its bedrock people who are comprehensive and personal liberals, the question becomes whether such a party should discourage from membership liberals whose liberalism is not personal but only political? That is, what about people who are not libera... |
These questions are particularly pressing in a party that has always welcomed religious minorities and dissenters (for example the Nonconformist tradition) but whose political line tends towards secularism. |
The best tradition of the party is that it should welcome liberals of all sorts, although it should recognise the tensions that will arise as a result. Liberalism, although as strong a political force in Britain as anywhere in Europe, is not so strong that it can afford to divide its forces. And it is also no longer po... |
Social liberalism’s combination of political freedom, social justice and democracy are needed now more than ever. |
1. See G. Gaus, ‘On Justifying the Moral Rights of the Moderns’ in E. Paul, F. Miller and J. Paul, Liberalism: Old and New (Cambridge University Press, 2007). [] |
2. P. Marshall and D. Laws, The Orange Book: Reclaiming Liberalism (Profile Books, London, 2004). [] |
3. J. Astle, D. Laws, P. Marshall and A. Murray, Britain After Blair: A Liberal Agenda (Profile Books, London, 2006) p. 144. [] |
4. D. Laws, ‘Size isn’t everything’ in J. Margo, Beyond Liberty: Is the future of liberalism progressive? (IPPR, London, 2007) p. 145. [] |
5. Ibid., pp. 145–46. [] |
6. See Lord Hoffmann in A v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2004] UKHL 56 at 95–97. [] |
7. A. O. Hirschman, Exit, Voice and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organisations, and States (Harvard University Press, 1970). [] |
8. See B. Greaves and G. Lishman, The Theory and Practice of Community Politics (Association of Liberal Councillors Campaign Booklet 12, Hebden Bridge, 1980). [] |
9. For a quick summary see the reissue of G. Tullock, The Vote Motive (Institute of Economic Affairs, London, 2006). [] |
10. See B. Ackerman, We, The People: Foundations (Belknap Harvard University Press, 1991), ch. 7, ‘The Economy of Virtue’. [] |
11. D. Miller ‘The Rise of the PR Industry in Britain, 1979–98’, European Journal of Communication 15 (1), 2000. [] |
12. See A. Ryan, ‘Newer than What? Older than What?’ in Paul, Miller and Paul, Liberalism: Old and New. [] |
13. Ibid. [] |
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2 comments on “What is Social Liberalism? |
1. Andrew says: |
I would like to know why in respect to the legal system, |
“human institutions are populated by human beings, who are not necessarily to be trusted” |
yet when public choice theory suggests that politicians are likely to maximise outcomes for themselves due to possible moral hazard, |
“it ignores the role of political values and ideals”? |
So those in the legal system are not to be trusted but those in the political system are? Or perhaps you are saying that political institutions aren’t human or populated by humans, which may well in fact be the case. |
David, where have you been for the last 10 years? |
And as you are a member of both trades, which one best describes you? |
I don’t mean to be rude, and I voted for you in 2005 in Cambridge and I came to a talk you gave in the Keynes room at Kings to the Gates Scholars (I wasn’t one, but my friend John organised the talks) and I was duly impressed and I would vote for you again if I still lived there, but surely the irony of your sweepi... |
Some politicians may well stay true to their “ideals and values” but as we don’t have a priori knowledge of this at the time of an election, it is impossible to justify a vote based on it. |
2. Matuop John says: |
How do liberal and democracy conflict within contemporary politics? |
5 Pings/Trackbacks for "What is Social Liberalism?" |
1. [...] Social Liberal Forum, a campaigning organisation within the LibDems representing the Social Liberal part of the LibDem alliance – this is a long-ish article on their values and identity: http://socialliberal.net/2009/02/12/what-is-social-liberalism/ [...] |
2. [...] be called ‘social liberalism’ (but which might better be called ‘social justice liberalism’1 ), also valued political freedom, also thought that the state should as far as possible leave us [...] |
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