Eric Schliesser's Blog, page 19

Descartes on Indignation

The 195 Article. Of Indignation.

Indignation is a sort of Hatred or Aversion, that a man naturally beares to those who doe some evil, of what nature soever it be. And it is often mixed with Envy, or Pity, but yet, the object thereof is altogether different from them. For he carryes an Indignation onely against those who doe good or evil to persons unworthy of it: but he envies those who receive this good, and pities those who receive this evil. It is true, in some respects it is evil to possesse a good whereof a man is not worthy. Which may be the reason wherefore Aristotle and his followers, supposing that Envy is alwayes a vice, have cal��led that Indignation which is not vicious.

...

The 198 Article. Of the use of it.

Furthermore, Indignation is observed to be more in those who would seem vertuous, than those who really are. For althought they who love vertue cannot without some Aversion look upon the vices of others, they are Passio��nate onely against the great and extraordinary ones. For it is to be nice, and squamish, to have much Indignation for things of little concern��ment; it is to be unjust to have any for those which are not blameworthy; and it is to be im��pertinent and absurd not to confine this Passion to the Actions of men, but extend them to the works of God or nature: as they do who being snever contented with their condition or fortune, dare controule the government of the world, and the secrets of providence.--Descartes, Ren��, 1596-1650., 2013, The passions of the soule in three books the first, treating of the passions in generall, and occasionally of the whole nature of man. The second, of the number, and order of the passions, and the explication of the six primitive ones. The third, of particular passions. By R. des Cartes. And translated out of French into English., Oxford Text Archive, http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12024/A81352.

I was triggered to return to Descartes' Passions while preparing a review of Michelle Schwarze's wonderful book Recognizing Resentment: Sympathy, Injustice, and Liberal Political Thought (Cambridge: 2020). This book is primarily focused on Butler, Hume, and Adam Smith, but it has a preliminary chapter on seventeenth century ideas on resentment and indignation in which Descartes is omitted. This omission is no surprise because Schwarze is focused on recovering and articulating a distinctly liberal understanding of sympathetic resentment and Descartes is no precursor to liberalism or especially interested in promoting commerce and sociability.  Even so, I think Descartes plays an important part of the story she wants to tell, so, here goes.

Early in Passions (article 65), Descartes define or characterizes indignation as follows "evil done by others, having no relation to us, breeds only in us Indignati��on against them." Indignation is, thus, an impartial response ("no relation to us") to the witnessing or experience of harms done to others by third parties. It has, thus, a kind of spectatorship and impartiality built into its very possibility. In addition, it presupposes that these harms are in some sense moralized and intentional ('evils').  This is nicely conveyed by the seventeenth century Dutch translation by Spinoza's acquaintance Jan Glazemaker, where Descartes' indignation is translated as 'euvelneming' literally the experience of evil. 

As an aside, when we are harmed by others, according to Descartes, we feel something stronger than indignation: colere translated nicely as 'wrath'. This passion is very similar to indignation, but also includes the desire of revenge. So it is action-guiding (and can actuate bold and/or courageous actions (see sect 199 of  the Passions). In fact, the somatic instantiation of wrath divers among people, and Descartes is careful to distinguish between a sudden wrath and a carefully nurtured wrath, which when it is joined with love for another may well be a kind of indignation on their behalf. ("interest themselves in the behalfe of those they love, as if it were for themselves;" sect 201).

If we now look at Descartes' treatment of indignation in sections 195-198, we see that he adds an important qualification, that is, that we only feel it when we judge the victim unworthy of the harm ("he carryes an Indignation onely against those who doe good or evil to persons unworthy of it"). It has, thus, an evaluative feature built into its very triggering conditions. So, to sum up the discussion so far, according to Descartes indignation is a  moralized reactive attitude that presupposes considerable impartiality by an observer to intentional harm done to someone not deserving of it. That is to say, the spectator most share a moral universe with the perpetrator and victim. It's not especially action guiding, and seems to have more a role in what we might want to call moral score-keeping and, perhaps, recognition of harms done to other.

When we to turn to the section on the use of indignation (198), we see that Descartes de facto distinguishes two uses of it: first, it has a social role -- I will call it virtue-signaling -- to make us seem virtuous in the eyes of others. And we can infer from Descartes' terse analysis that in its signaling capacity, there is a tendency for an overuse of indignation. This clearly suggests that being thought virtuous creates what we might call social credit. And since indignation is not action guiding (and so has little consequences or negative feedback), there are incentives for being too oft indignant on  behalf of others without qualification because there are no drawbacks. 

It's worth noting that Descartes does not really spell out what's wrong with excessive virtue-signaling, except that he seems to rely on some kind of proportionality requirement that the passion needs to be commensurate with the triggering cause(s). I actually think this kind of principle plays a huge role in Hume's and Smith's moral psychology, and I am kind of sad I just noticed this feature in Descartes today. Of course, that causes and effects have to be proportional to each other is an important element in Descartes' physics (see, for example, his letter to Huygens, 5 October, 1637: ���L���effet doit toujours ��tre proportionn�� �� l���action qui est n��cessaire pour le produire.��� [Quoted from S. Roux]), so  it is not ad hoc. But it has moved from a natural principle to a normative one that can be violated (and again that's not untypical of Hume and Smith). 

Be that as it may, presumably Descartes things that too-frequent indignation destroys the signaling quality of indignation when it is proper. (If X is a cheap source of social credit then X may well become inflationary.) So, second, there is a proper form of indignation of those who truly love virtue (and are not merely virtue signaling) at "great and extraordinary harms." Unlike, say, Hobbes (as described wonderfully by Theresa Bejan (recall)), Descartes really takes (to be anachronistic for a second) micro-aggressions for granted as not needing to be registered by bystanders and spectators. Perhaps this is due to the Stoic element in his thought.

It's not quite clear what the measure is that allows a spectator to distinguish between small-ish harms not deserving a passionate response and those so worthy. But indignation at the harms to others worthy of note is appropriate according to Descartes. Since it's not action guiding its primary function seems to be let victims (and their aggressors) know that evils done to them are recognized by outsiders. So I infer that its main role according to Descartes is as a kind of social score keeping that make victims of harms be seen by the community (and which establishes, thereby, to perpetrators that the have violated important social norms).

Interestingly enough, Descartes wants to rule out indignation at the greatest cause of all (and he puts this in surprisingly Spinozistic fashion) God or Nature [Dieu, ou de la Nature]. Again, we see a kind of appeal to a normative proportionality principle here. But lurking here is also an idea that we cannot make our indignation felt on God or Nature, and that in an important sense we are not fundamentally equal. 

I think it's pretty clear that by Descartes' lights, wrath -- as action guiding and nurtured over time under the sway of, say, anger or revenge, -- is taken as potentially more destabilizing to society than indignation. For, wrath can undermine good judgment. And so wrath must be moderated according to Descartes by generosity (sect 203).

You haven't read Schwarze's book, but I hope you trust me when I say that Descartes's account of indignation has already a lot of the building blocks that will be deployed by Butler, Hume, and Smith and that she analyzes with great skill. From the eighteen century perspective, what's really lacking in Descartes is a proper analysis of the role of sympathy in calibrating indignation. (Descartes was famously averse to sympathy because he associates it with the kind of philosophy he thinks is baloney.) And Descartes does not spell out the normative features that enter into judgment of the impartial bystander. If I am right about this it does raise an interesting historical-sociological question why Descartes' view of indignation was only really developed and elaborated during the eighteenth century by folk commonly portrayed as his critics.

 

The Virginia School and Carl Schmitt: Wagner's Entangled Political Economy (pt 1)

    The second type of tension points to some challenging issues of dialectical theorizing. Perhaps most significantly, it appears in Buchanan���s distinction between constitutional and post-constitutional politics. This distinction was central both to The Calculus of Consent and The Limits of Liberty, and it was the dominant theme within his body of work. This tension appears clearly in the Calculus of Consent, and continues in his various subsequent efforts to use the playing of parlor games as serving as a useful framework for thinking about problems pertaining to the organization of human affairs. This scheme of thought is closed and deterministic and not open and creative. Yet there can surely be no doubt that despite his flirtations with closed schemes of thought, the Buchanan (1982) who asserted that order could be defined only through some emergent process was someone who necessarily embraced open schemes of thought that is not reducible to a few people deciding what kind of parlor game to play.
   This tension within Buchanan���s scheme of thought points toward a distinction between sentimental and muscular versions of liberalism. Perhaps nowhere is this distinction illustrated in sharper relieve than in comparing John Stuart Mill���s (1859) On Liberty with James Fitzjames Stephen���s (1873) Liberty, Equality, Fraternity. For Mill, a liberal order was easy to achieve and maintain because personal liberty, equality before the law, and humanity were universal values, so human nature provided a bedding ground within which liberalism could flourish. Stephen agreed with Mill about liberty and equality, but not about the fraternal imperative being resident within human nature. Hence, Stephen thought that force would always be part of a well-ordered society, though he recognized that force could be used to subvert a liberal order as well as to support it. For the sentimental version of liberalism conveyed by Mill and later John Rawls (1971), human governance could be reduced to ethics, law, and commerce, leaving no room for the political insertion of force into society. For the muscular version of liberalism, free societies are not self-sustaining, and can degenerate without the proper use of force. While Stephen illustrated the muscular version of liberalism luminously, James Burnham (1943) traced that muscular version back to Machiavelli, and also associated it with such figures from the early 20th century as Vilfredo Pareto, Gaetano Mosca, and Roberto Michels. Burnham could very well have added Carl Schmitt (1932) and his recognition of the autonomy of the political to his menagerie of thinkers in the spirit of muscular liberalism.

    Buchanan���s position relative to the divide between sentimental and muscular liberalism is ambiguous. Much of this thinking reflected an ���end of history��� style of thinking whereby political force could be abolished through the creation of the proper constitutional rules. Yet, Buchanan never fully embraced this style of thinking. Sentimental liberalism treats liberty as a universal value. If so, people should readily embrace the challenge of living as free persons. But if a good part of the population is thought to be afraid of living freely (Buchanan 2005), either sentimental expressions of liberalism will transform liberty into servility (Belloc 1912) or political power will be
marshaled to lead protesters into accepting the liberal order. --Richard E. Wagner (2017)) James Buchanan���s "Liberal Theory of Political Economy: A Valiant but Failed Effort to Square the Circle" [published in Buchanan's Tensions: Reexamining the Political Economy and Philosophy of James M. Buchanan Edited by Peter J. Boettke and Solomon Stein , 2018.]

There is persistent strain of scholarship that aims to link important theorists of neo-liberalism -- Hayek, Eucken, Buchanan, Milton Friedman, etc. -- to Carl Schmitt's legal theory in order to unmask or show the true character of neo-liberalism. This is often illustrated with some references to their entanglement with Pinochet's dictatorship. While I do not want to dismiss such scholarship out of hand -- in some neoliberals, especially in Hayek, there is a strain of accommodation with temporary benevolent dictatorship --, but it is often not very illuminating. Sometimes, more rarely really, the point of the exercise is self-consciously to rehabilitate Schmitt as a kind of liberal, although one "free from democratic contamination." The quote is from a fascinating (1984) article in the Canadian Journal of Political Science by F.R. Cristi, a philosopher then at Wilfred Laurier.

I became aware of Cristi because I have been recently reading Richard E. ('Dick') Wagner's late works (at the urging of some of his students and admirers). Wagner is James Buchanan's first PhD student (or among the first), and also among his most prominent ones who played an important role in the development of 'Virginia school' public choice (alongside Buchanan, Tullock, and Nutter). More recently, Wagner has been developing an approach within public choice -- entangled political economy -- which draws on network theory, systems theory, polycentrism, and the Italian elite school (especially Pareto, Mosca, Michel, etc.) as well as the left strain of Austrian economics (associated with Wieser). Wagner also has a fondness for the sociologist, Elias. Wagner is widely read in social theory, and unusually for an economist, does not hide it. One reason to be interested in Wagner's entangled political economy is in its sober analysis of political life. For if corrosive rent-seeking by the powerful and connected is one of the Achilles-heels of liberal democracy then liberalism, or at least a realist liberalism (say of the sort defended by Matt Sleat) needs to come to terms with it. 

Much to my surprise, in Wagner's late works, Schmitt repeatedly shows up as an 'authoritarian liberal' and he cites Cristi's work repeatedly as source for this. (To be sure not the 1984 article I quoted above, but Cristi's 1998, book Carl Schmitt and Authoritarian Liberalism. But judging by Wagner's description of the latter the view is close to the 1984 article.) My own view -- which I share with Perry Anderson (no friend of liberalism) is -- that (recall) "Schmitt...never had any truck with liberalism." Leaving aside Cristi's motives and project, the question that I wish to pursue here is to what degree Wagner's position -- with its advocacy for a 'muscular' species of liberalism -- remains broadly liberal. 

The problem is that Wagner inserts his analysis in a historical set of contrasts attached to familiar names in the liberal tradition. On one side are Mill, Rawls, and much of Buchanan. These are sentimental liberals. And they are so called because and now I re-quote Wagner "human governance could be reduced to ethics, law, and commerce, leaving no room for the political insertion of force into society." I suspect that strictly speaking this claim is false about all three purported sentimentalists. But it's also a sufficiently familiar (realist) criticism of the latter two that I will accept something like it for the sake of argument.* In another work, Wagner explains this point (about the reduction of human governance to ethics, law, and commerce) as follows:

To assert the autonomy of the political seems superficially to clash with the traditional or classical notion of a society of free and independent individuals, perhaps still associated most strongly with John Stuart Mill (1863). This notion of liberalism appears to seek to reduce the political to some combination of economics, law, and ethics. The reduction to economics reflects the autonomy of economizing action. The reduction to law reflects the idea of a rule of law as replacing a rule of men, about which Rajagopalan and Wagner (2013) voice skepticism. The reduction to ethics reflects a presumption that humanity can will itself to be governed along the principles of one of those peaceable kingdom paintings where lions are lying with lambs. "The logic of economizing action: Universal form and particular practice" in (2016) Politics as a Peculiar Business: Insights from a Theory of Entangled Political Economy.

Before I get to this, I have to admit I find the way Wagner draws a contrast (in the material quoted at the top of this post) between Mill and Stephen a bit puzzling. While Stephen had many perceptive criticisms of the kind of hypocrisy and ideological blinders required to call Victorian England in any sense 'equal', his own underlying commitment was (as was clear to then contemporary commentators like Morley) un-egalitarian. To quote a key line from Stephen: "Men are fundamentally unequal, and this inequality will show itself arrange society as you like." See Liberty, Equality, Fraternity (LF ed.). Liberty Fund, 1874, pp. 152-153. (This is from the chapter 5, on the 'modern creed' of equality.) I return to Stephen's position below. I also found it odd to see Mill characterized as holding that "a liberal order was easy to achieve and maintain because personal liberty, equality before the law, and humanity were universal values." After all, Mill thought, to simplify, that many societies required English tutelage to be prepared for a liberal order.

Burnham was not confused about these matters during the phase when he was most enamored by Machiavelli and the Italian elite thinkers. In that period he did not think of himself as a liberal (either in the progressive twentieth century sense or the more nineteenth century classical sense that Buchanan ended up identifying himself with). After all, Burnham (a philosophically trained ex-Trotskyite) thought that managerialism would make liberalism (and Marxism) obsolete. One reason why his writings from the 1940s [recall The Managerial Revolution (1941) and The Machiavellians: the Defenders of Freedom (1943)] are so fascinating is that he is extremely insightful on the implosion of early twentieth century liberalism and the contours of the post WWII settlement, while completely missing the possibility of a neo-liberal revival.

I don't mean to suggest that there are no liberal ideas in Burnham. Burnham is explicitly not laissez-faire, and he denies that respect for private property is the end all or be all to defend what he calls 'freedom.' Rather he thinks that what's required for freedom is the possibility to provide criticism of the government, which must be constrained by law. And he thinks (in Madisonian fashion, and certainly this picks up a strain in Machiavelli) that it is competing powers/forces that maintain this freedom (beyond mores/norms). For Burnham the lesson is that concentrated power is dangerous. So, here Burnham is an accord with the ordoliberals of his own age, and trustbusters of the progressive era. But he argues this without much interest in much of what characterizes liberalism. (Burnham's rejection of equality slides into outright racism and sexism in his later work see (e.g. Suicide of the West)).

As an aside, I don't mean to suggest that there is no route into liberalism from Pareto (who was a liberal for most of  his life) and Italian Elite theory (as mediated by Burnham). The French political sociologist, Raymond Aron, read Burnham carefully and did develop a species of liberalism in which responsible elites play an important role.+

If we turn to Wagner's own use of Burnham and Schmitt, we see that what's crucial for him within his development of entangled political economy is what Wagner calls the 'autonomy of the political.' By this he means I think three distinct (but mutually supporting) claims: (i) politics is not reducible to economics or the economy (and so also has a proper form of activity of its own [and that analytically must be captured by its own methods])--sometimes there is an added claim that politics is 'parasitic' on the economy; (ii) the use of force is intrinsic to the political and, ultimately, unavoidable in political life. (The "parlor games" tend to obscure this fact.) Liberals who take liberal values for granted, and democrats who take democratic commitments of the people for granted, ultimately miss this point. (iii) Left to their own devices, the liberal economic order and civil society are not self-sustaining (hence the recurring crises within liberalism). What's needed is political will and force to save the liberal economic order from its own impotence (or crises).

In my view the great significance of Wagner's entangled political economy is its willingness to address the possibility (and dangers accompanying) the fact that liberalism may not be self-sustaining. And I hope to return to it before long. But I do want to register that Wagner's purported realism has slid into illiberalism in two characteristic ways. First, it's bedrock in liberalism, and anachronistically or not, Locke is the godfather of the idea, that force has to be backed by (legitimate) law and that if such law is unavailable, but the survival of individual members of society requires discretion, the use of force can be made accountable after the fact. (I owe this way of formulating it (recall) to Hume and Nomi Claire Lazar's States of Emergency in Liberal Democracies.)

It is by no means obvious that Wagner embraces this bedrock idea because his repeated invocations of Schmitt are meant to convey the idea "that the autonomy of the political within society is bound up in the ability of those who hold political power to act on and grant exceptions to rules and to act on and reinforce distinctions between friends and enemies." (from "Parasitical political calculation" in (2016) Politics as a Peculiar Business.) And accountability is never paired with this principle. 

Second, I have a sneaky suspicion that Wagner agrees with Stephen's rejection of egalitarianism. This is clear from another passage in Politics as a Peculiar Business that I will quote at length:

The autonomy of the political reflects recognition that power is ever present in society, along with recognition that people differ among themselves in both abilities and interests as these pertain to the relative attractiveness of comparatively introversive and extroversive lines of activity. In this respect, participation in political activity seems likely to hold generally stronger appeal for relatively extroversive types who find public interaction to be a source of energy rather than draining it away. While the autonomy of the political appears in the surface impression that a small number of rulers dominate large masses of citizens, that surface impression hides the sub-surface recognition that power is latent in human nature, and which manifests itself in numerous particular ways historically. That latency and its particular manifestation starts from recognition that humans could potentially be studied within the rubric of ethology as the study of the higher mammals, as against being studied as an independent species....While there may be little difference between a street porter and a philosopher (Levy and Peart, eds. 2008) when operating alone in Crusoe-like fashion, differences arise in societal settings, increasingly so as societal complexity increases as represented by an increasingly stratified division of labor, and with those differences both promoting hierarchy and intensifying the autonomy of the political.
To refer to human sociality is not necessarily to refer to something pleasant. Sociality might be pleasant, but often it is not. Sociality refers simply to orientations and activities that involve a multiple of people, and so are not phenomena recognizable to a Robinson Crusoe. The social mammals mostly exist in cooperative packs. A pack of wolves can bring down a moose even though the aggregate weight of those wolves is less than that of the moose. From time to time, quarrels will arise among the wolves in a pack, and with one of the quarreling wolves emerging as the leader of the pack. The social mammals display cooperation, conflict, and hierarchy as inseparable or entangled qualities, and human societies are no different in this regard.

It is possible that Wagner here is merely making a descriptive claim about the inevitability of social hierarchy in societies characterized by an advanced division of labor. But it is notable that he does so while stipulating that Levy & Peart's analytic egalitarianism only holds in small societies. For it is central to their analytic egalitarianism (which I tend to defend) -- which treats humans as broadly equal [in the way that Hobbes does] -- that any observed differences are due to social causes (not necessarily reducible to innate human differences). And so it looks like Wagner wishes to emphasize those features of elite theory that emphasize innate differences and social hierarchies and so implies that the elite that rules (with calibrated force), does so by nature (not law).

 

*As Mill's Indian writings show, he does have an art of government in which force plays a role beyond ethics/law/commerce. Rawls & Buchanan, who are in fact, fairly close to each other, inherit from Rousseau and Kant's rechtslehre ideas about the foundational role of force.

+I warmly recommend this paper by Richard Bellamy on Machiavelli and Machiavellianism. And this paper by Drochon on Aron's Machiavellianism.

On the Origins of Liberalism in a Critique of Mercantilism: a note on Duncan Bell's Famous Political Theory essay

While the term ���liberal��� had long been used in English to denote assorted aristocratic dispositions, mores, and pursuits, it only assumed a specifically political meaning in the early nineteenth century. Borrowed from the Spanish Liberales of the 1812 Constitution, the term was first employed in a derogatory manner by Tories to malign their Whig opponents. During the 1820s it was reclaimed by some radical Whigs, in a classical example of rhetorical redescription, to characterise individuals and policies dedicated to non-revolutionary reform, although it also became associated with the small but vocal group of ���philosophic radicals,��� including the young John Stuart Mill. ���Liberal��� was increasingly utilised to describe the politico-economic demands of the emergent middle classes. Yet it was still an obscure and marginal category: during the 1820s and 1830s ������liberals��� were not a firmly defined group and ���liberalism��� did not securely mark out a single intellectual phenomenon.��� It was only during the second half of the century that usage proliferated, though it remained closely tied to the creed of the newly named Liberal Party.--Duncan Bell (2014) "What Is Liberalism?" Political Theory, 2014, Vol. 42(6) 6 693

Throughout these Digressions I have been making passing references to Bell's important article since I read it last Summer. But it might be useful to state my disagreement with it in a more forthright manner. But before I get to that it is worth stating that for anyone interested in the construction(s) of (a) liberal tradition(s) it is full of sober and sobering analysis. And, in particular, it is very interesting on the utilitarian attitude toward Locke and also has a very plausible story to tell how Locke became a kind of canonical ur-Liberal. (Along the way it also makes some very useful historiographical distinctions that I will return to some day.)

A natural reading of Bell's piece is that 'liberal' in a political sense originates in the start of the nineteenth century in a Spanish political context and then later -- not unlike some other phenomena -- used in a derogatory matter before it became a kind of self-description. Unfortunately, Bell does not explain what he means by 'a specifically political meaning.' And that might mean that what follows attacks a straw man in some sense. But even so, the intended contrast is with the (somehow unpolitical?) attitude associated with liberality as an aristocratic disposition. Fair enough. 

Now consider the following passage published in 1776:

Mr. Colbert, the famous minister of Louis XIV, was a man of probity, of great industry and knowledge of detail, of great experience and acuteness in the examination of public accounts, and of abilities, in short, every way fitted for introducing method and good order into the collection and expenditure of the public revenue. That minister had unfortunately embraced all the prejudices of the mercantile system, in its nature and essence a system of restraint and regulation, and such as could scarce fail to be agreeable to a laborious and plodding man of business, who had been accustomed to regulate the different departments of public offices, and to establish the necessary checks and controls for confining each to its proper sphere. The industry and commerce of a great country he endeavoured to regulate upon the same model as the departments of a public office; and instead of allowing every man to pursue his own interest in his own way, upon the liberal plan of equality, liberty, and justice, he bestowed upon certain branches of industry extraordinary privileges, while he laid others under as extraordinary restraints. He was not only disposed, like other European ministers, to encourage more the industry of the towns than that of the country; but, in order to support the industry of the towns, he was willing even to depress and keep down that of the country.--Wealth of Nations, 4.9.3 (emphasis added)

I have quoted context because in it Smith is criticizing mercantilism severely. (Recall my post from yesterday in which I suggest this is an important stream for the development of liberalism.) And mercantilism is not merely criticized economically it is criticized politically--it's a system of 'restraint and regulation.' In fact, mercantilism is here presented as an ordering of the economy on the model of political bureaucracy and political functions ("different departments of public office.") that creates a kind of system of checks and balances within the economy by using incentives and prohibitions. In fact, Smith is explicit that it's a system biased in favor of the town and against the country. 

Now, a lot can be said about Smith's analysis of mercantilism (as a kind of ideology--Enzo Rossi and Paul Raekstad have some neat ideas on this). But what matters here is his motive to do so: and that is to draw a contrast with his own system: the "liberal plan of equality, liberty, and justice." Now, undoubtedly Smith is relying on the positive valence of 'liberal' as in 'generous' (associated with liberality)--I will discuss this below. But the terms he uses -- equality, liberty, and justice -- suggests that we're not in the realm of an aristocratic disposition, but in a political characterization of a system of political economy: the liberal plan.

To be sure, in Wealth of Nations, Smith most frequently uses 'liberal' to mean something like 'abundant' (as in 'liberal wages' or 'the liberal reward of labour.') And in a note added to the fourth addition he starts the book while thanking Henry Hope for his "liberal information" on the Bank of Amsterdam, where the information is not just abundant but clearly given in a generous spirit (of liberality) by Mr. Hope. And Smith also sometimes uses liberal in the still somewhat familiar sense of 'liberal professions' (which are, in fact, liberally rewarded and draw in most liberal spirits) and the 'liberal arts' (less rewarded). And in this abundant sense, landlords, governments, princes, and even banks are described as 'liberal' (although according to Smith such liberality was the undoing of a might yScottish bank (the Ayr bank)). In general 'liberal' in this sense is contrasted with 'moderate' or 'scanty.' When used like this, 'liberal' and 'liberality' are generally descriptive terms. 

Near the end of Wealth of Nations, Smith draws a distinction -- one important in The Theory of Moral Sentiments -- between two kinds mores/ethical systems: one austere, the other "the liberal, or, if you will, the loose system." (WN 5.1.g.10) And this is indeed the system apt for higher ranks. So, I do not want to deny that Smith also uses the non-political sense of 'liberal.'

The first time that Smith uses 'liberal' to refer to something like his own system, occurs also in Book IV: "Were all nations to follow the liberal system of free exportation and free importation, the different states into which a great continent was divided would so far resemble the different provinces of a great empire." (WN 4.5.b.39) What's notable about this instance is that it looks like the liberal system merely denotes free trade. Although Smith is quick to point out (anticipating an idea that Kant runs with) that the political effect of such a system is to turn a free trade zone into a kind of empire. Again, while there is no doubt that Smith wants to evoke his system as the generous one, the meaning of 'liberal' here is if not outright political at least clearly economic. Later in the same paragraph (the second use of 'liberal' in the sense that interests me), Smith writes "But very few countries
have entirely adopted this liberal system." What's nice, for my purposes, is that the adoption of the liberal system is clearly presented as subject to political decision. And these passages set up the material I quoted from WN 4.9.3

In fact, there are instances of Smith's use of 'liberal' that are ambiguous.  Smith describes free trade with colonies, as a liberal policy (WN 4.7.b.24). But here he is not quite describing his own system, and I think it's natural to understand him as suggesting it is a generous policy. (Something similar occurs when he speaks of "The liberality of England, however, towards the trade of her colonies has been confined chiefly to what concerns the market for their produce..." (WN 4.7.b.40) And he also describes the mercantile trade policy of "Great Britain" as "illiberal" (WN 4.7.b.50) So, the coupling of free trade with 'liberal' as generous occurs throughout book IV in Wealth of Nations, even though it's not always 'the liberal plan.' Smith, a professor of rhetoric, clearly is using liberal for rhetorical effect when describing his own system: "According to this liberal and generous system, therefore, the most advantageous method in which a landed nation can raise up artificers, manufacturers and merchants of its own, is to grant the most perfect freedom of trade to the artificers, manufacturers and merchants of all other nations." (WN 4.9.24)

So, my claim is the following: Smith clearly appropriated the term 'liberal' to apply to his own system and also used it as a name of his system (which he also sometimes called 'the system of natural liberty.') This system is a proper ancestor of nineteenth century liberalism (which often explicitly referred to Smith or evoked him). I actually believe this is also what happened in Spain. Smith's Wealth of Nations was translated into Spanish and very important to the debates surrounding the Spanish 1812 constitution (see this piece by Javier Usoz). I leave it to others to decide and figure out to what degree by adopting themselves as liberales this political group intended to evoke Smith's liberalism.

I am happy to learn from Duncan Bell that 'liberalism' was still fairly obscure in the 1820s and that to be a 'liberal' meant little to most (despite the non-obscurity of Smith's works throughout this period--his followers were not known as liberals). But by ignoring Smith's role in the genesis of liberalism, and his use in describing his own theory as 'liberal', Bell ends up obscuring a very important episode in the history of liberalism as an intellectual and political tradition. Many of the most important liberals of the nineteenth century -- Cobden, Bright, etc. even Mill to some degree -- were Smithians in non-trivial sense. And I worry that by suggesting that 'liberal' is merely an early nineteenth century Spanish import, something important to liberal self-understanding today gets lost.

 

 

 

 

 

Why Liam's blogging promotes the cause of Liberalism (or why I am not a Conservative.):)

Finally this blog post has a couple of issues specific to the left I wish to address. First, at some level it is clear that identifying as a liberal is just to identify as uncool and mainstream-in-a-boring-clueless-way among left cohorts. I don���t mind liberalism having a bad name, why would I?, but a result of this is I think people often miss the affinities of their thought with the liberal tradition and neglect its insights. A proper rejection of liberalism ought to involve understanding it as more than just a loser thing boring normies do ��� there is a reason it has won out in modernity. That reason may not (indeed I think should not) lead you to endorse liberalism; but you will get nowhere if you do not understand it, what liberalism responds to and addresses, and what of it one may wish to carry forward. Second, I think if we are being real with ourselves, a great many leftists in the academy who consider ourselves left of the Overton window should admit that we are de facto small-c conservatives ��� and in at least my society, to uphold the status quo just is to uphold a liberal social order. We are de facto conservatives in the sense that the modern university has clearly slotted into an important credentialing role for the approximation to meritocracy that dominates our economic, political, and ideological order. Materially speaking then just by going in to work and doing our job, however we may feel about it, we are playing the role of functionaries helping this system perpetuate itself. I think we ought be precise about the sense in which we are not liberals if only to self-acknowledge the many senses in which we are, and thereby cut out the bad faith pretences of pseudo-radicalism that so tiresomely dominate many academic spaces.---Liam Kofi Bright Why I Am Not A Liberal April 04, 2022

When I switched professionally from professional philosophy to political theory and from a focus on early modern science and metaphysics to political philosophy, I was reminded that most political philosophers are left egalitarian liberals. Within the profession, they work with or against Rawls in order to promote redistribution of income, wealth, or status/recognition. And Liam reminds them -- these 'leftists' -- that they are de facto conservative with a small c theorists. The nostalgia visible in the Corbynista left -- with its fellow-traveling lexiters, and the fondness for the era of the family wage -- is actually a nice illustration of Liam's case. 

Liam rejects liberalism on three grounds (I quote representative claims by him): (i) "there is no neutral position or viable overlapping consensus or anything of the sort;" (ii) "once market societies are allowed to develop I think they tend towards the concentration of wealth and capital, and so ultimately the ability to buy the state and shut down competition;" (iii) liberalism has :always existed along an imperial-core vs brutally proletarianised outer periphery model. " And before I say anything else, I want to state for the record that these are excellent reasons to reject really existing liberalism. And I wholeheartedly agree with Liam!

Now regular readers know that I self-identify as a 'skeptical liberal' and with that term I wish to distance myself from both the left egalitarian liberalism that dominates professional journals as well as the 'classical liberals' who tend to embrace markets. Readers may be left puzzled how I can agree with Liam's three grounds to reject liberalism, and reject the small c conservatism he ascribes to much of academic liberalism. Simply put: there is a lot more to liberalism than redistribution.:)

Before I get to that I want to mention an omission in Liam's account of "contemporary liberal ideology as the confluence of three factors that led us to where we are today." According to Liam the three factors are (a) the response to religious wars of the seventeenth century; (b) "the desire of the bourgeois to band together to create the conditions of that fair playing ground and drive the wasteful decadent aristocrats from their thrones, the peasantry from their common lands, and the blacks to the fields;" (c) "A nominalist picture of the individual person paints us as in some sense constructing our own worldview from our experiences rather than receiving the set concepts of a pre-ordered world." Liam himself actually likes (c). These three factors are very important and they also explain some of the path dependencies we see in liberalism today, and its difficulties in facing up to its challenges.

Even so, I want to suggest the bourgeoise and capital are not as unified as Liam suggests. To make this point I distinguish conceptually  between mercantilism and liberalism. Historically mercantilism came first and it has never been fully vanquished.  It's worth noting that the first theorist to call himself a 'liberal', Adam Smith, was much concerned with mercantilism, which just is another bourgeois and capitalist ideology. In this ideology the state is captured by capitalist interests (often this is described in terms of 'rent-seeking'), and these use the state's capacity to inflict violence internally and externally to promote their ends. I view (d) the fight to combat mercantilism as the fourth factor that led us to where we are today.

Now, as Liam's second ground to reject liberalism (recall ii) suggests, he views this -- the enduringness of mercantilism -- not as a bug, but as a feature of all really existing capitalism. In this Liam echoes (recall) Lenin after reading (the liberal) Hobson's explanation for imperialism. But the threat of mercantilism, and really existing imperialism which resulted in two bloody world wars, led to a renewal and rethinking of liberalism. For it is embarrassing that some of liberalism's greatest lights ended up defending colonialism, imperialism, and slavery; that Montesquieu, Kant, and Mill are better known and better read than, say, Gouges, Grouchy, and Liam's name-sake John Bright is not accident. (Even Hobson has too much fondness for racialized settler colonialism.) But such canonical choices are not inevitable. And a better liberalism is also lurking in the varied riches of the tradition.

This liberalism I would characterize as a mistrust of concentrated power. Concentrated power always presupposes hierarchy and means to dominate. Such mistrust requires from the state an active anti-trust policy, and a willingness to tackle concentrated powers where they arise, including state functions themselves. In so far as liberals ought to defend markets, these should be policed by vigilant anti-trust institutions. No liberal, for example, should feel at ease with de facto technology monopolies today and should be skeptical about using such technology to promote liberal ends. In fact, no liberal should feel wholly at ease with the way contemporary central banks have concentrated power that is largely unaccountable and makes us all like lab rats in various monetary social experiments. (This is one reason why crypto-currencies are welcomed by more radical liberals.)

The omission in Liam's presentation is important because so-conceived liberalism is a never ending challenge and constantly open to change because social problems change permanently. In fact, the fondness for markets among many classical liberals should be understood, on my more skeptical view, as just one mechanism among others that prevent concentrated powers from enduring. So part of the liberal response to Liam is that where monopolies do arise, they tend to rely on government sanctions (patents, copyright, and skewed labor regulation, etc.). But markets in combination with other important social institutions (education, the sciences, the arts, etc.) create unceasing change of a sort that left egalitarian liberals can't stomach, but that are exhilarating to skeptical liberals like myself.

Liberalism understood as an attack on concentrated powers -- and so as a kind of ideological war within the bourgeoisie -- cannot be neutral about the state and the ends it pursues. The skepticism about enduring hierarchies (i.e., concentrated powers) is the effect of substantive views about the good and good lives (including important roles for the arts and sciences). So, I agree with Liam that liberalism that embraces for itself (and its conception of the state) a purported neutral position and some kind of consensus cannot survive scrutiny. The defense of liberalism that I embrace is indirectly perfectionist: people will be happier and live more meaningful lives, even more moral lives, under properly liberal regimes. This kind of indirect perfectionism was the mainstream of liberalism through the early twentieth century.* It's the liberalism that embraces experiments in living such that better living is possible.

I think there is a lot of empirical evidence (including lots of poor people voting with their feet) that supports such indirect perfectionism. Unfortunately, a lot of the folk who end up stating views close to my own end up uncritical defenders of the status quo--the very status quo that has states impose evil and cruel borders that prevents people from moving where they want to move and drowns or kills people at borders. For, the truth is that within liberalism, the center-periphery dynamic can only be undermined if we do not police borders against migrants.

Liam might grant all of this and still note that really existing liberalism seems vulnerable to rent-seeking by really existing mercantilism. He might even note that liberal democracies, especially, seem rather conducive to promoting such really existing mercantilism because in them electoral majorities may well conspire to abolish estate taxes and to promote public spheres in which capital predominates and in which anti-trust (tackling monopoly media companies) is undermined and in which majorities want to keep some kind of newcomers out. After all, in really existing liberalism, judges don't always defend the rule of law, and don't always protect the innocent. And Liam would be right!

This is why a skeptical liberalism never defends the status quo without considerable qualification (and this is why one should be skeptical about liberals who always promote more markets as the answer). She always has to be willing to look at really existing institutions and confront them with a skeptical eye. Maybe human judges have to be replaced by AI systems? If the baseline is contemporary racist and sexist judiciaries, there is a lot to be said for it. (Of course, there are also good grounds for caution!) Maybe central banks have to be replaced by crypto currencies? A basic income or a birth share in capital may be useful strategies to combat some of the hierarchies produced by really existing capitalism. Really existing liberalism, as a vital force in permanent adjustment - in the spirit of adaptation -- to new social challenges, should never let any privilege endure without introducing countervailing experiments. 

After all, one reason why non-liberals are properly welcome and to be celebrated as state functionaries in liberal institutions of higher learning (or their private counterparts) is that they can help liberals better understand the weaknesses in their own position, and help us all imagine better futures for our societies. In fact, as long as Liam and his critical allies forswear violence, their critical acumen indirectly promotes the cause of liberalism as they promote experiments that are alternatives to the status quo worth having. We might call it, the cunning of the bourgeoisie. 

 

 

*It is worth asking why it was rejected. Short version: the attack on state privileges for religion made many liberals embrace state neutrality. (This one reason why I am not a friend of the idea that liberalism started with a reflection on the thirty years war.) That was an unnecessary mistake (with the extreme version of it France). The better liberal position is to embrace a public sphere full of many religions, but without letting any such religion dominate people's lives.

On the Marketplace of Ideas: on Mill, Holmes, Kalven, Condorcet and Carl Schmitt

Since the work of Jill Gordon (1997) it ought to be common knowledge that J.S. Mill did not defend the idea that the market place of ideas would inevitably lead to truth. (This fits with my own view that I have expressed over quite a number of digressions: see, for example, here; here,  and here.) Unfortunately, this leaves a bit puzzling how the phrase and idea came to be associated with his name and a kind of (providential) liberal faith. (And depending one's political commitments this is a sign of liberal naivete or well grounded liberal optimism.) Moreover, most sophisticated liberals would never assert that markets always produce optimal outcomes, so lurking here is also a question about the mechanism. (I return to that below.)

I suspect that true scholars are familiar with the fact that Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes's dissent in Abrams v United States (1919) is often thought to originate the idea and closely associated phrase. (As it happens Holmes did re-read Mill's On Liberty that year.) But Holmes wrote, "the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market." This does not actually claim that truth will prevail in the market for ideas (and does not use the phrase 'marketplace of ideas' at all). Holmes' position is more sober than that. I am persuaded by Vincent Blasi (2004) that Holmes never intended the providential claim about the competition of ideas. (Blasi is also the source of my claim that Holmes did read Mill.)

In a footnote (41), Blasi suggests that in 1935, David M. Newbold used the phrase "market place of ideas" first in a letter to the New York Times. But as quoted by Blasi that letter does not connect it to generation of truth (but to 'public opinion.') It's likely that this Newbold was the author of a book called Notes on the Introduction of Equity Jurisdiction Into Maryland:1634-1720. So he was probably a lawyer or law professor. In a Denver Law Review article of 1940, one can read that "Our entire system of free public education is based upon it and out of it has developed the American type of government of public opinion. Our people from the earliest days, unconsciously perhaps, have been demonstrating in every generation their faith in the doctrine that the test of truth is its "ability to get itself accepted" in the marketplace of ideas." This clearly quotes Holmes, but with Newbold's phrase. The first connection between the 'market place of ideas' and 'truth' that I have been able to find with some googling is in Senate testimony in June, 1941, by Mr. Louis G. Caldwell, an attorney representing mutual broadcasting system to the Interstate Commerce committee (here). The context is freedom of speech (and the role radio has in expanding it or not). A decade later the phrase, and its connection to truth is much more widespread. But I have been unable to find anyone expressing the idea that the marketplace of ideas leads to truth, and that somehow Mill had defended it before 1960. 

In 1960, the very eminent law professor, Harry Kalven Jr. did a kind of retrospective in The Chicago Law Review on the Scopes trial to celebrate the (near) centenary of Darwin's Origin of Species. To people who have any association with The University of Chicago, and those who have studied debates on academic freedom, Kalven's name is quite familiar (recall here on the Kalven report). The retrospective is interesting in its own right. But here I just quote a passage: "It is keyed, in the tradition-honored phrases of Milton, Mill, and Holmes, to confidence that truth will not be bested in a fair fight, to competition in the marketplace of ideas." (p. 516) Kalven's own view is not quite this, I think. But that's for another time. The quoted passages does come pretty close to the idea usually associated to Mill. (And unusually for memetics, also provides evidence for the role of Holmes in the process.)* And since Kalven was important and influential it is not unlikely he is the source of connecting Mill to truth prevailing in the marketplace of ideas (which starts to circulate widely in the 1960s).

That's the best I can do on this. I am open to learning from other people's search abilities. I could close here, but I was still left with a puzzle how the idea mistakenly associated with Mill came to be thought of as somehow intrinsic to liberalism. And I think I have a (surprising) answer to that, although it is a bit convoluted. I quote a long paragraph:

De Maistre and Donoso Cortes were incapable of such "organic" thinking. De Maistre showed this by his total lack of understanding of Schelling's philosophy of life; Donoso Cortes was gripped by horror when he was confronted with Hegelianism in Berlin in 1849. Both were diplomats and politicians with much experience and practice and had concluded sufficiently sensible compromises. But a systematic and metaphysical compromise was to them inconceivable. To suspend the decision at the crucial point by denying that there was at all something to be decided upon must have appeared to them to be a strange pantheistic confusion. Liberalism, with its contradictions and compromises, existed for Donoso Cortes only in that short interim period in which it was possible to answer the question "Christ or Barabbas?" with a proposal to adjourn or appoint a commission of investigation. Such a position was not accidental but was based on liberal metaphysics. The bourgeoisie is the class committed to freedom of speech and freedom of the press, and it did not arrive at those freedoms from any kind of arbitrary psychological and economic conditions, from thinking in terms of trade, or the like. It has long been known that the idea of the liberal rights of man stemmed from the North American states. Though Georg Jellinek recently demonstrated the North American origin of those freedoms, the thesis would hardly have surprised the Catholic philosopher of the state (nor, incidentally, would it have surprised Karl Marx, the author of the essay on the Jewish question). Further, the economic postulates of free trade and commerce are, for an examination within the realm of the history of ideas, only derivatives of a metaphysical core. Donoso Cortes in his radical intellectuality saw only the theology of the foe. He did not "theologize" in the least; there were no ambiguous, mystical combinations and analogies, no Orphic oracle. The letters about actual political questions revealed a sober attitude, often frightening and without any sort of illusion or any touch of the quixotic; in his systematic train of thought there was an effort to be concise in the good dogmatic tradition of theology. His intuition into things intellectual was therefore often striking. His definition of the bourgeoisie as a clasa discutidora and his recognition that its religion resides in freedom of speech and of the press are examples. I do not consider this to be the last word on Continental liberalism in its entirety, but it is certainly a most striking observation. In view of the system of a Condorcet, for example, whose typical meaning Wolzendorff, perhaps because of intellectual affinity, recognized and superbly described, one must truly believe that the ideal of political life consists in discussing, not only in the legislative body but also among the entire population, if human society will transform itself into a monstrous club, and if truth will emerge automatically through voting. Donoso Cortes considered continuous discussion a method of circumventing responsibility and of ascribing to freedom of speech and of the press an excessive importance that in the final analysis permits the decision to be evaded. Just as liberalism discusses and negotiates every political detail, so it also wants to dissolve metaphysical truth in a discussion. The essence of liberalism is negotiation, a cautious half measure, in the hope that the definitive dispute, the decisive bloody battle, can be transformed into a parliamentary debate and permit the decision to be suspended forever in an everlasting discussion.--Schmitt (1922/1935) Political Theology, translated by George Schwab, The University of Chicago Press (2005), pp. 61-3 [Originally published as Politische Theologie: Vier Kapitel zur Lehre von der Souveranitat]+

Okay, there is much going on here. Donoso Cort��s (1809 ��� 1853) is a fascinating character who was familiar with the first political group to call themselves 'liberal' and eventually became an ardent opponent of them. (Since Adam Smith describes his system of natural liberty as 'liberal,' I don't think it's anachronistic to claim him also as a liberal--despite learned protestations in Cambridge.) Schmitt admires both Maistre and Donoso Cort��s, but as this passage reveals he also sees some of their intellectual limitations.

It is by no means easy to establish in each sentence where Donoso Cort��s ends and Schmitt begins. But it's pretty clear that for them liberalism is identified with freedom of speech and the bourgeoise as the disputational/discussing class (clasa discutidora).** (Schmitt almost certainly made a transcription error because Donoso Cort��s used the phrase 'las clases discutidoras' in a letter of 1851.**)

But$, strikingly, that freedom of speech will generate truth is then associated with 'the system of Condorcet.' And, in fact, given the significance given to voting in Schmitt's argument, it's pretty clear we have a kind of reference to Condorcet's famous Jury theorem. And, indeed, in the jury theorem the more voters there are (alongside some minimal assumptions) the more likely one is to reach truth. And, over time, as voting population keeps growing, this becomes pretty infallible. Here truth is a kind of outcome of a process, and it is correct to say of it that (give some modest assumptions) "truth will emerge automatically through voting." 

However, I use a 'kind of reference' because the original jury theorem requires no communication among voters. So it's a pretty bad model for thinking about free speech/press.++ It's unclear to me if the conflation is in Wolzendorff or in Schmitt. Part of the historical problem is that Condorcet did also defend freedom of speech (with some attenuations) in a famous fragment from 1776. 

So, here's my suggestion: Schmitt is the source of the idea that liberalism is intrinsically committed to the idea that truth naturally will emerge from free discussion. This idea is associated with Condorcet (who was indeed a proponent of freedom of speech). But it's based on a (perhaps honest) misunderstanding of the jury theorem and the role it plays in Condorcet's thought! 

Schmitt's criticism of the idea he attributes to liberalism is not that it's false or a bad mechanism to discover truth, or somehow na��ve. Rather, it's that it's a device to avoid decisive, existential decisions: "The essence of liberalism is negotiation, a cautious half measure, in the hope that the definitive dispute, the decisive bloody battle, can be transformed into a parliamentary debate and permit the decision to be suspended forever in an everlasting discussion." That's actually a sound interpretation of the liberal ideal of rule by discussion, which is all about avoiding fighting (worst possible outcome) if one can continue talking (probably bad, but not so bad).

Schmitt, a jurist himself, was very widely read. So, my hypothesis is that Schmitt's idea about the nature of liberalism as a regime of talk that will produce truth circulated among jurists (perhaps with the reference to Condorcet being dropped once it moved into Anglophone world), and at some point merged with Judge Holmes' idea to produce Kalven's formulation. Okay, that's enough speculation -- I almost wrote 'cheap talk' -- for a day.

 

*I leave Milton aside for another time.

+I am unsure how much the 1935 edition is changed from the 1922 edition when it comes to this passage. I suspect it's this passage that Stephen Holmes has in mind on p. 46 of The Anatomy of Antiliberalism (1993).

**See M. Blake Wilson's translation of the letter and commentary here.

++Yes, I am familiar with Krishna K. Ladha (1992), which suggested a link between the Condorcet theorem and an argument for free speech. But it's pretty clear that the link fails in a partisan context.

On Liberal Exemplification: tempered liberalism and the problem of education

Tempered liberals certainly did not present themselves as models to be imitated; this would have been inconsistent with the modesty and self-subverting irony that were important features both of the ethos they advocated and their own ways of being in the world. But they did seek to exemplify a liberal ethos by putting it into practice--in their personal interactions with others, their manner of thinking through problems, and the authorial persona or voice that each cultivated--and by depicting it in earlier thinkers, fictional characters, or political leaders. At their best, they show us, by the force of example, how to cultivate these qualities, and how to urge them gracefully upon others.
The practice of exemplification and emulation is a deeply imperfect response to the liberal problem of character formation. Relying on some to rise to the challenge of exemplariness, and leaving others free to emulate them or not, presupposes that most individuals already have significant ethical resources. This will often not be the case. It may not be possible to have a decent politics without a degree of both personal goodness and political skill that is beyond what most people are mostly able to attain. And the effort to make people better may lead to more suffering and horror. Introspection, self-cultivation, and exemplification--frail reeds though these may be--may also be the best (least bad) means to foster elusive but indispensable virtues. Reflection on exemplars may help to replenish the moral foundations of liberal democracy--habits and ideals of civility, empathy, fortitude, self-restraint, solidarity, circumspection, respect for nuance and for others--by reminding us of why we need them, as well as displaying how admirable they can be.--Joshua Cherniss (2021) Liberalism in Dark Times: The Liberal Ethos in the Twentieth Century, 211

Cherniss Liberalism in Dark Times is a fascinating book with studies of Max Weber, Raymond Aron, Camus, Niebuhr, and Isaiah Berlin. He treats the latter four as 'tempered liberals." They are treated as admirable exemplars, but by no means not perfect. (210) The main argument of the book is nicely foreshadowed in this passage:

Proponents of ���tempered liberalism��� accordingly undertook three broad, interlinked tasks. First, they sought to critically reconstruct liberalism--to identify and correct liberalism���s internal weaknesses and failings. Second, they sought to reconceive liberalism as a particular ���temper,��� a ���certain condition . . . of mind or state of being,��� rather than (merely) an institutional framework or policy. Finally, they sought (with varying degrees of self-consciousness) not only to explicate, but to exemplify, a liberal spirit, which could belie anti-liberal ethical critiques, and resist the temptations and pathologies of an anti-liberal ethos. (38: emphasis in original)

The passage nicely suggests that a certain kind of ethos is an important feature of being a tempered liberal. My interest in today's post is the nature and status of of liberal exemplification (the third task). In my book on Adam Smith, I had explicitly treated Smith as an exemplar of a certain kind of liberal thinker. I had done so in part, by focusing on the way Smith used Hume's life and thought as a positive and negative exemplar; I had also drawn on resources in Smith that centered on the roles of exemplary characters in his moral psychology and political theory. (These characters are largely abstract fictions.) Smith, in turn, drew on Hume's practice of exemplification and (as I insinuate in the book) Spinoza's (who also uses abstract fictions in this way). Of course, the practice has an important ancient and Machiavellian pedigree.

In both Smith and the tempered liberals, exemplification plays an important role in moral-political education. It's required because these kind of liberals (as well as Smith) highly value contextual judgment. But my approach to exemplification in Smith is different from Cherniss' in some important respect: on my account Smith is a systematic thinker and understands himself as such; exemplification is very much an integral part of this system not a kind of substitute for it as it is, by contrast, in Cherniss and his four tempered liberals. In addition, Smith rejected the kind of modesty Cherniss ascribes to his four tempered liberals, and he seems to advocate emulation of worthy exemplars as models, whereas Cherniss' tempered liberals primarily wish that only a particular kind of ethos is emulated and rejects the idea of a life as a model to be imitated (see the first quoted line above).

There is, thus, an important distinction lurking here between an agent as an exemplary model to be studied and imitated and, say, a style of agency that is exemplified. I will return to that distinction below. But it is important to recognize that on both sides of the distinction there is a commitment to the idea that some things don't fall under a rule or principle, but require the acquisition of certain dispositions and cultivated judgment. (The crispness of this observation I owe to reading David Owen's forthcoming, "On Exemplarity and Public Philosophy.")

But in reading Cherniss I also came to realize I had not really thought through what liberal exemplification might mean. So, what follows is an exploration of Cherniss' account with an eye toward that larger project. As my remark above implies, the status of Weber in Cherniss' argument is a bit ambiguous. Anyone familiar with the depth of Weber's nationalism (and his anti-Polish sentiment) will be hard-pressed to call him a 'tempered liberal.' But he is important to Cherniss to set up the themes of the book. I quote an important passage:

Weber rejected both; this rejection was central to his own revision of liberalism. If liberals sloughed of the elements within liberal thought that reflected an ethic of normative necessity and an ethic of success, they could fortify their commitments and themselves for the hard, uncertain struggle ahead. To look for guarantees reflected inner weakness. Liberals should exemplify, as well as advocate, a dignified and free life, by affirming and defending principles without guarantees, devoting their lives to values that could not be demonstrated as rationally necessary and whose ultimate triumph was in doubt. (67)

It's unclear to me what, according to Cherniss, leads him to think that Weber advocates such exemplification. But it's clear that on Cherniss's account of Weber, exemplification is something that liberals as such should aim for. It's difficult not to think here of, say, puritan (and protestant more widely) ideas about the elect have to live godly lives as individuals and the community. I don't think that association is an accident: in the first half of the twentieth century, as Liberalism seems to be in retreat, the idea that liberalism rests on faith, or requires faith, shows up in other places. I have documented this in the case of Lippmann (here); and it's also visible in the title of Morris R. Cohen's (1946) Faith of a Liberal. (Cohen was then arguably one of the most important philosophers Stateside.)*

Interestingly enough, in the rest of Cherniss' argument, it seems not everyone should aim at such exemplification. Rather this is reserved for liberal intellectuals and public figures (like the four tempered liberals discussed by Cherniss), and, perhaps, also liberal statesmen. On Camus' possible self-understanding as an exemplar see p. 76 (and p. 85). Aron is treated by Cherniss an exemplar (p. 102, and also by Alan Bloom (p. 131)!), but I see no evidence to think Aron thought of himself that way. Cherniss convincingly suggests that Niebuhr did see himself that way (159ff).

That liberal statesman and artists could be exemplars is clearly Berlin's position. Cherniss skillfully takes us through Berlin's portraits of Herzen and Turgenev. Cherniss treatment of Berlin's "accounts of such leaders--Winston Churchill, Chaim Weizmann, and Franklin Roosevelt" is terser and in my view not especially convincing. This is a shame because the question "how political greatness and moral goodness could be balanced, in ways that could serve to sustain a liberal politics" (182) is a vital one. For, I would have liked to have read Cherniss on Berlin's blind-spots (e.g., Churchill's racialized imperialism (which led to a grossly inadequate response to Indian famine) or the fire-bombing of German cities). [To be sure such problems are hinted at by Cherniss because it's acknowledged thet were a "morally mixed bunch, as he acknowledged." (182-3)] Chaim Weizmann as exemplar is even more complex because he was never more important than, say, Ben Gurion. In political terms, much of the last (say) decade of Weizmann's life was a sort of failure. And because of this Weizmann also seems to have been somewhat removed from decisions surrounding Zionist ethnic cleansing during Israel's war of independence.

As a non-trivial aside, in my view Berlin's personal admiration for Weizmann arguably prevented a sober reflection on Weizmann's political life by Berlin. In fact, I read Berlin as treating Weizmann as a model of a new kind of Jew: see his much quoted claim about Weizmann, as the "first totally free Jew of the modern world." But in that same sentence Berlin goes on to claim "the State of Israel was constructed, whether or not it knows it, in his image." And this part of the sentence has aged badly if it ever was plausible.

Now, Cherniss extracts a kind of gross generalization from these portraits by Berlin: "Berlin suggested that the cultivation of political judgment might indeed be connected to the promotion of a more humane politics--and that the dispositions that contributed to failures of political judgment also tended to produce inhumanity." (183) As a generalization it's not very remarkable. But it can only convince, I think, through the sketching of biographies/lives. So, the focus on exemplars allows for a species of political education, especially with those already sharing a certain ethical outlook. This is, in fact, Cherniss own understanding (while drawing on Linda T. Zagzebski and Nancy Rosenblum).

I quote a lengthy passage because I think it helps illustrate what it might mean (for Cherniss) to think of what I called 'a style of agency that is exemplified.'

Pedagogic exemplification involves two elements: exemplification itself, and emulation. The latter consists not of slavish imitation, but a conscious, critical attempt to identify what is admirable and applicable in the exemplar, and to adapt this to the situation and the already-partially-shaped character--of the emulator. Exemplification respects liberty and individuality because the selection of an exemplar reflects the judgment and the needs of the ���student,��� rather than the exemplar���s will or ability to use force. This means that success is never fully in the hands of the exemplar. As a form of persuasion and guidance, rather than conditioning or compulsion, exemplification relies more on conscious human action--and requires less comprehensive control over background conditions and the experiences of the learner--than a program of habituation. At the same time, since it employs the force of example rather than (or in addition to) purely rational persuasion, it can appeal to the emotions, and promote skills of judgment that are not rule-based. (p. 210)

What's nice about this passage is that helps illustrate what is distinctly liberal about Cherniss' idea of exemplification (although not necessarily unique to liberalism). This is a form of teaching and moral/political education that leaves considerable freedom, individuality, and agency to those of us who wish to become better at being liberal (or liberal intellectuals, citizens, politicians, etc.) It echoes Mill-ean ideas (as well as those we find in Montessori) about education itself being an experiment in living and the cultivation of one's moral sentiments through the development of personality and authenticity.

Of course, the question is how much (to use Cherniss' language) pre-shaping is necessary for this to work as partially intended. That may be an empirical question. But it is also a political one (that is theoretically highly salient since the days of Plato). For example, Mill thought such pre-shaping had to be made compulsory, but was best left to the judgment of parents. Most liberal democracies have thought otherwise. And while this is no criticism of Cherniss' book, it is worth noting that in its very un-systematicity, tempered liberalism as such -- with its neglect of institutions -- has no answer to this question.+ To be continued...

 

 

*Amusingly enough, just after the passage I quoted from p. 67, Cherniss goes on to describe how Weber loses his temper in an exchange with Schumpeter in a caf�� over Schumpeter's fondness for social engineering. Clearly tempered liberals may be very passionate about their liberalism! (I think that's also Cherniss' position.)

+Camus and Niebuhr have important things to say about education and its institutions, so I don't mean this as a criticism of their own political theories. 

Covid Diaries: Highs and Lows

It's time for another Covid Diaries update. (For my official "covid diaries," see here; here; here; here; here; here; here;  here;  here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here;  here; here, here; here; and here). It's been a complex few weeks for me.
 
I want to start with a tremendous high. Last Tuesday I taught the last session of my intro lecture course to an overflowing auditorium. (I have over 600 students, and all the lectures are recorded and available with a thirty second delay.) At the end of my lecture I tagged on a few minutes of quasi-impromptu remarks. I thanked them from the heart for their encouragement and kindness during the semester; that they respected my boundaries and were unfailingly kind about my invisible/cognitive disability. This generated a tremendous applause. And I joined in the cheer, applauding them.
 
I then added a few remarks on the significance of political theory and the course, and closed with a kind of blessing wishing them wisdom (etc.) What happened next was surreal (like in a Hollywood movie you don't believe); I received a standing ovation. Eventually I joked -- which is what I do when I feel uncomfortable, I guess -- that I would hand out signatures at the end of class. That got the applause to stop. But I was mobbed by students who gave me flowers, thank you cards, chocolates, drawings, and -- never make this joke again -- a long line of kidz who wanted signatures. This lasted an hour! (Students had applauded after each lecture, so I knew there was appreciation.) During all of this, I knew I was going well beyond my cognitive limits and that I would have to deal with headaches and nausea. I walked home, got soup, and tried to sleep.
 


The next morning I woke up with a headache (the worst of the 7 weeks of lecturing), and decided to take it easy. I watched the end of the lecture on video a few times enjoying the moments again, and checking my memory of the event. By the end of the afternoon I was much improved, and could enjoy early Spring.
 


I also received news from HR that I won my battle with them about back-pay for holiday-pay that they had deducted in virtue of my disability. After consulting the union and jurisprudence, I had pointed out to them that according to European jurisprudence that holiday is a human right and that you can't lose it even if disabled or sick. (I learned from the union, that they generally obtain the pay out on behalf of people who are let go in virtue of their disability at the end of the contract. But that people like me who might return to work often end up losing a few days of holiday pay.) HR granted that they have no right to withhold it over 2021 (especially because they had already agreed to pay out in 2022!).


 
Later that week, I had a meeting with my department chair that I initiated. Under Dutch disability rules, in a few months my occupational physician, an outside expert, the department, and myself have to decide about my future. It's pretty clear now that I won't recover fully in the next two months The department has been very supportive (I have a few minor kvetches), but in all the communication to me it's always been about hoping for full recovery. So, I wanted to know how the department views a future with me if I don't fully recover. The meeting was encouraging and constructive. The real key for the department will be whether I can return to non-lecture format teaching or not. There is a lot more to say about this meeting, but I felt reassured that there won't be an effort to push me out.


 
After that, I decided to return to London. But not before my sister taught me some meditation tricks, and my mom  delivered some fantastic chocolate cookies.
 


Over the week-end I arrived in London exhausted. And the first 72hrs were both joyous and challenging catching up with the family after nearly 8 weeks away (with just one week-end visit). I had non-stop headaches and nausea for a few days. And I am reminded of my limits after two months of near self-isolation. Basically my symptoms are under control unless I interact socially with others for more than twenty-five minutes. 


 


Today, I had a meeting with the neurologist in the NHS long covid center at UCLH. She was a very kind and thoughtful physician. (I also learned that I was initially slotted to be seen by her in October -- she remembered my dossier -- but because they got overwhelmed with emergency care, I got pushed back. ) After taking my history and doing some cognitive testing, and discussing the situation with me, she decided to treat my symptoms like a kind of migraine. (A big contrast to My Dutch neurologist.) Her hope is to get the headaches under control first, and that I will get better and better in social environments over time. (She was also happy to hear that I had no teaching for four months.) I ran a number of the Dutch occupational therapy treatments by her, and that was instructive, too. She didn't promise miracles, but assured me that people with my symptoms do recover even after a year plus. Also, it's so nice to have a neurologist that takes my covid problems seriously. (Yes, I am pissed off at my Dutch neurologist.)
 


Tomorrow, my students take their final exam, so I am hoping that this time next week, I can close the door on course related stuff for the academic year. (It's astonishing  how many logistical and other curve balls come your way when class size is this huge.) I have returned to my daily swim, and next week I return to my research. I also look forward to my regular blogging. I am still withdrawing from conferences and other events, but I am growing hopeful I can return to these later in the year.

Lenin and The State's Essential Coerciveness

In what follows I use Lenin's The State and Revolution (1917; hereafter S&R quoted by chapter and section) as my guide to an orthodox Marxist interpretation of Marx and Engels on the nature of the late nineteenth century capitalist-imperial state. It's perfectly fine for my purposes if you think that Lenin flattened Marx and Engels or misrepresents them (or the evolution of their thought, etc.). It's also fine for my purposes if you think that this is not the best version of a Marxist theory (orthodox or not) of the capitalist state out there. 

Drawing on Engels' fascinating (1884) The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, for Lenin the modern state is the effect of class conflict; the state exists in order, it's fundamental function is, to reduce the transaction costs of class conflict. As Engels puts it: "in order that these antagonisms, classes with conflicting economic interests, shall not consume themselves and society in fruitless struggle, a power, apparently standing above society, has become necessary to moderate the conflict and keep it within the bounds of ���order���; and this power, arisen out of society, but placing itself above it and increasingly alienating itself from it, is the state." This independent power understands itself "as apparent mediator." In some respects (I will qualify this below) this anticipates the idea familiar from twentieth century neoliberalism which conceives of the state as an "impartial umpire" above civil society (I am quoting the excellent SEP entry on Hayek by Schmidtz and Boettke).

Of course, Marxists emphasize that the mediating role is not truly impartial. It serves the interest of capital. In particular, the bourgeoisie have captured the state for their own interests. As Marx and Engels put it in the Communist Manifesto, "the executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie." Or as Lenin puts it, "According to Marx, the state is an organ of class rule, an organ for the oppression of one class by another; it is the creation of ���order���, which legalizes and perpetuates this oppression by moderating the conflict between classes.  (S&R 1,1) It is worth noting that this emphasis on the order creating nature of states anticipates the Ordoliberal self-understanding in non-trivial ways, and also, as I learned from Erwin Dekker's biography of Tinbergen, more technocratic social democrats like Tinbergen, and the young Rawls as Katrina Forrester persuasively argues in the early chapters of In the Shadow of Justice. I return to this below.

While Lenin suggests that bourgeois politicians would deny it, as an empirical matter, it's not difficult for liberal thinkers to agree that late nineteenth century liberal states are characterized by rent-seeking elites biased toward relatively narrow interests. This was, in fact Hobson's view in his (1905) Imperialism -- a book Lenin (recall) studied carefully -- and Lippmann's in his (1937) The Good Society. And it is a familiar refrain from, say, the Chicago school onward in so-called classical liberal understandings of the contemporary state (recall here).

As an aside, Lenin anticipates the view of liberals of the 1930s that the 1870s were a watershed period in the development of the nineteenth century liberal state. As Lenin notes, in commenting on a remark by Marx that it "was understandable in 1871, when Britain was still the model of a purely capitalist country, but without a militarist clique and, to a considerable degree, without a bureaucracy." (3.1) For, in the 1920s and 30s, in reflecting on the collapse the global order during WWI, so-called neo-liberals came to believe that a corruption of liberalism was manifested after the 1870s. (They would tell different stories about the timing and original source of that corruption (compare here with here). 

The point of the last few paragraphs is that there is non-trivial overlap between Lenin's Marxist analysis of the period leading up to WWI and the liberal analysis of that same period in the first third of the twentieth century.  This is, as I have shown in a different context (recall), also visible in the accounts of the rise of militarism and imperialism as an effect of national monopoly. A crucial difference is that for Lenin capitalism naturally tends toward monopoly whereas Hobson treats it as an effect of rent-seeking behavior.

I use the language of 'rent-seeking' because the Marxist-Leninist position is that in addition to the exploitation of proletariat by capital, and the structural domination of all under capitalism, government offices and the leading functionaries in the bureaucracy are treated as special rents. This is manifest in the following passage (and others like it): "The bureaucracy and the standing army are a ���parasite��� on the body of bourgeois society--a parasite created by the internal antagonisms which rend that society, but a parasite which ���chokes��� all its vital pores." (Lenin S&R, 2,2) I don't mean to deny that in context Lenin's major point is the intrinsically coercive nature of the state. I return to that below. But on the orthodox Marxist view it is notable that the bureaucracy (and the army) is parasitic on the body of bourgeois society. These are rents extracted not just from the proletariat, but even from the bourgeoisie. This is pretty much Hobson's own position. (It is peculiar that Lenin implies this would be denied by "the petty-bourgeois and philistine professors and publicists.")

That is to say, on the Orthodox Marxist view the state is a coercive mechanism for upward redistribution. Further evidence for the claim that the bureaucracy is understood as a source of class based rents can be seen in the proposals what to do with the bureaucracy in the transitional period after a successful revolution (and before the state has withered away): 

At the present the postal service is a business organized on the lines of state-capitalist monopoly. Imperialism is gradually transforming all trusts into organizations of a similar type, in which, standing over the ���common��� people, who are overworked and starved, one has the same bourgeois bureaucracy. But the mechanism of social management is here already to hand. Once we have overthrown the capitalists, crushed the resistance of these exploiters with the iron hand of the armed workers, and smashed the bureaucratic machinery of the modern state, we shall have a splendidly-equipped mechanism, freed from the ���parasite���, a mechanism which can very well be set going by the united workers themselves, who will hire technicians, foremen and accountants, and pay them all, as indeed all ���state��� officials in general, workmen's wages. Here is a concrete, practical task which can immediately be fulfilled in relation to all trusts, a task whose fulfilment will rid the working people of exploitation, a task which takes account of what the Commune had already begun to practice (particularly in building up the state).

To organize the whole economy on the lines of the postal service so that the technicians, foremen and accountants, as well as all officials, shall receive salaries no higher than "a workman's wage", all under the control and leadership of the armed proletariat--that is our immediate aim. S&R 3,3

After the revolution, functionaries in the bureaucracy will be paid workman's wages, the implication being that their existing wages are a form of extraction, parasitic on proletariat's labor, that is, a rent. I don't mean to suggest that's the extent of the change. Lenin also re-activates ideas I associate with the French revolution (including Girondins intellectuals like Grouchy) in which bureaucrats are elected and subjects to recalls. (For example: "The workers, after winning political power, will smash the old bureaucratic apparatus, shatter it to its very foundations, and raze it to the ground; they will replacce it by a new one, consisting of the very same workers and other employees, against whose transformation into bureaucratic will at once be taken which were specified in detail by Marx and Engels: (1) not only election, but also recall at any time; (2) pay not to exceed that of a workman; (3) immediate introduction of control by all, so that all may become ���bureaucrats��� for a time and that, therefore, nobody may be able to become a ���bureaucrat���. S&R 6, 2; see also 6,3))

Let me wrap up with the crucial issue. While compared to anarchists, liberals tend to expect obedience to legitimate law,  liberals understand the liberal state as providing order without authoritarianism. In fact, the introduction of professional police -- as opposed to citizen militias and armed forces -- is seen as a crucial means forward away from despotism in part because the use of force against civilians can be more calibrated and less lethal than it is when every riot or public disorder is treated as a trigger of military action. And even states in which the mercantile tendency toward state violence is not fully defeated, but only partially tamed by parliament, law, press, and public opinion are often understood as doing so without extensive authoritarianism. (Of course, there are standing objections to this claim during, say, the Jim Crow era, and many periodic states of emergency.)

By contrast, for Lenin [here he is quoting Engels (1891 preface to the third edition of The Civil War in France)], the state is nothing but a machine for the oppression of one class by another, and indeed in the democratic republic no less than in the monarchy." (S&R 4.5; see also 2.1) Fundamentally, according to the Marxists we're focusing on here, the modern state is a coercive entity to impose class interests. Lenin (S&R 1.1) quotes Engels to that effect, the state ���consists not merely of armed men but also of material adjuncts, prisons, and institutions of coercion of all kinds.��� (Engels 1884; ch. 9)

That according to Lenin the most democratic state is essentially coercive is also revealed, by his view of what happens after the revolution:

Democracy is a form of the state, it represents, on the one hand, the organized, systematic use of force against persons; but, on the other hand, it signifies the formal recognition of equality of citizens, the equal right of all to determine the structure of, and to administer, the state. This, in turn, results in the fact that, at a certain stage in the development of democracy, it first welds together the class that wages a revolutionary struggle against capitalism--the proletariat, and enables it to crush, smash to atoms, wipe off the face of the earth the bourgeois, even the republican-bourgeois, state machine, the standing army, the police and the bureaucracy and to substitute for them a more democratic state machine, but a state machine nevertheless, in the shape of armed workers who proceed to form a militia involving the entire population. S&R 5, 4 (Higher phase of communist society)

What's notable about this is that the intrinsic coerciveness of the state is treated as an essential core that must be preserved through the transitionary period (the dictatorship of the proletariat) as a means to destroy class enemies, and to force changes in class structure and the possibility of acquiring rents. As Luxemburg discerned (recall the post earlier in the week) this understanding of the state, and the post-revolutionary transition period, has an inherent fragility; in so far as one leaves the coercive nature of the state untouched, one then opens the door to state capitalism in which a new managerial class extracts rents (as described by Burnham (recall) in The Managerial Revolution).

My point in the previous paragraph is not a victorious one. For, after the work of Foucault, few would be satisfied with the relatively limited list of coercive institutions that the orthodox Marxist tradition focus on. In addition, the last few years of financial crisis and pandemic have shown that liberal states have many instruments of coercion that they can use without fundamentally altering the liberal structure of the state or even traditional political institutions (elections, parliaments, press, rule of law, etc.) Simultaneously, Black Lives Matter has reminded many that even policing can easily be experienced as occupation, or worse. So, what I take away from the Marxist orthodoxy is that for liberalism to have proper self-understanding it needs to have an account of the centrality of the liberal state's coerciveness.** To be continued.

 

 

*Part of the interest in S&R is to understand Lenin's view on what happens after the proletarian revolution and the process of withering away of that state (after all this is written in the midst of a revolutionary year), and where appropriate I will remark on this, too.

**This is central to Matt Sleat's fascinating Liberal Realism: A Realist Theory of Liberal Politics, which I read recently. So, this post is undoubtedly shaped by my encounter with Sleat's book.

Huizinga (and Adam Smith) on the Admiration of Political Thuggery

The general deterioration  of the moral principle shows itself rather more in the tendency of modern society to tolerate, to condone, and to acclaim, than in a changed standard of individual conduct. In so far as violence, deception, and cruelty, of which there is more in the world than there used to be, find expression in individual action, this can often be traced to the residue of demoralisation and exasperation left over from the [first] World War and its aftermath of hate and misery. The general deterioration  of the moral sense of values can best be observed, therefore, in those countries which have been least affected by the world-wide political and economic upheaval. This deterioration appears most clearly in the appreciation of political conduct as contrasted with the judgment of economic conduct. In respect to moral failings of an economic nature, offences against commercial good faith, abuse of property rights, etc., the popular attitude remains much as it used to be: sincere condemnation with now and then a tolerant smile. The tolerance increases and becomes coupled with a measure of admiration in proportion to the scope of the offence. The international swindler meets with more sympathy than the embezzling clerk from the suburbs. Into the attitude towards the great financial scandals creeps a certain admiration for the talent with which the gigantic machine of technical organisation and international finance is operated. On the whole, however, the moral valuation of economic crime seems to have remained essentially unchanged.

The situation is entirely different when the party forming the object of judgment belongs to and acts in the name of Government. In its attitude towards political conduct���that is, acts committed by the State or any one of its organs���the public at large shows itself increasingly indifferent to moral judgment. Except, of course, when the acting party is a foreign State or an opposition element within the State which has from the outset been branded as "enemy." Still, the tendency of the public to acclaim and admire great political actions is not limited to the acts of the State to which it owes allegiance, alone. The worship of success, which was already seen to exercise a mitigating influence on the judgment of economic misconduct, is capable of eliminating practically all moral indignation from political judgment. It is carried to such lengths that many seem prepared to value a political organisation whose fundamental doctrines they abhor, according to the degree of success with which it achieves its predetermined aim. Incapable of judging the nature of this aim, the means with which it is pursued, and the degree to which it is actually achieved, the spectator contents himself with the external signs of achievement, which are the only ones the newspaper reader or the tourist can observe. Thus a political system which first filled him with disgust and subsequently with fear and awe, will gradually obtain his acceptance and even admiration. Injustice, cruelty, restraint of conscience, oppression, falsity, dishonour, deceit, violation of law and equity?���But look how they have cleaned up the cities and what wonderful roads they have built!--Johan Huizinga In The Shadow of Tomorrow, Chapter 13. (Translated by Huizinga.)

A few weeks ago, I noted that Huizinga's (1938) Homo Ludens ends with a fierce attack on Carl Schmitt (recall this post on Huizinga's eviction of a Nazi intellectual; and this one on the criticism of Schmitt). A paper by Alexander Lambrow had alerted me to the fact that Huizinga's (1935) In De schaduwen van Morgen (In the Shadow of Tomorrow) is also explicitly critical of  Schmitt in Chapter 12. In fact, while in Homo Ludens the criticism of Schmitt can be treated as an afterthought (I wouldn't do so myself), it is pretty essential to the whole argument of In The Shadow of Tomorrow, which is Huizinga's philippic against the temptations of fascism and a lament on the death throes  of bourgeois culture. This can be seen by the allusion to Schmitt's  ideas in the quoted passage ("when the acting party is a foreign State or an opposition element within the State which has from the outset been branded as "enemy."")* 

The larger argument in Chapter 13, is a criticism of the social tendency to glorify 'existence and life,' and to prefer these over 'knowledge and judgment' (a tendency, which according to Huizinga, can also be found in Lebensphilosophie and what he calls 'existentialism'). This tendency is constitutive of what he calls the 'general deterioration  of the moral principle.' To put it in Nietzschean terms (Nietzsche is mentioned a few times in the book), what Huizinga objects to is the effects on social mores of a cult of the affirmation of life. The passage quoted at the top of this post is an illustration of such purportedly nefarious effects.

The key point for present purposes is that political success, independent of the moral quality of the ends it serves, generates admiration, what Huizinga calls, "the worship of success." Such worship is able to corrupt the moral sentiments when it comes to political matters (it "is capable of eliminating practically all moral indignation from political judgment"). 

It is somewhat surprising that Huizinga treats this as a modern phenomenon requiring special explanation. We might say that the moralists of all ages have declaimed against the worship of success. One of my favorite examples of an analysis of the worship of success can be found in a rather elitist passage of Smith's The Theory of Moral Sentiments:

Our admiration of success is founded upon the same principle with our respect for wealth and greatness, and is equally necessary for establishing the distinction of ranks and the order of society. By this admiration of success we are taught to submit more easily to those superiors, whom the course of human affairs may assign to us; to regard with reverence, and sometimes even with a sort of respectful affection, that fortunate violence which we are no longer capable of resisting; not only the violence of such splendid characters as those of a Caesar or an Alexander, but often that of the most brutal and savage barbarians, of an Attila, a Gengis, or a Tamerlane. To all such mighty conquerors the great mob of mankind are naturally disposed to look up with a wondering, though, no doubt, with a very weak and foolish admiration. By this admiration, however, they are taught to acquiesce with less reluctance under that government which an irresistible force imposes upon them, and from which no reluctance could deliver them. (TMS 6.3.3o)

According to Smith the worship of success is a natural disposition which grounds our complicity in our own subordination to social and political hierarchy. This is also so when the hierarchy is founded on violence. And while elsewhere Smith also calls this disposition a corruption of the moral sentiments, he also makes clear that it such self-subordination also has social utility: "THIS disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful, and to despise, or, at least, to neglect persons of poor and mean condition, though necessary both to establish and to maintain the distinction of ranks and the order of society, is, at the same time, the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments." (TMS 1.3.1.1)

In fact, throughout TMS, Smith returns to the corrupting dazzle that violent conquerors like Caesar and Alexander generate. As he puts it while contrasting their achievements to more genuine philanthropists:

We may believe of many men, that their talents are superior to those of Caesar and Alexander; and that in the same situations they would perform still greater actions. In the mean time, however, we do not behold them with that astonishment and admiration with which those two heroes have been regarded in all ages and nations. The calm judgments of the mind may approve of them more, but they want the splendour of great actions to dazzle and transport it. The superiority of virtues and talents has not, even upon those who acknowledge that superiority, the same effect with the superiority of achievements. (TMS 2.3.2.3)

I have to admit that, against Huizinga, I think Smith is right that the worship of brutal success even when one does not benefit from it oneself (and it may go against one's moral principles and political commitments) is not a uniquely modern post WWI phenomenon. (That's compatible, of course, with being agnostic about Smith's further claim that the disposition is itself useful because it is order preserving.)+ 

But Huizinga and Smith do help point to the way to how to respond to the worship of success. The proper response to such worship is not to criticize the ends or means that the subject of admiration engages in. This will not undermine the dazzle of achievement. No the proper response, I think, is to either undermine the dazzle by a kind of -- echoing Jason Stanley's terminology  (recall here; here)-- undermining propaganda directed at the splendor that surrounds their success, or, when that it is impossible or too costly, to undermine the very success itself. The best way to tackle, say, an aura of invincibility is to beat the villain at their own chosen path. Of course, if success means victory on the battlefield, that's easier said than done. 

This strategy -- of blocking success from those that are worshipped for their success -- raises complex questions when one simultaneously recognizes that to end, say, an existing conflict face-saving measures may well be required. For these very face-saving measures may well reinforce and entrench the dazzle and splendor that surrounds the (to use Smith's terminology) most brutal and savage barbarians.** And if we look obliquely at today's headlines this means that the temptation to end miserable suffering of innocents has to be weighed against strengthening the interests and dazzle of a violent (and nuclear armed) dictator.

*In the Dutch there are no quote marks around 'vijandig' (enemy).

+My sense is that Huizinga justified indignation made it difficult for him to analyze this phenomenon with the same dispassionate brilliance as his other social theory.

**I would argue that in these passages Smith is explicitly undermining the self-congratulatory distinction between civilization and barbarism by pointing out that within civilization savage violence also generates morally corrupt worship of success. 

Luxemberg vs Lenin and a comment on Hayek (and Wieser)

The history of the Russian labor movement suggests the doubtful value of such centralism. An all-powerful center, invested, as Lenin would have it, with the unlimited right to control and intervene, would be an absurdity if its authority applied only to technical questions, such as the administration of funds, the distribution of tasks among propagandists and agitators, the transportation and circulation of printed matter. The political purpose of an organ having such great powers only if those powers apply to the elaboration of a uniform plan of action, if the central organ assumes the initiative of a vast revolutionary act.

But what has been the experience of the Russian socialist movement up to now? The most important and fruitful changes in its tactical policy during the last ten years have not been the inventions of several leaders and even less so of any central organizational organs. They have always been the spontaneous product of the movement in ferment. This was true during the first stage of the proletarian movement in Russia, which began with the spontaneous general strike of St. Petersburg in 1896, an event that marks the inception of an epoch of economic struggle by the Russian working people. It was no less true during the following period, introduced by the spontaneous street demonstrations of St. Petersburg students in March, 1901. The general strike of Rostov-on-Don, in 1903, marking the next great tactical turn in the Russian proletarian movement, was also a spontaneous act. ���All by itself,��� the strike expanded into political demonstrations, street agitation, great outdoor meetings, which the most optimistic revolutionist would not have dreamed of several years before.

Our cause made great gains in these events. However, the initiative and conscious leadership of the Social Democratic organizations played an insignificant role in this development. It is true that these organizations were not specifically prepared for such happenings. However, the unimportant part played by the revolutionists cannot be explained by this fact. Neither can it be attributed to the absence of an all-powerful central party apparatus similar to what is asked for by Lenin. The existence of such a guiding center would have probably increased the disorder of the local committees by emphasizing the difference between the eager attack of the mass and the prudent position of the Social Democracy. The same phenomenon ��� the insignificant part played by the initiative of central party organs in the elaboration of actual tactical policy ��� can be observed today in Germany and other countries. In general, the tactical policy of the Social Democracy is not something that may be ���invented.��� It is the product of a series of great creative acts of the often spontaneous class struggle seeking its way forward.--Rosa Luxemburg (1904) "Revolutionary Socialist Organization," part 1.

It is well known that despite their mutual admiration, and their common rejection of reformist/gradualist social democracy ('Bersteinism,') Lenin and Luxemburg also had some important disagreements. The quoted passage is from Luxemburg's response to Lenin's (1904) One Step Forward, Two Steps Back, and shows familiarity with Lenin's (1902) What is to be Done? In these works Lenin had advocated for an all powerful central party apparatus, as Luxemburg suggests. This apparatus was supposed to be secret (to avoid capture by the police) and constituted by an elite group of professional revolutionaries. (Lenin is also very critical of an exclusive, trade unionist focus on economic issues.) Lenin's argument appeals to the benefits of the division of labor among professional revolutionaries to the development of a professional cadre with different kind of specializations (agitators, propagandists, theoreticians, etc.) It is worth noting that the demand for secrecy is an effect of the Russian context (it being an autocratic police-state with few liberties of association), but the focus on professionalism seems less context sensitive for Lenin (nothing that follows hinges this, I hope). 

Luxemburg's intervention on the side of the spontaneous activity is notable not just because she risks being seen to side here, in part, with those gradualists she ordinarily condemns, but also because it appears she rejects the advantages of the division of labor to the revolution. In particular, Lenin's vanguardism solves a kind of knowledge problem for the proletariat which, while being exploited, lacks access to the intellectual tools to plan and organize a revolution. (It's short on human capital one may say.) Because I am not a Marxist, I hope the next part of this sentence is not treated as thinly-disguised-polemic, but it strikes me that Lenin is right to think that his view is well grounded in Marxist-Leninist writings (despite their criticisms of the division of labor under capitalism).* 

As an aside -- this may be more fairly construed as more polemical, but it is meant to be factual observation --, vanguardism does introduce an important tension into Marxism from a purely theoretical point of view. For, one of the key claims on behalf of Marxism, very clearly annunciated in the Communist Manifesto, is that it promises rule by the majority against the minority. And one need not be an Elite theorist to recognize how rare that it is. (The aristocratic element in liberal democracy -- elections to representative bodies -- secures (to be sure, legitimate) minority rule over a majority.) Vanguardism is a clear break with the idea of majority rule, which is why it is promised to be provisional. Of course, the non-trivial risk is that once in power the vanguard becomes a (new) species of elite rule.

So, Luxemburg's attack on the Leninist counterfactual ("The existence of such a guiding center would have probably increased the disorder of the local committees") is not merely an invention over a tactical debate, but also addresses a principled issue for Marxism. And here I want to call attention to two epistemic features of her position that are meant to respond to Lenin's solution to the knowledge problem for a revolutionary proletariat. First, she argues that central coordination does not increase unity and effectiveness, but is likely to cause disorder. And she attributes this to difference of positional or situated perspective which results inevitably in different stances (prudence vs enthusiasm), which itself undermines common agency. Of course, this is not a very convincing response to Lenin because the very enthusiasm of the masses is not sufficient to make a revolution (and often is directed at only local improvement without wider political regard). This is why Luxemburg's second point, the rejection of top-down policy, is significant.

Second, I read her as suggesting that many local struggles are each occasions of learning, trials that may in their very spontaneity and so novelty lead to new discoveries: where conflict induced necessity  generates "great creative acts." Each local trial of strength between the proletariat and the authorities and/or capital provides a feedback mechanism from which to learn in which (the revolutionary consciousness of) the working class is trained. And, in particular, over time this will create a critical mass of "the existence of a large contingent of workers educated in the class struggle" (presumably capable of revolutionary politics). So, from her perspective the temptation of vanguardism is understandable, but with patience (and class struggle) avoidable. 

By contrast, Lenin is quite clear that he thinks this is bunk--that a central clearinghouse is needed to integrate lessons learned and to provide the necessary expertise, to coordinate, and to educate. So, I am not suggesting Luxemburg wins this argument. In fact, with the benefit of hindsight we can see that he was right that vanguardism could achieve real power. But at the same time, Luxemburg was prescient in discerning that such vanguardism would inevitably lead to rule of a minority over a majority (as she notes "the self-discipline of the Social Democracy is not merely the replacement of the authority of bourgeois rulers with the authority of a socialist central committee.")

Now, what I want to note, in conclusion, is that Luxemburg's position on the spontaneous, bottom up education by the proletariat through local struggle is structurally analogous to (recall)the view that Michael Polanyi and then, more famously, Hayek develop in the 1930s on the way learning occurs in markets and the generation of spontaneous order. To be sure, knowledge about the spontaneous order generating features of markets pre-date Luxemburg, so I am not suggesting she influenced their development of the concept, which was already familiar. (And Polanyi is surely influenced by the way 'spontaneous' is used in chemistry and physics of the nineteenth century.) But anyone familiar with debates among Marxists at the start of the twentieth century, will be quickly struck by how important and intense the debate over revolutionary spontaneity is. This debate died circa 1920.

Hayek (1899 ��� 1992) and Michael Polanyi  (1891 ��� 1976) came to maturity in the aftermath of this debate. While Polanyi never seems to have flirted with social democracy (and was not especially educated in economics), Hayek was clearly (and un-controversially) influenced by Wieser and charmed by Wieser's 'Fabian socialist' tendencies as a student. The Fabians were the standard-bearers of social democratic gradualism (which is at times compatible, of course, with left liberalism). So, it's worth exploring to what degree Wieser and the young Hayek were themselves enmeshed in, or at least aware of, the debates over the epistemic merits of spontaneous proletarian action. 

 

 

*I am always a bit amused that Marxism requires bourgeois or upper class traitors for the revolution to succeed.