Liberals, Neoliberals, and Saints

Last week, the big conversation amongst politics and political theory blogs was an argument over neoliberalism, begun by Henry Farrell here, continued by Matt Yglesias here, and sprawling outward to include all sorts of commentary (see here, here, and here for a start). The gist of the argument, as I see it anyway, is an old one that touches on all sorts of concerns many of us who consider ourselves on the left have: what, if anything, can be done to give socialist and/or populist and/or radical democratic policy options a greater chance of electoral success, when a lot of the best, most thoughtful, and most successful liberal thinking in the country--of which Yglesias is but one example--remains resolutely in the "neoliberal" box, in which the claimed egalitarian potential of monetarily guided market growth and indirect subsidies via tax breaks are preferable to the class-based perspective exemplified by union power, rising and minimum wages, expanded welfare, and job protection? This is a concern not simply because of some old Marxist argument which suggests that every success egalitarian reformers have in making a little bit of peace with capitalism makes real egalitarian reform of our society and economy less likely, but because those reforms are, many of us on the left claim, not sustainable in themselves, and become more and more beholden to corporate sensibilities and interests with every electoral iteration. (The current legal and political arguments over the Affordable Care Act and the debt ceiling are only the most recent bit of evidence which arguable supports the left's argument.) Hence, the difference between "leftism" (which, whatever its particulars, is fundamentally concerned with gaining equal access to society's pie for all, and the historic and economic structures which make it such divisions difficult to achieve) and "neoliberalism" (which, however one chooses to explain it, is fundamentally convinced that attacking structures is mostly useless and often counterproductive, especially in comparison with simply working with capitalism to increase relative size of the poor and middle-class's slices of pie) is a political difference, with the former insisting that good politics has to be about organizing alternatives to and opposition to the current structures of society, and the latter insisting that good politics involves technocratic mastery of, and a consistently compromising approach to, the current social structure.

I freely grant that talking about organizing alternatives and opposition drives many a smart and decent egalitarian batty, because the efforts seems so repetitive and pointless. Far better, perhaps, as Tim Burke suggested (and then suggested again, in a response to me), to adopt a kind of "sociocultural libertarianism" in which you opt-out of most of these debates over reform. We should accept that there's always going to be so many different metrics for measuring success in any policy debate that it's wrong to make a fetish of any one of them, that there's no solution that'll fully achieve one's stated goals (particularly because there's no way of achieving any of those goals without releasing, as Tim wonderfully put it, "a lot of extremely rivalrous visions of praxis, with varying degrees of improbability and/or undesirability", into the room), and that if all that means you lose any given policy argument (like over the Affordable Care Act, or over the debt ceiling), you might as well just accept it, make something satisfactory out of it, wait until next season, and quit using the loss as a pretext for arguing that there's still that one thing you haven't tried yet that'll solve all your problems.

It would be unfair to call Tim's call to "chill out" a bourgeois, neoliberal call, because it really isn't...but it does share some elements with it, and I think he'd admit to that. "Satisficing" in the context of our present socio-economic structure is, in a sense, very much what the neoliberal, Ygelsias position entails: it means asking what can be done with our present liberal capitalist modernity that has done most of us (or at least most of us who hang out on the internet) a fair amount of good, and not day-dreaming about some plan that will suddenly make the leftist, structure-challenging approach to reform politically viable. What neoliberalism assumes, as Ygelsias apparently assumes as well (though perhaps this is unfair to him as well), is that liberalism is what we've got, and so why not be content with technocratically "nudging" it (as Henry observes in another follow-up post) as best we can?

It's here that I think a post from Noah Millman (a post which brought out comments from some much-missed bloggers like Pithlord) is directly on point:

The broad point is: alternatives to neoliberalism won’t be as liberal. They will be less-likely to prioritize efficiency. They will also be less-likely to prioritize positive-sum solutions. They will also be less-likely to prioritize basic fairness or democratic principles or whatever else. They will assign a higher priority to increasing the economic and political power of the people they are trying to represent (or their designated representatives).

I think this is a vital observation, because much of the left, in confronting this frustrating reality, often handicap themselves, I feel, because of their determination to remain liberals. And if your primary concern is equality...well, why should you be? Obviously there is good reason to be liberal in the broad, original sense--to be open-minded and respectful of difference and appreciative of individual rights and concerns. But the construct of liberalism, much less neoliberalism, with its bone-deep commitment to fairness and efficiency and individualism and neutrality and elite (as opposed to populist or radical) democratic procedures? Is that really the best model to follow if one's hope is to engender social democratic challenges to the prevailing, unequal structures of society? Perhaps one of the reasons we on the left often find ourselves frustrated is because we're too often taking many of our talking points from people uninterested in examining radical alternatives that take us away from the assumptions of liberal modernity.

This month's issue of The Atlantic contained two review essays which exemplify this attitude: one by Caitlin Flanagan on Cesar Chavez, the other by Christopher Hitchens on Mohandas Gandhi. Flanagan's story is somewhat sympathetic to Chavez, or at least reluctant in its condemnation of him, but perhaps all the more damning because of that; Hitchens attack on Gandhi, by contrast, is almost predictable. But what is most predictable in both pieces is how little use both authors see--especially in Flanagan's case, as she looks back as a globalized member of the American elite at her family's one-time Berkeley-liberal infatuation with the United Farm Workers when she was a child--for anyone who approaches issues of justice and equality from anything other than a technocratic, melioratic, redistributive approach. For Chavez, his attempt to push forward efforts on behalf on exploited workers meant making use of not only the union-organizing lessons of the Wobblies but also a "mystical Roman Catholicism" which led Chavez to make hunger strikes, peregrinations complete with crucifixes, and celebratory Masses part of his campaign. In Flanagan's view, his determination to pursue equality in this devout and "hard way"--her words can barely hide her rueful smile at how "the mighty Berkeley Co-op," where she once worked fundraisers for the UFW, and where "shoppers (each one a part owner) went in to buy no-frills, honestly purveyed, and often unappealing food", has been replaced by a Whole Foods chain store--is what best accounts for his ultimate susceptibility to cult-thinking, paranoia, and irrelevance. "Like most '60s radicals...[Chavez] vastly overestimated the appeal of hard times an simple living...as everyone from the Symbionese Liberation Army to the Black Panthers would discover, nobody actually wants to be poor". Hitchens, as one might expect, takes Gandhi's opposition to modern complexity and meritocracy even further, suggesting that his campaign to free India from British rule really has more in common with the reactionary attitude of Wahhabism and Islamic fundamentalism generally, than anything that can be called humane. Dismissing the idea that justice and equality can be rooted in what he labels (invoking again his well-known attacks on Mother Teresa, attacks which I think are actually quite persuasive...just not in the way Hitchens supposes) "redemption by self-abnegation", he concludes that Gandhi's vision for India revealed him to be a "friend of poverty" rather than a friend to the poor, and moreover reveals him to be a believer in what he caustically calls the "grotesque" and "conceited" notion that "the meek should inherit the Earth".

What do these articles, or the examples of Chavez and Gandhi for that matter, have to do with the argument about liberalism, neoliberalism, and the left? Perhaps only this: as a long-time reader (and really, an admirer) of Matt Ygelsias, I'm fairly confident that his opinions about Chavez and Gandhi would be substantially the same as those Flanagan and Hitchens laid out...and he wouldn't be alone amongst those pundits and economists and lawyers who have developed the monetarist, nudging, neoliberal approach to increasing egalitarianism in finding a lot of sympathy with those views. Chavez and Gandhi were, well, saints--meaning people who are, as George Orwell famously put it, "anti-human" and "judged guilty until proven innocent", and if there's anything which liberalism in all its varieties prides itself on being, it's human--grounded in the human experience, addressing the needs and wants of the human individual, taking seriously solely that which pertains to the human being present before you. That's a powerful and important force for equality...but it's not the only one, and not necessarily the best one, especially if you open you eyes to historical, structural forces (one of which might very well be sin) which makes it very difficult, if not impossible, for the solitary individual before you, whatever rights she may possess, to be able to equally enjoy the goods of society. Taking on those unequal structures requires a perception and conviction which very well can--and I think, more often than not, usually does--incorporate elements of the liberal, even technocratic, idea: after all, why wouldn't one want to make use of tax credits and hidden subsidies if that serves to accomplish one's immediate ends? But a serious--call it "utopian," if you will, in the spirit of Erik Olin Wright's excellent book--effort to actually empower the meek in their places and in their lives (as opposed to promising job retraining and college loans to help them join the elite)...well, that's going to require structural work, and structural work will require a comprehensive vision of some sort. Liberalism alone can't get you there.

The power and appeal of liberal modernity it obvious, and as a consequence late capitalism probably isn't going anywhere, at least not anytime soon. The problem--for us on the left, and for everyone else--is what follows when some assume that, because it's not going anywhere, there is little reason to imagine anything beyond it, and it is just too-frustrating-to-be-worth-it to attempt to argue for a way of believing, acting, organizing, and sacrificing which it might at the structures of capitalism, and point in a different, more equal direction beyond it. Some will always assume that, of course; not everyone is going to find anything remotely appealing about saints. But I would hope that there will always be some believers attempting to articulate something a little bit more comprehensive, and perhaps even keep alive some of the means (most particularly unions, but there are others as well) by which those more comprehensive, structural challenges can make a political dent in the system.. It's a way to keep up leftward pressure on the neoliberals, at any rate.