What goals has liberalism pursued and why have they proved so controversial - Essay Example

What goals has liberalism pursued and why have they proved so controversial The ideally competitive market in economic theory, where economic representatives are fully informed and ideally rational, is a fiction. It is not in existence, nor is it even compared to, in the real economic practice (Macleod 1998, 25). Yet this fiction influences greatly upon modern political theory. The tempting power of the ideal market grounds on its capacity to create elegant and disarmingly easy solutions to difficult problems. We can come to see, for example, how the uncoordinated activity of economic representatives can cause socially desired states of affairs (Moore 1993, 97). In much the same manner, the ideal market gets into normative political philosophy partially because it can be showed as illuminating essential values. Defenders of the market maintain we can get to know much about individual liberty, the encouragement of mutual advantage, and efficiency in the distribution of goods by studying it (Guathier 1986, 119). However, this cardinal limitation of the market for many theorists shows its supposed insensitivity to the demands of egalitarian justice (Ashley 2003, 112). This is partly because modern market societies demonstrate a great deal of social and economic inequality. However, egalitarians have also been inclined to suppose that there is an integral flaw in the ideal of a free market society (Berkowitz 1999, 140). In traditional left-wing critiques, the market has been showed as the opponent of equality on various grounds: it results exploitation; it causes alienation; it is an enemy of genuine freedom; and it is corrosive to the bonds of community (Kautz 1995, 32). It is necessary to notice then that the leading contemporary advocates of egalitarianism, for example Ronald Dworkin (1991), violently defend the use of the ideal market as a theoretical method for the articulation of egalitarian distributive justice and liberal political morality. On the same grounds Judith Shklar's "barebones liberalism" (Whiteside 1999, 501) actually fails to justify either values she proclaimed or liberal ideals of equality. In the end of her career, Shklar made her liberalism specific and took it in an egalitarian direction. She did so by launching skeptical issues at the certainties usually used to rationalize inequalities. While defending equality she ended up making empirical and ethical affirmations that her skepticism had expelled, providing strong proof for the conclusion that skepticism alone is insufficient for creating an egalitarian politics (Tomasi 2000, 46). In this direction of her thought, Shklar defined what Isaiah Berlin calls a "plurality of values." Like Berlin's, her way of thinking affirms "the permanent possibility of inescapable conflict between values" (Berlin 1990, 80) Although Shklar in some way agreed with the liberalism of Hobbes and Locke, she doubts the premises of their arguments (Dagger 1997, 98). The problem is that real consent - as opposed to the consent imagined in tales of the social contract - is elusive (Plaw 2002, 267). The fact of the matter, Shklar (1986) suggests, is that liberalism rests on moral intuitions that are plural, vague and controversial. All along liberal universalism was an illusion. "To a large extent," she concludes, "it was European ethnocentrism and indifference to historical variety and change that made discourse relevant to all' seem plausible in the first place" (Shklar 1967, 278). The difficulties befalling her "barebones liberalism" are the same as those that debilitate the "agonistic liberalism" of theorists like Joseph Raz and Isaiah Berlin (Gottfried 1999, 211). Like Shklar, these theorists propose a defense of liberty grounded in a "radical choice between incommensurables," to use John Gray's phrase (cited in Hardin 1999, 162). This is a choice that can only be settled in political competition - rather than in a putatively rational consensus. But Gray argues convincingly that accepting value pluralism does not entail privileging a liberal political order. It implies "theorizing liberal institutions and practices as particular forms of life having no universal authority whatever" (Gray 1995, 133). If values and interpretations are radically plural, rooted in different cultures and historical experiences, then one cannot even claim that a regime dedicated to individual liberty is preferable. Liberal individualism and toleration are only aspects of a contingent cultural form (Kloppenberg 1998, 102). Gray's (1995) "post-liberalism" ends in a plea for us to learn to live with other communities' ways of life, "each with their characteristic, and often exclusionary excellences, virtues, and goods." That candid reference to "exclusionary excellences, virtues, and goods" reminds us that radical pluralism offers no decisive support to liberal values of social inclusiveness and equal respect for individuals (Hardin 1999, 167). It is reasonable to suppose that support by liberals for actual free market arrangements as well as antipathy towards alternative economic models can be traced, at least in part, to the use in liberal theory of ideal models of market interaction (Chan 2002, 39). Whether we should be enthusiastic, from the point of view of justice, about extensive reliance on free market economic arrangements depends partly on the appropriateness of theoretically linking the market and justice (Macleod 1998, 210). The market now occupies a central place in modern liberal democracies and its machinations have a profound effect on the character of the communities in which we live. Moreover, the global dominance of the market is increasing. Thus, for example, Dworkin's account of liberal theory (1981) begins with the controversial but compelling claim that all theories of political morality can and should be construed as interpretations of an abstract but fundamental requirement that all persons be treated with equal concern and respect. The now famous equal concern and respect formula captures the idea that "the interests of the members of the community matter and matter equally" (Dworkin 1991, 24). This abstract egalitarian thesis is said to provide a common point of departure for all plausible theories of political morality. For Dworkin, developing a theory of political morality consists largely in developing a plausible and compelling interpretation of the fundamental egalitarian demand (Fonte 1995, 49). This involves furnishing an account of people's interests "most comprehensively construed' and determining what follows from 'supposing these interests matter equally" (Dworkin 1981, 287). Dworkin has claimed that the plausible forms of utilitarianism, libertarianism, Rawlsian contractarianism, and equal welfare theories can and should be represented as interpretations of the abstract egalitarian ideal (Dworkin 1981, 246 cited in Kymlcika 1989, 173). He also thinks there are decisive objections to these theories qua interpretations of the egalitarian thesis (Haas 1997, 45). The idea that some principle of equality has a fundamental role to play in political philosophy is, of course, an old and familiar claim. However, it is only in the last twenty years or so that systematic efforts have been made to articulate explicitly egalitarian conceptions of justice (Dyzenhaus 1998, 59). Much of the impetus for the exploration of the idea of equality can, of course, be traced to the work of Rawls (1971). His suggestion that the central idea of distributive justice is that there is a strong presumption that primary goods should be distributed equally has generated remarkable interest in the idea of distributional equality (cited in Macleod 1998, 217). Many theorists agree that equality must be accepted as a fundamental principle of distribution but they disagree both over how equality should be understood and what exactly justice requires be distributed equally (Moore 1993, 72). As Amartya Sen says we want an answer to the question: Equality of what (Sen 1992, 251). We need a richer account of the egalitarian ideal and how it may be realized. A number of different competing theories have tried to supply an answer to this problem. Even a cursory review reveals the lively debate surrounding the meaning of equality (Heideking 2002, 97). Sen argues that Rawls's focus on primary goods is too narrow. He suggests that we should focus on a notion of basic capabilities and this leads him to a conception of "basic capability equality" (Sen 1992, 230). Richard Arneson believes that what egalitarians should really care about is welfare, but he also believes a conception of distributive equality must be sensitive to certain considerations of individual responsibility. As a consequence, he develops a theory of 'equality opportunity for welfare' (Arneson 1989 cited in Plaw 2002, 257). G. A. Cohen has reservations about Arneson's proposal and develops his own variant of it called 'equal access to advantage' (Cohen 1989, 911). Dworkin (1991) has argued against a variety of versions of the view that it is welfare that egalitarians should aim to equalize. All versions of equality of welfare are, in Dworkin's (1981) view, defective conceptions of equality. Instead he argues that it is resources that should be distributed equally. All these theories are interesting and important but in many respects Dworkin's theory stands alone in the field (Chan, 2002, 129). What is noteworthy about Dworkin's contribution to egalitarian theory is its sheer breadth and depth. Where other egalitarian theories provide accounts of distributional equality, Dworkin uses his conception of equality as a basis on which to construct a comprehensive theory of political morality (Macleod 1998, 115). His remarkable achievement has been to offer an explanation of how the apparently disparate ideals embraced by liberalism can be systematically articulated and defended through the adoption of an egalitarian conception of distributive justice (Tomasi 2000, 62). As we have already indicated, at the heart of this theory of equality lies the ideal market. It is crucial to emphasize that the market does not appear in Dworkin's theory simply as a useful heuristic device. Rather it is intrinsic to the very interpretation of equality (Hardin 1999, 71). As Dworkin puts it, "the best theory of equality presupposes some actual or hypothetical market in justifying a particular distribution of goods and opportunities" (Dworkin 1981, 38). Yet the initial interpretation of the abstract egalitarian thesis does not begin with the market but with an account of the nature of our most fundamental interests (King 1999, 65). The failure of egalitarian theory in the past to accommodate responsibility has, in my view, substantially undermined its appeal both philosophically and politically by leaving egalitarianism vulnerable to libertarian critiques which place great emphasis on the moral and political significance of choice. Though libertarians are apt to exaggerate the degree to which entitlement is a matter of individual choice, they are right to insist that an account of justice which ignores or marginalizes responsibility for our own lives is unsatisfactory (Kautz 1995, 44). WORKS CITED Ashley, Susan A. 2003. Making Liberalism Work: The Italian Experience, 1860-1914. Westport, CT: Praeger. Berlin, I. 1990. The Crooked Timber of Humanity. London: John Murray, 80 Chan, Sylvia. 2002. Liberalism, Democracy, and Development. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Cohen, J. A. 1989. On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice. Ethics, 99/ 4: 906-44. Dagger, Richard Johnson. 1997. 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Philosophy and Public Affairs, 10, 3-4: 185246, 283-345. Dworkin, Ronald. 1991. Foundations of Liberal Equality. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press. Fonte, John. 1995. Ill Liberalism. National Review, 6 February, 48. Gottfried, Paul Edward. 1999. After Liberalism: Mass Democracy in the Managerial State. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Gray, J. 1995. Enlightenment's Wake: Politics and Culture at the Close of the Modern Age. New York: Routledge, 133. Guathier, D. 1986. Morals by Agreement. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Haas, Ernst B. 1997. Nationalism, Liberalism, and Progress. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Hardin, Russell. 1999. Liberalism, Constitutionalism, and Democracy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kautz, Steven. 1995. Liberalism and Community. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Kerlinger, Fred N. 1984. Liberalism and Conservatism: The Nature and Structure of Social Attitudes. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. King, Desmond. 1999. In the Name of Liberalism : Illiberal Social Policy in the USA and Britain. New York: Oxford University Press. Kloppenberg, James T. 1998. The Virtues of Liberalism. New York: Oxford University Press. Kymlicka, W. 1989. Liberalism, Community, and Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Read More