Ideologies and Political Theories: A Conceptual Approach

IDEOLOGIES AND POLITICAL THEORY

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Ideologies

and Political Theory: A Conceptual Approach

MICHAEL FREEDEN

CLARENDON PRESS • OXFORD

This book has been printed digitally and produced in a standard specification in order to ensure its continuing availability

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuaia Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan South Korea Poland Portugal Singapore Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam

Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York © Michael Freeden 1996 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) Reprinted 2006 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover And you must impose this same condition on any acquirer ISBN 0-19-827532-3

To Irene

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

T WOULD like to thank the British Academy for supporting this JL project by awarding me a two-year Research Readership, and enabling me to rethink my relationship with political theory. Many friends and colleagues have helped me to sharpen my focus by commenting on aspects of the written text, on papers I have given, or by discussing various issues with me. Among them are Terence Ball, Ros Ballaster, Richard Bellamy, Margaret Canovan, G. A. Cohen, Elizabeth Frazer, Robert Goodin, Jose Harris, Martin Hollis, Alison Jeffries, Ernesto Laclau, David Leopold, Colin Matthew, James Meadowcroft, {Catherine Morris, Noel O'Sullivan, Paolo Pombeni, Luanda Rumsey, Bhaskar Vira, and Albert Weak. More generally, I owe a debt to organizers of and participants in seminars and conferences on political thought and modern history I have addressed, to graduate students whose critical acumen and freshness sparked off new trains of thought, to undergraduates who posed questions requiring me to clarify my presentation, and to other individuals who have patiently reacted to my views as they developed over time. All testify to the fact that thinking about politics, even when channelled through a single individual, is a collective act. I have been fortunate in the great capability and understanding of my editor at Oxford University Press—Tim Barton—who philosophically took in his stride both the increasing length of the book and the time it took to complete, I thank Mansfield College for providing an environment as congenial as any to be found in the academic world. A shortened version of Chapter 2 previously appeared in the Journal of Political Philosophy, My family have, as always, been the mainstay of my work and, in particular, of my life beyond it, M.F. Mansfield College, Oxford

CONTENTS

Introduction

1

PART I: THEORIZING ABOUT IDEOLOGICAL MORPHOLOGY 1. Staking Out: The Distinctiveness of Analysing Ideologies (a) (b) (c) (d) (e) (f) (g) (h)

The Conceptual Histories of Ideology In Search of a Single Concept Analytical Misconceptions Rival Epistemologies Philosophy and Ideology: The Unholy Alliance Unconscious and Rhetorical Components of Ideology Ideology and the Limits on Logic The Ubiquity and Specificity of Ideology

2. Assembling: From Concepts to Ideologies (a) (b) (c) (d) (e) (f)

Political Words and Political Concepts Reassessing Essential Contestability The Morphology of Political Concepts Logical and Cultural Adjacency The Morphology of Ideologies The Escape from Strong Relativism

3. Applying: The Contexts of Ideological Meaning (a) (b) (c) (d) (e) (f} (g) (h)

The Inevitability of History Contextual History and Intentionality Ideology and Herrneneutics The Contribution of Regriffsgeschichte Competing Viewpoints and the Path to Integration Structure and Morphology Meeting Some Objections Ideologies as Vehicles of Political Theory

13 14 19 23 25 27 33 36 40

47 48 55 60 68 75 91

96 97 100 111 117 123 124 127 131

viii

Contents PART II; LIBERALISM: THE DOMINANT IDEOLOGY

Preliminary Observations 4. The 'Grand Projects' of Liberalism (a) (b) (c) (d)

Identifying the Millite Core Democracy and Other Adjacencies Peripheral Permutations French Connections and Disconnections

5. New Liberal Successions: The Modernization of an Ideology (a) (b} (c) (d) (e) (f) (g) (h)

The Idealist Liberalism of T. H. Green Perimeter Practices and Adjacent Aftermaths The New Liberalism: The Evolution of an Ideology The Changing Adjacencies of Liberty The Organic Analogy Fleshing Out the New Liberal Morphology State, Group, and Society: The German Case State, Group, and Society: The French Case

6. The Challenge of Philosophical Liberalism: ContextuaEzing the Contemporary American Variant (a) (b) (c) (d) (e) (f)

139 141 144 154 165 168

178 178 189 194 201 203 206 210 215

226

Political Liberalism and its Constraints Carving Out the Political? Trie Kantian Horizon Is Equality a Liberal Core Concept? Liberalism and Community Liberal Neutrality

228 233 236 241 247 259

7. Mistaken Identities and Other Anomalies: The Liberal Pretenders

276

(a) Libertarianism: An Attenuated Ideology (b) The Individual and Liberty: The Retreat to Non-Constraint (c) In Defence of Property (d) The Break with Liberalism (e) Hayek: An Appeal to the Old Liberals (f) Anarchism: The View from Liberty

276 279 285 288 298 311

Contents

ix

PART III: THE ADAPTABILITY OF CONSERVATISM 8. Theorizing about Conservative Ideology

317

(a) Oakeshott: Conservatism a la Carte 320 (b) The Chameleon Contra the Status Quo: Two Discarded Theories 329 (c) The Conservative Core: Resolving a Morphological Puzzle 332

9. The Chimera of Conservative Dualism (a) (b) (c) (d) (e) (f) (g)

The Multiple Counter-Defences of British Conservatism The Cases against Socialism Parrying Liberal Advances Cecil's Conservatism American Conservatism: Parallel Thoughts Libertarianism Reappraised Conservatism and Public Debate

10. Forward to the Past—The Conservative Revival (a) (b) (c) (d) (e)

Thatcherism as Conservatism The Subservience of Economics 'Who is the Fiercest of Them All?' Recent American Conservatisms The Unity of Thatcherite Ideology

348 348 354 360 362 369 373 378

384 385 393 397 399 408

PART IV: SOCIALISM: THE CONTAINMENT OF TRANSCENDENCE 11. The Congruence of Socialist Diversity (a) (b) (c) (d) (e) (f) (g) (h)

Pre- and Proto Socialisms The Socialist Core History: The Fifth Core Concept Socialism and Democracy Socialism and Power The 'Socialist Clause' and the State Class and Property The Socialist Periphery

12. Socialism, Liberty, and Choice (a) (b) (c) (d) (e) (f)

The Pursuit of Liberalism by Other Means Equality and Liberty: A Partnership of Equals? The Fundamental Nature of Revisionism Continental Comparisons The Perimeter Problem of Market Socialism A Note on Other Socialisms

417 420 425 433 438 442 446 448 450

456 456 464 469 472 477 480

x

Contents PART V: TRANSFORMATION AND DILUTION: THE ASSAULT ON IDEOLOGICAL CONVENTION

Preliminary Observations

485

13. Feminism: The Recasting of Political Language

488

(a) (b) (c) (d) (e) (f) (g) (h)

The Feminist Core: Between Critique and Prescription Gender and Power The Political Domain Paradigms Lost and Regained Postmodernism: An Alliance of Convenience? Equality and the Feminist Traditions An Ideological Reading of Ideologies The Role of the Concrete

14. Green Ideology: Retreat and Regrouping (a) (b) (c) (d) (e) (f) (g)

The Core Concepts of Green Discourse Deficient Dichotomies Conservative Components? The Individualist Ingredient The Ambivalence of Power The Green Perimeter Eco-feminism: A Distinct Position?

491 492 497 501 506 508 515 520

526 527 530 535 537 540 544 548

Epilogue

551

Bibliography

555

Name Index

575

Subject Index

583

INTRODUCTION

HE study of ideologies is torn between various approaches that Thave emerged out of different conceptualizations of ideology,

causing disarray and confusion among scholars. Appearing mainly as a peculiar and frequently unsavoury expression of distorted and power-serving political thinking, and thus as a point d'appui from which a transformative exposition of social thought and practice can be launched, or as a simplistic classificatory label for broadly based political belief-systems and the historical traditions in which they unfold, ideologies lag in the status stakes behind the high prestige of political philosophy, whether analytical or critical. A central aim of this book is to challenge the current predominant attitudes to ideologies and their scholarly analysis. Its argument will not follow Marxisant schools whose critical notions of ideology constitute attempts to transcend its illusory nature. To adopt that critical disposition is to deflect attention from the product itself and to deflate its status and value both as an intellectual phenomenon and as a means through which social understanding may be attained directly. The thinking encapsulated in ideologies deserves examination in its own right, not merely for what it masks. It should no longer be pigeon-holed as an impoverished and inferior relation of analytical and normative political philosophies. Rather, ideologies are forms of political thought that provide important direct access to comprehending the formation and nature of political theory, its richness, varieties, and subtlety. The academic investigation of ideologies, it will be claimed, must be accorded equal ranking with the study of political philosophy. The current state of affairs, with its exaggerated disjunctive between the two, gives rise to concern. As products, both political philosophy and ideology are genres of political thought that display strong similarities in their morphology and that may overlap considerably in many of their normative and recommendatory features. As academic modes of construing the social world, the current distanciation of political philosophy as a subdiscipline— in particular, its Anglo-American varieties—from a serious consideration of concrete ideologies has significantly depleted the

2 Introduction methodological tools at the disposal of political theorists. This neglect of ideologies has weakened our comprehension of political thought as a phenomenon reflecting cultural as well as logical constraints. Those constraints operate on the building blocks of political thought, its political concepts. It is all the more perturbing because, as a consequence, the signal capacities of reflectiveness and analytical precision displayed by contemporary political philosophers are channelled—in most individual cases—towards some features of political thought at the expense of others. The following inquiry offers a series of first steps to redress the balance. Traditionally, the exploration of political thought has been organized around the persons who have best expressed coherent political thinking, around the main overarching themes with which it has been concerned, around the formulation of philosophically valid political utterances, or around particular historical periods. But the basic units of thinking about politics are the concepts that constitute its main foci, just as words are the basic units of language, and in this book the argument is put forward that the analysis of political thought, as a scholarly enterprise related to the methodological interests of students of social phenomena, is most usefully promoted by proceeding from the conceptual morphologies it displays. Those internal configurations are detectable embodiments of the political beliefs of political actors, but with some important qualifications. The approach proffered here is not narrowly 'empiricist', in the sense of allowing particular data to dictate an inductivist general theory, as advocated by nineteenth-century positivists. It recognizes that the meaning of such data depends on frameworks of interpretation. Assigning meaning through such frameworks is a very different process from the reflective yet imaginative creations and speculations of many political theorists and philosophers, conducted at some distance from the manifestations of political thinking they experience around them. It refers to human thoughtbehaviour that is empirically but indirectly ascertainable to the1 scholar, through its expression in spoken and written language. Such thought-behaviour invariably includes, but is not identical with, the reflections and conjectures of political philosophers. This study is 'empirical' in that specific sense, while accepting both that the observations required must trace patterns not always discernible to the actors themselves, and that researchers cannot avoid imposing classifications on the subject-matter they 1

On the use of the term 'thought-behaviour' see Ch. 1.

Introduction

3

investigate, or shaping aspects of the reality under investigation. Ideologies, it is contended, may be subject to three scholarly perspectives. The first is genetic, in answer to the question: how did a particular set of political views come about? History and evolution are central to this mode of understanding. The second is broadly functional, in answer to the question: what is the purpose, or role (if unintended), of a particular set of political views? The third is semantic, in answer to the question: what are the implications and the insights of a particular set of political views, in terms of the conceptual connections it forms? Which universe of meaning—deliberate as well as unintentional—is constructed by its conceptual configurations? This latter perspective is the one that informs this book, engaged as it is not in the causal or functional explanation of ideologies but in offering an interpretative framework through which to comprehend their concrete manifestations. Such interpretations and understandings, however, must retain links with the perceived historical and sociological realities within which political thinkers, grand and modest, employ the copious range of political concepts that human cultures have put at their disposal. The analysis of political concepts is not, on this understanding, most usefully pursued by projecting their logical permutations and ethical possibilities in the abstract, often attached to universalizable models—currently the most common method of exploring them—but through locating them within the patterns in which they actually appear. Such patterns are most conveniently known as ideologies, those systems of political thinking, loose or rigid, deliberate or unintended, through which individuals and groups construct an understanding of the political world they, or those who preoccupy their thoughts, inhabit, and then act on that understanding.2 Those 'perceived realities' need not constitute the real world, for the reality of that world is only partly germane to the understanding of ideologies. The conscious perceptions, and conscious and unconscious conceptions, of the participants in the social world are the object of our concern and a major, if indeterminate, cause of human conduct, and it is at that level that ideologies operate. In addition the social world is itself, contra the positivists, the 2 The terminology adopted here designates ideologies as political; hence there is no need for the tautology 'political ideology'. There are two reasons for this. First, it is accepted usage among students of politics and political science. Second, cultural and sociological uses of 'ideology', ostensibly removed from the sphere of politics, specify power relationships as central to the concept, and power is a key, if insufficient, identifying feature of politics.

4 Introduction consequence of such perceptions and conceptions and cannot be said to exist entirely independently and objectively of them. The nature of society and its structures, supposedly reflected in ideologies, are themselves partly the product of those ideologies, operating as ways of organizing social reality. One caveat must immediately be registered. True to the above, the views of this scholar cannot be absolved from the limitations of perception and comprehension that apply to all human thought-processes. The test of this study will have to be not in the objective truth of its analysis and methods but in whatever intellectual appeal and utility of perspective it may be deemed to have. Proceeding from the political concept as the unit of analysis in political thought, it is the main thesis of this book that ideologies are distinctive configurations of political concepts, and that they create specific conceptual patterns from a pool of indeterminate and unlimited combinations. That indeterminate range is the product of the essential contestability of political concepts, and essential contestability provides the manifold flexibility out of which ideological families and their subvariants are constructed. It is a parallel thesis that the furtherance of our understanding of political thinking will be best assisted through comprehending political concepts as obtaining meaning on three dimensions: time, space, and the morphology of their interlinkages, and that these three dimensions have to be integrated in an overarching analytical perspective. While the first two dimensions are commonly used in interpreting political thought, the addition of the third dimension of morphology is a special, though not exclusive, aspect of the approach offered in the following pages. Political concepts acquire meaning not only through accumulative traditions of discourse, and not only through diverse cultural contexts, but also by means of their particular structural position within a configuration of other political concepts. Hence ideologies are none other than the inevitable macroscopic consequence of attributing such meanings to a range of interrelated political concepts. Specific structures of political thinking do not exist prior to meaning but are themselves formed by permissible and legitimated codes and norms at the disposal of a given society, or by challenges to those prevailing codes and norms. Put differently, while the prevailing traditions of studying political thought have focused on truth and epistemology, ethical Tightness, logical clarity, origins and causes, prescriptions, purposes and intentions—to name the more salient issues—political thought in its ideological manifestations can more fruitfully be

Introduction

5

regarded as a conflation of form and meaning, of the patterns that political thinking displays as a crucial facet of the interpretation and elucidation of its concepts. Those patterns are to be found in the thought-processes that produce political thinking, in its historical instances, in its cultural representations, and to a lesser extent in its internal logical relations.3 In contradistinction to preeminent structuralist positions, however, the history of an ideological tradition, the conventions through which it is understood and perceived, and its spatial diversities, must also play a central role in attributing meaning to the ideology in question. This entails superimposing diachronic on synchronic analysis and multiple synchrony on the examination of a single system, as well as appreciating that political concepts combine the contingent and the quasi-contingent.4 This study does not profess to offer a complete analytical approach to ideologies. It will not, for example, directly emphasize narratives, myths, symbols, idioms, or the affectivity of language—all additional dimensions that can be superimposed on the ideological product. Its main concern is to focus on political concepts and examine how they can illuminate an understanding of ideologies. Because the construction and employment of ideologies are an aspect of political conduct, and the nature of politics is centrally linked to decision-making, the meanings ideologies convey are of a distinct type. From the perspective of conceptual analysis, making a decision relates crucially to bestowing a decontested meaning on a political term. The nature of political thinking is such that any of its instances invokes, intentionally or otherwise, a very large number of the most common political concepts. Thus configurations of necessarily decontested concepts are the sine qua nan of thinking rationally about politics—that is, in a minimally organized and purposive way—with a view to political action. Those configurations, or clusters, are ideologies, a term employed irrespective of any pejorative or laudatory connotation it may have acquired, and without pre-empting any possible form that combinations of political concepts may exhibit. Monolithic ideal-types or Utopias pursued to their logical conclusions are distinguished by the presence or absence of some fundamental political concepts— a distinction then employed as a taxonomic device. However, temporally and spatially determinate arenas of political thought * The relatively subordinate role of logical cohesion in the analysis of ideology, as 4distinct from political philosophy, will be discussed in the first two chapters. See Ch. 2.

6 Introduction display the presence of most fundamental political concepts, while exhibiting variation and contention—and hence differentiating possibilities—over the specific mixture of the conceptual ingredients, and over their positioning vis-a-vis each other. The choice among political concepts and ideas is hence not necessarily mutually exclusive. Their compatibility depends entirely on the interpretation attached to each concept and the resultant composite structures. Competition over legitimacy is hence not among concepts but among meanings and structures. Nor is it sufficient to approach boundary problems between ideologies as a question of the one 'shading off' into the other. In the course of 'shading-off' important changes take place with respect to the decontestations of, and mutual relationships among, the political concepts in play. It is on this macro-process that analytical scrutiny should focus. While the function of ideologies is to guide practical political conduct the analysis of ideologies (as distinct from the role assumed by some political philosophers) is not geared to directing or recommending political action. Its purpose is to explain, to interpret, to decode, and to categorize. In so doing it does not claim to offer a correct description of the world of ideologies, nor a complete account of the patterns of political thinking that world incorporates, nor the promise of an archimedal vista of social relations beyond the tarnished sphere of ideologies. It must rest content with holding out the possibility of a plausible, generally applicable, and reasonably comprehensive framework of analysis that is both intellectually and culturally satisfying, but that acknowledges the multiplicity of available perspectives on ideological thought as well as the inevitable gaps in recreating so intricate a phenomenon,5 The readiness to accept manifold methodological approaches6 need not result in fragmentation, for they are united by the same research objective and by the desire to illuminate it with optimal interpretative light. These central characteristics of ideological analysis must not be seen as disadvantages. The following chapters air the proposition that, outside the sphere of political philosophy, which in its AngloAmerican versions is engaged primarily in clarifying the consistency and logicality of political thought, in evaluating its validity, and in offering ethical prescriptions, the study of political theory 5 It is of course possible, as will be noted in Ch, 1, that even the analysis of ideologies may cause the world to be interpreted in such a way as to promote certain practices over others. 6 See J. Bohman, New Philosophy of Social Science: Problems of Indeterminacy (Oxford, 1991), 39.

Introduction

7

would attain invigorating impetus and methodological refinement, were it to focus on the interrelationships of its basic concepts as a major clue to their decoding, and were that to be accomplished both while borrowing from philosophers and linguists some of their analytical rigour with respect to words and concepts, and from historians, cultural sociologists, and anthropologists the ability to situate those words and concepts temporally and spatially. In so doing we may also be able to cast new light on the complex nature of modern ideologies and attempt to reintegrate their investigation into the mainstream of political theory rather than, as so frequently is the case, regard them as a dubious and imperfect adjunct to a discipline that supposedly can exist independently of them. A political theorist is currently understood by many users of the term to be a creator of political theories. That usage need not be accorded monopoly status in establishing what political theory is. The aim of these pages is to promote another, parallel, political theory: the analysis of the 'behavioural' and structural properties of political concepts as reflecting concrete political language and debate, without which a full ability to formulate new theories will be deficient. It will also become evident that within AngloAmerican and Continental scholarship there is enough common ground to allow for converging routes, traceable from different premisses and interests, which can sustain such a venture. In organizing this book, I have adopted different strategies to illustrate the range of possibilities immanent in the analysis of ideologies, qualified by a lack of space in what had already become a long script. I have concentrated on the major ideological families of liberalism, conservatism, and socialism, and have in addition discussed two relative newcomers, feminism and green ideology. It is not my intention to provide a primer survey or an exhaustive description of what the world of ideologies has to offer. Hence, for example, the absence of nationalism as a separate subject in the following pages: the addition of the suffix 'ism' does not automatically transform a term into an ideology. My purpose, rather, is to promote a particular approach to the study of political thought, and to resuscitate the analysis of ideologies as a major branch of knowledge about politics. I have therefore preferred throughout to employ different techniques and strategies as representative of modes of analysis, while trying to preserve the broader picture of the features of ideological families. Following on Part I, which introduces a theoretical apparatus through which ideologies may be interpreted and investigated, some of the casestudies constitute detailed examinations of political thinkers whose

8 Introduction contributions to specific ideologies have been exemplary, while others present instances of group thinking. Some case-studies are contemporary, others historical. Some are based on a specific national ideological tradition, and are then accompanied with broader comparative explorations. Some are compressed into adumbrating their basis morphology; others are detailed, in order to proffer a sampling of their internal complexity. At all times these studies are related to the ideological family under discussion, and at all times the intention is to illuminate the multiple research paths available to the scholarly understanding of ideologies. To have explored all these possibilities in every instance would have taken a lifetime of research and would have resulted in an unreadable opus. Hence also the (arbitrary) decision to exclude fascism and communism, let alone non-Western ideologies; and the decision not to explore examples of common-language discourse, or literary expressions of political ideologies, or mass ideological thinking—the latter deserving of more serious consideration than currently accorded by some academics. For reasons of space, comprehensiveness is merely secondary to the attempt to demonstrate the link between ideologies and political concepts and the significance of this link as a framework for scholarly inquiry. In sum, this book modestly offers an invitation to a tasting, which further scholarship may yet assist in transforming into a feast There exists a rich world of intellectual and cultural behaviour which revolves round the mental activity of human beings engaged in constructing edifices of political ideas. That world has been explored from one perspective, that of the historian of ideas, interested in the evolution of chains of thinking, of themes, and of traditions. But imagine the undertaking presented here as equivalent to that of the anthropologist, examining not the history of practices over time but, rather, both their perennial and transient features, and concerned not with recommending practices or inventing new ones but with analysing them as windows into the human mind and the social institutions that derive therefrom. If we extend the notion of 'practices' to include patterns of political concepts, as a raw material pregnant with scholarly promise, an extraordinary creation of human mental ingenuity, appreciable both on its own and because it holds the key to the all-important political environments people inhabit, we may point the way towards introducing analytical rigour into a major aspect of human (thought) behaviour. That aspect has not been given sufficient attention by the various schools that have deliberated political theory. Without wishing in any respect to diminish the importance

Introduction

9

and attractions of both political philosophy and the history of ideas, the understanding of the politico-conceptual structures of the human mind is as vital to their pursuit as is their inspiration to this enterprise. The third angle of a triangle of thinking about politics needs to be etched in as firm a hand as the other two. The introduction of a morphological perspective into the examination of political thought is long overdue. It is essential to the extent that for quite a few centuries political theory has been pivotally concerned with political concepts. It could conceivably be the case that the political concept as a central analytical unit will eventually give way to some other entity. When that happens, the study of political thought will have changed beyond recognition and its analysis may require different heuristic tools. But that is some way into the future. At this stage we still need to catch up with its past and present.

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I

Theorizing About Ideological Morphology

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1

Staking Out: The Distinctiveness of Analysing Ideologies

... there exists a definite prejudice... which regards the constituents and relations of the ideological domain as 1intrinsically capricious and chaotic in their essential nature. half-century the concept of ideology has emerged O asVERonetheofpast the most complex and debatable political ideas. It is remarkable for being discussed on levels that seemingly do not intersect, for attempting to organize phenomena that appear unrelated, and for causing confusion among scholars and political commentators. Political theorists, historians, philosophers, linguists, cultural anthropologists, sociologists, and psychologists have all grappled with the notion of ideology. They are all aware that problems of definition and of approach are high on the agenda of students of ideology, yet movement towards accepted parameters has not been forthcoming. The result is a polysemic word which for some even connotes more than one concept, bound in various ways to different disciplines. Both scholars and non-scholars have invested in it not only purposive, reflective, and critical thought but strong emotions. Yet it is also the case that the very existence of the facts to which ideology purportedly refers has frequently been denied. What, then, is the place of this study in the literature on ideology? What needs to be said that has not already been stated emphatically, repetitively, and even authoritatively? To pre-empt the argument that I will later present in detail, these pages are informed by a number of fundamental contentions. First, a central thesis of this book is that ideologies can fruitfully be approached as a major genre of political thought rather than—at least within the discipline of political theory—as poor relations of political 1

H. Walsby, The Domain of Ideologies (Glasgow, 1947), 138,

14 Ideological Morphology philosophies. Through ideologies access can be provided to a close study and comprehension of the units of political thinking—those fundamental political concepts which shape political argument. Second, ideologies constitute a product of the human mind that can be ascertained through a threefold process: employing the conceptual analysis that political theorists have been trained to handle; utilizing the type of empirical and contextual inquiry in which historians are versed; and appreciating the morphological patterns which contribute to the determination of ideological meaning. The result is the study of political ideas and utterances within frameworks of cultural, temporal, spatial, and logical constraints, frameworks that optimize the richness of information and the depth of understanding that can be elicited from political thought. Such a perspective on ideology is still considerably underdeveloped. This, however, puts the cart before the horse. To begin with, we need to appreciate the challenges awaiting the student of ideology, what can be gleaned from the most salient theories and views currently in circulation, and where the present state of the art raises questions and leaves gaps to be filled. 00 THE CONCEPTUAL HISTORIES OF IDEOLOGY

Most surveys of the genesis of ideology hark back to Antoine Destutt de Tracy, the progenitor of 'ideology' as an aspiring scientific term indicating the study of ideas, and to its almost immediate demotion by the Napoleonic detractors of positivism as a pompous attempt to build castles in the air.2 That meaning of ideology, though not the debate surrounding it, is now of little significance. Instead, modern scholarship pertaining to ideology still labours heavily under the mid-nineteenth-century shadow of Marx and Engels. This is by no means entirely a bad thing, for the Marxist approach to ideology has sensitized us to crucial aspects of human thinking in societies and about societies, and to the sources, limitations, and imperfections of such thinking. It has, above all, provided political philosophers and practitioners with critical vistas from which to assess, interpret, and attempt to transcend existing forms of social, economic, and political thought. The notion that human thinking reflects socio-economic practices is now virtually a truism, though not always in the specific Marxist garb which related ideology to the capitalist mode of production and its 2

See e.g. G. Lichtheim, The Concept of Ideology (London, 1967), 4-6.

Staking Out: Analysing Ideologies 15 3 material contradictions. The suggestion that types of thought perform concealing and dissimulative roles is likewise one widely adopted by psychologists, psychoanalysts, and anthropologists as well as social theorists. The assigning to ideology of significant functions of power, domination, and exploitation in the political and economic realms is another pervasive feature in understandings of the phenomenon.4 But the Marxist conception of ideology has also placed scholarly blinkers on the variegated nature of ideology by encouraging certain analytical directions and readings rattier than others. It ascribes a pejorative meaning to ideology, exposing it as a distorted or inverted reflection of alienated socially produced thought, and opposing it to true consciousness,5 Marx indeed often presented it in a double role, as an inversion of a distortion.6 It identifies a particular historically situated epistemology which gives rise to ideology, tihus implying its ephemerality rather than ubiquity. It presents ideology as a product of class and associates it primarily with a ruling class, so that each society develops only one ideology serving the interests of the rulers. It concentrates on the domination and control aspects of ideology at the expense of other features and functions. The critical vistas it purports to offer have as yet to convince many that they are also archirnedal points from which to establish truth and transform societies. Alongside this coherent and influential theory of ideology another contemporary version is positioned, so different in its focus and characteristics as to confound the scholar seeking some common ground. The product of a research culture centring on American political science, it concentrates on the concrete phenomenon of ideologies rather than the category of ideology. That is a significant shift. No longer is ideology regarded as an aberration of perception or of understanding; instead, a positivist empiricism is harnessed to identify and investigate a widespread social phenomenon: the existence of organized, articulated, and consciously held systems of political ideas incorporating beliefs, attitudes, and opinions, though latent beliefs are also included.7 The study of this 3 See K. Marx and F. Engels, Tie German Ideology, ed. C, J. Arthur (London, 1974), 4 The three concepts are of course not identical For a comprehensive analysis of the Marxist conception of ideology see J. Larrain, Marxism and Ideology (London, 1983). 5 See R. Geuss, The Idea of a Critical Theory (Cambridge, 1981), 1-44. 6 Cp, Larrain, Marxism and Ideology, 13-15. 7 Cp. R. E. Lane, Political Ideology (New York, 1962), 3, 14-16.

16 Ideological Morphology phenomenon is seen to involve the properties of a value-free social science. In countless textbooks, classificatory schemes are provided utilizing a left-right spectrum, or variations on that theme, to unfold the full range of the most salient ideological traditions. While such contemporary analysis looks at ideologies as ubiquitous forms of political thinking,8 it does not, nor should it, consider them as identical with political thought. Instead, it employs a strongly functionalist approach that examines the purposes and contributions of ideologies to social and political life. They are identified as ideacomplexes containing beliefs—encompassing consciously or unconsciously held values, understandings, interpretations, myths, and preferences—which support or contest political arrangements and processes, as well as providing plans of action for public political institutions; and in9 doing so they act as devices for mobilizing mass political activity. Conservative sociologists in the Parsonian school have also demonstrated the integrative role of ideology in symbolically binding individuals to their societies, though that role is identified by nonconservatives as well. As Gouldner has put it, ideology 'links individual to society, person to group, by allowing certain selected components of individual consciousness to be shared with other persons... in public discourse'.10 A similar analysis, joining the sociological and the psychological, had been proffered by Apter in the pioneering volume, Ideology and Discontent, The dual functions of ideology—'binding the community together' and 'organizing the role personalities of the maturing individual'—generate a byproduct, the legitimation of authority." This contemporary version itself has a deviant form, which has more in common with popular perceptions of the nature of 'isms', but which complicates even further the task of explaining the nature of ideologies. It reflects the legacy of the French Revolution; specifically, the hostile reception of its slogans and principles, denigrated as abstract, a priori, and artificial. Its main features have been to denote ideology as a dogmatic, doctrinaire, and closed 8

See M, Seliger, Ideology and Politics (London, 1976), on the preference for inclusive over exclusive nations of ideology. * For two excellent appraisals of contemporary understandings of ideology see W. A. Muffins, 'On the Concept of Ideology in Political Science', American Political Science Review, 66 (1972), 498-510; and M. B. Hamilton, "The Elements of the10 Concept of Ideology', Political Studies, 35 (1987), 18-38. A. W. Gouldner, The Dialectic of Ideology and Technology (London, 1976), 82. 11 D. E. Apter, 'Introduction', in D. E. Apter (ed.), Ideology and Discontent (New York, 1964), 18-21.

Staking Out: Analysing Ideologies

17

system of thought, removed from observed reality, manifesting both a high level of internal consistency which is the product of a deductive rationalism, and supported, in Daniel Bell's words, by a 'passionate' or emotional commitment which provides social levers for action,12 This conception also attaches ideology to radical, non-democratic, frequently totalitarian,13 political views of the left or the right that are usually superimposed by their promoters on a pluralist 'grass-roots' population, against the desires and interests of the latter. Cautioning against ideologies, theorists such as Sartori have instead commended political belief-systems as looser, more open, and pragmatic sets of ideas which are appropriate for, and responsive to, a democratic environment.14 This view of ideology conforms to the pejorative connotation of its Marxist co-variant,15 but abandons it as a route to a critical demystification of social practices and thinking. It is deviant merely because it has not exhibited the staying power or the logical consistency characteristic of the other uses of ideology, and not because it fails to conform to a definitional norm, the existence of which would be alien to the methodology employed in this study. Not unexpectedly, such scholarly treatments of ideology both reinforce and reflect ordinary language usage. A case in point is the ill-fated 'end of ideology' thesis of the late 1950s and early 1960s, which claimed that a growing intra- and international consensus would attenuate ideological controversy and ultimately purge the world of it. As monolithic passion gave way to pragmatic pluralism, an exhaustion with the great 'isms' would diminish the impact of ideology on modern life. There is a striking irony in the affinity between that capitalist vision, announcing the convergence of life styles across the face of the globe which would result in the disappearance of conflicting Weltanschauungen, and the Marxist prediction of the withering away of ideology consequent upon the march of historical materialism. But if ideology patently is not dead, and verily burst into a new lease of life in the 1960s, some of the premisses that accounted for the 'end of 12

See D. Bell, The End of Ideology: On the Exhaustion of Political Ideas in the Fifties (New York, 1962), 393-407. 13 See e.g. L. Halle, The Ideological Imagination (London, 1972), 6. 14 G. Sartori, 'Politics, Ideology, and Belief Systems', American Political Science Review, 63 (1969), 398-411. 15 Cp. K. Mtrtogue, Alien Powers: The Pure Theory of Ideology (London, 1985), which identifies ideology with its Marxist conception and criticizes its dogmatism and its critical view of societies as requiring liberation from oppression.

18 Ideological Morphology ideology' thesis survived its demise, too,16 In the language of the mass media, ideology is all too often vulgarized as the artificial and deliberate construction by misguided individuals, or elites, of systems of thought which have no bearing on human and political experience, or which aim to force such experience into a neat and orderly bed that distorts the naturally unshapely frame of its occupiers, 'The end of an age of ideology', exulted the press yet again when Margaret Thatcher resigned in 1990, What the student of ideologies can make of that will be assessed in later chapters. It is because scholars such as Bell and Sartori defined and popularized ideology in the limited terms they did, that the possibility of its passing could be entertained and a non-ideological politics envisaged. In effect, Sartori's more extensive category of 'belief-system' performs much the same role as ideology does in mainstream political science, his version of ideology being thus reduced to one of its manifestations, rather than excluded altogether. On the more general understanding of ideologies mooted by that mainstream, there is no reason to suggest that extreme, closed ideologies differ in their general features and functions from moderate, flexible, or broadly endorsed ones. Pragmatism, too, represents a point of view and conceals principled positions often unintelligible to their promoters. After all, the overused pragmatist injunction to judge something 'on its merits' implies preposterously that self-evident merits simply leap out of concrete cases for all to see, rather than that they are read into those cases by the so-called pragmatists themselves. The end-of-ideology thesis conflated a number of issues. In subscribing to closure versus openness, to abstract rationalism versus pragmatism, and to passion versus political disillusionment, it overlooked the possibility that closure was a matter of degree rather than a dichotomous distinction. It disregarded the area most ideologies occupy, somewhere between a deductive rationalism and an ad hoc empiricism. It underestimated the role of emotion in all ideological systems. It implied that tihe above categories overlapped, so that ideologies could only be closed and abstract and passionate and not, for example, open and passionately committed, as is liberalism, or dogmatically self-styledly 'pragmatic' and closed, as are some types of conservatism. In addition it advocated a consensus/convergence theory concerning the general acceptance 16

See A, Shtromas (ed,), 'The End of "Isms"?', Political Studks, specia! issue (1993), esp. K. Mtaogue, 'Ideology after the Collapse of Communism', pp. 4-20, which perpetuates, on the basis of internal logic and passion, the distinction between ideologies and liberal democratic political doctrines.

Staking Out: Analysing Ideologies 19 of the welfare state and a mixed economy, based on a patently mistaken premiss. Even had such a full consensus existed, which was never the case, this would hardly indicate the end of ideology; rather, it would suggest the reduction of many ideologies into one, to which all assented. Plainly, the complexities involved in analysing ideologies had not yet begun to be considered. If ideology is, as will be suggested here, a permanent and ubiquitous phenomenon, the end of ideology would signal the end of society itself, a world in which strong and cohesive political beliefs would neither be held nor acted upon. (b) IN SEARCH OF A SINGLE CONCEPT

The debates within the positivist-empiricist tradition of recent political science allow little, if any, space for class, for immanent views of the world, or for concealed domination structures. But can the Marxist and political-science perspectives on ideology be bridged? The answer is that this has already been happening in part, even within the Marxist tradition itself. The first assumption to be queried was the ephemeraBty of ideology and its link to a specific set of historical circumstances, Antonio Gramsci retained through his notion of hegemony a conception of ideology preeminently serving to safeguard the power of a dominant class over the masses. But he allowed for a phenomenon corresponding to that identified by political scientists, one of indefinite duration, performing integrative functions, and fashioned consciously by intellectual elites.17 Louis Althusser similarly saw ideology as possessing on the one hand Marxist dissimulative and dominatory roles, but presenting itself on the other as a permanent objective phenomenon produced by all classes. It was both an 'imaginary' representation of the real and a 'lived' relation between individuals and their conditions of existence. Ideology was thus deserving of comprehension on its own terms, as a cultural apparatus existing in social practices 'interpellating' individuals and integrating them into their societies, though hardly as free agents and generally in the service of the state.18 This led some Marxists to comprehend ideology as an autonomous determiner of practices,19 while others 17 A. Gramsci, Selections from Prison Notebooks, ed. Q. Hoare and G. NewellSmith, (London, 1971), 12-13, 376-7, w L. Althusser, 'Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses', in L, Althusser, Essays on Ideology (London, 1984), 39 and passim, 19 Cp. N, Aberorombie, S. Hill, and B, S. Turner, The Dominant Ideology Thesis (London, 1980), 7-29.

20 Ideological Morphology denied that ideology was absolutely constitutive of reality and proposed a reciprocal relationship between the ideological and the material. The representational and discursive function of ideology was combined with the concrete practices embodying it.20 Castoriadis likewise evoked the notion of I'imaginaire social, the creativity of the human mind in conjuring up ideas that enable reflection on, and thus the meaningful existence of, the social and historical worlds.21 Some post-Marxist understandings of ideology, following Lacan, offer it as a symbolic and fantasmic, rather than representational, discourse of domination which unconsciously structures a social reality.22 The systemic and interconnected structures of ideologies have been increasingly emphasized, encompassing complex interrelationships between politics, economics, literature, law, religion, and art. These developments were paralleled in the field of structural and cultural anthropology. Most anthropological research has not focused directly on ideology, inasmuch as non-literate societies do not exhibit the typical ideological phenomena extant in modern or modernizing societies. Nevertheless, social anthropologists have contributed vitally to current thinking on ideology. Claude Levi-Strauss focused on cultural symbols such as myths, and by extension on ideology as modern myth possessing an internal, self-contained logic. Unlike Althusser, he regarded ideology as a 'thought-of order external to objective reality (a 'lived-in' order) and more akin to the supernatural. However, 'thought-of orders could only be understood in relation to 'lived-in' orders and were part of the experience to which they referred.23 Meaning is hence not provided deliberately through ideology, much as supernatural beliefs in undeveloped societies are there from the participants' viewpoint, rather than concocted by them. The function of ideology is therefore to join together with other mechanisms in imposing, unconsciously from the perspective of the participants, significant logical forms on content. Clifford Geertz's seminal paper proffered ideology as an ordered system of cultural symbols organizing and integrating social and psychological processes into meaningful patterns, enabling purposive action. In contrast to LeviStrauss, Geerfz emphasized the cognitive and expressive features of ideology, providing 'maps of problematic social reality' rather than opaque constructs requiring decoding by the observer. m

See M. Barrett, Women's Oppression Today (London, 1988), 84-93, 252-3. See J. B. Thompson, Studies in the Theory of Ideology (Oxford, 1984), 21-4. 22 S, Zizek, 'The Spectre of Ideology', in S. 2izek (ed.). Mapping Ideology (London, 1994), 1-33. 23 C. L6vi-Strauss, Structural Anthropology, i (Harmondsworth, 1977), 312-13. Z1

Staking Out: Analysing Ideologies 21 Significantly, Geertz saw ideologies as 'matrices for the creation of collective conscience', externally superimposed when institutionalized guides for conduct are weak,24 The tension between the conscious and the unconscious emerges as a central facet of the analysis of ideologies. Indeed, it is a salient divide when the study of ideology moves to the individual level, Both psychoanalysis and psychological theory have developed further lines of enquiry of their own, establishing promising subgenres of ideological investigation that frequently move off in different directions. Psychoanalysis has had a notable influence on the study of ideology. It has identified personality types (authoritarian or democratic) and pathologies, uncovered the role of the unconscious within each individual (which has, from a very different conception of the unconscious, intriguingly coalesced both with anthropological assumptions about latent cultural symbolism and Marxist premisses concerning the unwitting distortion of truths), submitted the genre of the psycho-biography as an explanation of ideological tendencies, and presented ideo-cultural structures as a necessary constraint on human impulses.25 Psychologists have concentrated on different areas, paralleling the main focus of political science on the cognitive aspects of ideology. As Brown has suggested, 'in a psychological analysis of ideology, the main concepts are,.. attitudes and beliefs, social and cultural influences, socialization and learning and the personality processes that mediate and actualize social relationships'. Crucially, ideology is merely the dependent variable, the focus being 'on individuals and their behavioural consistencies, and not on ideologies as philosophies or systems of ideas'.26 In parallel with some psychological concerns, the study of generally unstructured and unsystematic attitudes gained impetus from the work of Converse and other political scientists.27 Recently, social psychologists have reapproached ideology as a process of reasoned thinking.28 A distinctive image of ideology emerges from psychological explorations. It emphasizes cognition, choice, and the deliberate 24

C. Geertz, 'Ideology as a Cultural System', in Apter (ed.). Ideology and Discontent, 47-76, esp. p, 64. 25 S. Freud, 'Civilization and its Discontents', in The Complete Psychological Works o/Sigmund Freud, ed, J. Stratchey, xxi (London, 1961), 64-145; T. W. Adomo et at., The Authoritarian Personality (New York, 1950); E. H. Erikson, Childhood and Society (London, 1977). ^ L. B. Brown, Ideology (Harmondsworth, 1973), 14, 171. 27 P. E. Converse, 'The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics', in Apter (ed.), Ideology and Discontent, 206-61. 28 See S. W. Rosenberg, Reason, Ideology and Politics (Oxford, 1988), esp. pp. 200-27.

22 Ideological Morphology formation of shared patterns of belief, that is, cognitive selection in place of illusion. The conscious rather than the hidden thoughtprocesses of individuals, processes that both emanate from the backdrop of social values and contribute to the assessment of those values, are subject to detailed scrutiny.29 Those psychologists who use measurement devices such as scaling further imply that ideologies move along a single dimension—Rokeach's open and closed personality,30 or conservative and radical attitudes—rather than allowing for multi-variance. Also, though psychoanalysis tends to focus on the individual, social psychology has highlighted ideology both as a framework within which all individuals operate and as a mass phenomenon. It also upholds the important distinction between qualitatively elitist and popular ideologies or, in Billig's redirection of earlier terminology, between intellectual and lived ideology.31 Hence, despite micro-functions on the individual level, ideologies are primarily linked to central political structures, the latter seen to be both the objects and the disseminators of ideological activity. Like any discipline, psychology introduces perspectives, biases, and preferred positions which both enrich the understanding of ideology in other fields of knowledge and impede the cross-disciplinary utility of the concept. Piecing some of these perspectives together equips the student of ideologies with some valuable insights which will inform the analysis employed in this book. First, ideologies are importantly attached to social groups, not necessarily classes. Ideologies are produced by, directed at, and consumed by groups. Second, ideologies perform a range of services, such as legitimation, integration, socialization, ordering, simplification, and action-orientation, without which societies could not function adequately, if at all. Third, ideologies are ubiquitous forms of political thinking, reflecting as they do variegated perceptions, rnisperceptions, and conceptualizations of existing or imagined social worlds. Consequently, though the phenomenon can and must be referred to in the singular as 'ideology', if the word is to indicate an identifiable concept, its plural forms—ideologies—are of abiding and central interest. The many theorists who concentrate on the generic term 'ideology' are largely conducting a debate about a particular perspective on the social and political world, and not a debate about a phenomenon within that world, or one helping concretely to constitute that world. Fourth, ideologies are inevitably associated 29 30 31

See M. Biffig et A,, Ideological Dilemmas (London, 1988), M. Rokeach, The Open and Closed Mind (New York, I960). Billig, Ideological Dilemmas, 28.

Staking Out: Analysing Ideologies 23 with power, though not invariably with the threatening or exploitative version of power. For inasmuch as ideologies justify certain political decisions and encourage political action, they evoke power as the influence and direction of human beings. In that sense they are sometimes alluded to as 'neutral' analytical devices, though the strategy adopted here will have to qualify that neutrality heavily. Fifth, ideologies are distinct thought-products that invite careful investigation in their own right. In the final count, it is vital to recognize that in studying ideologies we are directing our analyses at actual arrangements of political thinking. The school of ideology as dogma, as a closed and abstract 'ism', is wishful thinking, a streamlined generalization which is itself a highly ideological product of the cold war. Even the so-called closed ideologies on which it concentrates are far more elaborate, more concrete and historically situated, than their portrayal by the pragmatist suggests.32 True, we may never be able to detach completely the thought-products we examine from our own values and interpretative frameworks, but at least we should try to represent and discuss the features of ideologies that can be shown to exist. We need to do so while remembering also—in the pursuit of questions of function—not to neglect their wealth of detail, intricacy of structure, and complexity of argument. This can only be achieved through employing interpretative methods of greater sensitivity than those available through the simple cognitive approaches applied to the study of ideologies by much existing political science. To date, theoretical treatments of ideology have been largely silent on the nature, forms of, and differences among, concrete ideologies and have adopted far too unitary an approach. On the other hand, the explorations of concrete ideologies have been insufficiently analytical with regard to the concept of ideology, frequently limiting their efforts to classifying attitudes. A main objective of this book is to bridge that gap. (c) ANALYTICAL MISCONCEPTIONS

Even after a partial reconciliation has been effected between different schools and subschools engaged in ideology, many problems still abound. They concern both substantive and methodological 32

See e.g. A. Brown and J. Gray (eds.). Political Culture and Political Change in Communist Systems, 2nd edn, (London, 1979); A. Brown (ed.), Political Culture and Communist Studies (London, 1984).

24 Ideological Morphology weaknesses in their existing arguments and the eschewal of aspects of ideologies and their analysis which demand urgent attention. In particular, we need to decide what we still do not know about ideologies and what else is worth knowing. Part of the problem with what we do not know about ideologies is that we also 'know' or assume things for which there is no evidence, advertised aspects which lead on to false trails. One such unwarranted assumption is that concrete ideologies consist of mutually exclusive systems of ideas. Conservatism and socialism, for example, are presented as opposed to each other on most political questions; to subscribe to the tenets of the one creed would necessarily rule out endorsement of the beliefs of the other. People either support the institution of private property or challenge it; they either want greater equalization or resist it. For that assumption to hold, ideologies would indeed have to be utterly closed, and arguments would have to be tight and coherent. Yet both conservatives and socialists will be found to argue for individual liberty; both may entertain a notion of an organic community whose values and purposes must be preserved. The reasons for this will be discussed in Chapter 2, but whatever they are, the notion of mutual exclusiveness cannot account for such ostensible overlaps. Its view of ideological space is not only systemic but oversystematic, one of clear boundaries, without shadings off, without a terra incognita, employing instead dichotomous relationships among idea-systems. It has consequently great difficulty in categorizing ideas and programmes, such as market socialism or an enforced laissez-faire system, which fail to slot neatly into preconceived groupings. This is one example arising from the predilections of cognitive political science. A second, not unrelated, assumption of dubious standing is the correlation of ideology and political movement or party, so that a particular ideology, say liberalism, is defined as the set of beliefs of members and adherents of the Liberal party. The posrulation of a one-to-one relationship between ideology and institution has long bedevilled political and historical analysis, and produced considerable blindness to the multiplicity of ideologies espoused within each such grouping, as well as the large number of groups which entertain partially similar views. One of the many contributions of the French to political culture has been the ordering of political parties on a spectrum from left to right. The implicit supposition, concerning the unidimensionality of gradience between one ideology and the next—as, typically, from the extreme left, through a moderate centre to the extreme right—conceals the possibility that ideologies relate to each other on a number

Staking Out: Analysing Ideologies

25

of idea-dimensions, and that their relative positions may change depending on the dimension selected: say, attitudes to central intervention, or views on national independence. It may well be that a multi-dimensional model is more appropriate to conceptualizing the interrelationships among ideologies, even if less amenable to graphic illustration or to marketing in terms of the requirements (as distinct from the actual belief-components) of political parties.33 (d) RIVAL EPISTEMOLOGIES

Apart from errors of cognition, classification, and conceptualization, the question concerning what we know and do not know relates to the epistemological status of ideology. Frequently, different issues are run together in scholarly exchange. The debate over ideology has been made to refer to what we can know about our social and political life; to what we actually do know, but in a distorted fashion; to what we think we know but actually do not; or to the impossibility of knowing for certain. For Marx and Engels, the phenomenon of ideology rested on the ontological premiss that being conditions consciousness. But, as has been astutely noted, 'when seemingly ontological conditions are challenged from the collective viewpoint of a dissident reality, they become visible as epistemological'.34 Epistemologically, the Marxist conception emerged out of a particular set of conditions under which human consciousness reflected the dehumanized and alienated existence of human beings. This reflection was itself distorted, reinterpreting negative aspects of human existence, such as exploitation, in positive language such as that of rights. Consequently, ideology came to be seen as inextricably connected to issues of truth and falsehood or distortion, to misperceptions and dissimulations with respect to an objective reality. In particular, the study of ideology pertained to determining and explaining the impediments, both deliberate and, more intriguingly, unintentional or unconscious, placed in the path of uncovering truth and reality, a task associated by many Marxists with the establishing of scientific knowledge. 33

For an example of recent recognition of the multidimensional nature of ideologies employing factor analysis see M. J- Hinich and M. C. Munger, Ideology and the Theory of Political Choice (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1994). See, however, P, L, Beardsley, Redefining Rigor. Ideology and Statistics in Political Inquiry (Beverly Hills, Calif,, and London, 1980). 34 C, A. MacKinnon, Toward a Feminist Theory of the State (Cambridge, Mass., 1989), 240.

26

Ideological Morphology Karl Mannheim's contribution to the inquiry into ideology was thus decisive both in heightening awareness of its epistemological pitfalls, and in rescuing ideology from some of the dead ends of Marxist analysis. Mannheim continued the Marxist tradition of linking ideology with its social genesis, but detached it from a particular social and historical group. By proposing to view ideology as the pluralistic product of diverse social groups undergoing common formative experiences, Mannheim paved the way towards generalizing ideology as a omnipresent social phenomenon as well as a group product, to include Marxism itself. This was attained at the cost of undermining the universalist aspirations that ideologies tend to have, by relativizing them as situationally motivated. Indeed, whereas Mannheim's particular conception of ideology was a matter of error or lie, his total conception, as Wettansdwuung, required unmasking as the interest-bound expression of a collective unconscious. Mannheim abandoned the prospect of ultimately unfolding a Marxist true consciousness, while becoming equally dissatisfied with the ensuing subjectivization of social knowledge.35 Mannheim hence attempted to introduce a new epistemology by suggesting that 'all historical knowledge is relational knowledge, and can only be formulated with reference to the position of the observer'. His alternative to treading the tightrope between the transcending of ideological relativism and the eschewing of ultimate values was to advance the notion of relationism, the balancing of multiple and conflicting social viewpoints which would be undertaken by the intellectuals, whose defining feature was their ability to cut loose from their social and historical roots.36 Mannheim's sociology of knowledge thus restored to social thought the critical and evaluative dimensions it assumed upon encountering ideology. However, his version of intersubjective and approximate truth could not come to grips with accepting ideology (and its progressive counterpart, Utopia) as a normal, rather than pathological or narrowly partial, manifestation of indeterminate social thought. Discounting the weaknesses both of the Mannheimian view of ideology and of Mannheim's solution to its existence, it expedited consideration of the relationship between political thinking and the external world and, within political thought, of the connections between the abnormal, the normal, and the normative. For ultimately the question that must be asked, as a preliminary to an 35 36

K. Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia (New York, n.d.; 1st publ. 1936). Ibid. 79, 8.5-7, 153-64.

Staking Out: Analysing Ideologies 27 adequate and effective analysis of ideologies as actual thoughtpractices, is; what kind of political thinking is the thinking reflected in ideologizing? To answer that, some idea must be available about the boundaries between ideology and its prestigious counterpart, political philosophy,37 We will find epistemological issues closely associated with this question, but also substantive issues which involve the nature and ends of political thought. (e) PHILOSOPHY AND IDEOLOGY: THE UNHOLY ALLIANCE . . . a political philosophy is itself a social reality: it is an ideology in terms of which certain institutions and practices are justified and others attacked; it provides the phrases in which demands are raised, criticisms made, exhortations delivered, proclamations formulated, and, at times, policies determined.38

From the outset it must be emphasized that political philosophy is not in a mutually exclusive relationship with ideology. Whatever the distinctions between them are, and whatever else can be said about them, both are, as forms of political thinking, shaped from political concepts and their interrelationships. That premiss informs the approach adopted in this study and it will legitimate the assertion developed in Chapter 2 that ideologies offer crucial scholarly access to the forms and substance of political thought. Nevertheless, many political theorists who are guided by the views and methods of political philosophy, particularly of the AngloAmerican variety, have been known to open up an exaggerated 'chasm' between philosophy and ideology. A major source of confusion derives from the accepted understanding of political philosophy as concerned both with the direct production and with the evaluation of political thought. For a correct assessment of its boundaries with ideology to follow, it should therefore be contrasted with two different phenomena: on the one hand with ideologizing on the dimension of producing political thought; on the other with the analysis of ideology on the dimension of a 37

In the not-too-distant past, it seemed equally important to determine the boundaries between ideology and science. If, however, the nature of the ideological enterprise is shown to have strong non-scientific components or, alternatively, the very divide between science, philosophy, and ideology may be queried in epistemological terms (see G. W, Mortimore and J. B. Maund, 'Rationality in Belief, in S. I. Benn and G. W, Mortimore (eds.), Rationality and the Social Sciences (London, 1976), 11-33) then the boundary problem loses in significance. 38 C. Wright Mills, The Marxists (Harmondsworth, 1962), 14.

28 Ideological Morphology reflective, evaluative investigation into the nature of political thought,39 This complex distinction is rarely made, at the cost of a considerable diminution in the understanding of the nature of the different forms of political thinking. On the first dimension of analysis, those engaged in ideological discourse make, as we have seen, stipulative assertions about the truth or correctness of their views. In so doing, they seek to legitimate interpretations and courses of political action in competition with other ideologies. Political philosophers, it would appear, are committed to different enterprises. Some are concerned with the truth-falsehood attributes of arguments, but they may be so while critically applying the notion of falsifiability and testing the validity of their beliefs and those of others. Political philosophers who hold to truths often adopt perfectionist perspectives and fault ethical arguments which fail to meet the foundational value-standards they set internally. Demonstration rather than assertion is the method adopted. Continuous reflection and self-criticism are de rigueur. Naturally, those distinctions are far from clear nor, taken on their own, are they sufficient to separate political philosophy and ideology categorically. Indeed, the methodological adherence to dichotomous presentation is itself a common weakness of political philosophers and of limited utility in this case. Liberal ideologists, in particular, may appear indistinguishable from their philosophical counterparts: the former may devote much effort to 'philosophizing' and engaging in self-reflection, and the latter to 'ideologizing' and opting for ineliminable value-preferences, in the above manner. This problem will attract consideration in later chapters. Political philosophers also lay great emphasis on the rational and logical aspects of their thought. Rational thought may itself be defined as logically entailed or inferred, but we may then simply be moving in the realm of truths designated as self-evident or internally consistent, in which case the coherence theory of truth is invoked. Alternatively, in the correspondence theory of truth rationality requires sensitivity to refutable evidence and susceptibility to change once evidence for a particular argument is not forthcoming. Political philosophers may employ rationality to denote reflective, contemplative assessment of political beliefs on 39 I prefer to present the distinction between production of ideas and their analysis or evaluation as one involving two dimensions, to avoid the conventional employment of the phrases 'first order' and 'second order' analysis, which seem to convey an order of importance as well as implying that the analysis and evaluation of ideas is not itself a productive or creative process.

Staking Out: Analysing Ideologies 29 0 the grounds of good, justifiable reasons,* or of particular styles of truth-and-falsehood reasoning41 or, borrowing from economics, to denote instrumental efficiency in attaining ends. On the first dimension of analysis, rationality may be contrasted either with irrationality or with emotion. Irrationality is often raised in relation to studies of mass ideology, which have shown how it is frequently characterized by non sequiturs and how incompatible beliefs can be held simultaneously. Fascism, for instance, is depicted as an ideology with strong irrational components. However, total irrationality is inconceivable in political thinking, as it would reduce debate to unintelligibility. More interestingly, rationality is contrasted with different degrees of emotive support displayed by ideologies for their propositions and values. We do not have to go all the way with Bell when he asserts that 'what gives ideology its force is its passion... the most important, latent, function of ideology is to tap emotion'.42 Nor do we have to condone Feuer's fantasy of ideologists surrendering their 'rational, independent response' and giving in to 'an emotional need'—a myth of a mission and the validation of a claim to rule.43 Ideologies do not dispense with reason. All major ideologies, bar the extreme right and even then not entirely, require some degree of reflectiveness and internal coherence. The findings of social psychologists support this case. There exists evidence to confirm the hypothesis that all individuals are rational, though in varying degrees, rather than rationality being a constant.44 If this is so, it is inevitable that ideologies, like other forms of human thinking, will exhibit combinations of rational and non-rational components. It is also conceivable that ideologies may vary among themselves in respect of the emotive force attached to their principles, and they no doubt differ in the degree of care or consideration devoted to their integration with scientific knowledge and culturally accepted modes of understanding and argument. Liberalism, for example, may be more open to change and to validation, and evince greater rationality in the sense of conforming to accepted methods of presenting evidence. If, however, liberal rationality leads to a single conception of rationality in the sense of advancing good reasons, it could conflict with the 40 See 'Introduction' (esp. pp. 10-11) and C, Taylor, 'Rationality' (pp. 87-105), in M. Hollis and S. Lukes (eds.), Rationality and Relativism (Oxford, 1982), 41 See I. Hacking, 'Language, Truth and Reason', in ibid. 48-66. 42 D. Bell, The End of Ideology (New York, 1962), 400. 43 L. S. Feuer, Ideology and the Ideologists (New York, 1975), 75, 79. 44 Rosenberg, Reason, Ideology and Politics, 96-157.

30 Ideological Morphology pluralist strain within liberalism.45 Were indeed the boundaries between ideology and philosophy to stand or fall on the basis of plausible distinctions between different types of rational justification, it would call for an intellectual enterprise that would surely strain the resources of current liberal thinking. In sum, ideologies mix rational and emotive debate freely. They will be more hasty in ending discussion if rational persuasion proves inconclusive. They will be less thorough in pursuing the detailed implications of their arguments. After all, ideologies have to deliver conceptual social maps and political decisions, and they have to do so in language accessible to the masses as well as the intellectuals, to amateur as well as professional thinkers. This free mix of reason and emotion is intolerable to many philosophers, who do not regard emotive reasons for an argument as good ones.46 Put plainly, for them a non-reflective argument is not an argument. The employment of rationality by philosophers, as well as social scientists, does however not clearly distinguish them from ideologists. For when rationality is conflated with truth, the beliefs to which it attaches adopt the distinct systemic and assertive features of ideology. Take Weberian Wertrationalitiit, according to which the pursuit of certain values may be considered rational irrespective of their instrumental cost.47 Rational arguments are frequently characterized by those non-negotiable foundational beliefs, such as 'autonomy is a good', presented in an uncritical form. This is of course a feature typical of 'open' as well as 'closed' ideological debate. Liberalism and socialism endorse deeply felt and broadly supported values. The reasons for supporting such values are never clearly set out. All belief-systems, even the most rationally inclined, contain components based on extra-rational preferences. It is quite plausible to view our attachment to democracy as a question of sentiment as much as of intellect. To be specific, the notion of democracy contains instrumentally rational preferences for certain decision-making processes (by comparing them to others in terms of outcomes, for instance), but it also contains non- or pre-rational preferences for weighting all individuals equally, based on cultural predilections and on social myths, not merely on moral 45 46

Cp. M. Billig, Ideology and Social Psychology (Oxford, 1982), 177. See the attack on emotivism by A. Madntyre, After Virtue (London, 1981), though that emotivism should not be confused with the emotive component of ideologies. 47 M. Weber, Economy and Society, ed. G. Roth and C. Wittich (Berkeley, Calif., 1978), i. 24-5.

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considerations. It may of course be the case that the belief in those pre-rational assumptions itself has rational outcomes, but that is different from arguing that they are themselves totally rational. Political philosophers may refuse to employ non-rational argument deliberately and saliently, but they can rarely avoid a degree of emotional appeal built in to the advocacy and promotion of their moral positions. Beyond that there is also another problem, to which we shall return in Chapter 3, concerning the role political concepts and ideologies play in constructing social reality, so that their rational significance may be secured through their place in such a discourse or language game. On the second dimension—the evaluation of the nature of political thought—a gap may open up between some versions of political philosophy and the analysis of ideologies with respect to rationality. For in contrasting rationality with either emotion or irrationality, we neglect some further attributes of rationality, in particular its common association by Western political philosophers with urdversalism. In contradistinction, as we have seen, ideologies are presented epistemologically as time and space bound, often located in very specific historical and social circumstances. Yet it need not be the case that ideologies fail to provide universal standards. It is quite possible to argue that they may incorporate methods of justification which are intelligible to right-thinking people across time and space/8 and thus to allow for their investigation in terms of universality or, at least, 'valid trans-cultural judgements of superiority'.49 Sociologists, for instance, have illuminated the rationality of ideologies as manifestations of variegated cultural relations.50 Ideologies are designed to be communicable and are by no means idiosyncratically subjective. Furthermore, on the first dimension all ideologies present themselves as espousing universal rules which, on due consideration, people ought to adopt (failing that, it is frequently argued that those rules should be superimposed on people for their own good, to safeguard that rationality). But some relativist-inclined views challenge the link 48

See H. Putnam, Reason, Truth and History (Cambridge, 1981), 110.1. Adams (The Logic of Political Belief (Hemel Hempstead, 1989), 98) observes that ideologies fuse facts and values and justify them, but that is not a dear demarcation between ideologies and philosophies. Whether or not the union of fact and value is 'illicit' (p. 137), it is a feature common to most kinds of political thinking. 4 * Taylor, 'Rationality', in Hollis and Lukes (eds.), Rationality and Relativism, 103. 50 N. Abercrombie, S. Hill, and B, S. Turner (eds.), Dominant Ideologies (London, 1990), esp. pp. 2, 231-2.

32 Ideological Morphology itself between rational argument and universalism. They posit instead that rationality relates to institutional norms that are 'internal to given societies'.51 Ideologies may thus be conceived as congruent with, and dependent upon, general moral standards and cultural values pertaining to a specific society, though the possibility that those standards spread to most societies cannot be ruled out. Far from separating ideologies from philosophical and rational inquiry, they are now construed as displaying the very tendencies thought to characterize all social thought. Similar views are notably advanced by some historians of ideas, who contend that beliefs currently repudiated as untrue may not have been irrational according to the criteria employed by their advocates at the time.52 Those views are also endorsed by political theorists who dismiss rationality as a natural or transcendental conception and regard it rather as a cultural capacity.53 One way or another, the space between particular ideologies and universal rational philosophies begins to shrink conspicuously. It is of considerable relevance to the aims of this study to distinguish between the question 'does a universal rationality exist?' and the question 'what is to be gained when someone assumes, knowingly or not, that the answer to the previous question is positive?' This latter question and its investigation is an instance of the domain of the analysis of ideology. Whoever invests moral or political values or beliefs with universal rationality is implying that they deserve to be scrutinized in a certain manner, and that every right-thinking person should, and would, adopt them. The claim of universalism promotes the assertions that the precepts be taken very seriously, that they are capable of transcending particular boundaries, that deviation from them is wrong and possibly dangerous, and that discourse about them can be discontinued. There is no reason why a relativist cannot accept the rationale behind universalism, if not its episterrtology, its dressing up of an appeal to critical assessment as a statement about validity. In other words, to couch deliberately one's political language in universal terms (even if one denies the validity of universal assumptions, as 51 'Introduction', in Hollis and Lukes (eds.), Rationality and Relativism, 13. Feminists, as will be noted in Ch. 13, may argue this from an association between rationality and male-dominated epistemologies, 52 Q. Skinner, 'A Reply to My Critics', in J. Tully (ed.), Meaning and Context: Quentin Skinner and his Critics (Oxford, 1988), 239-45, 53 Cp. B. Parekh, 'Social and Political Thought and the Problem of Ideology', in R. Benewick, R, N. Berki, and B, Parekh (eds,), Knowledge and Beliefs in Politics: The Problem of Ideology (London, 1973), 74.

Staking Out: Analysing Ideologies 33 for example a hermeneutically inclined liberal might) is intentionally to send a message that one is seeking to engage the attention, evaluation, and possibly the commitment of others to one's own political values, and that one regards those values as having a wider appeal than merely to the cultures and subgroups in which they are already held in respect. However, to convey the same message while using universalist language unintentionally is to indicate a belief in the overriding validity of intuitions and to make assumptions about human similarity, even identity, with particular repercussions concerning political conduct and its conceptualization.54 Those may well relate to myths concerning the rationality of foundational values such as, to cite an example addressed in Chapter 6, the neutrality of democratic constitutions. (/) UNCONSCIOUS AND RHETORICAL COMPONENTS OF IDEOLOGY

On the first dimension identified above—the production of thoughtpractices—there also appears to be a divide between philosophy as a reflective, intentional, conscious enterprise, and ideology as a compound of genuinely conscious beliefs, of unconscious assumptions, and of dissimulatively rhetorical statements. We learn from anthropology and from psychoanalysis about the importance of accounting for unconsciously held beliefs. But this requires more than the unmasking activity of a Marx or a Mannheim. The choice is not between the mask and the face. Both tell us complementary stories; both are there to stay. Once we abandon the doctrinaire adherence to truth and falsehood as an epistemological approach to ideology, the problem becomes one of interpreting and decoding, of trying to reconstruct the face we will never entirely see. Nor need this entail the further premisses that truth statements are impossible, or that there are no truth-falsehood statements within ideologies; simply that ideologies cannot be contained within a system of truth-falsehood statements. Suffice it to say that there is a disjuncture here between the scholarly analysis of ideology and much Anglo-American political philosophy. It is an asymmetrical divide. The latter is restricted to the analysis of intentional meaning. It attributes responsibility to individuals for composing deliberate thought-formations. It assumes that the mask reflects the face. 54

This latter message may be sent intentionally as well, but it is unlikely that most of its conveyers will be reflectively conscious of these substantive implications.

34 Ideological Morphology The former regards political texts as capable of interpretation on more than one level, incorporating different methods that, in turn, apply both to the intentional and the unconscious, A conscious system of ideas implies also that the holder's beliefs are under his or her control, possibly subject to re-evaluation and modification, and directed towards the attainment of personal or social ends. Lacking that consciousness, the holder may be subject to social forces or deliberate manipulation. Once the Mannheimian hope in transcending those limitations through a sociology of knowledge is abandoned, the analyst is confronted with the task of uncovering or decoding patterns of thought unknown, or meaningless, to the holder, yet of vital explanatory power. This linkage between symbol and signified is typical of much linguistic as well as anthropological work.55 Some of those meanings are intended but badly articulated and some are implicit (they would have been intended had the thinker been made aware of their connection to what he or she meant to say). These meanings may be retrievable through additional prompting, if the author is still available, or through scholarly extrapolation, though some layers of meaning may equally be lost in the process of translation and reformulation by external and future analysts. But other thought-patterns are underloaded with meaning for their holders, and such wholly unconscious meanings are explicable only in frameworks applied by their consumers (members of the thinker's society and of later/other societies) or possibly by psychoanalysts, to take an example outside the ambit of this study, While duly and centrally concerned with the face value of political pronouncements, the study of ideologies cannot detach them from the implicit meanings they carry and the unintended patterns they form. Because concepts and ideas exist that are at best semi-articulated in people's minds, and for which they lack adequate words, the role of the analyst is to reconstruct and amplify those concepts by inferring them from other aspects of speech-acts of such individuals and the contexts of those acts. Moreover, because these patterns and the concepts which fashion them transcend the creative power of any one individual, ideologies being the products of groups, we may not be able to attribute authorship, and hence individual responsibility for thought-production, at all. Ideologies incorporate beliefs that are widely spread and 55 On some parallel problems of decoding in social anthropology see Lukes, 'Relativism in its Place', in Hoilis and Lukes (eds.), Rationality and Relativism, 27592. On linguistics, see Ch. 2 below.

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held, but they may have no identifiable makers, or many makers. These issues will preoccupy us in Chapter 3. Of course, not all unconscious meanings are means of controlling other individuals and groups, of wielding exploitative or dominating power. The unconscious messages may, for all we know, permit the increase of individual choice, or further values which socialist as well as liberal societies may regard as liberating. Respect for democratic voting procedures, for example, may be furthered through a culture in which communal games and sports, in families, schools, and youth clubs, socialize individuals to accept losing as well as winning, so that defeat in an election will be generally accepted, even by the power holders, as a signal to relinquish power. Emphasis on welfare rights need not imply paternalism, but a developmental view of human nature which encourages open-ended solutions to catering to human needs and a built-in critical revisionist perspective with respect to the law. As for rhetoric, is it often used in a similar sense to Mannheim's deliberate deceptions or half-truths, 'more or less conscious disguises of the real nature of a situation'.56 The producers of ideology are assumed to use rhetoric as an inauthentic rendering of beliefs to which they subscribe cynically or not at all. Rhetoric is the weaving of a narrative tale deliberately employed as a. persuasive device, much as Plato did in justifying his magnificent myth concerning the different metals from which people were composed. In politics, rhetoric may in addition involve simplification of complex ideological patterns for the sake of public presentation, either for electoral and mobilization purposes, or because its opponents paint a caricature of that ideology, aspects of which are even grafted on to its supporters' understandings. These pitfalls of public perceptions often percolate into scholarship itself. How can the researcher distinguish 'genuine' ideological assertions from these dissimulative exercises in rhetoric? There are four possible responses to this problem. First, we may contend that careful contextual analysis will assist in determining whether the beliefs expressed are indeed held. An acquaintance with prevailing patterns of discourse in a given society will place any particular act of 'rhetoric' in a set of comparative parameters. Second, ideologies are not only produced but consumed. If the audiences towards whom rhetoric is directed find it indistinguishable from genuine political beliefs, it wiE have the same effect on the formation of their opinions, on their 56

Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia, 55-64.

36 Ideological Morphology judgements and actions. Rhetoric will then enter the plural world of ideological debate as a serious contender for the legitimacy of its utterances. The mass consumption of ideologies is of equal importance when analysing fields of social meaning as is their production—to a large extent—by social and cultural elites. Hence the question of the sincerity of those beliefs, the motives and intentions behind their enunciation, the propaganda roles they are designed to play, are not directly pertinent to comprehending their effective function. Third, rhetoric (as metaphor, irony, hyperbole, and so on) may be inextricable as stylistic device from language in general and ideological language in particular.57 In that capacity it will serve to highlight the meanings attached to political concepts and to emphasize specific interpretations. Fourth, even insincere rhetoric will display many of the features of genuine beliefsystems. In order to be comprehensible it will exhibit logical and cultural patterns that may be highly informative to the analyst. It will also, like any articulated statement, be separately decodable on the unconscious level—a level underrated by students of rhetoric—and serve as a clue to more deeply held, and occasionally more complex, beliefs. (g) IDEOLOGY AND THE LIMITS ON LOGIC

We still need to assess the place of logic in political philosophy and in ideology. Logic unquestionably plays a key role both in the philosophical formation of an argument and in the evaluation of its validity and persuasive power. In the composition of ideological arguments logic may not always be the most conspicuous attribute, and it may well be that mass belief-systems display low degrees of logical constraint,58 It is also plausible that many ideologists will not be deterred by anything other than a demonstration of blatant illogic from holding to their positions. But logic must be evident in any articulate presentation of beliefs, and ideologies— because they are communicative as well as persuasive devices— will have recourse to some measure of logical consistency. The problem arises, rather, in sanctioning ideology as a valid form of political thinking that meets the qualitative standards which philosophers expect of such thinking. In particular, leading lights in 57

See P, Ricoeur, Lectures on Ideology and Utopia (New York, 1986), 257-9, See Converse, 'Nature of Belief Systems', in Apter (ed.) Ideology and Discontent, 209-10 and passim. 58

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the Anglo-American schools of philosophy wish to maximize logical consistency in addition to endorsing critically perfectionist views of their normative arguments, and they may insist on employing rules of admissible evidence.59 But the failure of most ideologies, even liberalism, that favourite child of Anglo-American philosophers, to satisfy such criteria is no reason for dismissing them as bad or inferior political thought. Logical analysis in this context can take one of two forms. It can insist on subjecting existing political debate to probing tests of reasoning, inference, and consistency. Or it can apply those to constructing models of arguments, abstracted from existing political debate, which form the basis of analysis, deduction, interpretation, and contention. In the first case, political theories as well as ideologies simply cannot bear the full weight of the meticulous logical analysis directed at them by some philosophers. It is not only that many of the most influential arguments, such as Rousseau's, would never have seen the light of day had a strict logician been set loose on them, but also that the most elaborate political theory must necessarily contain extra-logical value-preferences and conceptualizations. Logic and consistency must remain important, but not overwhelming, criteria for the assessment of arguments. Logical perfectionism can be detrimental to the optimalization of analytical insight. Furthermore, increasingly detailed chains of logic need to be curtailed arbitrarily from the logical viewpoint—that is, again by using extra-logical considerations—otherwise the ramifications of a particular argument will become unmanageable because potentially infinite. As for ideologies, it is precisely because the interpretative insights they will yield on the basis of logic alone are comparatively inadequate that we need to change our analytical strategy if we wish for something to emerge that has significance for the pursuit of scholarship and knowledge. We will need to readmit the role of the emotional as well as the intellectual attractiveness of arguments, and we will have to examine cultural as well as logical validations of political thinking. Above all, the following chapters will argue that the morphology of ideologies affords insights into the nature of political thought that neither purist logical nor perfectionist analysis can provide. In the second case it is all too easy to dismiss certain theories as leading logically to morally unacceptable positions. Utilitarianism, for example, is frequently repudiated as a theory that condones "* On the latter point see the discussion on the limits of freely accepting public reason in J. Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York, 1993), 218-22.

38 Ideological Morphology the sacrifice of individual rights to the greatest happiness of the greatest number.60 But in so doing, philosophical critiques of utilitarianism often indulge in a caricaturizing oversimplification of utilitarian precepts in order to demolish them comprehensively, while ignoring the complex versions of utilitarianism which nineteenth-century thinkers such as Bentham and J. S, Mill have authored. The reason for this lies in a disposition among such philosophers to treat utilitarianism as a model proposition with all the features of a streamlined one-dimensional representation, rather than as a historically grounded intellectual doctrine. The weaknesses of some philosophical investigations, as far as the study of ideologies is concerned, may be illustrated through some typical devices they employ. The above example is an instance of the Aunt Sally or straw man syndrome, in which a particular model is postulated in order to destroy it through an immediate knock-out effect. An abstract and pure version of a theory is contrasted with highly sophisticated and complex alternative theories—in this case contained in contemporary rights discourses—and the contest can thus be won with a minimum of intellectual effort. Another device is the slippery-slope syndrome, in which a certain (often desirable) position is established, which through the inexorable application of logic will transform itself into another (often undesirable) position. A limitation on one's individual liberty to move around in one's car whilst driving, by enforcing the wearing of seat-belts, may metamorphize into the opening of the sluice-gates through which a paternalistic state will engulf its members. The analysis of actual political argument may well establish, as with this example, that a good pair of methodological boots permits theorists or ideologists to hold their ground at a point more or less of their choice, by superimposing value and cultural preferences that cut this particular logical chain. We have already commented on the dangers of a third device—the dichotomy-—as a categorizing implement that is, as will be shown in later chapters, most unhelpful in examining the relationships both among different ideological families and among political concepts. The analysis of ideologies will be furthered not through ignoring the strictures of logic, but through appreciating the interaction between logic, culture, and emotion or, put differently, between form and meaning. Fields of meaning are limited by logic and by available thought-practices, so that such fields are neither indeterminate nor rigidly bounded, neither flawlessly rational nor inarticulately emotional. The central importance of logical, rational, 60

R. G, Prey, Utility and Rights (Oxford, 1985), 9.

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and universal models for testing, criticizing, and exploring new ways of thinking about politics has been sufficiently demonstrated to require no further defence. But on their own, the methods those activities involve do not always provide the most useful or relevant manner of conceptualizing and understanding the ways in which political thinking is conducted, and the ways meanings are attached to, and develop within, political discourse. Rather than concentrate on the logical consequences of holding a particular viewpoint and on the extrapolation of positions from a given historically and geographically located argument, there is a scholarly call to look more precisely at the given argument as it presents itself, intentionally or otherwise. The actual manifestations of political thinking, in the temporally and spatially bounded circumstances to which they are inevitably joined, supply us with the abundant varieties of political thought from which to embark on a voyage of understanding of this facet of the human mind and its linkage with the worlds of government, power, and groupactivity. The thesis this book wishes to promote is that rigorous, pertinent, and challenging political analysis can be the outcome of identifying the basic features and units of political thinking as they appear to us. We require more subtle and sophisticated means of examining the contents and forms of political thought, and we need to refrain from streamlining the central ideas it displays, sometimes to the point of travesty. Here, too, generalizations may be entered into, and it would be foolish to pretend that the methodology advocated in the next two chapters will not favour certain perspectives over others. It is, however, based on permitting constant intercourse between political conceptualization and the real world to which it relates and from which it springs. It also sees the role of the scholar as focusing on the patterns, continuities, and discontinuities political thinking displays, and the manner in which it shapes the politically possible, and not as focusing on its critical replacement with more coherent structures, or normatively preferable positions which are often unrelated to the contexts in which political thinking actually occurs. Otherwise, the chasm between the approaches offered by dominant Anglo-American philosophical perspectives and those which apply to the politicalthought behaviour of individuals and groups is virtually unbridgeable. The more complex mainstream ideologies are comprised of ideas which, when carried to their logical extremes, could lead to serious contradictions and to substantive absurdities. But it is precisely because they are not carried to such extremes that those contradictions may be contained and that internal compatibilities

40 Ideological Morphology among different ideas are possible. Ideologies are the factual counterparts to the counterfactuals of much political philosophy. The latter—in order to elucidate, attract, or deter—may devise idealtypes founded on single concepts or principles each of which, when pursued to its logical conclusion, conjures up a world incompatible with the other. Ideologies, as actual practices of political thinking which never attain the total determinacy (and lucidity) of conterfactual thought, mix and balance the various concepts. The real question then is not, 'is there a mix?' but 'what is the range of mixes?'—what are the different possible conceptual combinations ideologies do and can produce? Political thought as it is constructed and as it does operate in societies, exhibits a far greater complexity than allowed for by unsympathetic or careless critics of ideologies, ever keen to categorize and label existing ideas in simplistic ways, and frequently proceeding to complex solutions based .on, and reacting to, the ideational abstractions they have themselves created. To be sure, analysts of ideologies impose their personal, cultural, and social categories on the reality they observe. But their intellectual efforts are not directed towards perfecting that reality through thought-exercises that distance one from it, but towards an interpretation of the intricacies of the reality as it appears to them. It is also the case that knowledge about, and understanding of, political thought is not merely a matter of tracing its development over time, if by that one means looking at laws of historical evolution or at the systematic unfolding of ideas and concepts. Rather, it involves acknowledgement of changing historical perspectives and of history itself as a category formed, often invented, to advance certain forms of political thinking. Both causal and functional explanations of political theories are important, but in this study they will be introduced to add layers of comprehension to the study of political thought as the phenomenological account and analysis of the interaction between the political concepts that make up a theory. This requires examination of the features of a political theory or ideology as the products of the interplay between what the forms we identify mean, and how those meanings themselves are formed. (h) THE UBIQUITY AND SPECIFICITY OF IDEOLOGY

Many scholars are unhappy with the extension of the concept of ideology beyond the restrictions imposed on it by Marxist and

Staking Out: Analysing Ideologies 41 even Marxisant theory. They argue that such ubiquity will lose it any discriminatory force, and ideology will become synonymous with political thought in general.61 That is not necessarily the case, but we have to tread very warily indeed. It will be seen throughout this study that, on the sole basis of the morphology of political argument, as explored in Chapter 2, it is difficult to separate ideologies from political philosophies. Both use the same raw material, political concepts; both do so in patterns which lend themselves to similar analysis; both introduce, consciously or unconsciously, particular cultural and temporal standards of attributing meaning to words. Nevertheless, though significant structural similarities abound, and though these structures assist in defining substantive content, the shrinking of the analytical distance between political philosophy62 and ideology does not imply their total collapse into the same phenomenon. On the first dimension of producing political thought, high-quality political philosophies will cluster together in terms of their emphases on reason, logic, reflectiveness, and critical self-consciousness discussed above, whereas ideologies will scatter far more widely on the bases of those criteria. Indeed, some though by no means all political philosophies are articulated as 'semi-private' languages among professionals and specialists, penetrable only with great difficulty to the uninitiated, whereas ideologies have to appeal to masses, and be consumed and assimilated by them. They require therefore to be couched in a public language, or a language aspiring to be public.63 Finally, whereas ideologies need to insert certainty into language because they compete over public policy-making and public recognition—a feature elaborated on in Chapter 2—some political philosophers may prefer more tentative formulations that allow greater flexibility of interpretation. Even here a sharp divide cannot be made. The liberal family of ideologies displays considerable flexibility, self-reflexivity, and openness itself, while many political philosophers insist categorically on the correct meanings of political terms. It could also be asserted that ideologies abandon the ostensible 61

Cp. e.g. Larrain, Concept of Ideology, 100, 121; Thompson, Studies, 82-3; S. Barnes, 'Political Ideology and Political Behaviour', in R. H. Cox (ed.). Ideology, Politics, and Political Theory (Belmont, Calif., 1969), 350. 62 To reiterate, I do not include all political philosophers in this generalization, but am referring to predominant forms of philosophical discourse in the AngloAmerican world. 03 None the less, the cultural membership of a particular philosopher in social groups which contribute towards the formulation of his or her ideas cannot be overestimated.

42 Ideological Morphology detachment from the political arena which many political philosophers attempt to practise, ideologies being action-oriented and their producers being involved participants in that arena. But that is to suggest that the social world exists quite independently from our thinking about it (an approach challenged by nineteenth-century Idealism) or, even if there is an objective world, that we can have clear access to it and that our understandings of the world have no impact on our conduct in that world and on the ways in which it impinges on our conduct. Rather, to recommend a particular way of thinking about politics, on the first dimension of analysis, is also to recommend a particular way of acting in politics, to establish the rules for acting and the areas in which action is possible, to interpret the world—in particular the social world—and thus to assist in shaping it. We are inevitably caught in the circle of reflection and shaping, though this may be a dynamic, critical, and changing circularity. Hence the distinction between philosophy and ideology on that score too must be severely tempered. As Rorty has argued, though 'the world is out there,... descriptions of the world are not'. Language in its multiple forms is a human artefact through which the world is contingently comprehended and through which the human self is created.64 Although actions and thoughts exist 'out there', they do not become practices or behaviour without the injection of meaning and interpretation. When Marx penned his famous words: 'the philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it',65 he was unwittingly paving the way to a threefold distinction. His was a contrast between what he saw as traditional European philosophy, in particular its speculative German manifestations, and the materialist dynamic of a dialectic acting on the world. More recently, this thesis could also have been seen as epitomizing the difference not between two conceptions of philosophy, but between philosophy and ideology. Finally, on the analysis proffered above, the Marxist distinction between interpreting and changing collapses yet again, but now because all (social and political) philosophy, as well as ideology, can change the social world by changing prevailing conceptualizations of such a world, seen as partly dependent on those very conceptualizations for its own shape and structure. 64

R. Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (Cambridge, 1989), 5-7. See also C. Taylor, 'Interpretation and the Sciences of Man', in C. Taylor (ed.), Philosophy and the Human Sciences, ii (Cambridge, 1985), 34: "The language is constitutive of the [social] reality/ *5 'Theses on Feuerbach', in K. Marx, Selected Writings, ed. D. McLellan (Oxford, 1977), 158.

Staking Out: Analysing Ideologies

43

From here to a related observation, which refers to the use of a phrase that will repeatedly recur in these pages; thought-behaviour. The objection to the traditional philosophical distinction between thought and action can be queried on two levels: not only that thinking promotes certain kinds of action and, possibly, change, but that thinking is itself a kind of activity. But employing the term 'thought-behaviour' may appear to raise a difficulty. As Wittgenstein wrote; It is a travesty of the truth to say "Thinking is an activity of our mind, as writing is an activity of the hand"'. However, Wittgenstein was engaged in breaking down the distinction between thought and language, not in denying that thought is a process.66 Elsewhere he wrote 'Is thinking a kind of speaking? One would like to say it is what distinguishes speech with thought from talking without thinking... A process, which may accompany something else, or can go on by itself.'67 Other philosophers are content to go along with the proposition that 'a concept is a capacity for certain exercises of the mind' and that 'to say that a man has a certain concept is to say that he can perform, because he sometimes does perform, mental exercises of a specifiable sort'.68 By thought-behaviour I do not wish to suggest that thought is distinct from language/9 merely that although our analysis of (political) thinking obviously depends on its expression in speech or writing, it is also the case that much political thought is uncommunicated by its thinkers and needs to be inferred from their inadequate speech and writing acts, including the unconscious messages in those acts. On one level, 'ideologies include beliefs in people's heads, and these may be discovered by conventional methods of empirical investigation'.70 On another, the linguistic expression of ideologies may bear more meaning that the thinker is aware of, and the analyst must attempt to establish that additional meaning. The analysis of ideologies proffered here starts out from the assumption that thinking is a 'social fact', a process in which human beings engage. All instances of what could be termed silent speech may relate to thought-behaviour at a deeper level than its external linguistic expression, though thoughtbehaviour is intermeshed with language behaviour. Hence, as has 46 67

L. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Grammar (Oxford, 1974), 106, 161. L. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, 2nd edn. (Oxford, 1958), para.

330.

68 69

P. Geach, Mental Acts (London, 1957), 78, 15. See Ch. 2. 70 S. Hill, 'Britain: The Dominant Ideology Thesis After a Decade', in Abercrombie, Hill, and Turner (eds.), Dominant Ideologies, 6.

44 Ideological Morphology already been argued, speech-acts construed as intentional acts constitute inadequate evidence of ideological thinking, and they require in addition an appreciation and decoding of the cultural, spatial, and psychological dimensions of meaning in which they occur. Much of that will never be retrievable. To sum up this section, what might have appeared as a paradox isn't really one. The ostensible paradox is that students of ideology can analyse philosophies as they would analyse ideologies, but philosophers of the kind discussed here cannot analyse ideologies as they would philosophies. What philosophers produce on the first dimension is supposed to differentiate them from what ideologists produce on that dimension, but that product would then immediately be appropriated as a target of analysis by students of ideology, operating according to the same guidelines they should apply to ideologies. Philosophers in their normative, substantive theory-producing mode, may clearly be caught in the analytical net proffered in this book. Both political philosophers and ideologists produce similar materials—arrangements of political concepts—and the differences between them, on the basis of the perspectives proposed here, are insufficient to warrant the analysis of their political thinking as belonging to entirely discrete categories. If we insist on the mutual exclusion of political philosophy and ideology, we shall merely bring about an artificial and deficient tidiness which will deviate from de facto practice, diminish the status of some ideologies by denying their philosophical attributes, and likewise impoverish some political philosophies by disallowing their ideological features. Above all, we will have weakened considerably the power of scholarly analysis at our disposal. The difference we are alerted to must exist then on the second dimension of analysis. It is that between political philosophers as critical evaluators and students of ideologies employing their own preferred methods of inquiry. Put differently, the study of ideologies is the study of the more general type of political thought directly produced by human beings; in addition, the political thinking that some of those individuals produce lends itself to analysis in further ways, as answers to the kind of questions put by political philosophers. The difference lies entirely in the readings of political thought as subject-matter offered by these two scholarly perspectives. The problem for the student of ideologies is that readings undertaken by Anglo-American philosophers rarely include, as they certainly should do, their own formulations of political thought. To the question, 'are we all ideologists?' the answer

Staking Out: Analysing Ideologies

45

is that we all have occasion to use political language in a selective manner, we all piece our political concepts together in particular patterns, we all interpret them in logically indeterminate but culturally significant ways, and these thoughts have bearing on the political activities of ourselves and of others.71 Nor is it merely the case that philosophers sometimes don the ideologist's hat because on another dimension they are also committed members of a political community. Rather, even when engaged in professional philosophical thinking political philosophers also contribute to the construction of ideologies. That is not to suggest that every single political idea and utterance is ideological, but that every major political thought or speech act will include ideological components, and that very many such acts undertaken by each and every individual display the attributes of ideologies. Those who object to caEing political philosophers ideologists may query, say, which passages of Rawls's are ideological and which philosophical. That is the wrong question to ask. Rawls is both a philosopher and an ideologist because his texts can be subjected to totally diverse analyses and can carry various meanings for different types of reading (and for different disciplines). Rawls may also be intelligible to a grammarian and to a cultural anthropologist. Texts are multi-layered; the point is that even within the range of political thinking, they are capable of bearing more than one significant set of messages. Political philosophers use language ideologically, though their intentions and meanings may concurrently be understood as engaging in another type of thinking about politics—e.g. devising 'better' kinds of argument or 'critically appraising' or identifying 'intuitively correct' solutions. The above analysis has not addressed all pertinent questions. Returning again to the epistemological issue, we need now to reassess where we stand vis-a-vis ideologies. If certain social and political knowledge is impossible, it follows that we must ask two questions: what uncertain knowledge may be gained through ideology; and what can our uncertain knowledge of ideology be? Uncertainty is of course a question of degree. Ideologies or, more precisely, practising ideologists (and we are all such in one capacity) often feel unable to live with uncertainty and insist on establishing an illusory certainty, necessary to political decision-making. We shall discuss its nature in detail in Chapter 2. But the reflective scholar of ideologies may be able to—indeed, may have to—live 71 For another kind of positive response to this question see Walsby, Domain of Ideologies, 145,

46 Ideological Morphology with a degree of uncertainty. Thus the problem is twofold. First, how can the uncertain knowledge we have as practising thinkers about politics, as ideologists, be assessed? Do we dismiss it because we cannot be satisfied about its truth-value; will this orthodox view of ideology have to give way to a starkly relativist approach to political thought, as some postmodernists suppose; or can new strategies be introduced for evaluating our perceptions and conceptions on the basis of their moral, emotional, or intellectual persuasiveness, or their ability to interpret facts meaningfully? Second, how can the value of the analysis of ideologies, such as the one advanced in this book, be assessed? Here again the manifold attractiveness of any proposal, as well as its attempt to bring new perspectives to bear, is significant. Part of the discussion pertinent to this issue will await the appraisal of hermeneutic approaches in Chapter 3.

2

Assembling: From Concepts to Ideologies

Whether we talk about freedom or equality, security or adventure, personal worth or personal development, the concepts must be placed in concrete circumstances, in a situation that we can envision, so that the content we want to give them can be understood and can be compared with other interpretations of the same general expressions,1 AVING examined some of the conflicting approaches to ideoHlogy, discussed some of its characterizations and ascribed fea-

tures, assessed some uses to which the notion of ideology has been put, touched on questions of both epistemology and function, and explored several boundary problems of ideology and philosophy, we are in a better position to realize how relatively untouched is the further issue pertaining to what ideologies are, in terms of their forms and the meanings they contain. It has been a feature of the 'black box' approach to suggest what objects of research can do, even to predict their behaviour accurately, while remaining agnostic as to what they are, what the inside of the box looks like. That reticence or quiescence often reflects apprehension in the face of the great complexity of both the structure and the mechanisms assumed to prevail inside the black box. This chapter is an endeavour to open the black box and assess its contents. We saw in the previous chapter that there are manifold ways of answering the question, what is an ideology? One important consequence of this pluralistic awareness has been a trend in the literature on ideology to replace traditional epistemology, preoccupied with the establishing of certainty and objectivity, with interpretative or hermeneutic approaches. However, much of that literature is unable to overcome its own doubts about meaning and understanding in order to concentrate on a more precise range of questions: 1 E. Wigferss, quoted in T, Tilton, The Political Theory of Swedish Social Democracy (Oxford, 1990), 44.

48 Ideological Morphology not only what the implications of assigning meaning are for the notion of ideology but, specifically, whether there are not important areas of the potential meaning and understanding of ideologies whose very existence has yet to be acknowledged? It is the contention of this book that, while some kinds of answers have been adequately supplied, others have been virtually ignored. What ideologies are is sometimes represented as tantamount to what they do: thus they are integrative mechanisms, systems of domination, justificatory blueprints for political action, schemes of history, or reflections of social relationships and environments. I began to argue in the previous chapter that the analysis of ideology must instead be incorporated into the study of political theory, and this case will now be pressed further. For any serious political theorist there is a more fundamental level on which ideologies exist: as ideational formations consisting of political concepts. In other words, the concept of ideology will benefit from presenting concrete ideologies as themselves formed out of unmistakably distinctive configurations of political concepts. In that sense an ideology is itself a concept with a recognizable form, a particular way of organizing clusters of other political concepts, though this does not preclude our conceptualizing ideology also with respect to the other roles it performs, as seen above. The answer to the question 'what is an ideology?' must, from the morphological perspective, be sought in identifying, describing, and analysing the building blocks that constitute it and the relationships among them. This, curiously, has not been accomplished to date and it is what this study sets out to do: the shaping of an approach that focuses on the common unit shared by political philosophy and ideology—the political idea in its sophisticated form as political concept—and that seeks to portray ideologies as a distinguishable and unique genre of employing and combining political concepts. (a) POLITICAL WORDS AND POLITICAL CONCEPTS

By introducing the political concept as a central unit of investigation, we enter the dual realms of language and of the conceptual analysis of ideas. Words are the outward forms of concepts. But concepts can constitute theories, and theory is to concepts what language is to words: an organizer, a regulator, a set of rules and uniformities, a grammar, a system. Thus, although we will not focus on language, nor confuse the structure of language wiih the

Assembling: From Concepts to Ideologies 49 structure of political concepts, some findings of linguistics are pertinent to our concerns. Above all, the revolution in linguistics effected by Saussure has some bearing on the type of analysis that will be applied here to ideological phenomena. It should not be forgotten that political concepts are expressed, or signified, in the form of words—indeed that words operate as significant rallying calls in politics—and the findings of scholars of linguistics may hence be relevant to understanding ideologies as forms of human expression, not only as complex and substantive analytical ideas. It was Saussure who implanted the profound theoretical insight that words were not separate from thought, nor thought from words but, rather, that a linguistic sign connected sounds and concepts, signifier and signified; and that consequently concepts did not exist independently of words. The study of signs, semiology, was designed to uncover the meanings that those signs conveyed. Meaning and form interlinked: grammatical phenomena were languagerelative, and the linguistic meaning of a word depended on its network of relationships with other words. These meanings and relationships were formed out of a large range of possibilities a language put at the disposal of its users. Saussure contributed a number of further important insights to linguistics which pertain to the enterprise of this study. First, his emphasis on language as an interconnected system led him to regard it primarily as a synchronic system, whose components derive meaning not from an essential core but from their contingent relationships at a particular point in time. Second, these relationships are of two kinds. The one is negative (associative) in that a unit of language is defined in contrast to other units. The other suggests that the signs of a language are linked in syntagmatic relations, namely, specific sequences in which they combine. We find that syntagmatic relations 'define combinatory possibilities', that they are composed of interdependent units and constitute 'a selection from a large range of associatively organised possibilities made available by the language'.2 These combinatorial possibilities influence the meanings of words. Third, the grammar of a language—its synchronic and systematic structural features-—need not be knowingly understood and acted on in toto but may exist at an unconscious level for the individual user of language. Consequently, one of the roles of the grammarian and linguist is to 2

F, de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics (London, 1983), 122-3, 126; J. Culler, Saussure (London, 1976), 48; R. Harris, Language, Saussure and Wittgenstein (London, 1988), 23,

50 Ideological Morphology uncover regularities that account for human linguistic conduct, to illuminate the rules that guide words and, indirectly, thought. As we shall see, all these propositions may inspire the scholarly analysis of ideology. The interdependence of word and meaning, and of word and word, conjure up a holistic system. But Saussure was not interested in the meaning of thought as distinct from its manifestations in language, specifically in signs. There was hence a third avenue that he, as a linguist, had no call to explore: the parallel interdependence of concept and concept, of complex units of meaning that, too, display characteristic forms. It was the anthropologist Levi-Strauss who, while embracing many of the insights of linguistics, grafted them on to a study of social behaviour.3 In his seminal article 'Structural Analysis in Linguistics and in Anthropology', while acknowledging a profound debt to the linguistic notions of unconscious infrastructure, interrelationships, and system, Levi-Strauss shifted his perspective away from examining systems of signification to systems of meaning, specifically of attitudes and practices that carried meanings of their own.4 Ideologies, too, are systems of meaning, and they, too, are social phenomena and the product of human conduct, namely, thoughtbehaviour with respect to political issues, but their analysis must diverge in part from that adopted by anthropologists. Unlike anthropologists, students of ideologies, as do all students of political thought, focus on the complex of thought-speech-text, or thoughttext, as their subject-matter, rather than emulating the anthropological stress on objects, institutions, or customs as the containers of thought or myth. As a rule, the meaning of political thought is not extracted directly from such reified evidence but from immediate oral or written expression. In particular, its units of meaning are the political concepts which comprise it. For linguists, if the terms of political discourse are the signifiers, the political concepts to which they relate are the signified. There exists an immediate relationship between political term (word) and political concept (thought).5 However, to borrow further from linguistic terminology, ideologies treat political concepts not merely as signified but 3 4

See T. Dant, Knowledge, Ideology and Discourse (London, 1991), 101-2. C. L6vi-Strauss, Structural Anthropology (Harmondsworth, 1977), i. 37-40. I. Shapiro, in Political Criticism (Berkeley, Calif,, 1990), notes the political relevance of the fact that the American philosopher Quine was arriving at similar systemic conclusions, if from a very different perspective. 5 Cp. W, Carisnaes, The Concept of Ideology and Political Analysis (Westport, Conn., 1981), 6.

Assembling: From Concepts to Ideologies

51

as referents. Far from engaging in abstract thought-exercises, they refer also to observable facts and to concrete social practices in the external world. On that dimension their study may welcome the methods of anthropologists. As shall be noted below, this differentiates them from political philosophies, which usually claim and display immunity from the impact of such practices, though we shall also see that these practices alone cannot be the main focus of the scholarly attention applied to ideologies. Indeed, on a more complex level, ideologies also constitute the thought-behaviour that interpellates and identifies such practices. That thought-behaviour may itself be distinguished as a type of human conduct to be explored and analysed. For political concepts are located within a pattern of ideas concerning the understanding and the shaping—through changing or conserving-—of the political world. In that sense they have a dual existence, in part internal and in part external to the realm of language. Thus the concept of power relates both to actions in which, say, coercion actually takes place and to the thought-events that identify particular actions as coercive and that contribute to the formation of ordinary language usage, creating what Taylor has called 'common terms of reference'.6 Moreover, political concepts are units of structure as well as units of meaning, be the two ever so connected. That structure must not be fused or confused with the structure of language itself, but draws crucially on patterns of culture and history. It is therefore important that we address the morphology of political concepts, without which an exploration of ideology remains fragmentary. In addition, another important difference between linguistic and political-conceptual analysis must be borne in mind. The Saussurian emphasis on synchronic states was accompanied by a closing of the language system to external influences and by a relative de-emphasis on diachrony. The meaning of words according to Saussure hinges entirely on their relation to each other at a given point in time; for him, language is not accountable to reality.7 But political concepts exist in the 'real world' of time and space and their meanings derive in part, though not completely, from that world. More precisely, they derive from an interplay between thought and the facts of the external world.8 Furthermore, although a language is socially formed, some languages may be employed, * C. Taylor, 'Interpretation and the Sciences of Man', in C, Taylor (ed.), Philosophy and the Human Sciences, ii. (Cambridge, 1985), 36. 7 R. Harris, Language, Saussure and Wittgenstein (London, 1988), 76. * See Taylor, Interpretation', 38,

52 Ideological Morphology if not privately, at least semi-privately when intended for limited consumption, as would a technical or professional language. In contrast, as noted in Chapter 1, political thinking—-particularly in the shape of ideologies—is a cultural construct designed for public consumption. The ability of political concepts to account for, or explain, the changing world to which they relate becomes a further test of their viability. As for the diachronk perspective, political concepts are notable for their strong historical grounding (partly due to the impact of the history of political thought, as an academic tradition, on the meanings of political concepts). Ideologies, too, appear as lived' traditions of political thought, so that historical continuity plays an important role in organizing the political thinking of the members of a society, as well as in selecting the political words they employ. So whereas, as we shall see, important synchronic aspects of the morphology of political concepts are retained, the interpretation of their meaning must include diachronic perspectives as well. Effectively, the continuity of an ideological tradition—which is assumed, rightly or wrongly, by the continuity of the words that denote those concepts—can only be put to the test by examining multiple synchronic states, over time and space. If these are sufficiently close, both temporally and culturally, plausible conclusions are possible. These questions require further consideration; at this stage we recognize the importance of diachrony but equally appreciate that it depends on a9 developed synchronic notion of the nature of political concepts. Prior to that, however, some other aspects of the meaning of political concepts need clarification. Political concepts are complex ideas that inject order and meaning into observed, or anticipated sets of political phenomena and hold together an assortment of related notions. The present discussion is anchored to assumptions about their features as found in their actual usage. First, they are neither arbitrary, nor simply stipulative, models that the theorist invites us to adopt, but constructs that reflect social and historical usage. It is of course entirely possible that two people using the term liberty' may relate to two different concepts; but it is also the case that the established cultural, historical, and social contexts in which the word appears are assumed to impose on most of its users common, or overlapping, fields which they cannot easily shrug off. Words and their meanings are invariably the product of 9

For a discussion of the dual importance of these perspectives see R. Koselleck, Futures Past (Cambridge, Mass., 1985), esp. 73-91.

Assembling: From Concepts to Ideologies 53 the social dimensions of language. But if the political concepts signified by those words are related in circular fashion to a sociohistorical context, because they not only emanate from that context but also seek to interpret and shape it, does this imply a total relativism in which meaning is inextricably embedded in contexts? By no means, for it may well be that some political arrangements and aspirations are so widespread that words will share connotations across cultures and centuries; equally, however, identical words10 may mask unbridgeable conceptual and behavioural divides. It is therefore necessary to begin by analysing those contexts in order to understand the senses in which the concept of liberty is being used, and whether we are faced with something other than an infinite range of the meanings of liberty. But relativism is not only an indication of the multiplicity and contextuality of viewpoints; it is employed as an indication that such viewpoints cannot be ranked as superior or inferior, in the absence of a criterion for such ranking. Certainly, a second assumption adopted here is that there are no correct ways of defining concepts, just as it is assumed here that words are not endowed with intrinsic meanings. There is thus no correct meaning of the word 'liberty', just as there is no perfect state of liberty to which one may aspire, and which dooms its existing impoverished replications to live in the permanent shadow of failure. To the contrary, following Wittgenstein, the meaning of words can only be determined by observing their grammar and their use in a language, and their conventional employment in a social context; "The concept of language is contained in the concept of communication/11 To invent a new usage, or to employ an aberrant one, is subject only to one test: is it acceptable, or is it in the process of becoming acceptable, to significant numbers of its users? Unlike other philosophical projects, the quest for a good usage of a concept, whatever this may be—a clearer definition, a truer 'correspondence' to reality, or a more ethical connotation—is not the primary purpose of this approach. That is not to suggest that there cannot be 'bad' usages (incoherent, unattractive, or abhorrent) but that such critical evaluation is analytically distinct from the focus of this study.12 Equally, concepts do not have fixed and determinate cores though, as will be argued below, concrete instances of concepts may display a core as a structural rather than substantial 10 11

The question of relativism will be addressed later in this chapter. L. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, 2nd edit. (Oxford, 1958), para. 43; Philosophical Grammar (Oxford, 1974), 184, 189-91, 193. 12 See also s. (/) below.

54 Ideological Morphology feature. For all these reasons, the study of political concepts does not fall into the Saussurian trap that Eagleton has identified, of looking merely at the relationship between word and concept, signifier and signified, rather than at the triple relationship between word, concept, and referent,13 The latter, and the conceptreferent nexus, is an overt element in our analysis, pertaining to the pluralistic world of human thought-behaviour containing political explanations, rationalizations, prescriptions, and evaluations, and born out of particular temporal and spatial circumstances, At this stage it may be helpful to present the course which the argument of this chapter will take. The building blocks of political thought are the political concepts—indicated by terms such as liberty, justice, power, and rights—that constitute its main foci. Ideologies, it is submitted, are the complex constructs through which specific meanings, out of a potentially unlimited and essentially contestable universe of meanings, are imparted to the wide range of political concepts they inevitably employ. Political concepts acquire meaning not only through historically transferred traditions of discourse, and not only through the pluralist disparaties of culture, but also through their particular location within a constellation of other political concepts. That meaning is crucially imparted through the morphological attributes of ideologies for, whatever else they are, ideologies are particular patterned clusters and configurations of political concepts. An ideology is hence the macroscopic structural arrangement that attributes meaning to a range of mutually defining political concepts. But this is no simple structuralist assertion. For the history of an ideological tradition, the conventions through which it is understood and perceived, and its geographical variations, play central roles in attributing meaning to the ideology in question, superimposing diachronic on synchronic analysis. The specific formations of political thinking embedded within an ideology are themselves formed by permissible and legitimated meanings at the disposal of a particular society. An ideology is thus located at the meeting point between meaning and form: it constitutes a significant sampling from the rich, but unmanageable and partly incompatible, variety of human thinking on politics, contained within and presented through a communicable and action-inspiring pattern. 13 T. Eagleton, Ideology (London, 1991), 213. Culler (Saussure, 33) suggests that philosophers might wish to extend Saussure's signification to contain both meaning and reference.

Assembling: From Concepts to Ideologies

55

(b) REASSESSING ESSENTIAL CONTESTABILITY

Any examination of political concepts must be indebted to Gallic's seminal notion of essentially contested concepts. However, while building on GalMe's treatment, the following discussion will attempt to show some of its limitations as well as introduce the paramount but unacknowledged preliminary field of inquiry—morphological analysis—that must precede GalHe's inquiry. The feature of ideological morphology, I suggest, identifies a cause in relation to which essential contestability is but an effect. Gallic has noted a wide range of concepts, including political ones, over whose uses insoluble disputes exist. On GalHe's own assessment the following are the most important characteristics of essentially contested concepts. They have to be (1) appraisive, signifying or accrediting 'some kind of valued achievement'; (2) internally complex; (3) containing various rival descriptions of their component parts; and (4) open to modification in the light of changing circumstances. To those Gallic adds a second grouping of attributes which, as we shall later see, are not necessary to the definition of essential contestability: (5) mutual recognition by the parties concerned that their concepts are in fact contested by others, and consequent aggressive and defensive uses of the concept; (6) derivation from an original exemplar whose authority is acknowledged by all the contestant users; and (7) the optimum sustaining or developing, through competition, of the original achievement of the exemplar.14 If Gallic were merely saying that, because poHtical concepts have normative elements within them, and because there are no universally agreed schemes of values, it is impossible to agree on the worth of a political concept—on whether, say, it is good or bad to pursue equality—essential contestability would boil down to a matter of moral choices and human tastes. It is, however, more than that, even on Gallie's understanding, though he does not supply us with sufficient grounds for appreciating why his notion is a richer one. To begin with, Gallic adopts a confusing characterization of an essentially contested concept as appraisive, signifying a valued achievement. True, when we identify a political concept such as liberty, we may wish to attach value to it. We may, for example, include the notion of self-determination within our concept of liberty, and regard the former as a good, as valuable. But two major 14

W. B, Gallic, 'Essentially Contested Concepts', Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 56 (1955-6), 167-98 at pp. 169, 171-2, 180.

56 Ideological Morphology qualifications need stating. First, not all essentially contested concepts signify valued achievements; they may equally signify disapproved and denigrated phenomena, the ambiguity attached to the concept of power being a suitable example. 'Appraisive' cannot solely mean Valued' nor, as Connolly suggests, 'moral';15 it must include, as Gallic does not, the notions 'unvalued' and 'devalued'. Second, political concepts are not merely appraisive, and this applies to essentially contested concepts as well. To suggest that self-determination is a value is not to deny that it also has descriptive aspects, that it refers to 'brute facts', that something must happen in or with a person for that person to be designated as self-determining. Concepts may have empirically describable and observable components that may in addition be conceived of as desirable and thus become values. In similar fashion, the speed of a car is a fact that can be described, but its speed may also be a value if 'time is of the essence'. Those components of concepts must be distinguished from words and concepts that are always positively appraisive—-beautiful, wise, just. For many people liberty is always positively appraisive, but for others it may signify an ascertainable human condition irrespective of any desirability or undesirability that may additionally accrue to it. It is only in the first instance that essential contestability will pertain to the simple issue of positive evaluative appraisal; in the second instance, as I shall presently argue, it will pertain to a different question: to which concatenations of human behaviour and of social arrangements are we entitled to assign the term 'liberty'? From here to the third and most important point. Gallic collapses two meanings of 'appraisive' into one and thus underplays the crucial structural nature of essentially contested concepts. To be fair, he clearly identifies two central structural features of such a concept. Giving democracy as an example, Gallic maintains that it must be 'internally complex in such a way that any democratic achievement... admits of a variety of descriptions in which its different aspects are graded in different orders of importance'.16 But there is no follow-up to this intriguing observation about the structural nature of concepts. Instead, tucked into Gallie's notion of 'appraisive' but unnoticed by him is a second meaning, which relates not to the values and norms embedded in a concept, but to a different type of evaluation. That evaluation pertains to a judgement concerning the following questions. What is the intension of 15 16

W. E. Connolly, The Terms of Political Discourse (Lexington, Mass., 1974), 27-8. Gallic, 'Essentially Contested Concepts', 184.

Assembling: From Concepts to Ideologies 57 a concept? The inclusion of which features within a concept facilitates a particular extension?17 And, by default, which features are excluded from a particular interpretation of a concept's intension? What is the range of components from which the concept is, or can be, fashioned? What are the methods used to accord priority to certain parts of the concept over others? Now this will prompt a very different sort of contest, and a concept can thus properly be designated as essentially contestable not just when the norms and values it contains are contestable, but crucially, when all or any of its components are contestable, The issue in this case is not one of the adequate description of the components of a concept, because, as Connolly has rightly observed, description is itself the singling out of certain features 'from one or more possible points of view',18 The issue is hence either that of employing an analytical judgement, or of expressing a cultural preference, concerning what is proper, relevant, edifying, or intellectually justifiable to include within the compass of a concept.19 In that important sense, political concepts create, through their 'topography', the reality to which we relate and attribute significance. Those judgements or preferences, moreover, are in turn applied to two essentially contestable areas: (1) the range of the components to be included; (2) the potential but inescapable indeterminacy of many of the components, once included, that allows for more than one characterization. An example of conceptual usage that illustrates both areas would be (1) a decision to designate equality of opportunity as a distinguishing component of the concept of equality, and (2) a further and inevitable choice, within the multiple and indeterminate meanings of equality of opportunity, between identifying it as minimal formal and legal equality, or (more maximizing) social and economic equality. It is hence impossible to discuss the notion of appraisal without entertaining a conception of a concept, in actual practice, as the 17 For a discussion of intension, see G. Sartori (ed.). Social Science Concepts: A Systematic Analysis (Beverly Hills, Calif., 1984), esp. Sartori, 'Guidelines for Concept Analysis', 15-85. Intension refers to the features and properties included in a concept. Extension pertains to the referents, in the external (including social) world, to which a concept applies. 18 Connolly, Terms of Political Discourse, 22-3. As Taylor has observed, this challenge to the distinction between 'descriptive' and 'evaluative' is a challenge to traditional empiricism ('Interpretation', 43-4). 19 As Feinberg has rightly pointed out in another context, a decision on a matter such as whether foetuses can be included in the category of rights-bearers 'is a conceptual, not a moral, question' (J. Feinberg, Rights, Justice and the Bounds of Liberty (Princeton, 1980), 180).

58 Ideological Morphology product of various Judgements concerning how to assemble and describe its components, as well as incorporating any subsequent evaluation of them. The outcome of these choices and evaluations will itself, however, be empirically ascertainable and describable. By 'empirically ascertainable' I do not mean to imply that those units necessarily have objective or real referents, nor am I referring to their capacity to reflect the external world adequately. Rather, it may be demonstrated that they exist within the intension of the concept in question, as social, historical, and cultural constructs, in the thought-patterns expressed through actual linguistic usage. The identification and description of observable facts, the dual assessment of those extensions in terms of their inclusion in the intension of the concept and of their value, and the empirical fact that such assessments have taken and are taking place (for which spoken or written evidence is necessary) are all parts of the conceptual analysis in which we must engage. For instance, the concept of rights will refer to certain arrangements and practices in rights-observing societies. It will also contain contestable value-judgements about protecting fundamental human attributes: are they worth defending, is the right to life always desirable, are rights more compelling than the interests that may override them? And it also may comprise, to employ Hohfeld's categories, liberties, claims, powers, or immunities, or any combination of the above.20 It may apply to all individuals, or to specific kinds of individuals (e.g. those who are rational, or adult, or law-abiding), or to groups. It may involve legal rights or moral and human rights. It may designate rights as absolute, prima facie, or culture-relative.21 The formation of these intensions is to a considerable extent, as I shaE later argue, a matter of temporal and spatial conventions; hence our analytical judgements concerning intension may be vitally affected by our cultural preferences. There is no logical necessity for including or excluding any of the above particular components, as long as some components are included in the concept, which would otherwise be vacuous. Because the structure of the concept is multi-faceted, any agreed position on its range will be logically—though not culturally— arbitrary. Finally, the fact that evaluations are made and intensions outlined in particular ways is itself a prime focus of the student of political thought and political concepts. Let us repeat: there are few 20

See W. N. Hohfeld, Fundamental Legal Conceptions (New Haven, 1919). For a discussion of these issues, see M. Freeden, Rights (Milton Keynes, 1991), 34-42. 21

Assembling'.' From Concepts to Ideologies 59 clear facts about description, let alone evaluation; rather, it is a fact that concepts include (indeterminate) components presented as descriptions. That fact too is empirically verifiable and its ramifications are a proper subject of study.22 But surely, one might argue, if only the concept of rights were to be extended sufficiently, it could encompass all eventualities, so that at least the intension of its components would not be essentially contestable? This is not so. Although some of the above sets may overlap, not all coexist with each other completely. Gallic too subscribes to the view that variety of description is part of essential contestability. But he is concerned with order of importance alone. There is more to it than that. Sometimes indeed there may be direct competition over the status of rights-bearer, as—from some ethical viewpoints—in the case of abortion: mother versus foetus. In other cases it is not a question of the order of importance, but of logical compatibility: a right cannot be both absolute and culture-relative, nor can all rights be absolute. In other cases again the contestability may be culturally rather than logically essential in the human worlds as we know them. For example, for a complete set of positive legal rights to be identical to that of moral human rights, we would have to postulate a counterfactual world where the law is perfect, where everyone's understanding of fundamental human needs is in total accord, where there is an agreed morality that generates no new ethical thinking. This logically conceivable philosopher's paradise falls short of the possibilities incumbent in socially embedded practices. Inevitably, certain legal rights will be preferred to others. But then, the notion of essential contestability is not an observation about the real or external worlds, but about the epistemological, psychological, and logical restrictions in making sense of those worlds. Contestability, in sum, will apply to both levels: the obvious contestability of value-judgements will coexist with the equally important contestability of the range of components deemed to contain the empirically ascertainable units of the concept. Nor is it necessary, for a concept to be essentially contestable, that all its 22

As will be noted in Ch. 3, this empiricism must be qualified by an awareness of the fallible interpretative role of the researcher. One cannot exclude the possibility of the researcher misdescribing the intension of the concept by misinterpreting the ordinary-language statements of the analysed population; e.g. by misconstruing a word to signify a particular concept, or component of a concept. This, of course, need not be the case. Such awareness cannot do away with the notion of empirical demonstrability entirely. At the very least, on the simple level of the presence of words in a statement, the description of intensions is possible.

60 Ideological Morphology components be incompatible, or capable of being ranked in order of importance, or culturally unrealizable. Essential eorttestability would obtain, even if its units displayed internal ambiguity or multiplicity solely in one area. A few words on Gallie's second grouping of attributes. First, the feature of mutual recognition is, of course, a prerequisite for the philosophical discussion of an essentially contested concept; in ideological practice we shall see that it is not required and frequently a hindrance to ideological expression. Moreover, Gallie's deliberate use of 'contested' rather than 'contestable' suggests actual conflicts on a level of ideational awareness. Neither of these conditions is logically entailed. Concepts can be essentially contestable even when they are not in fact contested in a given usage, or when not all aspects of the concept are contested. And in ideological practice, as we have seen, it is quite possible for a concept to be contested with no awareness, or limited awareness, on the part of the contesters. For instance, the consensus thought to operate in the 1950s and 1960s concerning the ends of the welfare state (known in Britain as Butskellism) masked great differences among the political parties claiming to support those ends. Second, there is no need for an original exemplar to have existed.23 The postulation of such an exemplar is in effect inimical to the very notion of essential contestability, as it presumes an agreed or correct position from which deviations have occurred.24 Third, it certainly does not follow that the existence of an essentially contestable concept needs to be coupled with its optimal development. Rather, it is quite conceivable that such a concept may be impoverished during competition over its interpretation, that some aspects of its meaning may be lost or abandoned, or that the level of debate may be of low quality. (c) THE MORPHOLOGY OF POLITICAL CONCEPTS

Connolly has usefully proposed the term 'cluster concept' for an internally complex political concept, with open connections to other political concepts. The relationship between these two aspects requires, however, further elaboration,25 The first set of questions 23 24

Gallic, 'Essentially Contested Concepts', 180. See e.g. 'Introduction', T, Ball, J, Farr, and R. L. Hanson (eds.). Political Innovation and Conceptual Change (Cambridge, 1989), 4; Q. Skinner 'A Reply to My Critics', in J. Tully (ed.)( Meaning and Context; Quentin Skinner and his Critics (Oxford, 1988), 288. 25 Connolly, Terms of Political Discourse, 14.

Assembling: From Concepts to Ideologies 61 that needs addressing is: what is the common denominator of a cluster concept? What entitles us to use the same word for its manifestations? Specifically, does it have a common core shared by all its instances? If indeed the concept of liberty has a central nucleus, how can we account for the very different uses it is accorded at different times and places, or by different users within the same cultural context? And if liberty is a capsule that incorporates a variety of properties, some overlapping with others but some possibly quite distinct, are we talking about the same concept or about the same polysemic word that may disguise the existence of different concepts? The guidelines adopted to tackle this issue derive from the postulate that words have indeterminate, rather than intrinsic meanings; that they are social constructs whose meaning is determined by their usage. Meaning has consequently to be ascertained empirically, with all the methodological pitfalls this may entail, and on that basis it will be contended that there exist a number of main political concepts. By the main political concepts I refer to the recurrence, in general as well as academic discourse, of terms (in no particular order of preference) such as liberty, rights, equality, justice, power, democracy. To that extent, the tradition of usage acts as a rough indicator of the presence or absence of a political concept, though not of its agreed content. Nor does this rule out the emergence of new political concepts as social and cultural conditions change, or as knowledge diversifies.26 The merit of this approach is to relate empirically to those concepts that exist as linguistic and cultural artefacts and that are, further, in reasonable general use; otherwise the minimum permanence and spread necessary to locate the very socio-cultural existence of a concept would be lacking. Put differently, the interpretation of the meaning of political concepts must rely on diachronic perspectives, even if—as will presently be suggested—their morphology incorporates important synchronic aspects. The morphology of political concepts, it is now proposed, can be approached through the following proposition. The main political concepts—those found in political theorizing as well as in ideological discourse—consist of both ineliminable features and 26 The separate question of applying later concepts to explain and interpret earlier political thinking is much more problematic, though it cannot be ruled out. For example, it must remain a matter for the critical reflection of the scholar whether the concept of autonomy can reasonably and usefully be applied to Mill's conception of liberty, although he did not employ autonomy in that context.

62 Ideological Morphology quasi-contingent ones. The ineliminable features of political concepts display two properties: 1. They are not intrinsic to, or logically necessary to, the meaning of the word to which they attach, but result from actual linguistic usage. In that sense, they come close to Saussure's notion of the 'arbitrary', except that we append arbitrariness to whatever substantive, determinate meaning is incorporated in the ineliminable feature.27 The feature is ineliminable merely in the sense that all known usages of the concept employ it, so that its absence would deprive the concept of intelligibility and communicability. Thus equality as a political concept appears always to have something to do with differences among human beings and the alleviation of those differences, rather than, say, with mathematical identity. 2. They cannot carry the concept on their own, that is, the concept cannot be reduced to its ineliminable component.28 At this stage we shall merely observe that the concept will therefore contain more than its ineliminable component, though its precise contents are impossible to establish. The choice of the word 'ineliminable' rather than 'core' is deliberate. Many political theorists suggest that concepts have a clear core or centre 29 and a hazy circumference where they merge into other concepts. Linguists have argued persuasively that the signified needs no essential core of meaning in order to be the proper signified for the signifier.30 But we need to advance beyond that assertion of relationship to examine the question of conceptual cores itself. There is reason to doubt the clarity of the core, and it is necessary to spell out the sense in which an jneliminable component constitutes part of a core. Later I will attempt to set out more precisely the relationship between the integral components of a concept and its circumference. If a core implies a pivotal and speciic element, lucidly spelt out, and able to stand on its own, to which more peripheral components are added in order to enrich it, the main political concepts do not possess cores. Rather, they 27

Saussure, in contradistinction, appends arbitrariness to the employment of linguistic signs and their internal relationships in a linguistic system (langue). See Saussure, Course, 71-8, and Harris, Language, Saussure and Wittgenstein, 47-50, 28 As we shall see below, the quasi-contingent features cannot carry the concept on their own either, though their further relationship with the given ineliminable component is complex. 29 B, Parekh, 'Social and Political Thought and the Problem of Ideology', in R. Benewick, R. N. Berki, and B. Parekh (eds.). Knowledge and Belief in Politics: The Problem of Ideology (London, 1973), 57-87 at p. 77. 30 Culler, Saussure, 23.

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have components that are ineliminable not in a logical sense, but simply in the sense that an empirically ascertainable cultural commonality ascribes to them some minimal element or elements. Democracy may mean the rule of the people, as its etymological meaning indicates (taking into account the burdens of translation from the Greek), but there is no logically entailed definition of either 'rule' or 'people', or any logical reason why this arbitrary word-combination, which signals the apparently ineliminable component of democracy, should not be altered or made unrecognizable to earlier users over time. Indeed, the deft implicit insertion of liberal' into many current accepted uses of democracy suggests a struggle—unsuccessful to date—over granting ineliminablecomponent status to a new, tacitly implied, notion. Inasmuch as the actual linguistic usage of a concept displays a generally shared and therefore de facto conventionally 'constant' or stable feature, that feature may be termed an ineliminable aspect of it: to eliminate it means to fly against all known usages of the concept (though this does not rule out its removal in future). To deny that political concepts have or can have such an ineliminable element is to concede that the word used to represent the concept in question refers to more than one concept. But to do that, to break down major political concepts into hosts of minor ones, is heuristically unmanageable as well as ontologically unnecessary. The prevalence of a particular political term that covers ostensibly different meanings and relates to a range of observable phenomena is an indication of an understood similarity that merits, at the very least, to be taken seriously. Let us illustrate the above by referring again to the concept of liberty. There is a strong empirical case for maintaining that all known usages of liberty contain the notion of non-constraint, and that if that notion is absent in a discussion of liberty, we are in fact looking at another concept usurping the word 'liberty'. It would be well-nigh impossible to discover an example of a text or speechact about liberty that does not contain the notion of non-constraint. That notion appears in one of two forms: (1) the subject claiming or desiring to be free will either feel (or hope to feel) unconstrained in some area of thought or action; (2) observers will describe the subject as being in a state of non-constraint, or claim such nonconstraint on behalf of the subject—irrespective of the subject's own views and feelings on the matter.31 The attribute of non-constraint 31 See W. L. Weinstein, 'The Concept of Liberty in Nineteenth Century English Political Thought', Political Studies, 13 (1965), 145-62; M. Freeden, Liberalism Divided: A Study in British Political Thought 1914-1939 (Oxford, 1986), 280-5,

64 Ideological Morphology is an integral and ineliminable component of the concept of liberty because, deprived of that attribute either in its 'feeling free' or 'being free' version, the concept would collapse. That argument is not tantamount to asserting that non-constraint, rather than another notion, is logically necessary to liberty. It suggests instead that non-constraint has become central to the ordinary-language, and to the philosophical, employment of liberty. For that reason, we must doubt whether the ineliminable component is also the central or core component in anything more than a conventional sense. It is simply a fact that human beings have organized the concept of liberty in such a way as to make the ineliminable and identifying component indispensable to it; though we may still wish to insist that other aspects of liberty, say, selfdevelopment or autonomy, are more central or core elements in terms of their importance for human and social life. Nor is the argument tantamount to asserting that non-constraint is identical to liberty. It must be stated emphatically that no political concept can be reduced to its ineliminable element— i.e. narrowed down to its minimum component.32 It needs further components without which the concept cannot be fleshed out. The reduction of liberty to non-constraint alone would render it entirely vacuous. We would lack further information about nonconstraint without which that notion is form devoid of content. After all, non-constraint entails a relationship between an object and a 'force' that has the potential of restricting an activity, or oppressing the sense of space, of the object. Dialectically, the notion of non-constraint is only possible when its opposite, constraint, is postulated. But who or what would not be constrained: individuals, groups, states, any living or social entity? And by what would they not be constrained: physical actions, internal hindrances, external impersonal forces, other objects? And how would that non-constraint manifest itself: through not impeding the actions of the free entity, through not interfering with its development (or non-development), through permitting the exercise of its abilities? All these are problems of intension separate from the further evaluative issue: would non-constraint be a desirable or deplorable condition to be in? We can immediately see that an isolated and abstract discussion of non-constraint leaves us with far too many imponderables to be able to make sense of it. Political concepts are 32

For that reason, G. MacCallum's triadic analysis offers a necessary, but insufficient, characterization of the concept of liberty ('Negative and Positive Freedom', Philosophy, Politics and Society, 4th ser., ed. P, Laslett, W. G. Rurtciman, and Q, Skinner (Oxford, 1972), 174-93).

Assembling: From Concepts to Ideologies 65 always richer and more sophisticated constructs than could be inferred from their ineliminable components alone. Why do political concepts have ineliminable components? Mainly because concepts are idea-artefacts that serve human convenience as ways of coming to terms with the world, and because, arguably, this is how our mind makes sense of that world. Certain political ideas, however vague, are deemed to be both fundamental and different from each other. They each become centrally ineliminable anchors for different concepts, that are designed, or are formed, around them. If liberty were to be defined entirely by a randomly fluid collection of components, and would therefore be bereft of a stable meaning, it would have no specific defining attributes and could be dispensed with as a specific political concept. But this is not the case. The specificity of political concepts derives from the combination of two factors: the presence of an ineliminable component, albeit an undifferentiated form rather than hard and substantive; and a non-random, even if widely variable, collection of additional components that are secured to that vacuous 'de facto' core in a limited number of recognizable patterns. An analogy with the overworked table might be useful here. All tables have one ineliminable feature: they constitute raised surfaces on which objects can be placed; they therefore have the property of raised levemess (or approximate levelness: the fact that tables can be tilted and caused to lose that property temporarily does not annihilate it, just as blindfolding people will not destroy, but simply interfere with, their capacity of sight). The further fact that not all objects with raised level surfaces are tables merely serves to illustrate that the ineliminable component of one item (or concept) is not necessarily exclusive to it, but may be found within the clustered features of other items (or concepts). By analogy, non-constraint—the ineliminable feature of liberty—may be an optional feature in the cluster of the concept of rights, in particular those rights termed choice-rights. The attribute of a level raised surface, while indispensable to the idea of a table, is insufficient. We have not spelt out any of its additional properties and we have no notion of what it will look like. The surface may be brown, it may stand on four legs, and it may be made out of wood. None of these attributes is essential; we can dispense "with any of them and yet may still have a table. Likewise, the additional elements that attach to the ineliminable core of a political concept are not likely to be geographically or historically universal features of that concept. Here, however, we encounter the important notion of quasi-

66 Ideological Morphology contingency. The additional components of a table, while individually dispensable, occupy categories that are not, A table will have a colour, it will incorporate some device to raise it from the ground, it will be made of a hardish material. Those categories are necessary, while their particular instances are contingent. We are consequently able to choose within each category, to offer a variety of different combinations. Moreover, there is no inherent reason why one instance of a category should have preference over another, why a table should be brown or white, have four rather than three or six legs, or be made of wood rather than plastic. Because this is structurally the case, the choice we exercise is essentially contestable, and the specific feature selected to fill each necessary category is contingent to the general idea of a table, though explicable in particular contexts and circumstances, Why are such categories necessary? First, because without some additional categories the core will remain vacuous, devoid of content and meaning. Second, because particular concepts need a specific range of categories: liberty requires the notion of a subject, it requires the idea of obstruction, and it may require an evaluation as to its desirability, if it is in competition with other concepts, Specific, contingent occupiers of those necessary categories accord sense to the core of non-constraint. As Laclau and Mouffe have argued, though it is impossible to fix the identity of the elements of a discourse, and these remain contingent floating signifiers, it is correspondingly the case that 'necessity derives.,. from the regularity of a system of structural positions'.33 However, third, there may exist entirely contingent categories that attach to political concepts as they may attach to tables, but have no bearing on the fully fledged concept or object. For example, some theorists will regard the question of the utility of liberty as superfluous. It is similarly beside the point whether a table is a work of art, or whether it supports a bowl of fruit. We have now come one step further. The above argument implies that there are constraints on the indeterminate range of meanings the idea of essential contestability may be thought to invoke. The initial limitation suggests that the main political concepts will each have to include certain categories, such as a unit of political analysis, a view of human nature, a notion of social structure, a conception of moral ends, and so forth. Beyond that there will be categories associated specifically with the concept in question: all approaches 33

E, Laclau and C. Mouffe, Hegemony mid Socialist Strategy (London, 1985), 93113, Cp. also S. Zizek, The Sublime Object of Ideology (London, 1989), 87-8.

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to the concept of authority, for example, will have to call up the concept of power, It may be further surmised that, although the concrete instances of each category will be contingent, their broad permutations may be limited. After all, the unit of political analysis will have to be the individual, or society, or some other group, or more than one such entity, but nothing else. And social structure is usually viewed on a spectrum that, roughly speaking, takes in positions from atomism to organicism. It is important for those who regard the essential contestability of political concepts as a cloak for relativism to appreciate that it does not allow for infinite variety or unfixity, We can now focus on a further paramount feature of a political concept: its location in a number of idea-environments, which bestow on it significant meaning. As Taylor has noted, 'things only have meaning in a field, that is, in relation to the meanings of other things ... there is no such thing as a single, unrelated meaningful element'.34 Ideologies constitute semantic fields in that each component interacts with all the others and is changed when any one of the other components alters.35 Some elements in those environments will be other concepts, adjacent and related, which can be swallowed up whole to form part of the concept we are initially examining, or they can be cannibalized for useful parts; some will be narrower ideas or attributes that are available for general purposes. For instance, autonomy has the status of a distinct political and moral concept, yet can be found within the quasi-contingent zones of the concept of liberty. On the other hand, the idea that 'man is wolf to man' is not in itself a concept, but has frequently been harnessed to the service of political concepts such as power, authority, or social justice. One conclusion which ensues from the above is that political concepts do not relate to each other entirely by negation. Parts of concept A may also 'belong' to other concepts, yet be logically entailed as a category by the inelkninable component of concept A, or be incorporated in concept A because of a social convention in a particular society to do so. Political concepts overlap and reinforce each other; it might be far neater if each were to occupy a distinct space, but such conceptual Utopias are not the stuff of which normal human thinking is made. In the analysis of the actual manifestations of political thinking we must take human thought-behaviour as we find it, to the best of our understanding. 34 35

Taylor, 'Interpretation', 22. See Sartori, Social Science Concepts, 52.

68

Ideological Morphology (d) LOGICAL AND CULTURAL ADJACENCY

To argue that a constituent of a concept is logically entailed by its ineliminable components is not to suggest that it must become an ineliminable part of the concept itself, A key distinction to be made when discussing the adjacent environment of a political concept is that between logical adjacency and cultural adjacency. As we have seen, the concept of liberty has as its ineliminable component a notion of non-constraint. But concepts logically adjacent to non-constraint will include autonomy, self-determination, selfde¥elopment, and power. They are logically adjacent because they refer to necessary options and permutations which are invariably brought into play by any concretization of non-constraint. Because those adjacent concepts are themselves essentially contestable, there is no way of establishing which of their own components will be embraced by the concept of liberty. All we can do at this stage is to apply the notion of quasi-contingency and to observe that some aspect of each of the following: autonomy, self-determination, selfdevelopment, and power, will necessarily be available to play a role in fleshing out any concept of liberty. Some instances of these logically adjacent categories wiE be locked into the ineliminable and integral component of the concept of liberty—non-constraint— and constitute further parts of that concept, just as the woodenness of a table may, in one design scheme, become one of its attributes. For although woodenness is not logically entailed, it is a logical necessity that a table be fashioned of some material or other. The specific attribute may be prised loose from the concept; the requirement for the category of material cannot. Without the particular pattern created by these interlocking categories, a concept such as liberty will remain a barren notion, bearing in mind of course that the patterns of liberty are multifold inasmuch as the inhabitants of each category are multifold, and inasmuch as the combinations of categories are indeterminate. Logical adjacency is both a constraint36 on the indefinite variety 36

This notion of constraint differs from the familiar one used by P. E. Converse, "The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics', in D. E. Apter (ed.), ideology and Discontent (New York, 1964) 207-12, Converse provides no theory concerning the constraints operating on the internal structure of concepts, sees such constraints as more prevalent among elites than mass publics, rather than a property of political concepts irrespective of their articulators, and does not allow for the overriding of logical by cultural constraints. Ultimately, the difference between Converse's approach and that of this study is located in different aims. As a quantitative social scientist, Converse is primarily concerned with the prediction

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of a concept and an opening for its indeterminate and pluralistic structure. Using the notion of logical adjacency we are slowly moving towards our first glimpse of the concept of liberty itself. We could now, for example, assert that liberty concerns the ability to self-determine without hindrance, or perhaps the ability to selfdevelop without hindrance. But we also now know that those abilities will display manifold shades and that such variety is in the nature of the concept. We can hence appreciate why the 'essential contestability' problem is a consequence of the morphology of political concepts. But that appreciation is in turn informed by the realization that, when any concept is formed, the process through which incorporation-choices are made among adjacent ideas and parts of adjacent concepts is more complex than originally appeared to be the case. First, as we have seen, even though some answer or other to the question 'what mechanisms of human thought, will, and conduct are activated in a situation of non-constraint?' must be logically entailed, the choice among answers is not. Constraint is not determinacy or closure. It is not illogical to suggest that non-constraint is compatible with state intervention, if that intervention is intended to protect individuals from coercion by others. But how do we arrive at that choice among a number of logically adjacent options? Second, not every possible permutation of a concept follows logically from positing the notion of non-constraint. It does not logically follow, for instance, that people's life-plans must never be interfered with, though it may be part of a concept of liberty held by libertarians. In other words, there must be a method other than, and parallel to, logical adjacency through which concepts are fleshed out. Again, what is that method? The answer to both questions is this: decisions about which paths to follow within a large network of logical adjacency, as well as decisions to establish illogical adjacent connections, will be socially mediated through the notion of cultural adjacency, which imposes further constraints on the morphology of political concepts. This is more than merely asserting in general terms that such concepts are socio-cultural products. Rather, their specific internal formation, attached to the initial meliminable component, is shaped by what is referred to here as culture: temporally and spatially bounded social practices, of ideological behaviour, and he views the study of constraints as the means to project future regularities. We can, by contrast, endorse J. Bohtnan's useful distinction between constraints and limits as that between variable and alterable enabling conditions and determinate and fixed limiting conditions (New Philosophy of Social Science (Oxford, 1991), 121).

70 Ideological Morphology institutional patterns, ethical systems, technologies, influential theories, discourses, and beliefs (to include reactions to external events and to unintentional or non-human occurrences). To all these we need add the crucial factor of human agency, which is not determined entirely by such socio-cultural products. It may reflectively select among them, and may also frequently be the non-rational 'rogue-factor' in preferring one option over another. There are two types of cultural adjacency. The first acts as a brake operating within the framework of logical adjacency. For whereas logical adjacency must draw into the meaning of liberty all the additional components that are entailed by the ineliminable component, thus overloading the concept with more parts than it can simultaneously hold (owing to possible incompatibilities among them), cultural adjacency will intervene against making all those logical connections and will thus preserve the viability of the concept. For example, in one observed version of the concept of liberty, the answer to the logically adjacent question 'what is the effect of non-constraint on the subject?' might be self-development rather than self-determining stagnation. The choice of self-development follows the introduction of a cultural and historical preference for an intervening factor, in this case a specific conception of human nature, subject to processes of evolution and maturation and capable of self-activating or enhancing those processes. This particular conception of human nature cements the quasi-contingent relationship between non-constraint and self-development and prevents both developmental and non-developmental conduct from simultaneously being expressions of liberty. Similarly, the cultural translation of the concept of rights into civil and political rights is only one logical possibility, but in the Western political tradition it would be inconceivable not to include them in any reasonable discussion of the term. This type of cultural adjacency is a choice over which branches of a logical tree to climb, given that we cannot climb them all simultaneously, and given further that they stretch out indeterminately. There is no logically conclusive resting point where we can say: our work is done. For the logical structure of all the main political concepts is incompatible with their translation into political action. They contain internal dialectical tensions, and more possibilities than can be put into effect. The fullness of their logical structure draws them inevitably into practical contradictions and any attempt to express them in terms of human conduct and institutional patterns will result in their collapsing under their own weight. They need to be brutally pruned by means of cultural

Assembling: From Concepts to Ideologies

71

constraints in order to survive in their function ms-a-vis the real world and to contain their contradictions.37 Culture, unlike logic, is unsystematic and multifarious, and no guaranteed meanings can be allocated to the rump concepts that remain after they are cut down to manageable proportions. And because political reality is to an important degree a function of what human beings, the organizers of that reality, choose to select, the ranges a specific concept covers will differ from case to case. Consequently ideologies are in part impervious to logical criticism. Once a path of argument is condemned as logically flawed, the cultural pluralism of conceptual intensions allows alternative paths to be established, until they too are condemned.38 Indeed, two contradictory paths may lead out of and into the same core, as with extreme conservative opposition to the European Union predicated on a xenophobia insulating against change, and conservative support for it predicated on improved economic performance contributing towards stability. The second type of cultural adjacency refers to elements that do not follow logically from the ineliminable components of a concept, but are regarded in ordinary usage as legitimate, if not indispensable. Wittgenstein observed that 'when a sentence is called senseless, it is not as it were its sense that is senseless. But a combination of words is being excluded from the language, withdrawn from circulation.'39 Here the opposite happens. A combination of words, which logicians and some philosophers would disallow, is accorded social and ideational legitimacy. For example, it is not logical to espouse the concept of political equality, to express it in general elections, to regard women as human beings, and yet to deny them the vote. Nevertheless, this variant has frequently been employed even within liberal-democratic systems, most notably Switzerland. Alternatively, ostensibly paradoxical logical features may be culturally pressed into one concept. Some versions of liberty will allow for force to be used in order to attain the behaviour considered consonant with non-constraint. If non-constraint is construed as applying to the removal of rational hindrances to individual choice, and those hindrances are deemed internal to the subject rather than caused by others, then the formula 'forced to be free' may be culturally acceptable despite what appears to be its defective logic. v That has been quite successfully accomplished in harmonizing the relationship between utility and rights. See Freeden, Rights, 83-100. 38 Cp. W. V. O. Quine, From a Logical Point of View (Cambridge, Mass., 1953), 43. 39 Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, para. 500.

72

Ideological Morphology Cultural adjacency refers to specific historical and sociogeographical phenomena that encourage the association of different political concepts, or smaller idea-units within a political concept, and which either operate within broader logically interlinked categories or override such logical linkage. It will relate to an historical and geographical usage of ideas and of language that may be either customary or innovative. Conversely, logical adjacency may, on rarer occasions and among more reflective ideologists, override cultural adjacency when attempting to reorder sets of values in line with agreed rational procedures or ends. Even here, the choice of which rationality is cultural. To recall, this analysis need not lead to a radically relativist position, as universal, or nigh-universal, usages of political ideas could well be demonstrated to exist. This contingent universalism is not an invariable attribute of the form and meaning of the political concept in question, but it can pertain to the concept at a particular point in time for socio-cultural reasons. Concepts have occasionally been analysed as composed of parts combined in a particular way. These attempt to correspond, on the whole unsuccessfully—as Wittgenstein argued—to the empirically observable component parts of something composite from which we construct our picture of reality.40 But an important element has usually been missing in such philosophical explanations. When Wittgenstein claimed that a triangle can be seen as a mountain, a wedge, a geometrical drawing, and so forth, or when he gave his famous duck-rabbit example, using a drawing that could signify either, he was persuasively attacking the notion of 'what is really seen' as a poor guide to defining a material concept. But the failure to interpret the object known as a duck-rabbit results from the isolated contemplation, that is, the decontextualization, of the object, Were the duck-rabbit to be depicted as floating on a pond, the likelihood that it signified a duck rather than a rabbit would be extremely high. Were the duck-rabbit to be located in a warren, or were a picture of it to appear on the cover of a book called The Tale of Peter Rabbit, the likelihood that it signified a rabbit would be similarly high. Of course, the relationship between object and environment is not always as highly defined as that. The concept of liberty may appear in ostensibly similar idea-environments, as we shall see is the case with liberalism and libertarianism, which might suggest that the same conception of liberty is in play. Only analytical 'fine-tuning' may assist in establishing identifying differences. 40

Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, paras. 39, 59.

Assembling: From Concepts to Ideologies 73 The point is that the observable context of the material object accords its related concept a particular interpretation. In parallel, political concepts will gather meaning from their empirically ascertainable ideational context, from the idea-environment in which they are located. To that extent the synchronic relational perspective of Saussure is a useful one. Wittgenstein did indeed raise the problem of looking at objects and concepts from multiple viewpoints, and he usefully regarded concepts as having fuzzy edges.41 It is precisely because concepts are not hermetically sealed and allow for fluid, if controlled, movement across their vague boundaries that the areas beyond those boundaries—the ideaenvironments—acquire importance. However, Wittgenstein did not explore in detail the possibility that the indeterminacy of concepts is revealed only when we are capable of detaching them from a given environment.42 In addition, as we have seen, political concepts regularly exhibit a feature that material objects display infrequently and only with difficulty, namely, some of their constituent parts are also part of their idea-environment, because they appear simultaneously in other external concepts. Ideas, after all, are not limited to a particular space; they can be both here and there. We can hence conceive of a concept as turned inside out, by externalizing its so-called internal parts and treating them as free-floating units that intersect with the concept's ineliminable component. In other words, the analysis of a (political) concept is inadequate in so far as all its components or properties are treated as internal to it, as independent, self-supporting, and sharply demarcated from other concepts. Conversely it will benefit from a viewpoint that sees most of those contingent components, though not their necessary categories, as externalized, and available to be drawn in different patterns into its skeletal structure. Obviously, in the absence of that skeleton— the ineliminable component and its logically adjacent categories —the concept would be annihilated. Its presence, however, is insufficient for the concept to emerge. Were we not to attach this fixed cultural point to any one of a number of logically and culturally adjacent environments, the interpretation of ideological phenomena, and the transformation of words into meaning-endowing concepts, would become impossible tasks, 41

42

Ibid, para. 71,

Wittgenstein appreciated that concepts are formed through 'aspects of organization', namely, through associating different parts (ibid. 208), but he did not go on to develop the notion that locating an indeterminate concept in a context or idea-environment is a prime method of such association.

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Ideological Morphology Similar conclusions have been reached, via different routes, in linguistics and in anthropology. But the analysis of conceptual structure offered in both disciplines is still relatively unsophisticated. Words, as linguists point out, only have meaning in relation to their place in a sentence. The words signifying political concepts are no exception. But whereas words in a sentence are strung out in a linear sequence, political concepts are surrounded by multidimensional adjacent concepts. In addition, while words are consciously used, linguists regard grammar as a possibly unconscious set of rules that guide the speaker, that is, the structure of language may be unknown to the user. A political concept, however, may have unknown additional meanings, or as Ricoeur has put it, a surplus of meaning,43 contained in its very structure. That is to say, both the intended and unintended meanings attached to the employment of a concept are part of its baggage and draw upon wide ranges of assumptions and ideas, though these are not spelt out in the paucity of the spoken or written language. The notions of illocutionary and perlocutionary force do some justice to these intricacies,44 but fall short of attesting to the multi-dimensionality of explicit and implicit adjacent ideas that keep any concept company and colour its meaning. In particular, whereas the structure of sentences is governed by strict rules of grammar, the morphology of political concepts, as we have seen, is capable of an enormous range of variations because there are so many ways in which the relevant components can become attached to each other. It is more akin to the structure of units of language such as phonemes or morphemes, but unlike phonemes, the parts of a concept are units of meaning, not of sound; and unlike morphemes, the parts of a concept are relatively complex units of ideas. Levi-Strauss, too, has emphasized the complexity of language deriving from its multiple elements. He is right in seeing language as a collective construct and in suggesting that 'much of linguistic behaviour lies on the level of unconscious thought'.45 He departs, however, from the approach proffered here by adopting too rigid a position when endorsing a view of structural linguistics that 'does not treat terms as independent entities, taking instead as its basis of analysis the relations between terms'.*6 The dependence of terms and concepts is not in question. But we cannot treat political concepts in the manner that Levi-Strauss wishes to treat terms. 43 44

See p. 108 below, See Skinner's treatment of Austin's distinction in Tully (ed), Meaning and Context, III, 260-2. K L6vi-Strauss, Structural Anthropology, i. 56-7, * Ibid. 33.

Assembling: From Concepts to Ideologies 75 Though a concept is meaningless without locating it at the nodal point of a series of relationships with other concepts and ideas, it is not just the sum-total of those relationships. From our previous argument it is apparent that the embryonic, skeletal, 'thin' ineliminable part of the concept exerts an organizing control over the kinds of relationships it attracts and that eventually constitute its full, concrete, comprehensible, and operational version. This is not to deny that the meaning of the ineliminable component is itself constituted by other concepts or notions; rather, it is to make the point that the ineliminable component is culturally privileged, by dint of accepted or common usage, over the other components of a political concept. The notion of non-constraint exercises a curbing, though not determining, influence over the multiple ways in which the concept of liberty is constituted. (e) THE MORPHOLOGY OF IDEOLOGIES

The analysis of ideologies may now be advanced by utilizing a three-tier formation: the components of a concept, a concept, and a system of concepts, just as by analogy we could talk about a level surface, a table, and a furnished room. So far we have been discussing the internal morphology of a single concept. Ideologies, however, are combinations of political concepts organized in a particular way. Here we alight on a major morphological distinction between political philosophies, at least as commonly perceived in ideal-type, and ideologies: the different methods by which they handle the problem of essential contestability. As we saw in Chapter 1, pure philosophical argument, judged by its own understandings rather than its practices, would have to engage one of two methods. It could explore and account for all logical adjacencies to a given ineliminable component of a concept, that is, trace the entire families of incompatible cultural connotations that the logical structure of a political concept can summon up. Alternatively, it could present a reflective, rationally and morally justifiable case for a choice among its components, in which case the conceptual end-product would not differ in form from that of an ideology, though the means of organizing that structure might. Contrary to the first method, ideologies will seek to maximize or optimize deterrninacy, if never entirely securing it. Contrary to the second method—while not necessarily ignoring logical adjacencies—ideologies will allow a socially situated and partisan value-arbitrated choice among adjacent components, by relying heavily on the

76 Ideological Morphology notion of cultural adjacency, and the result will display various mixes of rational criteria, emotional inclinations, and cultural valuepreferences. A similar process will also be at work in deciding how to organize the wide range of political concepts encompassed by any ideology and how to interlink them. In parallel to philosophers and logicians, most linguists would challenge the attribution of a one-to-one relationship between signifier and signified. A word may be related to many meanings and to changing meanings. Ideologies, however, display precisely the converse features. They aim at cementing the word-concept relationship. By determining the meaning of a concept they can then attach a single meaning to a political term. Ultimately, ideologies are configurations of decontested meanings of political concepts, when such meanings are ascribed by methods at least partly foreign to those employed in currently predominant approaches of scientists, philosophers, linguists, or political theorists. Political philosophers, on the other hand, may claim not to decontest meanings at all when they are engaged in the clarification of concepts;17 and when they do engage in decontesting, they will attempt to do so by means which preserve accepted technical or moral standards of analysis. In concrete terms, an ideology will link together a particular conception of human nature, a particular conception of social structure, of justice, of liberty, of authority, etc. 'This is what liberty means, and that is what justice means', it asserts. Ideologies need, after all, to straddle the worlds of political thought and political action, for one of their central functions is to link the two. The political sphere is primarily characterized by decision-making, and decision-making is an important form of decontesting a range of potential alternatives. Thus, while the very nature of political concepts lies in their essential contestability, the very nature of the political process is to arrive at binding decisions that determine the priority of one course of action over another. Put differently, human thought-behaviour aspires to determine the meaning of political language, though any specific form this decontestation may adopt will, from the viewpoint of the analyst, necessarily fail to achieve finality.48 Ideologies serve as the bridging mechanism between contestability and deterrninacy, converting the inevitable variety of options into the monolithic certainty which is the 47

See D. D- Raphael, Problems of Political Philosophy (London, 1970), 11-17, although the possibility of clarification that does not assign meaning is highly questionable. * Cp. Laclau and Mouffe, Hegemony, 112,

Assembling: From Concepts to Ideologies 77 unavoidable feature of a political decision, and which is the basis of the forging of a political identity. However, it is never possible to achieve total determinacy, and even an ostensibly clear-cut decision may retain ambiguities,49 For practical purposes, though, such indeterminacy may become insignificant. Furthermore, ideologies frequently adopt deliberately indeterminate statements, often because a political decision is to be avoided for whatever reason, or because a message is designed to appeal to a pluralist body of consumers, Political party manifestos tend to be such creatures, illustrating how the vagueness of language comes to the rescue of its political users. Even then, political language is employed to convey specific sets of meanings out of wider ranges. It is plain to see why so many theorists of ideology connect that term with power, for the act of decontesting, of deciding, of closing options, and of forging a political identity, is an instance of power-wielding. Because ideologies involve concerted action, they relate to the sphere of organization; because they involve decisions, they relate to control; and because they involve language, they relate to the attempted injection of certainty into indeterminacy. Competing ideologies are hence struggles over the socially legitimated meanings of political concepts and the sustaining arrangements they form, in an attempt to establish a 'correct' usage. But it is equally plain that the nature of action-orientated thinking necessitates such decisions, so that to attribute a pejorative connotation to the power aspect of ideology, in the absence of an alternative, is a futile qualification. Likewise, social psychologists draw attention to the inevitable cognitive ordering of the perceived (political) world required by individuals in order to make it intelligible and increase its predictability.50 What is meaningful is why one specific decontestation, one ordering of the political world, prevails over another. This is where morphology is underwritten by culture and history. Central to any analysis of ideologies is the proposition that they are characterized by a morphology that displays core, adjacent, and peripheral concepts. For instance, an examination of observed liberalisms might establish that liberty is situated within their core, that human rights, democracy, and equality are adjacent to liberty, and that nationalism is to be found on their periphery. The existence 49

As G, Therborn has commented, ideologies are ongoing social processes that actually operate in a state of disorder (The Ideology of Power and the Power of Ideology (London, 1980), 77). 50 See S. W. Rosenberg, Reason, Ideology and Politics (Oxford, 1988), esp. pp. 1819.

78 Ideological Morphology of concepts adjacent to the ideological core is essential to the formation of an ideology. The notions of logical and cultural adjacency, which we have explored within the framework of a single concept, are equally vital to the articulation of an entire ideology. On further examination of a specific case, for example, it would be evident that liberty may be given a particular meaning—selfdetermination—because of its close association with democracy, while conversely, democracy may be given a particular meaninglimited popular government—because of its structural interlinkage with liberty. So while the concepts of democracy and of liberty each have their ineliminable cores, they are filled out in a distinctive way due to their mutual proximity. This is a feature of the Western political tradition, in which the conventional path through the logical outreaches of liberty has become the one affiliated with democratic self-government, or with the kinds of equality that make self-government possible and that allow the generalization of liberty. Ideas drawn from equality and democracy have come in turn to create an ideational context that colours our understanding of liberty. In sum, all these skeletal or 'thin' concepts develop elements, both logically and culturally, that form overlapping and shared areas, which then react back on their separate ineliminable components to constitute full but mutually dependent concepts. These mutually influential relationships exist among the manifold concepts that make up an ideological system, and these structural networks give the ideology its distinguishing features. As with political concepts, an ideology will have concept-categories that are both culturally and logically necessary to its survival, though the particular instances of those categories are not. In addition, an ideology will contain peripheral concepts that add a vital gloss to its core concepts. More specifically, ideologies have two kinds of periphery. The one exists on the dimension of significance, and will be referred to as the margin. The other exists on the interface with time and space, and will be referred to as the perimeter. The margin pertains to ideas and concepts whose importance to the core, to the heart of the ideology, is intellectually and emotionally insubstantial. Concepts may often gravitate from a more central to a marginal position, or vice versa. Natural rights gravitated from a core to a marginal position in liberal morphology, whereas violence gravitated from a marginal to a core position in the development of fascism. Hence modifications on the significance dimension will often be longer term arrangements, reflecting accumulative changes, though they may occasionally be triggered off by cataclysmic events in the non-ideational environment of an

Assembling: From Concepts to Ideologies 79 ideology, such as the impact of the collapse of the Soviet Union on the hitherto marginal role of markets in East European socialist ideologies. Sometimes the retention of a marginal concept or idea may be dysfunctional to the survival of an ideology and direct it to ideational dead ends, as increasingly became the case with nationalization in Western socialist programmes. Although no longer closely adjacent to the socialist core in many modem reformulations of socialism, dogged adherence to nationalization in its new marginal location proved costly to many West European socialist ideologies, and German and British socialists, for example, acted on that insight. In addition, some concepts may be marginal simply in the sense that other ideologies force them on the agenda, but the ideology in question relates to them only reluctantly and contingently. Xenophobia and its impact on immigration policies may serve as an example. It is of course the case that a concept marginal to one ideology, for instance social order to liberalism, may be at the core of another—conservatism. The perimeter reflects the fact that core and adjacent concepts are located in historical, geographical, and cultural contexts. It refers to additional ideas and concepts that straddle the interface between the conceptualization of social realities and the external contexts and concrete manifestations in and through which those conceptualizations occur. It requires that, for an ideology to relate to, and emerge from, those contexts, indeed to avoid being couched at levels of generality that have no relevance to social and political worlds, it must conceive of, assimilate, and attempt to shape 'realworld' events. Through it a practice or institution or event is integrated into the macro-structure of the ideology.51 That process is essential to the specific decontestation and fleshing out of the abstractions which characterize core, and to a lesser extent adjacent, concepts. Whereas those abstractions enable ideologies to function on a long-term and wide-space basis, and hence permit the flexibility necessary to their survival, the relatively concrete perimeter concepts, ideas, and attitudes52 enable them to gain relevance for specific issues, to incorporate and identify significant facts and practices, to embrace external change, and to provide the 31

As Laclau and Mouffe have argued: 'the practice of articulation, as fixation/ dislocation of a system of differences, cannot consist of purely linguistic phenomena; but must instead pierce the entire material density of the multifarious institutions, rituals and practices through which a discursive formation is structured' (Hegemony, 109). 52 Attitudes are usually time and space specific, See E, Scarbrough, Political Ideology and Voting (Oxford, 1984), 37.

80 Ideological Morphology greater degree of precision necessary to interpret the core and adjacent concepts. Perimeter components of an ideology often are specific ideas or policy-proposals rather than fully fledged concepts, lacking the generalization and sophistication associated with a concept. They may also be applications of more general concepts to specific practices, as in the case of a concrete instance of censorship relating to the core concept of liberty. They may tend to be more ephemeral as well as particular, but that very specificity enables them to serve as the micro-ideological conduits of cultural constraints that impact on the macro-ideological structure, as well as conduits of structural and logical constraints already available in the ideological grouping in question, through which social facts and concrete events are construed.53 Their boundary location is crucial to the configuration, flow, and layering of meaning within the ideology and, unlike marginal concepts, is not to be regarded as a reflection of lesser or 'fallen' conceptual status within it. Nevertheless, any particular perimeter concept is peripheral in the sense that the existence of the total ideological morphology does not depend on its presence or absence. Of course, some perimeter concepts may be marginal concepts as well, while others may gravitate towards the ideological core. The impact of the practice of civil disobedience on conservative ideology has been marginal; while, conversely, free trade as a concrete set of practices moved away from both perimeter and marginal status to take on the features of an important adjacent concept to the nineteenth-century core of liberalism. By adopting an adjacent position, it no longer came under caseby-case scrutiny and thus was insulated from immediate arid continuous change. Here lies another significant morphological distinction between political philosophies and most ideologies. The former organize political concepts without much reference to perimeter ideas and practices. Their structure is controlled by the individual philosopher, or group of philosophers, producing them. Superficially, this constitutes a parallel with the subgroup of dogmatic and doctrinaire ideologies, whose structure is governed by powerful ideologues. However, philosophers adopt such an immunity to the perimeter for clarificatory reasons, or because they hope to maintain a high level of argument unsullied by less rational contributions, or 53

Quine identified the perimeter function of the peripheral boundary between belief and experience, but focused only on one of its two directions—the impact from experience to the internal logical connections among statements (From a Logical Point of View, 42-3),

Assembling: From Concepts to Ideologies 81 because they focus on counterfactual or ideal propositions. Yet they remain open to internal conceptual rearrangements on the basis of logic or 'good' arguments. Doctrinaire and dogmatic ideologies, on the other hand, deliberately sever their links with key perimeter 'intrusions', thus isolating themselves from the external world and from the possibility of reflecting changes in their ideaenvironments, in order to ensure the relative immobilization of forced relationships among the components of their ideologies. Both need be contrasted with open ideologies which are partly perimeter-driven and shaped by notions and practices at the interface with political action, Any specific belief item within an ideology will be identified by a particular route (among many possible ones) from the core, through adjacent concepts, to a perimeter one, as well as by the reverse movement. Thus, the assertion of the importance of a viable national health service may be decoded as encompassing a core belief about human welfare, decontested (and valued) as human flourishing; attached to adjacent concepts such as community, power, and responsibility (jointly decontested as involving state intervention to further the core belief), human rights (decontested as rights to social services), and the public interest (decontested as the maintenance of human capacities at their highest possible level); and rounded off by perimeter concepts linked to specific policy-proposals, such as pain and suffering (decontested as undesirable, especially when avoidable), and need (decontested as the provision of medical services to all who require them). Concurrently, travelling in the other direction of the interface, a financial crisis, or the lack of blood donors, may spark off a consideration of market-exchange relationships as an adjacent constraint on human flourishing, or genetic engineering may be identified as a relevant fact when interpreted through the prism of its potential danger to the equal rights principle involved in a national health service.54 The result could be the relocation of an adjacent concept within the ideological morphology, and in the longer run a potentially transformational impact on the core itself if, for instance, the responsibility for human flourishing would, through the economic and legal penalization of infirmity, shift to parents and experts. Conversely, the existing morphology could be reinforced as a M

Shortage of space will necessitate restricting such examples in later chapters and concentrating on significant core texts and statements about ideologies. But the analysis of ideologies must equally proceed from the concrete inspection of political practices and through them (re)constructmg the larger, often implicit, core and adjacent morphology.

82 Ideological Morphology consequence of such a prospect. In addition, perimeter concepts acting as conduits for cultural constraints could override logical constraints. The latter, after all, are internal rather than external and do not interface with the 'real' world. Thus, a 'national' health service could override its entailed universal and equal treatment by granting differential access to various groups, as a response to exigencies of funding and to preferences of allocation. This rudimentary scheme does not rule out other interpretations. We can now appreciate that ideologies are groupings of decontested political concepts. The mutual influence of these concepts is paramountly affected by the specific morphological arrangements that place them in relation to each other; they constitute systems of internal relations,55 albeit open-bordered and in constant mutation. In some cases ideologies constitute virtual freeze-frames of the meanings of the concepts employed, though only if they are saddled with an artificially rigid logic, or if specific cultural meanings are forcefully imposed or excluded. Otherwise their forms will display degrees of flexibility. Ideologies are capable of bending under pressure, and of hosting a number of variations on each of their concepts without collapsing. However, if completely alien meanings of concepts are hastily injected into a particular ideology, its structure may snap. And in the short term, even the more open ideologies eschew the philosophical ideal of questioning some of the fundamental internal relationships among their concepts. The morphology of an ideology exhibits both similarities to and differences from that of a political concept. Because ideologies attempt to assign to their constituent concepts clear meanings, be these ever so logically contestable and culturally partisan ones, it is not uncommon to encounter the belief that they have permanent cores, as well as fixed relationships between core, adjacent, and peripheral concepts. The major ideological families or traditions are frequently portrayed in that light. However, in view of the above elaboration on the essential contestability of concepts, the likelihood that different exponents of, say, socialism would display a fixed and common ideational profile is remote. There are as many socialisms as there are instances of that ideology, and hence a degree of fluidity will apply within any ideological grouping. This fluidity may be more characteristic of ideologies than of political concepts, for the latter are more stringently controlled 55

For useful discussions which reinforce Saussurian insights, see B. Oilman, Alienation, 2nd edn. (Cambridge, 1976), 256-62; Laclau and Mouffe, Hegemony, lllff.

Assembling: From Concepts to Ideologies 83 than the former through linguistic socialization. Ideologies may be held unconsciously and hence offer fewer opportunities for regulating their usage; even when consciously embraced, they are more complex constructs than political concepts and more capable of diverse forms. But having now introduced the term Ideological grouping', how can we determine which ideologies belong to which groupings? How can ideological morphology be classified into sets of distinctive arrangements that constitute the ideological patterns we can then call conservatism, liberalism, or socialism? Any attempt to answer this must begin with a related question: do ideologies have ineliminable concepts, just as political concepts have ineliminable components? In general they do, though the question allows for no easy answer. Liberty is rightly central to liberalism in the sense that its eradication is destructive of that ideology. No known variants of liberalism dispense with the concept of liberty. On the other hand, the ineliminability of concepts in an ideology is not particularly interesting, for the plain reason that virtually all political concepts will be found, deliberately or by default, within the ambit of any ideology. Precisely because ideologies are general, even total, political world-views—either by design or because they have implicit positions on all social issues—the presence within them of any particular concept is not a definitional property. In that sense most concepts within an ideology are ineliminable. Of far greater significance therefore will be two other features. First, as elaborated above, the rotation of each participating concept through a range of meanings until one of those meanings is held vis-a-vis the similarly held, or decontested, meanings of every other concept. Second (and affecting the first), the location secured by a political concept within the ideological framework. In effect, ideologies may be distinguished by the relative ordering in which they deploy similar concepts, on which depend both the precise decontesting of the concepts and the overall interpretation of any ideology's messages. The issue then becomes whether the continual presence of certain concepts in an ideological core location is necessary to maintain the identity of an ideology. This too is normally the case. However, the more complex the ideology, the more it is possible to remove one of its concepts from a core position, either temporarily or in the course of historical and spatial change, though it is highly unlikely to be eliminated from the ideological room altogether. In that case, the question must be whether the flexibility of the ideology's core morphological profile is still sufficiently

84 Ideological Morphology limited to preserve its identifiable pattern of ideas. But what then is the core of an ideology? If it refers to a structurally fixed and substantively permanent set of concepts, ideologies do not have cores. The term 'core' may be employed only as a flexible and empirically ascertainable collection of ideas, fashioned by social conventions.56 Some core concepts may migrate, over time and space, across the structure of an ideology. Others may be refused that right to travel: liberalism does not permit the concept of liberty to migrate to an adjacent or peripheral position. Its ineliminability from the liberal core is part of what constitutes liberal morphology. The same applies to equality in socialism. Moreover, if a core refers to a single constituent concept, ideologies do not have cores, either. They are not typified by one central organizing concept; in fact, they may invariably be described as having more than one core concept. That description pertains primarily to the actual thought-behaviour, as expressed verbally and in writing, of the adherents of the ideology in question. It would, for example, be far too simplistic to assert that liberty alone is found at the liberal core—indeed, one scholar has even identified that core, with equal implausibility, as equality.57 Rather, the core is itself a cluster of concepts. Furthermore, the same family of ideologies may present variants of a core cluster, each of which will emphasize different component concepts. In addition, they may not only eliminate a core concept, but include the odd newcomer. Nevertheless, all these variants may legitimately bear the same ideological tag. Thus some socialists will stress equality as their most important core concept; others, welfare, creativity, or the attainment of species-being—though all four may appear in different variations of the socialist core. Alternatively, there may be disagreement concerning which concepts are core, adjacent, or peripheral within the same ideological system. Different positions have, for instance, been claimed for property within the family of liberalism. Over the centuries that concept has travelled, in some liberal variants, from core to marginal position. It has in effect been eliminated as a core liberal concept. The assessment of the conceptual components of an ideology, and how to establish its minimal essential features, will depend in part on the synchronic 56 It is also, of course, subject to interpretative projections by the analyst of ideologies, though the insistence on empirical evidence for such analysis must be safeguarded. 57 R. Dworkin, 'Liberalism', in A Matter of Principle (Oxford, 1986), 183 and passim. See Ch. 6 below.

Assembling: From Concepts to Ideologies 85 58 standards the evaiuator employs and in part on the diachronie tradition of liberal interpretation into which the evaiuator taps (and there are as many such traditions as legitimate versions of liberalism, constituted by competing recognized conventions that have evolved over time and space), A parallel between the morphology of a concept and of an ideology exists also on another level. The core concepts of an ideology are non-specific, allowing for diverse interpretations to be attached to them through adjacent and peripheral concepts. By binding together a large number of concepts, each of which has been decontested through its association with its neighbouring concepts, ideologies obtain clear ideational profiles. Hence, for example, liberalism will rule out some of the meanings of its core concepts of liberty, rationality, and individuality simply by attaching a specific range of additional concepts to that core. As will be seen in Chapter 4, Mill decontested rationality by assuming the possibility of harmonious development, and individuality by linking it to pluralist views of eccentricity and the human ability to form life-plans. Liberty was decoded within these sets of constraints. Thus the meaning of each of the concepts within an ideological system, as well as the overarching meaning the system in toto is held to represent, will depend heavily on ideological morphology. That morphology will invariably reflect the fact that ideologies permit logical adjacency to be restricted by cultural adjacency. This vital mechanism enables ideologies to minimize the problem of internal inconsistency by creating acceptable connections between terms and arguments in order to escape logical criticism.59 Perfect internal consistency should in any event not be expected to obtain in political thought, but even salient inconsistencies can be overcome in the formulation of ideologies. The association of nationalism and socialism within German fascism is a conspicuous instance of forging links between viewpoints considered by many to be incompatible, logically as well as culturally. A further comparison between Nazism and Stalin's 'socialism in one country' illustrates the range of possible combinations of socialism and nationalism within different cultural contexts and idea-environments. It may be useful to illustrate the above discussion by exploring an analogy with a map. We may regard logical constraints as determining the network of roads emanating from a given point—given 58

See pp. 103-4 below. For a psychological exploration of the problems of consistency and dissonance-reduction in order to achieve psychological harmony, see M. Billig, Ideology and Social Psychology (Oxford, 1982) 162 ff. 39

86 Ideological Morphology by our choice of starting-point, not as immanent to the map— whereas cultural constraints make recommendations as to the preferable route, depending on whether our priority lies in landscapes, speed, safety, or avoiding hostile villagers. The cultural constraints may also close some routes to traffic and recommend unfinished roads. Each ideology in turn offers a map competing with those of its rivals. But here the notion of a map becomes intriguing. Imagine the main political concepts as a given number of towns, except that each ideology seeks to position them not only within a different road grid, but wishes to alter the topographical space between them, even to reshuffle their locations entirely, merge them, or deny that some of them exist. Unusually, for a map, the relationships between towns would themselves be multi-dimensional. The traveller would be offered a range of considerations in respect of moving between any two points, considerations that would not be evident on a simple reading of the map as a spatial representation of distance. Values such as efficiency, comfort, aesthetics, security, would supply alternative schemes for linking up the towns. Unlike a geographical terrain in which spatial relations are fixed, no one dimension of an ideological map is constant. What is constant is the very network of mutually informing and influencing concepts, on which human minds (rational or otherwise) and human wills impose the particular preferred set. Moreover, as there is no absolute sense in which any of the competing ideologies is superior, there is no correct map. The specific morphology of an ideology that entitles us to group a number of its instances under one heading may be illustrated by an extension of the table/concept analogy. Ideologies may be likened to rooms that contain various units of furniture ki proximity to each other. Two important, if obvious, observations need to be kept in mind: (1) rooms may be distinguished by the kinds and combinations of units of furniture they accommodate (kitchens will have sinks and cookers; studies will have desks and bookshelves); (2) the same type of room will appear in an infinite variety of furniture-combinations (there are hundreds of different don's studies in Oxford). This is precisely the position with regard to ideologies. Though it is impossible to give a clear-cut definition of liberalism, it is empirically ascertainable that liberalism has always contained units such as liberty, human rationality, and individualism. Subtract one of them from the liberal configuration and profound question marks begin to appear. Subtract a second and it is no longer liberalism. Similarly, a kitchen without a sink is hardly a kitchen; without a cooker either its identity is destroyed.

Assembling: From Concepts to Ideologies 87 Note also that, though there are countless kinds of cookers, they are all cookers; the same rule will apply to varieties of individualism. In sum, the appearance of certain items in a pattern endows an ideology with a distinctive nature. The example, however, is an extreme one: kitchens and studies share few items of furniture, tables and chairs being the most probable ones. But what if a common pool of furniture is used? Here we alight on the critical issue of organization. It is unlikely that in the hands of different furnishers the same room will be repeatedly cloned; far more probable that identical units of furniture may be used to create very different rooms. Modular furniture, for example, is specifically designed to achieve that. Ideologies, as we have argued, will display most, if not all, of the major political concepts within their system. Only the small number of closed, doctrinaire ideologies will succeed in forcing out a concept altogether. The key lies in the relation of the units to one another, in their positioning vis-a-vis the centre, and in the way units are made to interlock and support each other. A room with a table at its centre may be a billiard room, a dining room, or a study. It is unlikely to be a bedroom. If a table is surrounded by four chairs and a table cloth, rather than by strong arc lights, surgical equipment, and an anaesthetized person, it is most probably a diningtable, not an operating one. Now this is exactly the case with an ideology. If we find liberty, rationality, and individualism at its centre, while equality—though in evidence-—decorates the wall, we are looking at an exemplar of liberalism. If order, authority, and tradition catch our eye upon opening the door, while equality is shoved under the bed or, at best, one of its weaker specimens is displayed only when the guests arrive, we are looking at a version of conservatism. Core, adjacent, and peripheral units pattern the room and permit its categorization. It may also be noted that in some ideological rooms the furniture will be elaborate, elegant, and striking; in others spartan, rough, and bland. Matters can, however, become more complicated. What if my study also happens to contain a sink and a fridge in a salient position? What if—taking this further—two ideologies, one calling itself liberalism and the other conservatism, happen to share the decontested concepts of limited power, liberty from intervention by other people, constitutionalism, and private property? This is perhaps the most important facet of ideological morphology; the absence of absolute boundaries which separate the features of ideological systems. Multiple instances exist of ideological hybrids that could only be described as conservative liberalism, liberal

88 Ideological Morphology socialism, and the like. This is, however, the crux of any analysis, To compartmentalize ideologies into prefabricated categories called socialism or liberalism flies in the face of the evidence. Ideologies are modular structures, frequently exhibiting a highly fluid morphology. The myriad variants they manifest can only be broadly reduced to the few main categories, or families, with which we are conversant. It is useless to entertain the notion of precise ideological boundaries, or of features exclusive to one ideology or the other. These are merely popular as well as scholarly conventions for simplicity's sake. They are, unfortunately, conventions that have caused great misunderstandings both in the worlds of politics and of academe, and have frequently vitiated the subtlety requisite for the serious investigation of ideologies. An appreciation of ideologies as multi-conceptual constructs, and as loose composites of decontested concepts with a variety of internal combinations, provides the clue to understanding the linkage between political concepts and the many forms ideologies embrace. The comparative study of ideologies—synchronic and diachrortic comparison being the touchstones of scientific study— can only commence on that basis. The various profiles ideologies adopt are to a significant extent accounted for by the morphology of the ideational subject-matter on which they build. Nevertheless, comparison can also lead to classification, and here evidently boundary problems occur. One way of confronting these is to consider the similarities between the classification of ideologies, as loosely holistic phenomena, and the psychological process of Gestalt-forming. It is hardly surprising to find a structuralist such as Levi-Strauss making a similar connection between 'Gestalt' in psychology and structural perspectives, according to which a configuration is always more than the sum of its parts.60 In Gestalt psychology that additional import is a question of perception and recognition of evidence, but with respect to the analysis of ideologies it is also a question of interpretation imposed on such evidence. Merleau-Ponty likewise regarded parts as bereft of meaning on their own, and allowed for their rearrangement to form different wholes through which an emerging rationality could be seen. Gestalt was a pattern that accorded significance to what he termed 'the contingent configurations of the empirical'.61 And ideologies, too, have their Gestalten. Although I may enter many socialist 60 61

L^vi-Strauss, Structural Anthropology, L 324-5. M, Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception (London, 1962). See D. Cooie, 'Phenomenology and Ideology in the Work of Merleau-Ponty', in N. O'Sullivan (ed), The Structure of Modern Ideology (Aldershot, 1989), 130-2.

Assembling: From Concepts to Ideologies 89 rooms in my lifetime, for them to be categorizable as socialist I will need to be able to say: 'despite the different carpets, and even though in some cases the rooms lacked cupboards, and had very poor paintings on the walls, their arrangement of furniture was plainly socialist, not conservative'. What can make me reasonably sure of that will occupy us in the latter parts of the book. Wittgenstein's notion of family resemblances offers a further approach to these problems. For Wittgenstein a particular combination of features could be identified as having broad similarities with another particular combination, if enough features overlapped. He called up the phrase 'family resemblances' to characterize 'a complicated network of similarities overlapping and criss-crossing: sometimes overall similarities, sometimes similarities of detail'.62 This notion differs somewhat from the structuralism of anthropology, if not of Gestalt theory. Levi-Strauss's structural anthropology seems to be more formal and precise than the rattier flexible idea of family resemblances, which is more useful with reference to the macro-analysis of an ideology in toto than with reference to its details.*3 However, ideologies can also be subjected to the more rigorous scrutiny of morphological analysis, applied to the microanalysis of the idea-environments of a given concept, whereas LeviStrauss is concerned with the universal features of practices and Wittgenstein with the common features of units. Notwithstanding, Wittgenstein departed both from Gestalt theory and from structuralism in introducing the dimension of change over time. Families, after all, have histories. They are identified because their members have a direct relationship with other people that have hitherto been members of the family. Wittgenstein was anxious to argue that those resemblances are like a thread. There is no one fibre running through the thread in its entirety, only the overlapping of many fibres which create the object we call thread. This may be another way of describing a tradition. Ideologies exist on historical continua and the bunching together of political concepts in long-term relationships is a central ideological characteristic. An ideology may well follow a developmental sequence during which its components will subtly change. Over a long period of time, as with biological evolution, its core may shed or acquire concepts, and its morphology may undergo some transformation. The history of a tradition may assist in the decision whether to classify a particular instance as within or outside the confines of 62

Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, para. 67. " See below, Ch, 3, s. (/). 63

90 Ideological Morphology an ideology. Because we know that British liberalism abandoned private property as a core concept and introduced a notion of community, while retaining other identifiably liberal features, we need not commit the error of classifying liberal communitarianisrn as a form of socialism. In this case a variant of liberalism has been wrongly renamed. But on another dimension, the name of an ideology—its signifier—may remain constant. There are variants of liberalism that have retained both the name and the conceptual morphology; but there are identically named liberalisms that under close scrutiny reveal the existence of two different ideologies. Two problems now present themselves in applying family resemblances to ideologies. First, we clearly cannot pinpoint the beginning of a family; conceptually, that grouping may have emerged out of a custom which gave a number of objects the same name; empirically, there have been families as long as there have been human beings. Some ideologies, it has been argued, are more recent historical phenomena, dependent on the development of mass media without which their dissemination and consumption is impossible. Ideologies in their modern guise—liberalism, socialism, certainly Marxism and fascism—were subject to an initial decision to name them; in some cases, even to (re)construct them artificially, although some may have existed before they were named. Second, Wittgenstein's analogy of a thread as a discontinuous fibre may not be quite apposite. Although the same ideological family may display different decontestations of its constituent concepts, so that no decontestation overlaps with another, the fundamental aspects of morphology will run through all its instances: at least in the short run there will be a unique core, and certain concepts will be adjacent to it. As for each specific ideological family, the question of continuity of meaning is not an easy one to resolve. On one view the meanings of core concepts, though the same word is applied to them, differ from one cultural and historical context to another, so that it is merely the terms that maintain continuity. On another view, the meanings of political concepts can be sufficiently preserved and inherited to suggest that continuity prevails over change. It is not only that each successive instance will bear a notable resemblance to its predecessor. Whereas in Wittgenstein's family, the first member may be quite unlike the most recent, there still are recognizable resemblances between early and late versions of all major Western ideologies. But these have to be demonstrated. What we cannot do is take an ideological family as given and then discuss its overlapping variants as they now appear to us. We have to insist on some structural, empirically ascertainable common

Assembling: From Concepts to Ideologies 91 features over time and space before we bestow the same name on different ideological genres. In that sense, too, ideologies are bereft of fixed cores. Not only do family resemblances change, but the family resemblance may well be one selected by the observer, not one 'inherently' salient. The Wittgensteinian notion of family resemblances, when transported to ideological analysis, serves as a reminder that history plays a crucial role in the study of political concepts. They have conventionally appeared grouped together by traditions and ideologies, have had cumulative meanings attached to them and have existed on a level of political action and political culture, which have important pasts that contribute to their meanings. To concentrate on synchronic meaning, which cannot alone account for the burden that political concepts bear, is a weakness not only of semiology but of much analytical philosophy. Conversely, historians tend to look at contingent and unique occurrences and are suspicious of recurrent patterns. The emphasis on morphology counterbalances that by drawing attention to the general patterns that the history of political ideas—rooted as it is both in language and political concepts—must display. It has already been noted that those patterns need not be universal; at most, they may be contingently universal or nigh-universal, reflecting the proliferation of human conventions, though they may contract again in the future. (/) THE ESCAPE FROM STRONG RELATIVISM

Conceptual indeterminacy, and its ideological response in the form of decontesting, may seem to posit an inescapable relativism which cannot prioritize any ideological solution over another, a view shared by some postmodernists. Importantly, however, although there are no correct definitions of political concepts, not all usages are equally acceptable. To say that they are not equally acceptable is not to dispute that unacceptable usages may gain social legitimacy in specific contexts. Rather, it is a reasonable concession by the analyst of ideologies towards political and moral philosophers, not because it is necessary or relevant to the analysis engaged in here, nor because rationalism or intuitionisrn are compellingly persuasive, but because of the consequentialist impact that political concepts and their signifiers, political words, have in the real world. Rorty has forcefully argued that the very issue of relativism cannot exist in a world where there is no truth 'out there' which language must represent. It is not that relativism is right, but that

92 Ideological Morphology universalism is unhelpful,64 But whereas we may agree with Rorty that there are no absolutely true standards independent of the vocabularies we employ, the absence of a 'view from nowhere'65 does not endorse the view from anywhere. Nor does the rejection of total or strong relativism necessarily ensnare us in a universalist perspective, as the purveyors of dichotomies would have it. Rather, societies may adopt standards and express value-preferences which, however imperfect, are the result of the combination of two factors: enlightened deliberation and factual knowledge. Enlightened deliberation assumes, on the basis of the experiences of articulate individuals—and this is merely a working hypothesis rather than a truth-—that reflective, open, and collaborative consideration of courses of action produces results which have less ill-effects for individuals than the converse. There is no suggestion here that one set of responses would be elicited by these processes. Indeed, enlightened political debate may itself arrive at different conclusions, liberal, socialist, conservative, or other. Nor is there a suggestion that such debate is not contextually embedded; it is merely that some contexts may be more conducive to the type of conceptual thinking that promotes human flourishing than others. The value of human flourishing, however, may been seen as an acceptable starting-point for political debate, even as we acknowledge that there is no way of determining tihat it is universally valid. However, standards of behaviour cannot be the consequence of preferences expressed in abstract enlightened debate alone, however openly and deliberatively arrived at. They must also be guided by factual knowledge based on experience, such as that torture brings suffering, or unemployment in developed societies is correlated with a rise in crime. The concept of welfare will rely, to no small extent, on medical and psychological knowledge, and that knowledge will serve to stabilize, if not to decontest completely, the indeterminizing tendencies in all political concepts. If human rights derive, among other reasons, from a desire to decrease pain and suffering, the natural and human sciences may supply standards beneath which human life will be intolerable, though individual variations—as with any empirically ascertainable phenomenon—will always persist. As Mill contended, it would be absurd to pretend that people ought to live as i f . . . experience had done nothing towards showing that one mode of existence, or of 64 45

R. Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (Cambridge, 1989), 8. T. Nagel, The View from Nowhere (Oxford, 1986).

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conduct, is preferable to another... it is the privilege and proper condition of a human being, arrived at the maturity of his faculties, to use and interpret experience in his own way.66

Again, two caveats need to be entered. First, even state-of-knowledge evidence awaits contrary proof, yet societies cannot be blamed for abiding by what they may reasonably perceive the facts to be. Thus, once psychoanalysis legitimated the factual status of notions such as repression or unconscious drives, it became reasonable to accept these as a basis for decisions about human good or benefit. If smoking is considered factually damaging to one's health, it is legitimate to aspire to contain that practice, assuming all the while that human beings do not on the whole desire damage to themselves. Second, interpretations of identical empirical facts may be so different as to make the divergent ways in which they impinge on ideological thinking irreconcilable. This does not imply the nonexistence of the fact or the experience; merely that an agreed process on how to access to and know about them is not always available. Thus the accuracy of conceptualizing facts is impossible to ascertain, though that may have little bearing on the assumed validity or the function of the conceptualization, or even on the way it in turn recreates a social reality. All these caveats apply to enlightened deliberation as weE, for its assumed beneficial results are themselves a consequence of accumulated and shared factual experiences. It is also quite possible that some political conclusions arrived at through the combined process of enlightened deliberation and the establishment of facts through experience may be shared by a number of societies. That does not mean that they are a priori universal or intuitive, but they may be quasi-universal cultural practices, such as the high regard in which nurturing the human young is held. Even on the stricter political level, authority, obligation, and liberty may invoke similar images among different peoples, from which we may establish predominant or at least common usages. In addition, once a concept is postulated, logical constraints on its structure may counterbalance its interpretative fluidity and contribute to the establishment of common patterns. Hence both strong relativism and universalism may be eschewed. So whereas one can endorse the postmodernist contention that knowledge is never neutral, in order for decisions to be taken in societies it is necessary to accept that pockets of temporary and/ or fragmentary knowledge, which have been subjected to critical 66

J. S. Mill, On Liberty (London, 1910), 116.

94 Ideological Morphology assessment according to the best available criteria at the time, may provide reasonable guidelines. The deliberative equilibria which ensue wUl be of different temporal durations: some changing quickly, others far more stable. Nevertheless, and as a backdrop to the discussion to come, the escape from relativism cannot be attained through the tools used in analysing ideologies. The language of ideologies is couched in terms of truth-assertions, but ideologies—as contended in the previous chapter—do not attain truth-value status. The relevant question for the analyst is: what has to hold, in terms of conceptual configurations and prioritizations (reflecting cultural beliefs), in order for an assertion to be considered true by its producers? Such analysis—as distinct from what is being analysed—can offer no privileged viewpoint, though it may supply materials from which to forge privileged positions. The escape from relativism must therefore be attained through other paradigms, combining knowledge with the reflective assessment on human existence, the latter to include also the imaginative exploration of alternatives based on experiences regarded as dehumanizing. The preferred positions that will emerge may themselves be overturned on the basis of changed knowledge or new reflection. This view is sympathetic to Merleau-Ponty's observation that, because we are in the world, 'our reflections are carried out in the temporal flux on which we are trying to seize.., The philosopher... is a perpetual beginner'.67 That is immanent critique which at the same time is not trapped in immanence.68 If postmodernists such as Derrida or Lyotard perceive an unconceprualizable or unutterable chasm beckoning beyond the spatial and temporal finitudes that confine us,69 ideologies offer a necessary haven—however contestable—from that void in the very inevitability of their conceptual morphologies, enabling us to function in our personal and social worlds. On the level of distanciated scholarship, however, postmodernism facilitates a stark redecontestation of political concepts and, in particular, identifies the cultural quasi-eontingency of previous decontestations rooted in logical techniques or in specific explanatory paradigms. Its essential destructiveness notwithstanding, postmodernism offers those prepared to break with its sceptical and frequently nihilist epistemology the opportunity for a reordering of meaning on lines adumbrated above. In the end a balance has to be struck: while we 67

Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology, p. xiv. See Bagleton, Ideology, 171. 691 J. Derrida, Of ' Grammatology (Baltimore, Md., 1976); j.-f. Lyotard, The Differend (Manchester, 1988). 68

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cannot ignore the human ability to reflect, to make sense out of the world and endow it with decontested meaning, nor can we attach any degree of absoluteness to those meanings or accept them all. Any interpretation, including the one advanced here, must comply with the evaluative maxim: awaiting contrary reflective reassessment. To conclude, there is a distinct disjuncture between the viewpoint of the ideologist and that of the analyst. While no ideology can legitimate ideational diversity beyond what it condones in its own conceptual configurations70 and must consequently deny or disparage the innate pluralism of language and meaning, the positing of such diversity underlies the study of ideologies. Ideological morphology is neither fixed nor permanent apart from the decontesting nature of the core-adjacency-periphery nexus itself. Within those confines, internal formations are malleable relationships among political ideas that reflect changing cultural and historical conceptions. These latter factors rejig the basic morphology of ideologies to create different ideological families, so that within each family the structural element can only be held together through devices such as the Wittgensteinian 'family resemblance'. Nevertheless, the existence of historically long-term families of ideological interpretation suggests that meaning is not as contingent as some post-structuralists would have it. Political ideas can exist in broad patterns that may be shared, or at least overlap. When those patterns, which define each specific ideological family, change, they may do so almost imperceptibly. The exploration of meaning in the next chapter will focus centrally on such diachronic perspectives, as expressed among others through hermeneutical approaches and B Begriffsgehschichte. 70

On liberal flexibility as distinct from diversity, see Ch. 4,

3

Applying: The Contexts of Ideological Meaning

The text as a whole . . . may be compared to an object, which may be viewed from several sides, but never from all sides at once.1 QUIPPED with a developed conception of ideological morphoE logy, and building on the bases of the previous chapters, we now turn to exploring further the consequences of conceptual contestability and determinacy in conjunction with questions of meaning. As seen in Chapter 2, the composition of concepts, the relative position of their components, and the conceptual ideaenvironment in which they are set contribute importantly to a determination of their meaning. But from the outset it has been stressed that morphology alone cannot account for meaning, precisely because the morphology of an ideology is not a hermetically sealed network of conceptual relationships. This is so both for participant and observer. The hermeneutic persuasion has driven home the importance of the scholar's perceptions and misconceptions in constructing an interpretation of reality, as distinct from the impossible task of reconstructing that reality. The scholar may in addition be confronted with the infinite regression of decontesting the concept of ideology itself in the course of attempting to explain ideology as a decontesting exercise. In that sense we can only attempt to argue rationally for the plausibility of our approach to ideology in terms of its explanatory power, usefulness, or analytical attractiveness. In addition, we may pick up some wrong signals when engaged in the actual analysis of a particular ideology. We may overlook adjacent concepts, surround the core with wrong neighbours, 1 P. Ricoeur, Interpretation Theory: Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning (Fort Worth, Tex., 1976), 77.

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misapprehend the arguments we are trying to understand, overor underemphasize certain concepts, locate the ideology in inaccurate contexts, or misconstrue the consumption-value attributed to an ideology by its public. Nevertheless, we are not operating entirely in the realm of speculation and conjecture. Some aspects of the meaning of political concepts relate, as we have seen, to scientifically determinable facts, inasmuch as they have been integrated into political language; other aspects to generally recognized cultural speech practices and thought-behaviour. The observable employment of political language may supply us with a range of workable political concepts which, while different from the stipulative models or ideal-types preferred by some philosophers, are nevertheless the stuff from which conceptual political analysis can be fashioned. (a) THE INEVITABILITY OF HISTORY

There are, of course, many ways of bestowing meaning in an ideological system. We have noted in Chapter 1 some of the angles from which diverse disciplines observe and interpret ideologies. Those are questions concerning the ways in which the phenomenon of ideology can illuminate human and social conduct. But what of the phenomenon itself rather than its consequences? It is not the intention here to belittle functional or teleological explanations, which have always loomed large in ideological analysis. We are however, to reiterate, more concerned with what ideology is as a form of political theory than with what it is good for, though the two perspectives may inform each other. The question becomes more complex when the nature of ideologies is approached through their formation and development. It is, after all, a convention inherited from ancient Greece to harness genesis and growth to explanations of nature and essence. Mannheim may have been right to reject the dualism between meaning and existence which he pinned on modern Idealist thought, but it is unclear from his discussion on what Ms denial of the separation of genesis and meaning is grounded. When he insisted that there is 'a complex of conditions of emergence and existence2 which determine the nature and development of an assertion', his must have been more than a temporal argument in order to hold water. A mere 'geneticism' would relegate the study of ideologies to a tracing of 2

K, Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia (New York, n.d.; 1st publ. 1936), 292-3.

98 Ideological Morphology developmental sequences, with the attendant dangers that such a sequence attain a life of its own, abstracted from socio-cultural location, or—as already noted—that the idea of the corruption of a correct meaning may take root. This is where the utility of a third perspective applies: the morphological arrangements of cultural and socio-ethical concepts must necessarily supplement both their origins and consequences as sources of meaning. All this does not imply that we abandon temporal perspectives. Quite the reverse: it raises the broader issue of the role of history in ideological analysis. The concept of history makes its entrance through four different apertures. First and centrally, history—as well as geography—is an integral arena within which political concepts and ideologies are located, and it contributes the context required to concretize their particular meanings through perimeter concepts and ideas. Second, political concepts bear the accumulative burdens of their past in a manner rare among economic or sociological concepts. Democracy is a term heavily packed with past associations, debates, and prejudices stretching back to antiquity. Its present coating peels off only to reveal further layers without which the outer membrane would collapse. Most political concepts carry a public dimension of discourse which enshrines specific connotations as points of reference. Roosevelt's 'four freedoms', the trinity of the French Revolution linking equality, liberty, and fraternity, constitutions as official documents that embody ideological perceptions—all these indicate the salience of temporal points to which conceptual meaning is anchored. The formal, public aspect of ideologies combined with their social production and wide consumption ensures that linguistic innovation must to a considerable extent defer to customary usage. Third, the notion of change—as a specific reading of historical time—is itself a socio-political concept directly incorporated into an ideology. The concept of progress, for instance, both interprets reality as the march of human and social improvement, and reacts on other adjacent concepts to fashion a particular understanding of welfare, liberty, or rationality. A conservative view of slowly changing phenomena affects adjacent concepts that will either be halted in their development or construed through the prism of organic change. Theories of development or evolution thus allow for change within ideologies, either on the macrolevel of an ideology directed at attaining teleologkal or open-ended goals, or on the microlevel of patterned change within the structure of an ideology. In the latter case the concepts interact and co-ordinate their reinterpretation until an internal balance, or a continuous dynamic

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equilibrium, is achieved. It is consequently believed 'natural' for political concepts to be dynamic capsules for the development of their ineliminable cores. One difference may then be over the possibility of human intervention as a cause of the ordering and reordering of conceptual relationships. Furthermore, the nature of political language as decontestation operates at the very least to stabilize change, whether as stasis, as equilibrium, or as the attainment of a teleological end-state, so that there are limits to the fluidity of concepts and ideologies, and indeed to theories of history. Chaos and total contingency have no place in political language. If history (at least in a non-teleological sense) invokes the idea of constant renewal and non-repetition, the tension with political language is evident. Political language restrains the continual historical impulse for renewal by offering stabilizing patterns, and it does that through constraining our conceptualizations of history logically and culturally. The range of possible interpretations of historical and spatial events is restricted to a relatively small number of dominant paradigms, continually challenged by a few secondary ones, though even those constitute only a small sample from the potential perspectives on time and space. Every now and again a new perspective emerges which involves conceptual restructuring. Then a debate may occur over whether that perspective should already have been evident in past interpretations, or whether it could only arise given a particular set of cultural circumstances. Fourth, broad theories of history may themselves be a factor affecting the configurations of political concepts. Thus, a deterministic view of history will influence the decontesting of liberty and of power, perhaps subjecting human will to laws of development and serving to reduce the 'free choice' assumed to be available. In contrast, a view of history evolving towards increasing individual rationality will affect on a time-continuum the relative weight accorded to rationality in the make-up of the core concepts. The 'from status to contract' theory of history will expand the concept of individualism and concentrate on the shifting nature of human relationships consequent on that movement. In sum, history is both a concrete framework within which meaning can be located and an abstract value-laden concept which attaches itself to an ideological formation and colours the meanings of its contiguous concepts. Winch has identified serious difficulties with the temporal dimension: 'ideas and theories are constantly developing and changing, and . . . each system of ideas, its component elements being

100 Ideological Morphology interrelated internally, has to be understood in and for itself; the combined result of which is to make systems of ideas a very unsuitable subject for broad generalizations'.3 This is too pessimistic a view. Concepts and systems of ideas can be interrelated temporally on an historical dimension as well as spatially in frozen time. The 'in and for itself of a system must include the accumulative meanings it bears, and there is no reason to suppose that those are devoid of patterns, or that generalizations about past change cannot be introduced into ideological analysis. Though diachronk analysis, as was contended in Chapter 2, can only be superimposed on syrtchronic understanding, series of synchronic systems can be assembled in such a way as to shed a strong light on diachrony. However, Winch is right in parting company with attempts at scientific generalization directed towards predicting the future developments of ideologies. (b) CONTEXTUAL HISTORY AND INTENTIONALITY

The relationship between meaning and historical context has been explored by the influential school of historical research associated in particular with Quentin Skinner. Skinner has refocused scholarly attention on the issue of authorial intention as the central task of the historian of ideas when studying a text of a political thinker or ideologist. An initial feature of Skinner's approach is that he is not overly committed to maintaining the distinction between political theory and ideology, a distinction that, as we have seen, is far less categorical than is usually maintained. As he urges: 'We can hardly claim to be concerned with the history of political theory unless we are prepared to write it as real history—that is, as the record of an actual activity, and in particular as the history of ideologies.'4 Of course, ideology is not coterminous with any system of political ideas. It may be preferable, as 1 have argued, to pose the issue as one in which any system of political thought must contain ideological elements, rather than conflate the two. But the sentiment expressed by Skinner is commendable. Skinner's approach regards political texts as a written reflection of deliberate and purposive speech-acts, and emphasizes the need 3

P. Winch, The Idea of a. Social Science and its Relation to Philosophy (London, 1963), 133. 4 Q. Skinner, 'Some Problems in the Analysis of Political Thought and Action', Political Theory, 2 (1974), 280.

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to reconstruct the conscious intentions of the thinker within his or her social context as the prime method of making sense of an ideology or political theory. In adopting Austin's notion of the illocutionary force which attaches to utterances and iEuminates what an agent is doing in performing a speech-act, Skinner calls for historical scholarship to explain the behaviour of agents not only in the language of causation or motive, but to redescribe it on two alternative dimensions: decoding the meaning of political speech-acts in terms of the intentions of the agents, and placing those intentions firmly within the context of 'the conventional standards which are generally found to apply to such types of social action within a given situation'. Social actions, it would appear, are simply individual actions undertaken within a social context and which also conform to known instances of commonplace behaviour in a society.5 That social context contains in addition the acceptable standards of rationality employed by the culture of the agent and as such provides indispensable information about the rationality of the beliefs of the agent under consideration.6 In many ways, particularly in his emphasis on context and on the retrieval of meaning, Skinner has revitalized the nature of ideological research. Nevertheless, the heart of his enterprise diverges from the purview that an analyst of ideologies could most usefully adopt. Recently, Skinner has come out in favour of assuming the truthfulness of utterances and taking what people say at face value. He contrasts this with the social anthropologists' assignment of symbolic value to statements that purport to uphold the structure of the speaker's society.7 This stark choice is not one that the student of ideologies need make. Even if we bypass Skinner's unduly conservative characterization of structural anthropology (one could equally examine disruptive mechanisms conducive to change), there seems no reason to presume that a scholar could not accord equal respect both to 'face-value' reproduction of intent and to unconscious structural or psychological symbols that refer to further aspects of thought and conduct not apparent to the agent or the agent's society. The ostensible danger that this merely imposes the false perspective of the present-day historian is both unavoidable and unwarranted. It is unavoidable—even in the case of recovering intent—as 5

Cp. Q. Skinner, ' "Social Meaning" and the Explanation of Social Action', in J. Tully (ed.). Meaning and Context: Quentin Skinner and his Critics (Oxford, 1988), 83-4, 87-8, 94. 6 Skianer, 'A Reply to my Critics', ibid. 244-5, 247. 7 Ibid. 246-7.

102 Ideological Morphology Skinner frankly acknowledges, because 'there can be no observational evidence which is not to some degree shaped by our concepts and thus by the vocabulary we use to express them'. But this argument runs counter to the reasons he uses to reject contemporary methods of explaining the behaviour of historical figures. Those unwholesome methods, asserts Skinner, 'require us to map their distinctions and the terms they used for expressing them on to the distinctions and expressions we happen to use ourselves'.8 Again, a dichotomy is posited where none is necessary. Hermeneutical perspectives have re-emphasized that we cannot help looking for what we think significant, and construing past vocabulary in terms of present language. If, as Skinner seems to do, we accept that social reality is at least in part a construct of our minds, then it is unavoidable that past realities will be reconstructed through the conceptual frameworks of following generations, however excellent the instructions bequeathed to them by their forebears. Bearing this built-in bias in mind, we can then move to approximate the usage and meanings with which words were endowed at a particular time and place. But there is quite another level on which Skinner's misgivings are unwarranted. We may deliberately wish to apply current perspectives and concerns to previous societies in order to tease out aspects of their thought and behaviour about which they could have had no way of knowing. The political theory of modem feminism is exactly such a case in point, where available facts are (re)discovered with the aid of different ideological paradigms. Skinner himself concedes that concepts not available at a particular time may later be introduced to organize empirical evidence, but does so reluctantly and incidentally.9 The point is that the two scholarly activities can coexist as equally respectable and equally valuable. Recovering intent is one facet of ideological explanation; analysis of implicit but unconscious assumptions is another. Establishing the relation of both to current theoretical interests may be a third, even though it will suffer the ephemerality of a moving target. For instance, many late nineteenth-century European liberals intended (first) to recommend the more equal redistribution of social goods; they assumed unwittingly (second) that power relationships were to be found only in the formal, and hence politically controllable, sphere of social relationships and the messages they unintentionally imparted suggest that they were for the most part unaware of the social bases of power. And what makes them (third) interesting to us is 8

Skinner, "A Reply', 250, 252.

9

Ibid. 254.

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their unusual employment of communitarian organicism with a liberal bent, a conception that is considered problematic in modern liberal theory,10 All these facets of that variant of liberal ideology merit analysis; the study of none debars exploration of the others. The more we know about an ideology, the more we can maximize the explanatory power at our disposal, and the more we can understand (a disposition inevitably located in us). There is of course another eventuality, crucial to the analyst of ideologies, that is eclipsed in Skinner's emphasis on face-value intentionality and the truth-value of individual utterances. It is the problem of the fit between the self-perception of a holder of beliefs and their actual contents. The issue at stake is not the illocutionary force of an utterance, but the subsequent intention to put a particular ideological gloss on one's own political statements, as in 'my views are those of a true socialist'. It may very well be that an intention to be counted under a particular flag is simply invalidated by the understanding of others. In the best of all possible worlds, one who calls her or himself a socialist will indeed be one. In all other worlds, a disjuncture may occur between the self-classification of a socialist and the distinguishing marks of socialist thought as understood within that individual's social environment or by other available yardsticks outside that society. For example, the forms of 'democratic socialism' practised in former communist systems present little evidence of a family resemblance with Western social democracy, and suggest that the terms may have been stretched beyond conventionally acceptable limits, or that they covered more than one concept due to different conventions developing in West and East respectively. But nor can we permit the external imposition of an ideological identity totally alien to or rejected by an individual who holds political beliefs with some modicum of rationality. It would not do merely to tell a laissez-faire libertarian that he or she is not, contrary to their own assertion, within the liberal camp. The challenge is for them to explain on what view of liberalism they justify their claim to a space within that camp and to assess this against competing interpretations of liberalism. The conundrum facing the scholar is to establish a synchronic balance between the self-definition of an individual professing to adhere to an ideological family, the understandings of other contemporaries concerning that individual's place in the family, and the interpretation by the scholar both of the concrete evidence and 10

This liberal variant will be discussed in Ch. 5.

104 Ideological Morphology of the diachronic tradition currently held to constitute that family. This threefold interplay is essential to determining the nature of any specific ideology. Meanings will therefore centrally include agents' self-interpretations/1 but cannot rest content with their uncritical acceptance. For the purpose of analysing ideologies they may well serve as the starting-point, but each instance will then have to be tested against the growing body of accumulated evidence concerning that ideology's macro-features. Just as a morphological profile of a socially prevalent ideology may identify certain rules that exclude pretenders to the faith or plain unsophisticates, an innovative individual may push forward the frontiers of an ideology to include new tenets, omit some of the old, and thus modify its ideational profile. But in each case intentionality comprises only part of the presenting features. The question of contemporary reaction leads on to the major issue of the production as well as the consumption of ideologies. In focusing on an ideology as a product, we cannot rest content with the relationship of product to producer, e.g. the reflection of Marxist class or Skinnerian author in the finished ideational article. Rather, as with the analysis of all products, we must also bring in the relationship between product and consumer. Though it may well be, as Gouldner argues, that ideological products tend to gain undesirable independence,12 it is also the case that there are two ways of recontextualizing and relocating them in their historical milieux; by means of authors' intentions and of consumers' understandings (the Marxist, who would see decontextualization as alienation, solves the problem by eliminating the ideological product altogether). Here the distinction between political ideas and political ideologies, underplayed by Skinner, gains renewed significance when we shift our attention from the creation of ideologies to their function or, when deliberately contrived, their purpose. Skinner's analysis concentrates on two features of political speech-acts: they are produced (intentionally) and they are produced by an individual (an author). The position with ideologies is somewhat different, for they certainly cannot be adequately described in those terms. First—as we have seen—though some aspects of ideologies may be intentional, others may not. Second, it would be misleading to ascribe ideologies to an individual " As J, Bohmati insists on (New Philosophy of Social Science (Oxford, 1991), 378, 107). 12 A. W. Gouldner, The Dialectic of Ideology and Technology (London, 1976), 44.

Applying: The Contexts of Meaning 105 producer. Third, to concentrate on the production of ideologies is to overlook features which ought to attract equal interest. For unlike other sets of political ideas, two central characteristics of ideologies are their overt action-orientation and group-orientation. The action-orientation of ideologies distinguishes them by their propensity either to recommend political conduct directly or, indirectly, to make others adopt conduct-evoking thinking through the shaping of legitimate language; hence the ways in which ideologies are perceived and understood—that is, consumed—are vital to an appreciation of how they operate. The group-orientation of ideologies suggests that they are, as are all forms of language, collective constructs in their production13 and, specifically and typically, consumed by groups qua groups, thus contributing to the formulation of communal ends. Ideology, more than other kinds of political thought, is a phenomenon squarely located within group activity; a form of political discourse not only produced by groups, as might be asserted about all political thought, but consumed by significant political publics. Let us look more closely at the question of production. Are the producers of ideologies really outstanding individuals, informed by their social contexts but nevertheless intentionally and personally creating an opus of action-oriented political thinking? Are we not then continuing to debate in the mould of traditional political thought, if on a somewhat broader base, observing talented and exceptional elites in thought for the edification of the masses? Or is the production of ideologies elitist in another sense, namely, the product of cliques in positions of socio-political influence who desire to manipulate weaker groups and so further their interests? And is not a third possibility, to the contrary, to regard ideologies as forms of grass-roots political culture, focused on the political issues of the day, reflecting the widely prevalent thought processes that a specific society evolves over time, as well as those ideas that smaller groups within it generate differentially? On the first two assumptions, the act of producing ideologies is not a general attribute of human nature, but a specialism engaged in by certain individuals and groups. This makes ideologies easier to envisage as distorted or illusory, going against the grain of common human activity, as well as conspiratorial, self-seeking, and exploitative. It also suggests that they may have logical and ideationally qualitative profiles which locate them above the heads of their wider clientele. On the third assumption, however, ideologies may be 13

See the references to Levi-Strauss in. Ch. 2.

106 Ideological Morphology ubiquitous, emanating from popular reasoning and prejudice, facets of the social environment that penetrate and help determine political thought and action in general, but over which deliberate human control and design is limited. The analysis here tends to balance these competing viewpoints with some caution. Ideologies are, after all, manifestations of group behaviour, supportive or subversive of social structures and institutions. The conventional manner of organizing studies of political thought by ascribing ideas to individuals presents us with a somewhat deceptive map. To be sure, the analysis of ideologies will also be agent-based, but the individual agent per se is not the optimal unit for advancing such analysis. Where then do individuals come in, as they obviously must? Ideology-producing groups will reflect the impact of articulate and representative individuals, who may be the effective channels that give expression to more widely held beliefs, as well as adding their own imprint on what they absorb and convey. Those individuals—serving as nodal and eloquent points of ideological discourse—may offer an excellent illustration of a particular ideological position, and it is for that reason, as well as the greater accessibility of their ideas, that future chapters will harness individuals to the analysis of ideological families. Nevertheless, their articulated thoughts are meaningless without an understanding of the conceptual and ideational environments which fashion them. We have to bear in mind, all the while, the relationships between those representatives and their social and cultural surrounds. Optimally-—a task beyond the confines of this book—the investigation of ideologies ought to examine mass, or at least large-scale, social thinking, and therefore must depend on the collation of large numbers of personally expressed individual ideologies examined in a relational framework. Out of that examination the contours of ideological families will begin to emerge, not as an essentialist view but as a reflection, to the best of the analyst's interpretative ability, of discoverable ideological patterns. Here the critique of Skinner coalesces with the limitations, for the purposes of the study of 14 political ideas, set by the study of the 'great' political philosophers. Most ideologies are not the product of single individuals in the sense that modern idealism can be laid 14 It should, however, be appreciated that Skinner has contributed much to extending the scope of individuals bracketed in that category. Also, he represents a genre of historical analysis, itself a group activity. Many of the observations in this section do not relate primarily to his own work, whose subtleties rise above similar but cruder instances.

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at Hegel's door, or Bentham can be called the father of modern utilitarianism (though even then historians of ideas may wish to correct these exercises in labelling). One of the most obvious and notable exceptions, Marxism, has nevertheless acquired an existence of its own to which no individual can claim intellectual paternity, just as a group may outlast any particular member. An ideology's morphology reflects the social practices of conversation and discourse in which individuals participate with variable, and mutually shaped, input. That individual variety, as well as the multiplicity of such social practices, also accounts for the existence of extensive permutations within the dominant structural and ideational type of the ideology in question. Ultimately, these adopt identifiable patterns. Founding myths operating within ideological traditions are one such instance. Core concepts may initially emerge in a particular decontestation attached to specific perimeter notions, combinations which may function as myths over a long period of time, even side by side with later decontestations that develop alongside the myths. The role of the founding fathers and of the US Constitution in current American ideologies is a pertinent example. Certain ideas about the Constitution, such as those attached to the protection of life, liberty, and property under due process of law, survive and even contradict the particular and individual forms its interpretation currently takes. While the study of ideology has a sociological sweep, potentially (if not actually, for reasons of manageability) encompassing in its grasp all who produce or consume it, accepting the product itself as worthy of analysis and having a political function irrespective of its content, the study of political philosophy identifies its population as those individuals who uphold standards of substantive ethical value and logical argumentation. Political philosophers, when examined in a historical context, are usually singled out as paragons rather than guides to mass political action. The single case needs no further justification as a subject of study, but the configuration of ideas of the chosen philosopher may tell us little about the way a society puts its political ideas to work. Indeed, pluralism of structure is often regarded as a flaw in the coherence of a philosophical argument, whereas in the case of an ideology it may, by contrast, reflect the complexity of culling together and co-ordinating a social outlook from a multitude of individual positions. It has of course become a truism, and one of which Skinner is well aware, that language makes sense only as a group activity. Occasionally, Skinner nods in the direction of a holistic view of

108 Ideological Morphology beliefs as part of a network and refers to Austin's 'total speech-act situation'.15 That very important point raises issues of system and interdependence which we have discussed in earlier chapters; Skinner, however, does not cultivate them further. His individualist bias overemphasizes the extent to which the intentionality of authors is a satisfactory means of accessing to the meaning of texts and speech acts. Even when we consider the individual political thinker, we need to match the notion of intentionality with the paraEel notion of the comprehension of a political utterance. There are two reasons for this. First, even intentions do not hang in a vacuum. What authors mean to say and do in a speech-act is to a large extent directed by the available meanings with which political language is endowed in their thought-environment and in their immediate social context. All producers of political language are also consumers of such language, and their comprehension both of words and of concepts—a comprehension mediated by accepted social meanings—is a major clue to the reproduction of political language in which they engage. To acknowledge that even intentional speech-acts embrace unconscious or semi-conscious levels of meaning is to recognize that the author serves among others as a conduit of cultural and linguistic codes that he or she consumes and then transmits further. Students of linguistics have been especially anxious to make this point: language has structural properties which diminish the autonomy and centrality of the subject; words and concepts are intermeshed. Intentions are hence themselves moulded in part by the language at the disposal of the author, for we cannot intend something that is impossible to conceptualize and to endow with linguistic form. Language— a social product—thus constrains the political ideas theorists can express even before we consider the further constraints of their specific culture; moreover, linguists certainly do not insist that the structural properties of language must be known to its users. Skinner accepts that, while there cannot be unintended illocutionary acts, there can well be unintended illocutionary force, and recognizes16 Ricoeur's notion of the surplus of meaning embedded in a text. But that acknowledgement needs to be accompanied by a 15 16

Skinner, 'A Reply', in Tully (ed.), Meaning and Context, 248, 274-5. Ibid, 266,272. Ricoeur interprets that surplus as the meaning over and above the literal meaning of a metaphorical utterance (Ricoeur, Interpretation Theory, 55). However, the notion of a surplus may also apply to the multiplicity of meanings over any given meaning, whether that intended by the producer or understood by the consumer of the utterance, as well as to non-metaphorical utterances, and it will be employed here in that sense.

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discussion of the nature of, and reasons for, that surplus of meaning, and by the proportionate analytical treatment of the author in the twofold role of a consumer of ideologies and a member of an ideology-producing group. Second, looking beyond intention, texts are not only composed but also read. When we examine the impact of a set of political ideas on both intended and unintended hearers and readers, we do not engage in the activity of reconstructing the author's intention—an activity meant to do justice to the text as the author's creation, but in the activity of reconstructing the comprehension of the idea-audience, an activity meant to do justice to the text as a source of ideational shaping and political idea-related conduct. This is all the more so in the case of ideologies. Inasmuch as ideologies are levers of social action, the key to any scholarly analysis of their influence and an important component of their meaning lies in the manner the groups, to whom they are directed, comprehend the political concepts which fashion them. Moreover, inasmuch as many ideologies are, at least in part, disseminated and consumed unconsciously, the role of 'active' intentionality diminishes in relation to that of 'passive' comprehension. We have devoted space to Skinner as a particularly eminent and sophisticated exponent of the methodology of the history of ideas. But the intriguing nature of ideology derives from the sustenance it gathers from three separate, if overlapping disciplines: the history of political ideas, political philosophy, and political theory. This study attempts to show the need for the integration or, at least, mutual fertilization of those three perspectives so that a coherent and useful conception of ideology with analytical and explanatory power may emerge. Skinner's approach to the history of ideas has properly supplanted many older versions, especially those that have artificially created abstracted traditions, detached from time- and space-bound contexts and meanings. Nevertheless, the most common version of the history of ideas remains the establishing of an apostolic succession, a chain of discourse situated in some grand historical continuum, in which the thoughts of 'great thinkers' are expounded and related to each other. The result is a virtually closed list, difficult to join and from which it is almost impossible to be struck off. Academic traditions, with their search for standards of excellence that need to be emulated and repeated, have contributed to the conservative nature of such lists. More insidious than that conservatism are the biases that this predominant perspective has implanted into the practice of the history of political ideas. Whig views of history emerge which

110 Ideological Morphology mistakenly locate a movement from, say, Hobbes through Locke, Rousseau, and Mill towards more sophisticated notions of liberty, equating a chronology of thinkers with the progress of human thought. At worst, ideas attain a separate existence, with 'great thinkers' recruited as and when needed to inject those ideas with pace and direction, while history is replaced by pseudo-history and severed, as Skinner indeed observes, from context. Moreover, the role of certain individuals is central to this tradition of enquiry, and their impact has tended to be exaggerated in a number of ways. First, though such influence is immense within the confines of university curricula it must not be confused with the 'real-world' influence of individuals in formulating and disseminating political ideas that have operational ideological value. Hobbes is a case in point. Second, it is important to distinguish between individuals as convenient tags for ideational and ideological movements (Mill frequently appears as the representative of nineteenth-century liberalism) and between such individuals as members of groups, and drawing from existing pools of ideas, without which they could neither form nor spread their theories. Third, individuals may often be credited with influence for which they cannot be held responsible. T. H. Green, for instance, has frequently and speciously been hailed as a major contributor to welfare-state ideology. Even his immediate disciples attributed to him political influence that his ideas, in closer analysis, do not corroborate;17 moreover, empirical evidence of welfare-state thinking demonstrates many conceptual constructs not associated with British Idealism. Nevertheless, there are two areas where Skinner has overstated his case. First, the role of tradition cannot be discounted altogether, as Skinner is wont to do. Inasmuch as people come to attach importance to reified traditions, however erroneously conceived the latter are, they become factors in the formation of human thought and in the explanation of human behaviour. It is a "fact that many political thinkers refer to traditions of thought and attempt to place themselves within such frameworks. The frequent reference by later liberals and socialists to J. S. Mill's work illustrates the power of the idea of a (liberal) tradition as a binding image on the thought of other theorists. The power of Marxist theory, to take another example, even though parts of it are unsubstantiated and others unfalsifiable, lies in its persuasiveness and in 17 For some of these arguments see M, Freeden, 'The Stranger at the Feast; Ideology and Public Policy in Twentieth-Century Britain', Twentieth Century British History, I (1990), esp. 17-20,

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its perception as intellectually correct and emotionally inspiring by large numbers of individuals, who consequently desire to rally under that banner. To explain later variants of those theories within the framework of developmental sequences superimposed by their subsequent formulators is itself to gain considerable insight into their modes of thinking. Second, Skinner's hostility to the study of 'the "idea" itself as a "unit"'18 does not do justice to the different ways in which an idea unit may be handled.19 After all, one cannot just disregard the plausible contention that the history of (political) ideas should be about ideas. To discuss ideas is not tantamount to insisting that they have a life of their own, and it is not therefore necessary to adopt some of the excesses of Idealism or to offend against historical canons. For when those ideas are located within ideologies and their existence is empirically ascertained to relate to concrete groups in specific historical situations, much of the force of the old criticisms of the history of ideas as a discipline is dissipated. Empirical and contextual research, when focusing on the nature and role of ideologies, may still profitably identify the political idea, or more specifically, the political concept, as the central unit of analysis, without sacrificing academic respectability, offending the related disciplines of history and philosophy, or, most importantly, forfeiting the interest and novelty of approach that research and analysis should provide.

(c) IDEOLOGY AND HERMENEUTICS

The insights of hermeneutical approaches afford another set of perspectives on the problems of meaning. Within that school, however, divergent emphases have different implications for ideological analysis. Ricoeur in particular has been instrumental in associating that type of interpretation with the study of ideologies. He, too, accepts that the polysemy of words is the essential problem confronting the understanding of ideas and highlights 'the selective role of contexts for determining the current value which 18 Q. Skinner, 'Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas', History and Theory, 8 (1969), 35. ** This in itself is a legacy of Lovejoy's unit-idea which suffered from similar fixity. See A. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being (Cambridge, Mass., 1936), 3; and M. Richter, 'Begriffsgeschichte and the History of Ideas', Journal of the History of Ideas, 48 (1987), esp. 260-2,

112 Ideological Morphology words assume in a determinate message'.20 For Ricoeur, the challenge of hermeneutics is to recognize the relatively unequivocal message the speaker has generated from the polysemic basis of the present lexicon. But the handling of the issue is not conducted on the micro-level of morphological scrutiny preferred here. Rather, by alighting on a unit identified as a 'text', Ricoeur diverts the exploration of ideologies into a somewhat narrow channel. The text is approached as a block of meaning, to be absorbed in toto, and furthermore, a block capable of autonomous existence. The hermeneutic challenge is to overcome the distanciation between text and understanding that is the consequence of the threefold liquidation' of the author, socio-cultural decontextualization, and the removal of the original addressee. Because a text is subject, as Ricoeur sees it, to 'an unlimited series of readings', the text is emancipated from its initial environment and recontextualized through multifarious acts of reading.21 The conclusion, it should be observed, is sharply delimited from the Skirmerite enterprise, for Ricoeur (building on Dilthey and Schleiermacher) regards this breakthrough in comprehension not as enabling one 'to discover an intention hidden behind the text but to unfold a world in front of it'—to utilize the potential embedded in the text in order to refashion oneself through these externally induced imaginative variations, and to develop the path of thought opened up by the text.22 Ricoeur rejects the Diltheyan objective of understanding the author 'better than he understands himself'.23 If ideological analysis were to proceed simply by replacing self-knowledge with the external decoding of references assumed to be unknown to their authors, that method would indeed be incomplete. Self-definition, as argued earlier, must coalesce with empirically ascertainable criteria imposed by the analyst. Nor should the discovery of the unconscious as a primary factor in linguistic expression degrade in any way the status of the conscious. But there are problems with Ricoeur's position. The text as 'a worldless and authorless object'24 does not correspond directly to an ideological system for at least the following two reasons. 20 P, Ricoeur, Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences, ed. J, B, Thompson (Cambridge, 1981), 44. 21 Ibid. 91. 22 Ibid. 94, 162. 23 Quoted in ibid. 151. See also H.-G. Gadamer, Truth and Method (London, 1979), 263. 24 Ricoeur, Hermeneutics, 152.

Applying: The Contexts of Meaning 113 First, ideologies are by their very nature oriented to a particular political and social situation, even if not the one in which they first saw the light of day. Consumers of an ideology are unable to see it as a detached text because they will attribute to it social worlds and secondary authors, however unreal or inaccurate those attributions may be. Ideologies, unlike texts, are already absorbed as partially decontested packages. They are conveyed and consumed by groups whose perceptions may impose on those ideologies new rules of interpretation, which in turn have to be integrated into inherited rules of interpretation embedded in existing ideological patterns. Ideologies are not in themselves the commencement of the process of interpretation but are positioned at an advanced point in that circular process. No reader is in that sense 'free' to do what she or he will because of the cultural constraints operating on ideological interpretation, and because ideologies have groups both as their subjects and objects. Second, the viewing of the text as a unalterable palimpsest detaches it from the mutational underpinning which, as we have argued, is an important constituent of all ideologies. It would deny the malleability and fluidity of internal relationships which characterize each ideological family. Whereas the text as a pattern of words remains an objective constant, all ideologies—because they are constructed from many texts—are in a continuous process of restatement. Even if broad patterns remain identifiable and change imperceptibly over relatively long periods, the forcing of an ideology into a text, or single list of tenets, will constitute an arbitrary viewing of its temporal totality. The moment of interpretation, while located in time, is also a function of time, a product of the temporal transmission of meaning. This point is not lost on another major theorist of hermeneutics, Gadamer, though he encounters difficulties of the opposite nature. Moving away from epistemology and back to questions of ontology, Gadamer poses the question: 'what is the mode of being of that being who exists only in understanding?'25 Answering that in a famous phrase, Gadamer refers to 'the conversation that we ourselves are'.26 Significantly, Gadamer sets understanding in a public rather than a private framework, a framework in which individuals are assimilated by the historical process, rather than pre-tnterpreting it. Here is a tool that can apparently be applied to ideological analysis, with its own emphasis on the public political domain. Gadamer's preoccupation with the historical dimension 25

Quoted in ibid. 54.

26

Gadamer, Truth and Method, 340.

114 Ideological Morphology is central to his work. Contrary to the Skinnerite discomfort with tradition, as more often than not a reified artificiality superimposed on the historical process, Gadamer sees human beings as standing within traditions as part of themselves. The essence of understanding involves placing oneself within a tradition. He rejects that historical method which demands a release from the prejudices of the scholar in order to experience correctly a historical moment, just as he rejects the necessity of historical distance as a precondition of understanding if it is merely in order to quench any interest qua27involvement the historian may have in the object of investigation, Gadamer's conception of understanding is driven by the past, however modified that heritage becomes. He specifically singles out as constraints on thinking those 'prejudices and fore-meanings' given within the common tradition that binds interpreter and object of interpretation. Whereas the morphological approach proposed in these pages contends that meaning is to a considerable extent a function of the vast combination of options among the concepts constituting an ideology, Gadamer concentrates instead on the infinite variations of meaning that ensue from the different temporal points from which the interpreted text is observed. Because we ourselves are constituted by the very traditions in which we operate and think, we will share fundamental prejudices with those traditions. But the distance in time is not something that has to be overcome, as many modern contextual historians believe. As Gadamer puts it, 'it is not a yawning abyss, but is filled with the continuity of custom and tradition' which lets the true meaning of the object emerge fully'. Eventually two horizons appear, the one the horizon of the enquirer and the other that of the particular historical situation in which the enquirer places him or herself. These two will of necessity fuse, though the end-product changes continuously, and the tension between the two horizons remains a chief factor in the process of understanding. Moreover, although the possibility of truth in understanding is entertained, 'the discovery of the true meaning of a text or28 a work of art is never finished; it is in fact an infinite process'. Yet, as we have just seen with respect to Skinner, the question of tradition is a complex one. Traditions may be employed by ideological actors as a metahistorical device, while the scholar is engaged in uncovering empirically connected continuities, as well as discontinuities, of a different nature. Concrete traditions are 27

Gadamer, Truth and Method, 245, 250, 258, 251, 265.

2S

Ibid. 262-5.

Applying: The Contexts of Meaning 115 often far more fragmented series of highlighted periods and unexplored spaces that ideologies cement together. The choice of cement may itself become central to the reconstructive hermeneutical enterprise. That exercise of choice, however, is pivotal to the analysis of ideologies, while at the same time it must strike a note of caution for the scholar attempting to emulate ideological practice rather than retaining an awareness of the possible rigidity and artificiality of frameworks of tradition. What can ideological analysis glean from hermeneutics, while detaching itself from the overriding but restrictive image of the fixed text that the latter intellectual persuasion adopts? Whereas in the hermeneutic project the text is constant and the interpretations infinite, some analysts of ideology reverse this position only too frequently. The 'text' is fluid, voiced as it is by many creators within a given family, whereas the interpretation is frequently linked to a particular temporal manifestation of an ideology, and attempts to supply a durable, if not quite finite, understanding and construct an ideological profile. This temporal arbitrariness is faced with the continuous historical flow of an ideology, but there are mitigating circumstances that may justify it, and not all of those relate to the impossibility of the task or the flawed perspectives and ability of the investigator. Indeed, particular historical moments—as distinct from all possible ones—may have had a special significance in determining the dominant meanings of the political concepts comprising an ideology. Hermeneutics has three features to offer the student of ideologies. First, it makes conscious the prejudices governing our own understanding, so that a more balanced evaluation of a text becomes possible. That eschews the difficulty of being trapped in the assumptions that the text hands down to us, and is essential to the 'decoding' aspect of ideological analysis. Gadamer rightly stresses that 'we cannot avoid thinking about that which was unquestionably accepted, and hence not thought about, by an author, and bringing it into the openness of the question'. This carries us beyond intentionality towards another level of interpretation that must characterize the study of ideologies. The hermeneutic position contra the Marxist view of ideology reinforces the contention in Chapter 1 that ideological unconsciousness in transmitting messages is not necessarily false consciousness. The tension between intentionality and unintentionality must be seen as a permanent feature in a world of multiple meanings, only a few of which the author can master, and only a few of which any particular interpreter or consumer can learn. Meaning will always run

116 Ideological Morphology ahead of the synchronic study of Language, and this very indeterminacy is also the key to human choice. Second, this issue of choice is what Gadamer means by asserting that 'the essence of the question is the opening up, and keeping open, of possibilities'. The recognition of the range and plasticity of both experience and understanding is central to our attempts at gaining knowledge. From this viewpoint the existence of ideologies is not a repressive weight on the human mind, as it is so often portrayed, but a manifestation of the infinite variety of the political imagination. Third, the tentativeness of understanding is underlined by a consciousness of its own historicity. History is part of the process of understanding.29 Understanding is thus always interpretation, and has no constant points of reference. Variations exist between Gadamer's and Ricoeur's position over the relative capacity of the interpreter to cast off tihe shackles of history. Ricoeur hopes for a future-directed emancipation from the text,30 whereas Gadamer is backward-looking and cumulative in his perspective. In addition, Ricoeur sees the consequence of the hermeneutical method as personally beneficial to the interpreter as an actor in the historical process. He talks about a highly personalized herrneneutic experience, culminating in 'a self enlarged by the appropriation of the proposed worlds which interpretation unfolds'.31 This may well be the case but, as has been noted, ideological analysis is also a scholarly activity that sees the critical observer as supplying reflective and evaluative knowledge which is distinct from the knowledge he or she will bring to bear as a producer of ideologies. The hermeneutical enterprise tends to overemphasize the situating of the analyst in the midst of the material studied, at the expense of those features of the material that may be reasonably detached from the subjectivism of a particular observer. The view of ideological analysis pursued here differs slightly from both of these standpoints. The phenomena of both context and subjectivism need to be engaged; neither should obscure the other. We must be more sanguine about the possibility, indeed importance, of detecting patterns of political thought, however constrained by the horizons of our own interpretative vision, and the possibility—to approximate Mannheim's terms—of attaining relative generalizations (if not relative truths), assertions of meaning that are an admixture of factual knowledge and enlightened, deliberative, cultural understandings. 29 30

Gadamer, Truth and Method, 337, 266, 268-9, 31 Ricoeur, Hermeneutics, 94, 99. Ibid. 94.

Applying: The Contexts of Meaning 117 Moreover, instead of contending with a fixed text, an unaltered configuration of words, we ought to be thinking in terms of the structural nature of the ideological 'text' as a system of flexibly related ideas, open not only to constant reinterpretation but, because ideologies are formed through group activity, to constant restatement by their authors at any particular place and time. In this manner we may also avoid the accusations of built-in conservatism to which some varieties of hermeneutics have been prey. At the same time, care is required not to fall into another hermeneutical trap, namely, an exaggerated deconstruction of the text, in the sense of looking past the text (for instance to power structures), rather than looking more closely at the text. (d) THE CONTRIBUTION OF BEGRIFFSGESCHICHTE

German historians, some of whom are disciples of Gadamer, have developed a fertile perspective on social and political concepts that is pertinent to the issues we have examined. From their debates has emerged the school of Begriffsgeschichte (conceptual history) whose foremost proponent is Reinhart Koseileck, Starting from the hermeneutic acceptance of the plurality of meanings embodied in concepts, Koseileck has ably identified the nature of socio-political conflict as including centrally a 'struggle over the "correct" concepts'.32 This insight corresponds to the thesis articulated above, namely, that the decontesting of political concepts performed by an ideology is an attempt to legitimate a preferred political order by controlling the meaning of key political words. Koselleck's conception of a concept includes ambiguity as a definitional property and, in parallel, suggests that concepts are concentrations of several substantive meanings—unlike words, which can become unambiguous. The similarities between this analysis and Gallic's 'essentially contested concepts' is all the more striking in view of the apparently separate paths trodden by the British philosopher and the hermeneutic persuasion; and the benefits of combining the two all the more obvious when the differential inputs of these historical and philosophical perspectives are evaluated. Begriffsgeschichte is not an academic discipline identical to that of the analysis of ideologies as proposed in these pages, but it can support the latter usefully. In particular, it strives for recognition as an autonomous branch of study, a claim we have made for the 32

R. Koseileck, Futures Past (Cambridge, Mass., 1985), 77-8.

118 Ideological Morphology analysis of ideologies. Its formulators have intended it as an instrument of historical inquiry, a further means of exploring change and of illuminating social history, especially the latter's structures and conflicts. It does so, Gadamer-like, by fusing present and past understandings of conceptual usage, so that the mutating meanings of concepts serve as a window through which to observe and understand diverse socio-historical data. This parallels the world of analysing ideologies as a key to comprehending the universe of political ideas created by the human mind, and the interacting of that universe with the concrete world. Koselleck develops Gadamer's notion of horizons by identifying a horizon of expectations, linking expectation with experience. Experience is a cumulative horizon, 'present past, whose events have been incorporated and can be remembered'. Expectation permits the projection of changing horizons on to the future, for 'cultivated expectations can be revised'. Moreover, expectations can be retrospective in rereading the past: 'This is the temporal structure of experience and without retroactive expectation it cannot be accumulated.'33 Koselleck's analysis could benefit from two further categories. Horizons are not only accumulative but diminishing, as some meanings are lost or abandoned. Moreover, they may be false horizons, as when current thinkers attempt to project an ideology into a framework not backed up by its cumulative horizons. The relationship of libertarianism to liberalism, to be examined in Chapter 7, is one such possibility. The analysis of ideologies should not primarily be attuned to the separating of the horizons themselves, though they are important features of historical thinking, but to their impact on the morphology of political thinking. Begriffsgeschichte addresses the defects of the older traditions of the history of political thought by reconstructing the meanings of concepts, not in isolated context, but over a temporal sequence. The analysis of ideologies may well deploy this approach among others it chooses to use, but its purpose is different; to establish the reaches and richness of the variability of political thought, and to detail both the possibilities and the constraints such variability projects on political action. H Koselleck has defined Begriffsgeschichte as dealing 'with the convergence of concept and history',34 the analysis of ideologies is the arena of the convergence of concept and political theory, not however as stipulative model but within a timeand space-bound setting. We tend to talk of interrelationships 33

R, Koselleck, Futures Past, 270-5,

M

Ibid. 85.

Applying; The Contexts of Meaning 119 between thought and phenomenon or object, and rightly so. But the different disciplines that acknowledge that systemic interdependence may nevertheless create an artificial dominant partner through accentuating their own perspectives, so that the convergence is not entirely symmetrical. Systemic interdependence is a two-way street, but it may be observed from different ends of the thoroughfare. In analysing ideologies, history, place, culture, and morphology feed political theory, though they may mould human conduct and institutions more generally as well. In Begriffsgeschichte, political concepts serve the comprehension of history, though they may also be a factor within history. Finally, Koselleck has contributed instructively to our understanding of the relationship between concepts and ideologies. The ambitious undertaking embarked upon by him and his colleagues may be designed, as Richter notes, not only to consider ideologies historically, but to provide the tools for their identification and uses.35 Moreover, the school's reliance on a heterogeneous range of source materials is particularly conducive to ideological research. It includes major thinkers from all fields that create socially oriented discourse, as well as the press, pamphlets, and official publications.36 That method is in stark contradistinction to the concentration of philosophers and some historians of ideas solely on 'high-quality thinkers', a practice both restrictive and elitist from the viewpoint of ideological analysis. Koselleck has usefully distinguished between semasiological and onomasiological dimensions of concepts, thus returning us to the methodological problems aired in previous chapters. Just as one word may refer to more than one concept, so a concept can be expressed through a variety of words. This parallels the question of ideological self-definition versus the location of an utterance within an ideological family by the scholar. If, for example, an individual uses different words such as 'claim', 'entitlement', 'duty towards', or more problematically, the German 'Recht', can these terms be placed unequivocally within the realm of rights-discourse? The heuristic challenge becomes that of deciding when a particular concept is being used at a different time or place, a judgement that must in part be 35

M, Richter, 'Conceptual History (Begriffsgeschichte) and Political Theory' Political Theory, 14 (1986), 632. 36 See M, Richter, 'Begriffsgeschichte and the History of Ideas', Journal of the History of Ideas, 48 (1987), 253. However, even the Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe has been criticized as too elitist by other historians of the genre: 'To write the history of concepts in terms of major authors is... unacceptable as an empirical description of what different strata were in fact thinking' (p. 256).

120 Ideological Morphology entrusted to the scholar, relying heavily on different synchronic consumption-patterns of those ideas. Koselleck has also drawn attention to an historical development of socio-political concepts— their evolution from concrete to more abstract referents and consequently to greater open-endedness.37 If we accept that analysis, those concepts will be decontestable on more variegated levels of meaning and therefore more amenable to multiple ideological usage, while concurrently more dependent on the development of perimeter concepts and ideas that link them to the here and now. The past is undoubtedly a crucial generator of understanding for, as we have noted, history interpellates ideology on a number of dimensions. But the Saussurian distinction between synchronic and diachronic perspectives is necessary in order to maximize our interpretative ability. Koselleck is a rare instance of a historian acknowledging the need to alternate between the two, for diachrony 'scientifically defines anew the registration of the past meanings of words'.38 This alternation is especially important to the study of ideologies because the grand ideological families such as liberalism inhabit temporal as well as spatial fields—ideational traditions—from which they draw their layers of meaning. For similar reasons, but also because of the contemporary focus of much political research,39 the analysis of ideologies must utilize a comparative dimension; indeed, a resort to such analysis is both dictated by the requirements of scholarly method and enabled through the large number of conceptual combinations available. The extreme position which, though not incorrect, is unwieldy, is to argue that there are as many examples of ideological schemes as there are people who enunciate them. That would certainly supply enough material for comparative analysis. Even if we sensibly reduce those to more inclusive profiles, as we inevitably have to, there are still many variants within each ideological family and between families. The comparative analysis of ideologies is not plagued by some of the practical restrictions operating on political science, with a limited number of existing regimes or political systems to be compared. The objection that some samples available for comparative 37 Richter, 'Conceptual History', 617, commenting on Koselleck's introduction to O. Brunner, W, Conze, and R. Koselleck (eds.), Geschichtlicke-Grundbegriffe (Stuttgart, 1972-%). 38 Koselleck, Futures Past, 80, 39 The constant need to refer to foci of current fashionable scholarship is exaggerated, especially among scholars who feel obligated to link up their various research interests to what is termed, in Ch. 6, American philosophical liberalism.

Applying: The Contexts of Meaning 121 politics are too small to be significant is irrelevant within the rich universe of ideological variation. Beyond that, the comparative method must be grafted on to the insights we can glean from hermeneutics because, despite the diachronk leanings of the latter, similarities among cultures do exist, so that we are not comparing apples with oranges. Although, as argued in Chapter 2, logical constraints are subordinate to the cultural choice of logical branch within a mature tree, some logical attributes will be shared among different ideologies. Finally, the shared morphological characteristics of ideologies identified earlier are themselves independent of history, even if the contents of these formations are not, and this constitutes an important element in understanding ideologies. As Koselleck has observed more generally: 'Concepts do not only teach us the uniqueness of past meanings but also contain the structural possibilities, treat the concatenations of difference, which are not detectable in the historical flow of events.'40 Problems concerning the production and consumption of ideologies are also insufficiently addressed by hermeneutical arguments. Whereas herrneneutics is, for mainly incidental reasons, concerned with the intellectual creations of past individuals, ideology is a group product. That is why the text of an ideological family, or tradition, is never truly available, because the various statements of the contributors to that ideological profile make up a fluctuating mass of overlapping but non-identical arrangements. True, from time to time a text is artificially fashioned out of this fermenting entity: declarations of rights are typical instances of frozen group ideologies but, no less typically, they demand immediate defreezing in the form of interpretative restatements from the later bearers of ideological torches. It is precisely because liberal ideologies permit the political concepts which comprise them to be open to plural (though not to all) interpretations as a matter of principle, so that they are not rigidly interlocked but capable of modifiable configurations within a generously defined rubric, that the strait-jacketing role of constitutions is bound to create strains. Conversely, it is the case that some ideologies, in particular totalitarian ones, produce a 'text' that is monolithically superimposed on their consumers, so that an artificial inflexibility acts as an oversimplified representation of an ideational reality, or even as a scheme that flies in the face of empirical evidence. In those instances it may be necessary to establish a dual level of ideological activity, for beneath the formal rigid decontestations there may be an unofficial ideological *' Koselleck, Futures Past, 90.

122 Ideological Morphology system emanating from groups beyond the control of the selfappointed ideologues,41 Here the tension arises because the official ideology cannot bend with changes in time and perception— cannot integrate a growing mass of perimeter concepts—and is thus more liable to crack. Change is not only built into the diverse historical perspectives that hermeneutics applies to a past event, but into the multiple meanings injected by a host of contemporaneous ideological producers when structuring what they believe, or claim, to be the same ideology. Ideological change is hence not merely the result of a reaction to externally induced socio-economic events, but an internal property of ideological morphology itself. It is a function not of the historical process but of the multiple subjective units of perspective, the separate individual consciousnesses, that combine to form an ideology-producing group at any point in time, and the consequent minor shifts that result from switching from one exponent of the creed to another. In order, for example, to ascertain the dominant ideology of the British Labour party at the time of the 1956 Suez crisis, any sampling of opinion on which we choose to base our analysis will be composed of variations round a theme that include party spokesmen, the Labour press, and grass-roots Labour opinion. While we can recognize the prevalent 'group' profile, it will be both practically impossible and methodologically erroneous to pin that profile down accurately. Equally important, because the analysis of ideologies must highlight ideology as product, the effect of ideologies on their consumers is an important issue that needs recontextualization and historical location. While we are greatly indebted to hermeneutics for refocusing our attention on the triple relationship between author, product, and consumer which, as has been argued above, offers a vital viewpoint on the nature of ideologies, there is a clear difference of emphasis. The consumer of ideologies is not the isolated hermeneutical interpreter-cum-scholar but the group of contemporaries to whom the ideology is either consciously addressed or who stand within earshot and assimilate its messages. Here is yet another ground for summoning up a synchronic pattern of conflicting interpretations, no less significant than the diachronic understanding preached by advocates of hermeneutics. It is also a peculiar synchronic view, emphasizing not, as Koselleck does, the singularity of the situational context but the plurality of ideological 41

On an attempt to argue this sec M. Seliger, Ideology and Politics (London, 1976), who distinguishes between fundamental and operative ideology.

Applying: The Contexts of Meaning 123 voices. For all the above reasons, the products themselves—the concrete ideologies—-eventually gain some conceptual independence from those who create them to begin with, just as their study requires autonomous status. (e) COMPETING VIEWPOINTS AND THE PATH TO INTEGRATION

Concrete ideologies are the creation of three different groupings: professional political thinkers, political organizations such as parties and interest groups, and mass populations that entertain politico-cultural assumptions which percolate into more specific receptacles of political ideas. All three demand disparate modes of analysis and their input into the ideology under discussion will differ too. Central to this venture is the shift in perspective from regarding political philosophers and theorists as 'first-order' providers of normative thought-systems which cast a critical light on human political activity, to significant and salient suppliers of ideological interpretations and recommendations which societies are urged to adopt, and which they can plunder at will. Sometimes the stature of such philosopher-ideologists is so prominent that they become responsible for a disproportionate portion, qualitatively speaking, of the ideology in question. The discussion of the political ideas of those individuals—a Marx or a Mill—may be central to an exploration of the ideology with which they are associated—socialism or liberalism. It cannot, however, substitute for the wider purview of the group that sustained such individuals, that amplified their views, and that reinterpreted their theories. Nor is it always the case that the individuals who loom large in the philosophical tradition are those on whom the analyst of ideologies should concentrate. Alone, J. S. Mill is hardly representative of nineteenth-century British liberalism, because of the unusually high quality of his arguments, as well as their relative distance from some of the concrete issues that exercised liberals at the time. It is, of course, equally true that later liberals came to see Mill as pivotal to the liberal tradition and that their interpretation of his role as liberal thinker must be given due recognition in their own ideological utterances. Those competing viewpoints must guide the analyst of ideologies, attempting a threefold balancing of the individual gifted with outstanding ideological creativity, the groups that nourished and supported that individual and from which he or she drew, and

124 Ideological Morphology the later ideological producers who used their multiple interpretations of that individual's opus to spice their own ideational brew. To focus on one or the other is also to adopt different nuances of methodology: to grapple with complex arguments and their impact on fundamental political questions, to synthesize or organize the patterns of broader group debate and their role in formulating the parameters of political issues, to give due consideration to the wider beliefs of prevailing political cultures, and to include as potential candidates for investigation the entire gamut of individuals who give vent to political thinking, up to the point where their political understanding recedes into practical insignificance. It also means to shift between individual and group as the one or the other provides a more useful angle of insight, while acknowledging that the two are inseparable. For the above reasons, a commitment to the search for a total theory of ideology, overarching and employing macro-models, as is prevalent in some textbook approaches, is not necessarily a research paradigm guaranteed to optimize understanding. It is no coincidence that little attempt has been made in recent times to articulate a parallel general theory of the counterpart of ideology, political philosophy. In an area as complex and as indeterminate as human political thinking, it may be more appropriate to develop explanations for thought-patterns on different levels, multiperspectival as well as multi-causal. Our goal is, after all, the maximizing of understanding, which may best be served by a plurality of viewpoints, by an eclectic resort to complementary theories, and by sifting through evidence from any source deemed useful. (/} STRUCTURE AND MORPHOLOGY

The above discussion leads in more than one way to a reconsideration of the relationship between ideological morphology and the insights of structural anthropology. It needs emphasizing that the approach proffered here is not yet another offering on the altar of what is commonly known as structuralism, or the anthropological variant of structuralism-functionalism. Discrepancies exist which are at least as significant as convergences. Specifically, structural anthropologists present language as a collective construct, which reinforces our perception of ideology as a group product. But they do so in a manner that contrasts with many propositions that the proper analysis of ideologies should entertain. Despite our stress on decoding and unintentionality, ideologies are to a

Applying: The Contexts of Meaning 125 significant extent a conscious act of creation. Human agency appears in two forms. First, ideologies will frequently include the deliberate formation of new conceptual patterns, and their study must draw out the plasticity of these configurations. The anthropologist concentrates on myths as unconscious 'givens'; the student of ideologies recognizes the role of innovators, reformers, or manipulators and allows for ideology, unlike myth, also to be an agent of change. Second, the more open ideologies offer the option of internal choice among conceptual decontestations. Levi-Strauss, moreover, is keen to distinguish between myth and objective reality and subsumes ideology under the first category. In contrast, the intellectual and emotional activity of shaping both myths and ideologies preoccupies the analyst of ideologies; that activity is in itself a reality demanding scholarly attention. As the phenomenologist Merleau-Ponty observed, ideologies are existential, neither ideal nor false, and as such they reflect some truth about their society.42 Specifically, they provide some information about the nature of political thought as an aspect of human conduct. Moreover, their interface with the external world is not a given, but the focus of analysis. My preference for 'morphology' over 'structure' as a term that characterizes the internal ideational arrangements of an ideology stems from the broad connotations of structure in recent scholarship and a desire not to associate with any particular stream. Psychologists who talk about ideologies as sets of structures sometimes allude to styles or types of perceptional or attitudinal responses.43 But these refer to attributes of ideologists—people thinking ideologically—rather than attributes of the product itself. They offer explanations, on cognitive and emotional levels, for why individuals decontest political concepts in particular ways, not what the decontestation itself amounts to, and what it means in terms of the organization of political ideas themselves. Structure has already been used as an organizing device for the analysis of ideologies, but mainly to indicate their macro-systemic properties44 rather than offer a micro-morphology of internal relationships. A current textbook identifies the structure of ideology as composed of 'philosophy, program and propaganda'.45 These themes do indeed run through ideological thought, but as attributes 42 D. Coole, 'Phenomenology and Ideology in the Work of Merleau-Ponty', in N. O'Sullivan (ed.), The Structure of Modern Ideology (Aldershot, 1989), 137, 140-1. 43 See L. B. Brown, Ideology (Harmondsworth, 1973), 170-80. 44 See e.g. the valuable collection of essays, N. O'Sullivan (ed.), Structure. 45 M. N. Hagopian, Ideals and Ideologies of Modern Politics (New York, 1985), 4-7.

126 Ideological Morphology of presentation and discourse rather than conceptual structure. Indeed, the genre known as discourse analysis offers a contentanalysis of ideologies quite distinct from that required by the adoption of morphological perspectives. Discourse analysis attempts, among others, to identify the idiom and social connotations of key turns of phrase, of metaphor and sentence construction, even of emotional implications of tone. In particular, as with Foucault, it emphasizes the power aspect of such discourse, thus reclaiming the concept of ideology for the broadly Marxisant approach. The content-analysis employed here is rather a function of the constrained interlinkages among political concepts and regards political discourse as shaped by such constraints, which cannot be reduced to power relationships. An alternative approach in existing literature is to talk of a grammar of ideology, where the grammar represents not a linguistic set of rules, but a set of rules in general. This can be an instructive and fruitful perspective on ideological style. As Manning has put it, 'all ideologies play the same language game of persuasion, but they each play it with a different vocabulary'.46 At its most fundamental level, a grammar is a type of combination of words, not of ideas, and its intellectual affinity is far closer to linguistics than to ideological analysis. But many students of ideological grammar go further. They inform us that ideologies are one of many types of human verbal expression and proceed to detail what the type is. The observed regularities are presented as being of an Elocutionary and perlocutionary nature. However, a grammar in that sense refers to the methods and patterns by which human beings deliver certain political ideas, without telling us much about how these ideas bear specific properties as a consequence of being combinations of political concepts. Although ideologies frequently have a 'grammar of prescription'47 (not, however, if unconsciously held), there are morphological grounds, related to the constraints on decontesting political concepts, that account for the feasibility of prescription. Under conditions of prescription conceptual configurations are forged which facilitate and prioritize specified routes between core and peripheral concepts. Susser's sophisticated discussion of ideological grammar has attempted to identify the rules of discourse that typify ideological speakers. For him, too, structure refers to the general sense of recurring patterns of verbal behaviour, but in a manner distinct from the morphological approach adopted here. The grammar of 46 47

D. Manning, 'Ideology and Political Reality', in Q'Sullivan, Structure, 70. Ibid. 78.

Applying: The Contexts of Meaning 127 ideology does not uncover for Susser the meanings that conceptual units and their configurations are made to carry, but endeavours rather to identify the ontological and epistemological rules that are engaged over and above the logical, cultural (temporal and spatial) constraints which operate on an ideology.48 Susser regards structure as too unbending and immutable a notion;49 however, the aim of the analytical approach adopted here is to introduce the notion of morphology as flexible, internally pliant, and subject to continuous reshaping. What remains constant is the type of units we are dealing with and the requirement that they form mutually constraining attachments; what changes incessantly—due to essential contestability, historical and spatial circumstance, and human agency—is the particular shape the ideological decontestation will adopt, so that it can never be predetermined by rules of structure. Concrete, detailed historical and contemporary comparative investigations are indispensable to this conception of analysing ideologies. Their morphological peculiarities, namely their multidimensional properties, are however the very precondition of their indeterminacy. The reshuffling of concepts inevitably ends in an ideological position or statement, but that in turn is only the precursor of a new conceptual arrangement. All this is not to invalidate thoughtful investigations such as Susser's, merely to point to significant differences in the usages of 'grammar', 'structure', and 'morphology'. For that reason, too, the study of ideology is always the study of ideologies. One problem with the Marxisant reference to ideology in the singular is that it indicates a process50 which, while containing valuable insights that may be utilized by the morphological approach, suggests a unity of attributes and a monolithic reading detached from a recognition of the structural features of ideologies. (g) MEETING SOME OBJECTIONS

It is now possible to appreciate the inadequacy of those prevalent approaches to ideology that rest content with a compendium of attributes of particular ideological manifestations—lists such as Burkean conservatism, Millite liberalism, evolutionary socialism. 48

One result of this exploration is to offer the debatable grammatical rule that ideology is exclusively the product of intellectuals (B. Susser, The Grammar of Modern Ideology (London, 1988), 109), See also L. S, Feuer, Ideology and the Ideologists (New York, 1975), 202-10, m Susser, Grammar, 5. 50 See R, Boudon, The Analysis of Ideology (Oxford, 1989), 37.

128 Ideological Morphology Both particularization and listing contain heuristic perils. Historians, for example, are occasionally guilty of oversimplification, plucking out a complex phenomenon from its multidimensional existence, however well this may be done on its own terms, or regarding ideology as a subsidiary adjunct to social and economic forces,51 Students of contemporary ideologies are also sometimes prone to analytical errors, claiming to describe an ideological position through itemizing its beliefs, while oblivious to Winch's warning that 'the concepts we have settle for us the form of the experience we have of the world'.52 From the philosophical side of the spectrum, Gaus exemplifies some typical concerns in his argument against a 'conceptual cartography [that] remains essentially descriptive'. He claims that theories of concepts are more lexicographical than philosophical if they are not engaged in explaining, criticizing, or defending the concept.53 This critique is based on a misconception. Mapping, if executed on the basis of the analysis proposed in these chapters, is not itemizing, and hence never simply description. First, it is not entirely reflective of existing usage, because it extrapolates from such usage what the limits of the possible are and could be. While some philosophers may prefer to delineate the contours of the desirable rather than the possible, students of ideologies—when presented with philosophical desiderata generated outside the disciplinary boundaries of ideological analysis—can explore those desired ideational configurations as components of ideological thinking and examine the extent to which they are feasible and what their institutional consequences may be. Second, the presentation of a map of internal conceptual relationships is an invitation to a viewing, to an interpretation of the social and political world. The map proffered in Chapter 2 should not be conceived in terms of a static model but as a multidimensional one capable of interpretative adaptation. Ultimately, we must take account of hermeneutic insights in realizing that an ideological map is a peculiar sort of map, one in which the cartographer plays a modest, though not decisive, role in fashioning the terrain itself. Other philosophers have doubted whether in fact concepts are essentially contestable.54 For Moriss, this runs contrary to the philosopher's commitment to the rational resolution of disputes. 51 H 53

See Freeden, 'Stranger at the Feast', 17-20, Winch, Idea of a Social Science, 15, G. Gaus, Value and Justification: The Foundations of Liberal Theory (Cambridge, 1990), 4-5. 54 For a qualified approach see A. Mason, Explaining Political Disagreement (Cainbridge, 1993), 47-68.

Applying: The Contexts of Meaning 129 But that hardly invalidates what, we have argued, is an ineluctable phenomenon of analysis, arising from the selective description of facts and the parallel indeterminacy of political concepts, rather than the failure of a scholarly enterprise. It ignores the probability, indeed inevitability, that the philosopher's resolution will be similarly selective. If the problem were merely to 'get the logic of our concepts sorted out', as Moriss seems to hold, then some form of rational solution would possibly be within reach,55 But as has been maintained in previous chapters, the subject-matter of human political thinking cannot beneficially carry the weight of logical purism, and—even if it could—the consequence would be to overlook entire areas of significant extra-logical analysis. Because essential contestability is predicated not only on logical, but on cultural, adjacency, both selective and normative linkages among the components of a concept are invariably shaped by political thinkers, either deliberately or as part of an unconscious process of cultural perception and internalization. Indeed, the major functions of the decontestation of political concepts are not connected, on our understanding, to underscoring the truths of logical purism or value perfectionism, but to supporting courses of political action and enabling the development of organizational practices, to the psychological need to restrict uncertainty, and to the communicative need to employ common linguistic conventions, whether agreed or imposed. In the course of that process a thought-of choice becomes a thought-of certainty, but certainty is no indicator of truth, and the form decontesting adopts is itself elastic and indeterminate. Acting as handmaiden to philosophical projects is only a small part of the enterprise of analysing ideologies proffered here. It is above all an enterprise in its own right. Whether or not it may assist normative analysis, it constitutes the application of understanding in a distinct way, by presenting a crucial aspect of ideological comportment as expressed through its highly flexible morphology. That understanding can never simply be reduced to description. At the same time, the morphology of an ideology is by no means all that is intelligible or significant about it. The argument here has been rather that a morphological perspective is a relatively neglected yet essential aspect without which the scholarly study of ideologies is impoverished. It also supplies the middlerange theory, the absence of which Gouldner bemoans,56 by linking up abstract generalizations with concrete instances, that is, by 55 56

P. Moriss, Power (Manchester, 1987), 202, 206. Gouldner, Dialectic, 64.

130 Ideological Morphology supplying the two-way route between core and perimeter. Ideologies need therefore to be seen as distinct means of organizing our experience of a specified human activity: that of thinking about politics through the formations we call political concepts. All the while, we need to retain an awareness that the product is both generated by those thinkers and outlasts in time, and outreaches in space, any particular thinker. For those reasons, also, an additional criticism that Gaus directs towards conceptual inquiry must be queried. He deems conceptual maps defective simply because not all the components of an ideology can be mapped.57 If ideological analysis were indeed merely descriptive, that failure would certainly be an indictment. But it is precisely because ideological morphology is indeterminate in content that such criticism misses the point. The proper conduct of the investigation of ideologies cannot be geared just to telling a tale about a particular set of beliefs, but to understanding the larger fluid phenomenon we call political thinking. A failure to enumerate every single conceptual linkage is analogous to a failure to discuss each instance of verbal and bodily conduct of parliamentary representatives when we examine legislative behaviour. To assume the possibility of a map that would display all possible kinds of thinking about politics is to abandon hope of human creativity and innovation.58 But a map may still have its uses while failing to reproduce completely the 'reality' it attempts to model It is impossible, indeed futile, to provide a complete picture of the adjacent and peripheral concepts and ideas constituting an ideology, and of the events and reactions that account for them, because in any event the exact determination of meaning is elusive and illusory. One type of map, an aerial photograph, is composed of grains that under magnification lose their contextual specificity, yet viewed from a sufficient distance and with medium determination the pattern becomes evident. Furthermore, the judgements of both participants and observers need to be incorporated in order to make an intelligible selection of items that appear to be of major consequence. In the conceptual dissection of an ideology, similar judgements must be exercised so as to concentrate on those that loom large in political discourse and that form and inform political acts and decisions. The purview of the observer is always far from perfect, but that is no excuse for abandoning the pursuit of the knowable and the interesting.59 57 58

Gaus, Value and Justification, 5. Cp. C. Taylor, 'Interpretation and the Sciences of Man', in C. Taylor (ed.), Philosophy and the Human Sciences, ii (Cambridge, 1985), 56, 59 This important point is well put by Boudon, Analysis, 117.

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(h) IDEOLOGIES AS VEHICLES OF POLITICAL THEORY

This chapter has concentrated primarily on the intrinsic elusiveness of meaning. That feature is the major corollary of the morphological characteristics of political thinking. It partly replaces the central role that the irrational unconsciousness of individuals, or that of social classes, has recently occupied. But whereas these were offered as heuristic devices to explain the inability of the scholar to assess the truth-value of political ideas, the question of such inability no longer seems relevant to the issue of meaning and interpretation. Rather, it builds on the fruitful notion of 'essential contestability'. That apart, my purpose has been a wider one. I have of course been predominantly concerned with giving a plausible account of the phenomenon known as ideology. But behind this lurks a more fundamental and ambitious aim: a reassessment of the nature and focus of political theory, and the reclaiming of its rightful place in the extensive area that exists alongside political philosophy and empirical political analysis. Political theory can no longer claim to be an absolute clarifier of meaning, an end to which it frequently aspired, though it may assist in illuminating meaning in timeand space-bounded contexts. The appreciation of the cultural variability and historical mooring of human thought has assisted in refining the notion of relativism, while retaining the contingent universalisrn that comparative studies sometimes discover. Nor can political theory aspire to establish ethical truths, though political philosophy has a vital role as an elucidator of political values and of ethical dilemmas. The decline of the status of 'truth' in the social sciences has combined with the realization that the older abstractions and model-building of political theory cannot satisfy the critical exploration of concrete idea-phenomena. The more political philosophers attempt to engage in their perfectionist enterprises, the more remote from the sphere of politics, and from politics as a Wissenschaft, do their findings become. On the basis of those partial failures of the past functions of political theory, a redirection is called for. It has been the contention of Part I of this book that the study of ideologies may be presented as the sphere in which political theory as a discipline can find its rationale. Political theory, as understood from the above concerns, is the study of the universe of political meaning and, no less important, of the interface of the variety of meaning contained in that universe with political conduct and with the formation of political institutions. Because the analysis of any one political concept is linked to its idea-environment, the study of political theory must proceed from an acquaintance with the range of socially supported

132 Ideological Morphology and produced formations of which the examined concept constitutes, or can constitute, an integral part. And because any form of decontestation of a set of political concepts is ipso facto an ideology, the conceptual analysis of ideologies is at the heart of political theory. Such decontestation is not only the product of those commonly known as ideologues: deliberate, manipulative manufacturers of superimposed and 'distorted' political ideas and rhetoric. It is the product of all members of a polity who express beliefs about political communities, theirs and others. It includes the highly systematic and articulate expositions of such beliefs formulated by those labelled as political philosophers, who are in fact operating as ideologists—exclusively or conjointly with their other intellectual activities*—and who thus become the subjectmatter of the study of ideologies just as much as any other deeontesters of political concepts do. The thought-behaviour of all these individuals, and groupings of individuals, affords insight into the corresponding permutations of the political concepts themselves, We can now reconsider some of the themes of Chapter 1. In the past, many political theorists have contraposed ideology and political theory, while oblivious to the relationship between political theory and the analysis of ideologies. It is one thing to maintain, as does Germino, that 'ideological thought in its most radical form is the converse of authentic political theory. Where theory is open to various dimensions of experience, ideology is the enemy of all openness...'. It is quite another to conclude that 'ideological politics... is in truth a non- or an antipolitics' and to exclude it from the compass of political theory.60 If political theory is, as inhtethe Germinoit, sees'the study of the principles of right order in psyche and in society', it is indisputable that those principles are fashioned out of the very same political concepts or units that comprise ideologies. It is because both political theory as philosophy and political theory as ideology offer a range of diverse solutions based on the identical polysemic and contestable features of those concepts, that we can focus on the type of political theory which explores, evaluates, and elucidates philosophies and ideologies alike with a view to establishing the properties of political thinking. This has been referred61 to above as the second dimension of analysing political thought. *° D, Genuine, Beyond Ideology: The Revival of Political Theory (New York, 1967),

45-6, 66. 61 See above, pp. 27-8,

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At the same time, we need to recall the distinction between the ideologist and the analyst of ideologies. Ideologies either deny, or restrict considerably, the possibility of interpretative flexibility, whereas the analyst is confronted with morphological features that establish such flexibility as constitutive of political argument. Even then, the analysis of ideologies is not open to an unlimited range of interpretations, as deconstractionists might argue, because of the logical and cultural constraints on the permutations they display. Both the phenomenon of ideologies, and the implications for scholarship derived from their critical study, offer rich pickings for the discipline of political theory. The attitude of those political theorists-cum-philosophers who do not even consider ideologies as worthy of scholarly study on the conceptual level impoverishes our political understanding and diminishes our analytical capacities, and should be abandoned for the sake of political theory itself. Some philosophers might consider the linking of political theory to the analysis of ideologies unduly conservative, as ostensibly only immersed in existing patterns of thought. Adams has reiterated this well-known criticism of the Wittgensteinian project, and has condemned its preoccupation with shared practices as denying individuals freedom, choice, and radical moral change. Ideology in particular is seen to be parasitic on ordinary morality.62 The analysis of ideologies is not, as we have seen, restricted to reproducing Wittgensteinian insights, though those have contributed towards our understanding of the phenomenon. More importantly, the study of shared practices and ordinary-language usage is not tantamount to operating within their confines. Even were ideologies to be acknowledged as stunting innovation—an accusation that any acquaintance with progressive political thought will reveal is not based on fact—the very appreciation of the multiplicity of thought-patterns that ideologies can adopt may itself be a catalyst for change. Although the analysis of ideologies is an inquiry into what is and has been, it is not a conservative perspective on political theory. It also permits the exploration of what can be and thus allows for choice; it recognizes the role of change in political conceptualization and ideological expression; and it builds on the multi-valence of political concepts and of the ideational options they already have supported and do support. Speculation on what can be, reflected in an awareness of the pluralism of past and present, is particularly appropriate in the time- and space-bounded 62

I, Adams, The Logic of Political Belief: A Philosophical Analysis of Ideology (Hemel Hempstead, 1989), 82,

134 Ideological Morphology instances on which the study of politics concentrates, as an aid to policy-making when a given institutional or ethical target is established and the ideological means of securing or evading it are investigated. Adams's often penetrating consideration of ideology regrettably leads to a philosopher's assertion of superiority, in that ideology is dismissed, in what we must now regard as orthodox terms, as 'an inherently defective mode of thought',63 rather than an inevitable, and resourceful, product of thinking about politics. Would this contention similarly endorse the abandonment of the study of political institutions, because optimally rational and ethical institutions are not yet in place? We have already suggested that the disjuncture between political philosophers and ideologists has been overstated. Both groups are concerned, if through different means, to reduce drastically the degree of indeterminacy displayed by political concepts.64 Totalitarian ideologies illustrate the extreme form of one method, which assigns in a semi-arbitrary and irrational fashion a precise meaning to concepts, held in place by force not only of the physical kind but of that which pre-empts rational and open debate,65 The other method is adopted by those philosophers who assign stipulatively precise meanings to concepts and then proceed to construct a rational system around them which inevitably includes those precise meanings and excludes others.66 The ensuing simulation bears only partial resemblance to the prevalent usages of terms. Nevertheless, a vital issue is at stake here: how best to utilize the sophisticated analysis offered by political philosophers while attaching it to a. preponderantly empirically based exploration of ideologies? How to bridge the gap between model-building and a non-prescriptive interpretation and analysis of the thoughtbehaviour of individuals engaged in thinking about politics? That is the challenge taken up in this book. The view of political theory propounded here does not deny the parallel, if separate, concern of political philosophers with what ought to be, with perfectionist and reflective prescription. That latter concern, it is readily admitted, may itself become part and parcel of alternative future decontestations of political concepts, and the work of philosophers 63

Adams, Logic of Political Belief, 140. See Ch. 2. It is of course the assertion of radical critics of Western ideologies that they employ no less considerable force in a subtler manner. 66 For an example of this approach in political theory see F. Oppenheim, Political Concepts (Oxford, 1981) and, in philosophy, A. R. White, Rights (Oxford, 1984). 64 65

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is therefore essential in order to create the idea-universe from which ideologists can draw. But side by side with that traditional sphere of thinking about politics, an area exists which, to date, has been singularly underdeveloped—even though it embraces wide ranges of political thinking, it identifies crucial issues concerning the nature of political thought, and it integrates promisingly with many conceptual interests and investigative tools current political theory already provides. The paradigm now employed by Anglo-American political philosophy is only one possible conversation about political ideas. There are other legitimate and significant conversations, and those engaged in them need to decide how best to convey the notion of a plurality of conversations, and whether the best tactics to attain this will involve meeting current conversations on their own terminological grounds or departing from that language entirely.67 We are now also better equipped to return to another issue referred to in Chapter 1: an objection directed at non-Marxist ideological analysts by those reluctant to part with their view of ideology as a term specifically dedicated to 'sustaining asymmetrical relations of power'. That view has somewhat imperiously been designated the critical conception of ideology—as if critique could only encompass social transformation, rather than the appraisive handling which interpretative morphological perspectives level at political thought-processes,68 The objection is addressed in particular to those who extend the notion of ideology to all actionorientated political idea-systems, as well as to those who find power relations in every trivial human act. But such an extension may now be seen as perfectly proper without in any way depriving 'ideology' of the capacity to discriminate among different types of political thinking and verbalization. The distinction—and for a term to be useful distinctiveness is crucial—is not between ideology and human relations in which domination plays no part, as the Marxists would have it, but between ideology and other forms of thinking about politics. Ideology is ubiquitous only inasmuch as it indicates a general type of human thought-product, not in the sense that it contains all forms of political thought; much as human exchange relationships are ubiquitous while not embracing 67

On the history of philosophy as a sequence of superseding vocabularies see R. Rorty, 'The Historiography of Philosophy: Four Genres', in R. Rorty, J. B, Schneewind, and Q. Skinner (eds.), Philosophy in History (Cambridge, 1984), 4975. 68 Cp. for example J. B. Thompson, Studies in the Theory of Ideology (Oxford, 1984), 4; R. Geuss, The Idea of a Critical Theory (Cambridge, 1981), 26-44.

136 Ideological Morphology all possible kinds of significant communication and not capturing the entire range of human interaction. Eagleton seeks to protect ideology from the accusation of indiscrimination, but does so by showing that not all language, values, and beliefs denote domination, while confining ideology to the latter phenomenon.691 wish, in contrast, to protect a broader notion of ideology from that accusation. Even on the view promoted here, namely, that societies display ideological thinking in areas unrelated to domination, ideology is not an indiscriminate concept. That is so because the political ideas that also constitute ideologies have multiple dimensions—for instance, philosophical and fact-identifying, as well as ideological. Specific speech-acts and texts may display all of these simultaneously; what is at issue, however, is to retain awareness of the categorical, epistemologkal, and functional distinetiveness of ideologies, as well as their morphological specificity and the social, temporal, and cultural contexts from which they derive. Finally, it has been queried in recent scholarship 'whether the concept is that unit of analysis most appropriate for writing the history of political theory'. That question is specifically a reaction to Begriffsgeschichte, but it could equally be applied to the contemporary study of political theory as well. Alternative candidates for units of analysis have been 'individual authors, texts, traditions, persisting problems, forms of argument, discourses, ideologies'.70 The response offered in these pages is that the concept remains a pre-eminently apposite tool both for exploring past synchronic expressions of political thought and present ones, and one through which the alternative candidates can be organized. It is, however, also necessary to embellish our understanding of political concepts by situating them in contextual and diachronic idea-environments. In sum, the exploration of political thought, historically and contemporaneously, can benefit greatly from adopting a three-tiered unit of analysis, comprising the political concept, its components, and its configurations within the confines of ideologies. m 70

Eagleton, Ideology (London, 1991), 7-9, Richter, 'Conceptual History', 633.

II

Liberalism: The Dominant Ideology

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PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS The remainder of this book is devoted to examining the major ideological families of liberalism, conservatism, and socialism, and some related boundary areas, with briefer sections on feminist and green ideologies. To do full justice to the methods advocated in Part I would require an investigation beyond the capacities of any one scholar. A two-dimensional diachronic and synchronic morphological analysis of any ideological family, based on a suitably extensive variety of source material, is an immense task. Does that mean that hopes for adequate ideological analysis must be abandoned? A theory-cum-method, however persuasive, that would be too difficult to apply is a futile one indeed. Nevertheless, adequate—if inevitably partial—illustration is feasible. The following chapters aim not to construct an encyclopaedic compendium of the conceptual variations within given ideologies but to demonstrate, through a selective use of sources past and present, the dominant features of those ideologies and the ranges of their internal conceptual decontestations. This has to be achieved, to conform to the method recommended above, without imposing a stipulative model on the actual manifestations of political thinking. No prejudged notions concerning the contents of particular ideologies should be allowed to overrule scholarly judgement about the idea-combinations they evince. Unavoidably, the author's guiding hand in that selection is in evidence and, as with any scholarly interpretation, other viewings of the same ideological families might well result in different analytical mappings. Some readers may utilize this study for an approach to political theory that is both conceptual and empirical, others for an acquaintance with the intricate world of the ideologies themselves. Even a partial success in conveying the complexity and richness of the subject-matter to the reader would be ample reward. Conscious of my own limitations in restricting the analysis to a few major Western exemplars, I hope that others may be persuaded to extend this horizon and, perhaps as a consequence, reassess my culture-bound investigation of ideological families. As an admittedly feeble mitigating circumstance I would point to the preponderance of the Anglo-American versions of liberalism, and to the signal, if less unique, contributions of those cultures to conservatism. Hayek observed of liberalism that only its British variant developed a definite political doctrine whereas many of the

140 Liberalism: The Dominant Ideology Continental types were derivative,1 and with respect to that particular ideology that claim is a plausible point d'appui. Many balances have had to be struck—between utilizing my own original research, mainly restricted to British variants of liberalism, conservatism, and socialism, with occasional forays into the Continent and the USA, and relying on the work of others; between choosing major theorists commonly associated with a specific ideology and broader expressions of ideological thinking; between examining the minutiae and adumbrating the broad overview. If I have failed to strike the right equilibrium, that will, I hope, attest less to deficiencies in my approach than in my education; moreover, a manageable book should whet readers' appetites rather than overwhelm them with information. In studying a distinct ideology one is conscious of the 'ism' attached to its configuration of concepts. This is a further dimension of conceptual analysis that may cause some confusion. Are liberalism and conservatism themselves political concepts in the same way as are justice, liberty, and rights? The thrust of the argument in Part I has been that the names given to ideologies signify combinations of political concepts and not a concept that exists on the same level as its components. Indeed, their contestability is a consequence of the prior contestability of those components. There is of course nothing either in common usage or in logic to prevent them being designated political concepts as well, and in a very specific sense they are. However, observation and analysis of these 'isms' entitles one to treat these as 'super-concepts' or 'umbrella concepts' without committing a methodological infelicity. 1 F. A. Hayek, 'Liberalism', in F. A. Hayek, New Studies in Philosophy, Politics, Economics and the History of Ideas (London, 1978), 121, 126-7, 132. But see below, Ch. 7.

4

The 'Grand Projects' of Liberalism

... liberalism is a basket of ideals that inevitably come into conflict with one another if a serious effort is made to realize any one of them fully, let alone all of them simultaneously.1

HE study of liberalism is both simple and complex. It is simple Tbecause liberalism is a pre-eminent ideology in Western political thought, extensively articulated and amplified, and a familiar component within the ideological spectrams of the past century and a half. It is complex because its permeation into rival families, both socialist and conservative, makes its unravelling difficult, and because its diffusion has led to an extraordinary range of variants that, unlike the many nuances of socialism, tend to present themselves under the same name, without qualifiers such as 'evolutionary', 'Marxist', or 'democratic'. Indeed, many theorists as well as laymen assume some vast homogeneity that adherence to liberalism bestows on its supporters, often described as a general attitude of mind rather than a distinct set of political beliefs, without being alert to the conceptual permutations which those beliefs display within a recognizably liberal morphology. Historians of ideas frequently date the evolution of liberalism back to Locke, if not earlier. The onomasiologicaL approach would justify this on the grounds that, although it is anachronistic to apply the term to the seventeenth century, the concepts actually used by Locke and his fellow theorists conform to the profile of what later became known as liberalism. Whether or not semasiological problems arise is another issue, as Locke may have had a different conception of liberal components, such as rationality or human progress, than did later liberals. But there is another difficulty, more of an historical than a conceptual nature. Can one usefully speak of the emergence of ideologies prior to the development of mass means of dissemination and prior to the mobilization of 1

W, Galston, Liberal Virtues (Cambridge, 1991), 95.

142 Liberalism: The Dominant Ideology mass publics? And even if one could, which may well be the case, is it possible with the restricted information at our disposal to reconstruct the beliefs of these wide audiences without which an ideology cannot come into being? A research strategy must come to terms with these issues. At the very least, the inclusion of Locke could be unjustified in its own right but vindicated because of the prominence he was accorded in the emergence of a conscious liberal ideology. Here intentionality, Locke's own perceptions of his arguments, is a matter for historical reconstruction rather than ideological analysis, but the interpretations and misperceptions of Locke in, say, the early history of the United States, are a subject of immediate concern to the student of ideologies. Our discussion of ideology, then, will not begin much prior to the nineteenth century, although its emergence as a modern phenomenon may be situated somewhere in the eighteenth.2 From the vantage point of the end of the twentieth century, I have selected four case-studies of clusters of thought claiming to be liberal, in order to perform the twofold task of assembling the units of liberalism into an identifiable structure, and of testing concrete instances against whatever dominant morphological configuration may emerge. First, there is what is misleadingly known as classical liberalism, an early- to mid-nineteenth-century creed associated in Britain with Mill. We shall look at some of its tenets while being careful not to fall into the trap of assigning lexical correctness to its conceptual definitions and merely secondary or derivative status to its successors. Second, there are versions of reformist liberalism, such as those associated with T. H. Green, the British new liberalism, and their German and French counterparts. Here we will want to assess both the question of family continuity and the boundary problems these permutations have, particularly with socialism. Third, there is a recent genre of philosophical liberalism, much in fashion in the American academic world but achieving success abroad through the prominence of American political philosophy. We will inquire into whether this school produces a possibly innovative but stipulative model and whether it is reconcilable with mainstream American liberal traditions. We will also examine the ideological elements in this philosophical position. Finally, there is a variant broadly known as libertarianism, with both nineteenth-century and contemporary instances. We shall explore its own claim to be representative of a (or the) 2

See the employment of ideology in that context in H. T. Dickinson, Liberty and Property: Political Ideology in Eighteenth-Century Britain (London, 1977).

The 'Grand Projects' of Liberalism 143 legitimate strand of liberalism and the extent to which it is situated within or outside the accepted boundaries of liberalism. In all these investigations we will be guided by our own admonition not to confuse institutional liberalism (party labels) with its ideological guises, even though a proximity of the two would not be unexpected. Awareness of liberalism as an ideological tradition is chronologically subsequent to the political employment of the term from the 1830s onwards. J. S. Mill, considered by many to be the prime exponent of Victorian liberalism, did not describe his writings as elaborating a set of beliefs called liberalism.3 Rather, he used liberalism to indicate the doctrines held by the Liberal party and saw his own beliefs as developing on from those doctrines: both Conservatives and Liberals . . . have lost confidence in the political creeds which they nominally profess, while neither side appears to have made any progress in providing itself with a better. Yet such a better doctrine must be possible ... something wider than either, which, in virtue of its superior comprehensiveness, might be adopted by either Liberal or Conservative without renouncing anything which he really feels to be valuable in his own creed.4

Even Mill, though, hinted at the potential disjuncture between party and ideology when he wrote in a footnote: 'Well would it be for England if Conservatives voted consistently for everything conservative, and Liberals for everything liberal.'5 None the less, Mill regarded himself as a liberal in the political and ideational senses and has been likewise regarded by his readers and interpreters, even when they profess to encounter strong elitist6 or socialist7 undertones in his writings. Such undertones need not surprise us or deter us from classifying Mill as a liberal; 3

In earlier writings Mill had attacked liberalism's belief in equal individual sovereignty (see A. Brady, 'Introduction', in J. S. Mill, Collected Works (Toronto and London, 1963- ), xviii, p. xiii). Only in his Autobiography (Oxford, 1969), written in the 1860s, did Mill refer to advanced liberalism to suggest a doctrine not identical with Liberal party beliefs (p. 170). He also referred in a number of his writings to Continental liberalism as a topic of interest to him. 4 J. S. Mill, Preface to Considerations on Representative Government, Collected Works, xix. 373. * Mill, Representative Government, 452. 6 See M. Cowling, Mill and Liberalism, 2nd edn. (Cambridge, 1990). 7 Mill's posthumous Chapters on Socialism (1879), Collected Works, v, enabled that interpretation to emerge. See e.g. S. Ball, 'Individualism and Socialism', Economic Review, 8 (1898), 234-5: 'As regards my own position in relation to Socialism, 1 am content to be a follower of Mill, from whom I learned my first lessons in Socialism as well as in Liberalism.'

144 Liberalism: The Dominant Ideology it is a cardinal aspect of the analytical stance adopted here that ideological boundaries are blurred and that conceptual overlaps will occur. But is Mill (a liberal only vaguely by self-definition) a liberal by other-definition? To answer that last question we require a broader acquaintance with liberal argument—to establish whether there are features common, in one guise or another, to all liberal discourse and also part of the liberal core itself. And do we start with self-definition or with a famous instance of liberalism based chiefly on other-definition? We can see the type of problem confronting the researcher. It is necessary to commence with one exemplar of an ideology in order to begin a discussion of its general components, but the finalization of that discussion, if at all possible, must await comparison with other instances of the ideological family. Mill as a liberal ideologist cannot be discussed on his own but only as a member of a community of similar thinkers. Such a comparison will render an assessment of the morphology of his own arguments more visible. While as a political philosopher Mill's thought-edifices can be, and have been, subjected to discrete analyses, ideology is a group product. Particular thinkers who in one capacity may be appraised solely as individuals are here seen as participants in and contributors to thought-behaviour of general and communal provenance. We begin, therefore, with a synchronic investigation which needs later to be placed in diachronic and cross-cultural settings. (a) IDENTIFYING THE MILLITE CORE

If we assume, as hypothesis rather than proven fact, that Mill's OK Liberty is a text that illustrates liberal principles, what are the key terms or concepts that anchor the argument? First and foremost among them is liberty itself, for Mill formulates the object of his essay so as to place the preservation of liberty at its centre.8 Liberty, however, is positioned in immediate proximity to a dual decontesting of individualism. First, because 'over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign', the individual is the unit of analysis. As Mill categorically states, deliberately dismissing the role of groups in social inquiry, 'The worth of a state, in the long run, is the worth of the individuals composing it/ Parallel to this emphasis on the individual is an appreciation of the personal attributes that individuals possess, what Mill terms 8

J. S. Mill, On Liberty (London, 1910), 73.

The 'Grand Projects' of Liberalism 145 'character', and the expression of which is 'one of the principal ingredients of human happiness'. Hence the assertion that 'the free development of individuality is one of the leading essentials of well-being'. That freedom is exercised in a distinctive way and has a special effect on individualism, which in Mill's employ can now justifiably be termed individuality. It is present when 'he who chooses his plan for himself, employs all his faculties'. The one phrase, 'the free development of individuality', contains three of the core concepts Mill wished to promote, for like many nineteenthcentury theorists he worked within the cultural constraints of a developmental conception of human nature, educable and capable of maturing, and linked it to the larger goal of individual and social progress. Indeed, early on in his essay he presents a definition of 'man as a progressive being' who by dint of this feature has permanent interests. The relationship of liberty, individualism, and progress is one of mutual dependence and definition. It is impossible to disentangle them and to position one alone at the core of Mill's argument; all three are most usefully regarded as core concepts. Each manifests an ineliminable component: for liberty, it is the notion of nonconstraint; for individualism, the notion of the person as a separate entity possessing unique attributes and capable of choice; for progress, the notion of movement from less desirable to more desirable states—'the idea of moving onward', as Mill puts it,10 Each core concept then attracts additional defining components, obtained, among others, from proximity with the other core concepts. Mill was not blind to the significance of this structural interrelationship. As he wrote of liberty and progress: The spirit of improvement is not always a spirit of liberty, for it may aim at forcing improvements on an unwilling people; and the spirit of liberty, in so far as it resists such attempts, may ally itself locally and temporally with the opponents of improvement; but the only unfailing permanent source of improvement is liberty, since by it there are as many possible independent centres of improvement as there are individuals,11

The mutual proximity of the core concepts holds them in check, inhibiting liberty from gravitating towards licence, or mere vegetation, or a Rousseauist monolithic rationalism; restraining individualism from signifying vicious and anti-social competition;12 10 * Ibid. 73, 170, 115, 117, 74. Mill, Representative Gaverment, 388. " Mill, On Liberty, 128, 12 Mill intentionally detaches individualism from that decontestation in Chapters on Socialism, 715.

146

Liberalism: The Dominant Ideology

and avoiding an interpretation of progress as a mechanical, materialist, determinist, or superimposed process. This structural interlocking ensures that sizeable potential areas of meaning which each concept could logically signify are ruled out of court—a prime function of any ideology. Specifically, Mil's concept of liberty is decontested in a number of ways. First, he attaches it to the development of individuality. Second, he emphasizes that it is primarily liberty of expression and of action that need protection, because the actions of other individuals are the main threat to the exercise of liberty (although amorphous public opinion is also a danger, providing Mill with an undeveloped opening for discussing group activity). Third, by suggesting that "me only freedom which deserves the name, is that of pursuing our own good in our own way', Mill connects it to two farther adjacent ideas: it is open-ended and allows for each individual to be the arbiter of his or her choices; and it is not merely the passive condition of not being interfered with, but the active one of cultivating valuable behaviour and purposes. Mill also allowed for liberty in a more traditionally 'negative' sense, that of the mere absence of impediments to making choices, or to self-development, rather than the actual exercise of those capacities. But that was always a lesser option, a less valued liberty. The issue hinges around the use of the 'good' that individuals pursue in their 'own way' and Mill's preference for the term 'good' over the terms 'wants' or 'desires'. If liberalism is about neutrality among competing concepts of the good, as modem commentators often argue,13 Mill does not satisfy that criterion, clearly preferring certain human actions and conditions over others, and wishing as he did to educate people in the appreciation of liberty.14 Though the above quotation suggests that Mill valued individual choices equally, concerning the methods of pursuing their goods, it also implies that they were only free when pursuing their own good, and that the 'good'—as Mill's extended reference to Wilhelm von Humboldt demonstrates—involved 'the highest and most harmonious development' of individual powers.15 Nevertheless, the promoting of Mill's preferred position is a matter of exhortation, never of coercion. " See Ch. 6, s. (/) below, 14 See also G, W. Smith, 'J, S. Mill on Freedom', in Z. Pelezynskl and J. Gray (eds.). Conceptions of Liberty in Political Philosophy (London, 1984), 190, 195. 15 Mill, On Liberty, 115.

The 'Grand Projects' of Liberalism 147 A package emerges that interprets liberty in a particular ideaenvironment. The linkage of the ineliminable component of nonconstraint with the additional component of making individual choices creates an exercise conception of liberty.16 The linkage of these two with development suggests the direction that valuable human choices can take, and rules out development that is not self-development. Put differently, liberty is not merely selfdetermination, but the subset of self-determination known as self-development. Nor does it proceed to become the subset of self-development known as self-realization, for that would entail a perfectionist view not found in Mil. To further situate non-constraint, choice-making, and valuable development in a context of individual interpersonal relationships suggests that there are areas of existence that concern individuals alone to the exclusion of others, that denying that space is harmful to individuals, and hence that the complex concept of liberty is vitally beneficial directly to individuals and indirectly to their shared institutions. We could of course similarly begin with individualism or progress and work our way towards a quasi-contingent decontestation that acknowledges the proximity of each to the other two core concepts. If liberty is culturally adjacent to pursuing one's own good in one's own way, it would be logically adjacent to a non-determinist conception of progress. But proximity is always a two-way street and this sequence could quite properly be reversed. The following could then be claimed. First, progress is culturally adjacent to a meliorist, but not a perfectionist or teleological, view of the world. Second, progress is also culturally adjacent to a particular conception of individualism. In Mill's own words (in good ideological fashion superimposing cultural on logical adjacency): 'individuality is the same thing with development, and ... it is only the cultivation of individuality which produces, or can produce, well-developed human beings'.17 Third, given the above, progress becomes logically adjacent to a conception of an individual capable of exercising free choice. The permutations of discussing On Liberty in these morphological terms are intriguing, but also legion, and there is insufficient space in this work to do so. Diachronically, it may be useful to note the debt owed by Mill to von Humboldt's ideas (representative of German enlightenment 16

This latter phrase is from C. Taylor, 'What's Wrong with Negative Liberty', in A. Ryan (ed.), The Idea of Freedom (Oxford, 1979), 175-93. 17 Mill, On Liberty, 121.

148 Liberalism: The Dominant Ideology thinking) about self-education and Bildung as a 'harmonious individuality nourished by diversity of experience', which included not only rational but creative and emotional self-development,18 so that the concept of individuality incorporated pluralist life experiences rather than a process of the unfolding of innate potential, and could be related to a diverse reasonableness of life-plans.19 We may not have completed our analysis of Millite core political concepts. What if his oeuvre contains further key concepts which appear onomasiologically camouflaged by different words or phrases? Two further topics of debate appear central in Mill's political writings: human nature and the organization of government. The theme of human nature is hardly a surprising feature of a political theory; the issue is rather one of its specific interpretation. Limited government, on the other hand, may simply transpire to be an institutional derivative of primary principles. We are therefore presented with an initial conundrum. Do these two areas constitute core concepts? Do they constitute adjacent concepts? Do they, in conjunction with Mill's other core concepts, constitute liberal concepts? Mill, we know, was impressed by von Humboldt's designation of the end of man as 'that which is prescribed by the eternal or immutable dictates of reason'.20 But to suggest that human nature is rational and that rationality is a key liberal concept is hardly a startling discovery for one who inspects the works and statements of other liberals besides Mill. It is virtually a truism to state that liberals view human nature as rational.21 If, then, the concept of rationality is an ineliminable component of liberalism, it will require further decontesting to determine its precise liberal ingredients. In the course of the history of human thought rationality 18

See 'Editor's Introduction', W, von Humboldt, The Limits of State Action, ed. J. Burrow (Indianapolis, 1993), pp. xxx-xxxii and 76-7; and Ch. 5 below. 19 This constituted a partial rereading of Humboldt by Mill; as the former's harmony has cultural undertones lacking in Mill's rephrasing: a balance of an inward-looking particularistic originality with a universalistic, holistic humanism as part of the Bildungs tradition. See L. Dumont, German Ideology (Chicago, 1994), 91-7, 20 Mill, On Liberty, 115, 21 This theme is emphasized in a number of general surveys of liberalism over the past half-century (see e.g. J, H. Hallowell, The Decline of liberalism as an Ideology (London, 1946), 4; T. P. Neill, The Rise and Decline of Liberalism (Milwaukee, 1953), 20); by critics of liberalism (see K. Minogue, The Liberal Mind (London, 1963), 25-35); by studies of liberal theory (see G. Gaus, The Modem Liberal Theory of Man (London, 1983), 28); and by contemporary liberal philosophers (see J, Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York, 1993), 212-54).

The 'Grand Projects' of Liberalism 149 has signified tightness, or moderation, or self-willing and autonomy, or calculated means-end purposiveness, or obedience to the law of God—terms which, though all different, are not necessarily mutually exclusive.22 A strategy to ascertain the role of 'rationality' or 'reason' m Mill's liberal ideology would have to explore a dual path: to construe the manifest uses of the word, and to evaluate instances when Mill describes human activities in terms that indicate the concept of rationality to us as students of ideology, or to other liberals as ideational consumers. In a fundamental sense, Mill's political and ideological positions derived from his stated commitment to rational argument and evidence; ipso facto reason would be a tenet of his world-view.23 The process of reasoning was at the heart of the pursuit of happiness, including in particular the higher pleasures derived from employing the nobler, or better, human faculties. Utilitarianism, after all, entails a rational assessment of the ways of maximizing happiness, and Mill described the pursuit of happiness as 'the rational purpose of human life and action'. Moreover, there is a rational case to be made for the utilitarian formula itself.24 But reason was more than correct reasoning, logic, or proof, and more than the practical inductive method Mill subscribed to. It is no coincidence that von Humboldt, with Mill's full approval, juxtaposed reason and harmony. Harmony had for Mill a twofold sense: internally within a person, as the development of human powers 'to a complete and consistent whole', and among individuals, because 'the deeply rooted conception which every individual even now has of himself as a social being, tends to make him feel it one of his natural wants that there should be harmony between Ms feelings and aims and those of his fellow-creatures'.25 It would be plausible to presume that rationality was not just a way of thinking but the end-result of that process, for Mill frequently recognized that a means could become an end, and that the pursuit of happiness could involve permanent goods. Thus behaving rationally, pursuing one's happiness, entails for example the attainment of virtue, of wealth, and of power as aspects of happiness.26 There are thus a number of facets to Mill's conception of human rational nature. But in the socio-political sphere the 'strength of n

For the potential dangers of harnessing a 'hyperrationalism' to liberalism see S. Holmes, The, Anatomy of Antiliberalism (Cambridge, Mass., 1993), 247-52. 23 See A. Ryan, The Philosophy of J. S, Mitt, 2nd edn, (London, 1987), 187-212. 24 Mill, Utilitarianism, (London, 1910), 11, 4-5. 25 26 Mill, On Liberty, 115; Utilitarianism, 31. Mill, Utilitarianism, 33-5.

150 Liberalism: The Dominant Ideology the utilitarian morality' is based on 'the social feelings of mankind, the desire to be in unity with our fellow creatures'.27 A reading of Mill as advocating both a rational optimizing of individual happiness and harmony, and as affirming the natural sociability of human beings assumes the existence of these two further core concepts. An interpretation which regards both as crucially buttressing Mill's other core concepts deserves consideration. Rationality is a term that hovers in the background of Mill's political arguments but nevertheless underwrites much of his analysis. It is pointed in the direction of harmony and sociability and locked into an idea-environment of meliorism and non-constraint This is so because only under conditions of non-constraint can natural human attributes develop. We also learn from Mill that reason is natural, though its expression may be an acquired faculty.28 Rationality, then, will unfold, and progress will reflect its growth. Rationality is also a facet of individualism, both as the exercise of utility-maximizing choice and as the drawing out of human wholeness. To propose sociability as a candidate for a liberal core concept might seem surprising in view of the individualistic tenor of liberal ideology, or trivial fa view of the truism that most ideologies regard human beings as in some sense social creatures. Neither reaction is justified. As we have argued, a core concept may be present in more than one ideological family. Moreover, concepts undergo cultural trimming to enable compatibility between ideas that—given a different cultural slant or taken to a logical extreme— may prove incompatible. A successful ideology permits its core concepts to develop until they inevitably begin to intrude on the viability of the other core concepts.29 The area where that occurs is culturally rather than logically conditioned and may involve a range rather than a point. Mill's emphasis on sociability is certainly in evidence and it is of a distinctive kind—one that sees a mutual regard for interests as inevitable and promotes 'the general welfare of the community' rather than the interests of any section of it;30 one31 that is perceived as developing towards greater cooperation, but also one that does not subsume the individual into the larger group. It is, revealingly, decontested in such a way as not 'to interfere unduly with human freedom and individuality'.32 17 29 30

2S Mill, Utilitarianism, 29. Ibid, 28. I have discussed this in Freeden, Rights (Milton Keynes, 1991), 91 ff. 31 Mill, Representative Government, 436. Mill, Utilitarianism, 29-30. 32 Md. 31. See also W. Donner, The Liberal Self: John Stuart Mill's Moral and Political Philosophy (Ithaca, NY, 1991), 181.

The 'Grand Projects' of Liberalism

151

In Mill's writings, however, the differentiation between the core concept of sociability and the concept of the general interest (served through the universalizing propensity of utilitarianism) is embryonic. The 'sense of unity with mankind, and a deep feeling for the general good', are both part of human nature,33 Mill's 'general interest' moved away from its identification by the philosophic radicals with the interest of the populace, the 'numerous classes'34 to an emphasis on the interest all individuals should have in advancing values such as self-development, and it was notably the former position which could accommodate ideas of group solidarity. As will be seen below, it is only through comparison with parallel liberalisms, or viewed from later horizons, that sociability and the general interest emerge as discrete, if frequently supportive, core concepts in liberal ideology. Their subsequent decontestation was often abetted by a transformation of the adjacently sustaining concept of equality, from denoting a formal/legal universalism to a substantive socio-economic notion encompassing mutual sharing and redistribution of resources, As is well known, Mill sought to delimit sharply the spheres of individual and society. At the same time, he displayed what in the larger purview is a typically liberal ambivalence towards society. On the one hand he acknowledged the dependence of individuals on the services of others for their happiness and conceded that 'no person is an entirely isolated being';35 on the other hand he worried that 'society has now fairly got the better of individuality'36 or, as Mill cautioned when a young man under Tocquevillian influence, 'as civilization advances, every person becomes dependent . . . not upon his own exertions, but upon the general arrangements of society'.37 The natural fact of sociability could, under adverse conditions, result in a stifling invasion of individual space. But that does not rule out sociability in its beneficial, rational, harmonious, sympathy-for-others sense. Situated at the heart of Mill's view of human nature, it too could be enlisted to core status in his ideological structure. In Mill's hands, the sphere of the organization of government emphasized the constraints applying to responsible leadership. Mill's Considerations on Representative Government, as political theory, is a study of the institutionalization of power. It may be deemed 33 34

Mill, Utility of Religion, Collected Works, x, 422. See J. Hamburger, Intellectuals in Politics: John Stuart Mitt and the Philosophic Radicals (New Haven and London, 1965), 53-6. 35 Mill, On Liberty, 133, 136-7. *> Ibid. 119, 37 Mill, Civilization, Collected Works, xviii. 129.

152 Liberalism: The Dominant Ideology odd to propose power as a central liberal concept, in view of the habitual blindness of liberalism to many of its manifestations, notably class conflict. Mill, however, was one of a few liberal thinkers to accept the inevitability, even benefits, of power and to assert that all governments needed power 'to preserve order and allow of progress in the people'.38 Nevertheless, its existence as a central concept was honoured in the breach, by presenting the very notion of limited and responsible government as a prime tenet: 'To render its ascendancy safe, it must be fitted with correctives and counteractives',39 The control of power is central to an ideology that highlights liberty. Ideologies after all shape practical orientations towards political conduct and organization, and institutional arrangements must loom large in their schemes. Mill recognized a mutually sustaining relationship between the form of government and the promotion of the desirable qualities, moral and intellectual, of the governed: 'besides that their wellbeing is the sole object of government, their good qualities supply the moving force which works the machinery'.40 In this instance we are fortunately assisted by the frequency of Mill's direct references to power and its delimitation. We know that liberty necessitates protection of others against harm, and that the 'one very simple principle' of On Liberty concerns 'the dealings of society with the individual in the way of compulsion and control'.41 And there is more straightforward evidence. Power was decontested by Mill in a specific way. Arguing against the effect of a hypothetical benevolent despot on his people, Mill voiced concern that 'their passivity is implied in the very idea of absolute power ... What sort of human beings can be formed under such a regimen? What development 42 can either their thinking or their active faculties attain under it?' Power could be dangerous when exercised unduly either by individuals or by governments. In the first case, Mill identified a chief feature of the well-ordered state in that 'while it respects the liberty of each in what specially regards himself, [it] is bound to maintain a vigilant control over his exercise of any power which it allows him to possess over others'. In the second case, Mill categorically stipulated that 'the ... most cogent reason 38 39

Mill, Representative Government, 435. Mill, Duveyrier's Political Views of French Affairs, Collected Works, xx. 307. Mill, Representative Government, 390. Mill, On Liberty, 72. Mill was of course aware of the tyranny of public opinion, against which institutional safeguards are less precise. 42 Mill, Representative Government, 400. 40 41

The 'Grand Projects' of Liberalism 153 for restricting the interference of government is the great evil of adding unnecessarily to its power'.43 The art of government, Mill decided, had to address the complex balance between centralization and the benefits of widespread mental activity by providing centralized information together with 'the greatest dissemination of power consistent with efficiency'.44 Much of the argument in Representative Government was therefore directed at constructing the institutional edifice required to counter 'the corrupting influence of undivided power'. Power itself may be beneficial and is certainly necessary, but the government wielding it should be based on participation of the people, 'the admission of all to a share in the sovereign power of the state', and consequently the exclusion of particular group interests. This was conjoined with the responsible exercise of power: 'Nothing but the restriction of the function of representation within ... rational limits will enable the benefits of popular control to be enjoyed'. That would be achieved by securing for the many, 'under strict responsibility to the nation, the acquired knowledge and practised intelligence of a specially trained and experienced Few'.45 We now have in place a mutually sustaining core structure of political concepts that holds Mill's ideology together. It is a core structure in a dual sense: the removal of any one of the concepts would change the peculiar pattern created by their joint intermeshing, causing the core to collapse; and a further range of adjacent and peripheral concepts derives from, and is in a slightly looser sense dependent on, that core. If Mill is a typical liberal, liberal ideology places the protection of individual capacities at the core of its programmatic concerns and its arrangements are primarily geared to ensuring that free individuals will be able to develop their rational and sociable attributes. A diffused, responsible, and limited use of political power is the chief institutional corollary of liberty; it complements Mill's specific conception of liberty, of achieving non-constraint through space for individual expression. It also complements the avoidance of sectional privileges and, with the adjacent concept of democracy that attaches itself to limited power, the accountable and educated exercise of 43

Mill, On Liberty, 159, 165. Ibid. 168. Mill's experience in the East India Company was an additional environment from, which to draw ideas about good administrative practice. These served as perimeter notions that helped to decontest centralization and bureaucracy as undesirable facets of power, inimical to the general interest. See Brady, 'Introduction', in Mill, Collected Works, xvii, pp. xli, Ixiii. 45 Mill, Representative Government, 514, 412, 433-4. 44

154 Liberalism: The Dominant Ideology political choices and decisions, But that typicality must yet be put to comparative tests. (b) DEMOCRACY AND OTHER ADJACENCIES

Prior to that, the Millite ideology requires some fleshing out. Many political concepts are logically candidates for adjacent-to-core status, but the appearance of some of them on Mill's agenda was facilitated by the cultural constraints to which he was subject. Democracy was the most prominent of those concepts, and its peculiar decontestation reflected Mill's synchronic location in relation to a number of mid-nineteenth-century debates, both British and French. It was logically adjacent because it could be inferred from Mill's views on individuality and self-culture, rather than their deriving from it. Its adjacency could also assist in further decontesting the core concepts, beyond the mutual decontesting they exercised on each other. It was culturally adjacent because the questions of the enfranchisement and inclusion of the masses, and representation and protection of minorities, had become salient political issues in nineteenth-century Britain in general, and topics of concern, in varying measures, for the intellectual groups from which MiE obtained nourishment. The concept of democracy assisted Mill in holding a number of themes in a delicate and shifting balance, which ultimately produced a semantic field that avoided some of the slippery-slope fears of his contemporaries. First, the decontesting of freedom as self-determination pointed the core concept of liberty in the direction of equating the rulers with the people.46 Under the influence of the philosophic radicals this could further be construed as one man one vote, and irt Mill's case—with Harriet Taylor at his side— even one person one vote. But, second, democracy as popular rule had to be tempered by quality control, by the securing of competence in government. The elitist views Mill absorbed from France coalesced with the home-grown produce of Coleridge and Carlyle to insist on the protection of those able enough to make wise decisions from the mediocrity of the uneducated populace, and to suggest that when the former were able to exercise power and moral influence, 'Society may be said to be in its natural state.'47 46 47

Mill, On Liberty, 67. Mill, 'The Spirit of the Age', in Mill, Essays on Politics and Culture ed. G. Himmelfarb (New York, 1962), 17, This appeal to nature had strong conservative

The 'Grand Projects' of Liberalism. 155 48 This elitism fell on the welcoming soil tilled by James Mill, and it must be acknowledged that Mill's upbringing, despite all his later reservations and taking into account his high degree of reflectiveness, provided49an unconscious receptivity to an elitism sustained by education. In addition, another theme which was becoming central to liberal argument in particular emerged in Mill's tempered democratic inclinations: the avoidance of sectional or class rule, be it of the aristocracy or the masses, as inimical to the pursuit of the general interest50 Hence, the core concepts of both rationality and the general interest were engaged to moderate the logical potential of liberty as unqualified self-determination. Moreover, the general interest had to be underpinned through the positioning of the two adjacent ideas of participation and education.51 The one ensured the generality of the interest; the other, that it indeed was in the interests of those who expressed it, Finally, Mill's principled allegiance to democracy as an ethical arrangement was retained through the cultural path the concept of liberty was made to take, among logical alternatives, from self-determination to self-development. The participatory facet of democracy was made to work for individuality and progress by requiring in the long run a democratic framework for all. This would enable the exercise of the mental and moral faculties without which the rationale of good government was undermined and no nation could flourish. Conversely, once an educated, developed, and critically aware individual had emerged, democracy would be both justifiable and desirable. Hence quasi-contingent instances of democracy operated within a logically necessary adjacent category, given the nature of Mill's core concepts. Mill accomplished that through building into his liberalism a diachronic sensitivity which assumed, as given (i.e. as attainable), a change of relationship between the liberal core and the adjacent notion of democracy. The success involved in allowing full expression to leanings, as has been pointed out in ], H. Burns,']. S. Mill and Democracy, 182961', in J, B, Schneewind (ed.). Mill: A Collection of Critical Studies (London, 1969), 305-7, Cp. Ch. 8 below. 48 Cp. J. C. Rees, John Stuart Milt's On Liberty (Oxford, 1985), 71. 49 See }. Stillinger, 'John Mill's Education; Fact, Fiction and Myth', in M. Laine (ed.), A Cultivated Mind: Essays on ]. S. Mill Presented to John M. Robson (Toronto, 1991), 19-43. 50 This was an. elaboration of Bentham's admonitions against sinister interests channelled through the philosophic radicals (see Hamburger, Intellectuals, 46). 51 D. F. Thompson, John Stuart Mill and Representative Government (Princeton, 1976), 176.

156 Liberalism: The Dominant Ideology core and other adjacent concepts would result in the gradual integration of a richer conception of democracy into a more central position in liberal morphology. Mill's conceptualization of democracy was thus positioned between diverse boundary posts, and in the course of his life he thoroughly traversed the area in between, his work reflecting the cumulative horizons he encountered. In part this attested to his reflective willingness to experiment with the wide range of approaches to which he had been exposed, and to query them when he believed it to be justified; in part because, on his own account, he had accepted the diachronic insight of his French intellectual mentors, the Saint-Simonians, Comte and d'Eichthal, that the ideas of one period in time were not necessarily correct or fixed,52 As for the wider background of Mill's ideas in the context of nineteenthcentury British liberalism, current scholarship has reaffirmed the ideological unity of Victorian liberalism while remaining alert to its internal nuances.53 Mill operated among & number of important liberal political forces. First came the utilitarian influences of his father, James Mill, and the philosophic radicals, who contributed a rationalist and reforming zeal, as well as an appreciation of individuals as the arbiters of their own good, and whose 'ideology initially provided a defence of democratic government',54 Then came populist liberals, as well as Nonconformists, whose purpose it was to bring immediate and extensive political reform to the working classes;35 university liberal intellectuals and educationalists, who pushed learning to the forefront of their endeavours to control the direction of democracy,56 and the inspiration of the German philosophers, notably Humboldt,57 Mill's continuous acquaintance with French 'Continental Liberalism', including JeanBaptiste Say and Frangois Guizot, also influenced his development58 M Mill, Autobiography, 100. 53 j^ parryi jfu mse mtj fan oj ubeml Government in Victorian Britain (New Haven and London, 1993), 3 and passim. 54 Hamburger, Intellectuals, 2, See also S, Collini, D. Winch, and J, Burrow, That Noble Science of Politics (Cambridge, 1983), 102-4. 55 See E. F. Biagini, Liberty, Retrenchment and Reform: Popular Liberalism in the Age of Gladstone 1860-1880 (Cambridge, 1992). In addition, Biagini has redirected attention to popular Liberals—organized labour movements which were Liberal (P.567). See C. Harvie, The Lights of Liberalism: University Liberals and the Challenge of Democracy 1860-86 (London, 1976); Parry, Rise and Fall, 231, 57 See B. Semmel, John Stuart Mill and the Pursuit of Virtue (New Haven, 1984), 165-7. 58 Mill, Autobiography, 39. See below, s. (d).

The 'Grand Projects' of Liberalism 157 It is hence an analytical illusion to portray Mill as requiring undivided attention as a representative of liberal ideology. Ideology is a group product, however illustrious some of its individual exponents, and Mill was no exception to that rule. Mill's conceptualizations, as he oscillated among different stances, were clearly fashioned by the semantic fields that moulded Victorian liberalism and some—like Continental positivism—were fashioned outside that family. Yet such was his impact on the thought of his time that liberalism was to no small extent refined in turn by his opinions, which firmed up distinctive conceptual morphologies. Mill was himself unusually aware of the interaction between logic, culture, and emotion at the basis of his thought, as of any ideology. His is a fine particular instance of an ideological system both intellectual and lived, and of the passionate intellectual commitment extant even within liberalism. It is not the aim of this study to trace Mill's intellectual development, a task which has already been admirably discharged by others. Let it be noted rather that his youthful Benthamism reflected the egalitarian democratic tendencies of many of the philosophic radicals, as well as their sanguine faith in their ability to mould the masses in their own likeness.59 Initially regarded as their mouthpiece, Mill recognized the semi-conscious operation of Benthamite principles on Ms early thought, and was regarded as 'a "made" or manufactured man, having had a certain impress of opinion stamped on me which I could only reproduce'.60 An early visit to France saw him donning the imaginary mantle of a Girondist, and in politics he developed 'an almost unbounded confidence in the efficacy of two things: representative government, and complete freedom of discussion' as direct guarantors of the core concepts of reason and the general interest.61 His youthful crisis brought him—through Comte and the Saint-Simonians, among others—into touch, both intellectually and emotionally, with the values embedded in advanced cultures and the need to ensure that their carriers would not be silenced. Mill's new but resurgent elitism preferred the educated and talented, the pouvoir spmtuel, to the untrained and accorded them additional political weight. He consequently argued against compelling representatives to undertake pledges vis-a-vis the electors, 'because we knew the formidable array of human weaknesses and passions which would be 59

See W. Thomas, The Philosophic Radicals: Nine Studies in Theory and Practice, 1817-1841 (Oxford, 1979), 159. 60 61 Mill, Autobiography, 93. Ibid. 40, 64-5.

158 Liberalism: The Dominant Ideology perpetually at work to make a Representative Democracy... a mere mob-government' ,62 Mill's later acquaintance with Tocqueville's works reinforced Ms fears concerning the tyranny of the majority, a theme to which he adhered in his subsequent writings. Here power, organized or through public opinion, was unleashed by democratic procedures to threaten liberty and, especially, individuality. As he became increasingly sensitive to the dangers surrounding individuality,63 he encircled it with an expanding number of protective devices. It was not that Mill had become an anti-democrat, but that his rich liberal ideology demanded the preservation of a range of values, not the monomania of a single cause reformer. Democratic practice had to be contained within those decontested limits that did not imperil liberty, individuality, or the general interest of the people. Under the impact of Tocqueville and Samuel Bailey, Mill threw out the earlier utilitarian decontestation of democracy as 'identification of interest between the rulers and ruled' and argued for a looser conceptual link in the form of 'a somewhat less approximation ... than might possibly be attainable'. The new conceptual structure he envisaged was 'the grand difficulty in polities': 'how best to conciliate the two great elements on which good government depends; to combine the greatest amount of the advantage derived from the independent judgment of a specially instructed Few, with the greatest degree of the security for rectitude of purpose derived from rendering those Few responsible to the Many'.64 The perimeter notions Mill engaged to support these vacillating views on democracy included, at various times, a softening of his views on pledges, the abolition of the hereditary chamber, and practices such as the secret ballot (later discarded), a one person one vote system, strongly influenced by the 1848 events in France,65 plural voting, and proportional representation recommended through Mill's acquaintance with Hare's scheme and adumbrated in Representative Government. This is not the place to query Mill's consistency, which is evident even in his final decontestation of representative government in elitist terms as the protection of knowledge against ignorance.66 What is important is that the 62

Mill, Newspaper Writings, Collected Works, xxiii. 504. Rees, John Stuart Mill's On Liberty, 68. M Mill, Rationale of Representation, Collected Works, xvili. 23-4. 65 See B. L. Kinzer, 'John Stuart Mill and the Experience of Political Engagemenf, in Laine (ed.), A Cultivated Mind, 191 ff. 66 Cp. Bums, '}. S. Mill and Democracy, 1829-61', 327-8. 63

Tlze 'Grand Projects' of Liberalism 159 patterning of Mill's political concepts reflects the changing relationships he perceived between the elements of his synchronic system as well as a diachrony interacting with external events, personal biography, and competing schools of thought. And it was through the perimeter interface of the political and administrative life in which Mill participated fully that the morphology of his ideology adopted shape after shape, testing different formulae for optimizing its core concepts. The open perimeter was the hallmark of a non-dogmatism in which new evidence was continuously permitted to permeate Mill's liberal ideology and reorganize its conceptual configurations. Millite democracy leads logically to the adjacent concept of equality, but again in a culturally muted form that denies it the status of core concept claimed for it by some modern liberals,67 Though universal suffrage is a formal egalitarian arrangement, the absence of complete political equality was not fatally detrimental to Mill's liberal project. Moreover, the question of extra-political equality was favourably tackled only in Mill's later writings. In his earlier attitudes to equality he was clearly at some distance from modern liberal philosophical formulations: if it is asserted that all persons ought to be equal in every description of right recognised by society, I answer, not until all are equal in worth as human beings. It is the fact, that one person is not as good as another; and it is reversing all the rules of rational conduct, to attempt to raise a political fabric on a supposition which is at variance with fact.68

It is also a fact that liberalism has not constructed its arguments on the more fully developed concept of equality developed by other ideologies, and that the profile of liberalism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries has not depended on the salience of equality.69 Rather, the intension of equality has been shaped mostly by features of the core concepts of rationality and individuality. The universalization of rationality as an attribute of human nature and its attachment to the individual freedom to choose (in pursuit of one's life-plans, whether reflectively or not, as long as they did not critically impede those of others) contains aspects of equality as a consequence of these premisses. Liberalism has thus been able to incorporate the two ineliminable components of the concept of equality: the postulation of a common humanity in virtue of a shared 67

See below, Ch. 6. Mill, Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform, Collected Works, xix. 323. tft See the remarks on American liberalism in Ch. 6, s, (d). 68

160 Liberalism: The Dominant Ideology rational capacity, in which the worth of any individual is commutable into the worth of any other, and the negation of irrelevant differences among individuals. Such differences are those immaterial to the free and rational pursuit by all of individual life-plans, for each individual is assumed potentially to be in possession of some merit. The liberal semantic field has been culturally constrained to signify one or more of the following: a moral conception of equal regard and worth, itself joined to a conception of individualism as self-expression and purposiveness; a notion of equal legal and political opportunities for fair competition and individual development; sharply, but not totally, reduced economic and social inequalities; and a notion of sovereignty which locates decisions in a democratic popular majority directed by the constitution. That semantic field has never included equality as sameness, nor nonliberal maximizing versions of equality of opportunity, that allow for continuous redistribution on the basis of equal need, nor equality of result. Nineteenth-century liberal thought was specifically nourished on prevalent beliefs about the uneducated masses that viewed equality as potentially destabilizing, even pernicious.70 Hence Mill subjected Tocqueville's examination of equality in America to minute scrutiny, concluding that America's lessons could pave the way for a democracy in Europe which would recognize that 'where all are equal, all must be alike free, or alike slaves'. The former condition could only be attained through intermediary bodies and the cultivation of centres of antagonism to government that would prevent the stultifying possibility of even the partial political and social equality evident in America.71 However, the evils of sectionalism could, as in Britain, emerge without the equality of conditions.72 Of far greater concern to Mill was the positioning of equality in relation to the concepts of progress, power, and rationality. Though 'a constitution which gives equal influence, man to man, to the most and to the least instructed, is nevertheless conducive 70 Mill of course acknowledged the Saint-Simonian and Coleridgean advocacy of government by the cultivated few (Hamburger, Intellectuals, 87, 103). For the wider views of Victorians on the subject see C. Kent, Brains and Numbers: Elitism, Comtism, and Democracy in Mid-Victorian England (Toronto, 1978), 34—52. W. E. Gladstone, too, supported a limited extension of the franchise, blending hierarchy and egalitarianism (see H. C, G. Matthew, Gladstone 1809-1874 (Oxford, 1986), 140). The question of women's suffrage is another case, based on partially different grounds, and on which Mill's later views ran ahead of those of most liberals. 71 Mill, De Toccjueville on Democracy in America, I, Collected Works, xiii. 57. 72 Mill, De Tocqueville on Democracy in America, II, Collected Works, xiii. 191-6.

The 'Grand Projects' of Liberalism 161 to progress', because it encouraged deliberation among the latter, its effect could also be, 'when they are made the possessors of all power' that 'they have no longer need of the arm of reason' and consequently to retard their development,73 Once cultural factors such as Mill's intellectual environments and external political events had narrowed down the options, the inevitable morphological chain of reactions was triggered off, as one cultural decontestation of equality took the logical path that led via participation to individuality and progress, while another led via (unlimited) power to the diminution of reason and self-development. Mill's choice of the one or the other adjacent decontestation would thus establish differentiated patterns of interrelationships among the liberal core concepts. Most typically, when equality was put to work as an adjacent concept to the Millite liberal core, it served to prevent the undue claims of 'privileged' social groups to consideration on grounds not sanctioned by democratic agreement—that is, to preserve the core liberal concept of a general interest that overrode sectional claims; otherwise, it was kept in check to shield other core concepts. Only in Mill's later writings did an interest in extra-political equality, neatly obviated in his assessment of Tocqueville, emerge. Significantly, though, it was presented by him, and consumed by many of his contemporaries, as a form of socialism. We shall evaluate the accuracy of that epithet, as well as its compatibility with liberal morphologies, in later chapters, but Mill's substantive argument about equality certainly merits attention: 'The very idea of distributive justice, or of any proportionality between success and merit, or between success and exertion, is in the present state of society so manifestly chimerical as to be relegated to the regions of romance.'74 Though he continued to reject equal pay for all, Mill developed qualified sympathy towards another decontestation of equality, equality of desert, which would have far-reaching social and economic repercussions, and he looked forward, in the long run, to 'an equal participation of all in the benefits of combined labour'/5 that is, to an equality conditional upon its adjacency to another political concept: sociability decontested as productive cooperation. This is by no means an exhaustive list of adjacent concepts, were such a list indeed possible. Education, for instance, runs as 73 74 75

Mill, Representative Government, Collected Works, xix. 478-9. Mill, Chapters on Socialism, Collected Works, v. 714. Ibid. 729-30, 743-4; Autobiography, 115, 138.

162 Liberalism: The Dominant Ideology a central thread through all Mill's writings, as formal qualification for exercising the skills of government, including the professional civil service, on which Mill's personal experience meshed with his elitism to bind education to progress and rationality; as well as in the broader sense of self-culture which coincided with his ideal of the harmoniously developed individual Mill held the meaning of the "free development of individuality' by means of constraining satellite terms which made it 'a co-ordinate element with all that is designated by the terms civilization, instruction, education, culture', as well as 'a necessary part and condition of all those things' —another insight into the mutually defining morphology he constructed.7* One could also mention rights or property, simply because those political concepts are well-established in all dominant Western ideological systems, and subject to degrees of criticism in alternative ideologies, mainly socialist or anarchist. I have argued elsewhere—contrary to most current rights-based theorizing—that the concept of rights cannot be part of an ideological core, being definitionally attached to any political value or concept it is designed to protect and prioritize.77 A right is a prioritizing concept which deliberately secures a specific configuration of the core concepts of a given ideology. In classical liberalism this occurs typically through linking together life, liberty, and property. More generally, rights serve as a device that identifies and protects whatever attributes of individuals and groups are regarded by their societies as significant On the micro-level, the concept of rights has a specific impact on deeontesting the concepts to which it is proximate. Thus, its attachment to the concept of liberty entails specific conduct on the part of others towards the subject of Eberty; the possibility of conflicting life-plans of liberty-bearers (otherwise their rights would not need stating); the active selfdetermined behaviour of the units; and the desirability of promoting their good understood in the above senses. In his early work Mill himself defined a right as a correlative of a duty not to interfere and prevent a person from an action—thus attaching a right to the protection of liberty.78 In On Liberty Mill perceived the historical role of rights as limiting the power of rulers and thus enhancing liberty—in this instance adjacent to two liberal core concepts.79 But Mill moved on significantly to specify political and electoral rights as protective of a uniquely valuable 76 78 79

n Mill, On Liberty, 115. Freeden, Rights, 6-11. Mill, 'Use and Abuse of Political Terms', Collected Works, xviii. 9-10. Mill, On Liberty, 66.

The 'Grand Projects' of Liberalism 163 type of human activity, 'one of the chief instruments both of moral and of intellectual training for the popular mind'/0 consciously appending instrumental status to rights as servants of individuality and development. This was a clear departure from the language of natural rights and contract which located rights within the context of irremovable restrictions on the power of rulers in an attempt to establish legitimate consensual government. Mill shifted rights to a relatively peripheral and marginal position. Their inviolability was not central to a universal theory of political society; rather, their broad utility was proportionate to their role in fostering individuality. The concept of rights was no longer fastened to the core concept of liberty in such as way as to protect the latter from redefinition. It was flexibly and loosely attached to promoting individual abilities within a time- and space-bound view of civilization.81 It is especially illuminating to observe how Mill dealt with the concept of property. His views on the subject must be seen in the context of changing opinions in mid-Victorian England but, importantly, he was aware of his own changing horizons and the theoretical significance of those permutations. Looking back, Mill conceded that private property as now understood, and inheritance, appeared to m e . . . the dernier mot of legislation: and I looked no further than to mitigating the inequalities consequent on these institutions, by getting rid of primogeniture and entails. The notion that it was possible to go further than this in removing the injustice... involved in the fact that some are born to riches and the vast majority to poverty, I then reckoned chimerical... .82

He came to recognize that it was normal, especially in periods of transition, for words to be invested with polysemic meaning, expressing this most lucidly towards the end of his life in language close to the concerns of this study: One of the mistakes oftenest committed, and which are the sources of the greatest practical errors in human affairs, is that of supposing that the same name always stands for the same aggregation of ideas. No word has been the subject of more of this kind of misunderstanding than the word property. It denotes in every state of society the largest powers of 80 81

Mill, Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform, Collected Works, xix, 323. Cp, M. Francis and J. Morrow, A History of English Political Thought in the Nineteenth Century (London, 1994), 148-51. 82 Mill, Autobiography, 137-8,

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exclusive use or exclusive control over things83.,. but these powers ... are very various, and differ greatly in different countries and in different states of society.., The idea of property is not some one thing, identical throughout history and incapable of alteration, but is variable like all other creations of the human mind.84

Mill himself allowed different ideological deeontestations to permeate his work, thus affording insight into the handling of the concept. The young Mill could assert categorically that 'the security of person and property are the first social interests not only of the rich but of the poor'.85 The importance of the inviolability of property lay in the protection of individuals' ways of life and in the linking of exertion and reward,86 which was part of the prevalent notion of character. In Mill's later works such arguments persevered, but they were accompanied by a reflection of changing attitudes to the concentration of wealth, the problems of poverty, and the power that emanated from property, all of which impelled Mill to associate the upholding of excessive property rights with anti-reformers.87 As is well known, Mill called for a redistribution of the burden of taxation,88 the resulting spread of property being intended to bolster more universal opportunities for individual development, as well as recommending the abolition of some types of inheritance, and the taxation of some forms of unearned income.89 His opposition to the granting of monopolies was entirely in line with the contemporaneous liberal fear of the concentration of economic power. He believed that the practices surrounding property constrained two other desirable political concepts: equality and justice.90 In conclusion, in no sense can Mill's concept of property be assigned the core role it is thought to play in classical liberal theory grounded on Lockean natural right premisses.' It is of incidental interest to note the virtual absence of Locke in Mill's political writings, despite the pivotal function of Locke in American political discourse. However, though property migrated away from the Millite core, it did not become a peripherally marginal concept. It played a supportive and interpretative 83

Even this generalization is ideologically biased against decontestations that permit non-exclusive property. 84 Mill, Chapters on Socialism, Collected Works, v, 750, 753. 85 ME1, De TocijueviUe on Democracy in America, I, Collected Works, xviii. 80. 96 Mill, De Tocquevitte on Democracy in America, II, Collected Works, xix. 176. 87 Mill, Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform, 316, 88 Mill, Representative Government, 442. 89 Mill, Principles of Political Economy (Harmondsworth, 1970), passim, 90 Ibid. 358.

The 'Grand Projects' of Liberalism 165 role for the core concepts of liberty, individuality, and development, but was seen even by Mill currently to fluctuate among indeterminate meanings, some of which were detrimental to the viability of the Millite decontestations of those core liberal concepts. (c) PERIPHERAL PERMUTATIONS

A brief allusion to peripheral concepts and ideas will round off this discussion. State regulation of some economic and social practices, free trade, equal rights for women, national selfdetermination, free education, and social order are all candidates for perimeter status in the Millite morphology.91 The positions they occupy, thought not vital for underpinning liberalism's basic structure, provide the necessary interface between general ideological conceptualizations and their temporal and spatial contexts. Free trade was tangentially related by Mill to his core complex concept of individual liberty, 'only in so far as leaving people to themselves is always better, caeteris paribus, than controlling them', though state intervention in some aspects of trade was desirable to protect the welfare of workers and consumers.92 Free trade was a nineteenth-century liberal doctrine shed by liberals only in the 1930s, by which time the liberty it offered was judged to be akin to free play and to the lack of rational control of a society over the behaviour of its members, especially because of its 93rising costs in unemployment and a declining standard of living. Equal rights for women, which Mill helped to promote, were presented as a special case of universal rights for human beings.94 They were perceived as problematic only when an injustice of deprivation or discrimination was committed. Those rights were marginal, for once the circumstances of the particular need were removed, by annihilating the socio-political distinctions under which women laboured, the issue could be subsumed within the concepts of equality or individual development. However, the views of Mill (and Harriet Taylor) on women assisted in reinterpreting the core 91

Some of these, such as state regulation and equal rights for women, later attained adjacent status in liberal argument. See Chs. 5 and 13. w Mill, On Liberty, 150-1. 93 See B. Semmel, The Rise of Free Trade Imperialism (Cambridge, 1970); and M. Freeden, Liberalism Divided: A Study in British Political Thought 1914-1939 (Oxford, 1986), 121-2. 94 Cp. S. M. Okin, Women in Western Political Thought (London, 1979), 202-6.

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notion of progress, linking it with a sweeping historical faith in 'the whole course of human improvement' towards equality of rights of the two sexes,95 But this version of political and intellectual equality was continually constrained by Mill from including the uneducated. State regulation, a negatively connoted combination of directive power and interference with liberty, was acceptable under clearly curtailed circumstances, with respect to educating children, preventing harm to others, the supervision of local government, or the securing of standards of welfare.96 Its role in Millite ideology was far more marginal than that assigned it by later liberals, for reasons to be pursued later. Education was itself immediately adjacent to the liberal version of rationality, the cultivation of talent and intelligence being essential to the ends of self-developing, active, and internally harmonious human beings. It was no coincidence that Mill supported the broad principles—though not the denominational bias—of the 1870 Education Act. Liberals as well as conservatives insisted on coupling the enfranchisement of 1867 with an educational programme that would make democracy safe for the world.97 The unconscious and unchallenged assumption was that education and knowledge would decrease social conflict and be put to beneficial ends. The question of nationality was attached by Mill to the problem of liberty, while concurrently recognizing the claims of groups: there is a prima facie case for uniting all the members of a nationality under the same government, and a government to themselves apart. This is merely saying that the question of government ought to be decided by the governed. One hardly knows what any division of the human race should be free to do if not to determine with which of the various collective bodies of human beings they choose to associate themselves.98 The association of a mild culturally and historically based nationalism with liberty, so much in the Gladstonian mould of Victorian foreign policy, was clearly distanced from a nationalism in which the state was glorified, or in which a society was endowed with mythical characteristics setting it indisputably above its members. As for the concept of order, a central plank in many conservative 95 96

Mill, The Subjection of Women, Collected Works, xxi. 272. See Ch. 13 below. Mill, On Liberty, 160; Representative Government, 544-5; Centralisation, Collected Works, xix. 602. 97 Cp. R. Shannon, The Crisis of Imperialism 1865-1918 (London, 1976), 86-91; F. W. Garforth, John Stuart Mill on Education in Society (Oxford, 1980), 123-4,129. 98 Mill, Representative Government, 547.

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ideologies, it was diffused by Mill over a wide range of meanings: obedience, the preservation of peace (both for Mill means to other ends, not a purpose of good government), or—significantly attaching it to the concept of progress—the preservation of the good that progress was meant to increase, 'a part and means of Progress itself. It is only when bonded and subservient to progress that order became a constituting, though marginal, concept of Mill's liberal thought. Otherwise, alternate decontestings of order and of the consequent exercise of governmental authority, 'may differ by the whole interval which divides the best from the worst possible'.99 Let us recall what we set out to accomplish. The above discussion is not a summary of Mill's thought, nor a detailed philosophical exploration of its subtleties. It is an exposition of the main political concepts used by Mill when constructing his arguments, and the most salient configurations they have adopted. His diverse arguments form the unique contours of those morphological configurations. As it stands, this exposition is incomplete. It awaits the greater sophistication that comparative analysis will give it. We require a feel for the range in which the concepts selected by Mill move within the liberal ideological family and still lack a sense of their multi-dimensionality and the richness of their liberal decontestations. We cannot yet be sure whether all of Mill's conceptual preferences will be located within an emerging morphology of liberal thinkers: is his elitism, for instance, a prevalent liberal form of decontesting individuality or progress? We have as yet no information on the consumption of Mill's ideas by other liberals. And, returning to the map analogy, we are dependent on the magnification factor that we have selected. We have outlined Mill's conceptual scheme in general terms, to provide an overview of the entire area. We could have chosen a larger magnification, as many specialized works on Mill have admirably done, in order to cast light on the highways and byways that surround any selected concept. We would have gained in terms of the meticulous investigation of a specific topic, but at the expense of comprehending the whole ideological picture. It may be asked whether we could not do both? The answer must be in the negative, because the question of which map to choose significantly depends on the purpose at hand. To engage in both would have meant to devote an entire book to Mill alone, or to another worthy exemplar of liberal thought. At this initial stage of its adumbration, the broader 99

Ibid. 384-8.

168 Liberalism: The Dominant Ideology view of ideological morphology needs to sacrifice detail for the sake of its own clarity. (rf) FRENCH CONNECTIONS AND DISCONNECTIONS

Outside his own, France was the country with which Mill was most familiar. He was also well placed, through personal contacts and journalism, to act as a transmitter of French reform movements to Britain.100 Rather than offering a detailed exegesis, this section outlines some currents outside the Millite framework in the pursuit of the morphology of liberalism and of the analytical validation of that approach to liberal ideology. A comparative perspective is utilized to identify broad themes in French liberal ideology that cohabited over a longer period of time. Unquestionably, the concept of liberty occupied a prime position in French liberalism, while a strong historicism and evolutionism brought liberty into close proximity with conceptions of progress. A vigorous respect for universal and disinterested law offered the possibility of imposing constraints on the excesses of free action, while the divide between individualism and individuality was making itself known through Benjamin Constant's writings. Yet one can discern a range of reordering of the relationships among the core concepts. The experience of the French Revolution had caused a schism in the employment of concepts that later liberals were to use. Through the good services of Rousseau and other participants in the enlightenment project, rationality was proffered in a more abstract form. This had repercussions on the concept of the general interest, now accruing holistic (rather than aggregative) connotations which were unavailable at the time to British liberals. In particular, rationalism in France was associated with universality and a generality of attributes vested in social wholes and in the abstract features of law; whereas British liberals preferred to follow Mill, until late in the nineteenth century, in situating reason in the free, discrete, and personally valuable chokes of individuals, as long as they did not impede the similar choices of others. In addition, the main problem of French liberalism in the first 101 half of the nineteenth century was its relationship with democracy and the letter's movement from a marginal to an adjacent position 1(0

M. Filipiuk, 'John Stuart Mill and France', in Laine (ed), A Cultivated Mind, 80-120. 101 P. Rosanvailon, Le Moment Guizot (Paris, 1985), 13.

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within the liberal configuration. In Britain, in contradistinction, the democratic theme—-while evident—often trailed behind a concern with individual liberty, political rights, self-development, and their limits. The French liberal sensitivity to constitutional guarantees of limited power might have appeared redundant in a culture whose version of rationality, as a constant and general will, put complete faith in the combination of liberty and democracy—decontested as popular sovereignty—based on the possibility of arriving at universal truths and the introduction of populist notions of equality. Unsurprisingly, faced with a rationality that dispensed with safeguards for individual liberty, and unable to attach a diverse rationality to a range of individual actions, some French liberals, such as Constant, were uncertain about the centrality of reason in their ideological morphology. They preferred to rely on devising institutions that would, in one scholar's words, 'channel their nonrational drives, such as amour-propre, in the direction of reason'.102 There were those for whom abstract law embodied rationality; for Constant, the reasoning powers of individuals shaped concrete laws. The formality of law replaced the moral virtues of the community as the locus of rationality. Sociability, too, took on a distinct hue in French political debate, and its colours rubbed off on liberalism. The social and sociological contexts of political behaviour were closer to the concerns of French than British political thinkers. Moreover, the famous slogan of the French Revolution had conveniently and significantly tied together in ordinary language usage not only liberty and fraternity, but equality as well. This opened up the possibility of decontesting the revolutionaries' motto on two diverging tracks: the one leading towards sociability,103 the other—deplored by Tocqueville—towards a more radical atomization of individual rights, which could either threaten liberalism or direct it towards commercial activities.104 Thus, in comparison to Mill's own inclinations, the French liberal tradition included some features which were more individualist, while others were more socially oriented. As a whole, though, it displayed a recognizably similar morphology. The liberal response to the Revolution both retained old themes 102 S. Holmes, Benjamin Constant and the Making of Modern Liberalism (New Haven, 1984), 140; see also p, 202. 103 But see C. Pateman, The Disorder of Women (Oxford, 1989), 41, about the patriarchal limitations of fraternity. 104 On the latter possibility see C. B. Welch, Liberty and Utility: The French Ideologues and the Transformation of Liberalism (New York, 1984).

170 Liberalism: The Dominant Ideology on which liberalism could seize and—often as a reaction—saw the emergence of new ones, French liberal thought had, as far back as Montesquieu, related the analysis of political concepts to diverse social structures and had decontested liberty within a 'context of social rules'105 and (institutionally) through the extolling of intermediate bodies between individual and state. Its conception of liberty had been grounded on a rational and moral sense of responsible social conduct within the confines of the law. If the ineliminable component of liberty was still identifiable as nonconstraint, one of its interpretations, contrary to English traditions, was that 'no-one will be constrained to do the things the law does not oblige him to do, or be kept from doing the things the law permits him to do'.106 In this way liberty and a duty-bound rationality were combined in the French liberal tradition, expressing a dual belief, first, in the possibility of just law based on 'a raison universelle ... which resided in a sphere superior to the conflicting interests of individuals'107 and, second, in the virtues and internal cohesion of the political community, thus detaching the conceptualizations of liberty from the taint of an adjacent social atomism. There was of course a more Individualist strain among French liberals. Parallel to the mainstream of a centralizing 'political' and 'constitutional' guarantist liberalism108 there emerged themes of 'economic' liberalism influenced by Say and indebted to British Cobdenism.109 This divide occurred against the cultural backdrop of the stronger role allocated to the state in French politics. 'Economic' liberals concentrated on the individual entrepreneur as the unit of social action and preached the reduction of social responsibilities in favour of the balance established by a free market, thus severely curtailing the core concept of sociability at the expense of a market-generated conception of the general interest. But this was the exception rather than the rule. While even Mill had to approach the connection between liberty and community through a mild form of the 'general interest', mediated—as we have seen—via other core concepts such as individualism and progress-cum-development, many French liberals displayed little 105

L, Siedentop, 'Two Liberal Traditions', in A. Ryan (ed.), The Idea of freedom (Oxford, 1979), 155-6. 106 C. L. de S. Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws (Cambridge, 1989), 155-6. 107 G. de Ruggiero, The History of European Liberalism (Boston, 1959), 160. 108 Cp. N. Roitssellier, UEurope des IMraux (Brussels, 1991), 58-60. 109 Cp. L. Girard, Les IMraux franyns 1814-1875 (Paris, 1985), 140-4; Rosanvallon, Le Moment Guizot, 15.

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unease with a direct linkage between their core concepts of liberty and sociability. The utilitarian concern with the individual bequeathed to Mill an ideological predilection for a conception of a state whose worth was that of the individuals composing it, one in which social entities and structures did not have a salient role to play in organizing and forming individual conduct While in the work of Constant or Henri de Saint-Simon (himself no liberal but respected by Mill) utilitarian resonances can be detected,110 the two thinkers sought consciously to dissociate themselves from utilitarian argument, causing a distinctively liberal horizon to diminish. Indeed, among French liberals this was most strikingly accomplished—from the British perspective—while nevertheless maintaining allegiance to theories of property and economic individualism. The general interest was skilfully construed not merely as the harmonious and enlightened, yet discrete, self-interests of rational individuals. Rather it became, as with Adolphe Franck and Paul Janet, a set of duties owed by each individual to society —the obligation to serve—which sought above all to reconcile the claims of society with individual free choice. That could partly be achieved through a formal guarantism, but behind the operation of the constitution loomed the idea of rational, occasionally still natural, law, and freedom was often decontested in a direction which implied a morality expressed in responsibility towards society."1 Some of the groundwork had already been prepared by Constant. His much-publicized 1819 discussion of liberty drew attention to a tension between the (so-called ancient) conjunction of liberty with an adjacent participation in the public arena, and the (so-called modern) conjunction of liberty with an adjacent individual choice in action as well as in association.112 The first allowed each person to share in national sovereignty, so that 'the will of each individual had real influence', but it diminished individuality by locating liberty in the political collectivity. The second installed liberty—in the shape of concrete liberties such as those of 110 See also Girard, Les Libemux frangais, 48-52; and Welch, Liberty and Utility, with reference to the ideologues. 111 See W. Logue, from Philosophy to Sociology: The Evolution of French Liberalism 1870-1914 (DeKalb, 111., 1983), chs. 1,2, for an elaboration of some of these themes. Logue notes aptly that some of the eclectics who espoused these views later became conservatives (p. 50). The ideas of a natural morality and progress fostered by such thinkers were, as will be contended in Ch. 8, the most likely to carry them into the conservative camp. 112 These different stresses also reflected diverse historical circumstances which shaped Constant's arguments (see Holmes, Benjamin Constant, 33-43).

172 Liberalism: The Dominant Ideology opinion, expression, and religion113—in the domain of commerce, which 'inspires in men a vivid love of individual independence'.114 As Constant noted elsewhere, 'by liberty I mean the triumph of individuality'.115 The dichotomy was not as stark as it seemed. Constant approved of the path leading via participation and reason to community, a path which conferred the 'eternal rights to assent to the laws,... to be an integral part of the social body of which we are members',116 because he also believed in a society united by common ideas.117 But he appealed for a reduced role for political liberty, now to be balanced with a civil liberty buttressed by an adjacent regard for property and security and a perimeter allegiance to free trade, as well as a respect for variety and tolerance—all this providing the best route to the progress of civilization. This was not a plea for a retreat to the domain of the private, but an endorsement of a circumscribed popular sovereignty through representative government, with its mechanisms of limited and constitutional power, reinforced by a commercial civil society capable of resisting the state. In contrast to the conjectural Rousseauist strain in French political thought, Constant observed: "The abstract recognition of the sovereignty 118 of the people in no way augments the sum of individual liberty.' Hence Rousseau's direct democracy was ruled out. Democracy was decontested by holding it firmly in check between 119 constitutionalism, pluralist decentralization, and participation. Only this could ensure political liberty, and 'political liberty is the most powerful, the most effective means of self-development'120—though this was interpreted not as Mill's self-cultured individual, but in more limited fashion as an enlargement of spirit and ennobling of thoughts. Constant sought to promote the general interest through a pouvoir neutre, a body which combined the popular121desire for liberty with the government's concern with stability. Private property, too, found its way 113 Cp. 'Introduction', in B. Constant, Political Writings, ed. B, Fontana (Cambridge, 1988), 27. 114 Constant, Political Writings, 315-16. 115 Quoted in G. A. Kelly, The Humane Comedy; Constant, Toctjueville and French Liberalism (Cambridge, 1992), 41. m "* Constant, Politkal Writings, 324, Kelly, Humane Comedy, 45. ns Holmes, Benjamin Constant, 96, See also P. Manent, An Intellectual History of Liberalism (Princeton, 1994), 86-93, 119 See also Holmes, Benjamin Constant, 2, 44, 77, 120 Constant, Political Writings, 327, 121 Cp. Girard, Les Liberaux frangms, p. 43. On the pouvoir neutre see p, 263 below.

The 'Grand Projects' of Liberalism 173 to the liberal core by new routes, linked not only to liberty but adjacent to social co-operation as a contingent consequence of social life. And equality was decoupled from its populist potential and rendered safe by associating it with the opening up of the structures of the ancien regime and enabling free individual choice.122 The internal conceptual balance in Constant's thought establishes him as a highly representative figure in French liberalism, even though the more famous Tocqueville helped shift that balance back towards an appreciation of the social and intellectual forces without which a liberal-democratic state could not flourish, and towards the controlled democracy from which Mill took his inspiration. The omnipresence of the concept of sociability emanating from sociological assumptions had become a defining feature of the semantic field of French liberalism. Although the earlier legacies of Montesquieu or Constant figure only marginally in his writings, Mill was conversant with Guizot's work, and had indeed met him and become a qualified admirer.123 Through Guizot, Mill had access to a historicist perspective additional to that of the positivist school, one that emphasized liberty of thought—reason taking herself for her own starting point and her own guide', and reinforced the conceptual connections between progress, liberty, and rationality, while also further decontesting liberty as the exercise of the critical ability and moral conscience of individuals.124 However, Mill took exception to the 'Liberal' or 'Whiggish' politics of Guizot and the French doctrinaires, whose respect for constitutionalism as a political panacea offered a core liberal concept inappropriately conjoined with inflexible stances. He believed that they had returned to interpreting rationality in politics as an abstract universalism, not that of the radical but of the conservative who wishes to set in stone a natural political arrangement.123 As Guizot had written; 'In this rational existence, capable as he is of discerning the truth, man is sublime , . . liberty is in him only the power of obeying the truth which he can discern and of shaping his actions in conformity with it.'126 This was contrasted with an interpretation of 'natural' liberty, at 122

Cp. Holmes, Benjamin Constant, 70, 200-1. J. C, Cairns, 'Introduction' to Mill, Essays on French History and Historians, Collected Works, xx, pp. Ixxii-lxxix. 124 Mill, Guizot's Essays and Lectures on History, Collected Works, xx. 271-3. 125 Mill, '"French News", Examiner, 21.10.1832', Newspaper Writings, Collected Works, xxiii. 512-16. 126 Quoted in Ruggiero, History, 170, from Guizot, Histoire de gouvemement representatif. 123

174 Liberalism: The Dominant Ideology an earlier evolutionary stage, of doing nothing except what one likes. In this decontestation Guizot could divorce liberty entirely from rational deliberation and judgement.127 Progress, therefore, also saw the development of rational-cum-moral capacities, but for Guizot it was to be preserved by law rather than vested in the free activity of individuals. It retained however a typically liberal open-endedness: 'The more society is perfected, the more it will aspire to new perfections.'128 Though the core concept of reason figured prominently, it was the sovereignty of a transcendental reason, divorced from the autonomous exercise of individual choice, indeed inaccessible to individuals as such. It could only be reflected in a communal reason scattered throughout a society, embedded in law and right practice, and retrievable by those who acquired social intelligence. As a perimeter notion, the qualified freedom of the press acted as a shaper of and outlet for reflective public reason, a concrete form of social rationality and communal common sense.129 The concept of power was also subjected by Guizot to a treatment that retained its core location, but redefined its heart as social as much as political. Instead of being opposed to and superimposed on society by an external government, power, particularly with the rise of mass politics, was embedded in society.130 The morphological spin-off was the decoupling of a constrained power from the task of securing individualism and laissez-faire, and its reconfiguration with state activity on behalf of the community which, though still constitutionally restricted, could also be permitted to reflect rational social interests.131 In his opposition to an atomization of society with its consequent loss of moral liberty, Guizot exercised great influence, not least on later figures such as Tocqueville. The search for intermediate institutions, a recurrent theme of French political theory, acquired fresh urgency. Local government no longer wielded aristocratic autonomy, and new means were required to resist the tyranny of centralization.132 Checks on power had to emerge not 127

Cp. L. Jaume, 'La Raison politique chez Victor Cousin et Guizof, La Pensle politique, 2 (1994), 248. 128 Quoted in Manent, An Intellectual History of Liberalism, 97, from Guizot, Des ntoyens de Gouvernement et d'Opposition dans I'&at actual de la France (Paris, 1821), 271,129 F. Guizot, 'Thoughts upon the Liberty of the Press' in E. K. Bramsted and K. J. Melhuish (eds.), Western Liberalism: A History in Documents from Locke to Croce (London, 1978), 493-5. Cp. Rosaiwallon, Le Moment Guizot, 88-94, 67-9. 130 Rosanvallon, Le Moment Guizot, 41, 52. 131 Cp. Manent, Intellectual History, 96-7. 132 Cp. L. Siedentop, Tocqueville (Oxford, 1994), 7-8, 25-6.

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only from existing constitutional or social structures but, through the elaboration of sociological perspectives, from a reassessment of the relationship between liberty, individuality, equality, and responsible power. That reassessment was the measure of Tocqueville's success. The contextualization of equality reflected polysemic ideational combinations in French political thought, and its indeterminacy was contained by its diversion into three channels. Of the first two it has been pointed out: 'Rousseau.., believed in sameness and unity; Tocqueville foresaw sameness and separation'.133 That is, a universal rationalism decoded equality as conformity to general rules; whereas a temporal and spatial understanding of the role of community decoded equality as developing on a mass-induced route of alienation, leading from the Revolution to atomization and centralization. The third route, followed by Tocqueville as value preference rather than sociological prediction, but in the footsteps of the liberal doctrinaires and Guizot, led via the upholding of Christian morality to an appreciation of individual rights and liberties,134 without which the exercise of an equal, reasonable, personal, and commercial liberty was meaningless. Needless to say, the adjacent concept of property was not the subject of equal redistribution, for fear of reducing the opportunities of individual development. The upshot was a further conceptual configuration, affecting diverse understandings of liberty, which in its modem mode could be attained via natural right and equality ('the employment of a common right'),05 and in its aristocratic and more desirable mode was interlocked with 'the individual possession of a right to independence' and the expression of individual worth. These divergent logical trees intersected uneasily in practice.136 Tocqueville's alternative liberal morphology situated liberty within social constraints through a more refined appreciation of social as well as political power (the former decontested as mass despotism, the latter appearing in the distinctive form of centralization). It attempted to control the rapid movement of equality towards the centre of leading ideological cores, attached human rationality to the pursuit of cultured and moralized choices,137 and supported this conceptual configuration by social mceurs, religion, and conscientious participation in public life. Tocqueville thus 133 135 136

m Kelly, Humane Comedy, 52, Cp. Siedentop, Tacqueoitte, 63-4,99-101. Quoted in Kelly, Humane Comedy, 61. Kelly, Humane Comedy, 61-2. 137 Cp. J. Lively, The Social and Political Thought of Alexis de Tocqueville (Oxford, 1965), 9.

176 Liberalism: The Dominant Ideology proceeded with the retrieval of the concept of community for liberalism, while recognizing the sociological limitations on free choice. Here Constant's ancient world found an echo, in 'the duties of men towards each other as citizens' and the rediscovery of the 'public virtues'.138 Freedom was not an exclusive value for Tocqueville, but it was, as for other liberals, a non-negotiable good, 'a sacred thing... what is virtue if not the free choke of what is good'—a choice governed by a regard for a moral order created in a social context.139 His sensitivity to the restrictions imposed by that context were greater than Constant's,140 and Mill chose not to follow this specific interpretative path. Saint-Simon, although another guiding light for Mill, also adopted decontestations of core liberal concepts which Mill refused to embrace—for, as with Rousseau, they could lead away from the individualism and variety Mill held dear. His highly selective approach to Saint-Simon's teachings was mainly supportive of ideological tendencies Mill had already evinced. Mill shared with many French liberals a moralizing or, at least, educational view of politics—hence the importance of political participation in his writings as in theirs. But participation was for Mill an act of individual choice and personal development, whereas for French theorists it could be transformed into an affirmation of the ends of social membership, an essential by-product of social activity. Thus Saint-Simon wrote: 'True liberty is not simply a matter of keeping one's arms folded in the association, if one so desires. Such an inclination should be severely repressed whenever it arises. On the contrary, liberty means developing a temporal or spiritual capacity useful to the association ...'. Here Saint-Simon offered a version of liberty alien even to French liberal formulations, in failing at the very least to maintain an equilibrium between individual choice and universal rational activity.141 Liberty, individuality, progress, rationality, the general interest, sociability, and constraints on power—all these appear in central areas of French liberal rooms, but interpretative nuances and repositioning adapted them to the cultural requirements of the locality, and the respective subtleties of each conceptual decontestation actuated a chain reaction that affected the other core and 138 139

Quoted from Tocqueville in Siedentop, Tocqueville, 101, Lively, Social and Political Thought, 13-14, Quotation from Tocqueville at p. 140 13. Kelly, Humane Comedy, 39, 141 H. Saint-Simon, Selected Writings on Science, Industry and Social Organisation, ed. K. Taylor (London, 1975), 229, We shall return to Saint-Simon in Ch. 11.

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adjacent concepts. The morphological resemblances between Mill's views and the instances of French liberal thought noted here are undoubtedly sufficient to confer on them all membership of the same ideological family; while the differences among the concepts and their ensuing relationships allow for the emergence of many varieties of liberalism. Here lies a final yet crucial comment on the liberal core. What has been termed liberalism's self-critical spirit is morphologically corroborated by the conscious readiness of liberals to entertain multiple rearrangements of their conceptual furniture to a far greater extent than would non-liberal ideologists. Scepticism, non-dogmatism, or tolerance are thus translated into a disposition for conceptual reconfiguration. These have often been presented as substantive liberal values, and may well constitute a different interpretation put on the reflectiveness and variety which are adjacent, respectively, to rationality and to individuality as differentiated uniqueness.142 In their active form they encourage synchronic conceptual flexibility. Hence the deliberate and rational exercise of structural tolerance—always within the limits set by its substantive core concepts143—is an additional non-conceptual feature of liberal ideology.144 It needs to be distinguished from the passive diachronic flexibility of the liberal tradition whose features encourage unintended conceptual change over time. We turn now to ano&er set of case-studies which will assist in exploring the wider dimensions liberal conceptual arrangements occupy. 142 114

M3 See also p. 256. Cp. Hobhouse's comments on p. 262. This differs from the strategic flexibility of conservatism explored in Ch. 8.

5

New Liberal Successions: The Modernization of an Ideology

From the standpoint which best presents its continuity with earlier Liberalism, [the new liberalism] appears as a roller... realization of individual liberty ... But to this individualist standpoint must be joined a just apprehension of the social, viz., the insistence that these claims or rights of self-development be adjusted to the sovereignty of social welfare.1 (a) THE IDEALIST LIBERALISM OP T. H. GREEN

of Mill's ideational legatees offers an unusuANallyexamination useful insight into ideological variation. Later liberals constantly alluded to Mill as a yardstick by which to measure their own attainments; we thus face a tradition consciously absorbed and recreated by a new generation of ideological consumers, employing common points of reference to forge a sense of ideological community through expanding horizons. The Millite paradigm of the previous chapter becomes pivotal not merely as a preference of the analyst of ideologies, but because so many shapers of liberalism believed Mill to be pivotal. To assess their contributions on the basis of that perception—at least partly, because we cannot entirely abandon current judgement to their self-evaluations—is methodologically justified. Moreover, from the historical perspective, a period offering instances of both ideological continuity and change is optimally suited to studying ideological diversity and conceptual mutability. Liberty, individualism, progress, rationality, the general interest, sociability, limited and responsible power—how did these core concepts fare in the hands of the Millite succession?2 It is contended 1 2

J. A. Hobson, The Crisis of Liberalism (London, 1909), p. xii Spencerian-type Individualists are excluded from the current discussion because their relationship to liberal ideology is explored in Ch. 7.

New Liberal Successions 179 in this chapter that they all remained constituents of the liberal core, but that some underwent redecontesting due to changing scientific fashion, new sets of ethico-cultural beliefs, and specific events that made their mark on ideological assumptions. The final feature of liberalism—structural tolerance—was a key facilitator in that process, allowing critical distanciation from the modernist project with which liberalism was associated. Many participants in, and observers of, the late Victorian and Edwardian eras have followed Dicey in summing up the times as a transition from individualism to collectivism,3 an emphatic movement from one mutually exclusive position to another. This is another instance of a false dichotomy. The break that occurred was not with the concept of individualism but with a specific meaning of individualism as an atomistic conception of social structure, predicated on the separateness of persons. It may be argued that this is a semasiological trap, inasmuch as 'individualism' refers to two different concepts altogether—a structural unit of social analysis as against a notion of personal uniqueness—but that is a doubtful claim. The two notions have been integrated in common discourse as they were by Mill himself: the single person is also seen as unique in worth and ability and largely self-responsible for his or her attainments; the creative centre of thought and action is, in the last resort, located in separate people. The dispute is rather over inflating one of the decontestations of individualism to take up the entire available space of the concept, a tendency more apparent among 'atomistic' thinkers than among Millite extollers of individuality or the communitarian liberals explored in this chapter. It is indisputable that liberal individualism was making rapid strides along the path indicated by Mill, when individuality and progress were interlinked. T. H. Green served in this process as an ideological halfway house towards the communitarian theories of the British new liberals. Human nature was reaffirmed as developmental, though this was now accompanied by the cultural influence of the Idealist conception of (self )-realization, that is, of moving from a potential to an actual state: 'man has definite capabilities, the realisation of which, since in it alone he can satisfy himself, forms Ms true good'. Excising this process from conservative interpretations of living out a familiar and repeated pattern, Green continued: "They are not realised, however, in any life that can be observed, in any life that has been, or is, or (as it would seem) that can be lived by man as we know him; and for this reason we s

In recent years especially W. H. Greenleaf, The British Political Tradition, ii. The Ideological Heritage (London, 1983),

180 Liberalism: The Dominant Ideology cannot say with any adequacy what the capacities are.' That indeterminate and open-ended notion of human development followed the Millite deviation from Comtean ideas about the closed and finite nature of progress. It was bound up with an emphatic insistence on the individual person, or personality, as the unit of such development, as the only entity to which self-consciousness—the precondition for the full rational development of human life— could be ascribed. But the idea of individual development was equally joined to an extension of the concept of sociability: 'It is in fact only so far as we are members of a society, of which we can conceive the common good as our own, that the idea has any practical hold on us altogether... society is the condition of all development of our personality/4 Green had inherited, and was recasting in new philosophical language, the liberal aversion to promoting the sectional interests of particular groups which, rightly or wrongly, they attributed to their ideological rivals, conservatism and socialism, The relatively embryonic, though nevertheless central, liberal concept of sociability was available in a form capable of redirection towards budding notions of interdependence and community. Green's 'common good' was predicated on the idea of the self as social, possessing a good that included 'interests in the good o f . . . other persons', though they remained ends in themselves.3 Because Green defined himself, and was perceived, as a liberal6— as well as an active member of the Oxford Liberals—and because his popularizations of liberalism,7 if not his abstruse philosophy, had a noteworthy ideological impact on a generation of followers, it is legitimate to consider his reformulations as significant contributions to liberalism. Two practices engaged in until recently, however, are not legitimate. The one regards Green as one of the final milestones in the evolution of liberalism, mainly because scholarly biases induce students to equate major philosophical constructs with ideological ones.8 This line continues the overestimation of philosophical at the expense of ideological argument, as 4

s T. H. Green, Prolegomena to Ethics (Oxford, 1883), 189, 192, Ibid. 210. * See R, L. Nettleship, 'Memoir', in Works of Tttomas Hill Green, ed. R, L. Nettleship (London, 1889), iii. p. cxx. 7 In particular 1. H, Green, Liberal Legislation and Freedom of Contract (Oxford, 1881), and some vulgarizations of his philosophical positions that percolated into current ideological discourse, such as the conception of positive liberty. 8 See e.g. C. Brinton, English Political Thought in the 19th Century (New York, 1962), 212, 226; W. H. Coates and H. V. White, The Ordeal of Liberal Humanism, ii. Since the French Revolution (New York, 1970).

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a provider of insights both into conceptual analysis and into political conduct. The other sees Green as a radical reformulator of liberal positions, ignoring the cultural context in which his statements were made and their progressiveness or otherwise in relation to other contemporary liberal positions.9 Whereas Green has strong claims to rank as one of the last important social philosophers in Britain, a number of liberal thinkers who succeeded him can fairly be designated as more ideologically innovative and influential. No group of thinkers was more adamant than the British Idealists in insisting on the complementary nature of the individual and social principles—the one defining the other and dependent on it, each incapable of autonomous existence.10 Nevertheless, some Idealists gravitated towards positions identified in their times as conservative while others did not.11 What then makes Green an exemplar of liberal political Idealism? In order to answer that satisfactorily, a diachronic match has to be demonstrated between Green's core concepts and those already posited as characterizing Mill's liberalism. These can also be synchronically tested against the liberal ideas held by his contemporaries. To traipse through every combination would be tedious, and in making short cuts I must occasionally appeal to the reader's indulgence. There is, however, no proper substitute for textual analysis. Nor would a total match be necessary as long as liberal ideologies displayed sufficient family resemblances. From establishing changes in sociability and individualism, we turn to Green's concept of liberty and its intersection with other core liberal concepts. Note immediately how Green homed in on a specific decontesting of freedom.12 Surveying past uses of the concept—Stoic, Pauline, Kantian, and Hegelian—he observed: in all these different views as to the manner and degree in which freedom is to be attained, 'freedom' does not mean that the man or will is undetermined, nor yet does it mean mere self-determination, which . , . 9 This view was represented by G, H. Sabine, A History of Political Theory, 3rd edn. (London, 1951), 615. 13 See A. Simhony, 'Idealist Organicism: Bevond Holism and Individualism', History of Political Thought, 12 (1991), 515-35,' " The most controversial Idealist to categorize in these terms is Bosanquet, who has been described as both liberal and conservative. See A. M. McBriar, An Edwardian Mixed Doubles (Oxford, 1987); ]. A, Hobson, 'The Social Philosophy of Charity Organisation', in Hobson, The Crisis of Liberalism (London, 1909), 192-217; and G. Gaus, The Modem Liberal Theory of Man (London, 1983). 12 I treat freedom and liberty as synonymous.

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must be equally applied to the man whose will is heteronomous or vicious, and to Mm whose will is autonomous ... It means a particular kind of self-determination.

Feeling Ms way towards the inelimkiable component of tihe concept of liberty, Green continued: 'Now none of these modes of self-determination is at all implied in "freedom" according to the primary meaning of the term, as expressing that relation between one man and others in which he is secured from compulsion'—or non-constraint, as proposed in Chapter 2. He was incorrect, however, in suggesting that securing from compulsion necessarily implies 'that a man should have power to do what he wills or prefers', because that already attaches non-constraint to certain attributes of human nature—power, consciousness, choice—not inherent to all decontestations of the concept of liberty. Nevertheless, Green correctly indicated that adjacent notions are necessary to elaborate the meaning of freedom, which 'is not constituted by the mere fact of acting upon preference, but depends wholly on the nature13of the preference, upon the kind of object willed or preferred'. Here Green departed from Kant and permitted a substantive evaluation of chokes and their consequences, evident in Mill—rather than just the formal exercise of an autonomous will— to persist in the British liberal tradition.14 In assuming that a person's 'will is himself. His character necessarily shows itself in his will', Green adapted current conceptions of the essence of human nature to liberal Idealist causes.15 This conception dictated the cultural adjacency between freedom and the exercise of individual will. In turn it was presented as a chain of logical adjacency between exercise, individuality, and freedom, decontesting the latter as the expression or assertion of a selfmastering or autonomous individual. In addition, it was joined by the assumption that the freedom of the will depends on the character of the objects wiled, objects in which individuals could satisfy themselves. Freedom is 'the expression of that same self-seeking principle from which the quest for such an object proceeds'. Between the ineliminable component of non-constraint and the full 19

T. H. Green, Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation (London, 1941), 9. Italics added. 14 See P. P. Nicholson, The Political Philosophy of the British Idealists: Selected Studies (Cambridge, 1990), 61-2. 15 Green, Political Obligation, "12. For Green, character entailed conscientiousness (see Nicholson, Political Philosophy, 78). See also S. Collini, 'The Idea of "Character" in Victorian Political Thought', Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th ser. 35 (London, 1985), 29-50.

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concept of freedom, Green interposed dominant cultural interpretations of such 'quests' deriving from, psycho-biological theories of 'a consciousness of impeded energy, a consciousness of oneself as for ever thwarted and held back' as well as from his deontological Idealist views on actualization. Freedom now became 'the fulfilment of one's possibilities'.16 Given this cultural decontestation, we are led not to the logically adjacent concept of self-determination alone, which is merely a formal category,17 but to a particular direction of self-deterrnination—self-development,18 which appears in Green's terminology as 'self-improvement', 'self-realising', 'moral endeavour', 'moral growth', or 'attainment o f . . . human perfection'.19 Green shifted carelessly between decontesting progress as improvement (self-development) and as human perfectibility (selfrealization). The latter interpretation, inspired by Hegel's notion of the idea realizing itself in the world through human selfconsciousness, exceeded Mill's more modest assumption of harmonious meliorism. Only by insisting that the motive and forms of such perfectibility spring from individual wills, rather than a transcendental, absolute idea, could Green avoid the positing of a model of human development to which individuals must inexorably subscribe—a model frequently, if not always accurately, read into Hegel's system. By retaining freedom at the centre of his argument, and by joining free will with individual self-development, the idea of perfection was restrained from linking up with a determinist and universal standard against which any individual would be judged. The postulation of that standard would have raised serious doubts over Green's status in the area we are beginning to map out as liberal, inasmuch as liberals tend to decontest rational development as pluralistic.20 In locating human rationality at the core of Ms liberalism, Green strengthened the interdependent relationship of the other core concepts. 'Reason and will... are one in the sense that they are alike expressions of one self-realising principle'.21 The freedom he wished to see realized was a rational freedom. But will was also 16

Green, Political Obligation, 17-18. 1, H. Green, 'Lectures on the Philosophy of Kant', in Works of Thomas Hill Green, ii. (London, 1886), 95. 18 See also H, J. McCloskey, 'A Critique of the Ideals of Liberty', Mind, 74 (1965), 483-508, 19 Green, Political Obligation, 18-21, 25. w That indeed was Berlin's critique, the result of his evaluation of the perfectionist principle separately from the context of the idea-environment in which Green firmly locates it. See I. Berlin, Four Essays on Liberty (Oxford, 1969), 133 n. 17

21

Green, Political Obligation, 23.

184 Liberalism: The Dominant Ideology the basis of the state. The true state was a society in a specific mode, one 'fulfilling its primary function of maintaining law in the interest of all'—the liberal appeal to a general interest grounded on classlessness. It was also 'the nation organized in the form of a self-governing community'—-which now decontested liberty as self-determination in the context of a common good.22 By attaching self-determination to a good, Green introduced a dynamic bonding the two together. His ideological core thus contained an emphasis on 'the development of society and of man through society.' He asserted that 'it is only as members of a society, as recognising common interests and objects, that individuals come to have ... [moral] attributes and rights'.23 Those rights, specially guaranteed, were the means through which the moral attributes embarked on the process of development. Liberty, progress, and rationality were placed in proximity to a rather stronger notion of sociability than that employed by Mill. But nor was society conceived, in the manner of French liberals, as the repository of a sociologically based morality and reason, accessible through retrieving certain established institutional and moral practices. Sociability was for Green an individual ethical attribute, rather than the social fact of embeddedness in a group. It is both because individuals have a consciousness of ends, and because those ends encompass a common good that individuals share 'in virtue of their relation to each other and their common nature', that the state can realize 'an idea of social good'.24 Whereas for Mill sociability denoted mutual dependence and sympathy, Green's stronger version posited a shared rationality and a conception of human nature in which moral elements were held in common. Conversely, whereas many French liberals perceived society as supplying individuals with instances of universal rational practice, Green saw society as granting individuals the power and conditions without which they would be unable to exercise their rational faculties freely,25 and did not attribute personality and will directly to an organic community.26 22 Green, Political Obligation, 129-30. There is little distinction in Idealist thought between state and society in their optimal forms as ethical communities. See Z. Pelczynski, 'The Hegelian Conception of the State', in Z. Pelczynski (ed.), Hegel's Political Philosophy: Problems and Perspectives (Cambridge, 1971), 1-29. 23 24 Green, Political Obligation, 121-2. Ibid. 129,132, 135. K Ibid. 144. 26 Cp. M. Richter, The Politics of Conscience: T, H, Green and his Age (London, 1964), 207, and M. Freeden, The New Liberalism: An Ideology of Social Reform (Oxford, 1978), 57-8.

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To assist in buttressing his ideological structure Green drew in the adjacent concept of rights. A right supported the mutual interlocking of the core concepts of individuality and sociability. It was both "a claim of the individual, arising out of his rational nature, to the free exercise of some faculty' and 'a concession of that claim by society, a power given by it to the individual of putting the claim into force', The most essential rights were those to life and liberty, the connection between the two being that human life entailed the exercise of will. The right to the most fundamental human attributes was based on an understanding of human capacity or nature. It was 'capacity on the part of the subject for membership of a society, for determination of the wiE, and through it of the bodily organisation, by the conception of a well-being as common to self with others'. This line of argument allowed Green to indulge in the common hallmark of ideologists and to present a cultural set of adjacencies as logically sufficient as well as necessary: 'The admission of a right to free life ... does in fact logically imply the conception of all men as forming one society in which each individual has some service to render, one organism in which each has a function to fulfil.'27 We are now confronted with a morphology in which a rational and sociable human nature freely develops towards a perceptible concept of community. That concept became manifest in the liberal core and was made to engage in a mutually supportive relationship with the individual. Did this entail the demise of individualism and hence the removal from the Millite liberal core of one of its pillars? And was the notion of community, with its incipient organicism, intolerably intrusive on the other core liberal concepts? That the answer is negative can be demonstrated through following Green's arguments further. In Idealist fashion. Green proffered individualism and community as two sides of the same coin. One's function in the social organism must be freely fulfilled, and a right, though secured by the community, is a power of acting for the individual's own ends (though these include ends incorporated in the notion of the common good). Individualism clearly sheers towards individuality. Green saw community as emanating from individual minds which move towards exploring the ground they share,28 not being a notion that imposed a preformed conception of community on individuals, nor even one that allowed communal interests to take a direction of their own.29 The liberal core concepts 17 28

Green, Political Obligation, 144, 155-6, 157, 29 Ibid, 159, 207, Cp. p. 252 below.

186 Liberalism: The Dominant Ideology of the general interest and of sociability merge in a unique way through Green's conception of the common good.* With its strong sense of moral agency and of individuality, the common good is still containable within a liberal morphology. Furthermore, the concept of tihe state, adjacent to Green's core concepts, had a service function with respect to individual self-assertion and development. It was crucial, as Green insisted, that the state 'remove obstacles to the realisation of the capacity for beneficial exercise of rights, without defeating its own object by vitiating the spontaneous character of that capacity'.31 His ideological morphology thus retained a pervasive liberal complexion; liberal not only in the light of Green's self-definition, but because of sufficient family resemblances to Mill and his contemporaries. The best-known pronouncement of Green's liberal ideology in non-philosophical garb, Liberal Legislation and the Freedom of Contract, caste additional light on the core concepts while adding some peripheral ones. Its intention was to decontest liberty so as to exclude from it total freedom of choice. The concept—and institution—of the state as a culturally adjacent concept was harnessed in order to debar, by its authority and even force, those senses of liberty detrimental to the other liberal core concepts. Green's well-known definition of freedom deserves careful structural examination. 'We do not merely mean freedom from restraint or compulsion', he wrote. But we also mean that. The ineliminable element is retained, but immediately locked in to components which point it in a specific direction while preventing it from moving towards other contested meanings of the concept. First, the exclusions: 'We do not mean merely freedom to do as we like irrespectively of what it is that we like.' The unqualified choice of ends, of objects of desire, is ruled out. Freedom is not a wants-related notion. Furthermore, 'We do not mean a freedom that can be enjoyed by one man or one set of men at the cost of a loss of freedom to others.' Here the social constraints on the unlimited exercise of any individual's freedom as an absolute right are recalled to mind. Both notions are clearly visible in Mill's writings, even if Mill gives the second greater prominence than the first. Then comes the approved decontestation. By freedom 'we mean a positive power or capacity of doing something worth doing or enjoying, and32 that, too, something that we do or enjoy in common with others'. Freedom is tied in to a range of features character30 31

Cp. Gaus, Theory of Man, 55-6. Green, Political Obligation, 210.

32

Green, Liberal Legislation, 9.

New Liberal Successions 187 izing human nature—powers, capacities, doing, and enjoying— and external conditions are organized so that non-constraint applies specifically to those beneficial areas of human self-expressioncurn-development. Non-constraint does not have to apply to all human actions, for some unconstrained actions will not result in freedom. As Green himself observes: 'the mere removal of compulsion, the mere enabling a man to do as he likes is in itself no contribution to true freedom'. The ineliminable element of nonconstraint is insufficient to bear the weight of freedom and may occasionally be attached to concepts (on the theoretical level) and conduct (on the practical level) far removed from freedom. Ineliminability does not entail exelusiveness to one concept. Moreover, for Green freedom is only fully attained when a particular combination of its components is secured; it is impaired when other potential components are employed, components that other— possibly non-liberal—champions of liberty might advocate. But freedom is also bound up with a common activity, arising out of the sociability component of human nature. Freedom is moreover, we learn, something capable of growth, and 'we measure the progress of a society by its growth in freedom'. Hence Mill's core concepts attain even greater fusion. Liberty is not merely a sign of, or means to, development; it undergoes growth itself. And the more do the sociable attributes—those that contribute to the common good—emerge as a result of this freedom, the more can 'the citizens as a body ... make the most and best of themselves'.33 Here is yet another decontestation of liberty. We already know that it is not mere self-determination, and that it has to be fertilized by another core concept—development. Green now narrows the options further; not even casual or limited development, but its optimaHzation, collapsed into maximization. In that, again, Green follows the perfectionist route tihat, taken on its own, might have caused liberal meliorism to burst through the restraints of its fellow core concepts, and appears to weaken the structural tolerance liberalism exhibits. However, liberty is firmly held in place by what is importantly taken to denote subjective, not objective, optimalization—the citizens are those who make the most and best of themselves. It is a modified item of furniture in a room we have already come to recognize. The next step follows closely. Green now subdivides the concept of freedom. Its less exalted 33

Md. 10. For a discussion of some of the above themes see A. Simhony, 'On Forcing Individuals to be Free: T. H. Green's Liberal Theory of Positive Freedom', Political Studies, 39 (1991), 303-20.

188 Liberalism: The Dominant Ideology manifestation contains all forms 'of doing what one will with one's own'. Its preferred manifestation (the end of social effort) is specified as positive liberty, 'the liberation of the powers of all men equally for contribution to a common good'. Again, this sentence is morphologically packed with meaning. Liberation of powers implies the unleashing and consequent natural working out of human potential. That potential is made available for social purposes and—introducing a new element—equality of such liberation is placed adjacent to liberty. 'Freedom contributes to that equal development of the faculties of all which is the highest good for all.'34 There are in Green's writings occasional references to, though little sustained analysis of, the practicalities of the responsible, delimited use of political power.35 But the concept is implicit throughout When Green wrote that 'will, not force, is the basis of the state' he was indicating that very point, though he couched the issue in terms of rights and obligations. As an Idealist, he regarded submission to the power of the state as the rational self-regulation by individuals of those ends which they share with others.36 In predominant liberal perspectives the gap between individual and society is presented as a constant fact of liberal ideology, although it may be narrowed and co-ordinating mechanisms established. The perfectionist Idealist paradigm parts company with liberalism inasmuch as individual and society are so integrated that the question of political obligation is rendered superfluous. If even in this regard Green was in the liberal camp, and his perfectionism was a not altogether intentional surplus of meaning, it was because he felt the need to argue in favour of political obligation— for by assuming that a case for bridging the divide must be made, the divide was perceived as given—and because he was prepared to accept the empirical world and 'take men as we find them'.37 Here is the opening to structural tolerance. Unquestionably, too, force limited by right is a core concept in Green's liberal edifice. Individual development and institutional arrangements stand, as components of an ideological core always do, in a relationship of mutual sustenance: the institutions by which a man is moralised . . . express a conception of the common good;... through them that conception takes form and 34 35

Green, Liberal Legislation, 11. Cp. Green's reflections on Cromwell and constitutional government in 'Four Lectures on the English Revolution', Works, esp. pp. 361-4. 36 37 Green, Political Obligation, 122. Green, Liberal Legislation, 13.

New Liberal Successions 189 reality; and... it is in turn through its presence in the individual that they have a constraining power over him, a power which is not that of mere fear, still less a physical compulsion, but which leads Mm38to do what he is not inclined to because there is a law that he should. (b) PERIMETER PRACTICES AND ADJACENT AFTERMATHS

Green popularized some of his philosophical and ideological views in order to promote several peripheral liberal concepts and push others off the liberal map. Thus he joined the ultimately unsuccessful effort to transfer temperance from a marginal idea to a more central position in liberal theory, suggesting that it was critical to protecting the ineliminable core of liberty: 'drink is the greatest impediment to freedom that exists in England'.39 The reasons for this unexpected adjacency were both personal and specific to a strong British subculture. Green's brother had been an alcoholic, and the temperance movements in their different currents had long agitated for the control of drink for a variety of reasons. These ranged from disapproval of the dissipation of moral fibre involved in alcoholism, to the perceived association between drink and adherence to Conservatism, to a fear that the working class would be unable to attain full citizenship and welfare under such debilitating conditions.40 To these may be added Green's typically Victorian concern with character. Temperance had a vital perimeter function in Green's liberalism, unlike its marginal position for Mill, who stated: 'Drunkenness... in ordinary cases, is not a fit subject for legislative interference' unless its consequences were violent.41 Green, to the contrary, returned to his conception of the state as removing hindrances—in this case to liberty and to the development of character as constituting the common good—and supported legislation for a local option'—a devolved and direct community decision on whether to permit the liquor traffic rather than rely on remote state action. In turn, the powerful United Kingdom Alliance prohibitionist organization 'helped to publicize the "constructive" Liberalism of T. H. Green'.42 The drink question 38

Green, Political Obligation, 123-4. Quoted in P. Nicholson, 'T. H. Green and State Action: Liquor Legislation', in A. Vincent (ed.), The Philosophy of T. H, Green (Aldershot, 1986), 76. 40 Cp. ibid. 76-103 and passim; Richter, Politics of Conscience, 362-70. For a general discussion see B. Harrison, Drink and the Vktorians: The Temperance Question in England 1815-1872 (London, 1971). 41 42 Mill, On Liberty, 153. Harrison, Drink, 210. 39

190 Liberalism: The Dominant Ideology offered concrete support to wider trends in liberal ideology. One tendency relied on apportioning areas of self-determination to individuals, or allowed them to discover, in utilitarian fashion, the costs of their own errors. Green's alternative strand now raised issues of substantive goods without which human development was unachievable. Specifically, temperance reform affected Green's morphological core in its contribution towards controlling the interrelationship between liberty and the coercion that safeguarded it, securing vital conditions for progress, and linking community, rationality, and democracy by permitting concerned local communities to set majority standards of rational conduct. In broader terms, despite its relative failure, it preshadowed the direct concern of later liberals with the attainment of welfare, decontesting core concepts in terms that spelt out a general duty to establish minimum values for each core; though in an institutional sense it moved only gingerly in the direction of the assumption of state responsibility for the supply of such goods. Green's attack on freedom of contract was intended to marginalize, if not remove, that particular configuration, and to contest some of the rights of property commonly associated with liberalism, and it was far more successful in contributing to that cause, The notion of contract assumed complete equality of choice but attached it to inequalities of power. In endorsing the equality that offered all people the same opportunities for development, Green rejected Benthamite views in favour of Kantian ones. The Benthamite principle that 'every one should count for one and no one for more than one' was beneficial when it was practically construed as meaning that every person was 'deemed an end of absolute value'; but it was unsatisfactory because in the final analysis the pleasure, not the person, was of value.43 Only the Kantian formula—acting to treat one's own person and others always as an end—employed the concept of equality in order to secure the underwriting of the core notion of the individual. The type of equality of choice embedded in freedom of contract related to equal respect for people's wants, while disregarding their equal development and common good, and was too weak to support Green's decontestation of liberty. Contrary to many interpretations, equality was not a core concept of Green's, It was employed to serve the substantive and general end of securing the common good, and the formal end of providing the conditions for individuality. It appears regularly, 43

Green, Prolegomena, 226-8,

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in some guise or another, adjacent to the liberal core, but some of its forms are frequently banned from the liberal room and what remains is thin. Beyond equality of freedom, of opportunity for development, and an ethically orientated equality of treatment Green interpreted the concept of equality with caution. This is especially noticeable in his handling of the concept of property. By attaching property to, as well as severing it from, perimeter ideas and concepts prevalent in his day, Green supplies our second glimpse of that adjacent liberal concept in the process of change. Specifically, he sought to restrict the right to property while vindicating the inegalitarianism of its accumulation. 'The rationale of property', Green claimed, 'is that everyone should be secured by society in the power of getting and keeping the means of realizing a will, which in possibility is a will directed to social good.'44 This complex sentence bridges an entire universe of liberal argument. Green began with the Lockeart linking of the right to free life with the right to property,45 but then connected the latter to his specification of will as a constant principle aimed at the realization of human well-being. He added the prevalent late nineteenthcentury departure from natural-rights theory by identifying social recognition as a crucial component of any right, that to property included.4* And he ended by reminding the reader that property must be justified as a means to promoting the social good.47 The restriction of the powers of appropriation was defensible when an individual's possession of property interfered with the possession of property, and consequent self-realization, by others. However, 'once admit as the idea of property that nature should be progressively adapted to the service of man by a process in which each, while working freely or for himself, i.e. as determined by a conception of his own good, at the same time contributes to the social good, and it will follow that property must be unequal'.48 In this respect Green did not depart from contemporary liberal wisdom, nor did he do so in upholding the freedom of bequest. It was not, he insisted, the fault of capitalism or the free development of individual wealth that rights over land had been misused, but the failure of the state to regulate unlimited private ownership. 44

46

Green, Political Obligation, 220,

4S

Ibid. 216.

See M. Freeden, 'Rights, Needs and Community: The Emergence of British Welfare Thought', in A. Ware and R. Goodin (eds.). Needs and Welfare (London, 1990), 54-72. But, like Hobson after him, Green retained the qualifier 'natural' to denote a right that was ideologically necessary {see Richter, Politics of Conscience, 234). 47 48 Green, Political Obligation, 212-14, 216-17. Ibid. 219-21,

192 Liberalism: The Dominant Ideology The state was, significantly, entitled to regulate the distribution of property for purposes of freer access, but not to deprive individuals of what Green saw as the fruits of their labour. He was not ready to consider the taxation of unearned increment in land, an item frequently present on contemporary radical agendas, both because it was too difficult to identify that increment, and because of the cost to individual incentive.49 In many cases, Green's perimeter notions did not sustain the radical and communitarian potential made available in his core and adjacent decontestations and his political views were shaped by, but did not spearhead, the advanced liberalism of his day.50 Green's theorizing was the product of a number of intellectual environments. Two general ones were the burgeoning political Liberalism of the mid- and later nineteenth century, harnessed to emancipatory causes internal and external, and the powerful radical and reformist impulses unleashed by utilitarianism.51 But there were also more specific environments. One such was constituted by the small but influential coteries of Oxford (and Scottish) Idealists. They maintained a supportive philosophical subculture that adapted Continental interests, Kantian and Hegelian, to a revived Aristotelian tradition, central to the Oxford curriculum, and markedly teleological in its posited relationship of individual to society.52 Though Green and his fellow Idealists served in different ways as conduits of a dominant stream of critical German philosophy into Britain, which affected his ideas on the links between liberty, individual consciousness, and rationality, his thought was formed by alternative contexts which mitigated the impact of Kantian perfectionism and its strong emphasis on intuition, transcendentalism, personal autonomy, and truth. Instead, it was filtered through British empiricism and a political radicalism based on gradualist and concrete aims and prescribed political action,33 as well as awareness of current moral practices54—including the 49 50 51

Green, Political Obligation, 223, 228-9; Liberal Legislation, 15-19. See Freeden, New Liberalism, 16-19; Nicholson, Political Philosophy, III, 193. On Green's limited affinity with utilitarianism, despite his—-and others'—protestations to the contrary, see J. A. Hobson 'The Philosophy of the State', Ethical World (I Sept. 1900); Nicholson, Political Philosophy, 189-91, and D. Weinstein, 'Between Kantianism and Consequentialism in T. H. Green's Moral Philosophy', Political Studies, 41 (1993), 618-35. 52 Cp. Richter, Politics of Conscience, 221; S, den Otter, British Idealism and Social Explanation; A Study in Late Victorian Thought (Oxford, 1996), 36-51. 53 Cp. I. M. Greengarten, Thomas Hill Green and the Development of Liberal-Democratic Thought (Toronto, 1981), 107. s * Nicholson, 'Green and State Action', 96.

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practices enshrined in the British liberal tradition itself. Another environment was reflected in a strong infusion of politics with ethical concerns culled in part from the emergence of a liberal, humanist, and non-dogmatic Broad Church in which citizenship was underpinned as a religious vocation.56 More generally, an activist nonconformist ethic spurred liberalism into the realization of public duty as social and political reform, reflected in personal example—e.g. through the Settlement Movement.57 In Green's case, it was further buttressed by an immanentism supported by his interpretation of Hegel.58 Separately and together, these intellectual and cultural trends assisted in propelling liberal ideology towards a greater appreciation of human rationality as expressed in social organization, an increased cognizance of the systemic, if not yet organic, nature of society, a keener desire to give vent to human potential under conditions of personal and national liberation, and an enhanced awareness of political life, specifically via citizenship, as an arena for the fulfilment of human values. Nonconformity was one, though not the only, factor in turning the attention of liberal theorists towards social reform and the need to improve both material and moral conditions in order to secure a just society. Above all, liberalism became imbued with an internal dynamism unavailable from its previous association with laissez-faire and that doctrine's fixation with a natural, unintended, and relatively static harmony resulting simply from the private pursuit of individual interests. It was also unavailable from Mill's early work or from his later concern with the protection of self-regarding conduct. Nevertheless, horizons were accumulating as well as diminishing: the liberal tradition which Green's version of Idealism had inherited was already operating as a constraining horizon on the absolutist and conservative semantic fields to which Idealism frequently lent support. The hitherto concentration on Mill and Green must not be misconstrued as a departure from the programme for analysing ideologies set out in Part I. In examining some ideas of two 55

G, Thomas has asserted that 1 cannot see that in his political philosophy Kant significantly supplied Green with arguments or ideas' (The Moral Philosophy of T, H. Green (Oxford, 1987), 44). See also Ch. 6 below. 56 See Riehter, Politics of Conscience, 29-30; A. Vincent and R. Plant, Philosophy, Politics and Citizenship: Tfw Life and Thought of the British Idealists (Oxford, 1984), 6-17. 57 See Vincent and Plant, Philosophy, 132-49. 58 M. Bevir, 'Welfarism, Socialism and Religion; On T. H. Green and Others', Review of Politics, 55 (1993), 639-61.

194 Liberalism: The Dominant Ideology outstanding political philosophers, three objectives have been borne in mind. First, to illustrate that the internal morphology of their liberal views is one characteristic of ideological thinking, with its patterns of decontestation, its struggle over the legitimacy of meanings, and its mixture of logical and cultural adjacency. Second, to indicate how the two could also be seen as part of wider social groups that sustained their ideas and from which they drew as consumers as weU as producers of ideologies; and how they could be put within spatial and historical contexts which cast light on their choke of conceptual decontestation. Third, to contend, as shall be illustrated below, that however much liberal ideology owes to these two theorists, it developed independently of them through groups possessed of lesser' intellectual rigour, often using different media, whose flourishing and influence, if not precise direction, would most probably not have been affected had Mill and Green not existed. (c) THE NEW LIBERALISM: THE EVOLUTION OF AN IDEOLOGY

The immediate generation of liberal thinkers to succeed Green took liberalism into areas considered to this day by many to be so close59to socialist thought as to render a clear distinction impossible. The purpose of this section, employing the diachronic criteria available at the time as well as measuring it against the emerging liberal morphology, will be to demonstrate that the new liberalism was emphatically liberal. Its configuration of core concepts followed already established patterns, while placing slightly different stress on the relative weight of each of them within the core. The new liberals constituted an explicit social and cultural reaction to the glaring evils of the industrial revolution, evils exposed in increasing detail by surveys and research into the condition of the poor and underlined by the pressing need to accommodate the ascendant working class in terms of an economic redistribution commensurate with its newly acquired political power. Concurrently, the rise of socialist groups necessitated a liberal response to, if not a pre-empting of, their theories. While socialist ideology was in many ways a development from liberalism,60 it threatened to undermine the centrality of some of the latter's concepts and to 5

» See e.g. J, Townshend, /. A, Hobson (Manchester, 1990).

" See Ch. 12.

New Liberal Successions 195 delegitimate its ideological solutions. The middle classes in Britain were eminently equipped to initiate responses within liberalism, because among them emerged new professional groups—journalists, social reformers, academics, churchmen—that combined a number of vital factors: an education bringing them in touch with new social thinking about society and the state, as well as awareness of new scientific theories; an enhanced ethical sense of responsibility towards the less fortunate through a sentiment of social mission instilled at the leading universities; an explosion in the means of dissemination of progressive ideologies through mass book circulation and the press, the latter partly due to the fortuitous emergence of powerful liberal editors; and an attraction towards new economic theories that combined historical liberal aims with fresh views on consumption and distribution. It is fitting to begin this discussion with L. T. Hobhouse's Liberalism—not the first book published in Britain bearing that title, but the first to concentrate on a self-conscious exposition of the principles of liberal theory rather than policy. Because Hobhouse was part of an identifiable group of interacting liberal thinkers, he can be shown to be both consumer of their ideas and consumed by them in turn. Hobhouse adopted historical as well as analytical approaches to locate his brand of liberalism within a perceived tradition. His views of that tradition constitute a central characterization of the new liberalism itself (that is, Hobhouse's history is also his ideology) and the compatibility of the new liberalism with its antecedents becomes a question to be tested equally by its producers and by our own examination of that tradition's reference points. Many scholars of liberalism regard Hobhouse primarily as a disciple of Green, a typical product of the Oxford Idealist tradition, and are therefore encouraged to read back into Green an ideological position that seems to make him indispensable to the evolution of a welfare-oriented, socially conscious liberalism.61 There is no disputing that Green exercised great influence on Hobhouse's ideas and formulations, but it is equally undeniable that Hobhouse expanded liberal theory in directions that Green did not initiate and might have felt unable to follow. Nor is it in doubt that Hobhouse developed an aversion to many of the principles he believed to be embedded in Idealism.62 It is worth drawing attention to the prominence of Mill as 61 S. Collini, Liberalism and Sociology. L. T, Hobhouse and Political Argument in England 1880-1914 (Cambridge, 1979). 62 Cp. L. T, Hobhouse, The Metaphysical Theory of the State (London, 1918).

196 Liberalism: The Dominant Ideology compared to Green in Hobhouse's book, and to his important statement that 'in [Mill's] single person he spans the interval between the old and the new Liberalism', a view held by many new liberals, anxious to establish their credentials within the liberal tradition.63 Though Hobhouse frequently converged on Green's position, he did so while associating with what he believed to be the logic of the British liberal tradition itself (Green being more concerned with the customary apostolic succession of individual Western philosophers), and he was far more influenced by evolutionary notions which are absent in Green's opus. It is those which led Hobhouse significantly to describe the heart of his liberal position as follows: 'We have, in fact, arrived by a path of our own at that which is ordinarily described as the organic conception of the relation between the individual and society—a conception towards which Mill worked through his career, and which forms the starting-point of T. H, Green's philosophy alike in ethics and in politics. Embarking on an examination of that path can begin usefully with Hobhouse's view of Mill. Reacting more positively than Green to Mill's utilitarianism, Hobhouse suggested that as a utilitarian Mill could not single out 'any rights of the individual that can be set in opposition to the public welfare'; indeed, that 'the permanent welfare of the public is bound up with the rights of the individual'. The preference for the term 'welfare' over Green's 'good' is indicative of a shift away from a predominantly moral view of individual abilities and social interests to the incorporation, within an ethical overview, of direct appeals to human needs and material human capacities for which the public is responsible and from which it would benefit directly.65 That approach had already outraged Herbert Spencer, who regarded it as an unacceptable intrusion in a natural order based on the free functioning of individuals.66 In particular, Hobhouse derived from Mill a notion of the rational self-development of personality, an understanding of liberty as a process of growth, a sense of the mutual compatibility between individual and social well-being (without reducing the latter to the former, as did the political economists who espoused laissezfaire), and a view of government as the responsible exercise of limited power.67 63

Hobhouse, Liberalism (New York, 1964; 1st edn. London, 1911), 58. See also J. A. Hobson, 'John Stuart Mill', Speaker (26 May 1906). 64 Hobhouse, Liberalism, 67. Italics added. 65 Green's position on this is ambivalent. See Gaus, Theory of Man, 17-18. ** H. Spencer, The Man versus the State (Harmotidsworth, 1969). See Ch. 7. 67 Hobhouse, Liberalism, 60-1.

New Liberal Successions 197 Two major factors in the restructuring of the liberal edifice were the interposition of evolutionary theories and the rise of an ethic of integrated social reform. The doctrine of evolution began to carry weight in political discourse from the 1880s, both in its specific scientific formulation and as a more general cultural view of progress. The absence of the post-Darwinist view of evolution in Green's writings is as telling a symptom of his failure sufficiently to radicalize liberalism as is the presence of that view a hallmark of the new liberalism. It is revealing that Hobhouse swore by evolutionary theory from early adulthood. Already when being taught in an Oxford still under the shadow of the newly departed Green, Hobhouse linked evolution, progress, and individual development: 'working on the Evolution theory.,. we may confidently predict that the growth will not cease, b u t . . . the rnind of man will set its own improvement or development before itself as its great object'.68 Above all, it was D. G, Ritchie who bridged the gap between a liberalism that incorporated mere progress and a liberalism that adapted to the evolutionary rhythm. Combining Idealist, utilitarian, and evolutionary perspectives, Ritchie believed the emergence of a rational human consciousness itself to be the product of evolutionary forces, enabling individuals to collaborate in a critical ethical assessment of their own society and to effect its improvement. Human rationality was the product of a cosmic sequence that Darwin had assumed to be ethically neutral.69 In later years, Hobhouse too gained from the theory of evolution a confidence in the emergence of the rational minds of individuals, a process through which the human race would control its environment and its own future development.70 While competing theories of social Darwinism conjured up a nature red in tooth and claw as a vindication of human competition and the Spencerian end of the survival of the fittest, the new liberals promoted an alternative interpretation of social evolution as one leading to increasing human co-operation, precisely because the development of human rationality was also the development of human sociability. Here again, Ritchie's contribution was instrumental. Mill's liberalism, as we have seen, absorbed utilitarian principles through philosophic radicalism in order to employ the concept of liberty as a tool for change, to introduce a nominal egalitarianism and to optimalize, if not maximize, individual good and development. 68

L. T, Hobhouse to Mary Howard, Gilbert Murray papers, Box 124 (Bodleian Library, Oxford). 69 D, G. Ritchie, Darwin and Hegel (London, 1893), esp. pp. 60-3. 70 See Freeden, The New Liberalism, 86-8.

198 Liberalism: The Dominant Ideology Ritchie elaborated on the idea of utility not only by detaching it from its atomistic and hedonistic presuppositions but through attaching it instead to two new partners: the social body whose utility could be pursued directly not as an aggregate but as an ethical community, and a notion of welfare extending from pleasure and happiness towards well-being and health in the broadest sense of the term/1 This still left later new liberals, as we shall presently see, with some ironing out to perform. They wished to avoid a clash between individual and social utility, and to reconcile a concept of welfare, that presumably also acknowledged objective standards, with the concepts of liberty and limited power. These tasks were essential for the purpose of refining an ideological structure that now stretched its core to accommodate logically possible configurations that had up to now been vetoed by cultural considerations. The intervening factor of evolutionary theory could be harnessed in important ways to different political ideologies. Conservatives could, and did, seek support from evolution for their stance of non-intervention in a social balance based on what they believed were natural aggressiveness and competition, and justified a limited role for the state in supporting the disadvantaged. Leftliberals and evolutionary socialists saw the emergence of regulatory social institutions as the very reflection of the rise of collective reason which the evolutionary process dictated. The doctrine of evolution was hence used by the new liberals to redefine the affiliations between the core liberal concepts of liberty, progress, rationality, individualism, sociability, and limited power. It plugged a gap in British political thought that strong historicist theories had long closed in its French counterpart. Human growth appeared normal and only its limitation unnatural, so that liberty became ever more associated with the unimpeded growth of individuals. Non-liberty, to the contrary, was attached to hindrances not just to human action but to any form of human development within the frame of human choice and control. Progress was again, as in past centuries, linked with a quasi-necessitarian movement of history, tempered in the liberal case by the exercise of free minds who could change its direction only as a rational response to circumstance. Liberals thus predicted with conviction that improvement, however open-ended, was inevitable. Finally, it was denied that conflict was endemic to the human condition. The misuse of 71 D, G. Ritchie, Principles of State Interference (London, 1891), 107; Natural Rights (London, 1895), 101-2,

New Liberal Successions 199 power—discouraged by the installation ol democratic institutions —was thought to be an aberration that a rationally self-guiding community would eliminate. Evolution recommended clear and promising routes on the liberal map. It supplied liberals with an exciting interpretative and diagnostic apparatus for social and political practices, and with as strong as possible an endorsement of a collective rational self-control that would complement individual self-determination and self-realization. Morphologically, liberalism forecast a temporal pattern of its conceptual reconfiguration to an optimum point of maturation and equilibrium, projecting a future ideological horizon. The reading into evolution of a communitarian ethic would not have proceeded apace without the further reflection of socioeconomic circumstances in political speculation. The growing preoccupation with social reform was shored up by empirical research into the spread of poverty, the pressures towards increasing democratization, innovative economic theories on the merits of redistribution, and the rise of a new group within the ranks of middleclass professionals, devoted to infusing a more communitarian humanism into society. These penetrated into the liberal heart through its perimeter concepts and ideas, pressing it into a redefinition of social duties, responsibilities, and rights. Concurrently, changes in the liberal core, relating to macro-theoretical changes in conceptions of development and sociability, affected the time- and place-dependent aspects of that periphery. Agitation for a betterment of the conditions of the poor was harnessed to all the major ideologies in turn, but the chemistry of the reaction created in each case different molecular structures. Progressive political groups, and many conservatives, were clamouring for an extension of citizen rights in a number of spheres. Old-age pensions were demanded as a social recognition for services rendered as well as a concrete statement of communal duties towards people now unable to cater fully for themselves. Plans for unemployment insurance reflected both the social interest in keeping the workforce in good condition, and public responsibility for relieving individuals from distress—now understood by progressives to emanate not from character defects, but from an economic mal-organization which society had in its power to prevent. Health insurance was a consequence of the national efficiency concerns exacerbated by the findings about the state of recruits in the Boer war. But it was primarily regarded as the sign of a civilized society that its members would not languish unassisted for the mere lack of means. Generally speaking, an assault

200 Liberalism: The Dominant Ideology on poverty combined with an attempt to dissociate it from the pejorative connotations of pauperism. This latter concept had a meaning located somewhere between criminality and personal culpability, and the gradual depersonalization of responsibility for social and economic evils powerfully influenced a liberal ideology previously based on the very notion of individual accountability for one's fate. In the sphere of economic theory, interest was refocused away from a prime interest in production towards a re-evaluation of the importance of consumption, Ruskinian sentiments about the quality of life as the measure of human wealth and welfare were reinforced by Hobsonian economics. For J. A. Hobson underconsumption was a root cause of capitalist crises. He sought to correct its effects by a redistribution that would be economically sound—through increasing the purchasing power of a society and hence the demand for goods—-as well as ethically attractive, through reapportioning wealth in favour of the less well-off.72 These theories were transmitted successfully among left-liberals and some socialists who, like Hobson himself, were active in the creation of a liberal progressive press whose influence by far exceeded its circulation. The Manchester Guardian, the Speaker, the Nation, and a host of monthlies and provincial papers, served as the crucible of a new liberal ideology and supplied it with the means of dissemination without which no modern ideology can germinate and spread.73 The new liberal theories paved the way for utilizing the state, as the primary agent of a rational society, to alleviate and repair some of the ills that dehumanized its members and incapacitated society as a well-functioning organization, Hobhouse's Liberalism, published in 1911 when the sea change in social attitudes and political beliefs had reached an advanced stage, took full account of these developments and may be seen as one of the finest and most accomplished expressions of the revised liberal ideology. It also demonstrates that even liberalism contains nonrational elements for, as Hobhouse contended, 'great changes are not caused by ideas alone, but they are not effected without ideas. The passions of men must be aroused if the frost of custom is to be broken or the chains of authority burst/ And again: 'the vision of justice in the wholeness of her beauty kindles a passion that , . . burns with the enduring glow of the central heat'.74 72 73 74

}. A. Hobson, Work and Wealth: A Human Valuation (London, 1914). S. Koss, The Rise and Fall of the Political Press in Britain (London, 1984). Hobhouse, Liberalism, 30, 127.

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(d) THE CHANGING ADJACENCIES OF LIBERTY

Like the vast majority of liberals, Hobhouse placed liberty at his ideological epicentre, decontesting it by incorporating formal restraints best summarized by the phrase 'the reign of law' and tying it in to responsible government and the democratic principles of popular sovereignty and universal suffrage. Like his predecessors, he detached the unlimited pursuit of self-interest from the concept of individualism and sought to reconcile that concept with collective responsibility. Pointing to an example of the shedding of a peripherally marginal ideological element, freedom of contract (a shift to which Green's arguments had contributed), Hobhouse noted that 'Liberalism seems definitely to have retraced its steps', that is, diminished one of its horizons. Alternative perimeter concepts were brought in to underpin a new interpretation of what constituted a responsible, rational, and free adult. These qualities would be secured not by the older appeal to individual self-interest or, conversely, to moral fibre and altruism alone, but by promoting education, health, employment, and housing, and doing so through public control.75 The reformulation of individualism was abetted by a closer analysis of liberty and sociability. Hobhouse weighed up two alternative definitions of liberty, the one 'the power to do what does not injure others' and the other 'a right limited by the consideration that others must enjoy the same rights'.76 The second definition was defective, both in that it reduced the concept of liberty to the formal equality it implied, and in that it imposed no restrictions on the exercise of liberty.77 In plumping for the first definition, Hobhouse cleverly integrated Mill and Green's two previous decontestations of liberty. It was both an ability of individuals in conjunction with others, and a gift that should not be used to harm others and their similar gifts. Indeed, the linking of nonconstraint to 'the free competition of isolated individuals'—the uncooperative behaviour assumed to be associated with the atomistic conception of social structure—produced a concept of liberty that involved, if not 'the decay and death of the older Liberalism', certainly the challenging of many of its 'old presuppositions'/8 75

7 Ibid. 17, 19, 28, 23. * Ibid. 36. Hence Hobhouse revealingly rejected as a liberal tenet what became Rawls's first principle of justice, with the proviso that Rawls refers only to equal basic liberty (J. Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Oxford, 1971), 60-1). See below, Ch. 6. 78 Hobhouse, Liberalism, 48-9, 69. 77

202 Liberalism: The Dominant Ideology The older conception of liberty had been set in an idea-environment that endorsed competition, separate individual responsibility, and personal exertion. The newer conception affiliated liberty with 'growtih itself and greatly extended the coexistence of nonconstraint with legitimate kinds of constraint. Hobhouse stressed that his version of liberty involved the issue 'not of increasing or diminishing, but of reorganizing, restraints'.79 There was no question of moving from one concept of liberty to another; from identifying it solely with its ineliminable element, non-constraint, only to introduce a measure of constraint which would obviously appear to contradict the full and complex concept of liberty. That was, as we shall see, an interpretative error of libertarians who failed to see that constraint could be inferred also from their own concept of liberty, and who would therefore condemn new liberal approaches as abandoning any reasonable sense of what liberty was. For Hobhouse, all historical conceptions of liberty were attached to a notion of restraint as a logical corollary of liberty itself; indeed, they incorporated a notion of restraint. What differed were the types of restraint (formal, physical, social) and the features of human conduct that were being restrained (conduct harmful to others, irrational choices, conduct harmful to self). Old liberals and libertarians would simply not describe irrationality as a constraint, because it was not an observable physical act, and consequently removed it from tihe intension of the concept. New liberals, because they perceived constraint in unconventional ways, had a different understanding of non-constraint, which in turn coloured their conceptualization of liberty. Specifically, Hobhouse reiterated the view accepted by all defenders of liberty, except individualist anarchists,80 that liberty required control and limits on human action, and then followed the logic of that position in a manner ruled out by the culturally adjacent conceptions of laissez-faire theorists. The latter limited constraint to legal and formal restrictions on physical invasions of the free activity of others, because they entertained cultural conceptions of individuals as completely self-determining agents, because they could not conceive of significant political restrictions on individuals that were not visible and not reducible to the exercise of ultimately tactile force, and because they believed in the inevitable rationality and explicit non-constraint of the market. Hobhouse, to the contrary, could assert that 'there is no intrinsic and inevitable conflict between liberty and compulsion'81 because his cultural 79 81

Hobhouse, Liberalism, 81. Hobhouse, Liberalism, 78,

w

See Ch. 7, s.(f).

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preconceptions of intrusions on growth and self-expression were broader. Significantly, a 1914 Liberal party leaflet supporting unemployment insurance employed the phrase 'compulsion means simply a larger freedom'.82 The issue is in a sense quite simple. If liberty was to be construed as a blend of non-constraint and compulsion, and these elements were applied respectively to liberate the assumed inherent, desirable, and socially beneficial aspects of human nature, and conversely to repress any features that prevented their expression, then all particular decontestations of liberty depended on the cultural attire donned by human nature and the conditions under which it could be displayed. The path linking the chain of conceptual decontestations was paved by the evolutionary and economic scientific and quasi-scientific theories, as well as the ethical beliefs, predominant in the minds of the ideological producers. The integration of liberty with sociability was abetted by Hobhouse's version of human rationality as harmony. Well-being was predicated on the possibility of responsible and rational individuals, and the 'rule of liberty is just the application of rational method' but, crucially, 'liberty... becomes not so much a right of the individual as a necessity of society'. Though he referred to Green's notion of the common good, Hobhouse's interpretation of sociability allowed for a stronger assertion of communal action. He claimed joint star billing for liberty and sociability in the presentation of liberalism: 'freedom is only one side of social life. Mutual aid is not less important than mutual forbearance, the theory of collective action no less fundamental than the theory of personal freedom.' Social solidarity, however, had to be founded on liberty.83

(e) THE ORGANIC ANALOGY

The organic concept of society is as old as political thought itself, but its assimilation into liberal theory was unprecedented. The analogy had become popular both as a metaphorical indication of concrete social structure, and as indicating the interdependence of biological, psychological, and social aspects of human conduct. Most new liberals absorbed the idea from a milieu replete with organistic references. Ritchie, noting the more recent Comtean 82

'Why the Insurance Act was made compulsory and why it should remain compulsory', Liberal Publication Department (15 May 1914), 83 Hobhouse, Liberalism, 60, 66, 67.

204 Liberalism: The Dominant Ideology pedigree of the term 'social organism', referred to its mid-century ventilation in Britain by Spencer, while dismissing its likening by Spencer to a decentralized life form, lacking a controlling sensorium. That had inevitably led to individualist conclusions which Ritchie found unacceptable. Instead, he concluded that 'the conception of society as an organism seems to admit of more easy applications to the defence of just those very views about the State which Mr. Spencer most dislikes'.84 The model provided a notion of growth that was both purposive, being directed towards conscious ends, and interdependent, being predicated on a parts-whole relationship in which either side to this partnership depended on and benefited from the flourishing of the other. That interpretation made the analogy of immense utility in sustaining the new trends liberal theory was promoting, and its frequent appearance in progressive political discourse explains the increasing salience within the liberal core of the concept of sociability which it supported.85 The purposiveness and consciousness with which Ritchie endowed the social organism suggested a self-regulation that,8 when rephrased in political terms, justified state intervention. * But the totalitarian implications of that view were decisively rejected. For Hobhouse, the organic theory of society assisted in establishing the dual centrality of liberty and sociability. It implied that individuals—^as parts of a whole called society—would be 'destroyed or vitally altered' when removed from society. It equally asserted that 'society consists wholly of persons. It has no distinct personality separate from and superior to those of its members.' It associated rationality and harmony, suggesting that the drive to harmony was 'a persistent impulse of the rational being'. And it linked these with the furtherance of the collective life of a society, so that it was 'harmonious interaction, the response of each to each, that makes of society a living whole'.87 No one formulated the liberal potential of the organic analogy better than J. A. Hobson, Hobhouse's colleague and chief coformulator of the new liberalism, when he wrote: The unity of ... socio-industrial Efe is not a unity of mere fusion in which the individual virtually disappears, but a federal unity in which the rights 84 85

Ritchie, State Interference, 13-22. See eg. M. Freeden (ed.). Minutes of the Rainbow Circle 1894-1924 (London, 1989), IS, 27, 86, 141-3, 149-50. 86 See Freeden, New Liberalism, 94-8. 87 Hobhouse, Liberalism, 67-71; L. T. Hobhouse, Social Evolution and Political Theory (New York, 1911), 87, 96-7.

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and interests of the individual shall be conserved for him by the federation. The federal government, however, conserves these individual rights, not, as the individualist maintains, because it exists for no other purpose than to do so. It conserves them because it also recognises that an area of individual liberty is conducive to the health of the collective life. Its federal nature rests on a recognition alike of individual and social ends, or, speaking more accurately, of social ends that are directly attained by social action and of those that are realised in individuals.88

The liberal furniture was inrriguingly reassembled. The concept of individuality was retained while fulfilling a twofold function— not only related to individual flourishing but to the immediate realization of social purposes. Individualism was ingeniously detached from the individual as the unit of analysis and extended to serve the interest of society—now installed as the second, co-equal social unit. Liberty and social welfare were aligned through the organic resolution of the tension, postulated by an older liberalism, between individual rational activity and the general interest. The pursuit of personal liberty was an integral aspect of social health; the guaranteeing of welfare was indispensable to a concept of liberty that embraced growth, development, and flourishing. The organic analogy was reinforced by the liberal aversion to sectionalism and class interests. In claiming to promote the good of society as a whole it served politically to distinguish the liberal programme from many of its ideological rivals. At times, Hobson had taken the organic notion to an extreme, introducing a notion of community stronger than anything seen before in liberal theory when suggesting that society could even develop a will and purpose of its own, and he was taken to task for that by the liberal Manchester Guardian.m If that seemed to burst the bounds of liberal ideology, it was immediately hauled back by his parallel insistence on the development of the parts as essential to the flourishing of the whole. Hobson extended the Millite theme of atrophy, in which the welfare of society was dependent on the healthy exercise of the faculties of its members, even as the latter were dependent on the rationally organized community for their self-realization.90 Breaking with earlier liberal-Benthamite assumptions, he used the new findings of the social sciences to contend that a social will that was merely 'the aggregate of feeling for the public good... m

J. A. Hobson, Work and Wealth (London, 1914), 304. See J. A. Hobson, 'The Re-Statement of Democracy', Contemporary Review, 81 (1902), 262-72; and leader, Manchester Guardian (4 Feb. 1902), 90 Mill, On liberty, 116-17; J. A. Hobson, "The New Aristocracy of Mr. Wells', Contemporary Review, 89 (1906), 496. w

206 Liberalism: The Dominant Ideology generated in the separate wills,,.. may not suffice to support the commonweal'. But the liberal constraints on unwelcome interpretations of the notion of community still applied: 'Scope must remain, in the interests of society itself, for the legitimate play of individuality. The well-ordered society will utilise the energies of egoism in fruitful fields of social activity/91 Paradoxically, the organicist Hobson was more willing than some of his less communitarian new liberal colleagues to concede that individualism incorporated non-sociable aspects which none the less could have indirect social advantages. He also allowed for 'unchartered liberty' of experimentation which might not have obvious or immediate benefits, as long as it was not socially harmful92—again a telling instance of structural tolerance. However, the preference for arrangements that would respect the natural harmony of these energies was replaced by the advocacy of their social redirection. (/) FLESHING OUT THE NEW LIBERAL MORPHOLOGY

The liberal core concept of limited and responsible power also appears prominently in the work of new liberals. Emphasizing that responsibility should be commensurate with power, indeed that 'the establishment of responsible government [was] the first condition' of a social will,93 Hobhouse supported a programme of devolution, proportional representation, and reform of the second chamber. He also emphasized the interdependence of liberty and equality, bringing equality in closer proximity to the liberal core than did Green or even his new liberal colleagues. Nevertheless, equality was maintained as equality of opportunity, and in that form inequalities that were in the general interest were condoned. Equality remained subservient to a rational sociability and to the furtherance of the liberty of individual development and choice.94 When Hobhouse observed that 'a new and more concrete conception of liberty arose'/5 he was really indicating that new perimeter concepts had replaced the old. The new liberal conception of liberty stood at the centre of a web of rearranged conceptual links that formed its ideological identity. It pointed at a host of perimeter practices, central to the policy-making of the day, such as n

Hobson, Work and Wealth, 302, 291. J, A. Hobson, From Capitalism to Socialism (London, 1932), 36-7. *3 Hobhouse, Liberalism, 118. n Ibid. 20, 24-5, 70; Hobson, Crisis, 96-113. See also Ch. 6. 95 Hobhouse, Liberalism, 49,

n

New Liberal Successions 207 unemployment and health insurance, a living wage, old-age pensions, a redistributionary income tax, and the communal regulation of ills beyond individual control. Mediating between the core and the periphery arose a concept which, though hardly novel to liberal theory, was new in its location in liberal morphology and in the role it played in translating the more recent decontestations into concrete measures. That concept was the state, even if its institutionalized form fell short of its theoretical potential. Green permitted only the hindering of hindrances to individual activity, and cast the state (beyond its accepted tasks of restraining the excessive use of individual force and legitimating authoritative leadership) in the negative role of remover of historical obstacles to liberty and development, such as the peculiar landownership patterns prevailing in Britain, In contradistinction, the new liberals accorded the state—as potentially the responsible agent of a rational community—tasks commensurate with the evolutionary emergence within a society of an organized, cooperative intelligence. Hobhouse regarded 'the self-governing State' as the product of 'the self-governing individual' and saw one of its permanent functions as employing whatever compulsion was necessary to achieve the more extensive conceptualizations of the new liberal core. He noted a 'movement of opinion' in the posing of the question of 'what the State is to do for the individual'. 'Character, initiative, enterprise' remained only part of the desirable catalogue of liberal virtues, rather than constituting their entirety, and further, more sociable, human characteristics were encouraged, 'necessary to a full civic efficiency'. Moreover, the duty to realize them was thought to have shifted some distance away from the individual towards society. Hence the state now came into its own as the instrument of the collaborative responsibility of that society for the joint welfare of its members. Hobhouse also suggested that it 'was vested with a certain overlordship over property96in general and a supervisory power over industry in general'. Specifically, liberals and moderate socialists endorsed the idea of a state guarantee for a national minimum income and its assumption of direct responsibility for areas in which fundamental needs were concerned, or in which it could act more efficiently or at less risk to the public. In sum, the concept of the state was moved to a position immediately adjacent to the liberal core, with the express purpose of underpinning the development of creative, socially beneficial individuals, but ready to take the * Ibid, 81-3, 108.

208 Liberalism: The Dominant Ideology initiative where socially valuable private action could not succeed on its own. Most new liberals were also blissfully unaware of the deficit of meaning they accorded to their notion of the state—the underplaying of its 'irrational' power aspects. The reformulation of liberal ideology also involved tracing new paths between the core concepts and their application to temporal and spatial circumstances. This was most evident in the redefining of liberal rights which served, as all rights do, as protective capsules for the protection and advancement of those human and social attributes most valued by the ideology promoting them.97 Older liberals had endorsed theories of natural rights, protective of static attributes and based on separatist, individualistic views of social structure which attested to the importance of liberty as physical non-interference and property as an adjacent concept propping up self-determination. The new liberals modified the right to life from a general statement to specific statements about the quality of life it entailed. Once it meant the right to a life that was not dehumanized, and the physical, psychological, and mental attributes of human nature were held equally valuable and necessary, these attributes were seen to crave adequate protection, even enabling conditions. The logical sequence which ran from life to supplying the means without which life could not be effected became the particular cultural option that was set in motion. Thus Hobson argued that the right to life implied a 'state guarantee of a minimum standard of life'98 and Hobhouse talked of the right to a living wage and the right to work as its cultural corollary." Correspondingly, the right to private property was further demoted and marginalized in liberal thought. In part this reflected new understandings of the goods without which all human beings could not function, in part the elevation of the community as an entity with co-equal and occasionally parallel demands to those of its members. By diminishing the intimate connection between property and prevailing distribution systems based on ascriptive and formal mechanisms of allocation and entitlement (while retaining the connection between property and market acquisition as an aspect of free, if not always rational, choke), the concept of property was unshackled to gravitate towards one of need and made to service the notion of universal individual welfare.100 97 See Freeden, Rights, 7, n J, A. Hobson, The Social Problem (London, 1901), 201, 99 Hobhouse, Liberalism, 83-4, 100 See J, A. Hobson, 'Rights of Property', Free Review (Nov. 1893), 130-49; Social Problem, 95-111.

New Liberal Successions 209 Concurrently, the organic analogy allowed for a concept of property to be attached to the community, inasmuch as the latter was conceived to be a distinct identifiable entity.101 After the First World War, the bifurcation of British liberalism into left and centrist tendencies provides a revealing illustration of the fine-tuning so typical of variants within the same family. Leftliberalism did not eject private property entirely from its beliefsystem, but secured it by making it subservient to communal priorities supported by adjacent ethical conceptions of social welfare. Centrist liberalism, a more entrepreneurial and structurally individualist genre, did not marginalize social welfare, but located it in a different part of its room, by introducing ideological units such as efficiency and productivity and supporting a substantively different, more economically oriented, view of the general interest. Both liberal streams were convinced that their beliefs would enhance notions of individuality and progress,102 It is not suggested that the above account is more than a macroscopic encapsulation of new liberal views. Independent variations existed, but were all recognizably the accoutrements of liberal rooms. All liberal core concepts were preserved by Mill's successors, while simultaneously all were subject to new interpretations, elicited both by preferring some logical connections among their components to others, and by encircling them with what were at the time compelling adjacent and peripheral cultural and ideational contexts. It is the very internal flexibility of an ideology that ensures perceived continuity in the midst of social, economic, scientific, and philosophical change. The reharnessing of familiar terms amplifies the claims of a previously successful ideology to renewed legitimacy and performs the important political and psychological function of retaining the loyalty of actual consumers while attempting to attract new allegiances. Immediate recognition is a must in the political world of quick messages and snap decisions. Not that all changes were cosmetic. The rooms occupied by the conceptual configurations were still plainly liberal. If the communitarian components of liberalism have been emphasized, it is mainly because their location and decontesting impact on its morphology have been commonly neglected. It is unquestionably the case that many liberals, who carry communitarian undertones as unconscious surplus meaning, will still prefer to identify individual rights, even markets, as morphologically salient in their rooms. Nor is the 101 H. Scott Holland, 'Personality and Property', in C. Gore (ed.), Property: Its Duties and Rights (London, 1913), 186-8, 102 For a detailed discussion see Freeden, Liberalism Divided, 13 and passim.

210 Liberalism: The Dominant Ideology fact that, conversely, socialists may feel more at home in a liberal room with a communitarian decor, an argument in favour of its reclassification. These all are, however, arguments against the mutual exclusiveness or sharp boundaries that ideologies are thought to display, and an acknowledgement that their cogent analysis must attend to the multiple forms they adopt. (g) STATE, GROUP, AND SOCIETY: THE GERMAN CASE

However much German liberals struggled ambivalently with the concept of the state, their ideology was formed within a cultural context in which the state—as institution or as idealized integrative and emancipating mechanism—could not be overlooked. Early nineteenth-century German liberals reacted against the absolutism evident in existing states by embracing the Rechtsstaat, a constitutional arrangement intended to protect individual rights against arbitrary and parochial power by means of a strong parliament. Concurrently, they adopted a universalism whose purpose it was to ensure individual freedom and progress, by establishing a rational, impersonal, and legal framework realized through the state.103 Even etymologically rights and law, as Rechte and Recht, seemed to blend into one entity. Liberty, progress, individualism as the securing of space for personal development, a formal rationalism attached to the state, and limited and responsible power were core concepts constitutive of German liberalism. The HegeHan conception of the state as an ethical expression of social unity thus grew on ideologically fertile soil and injected a concrete communal foundation into earlier Kantian influences. The latter had imparted a compelling appreciation of individuality as autonomy and agentcontrolled activity, as well as an abstract universalism which promoted a formal equality of regard. The links Kant forged between will, liberty, and reason assisted in viewing law as an expression of both rational will and free104will, through which individual differences could be overcome. This blend of social holism and individualist universalism105 also merged into the German Bildungs 103 See J. J, Sheehan, German Liberalism in the Nineteenth Century (London, 1982), 40-3,131; G, de Ruggiero, The History of European Liberalism (Boston, 1959), 21920, 253; J. H. Hallowell, The Decline of Liberalism as an Ideology (London, 1946), 39-47. 104 See R. Vierhaus, 'Liberalismus', in Geschichtliche Gntndbegriffe, iii (Stuttgart, 1982), 762. 105 Cp. Dumont, German Ideology, 14-25.

New Liberal Successions 211 tradition, with its high premium on education, cultural and moral enlightenment, and reason as the necessary trappings of the participating citizen. Education was linked to the concept of liberty as well as to that of progress, for liberty was decontested as a selfassumed spiritual emancipation, understood to comprise an extended non-constraint: not only the removal of unnatural external constraints to the human spirit, but of internal constraints as well.106 The adjacent concept of the state became indispensable to a developmental conception of liberty.107 Within this framework other forces were at work. The need for an integrative state was a prime political aim of German progressives, through which to combat the particularist anti-rational and illiberal tendencies of the localities. They could hence enter into temporary alliances with various strands of nationalist thinking. But liberalism itself was also the product of the corporate structure of German society, especially the notion of the Burger and its interplay with the concept of the citizen.108 A stark differentiation must thus be made between urban and national liberal loyalties, and correspondingly complex ideological configurations ensued. Moreover, the liberals in Germany as elsewhere subscribed to conceptions of a classless society in which their vision would play a key role. German liberals unconsciously generalized the virtues of the Mittelstand as those of the rational citizen per se, though they did not on the whole restrict those virtues to a narrow pursuit of bourgeois economic self-interest.109 When they did, that diminishing horizon of particularist Manchesterite individualism was accompanied by an impoverishment of the concept of liberty which undermined the integrative appeal of liberalism, weakened its pursuit of a general interest, and consequently impaired the balance between the core concepts that had been struck by incorporating a strong social component.110 Out of this medley of conflicting tendencies came a vigorous conception of group identities and social wholes, which was to pervade liberal thinking, and partly accounted (together with the undeveloped nature of the German economy) for the fact that laissez-faire had no major impact 106 Sheehan, German Liberalism, 14-15; Vierhaus, 'Liberalismus', 764; Dumont, German Ideology, 40-3. 107 See D. Langewiesehe, Liberalismus in Deutschland (Frankfurt, 1988), 21. 108 Ibid. 210. 109 D. Blackboum and G. Eley, The Peculiarities of German History (Oxford, 1984), 76-81; Sheehan., German Liberalism, 26, 85. 110 See H. Vorfander, 'Hat sich der Liberalismus totgesiegt?' in H. Vorlander (ed.), Verfctll oder Renaissance des Liberalismus? (Munich, 1987), 19-20,

212 Liberalism: The Dominant Ideology among those liberals. But it also tended to emphasize the rights of citizens located in groups, at the expense of the actual development of individual personality.111 The concept of the general interest was identified by liberals through two different means—the nation and the state. If the state seemed initially to offer hope for a universal, rational organization, the Volk was a more concrete rendering of the Kantian abstraction employing a term close to the hearts, or at least central to the vocabulary, of most Germans. Nationalism served at first to strengthen the liberal concern for the general interest and counteracted class in the liberal search for non-sectionalism. By identifying with the notion of an emancipated Volk, liberals indicated consideration for the interest of the people at large, but they were reluctant to follow one possible logical path—towards an adjacent notion of democracy—and to see in the people 'the primary source of legitimacy and power'.113 Nevertheless, the appeal to a combination of state and Volk—the state limiting the irrational impulses of the Volk and the Volk containing the overbureaucratization of the state—appeared to sustain the full range of liberal core concepts. The prescription was similar to that adopted by Max Weber in his attempt to balance the pros and cons of leadership, bureaucracy, and democracy,114 and it reflected a more fundamental German liberal anxiety about the relationship between democracy and mass politics than could be found among British and French equivalents. German liberals consistently rejected political, as distinct from legal, equality, including the repudiation of democratic decision-making at local level, and insisted on objective criteria such as property and education for political participation.115 In part this was brought on by a political situation in which the socialdemocratic threat was perceived as immediate and dangerous to liberals.116 In some cases however it also signalled a principled opposition, as with the right-of-centre liberal Heinrich von Treitschke, to 'the recognized hegemony of the irrational', endorsing 111 112

HalloweU, Decline of Liberalism, 73-4, R. Koselleek, 'Volk, Nation, Nationalismus, Masse', in Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe, vii, (Stuttgart, 1992), 149, notes that 'Deutschtum' and 'Volkstum' were parallel, mutually sustaining concepts, 113 Sheehan, German Liberalism, 115-16. 114 M. Weber, Economy and Society, ed. G. Roth and C. Wittich (Berkeley, Calif., 1978), i, part 1, ch. 3; ii. 'Parliament and Government in a Reconstructed Germany', 1381-1469. For a critical assessment of Weber's liberalism in a European context see R. Bellamy, Liberalism and Modern Society (Oxford, 1992), 157-216. 115 D. Langewiesehe, 'Liberalismus und Biirgertum in Europa', in J. Kocka (ed.), Deutschland im europHischen Vergleich (Munich, 1988), 371-2, 388, a * Langewiesehe, Libemlismus, 209.

New Liberal Successions 213 instead a withdrawal to competitive versions of individualism, and a defence of economic liberty, in which collective action played no role,117 yet in which the wholeness of the state was an end in itself.118 These outer ranges of membership of the German liberal family no longer corresponded to legitimate versions of British liberalism. They indicated a divide overlapping with, though not identical to, that between liberalism and libertarianism. The notion of Volk further contributed a romantic organicism into German liberalism, conceiving of the nation as a living and growing personality—a rather different formula for liberal organicism from that devised by the British variant, with its reliance on interpretations of evolutionary and biological science to cement mutual individual interdependence and rational democratic control, or from the French variant, with its penchant for sociological holism. But as with its British and French counterparts, the personality of the state was not allowed to override those of its individual members, the Rechtsstaat yet again containing the Volk.119 However, while certain decontestations and idea-environments of core liberal concepts were gaining ground and moving towards the morphological centre of German liberalism, others were tottering on the periphery. A strong adjacent nationalism, fuelled by emerging social-Darwinist views, had at a later stage to be evicted from its supportive adjacent position in liberal morphology and became increasingly marginal to that ideology. Once the meaning of nationalism was captured by the right, German liberals were deprived of a major integrative mechanism.120 The social liberal tendencies in the German liberal tradition were pronounced, indeed built into its basic ideological assumptions.121 Paradoxically, this is one reason why there was no distinct transition in the German case towards something equivalent to the British new liberalism.122 Left-liberals were frequently less inclined to endorse state social reforms for fear of strengthening a 117

Sheehan, German Liberalism, 154-5. Quoted from H. von Treitschke, Der Sozialismus und seine Conner (Berlin, 1875). See also Langewiesche, Liberalismus, 188-9. 118 H. von Treitschke, 'Political Freedom and its Limitation', in E. K. Bramsted and K. ]. Melhuish (eds.), 'Western Liberalism: A History in Documents from Locke to Croce (London, 1978), 449-52. 119 Ruggiero, History, 223, 259-60. 120 D. Langewiesche, "The Nature of German Liberalism', in G. Marfel (ed.), Modem Germany Reconsidered 1870-1945 (London, 1992), 112. See also Sheehan, German Liberalism, 274. 121 Langewiesche, Liberalismus, 7. 122 Cp. S.-G. Schnorr, Liberalismus zwischen 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Baden-Baden, 1990), 56-7.

214 Liberalism: The Dominant Ideology centralizing power, while the right-of-centre National Liberals backed those reforms for that very reason. However, well-developed local and communal welfare measures fostered a municipal mutual support structure that had active liberal blessing.123 From another source, the centrality of voluntary corporations was assimilated into liberal thinking.124 One of the pre-eminent German liberals, Friedridh Naumann, approached conrymturutarianism through notions of corporation and organization, while raising the concept of efficiency (as did many British thinkers at the turn of the nineteenth-twentieth centuries) to a position of structural prominence.125 Planning, organization, the attainment of common commercial and welfare ends—these were the 'communal' themes Naumann wished to implant in decontesting liberal core concepts.126 His emphasis was more on modernization and a recognition of the growing role of the masses in contemporary society—again without any enthusiasm for their democratic participation—than on the ethical case for mutual support and responsibility. Progress was construed as industrial and technical as much as social and political.127 In Ms respect for national power and economic prosperity, and the priority accorded them over the ethical and spiritual development of the individual, Naumann skirted very close to the boundaries of accepted liberal argument. Ambivalence on the issue of power and a quasi-instrumental understanding of individualism and rationafity radically decontested the liberal core to the point where its morphology became too unrecognizable to qualify for automatic membership in the late rdneteenth-century families of liberal discourse. It was only when Naumann's organicism, like Hobson's, insisted on the development of personality as a precondition for the functioning of the socio-economic machine, that the concept of sociability could be retrieved for liberal use.128 Naumann felt he had to remind Ms readers that the state had a dual nature: 1. We all are the state. 2. The state may not do everything.'129 The state extended strong support to the concept of community wMle itself 123

D, Langewiesche, 'German Liberalism in the Second Empire, 1871-1914', in K. H. Jarausch and L. E. Jones (eds,)» In Search of a Liberal Germany (New York and Oxford, 1990), 232; Langewiesche, 12S Liberalismus, 202, 124 Ruggiero, History, 270, Schnorr, Liberalismus, 116, 122, 126 Sheehan, German Liberalism, 232. 127 Schnorr, Liberalismus, 143, 145-50, 152-5, 168. There is a greater affinity between Naumann's liberalism and the British centrist-liberals, the latter lacking though the appeal to the state and the Volk. 128 Cp, Schnorr, Liberalismus, 218. 129 Quoted in ibid. 239 from F. Naumann, Das Prinzip des Liberalismus (1904).

New Liberal Successions 215 restricted, through the concept of constitutional power, from occupying a core ideological position. Notwithstanding, the state in the German tradition was closely associated not only with formal legalisrn, but with organization and the locus of expertise.130 Curiously, the Hegelian moralization of the state, a theme that in its un-Hegelian version was echoed in British liberalism, was largely absent from German liberal discourse in its later manifestations. (h) STATE, GROUP, AND SOCIETY: THE FRENCH CASE

French liberals, too, had by the end of the nineteenth century consolidated the liberal alliance with community, though the route they followed was not via the legal might of a unifying and respected state, but one that converged—with some significant distinctions—on British new liberal positions, even anticipating some of them. The solidarism typifying much Third Republic radical thought, though it engaged the state in important regulatory functions, had its roots in the organic and evolutionary social thought popularized by Comte. But, as in Britain, liberals reinterpreted the authoritarian and deterministic aspects of Comte's organicism in line with their values, and attached it to a view of social progress bent on wresting Social Darwinism from the grasp of the advocates of a competitive and aggressive evolutionism. Solidarism, as preached by the liberals Alfred Fouillee and Leon Duguit, and both advocated and practised by Leon Bourgeois, provides an instructive example of the adept reshuffling of arguments that a flexible and open ideology such as liberalism permits in order to suit the intellectual trends and political requirements of a society. It is a central argument of this study that political concepts cannot be understood in isolation from each other, and the syntagmatic structure of the trinitarian French revolutionary slogan facilitated the transmission of ideational interdependence into conscious popular political culture as substantive assertion, not just morphological feature. Anglo-American political discourse, in contradistinction, was susceptible to the disjointed and frequently reductionist treatment of an ideology represented by a sole concept. Astutely anchoring his arguments in that predominant conceptual horizon, Bourgeois reorganized the sequence of the trinity 130

See K. Rohe, 'Von "Bnglischer Freiheit" zu "Deutscher Organisation"? Liberates Refonndenken in GrossBritannien an der Schwelle zum 20. Jahrhundert und deutsche politische Kultur', in K. Rohe (ed.), Englischer Liberalismus im 19. und Friihen 20, Jahrhundert (Bochum, 1987), 277,

216 Liberalism: The Dominant Ideology in order to serve a more communitarian version of liberalism: 'Solidarity first, then equality or justice, which amounts to the same thing; finally liberty. Such, it seems to me, is the necessary order of the three ideas in which the Revolution sums up social truth/131 The package was retained; its internal priorities were transposed. Whereas earlier on, and again in the twentieth century, French liberals had selectively preferred liberty and rights from the indivisible totality of the revolutionary creed and thus weakened their association with the winning republican tradition,132 some late nineteenth-century liberals took a more generous view of the revolutionary message in toto. They allowed a movement of ideas such as solidarism (itself no more than a loose umbrellaterm for polysemic ideological combinations) to be self-consciously integrated into liberalism. As seen in the previous chapter, it would be wrong to regard fraternity or, indeed, community as foreign implants into an atomistically individualist French liberalism. To the contrary, a strong concept of the general interest incorporated into social groups and wholes typified the weightier part of postrevolutionary French liberalism throughout. Late nineteenthcentury radicalism took this further by cutting loose from those tendencies within French liberalism that offered succour to minimalist and order-preserving ideational composites represented in particular by Guizot.133 The ideological core of French liberalism in its Radical mode retained all the features of its equivalents elsewhere. It was assertively rationalist, drawing on both humanist anthropocentrism and revolutionary reconstructionism. It assimilated theories of progress congenial towards the other ideational decontestations it established, though it tended to incorporate individual into social development. It appealed to the power of the state and the law to enshrine individual liberty, rights, and duties in a protective constitutional shield, specifically developing a doctrine of guarantism to maintain a viable balance between the claims of individuality and those of the state or society. Yet subtle changes were introduced, adjusting the internal relationships among some core concepts, by rearranging their mutual priority and surrounding them 131 Quoted in J. E. S. Hayward, 'The Official Social Philosophy of the French Third Republic: L£on Bourgeois and Solidarism', International Review of Social History, 6 (1961), 27. 132 See S. Hazareesingh, Political Traditions in Modem France (Oxford, 1994), 23, who rightly also emphasizes the frailty of the ensuing liberal political practice. 133 Cp. S. Seidman, Liberalism and the Origins of European Social Theory (Oxford, 1983), 153-4,

New Liberal Successions 217 with modified adjacent concepts. Those changes should not be regarded as fusions of a liberal tradition with a revolutionary one134 —if by that is meant that clear-cut rigid and mutually exclusive political traditions actually exist. Rather, as has been claimed throughout this study, the flexibility of many ideological families allows for the emergence of a host of variants that can easily cross such presumed divides. The internal logic of liberalism enables— as it did in a series of widely legitimated European developments— the ascendancy of a communitarian strand without reneging on any of its core principles. Solidarism had been building up through a pedigree of French liberal thinkers keen to reinterpret liberalism by utilizing the state as an adjacent concept which would further the realization of the values embodied fat the core liberal concepts. In so doing it traversed considerable additional ideological territory. The initial role French liberals had accorded the state was that of protecting individual rights, though even that could entail considerable state power, provided the concept of liberty was not expanded to impinge on other liberal values.135 Individualist liberals such as Charles Renouvier had resisted the bureaucratic advance of the state and still promoted the diffusion of private property as the best way of maximizing liberty and individuality, interpreted on the lines of Kantian autonomy. Renouvier's guiding idea 'of a society of rational beings consisted] in each being an end in himself and in having the means to pursue this end, with the aid of others if need be'.136 Yet here too a tenuous link with joint social action was constructed, the collective extolling of voluntary associations serving to forge co-operative ties among individuals.137 Significantly, the notion of contract was stretched to allow not only for the formation of societies or the strict performance of pledged duties, but to encourage further consent and association through individual agreement. But this remained a weak form of sociability, denying the formation of a collective morality.138 It was left to later liberals such as Fouillee to advance further on that path, presenting artificial (contractual) co-operation as predicated on original natural m

Ibid. 159. Cp. W. Logue, From Philosophy to Sociology: The Evolution of French Liberalism 1870-1914 (De Kalb, 111., 1983), 28, 44. 136 Quoted in Bellamy, Liberalism and Modern Society, 64. 137 Logue, From Philosophy to Sociology, 61. 138 R. H. Soltau, French Political Thought in the 19th Century (New York, 1959), 308. 133

218 Liberalism: The Dominant Ideology 139 social affinities. The associatiorast drive of individuals was reinforced by placing it in close proximity to the concepts of human reason, consciousness, and liberty-cum-choice. Nevertheless, Renouvier too saw the state as the prime social association, entrusted with maintaining social justice. To that end perimeter notions were attached. One was endemic in the French secular tradition, in encouraging the use of state schools to foster republican values.140 Others concerned redistribution via progressive taxation, organizing labour and limiting profits and inheritance, and restricting Church141activity to diminish its power to interfere with individual liberty. The solidarism of Bourgeois became 'the official doctrine of the Third Republic'142—calling into question the assessment that liberalism had failed as a central belief-system in France. That latter judgement depends chiefly on the conceptual configuration such analysts attribute to French liberalism.143 Bourgeois, like Fouiilee, purged natural solidarity of its irrationalism by superimposing a human consciousness directed towards social justice. "The solution is to transform the involuntary, blind and unequal interdependence that is the result of the antiquated social policy of the past, into a free and rational interdependence based upon equal respect for the equal rights of all/144 Reason and sociability spawned in their interaction an ethical guarantism that called on a limited adjacent universalism, in the form of equality of treatment— specifically a diminution of the inequality of opportunity—and on planning and redistribution as perimeter concepts. The social practices of this ideological configuration were old-age pensions, a limited working day, and social insurance to cover accidents, Elhealth, and unemployment,145 Solidarism developed within the ambit of two cultural constraints, the one characteristic of the British new liberalism as well, the other specifically French. The shared constraint was a strong orgamcism which, on some assessments, underpinned the solidarist movement. Whereas in Britain the impact of organicism was 139

Cp. J. E. S. Hayward, '"Solidarity" and the Reformist Sociology of Alfred Fouillee', American journal of Economics and Sociology, 22 (1963), 208. 140 Bellamy, Liberalism, 64-5; Logue, From Philosophy to Sociology, 70. 141 Soltau, French Political Thought, 312-13. 14Z J. E. S. Hayward, 'Official Social Philosophy', 20. 143 See Soltau, French Political Thought, 295-306, who associates liberalism with a highly individualist and broadly anti-statist doctrine, increasingly confused by the challenges of political and cultural change. 144 Quoted in Hayward, 'Official Social Philosophy', 33, 145 See ibid., passim.

New Liberal Successions 219 coupled to the rise of co-operative Social Darwinism, French political thought, as Rosanvallon has noted, had its own indigenous scientific culture from which to interweave biological and social laws. Pasteur had, in Bourgeois's own opinion, been responsible through his epidemology for disseminating an appreciation of the robust social ties that existed among people, and the mutual dependence of each person on the intelligence and morality of the others.146 Here lay the key to unlocking the irreconcilable tension between individualism and collectivism, for liberty and individuality still remained cherished and privileged values. The specifically French constraint on conceptual realignment was the significance of voluntary associations and the ways in which they interacted both with society as a whole and with the individuals composing both groups and society. Voluntary associations were not, as in the British case, private organizations outside the realm of the state and supplanting some of its activities nor, as in the American tradition, interest groups relating to each other in a competitive pursuit of governmental distribution of scarce goods, but more directly integrated into the workings of society—itself perceived as a pluralist combination of groups and associations— and crucially shaping its communitarian dispositions. State intervention needed to adopt guises compatible with that social fact. Importantly, this conceptual interpretation reinforced the role of the state, and this intellectual current attained its apogee in the French liberal tradition with fertile Durkheim and even more so with L6on Duguit.147 Durkheim was influenced in his early years by Renouvier's rationalism, his strong ethical views of liberal republicanism, his balance of individual autonomy and individual interdependence, and, not least, by his 'scientific' approach.148 Later, Durkheim was to inject a new scientism into political theory by discovering a fresh set of sociological laws, the search for which had always fascinated French intellectuals. Durkheim's organic solidarity, which he claimed typified the division of labour of complex societies as a culmination of a sequence of social progress, established that increased individuation entailed increased interdependence. By calling this a social fact Durkheim employed a powerful verbal mode of decontesting core liberal concepts. Whether or not he was a conscious political solidarist, his sociology contained much surplus-meaning attached to 146 147 148

P. Rosanvallon, L'ttat en France: De 1789 a nos jours (Paris, 1990), 171-2. Cp. Logue, From Philosophy to Sociology, 8, 176, 199. S. Lukes, tmile Durkheim (Harmondsworth, 1975), 55.

220 Liberalism: The Dominant Ideology the liberal solidarist tradition. If, as has been argued, Durkheitn also displayed strong affinities with socialism,149 that was entirely consonant with the polysemic possibilities inherent in the interchange between late nineteenth-century liberalism, socio-biological theory, and the political pressures engendered by advanced industrialism.150 In France growing working-class power and malaise were also accompanied by a continual external threat to the integrity of the state, which smoothed the path of holistic theories. Indeed, Durkheim deplored the connection made between socialism and the working class, preferring to see the social question as affecting the general interest,151 as did British liberals. Pluralism and voluntarism coexisted in Durkhekn's theory with a spirited appreciation of groups. He anchored the individual in a group structure, which was both a repository of social norms and a functional instrument in their performance. The adjacent concept of the state established it as an ethical regulator, though not ultimate controller, of groups and individuals, against the backdrop of its increasing administrative complexity. The state was however linked to a liberal core in a new manner—not as protector of individual rights against arbitrary power, but as 'free[ing] the individual from the particular and local groups which tended to absorb him'. Yet the state was also the product of individual conduct and needed to be democratically moralized, directly by individual consent and indirectly by the groups that socialized the individual. Those groups, if sufficiently autonomous and individuated, could also curb the state's activities. In good rationalist fashion Durkheim wrote: 'What liberates the individual is not the elimination of a controlling centre, but rather the multiplication of such centres, provided that they are co-ordinated and subordinated one to another/152 This effected a recognizable compound, at a more sophisticated sociological level, of the liberal concepts of sociability and individuality. A semi-conscious subscription to a liberal notion of harmony,153 which mitigated power and conflict in healthy societies, was a further hallmark of the liberal in Durkheim, while the specifically nineteenth-century aspect of his liberalism was represented by an elitist conception of democracy, in which the public had to be educated by the state.154 149

Lukes, Durkheim, 320-30, Lukes accepts that Durkheim was also a liberal. Logue has significantly observed of Durkheim that 'his fundamental liberalism would have been more generally recognized, had observers been more aware of the movement we have called the "new liberalism"' (p. 151). 151 ISZ Lukes, Durkheim, 323-4. Quoted in ibid. 324, 325. m

153

m

Cp. Logue, From Philosophy to Sociology, 173. fi. Durkheim, Professional Ethics and Civic Morals (London, 1992), 92.

New Liberal Successions 221 Durkheim's detailed analysis of the indeterminate meanings of individualism underscored the ways in which nineteenth-century liberalism successfully engaged in extending the accepted connotations of the term. Within the ideological framework of a strong sociability-cum-associationism, an organic holism, and an ethical conception of social life, the progressively oriented Durkheim was encouraged to construct decontestations of individualism reflecting the social prerequisites for the development of personality.155 Opposing both egoistic individualism, related to individual motivation and self-perception,156 and methodological individualism, related to an atomistic conception of social structure,157 he posited instead an autonomous individual sustained by supportive group relationships and by the state. This theory adopted a salient organicist profile whereby social life resulted from 'special cultivation which individual consciousnesses undergo in their association with each other, an association from which a new form of existence is evolved'.158 But as with other liberal organicists, social solidarity remained a prerequisite of individual liberty and reason.159 Fouillee attempted a synthesis between organicism and French associationist pluralism. Again, a liberal organicism repudiated the subordination of the parts while advocating their co-ordination and reciprocity.160 Fouillee emphasized 'idees-forces', motivating ideas which propelled individuals to action, refuting the dichotomy between thought and experience,161 Two such ideas were liberty and reason.162 Fouillee's organicism was thus voluntarist, and its reliance on choice permitted the introduction of a sophisticated social contract which would safeguard individual rights and personality. On the other hand, self-consciousness was holistically extended to include the consciousness of others, from which emerged a notion of community and a reconciliation—as with the British new liberals—of the requirements of individual personality and social solidarity.163 These conceptual devices were buttressed 155

Cp. Seidman, Liberalism, 174. t. Durkheim, Suicide (London, 1952), 364, 157 t. Durkheim, The Rules of Sociological Method (Chicago, 1938), 122, 158 Ibid. 124. See also Lukes, Durkheim, 19-20,199, 326-7. 159 Cp. Logue, From Philosophy to Sociology, 162. 16(1 A. Fouillee, La Science sociale contemporaine, 2nd edn. (Paris, 1885), 157, 161 Cp. J. T. Kloppenberg, Uncertain Victory; Social Democracy and Progressmism in European and American Thought, 1870-1920 (Oxford, 1986), 53, 88. 162 A. Fouillee, La Liberte et le Determinism: (Paris, 1890), 221-51. 143 Hayward, '"Solidarity" and the Reformist Sociology of Alfred Fouiilee', American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 22 (1963), 209-14; Kloppenberg, Uncertain Victory, 77, 129, 148. m

222 Liberalism: The Dominant Ideology by the adjacent conception of an activist state engaged in repairing social injustices, including the perimeter practices of pensions, child support, and insurance,164 a diffusion of property ownership, and the reformist perimeter of solidarism.165 They provided the cultural underpinning for a logically entailed path which successfully blocked off two political alternatives: a collectivism undifferentiated from socialist positions;166 and an individualism undifferentiated from what had become a conservative laissez-faire.167 Fouillee could conclude with some satisfaction that 'the doctrine of contractual organicism is a form of liberalism elevated to its highest power'. Significantly for the semantic field now staked out by liberalism, this was tantamount—because of an overriding commitment to pursuing liberty—to 'an enlightened and rational $ocialism'.m 'Liberty, right, society, are then the three moments of one and the same evolution; an isolated liberty has no meaning and cannot exist.'169 The mutual sustenance of these terms embraced the morphological adjustments in the reconceptualization of liberalism. Duguit presents an interesting case-study in the ability of an ideology to adopt the contours of indigenous and ephemeral sociopolitical debate, in this case syndicalism. Once the state was no longer the supreme social organization, and echoing the predilection of many French political theorists for the group as a key social entity, Duguit represented the climax of the attempt to construct a new social reality in which additional concepts were identified, and tentatively and experimentally introduced into the liberal family—as long as they were able to prop up a satisfactory configuration of the liberal core. Dismissing the conventional legal fiction of state sovereignty, Duguit preserved the role of the state only as an agent to enforce laws, and laws were 'the sum of those principles of social conduct which... are necessary to the achievement of the social purpose'.170 The state also actively supplied the opportunities for the unfettered material, intellectual, and moral development of individuals-—which constituted liberty—but it was now 164

Kloppenberg, Uncertain Victory, 187. Cp. Logue, From Philosophy to Sociology, 145-6. MS perceptjQ]is of that French ideological divide did not necessarily correspond to the actual morphologies concerned. See Ch. 12 below. 167 Examples of the latter may be seen in P. Leroy-Beaulieu's The Modern State in Relation to Society and the Individual (London, 1891) and in ferrule Faguet's Le Liberalism; (Paris, 1903). 168 Quoted in Hayward, '"Solidarity"', 215. 169 Fouillee, La Science sociule contemporaine, 390. 170 Quoted in Soltau, French Political Thought, 474, MS

New Liberal Successions 223 171 demystified as a public service organization. Duguit located the adjacent concept of democracy institutionally in self-governing professional groups, whose ethos would encourage the reciprocity of individuality and sociability as well as providing a different, group-located, perimeter interpretation of the dispersed countervailing force with which liberals sought to delimit concentrated power. Duguit curiously transformed liberal theory by promoting a network of interrelated duties over the rights of individuals and states, as part of a process of social evolution. The correlativity of rights and duties does not as a rule postulate the one without the other, and his assertion should be regarded as a rhetorical device stressing the priority of mutual obligations over atomistic claims. In so doing he was bold enough to reject explicitly the horizon of the French Revolution with its inalienable individual rights,172 though at the cost of a rather deterministic evolution, Duguit pulled back from endorsing the revolutionary forms of syndicalism when he argued that 'groups have no will and cannot therefore be responsible persons'. He retained state activity, which 'emanates from individual wills, but is essentially collective in its end'. The proper functioning of both individuals and groups was the responsibility of the state,173 for individuality and social solidarity developed, as with Durkheim, in complete reciprocity.174 Britain experienced fainter resonances of the partial liberal reconciliation with syndicalism. One of Duguit's books was translated by Laski in Ms pluralist phase, and even self-defined British liberals advocated the extension of democracy into the workplace after the First World War, drawing in the themes of community, control, participation, individual liberty, and the development of human creative potential. New conceptions of rightful property ownership directly by value-producing groups were mooted. At the same time, British liberals, most of whom were bereft of the sociological holism that characterized French solidarism, were more reluctant to separate society into discrete entities that could in their view undermine the pursuit of a general interest.175 The presence of three central political concepts (liberty, equality, and fraternity) as common terms of reference at the heart of French political language has been a defining feature of ideological 571 m 174

L. Duguit, Law in the ModernmState (London, 1921), 30, 44, 51. Ibid., pp. xxxviu-xli. Ibid. 206-7. Cp, J. E. S. Hayward, 'Solidarist Syndicalism: Durkheim and Duguit. Part II', Sociological Review, 8 (I960), 189. 175 See Freeden, Liberalism Divided, 45-77.

224 Liberalism: The Dominant Ideology discourse and a significant factor in the conceptual construction of a social and political reality. It has permitted the formation of a very wide range of legitimated combinations involving different decontested paths. That is not to argue that equality attained core concept status even in French liberal argument, though facets of it—relating to universalism and, through the revolutionary tradition, to the condoning of group if not mass participation—were high on liberal agendas. For most French liberals the concept of property inhibited a radically egalitarian socio-economic vision, and the analyst must not be led astray by the ubiquity of the egalitarian slogan. Equal respect, or equality of opportunity, still functioned as service concepts to core liberal concepts of libertycum-autonomy, individuality, or rationality.176 Indeed, they have also been appropriated by conservative ideologies as relatively marginal supports for personal entrepreneurship or the authority of law. Durkheim's sociological viewpoint was hardly exceptional in suggesting that 'the unequal merit of men will always bring them into unequal situations in society ... these inequalities . . , have no other influence over the determination of values except to establish a gradation among the latter parallel to the hierarchy of social functions'. To attain this correct gradation, equality of contract was sufficient, rectifying an external inequality, whereas compensation for inequalities generated by internal capacities was excluded from the conceptual environment of Durkheimian equality.177 Hence function rather than need defined the redistribution required by social justice,178 Though Durkheim objected to private property grounded on traditional legal forms such as inheritance— arrangements which, as we have seen, had migrated away from the centre of liberal morphology—it was acceptable when based on functional differentiation, and his arguments followed the welltrodden liberal path in relating property to a sphere of individual independence.179 At best, the liberal family had conferred guest core status on a neutered version of equality. As for structural tolerance—the readiness to shuffle core and adjacent concepts around—it was practised in so far as rational criticism was a maxim of both French and German liberals, but its status was weakened in both cases by a firm belief in the unequivocal directing power of reason, rather than in a substantive scepticism. 176 177 178 m

172.

See p. 175 above. fi, Durkheim, The Division of'Labor in Society (New York, 1933), 381-4. Cp. also Bellamy, Liberalism and Modern Society, 87, Durkheim, Professional Ethics, 213-14; Logue, From Philosophy to Sociology,

New Liberal Successions 225 We now look across the Atlantic where, despite their intellectual origins and the existence of open routes of conceptual and linguistic communication witih Europe, a number of ideological variants were knocking on the liberal door, some of whose family links were distant and even tenuous.

6

The Challenge of Philosophical Liberalism: Contextualizing the Contemporary American Variant

, . . those who felt inclined to systematize liberalism—John Stuart Mill is the greatest name in this tradition—were handicapped by their commitment to the culture of their age.1 We have to concede that as established beliefs change, it is possible that the principles of justice which it seems rational to choose may likewise change.2

the past quarter-century an astounding revival of liberal OVBm thought has taken place. That revival, curiously, has occurred within academic rather than political or popular circles, has been spearheaded by philosophers rather than by ideologists-cumpolitical activists or even political theorists, and has been located geographically in the American east coast/ though the power of American mass marketing and the Ph.D. industry have secured it important overseas outlets. Despite initial attempts to present itself as non-ideological, through claims both to universalism and to non-bias, contemporary philosophical liberalism is an ideological phenomenon like any other liberal doctrine. This chapter will concentrate on two tasks: to assess its self-definition as Hberal in the light of the evidence assembled above about the identifying features of that ideology; and to assess its location in relation to salient features of the American liberal tradition with which it associates. The limited spread of philosophical liberalism beyond university walls suggests that is not a fully fledged ideological variant, lacking as it does detailed perimeter notions and practices, 1

G, Lichtheim, A Short History of Socialism (London, 1970), 74, J. Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Oxford, 1971), 548, 3 On this limitation and the problem of liberal relativism see J, A. Hall, Liberalism (London, 1988), 188. 2

Challenge of Philosophical Liberalism 227 although its espousers all exhibit the defining characteristics of ideologists. Were philosophical liberalism to become a popular political belief-system, there would be grounds for maintaining that a radical reformulation of ideas had been injected into both the American and European liberal traditions, and that while some of its core concepts were still recognizably liberal, others constituted a decisive departure from existing configurations. More incisively, as an applicable political doctrine philosophical liberalism falls seriously short of its aims. Designed as a normative improvement on important aspects of existing liberal theory, it ends up mainly in delivering hypothetical counterfactuals to the thoughtbehaviour already incorporated in liberal ideologies. Whatever the normative merits of those types of thought-behaviour are, and granted that they will inevitably change (whether for better or worse), they are evident in political conduct. Philosophical liberalism thus poses a challenge for the ideological analyst. It illustrates the divide between ideology and political philosophy discussed in Part I, even though at least one of its most representative formulators refers to its distinct ideological features.4 It is almost entirely ahistorical despite superficial allusions to the historical liberal tradition; it adopts the conceptual purism of some philosophers in its attempts to isolate the synchronic constitutive principles of liberalism 'as such'; it is formalistic and rule bound. It may be asked why philosophical liberalism merits consideration in a book on ideologies, and the answer must be tentative inasmuch as its dissemination, consumption, and political viability are still uncertain. It is currently the most carefully argued and academically the most widely discussed liberal theory. Moreover, it follows the academic trend of resurrecting major ideologies—Marxism is the best-known example—within the confines of philosophical discourse and, like twentieth-century Marxism, it exhibits the scholastic tendency of relatively circumscribed circles to focus detailed and often repetitive debate on a small number of texts. Liberal principles are consequently stated in such a way as to blur the distinctions between the theory and the ideology; in particular—again, as with Marxism—to disengage the theory from a diachronic tradition of thought against which its identity has been subject to continuous appraisal. Significantly, American philosophical liberalism is both similar to and different from other American liberal counterparts and a comparison between the two is therefore of some interest. Philosophical 4

R. Dworkin, 'Liberalism', in A Matter of Principle (Oxford, 1986), 185.

228 Liberalism: The Dominant Ideology liberalism, it will be contended, has borrowed a false horizon5 for American liberalism, stretching back to Kant but unrelated to the thought-behaviour of American liberals. The hitherto existing horizons of those liberals, whether accumulative or diminishing, and whether compatible or incongruous, hark back instead to Locke, to progressivism and the New Deal, and to the civil rights movement of the 1960s. First, however, the arguments of philosophical liberalism need to be briefly examined. (a) POLITICAL LIBERALISM AND ITS CONSTRAINTS

The theorist most closely associated with philosophical liberalism is John Rawls. Ironically, while Rawls serves as the focal point of much discussion on philosophical liberalism and has been responsible for many of its main features, he himself later undermined some of the assumptions holding it together, though not sufficiently to justify detaching his current views from its basic premisses. It is not the aim of this section to reproduce the range of Rawls's complex arguments. Rather, some of his more revealing work, collated in Political Liberalism, will be assessed in relation to his seminal A Theory of Justice and to the writings of other philosophical liberals. In distinguishing fundamentally between the right and the good, Rawls has argued that a theory of justice as fairness precedes any particular conception of the good which may be expressed in social arrangements. He has hence claimed that a theory of justice can be universalized without predetermining the specific manifestations of plans of life that people wish to realize. Rawls has also suggested that a 'thin theory' of the good underpins a theory of the right, of justice itself; that is, some value assumptions, somewhat reluctantly identified by him as intuitive/ %

See above, p. 118. * By intuitionism Rawls understands the doctrine of weighing first principles against each other through applying a considered judgement as to the right balance among them, in the absence of any rules for such prioritizing (Theory of Justice, 34), Specifically, in 'Justice as Fairness: Political not Metaphysical', Philosophy and Public Affairs, 14 (1985), 229, Rawls refers to 'society as a system of fair social cooperation between free and equal persons' as 'a more fundamental intuitive idea', a sentence deleted from the parallel section in Political Liberalism (New York, 1993), 9. In the latter book Rawls is keen to distinguish rational intuitionism from his approach, while drawing important parallels between the two (pp. 91-5), and continuing to make occasional appeals to intuition (e.g. p. 192).

Challenge of Philosophical Liberalism 229 are contained in a universal theory, but even they do not pre-empt its wide application. A frequent criticism to which Rawls's pre-198Qs work has been subjected is the suggestion that the assumptions of the 'thin theory' cannot be generalized, and that he has been working within the confines of an individualistic, even vacuous, conception of the person, which disregards the formative impact on the individual of social organization and of psychological dispositions. From this perspective, it is illuminating to examine Rawls's own corrections to his earlier statements. Specifically, we will want to explore whether there is any parallel between the thin and full theories of the good and the morphological features of an ideology: can the 'thin' be related to the anatomical core and the 'full' to the complete fleshed-out version of an ideology? We then need to know whether the 'thin' and 'full' theories can be severed so that the former may be generalized without having a bearing on the substance of the latter. Finally, we require an evaluation of Rawls's understanding of liberalism, a subject on which he has been more explicit in his later writings. To a much greater extent than some of his supporters, Rawls has conceded that his theory of justice is not as all-embracing as originally intended. He now acknowledges that what he previously termed the 'thin theory' of the good contains a liberal position, though he calls it a political, not a comprehensive, liberalism.7 Before assessing the validity of that distinction, this political liberalism needs to be explored. Is Rawls—by employing a political liberalism—a liberal theorist pure and simple, is his theory capable of alignment with non-liberal political doctrines, or is it a liberalism which parts company with recognized exemplars of that tradition? Since identifying his conception of justice as liberal,8 Rawls has accepted that it sets limits to 'permissible conceptions of the good', while continuing to insist that the basic values associated with the priority of the right do not 'suffice by themselves to specify any particular political view'.9 The challenge this poses to the student of liberalism as an ideology is to establish whether the tension between these two assertions may be resolved, and whether the conceptual configurations indicated by the permissible ways of life can be contained, without propelling us in the direction of 7 J. Rawls, "The Priority of Right and Ideas of the Good', Philosophy and Public Affairs, 17 (1988), 253-4, 8 Rawls, 'Justice as Fairness', 245, * Rawls, Political Liberalism, 190-3,177,

230 Liberalism: The Dominant Ideology particular political views. In other words, is Rawls's political liberalism really 'thin' and, even if it were, can one entertain a politically liberal restricted basis which has such a meagre logical and cultural influence over more comprehensive political viewpoints that they can avoid being instances of a 'comprehensive' liberalism? Rawls is wrong to assume that no particular political view is assumed by adhering to Ms basic values. This may be explained by reference to the structure of the core of an ideology in relation to its other conceptual ingredients. The core of an ideology is indeed composed of concepts that, taken on their own, are too indeterminate to allow of a clear interpretation. But they are not, in linguistic and political practice, taken on their own. Already in A Theory of Justice Rawls introduced the notion of lexical priority that ordered the two fundamental principles of justice (the equal liberty principle and the distribution of social and economic inequalities principle).10 A configuration was formed which allocated relative positions of significance to one decontestation of justice as fairness over another. Redistribution to the benefit of the least advantaged was unacceptable on its own, being just only if it proceeded from social arrangements that facilitated the exercise of basic liberties, the pursuit of 'spiritual and cultural interests', and the furtherance of self-respect. Status based on equal citizenship was decontested as more desirable than status based on material means.11 In his later work, even more explicitly, the component concepts of the core inform and colour each other. Rawls's thin theory of the good constitutes a partial decontesting of the concepts it contains, and consequently operates as a constraint on, and (flexible) determinant of, whatever additional configurations the core can attract. 'Thin' and 'thick' are employed in Rawlsianinspired debate as dichotomized concepts, although the very terms suggest a continuity rather than a disjuncture. The liberal profile set out in the previous chapters involves a proximity of liberty, development, individualism, rationality, the general interest, sociability, and rule-limited government.12 These already rule out 10 12

Rawls, Theory of justice, 40-5, 60-1. " Ibid. 541-8. Though the previous chapters have examined European liberalisms, American liberal variants have always insisted on their European origins, particularly Louis Hartz in his The Liberal Tradition in America (New York, 1955), but also philosophical liberals themselves. Ackerman acknowledges the European backdrop to American political self-understanding in his recent clarion-cry: 'Is [America] content, even now, to remain an intellectual colony, borrowing European categories to decode the meaning of its national identity?' (B. Ackerman, We the People (Cambridge, Mass., 1991), 3).

Challenge of Philosophical Liberalism 231 ideological positions associated with fascism, with some kinds of conservatism, with anarchism, and with most variants of Marxism. Instructively, when the components of Rawls's 'thin', political liberalism are examined in detail similar limitations, no less restrictive, are evident. We learn that political liberalism draws 'solely upon basic intuitive ideas that are embedded in the political institutions of a constitutional democratic regime' and in its public political culture.13 We also learn that the citizens who support it are rational, free, and equal persons, that they are capable of growth, that they share the same basic rights, liberties, and opportunities, that because they are concerned to 'find the truth or to reach reasonable agreement' they are capable of an overlapping consensus, that they display the political virtues of 'fair social cooperation' such as civility and tolerance, and that they are capable of the development and full exercise of two moral powers: a capacity for a sense of justice and for a conception of the good.14 These attributions of political liberalism are even more elaborate than those identified in chapters 4 and 5 as forming the liberal core. They constitute numerous postulates—for a number of which intuitive status is claimed, but all capable of being culturally conditioned—about human ends and their compatibility in a social context. Seven out of the eight core liberal features identified in previous chapters15 appear in Rawls's political 16 liberalism, together with adjacent concepts concerning equality,17 democracy, and allocations of rights and opportunities. The notion of an overlapping consensus, however, seems to stretch other liberal conceptions beyond their normal range because, unlike the general interest, its contents are unusually specific.18 The missing 13

Rawls, 'Political not Metaphysical', 225, 234; 'The Priority of Right', 262. Rawls, Political Liberalism, 19, 176-80, 192, 194, 202. Italics added. 15 I have argued that tolerance is not just a substantive value but a morphological device enabling ranges of decontestations to be undertaken within the limits defined by the semantic field of the other core concepts. See Ch. 4 above. 16 Rawls distinguishes between rationality and reasonableness: the first refers to the judgement and deliberation used by agents in attaining their ends; the second to the social context of co-operation in a limited pluralistic framework that decontests and constrains rationality (Political Liberalism, 48-57). 57 Core-status claims made for the concept of equality will be addressed below, 14

8. (d). 18

Overlapping consensus is a constitutional procedural device identified by Rawls with a variant of neutrality (see s, (/) below). But it also assumes the principles of justice as fairness which Rawls has already allocated to political liberalism (Political Liberalism, 144-8). It is hence a serious constraint on pluralism.

232 Liberalism: The Dominant Ideology core concept is individuality, to which Rawls mysteriously* assigns the status of a comprehensive liberal ideal.19 Rawls's political liberalism may not be comprehensive in his sense of the term 'comprehensive' ('conceptions of what is of value in human life, as well as ideals of personal virtue and character, that are to inform much of our nonpolitkal conduct'),20 but it is a highly advanced skeletal structure that, while capable of being fleshed out in many ways (as is typical of all ideological families), must necessarily be fleshed out in a manner consistent with the contours of its ideological anatomy. Though a core is too rudimentary an anatomical structure on which to suspend a fully fledged ideology, the principle of quasi-contingency applies. The introduction of certain adjacent concepts rather than others is logically entailed, even though the precise decontestation of those concepts is not specified exactly. To pick up an earlier analogy, once we have decided that a table is for eating at rather than generally for putting things on (= e.g. once we have decided that liberalism is a human-growth-oriented theory, rather than an unlimited selfdetermination theory), we will surround the table with eating utensils rather than with anything that can be put on it (= e.g. we will surround liberalism with the concept of equality of opportunity, rather than with the concept of non-interference in individual actions, or the endorsement of all human choices). We may still have generous leeway in deciding which crockery and cutlery to use (e.g. which version of equality of opportunity to support), but we shall certainly be using eating utensils (e.g. promoting equality of opportunity) rather than typewriters or table-tennis nets (e.g. inegalitarianism or sameness). Likewise, when Rawls argues that the state cannot be used to further a particular comprehensive doctrine, he illustrates this by means of an idea within the domain of comprehensive doctrines: human excellence. Now it is quite proper that human excellence should not be a shared or imposed notion of the good life. But excellence is one possible decontestation of human growth, and growth is a concept previously endorsed by Rawls as endemic to his political liberalism, one we have already found in other liberal variants, or covered by onomasiological terms such as development. So whereas excellence is too specific a decontestation of growth, growth itself is nevertheless a constant in Rawlsian theory which must run through each comprehensive doctrine the state 19 20

Rawls, 'Justice as Fairness: Political not Metaphysical', 245, Rawls, Political Liberalism, 175.

Challenge of Philosophical Liberalism 233 can accept. An appreciation of ideological structure and conceptual relationships assists in realizing that the non-specificity still claimed by Rawls for Ms political liberalism is chimerical The baggage Rawls once carried surreptitiously, and which he is now commendably prepared to declare, is already designed in partially decontested patterns that severely restrict our freedom to introduce an open range of concepts into further discussion. Hence Rawls overloads political liberalism with more meaning than he intends it to carry. This runs contrary to his implication that one can prioritize the logical structure of a system of political beliefs over its cultural structure. That implication obfuscates the fact that his theory also possesses the features of an ideology, features which require any initial logical position to be linked to conscious or unconscious cultural preferences for a fundamental building block on which to construct the logic.22 Sometimes Rawls appears to waver on the brink of a culturally diachronic awareness, as when he says of his conception of justice that, 'given our history and the traditions embedded in our public life, it is the most reasonable doctrine for us'.23 But he fails to spell out how exactly history and tradition shape conceptions of contemporary public life. 21

(b) CARVING OUT THE POLITICAL?

As has been noted, Rawls has moved some way towards recognizing that political justice, or political liberalism, is compatible only with some comprehensive doctrines. In other words, liberalism's basic ideological morphology legitimates certain configurations of ideas and concepts while debarring others. Nevertheless, the range of compatibility between political liberalism and 'comprehensive' moral doctrines—as Rawls puts it—is much narrower than he would lead us to believe. Political liberalism is both culturally and logically constructed so as to lead only to 'comprehensive' liberal doctrines (and to socialist and conservative ideologies inasmuch as they overlap with the former). But political liberalism is not directly and not necessarily compatible with other kinds of socialism 21 22

For the constraints on Rawls's notion of growth, see below, p. 234. Cp. B, Yack, "The Problem with Kantian Liberalism', in R. Beiner and W. J, Booth (eds.), Kant and Political Philosophy: The Contemporary legacy (New Haven, 1993), 234; '[Rawls] merely superimposes his philosophically designed conception upon something he calls our public culture.' s J. Rawls, 'Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory', Journal of Philosophy, 77 (1980), 519.

234 Liberalism: The Dominant Ideology or conservatism, let alone other political theories. For example, Rawls's notion of 'free' is underpinned by a rationality and a constitutional power structure typical of all liberal ideologies, but certainly the former is not present in much conservative thinking, and the latter is anathema to some well-known socialist variants. More remarkably, political liberalism is not even compatible with all varieties of 'comprehensive' liberalism. Although 'political' liberalism does not entail any particular liberal variety, and although it is logically and culturally inevitable that a 'comprehensive' liberalism will follow a 'political' one, Rawls decontests 'fair social co-operation' in such a way as to exclude, as shall be seen below, some types of liberal communitarianism. In assuming a disjuncture between a political conception and a comprehensive doctrine based on a differentiation between political and non-political values, Rawls offers a distinction that is not easy to sustain.24 Is liberty a purely political conception? Political values are not formulated independently of moral, religious, and philosophical viewpoints. These various perspectives may espouse similar values, though in modified ideational contexts. Conversely, is Rawls's notion of growth political rather than philosophical? As it happens, his decontestation of growth is at odds with those of other key articulators of liberalism. It relates to inherent moral powers, whose development is removed from a conscious elucidation of the social and political arenas which enable such growth, no less than from the crucial historicity of the notion of growth itself. This stipulative shrinking both of the ambit of the political and of its context does not accord with the practice of most political theorists instrumental in formulating liberal thought. Similarly, another philosopher of liberalism, Ronald Dworkin, has distinguished between personal and external preferences— the latter being 'about what others shall do or have'25 and potentially rights-threatening—suggesting that a line can be drawn, removing decisions likely to reflect strong external preferences 'from majoritarian political institutions altogether'.26 This could be achieved by a Bill of Rights. Such arguments diverge from the conception of ideology presented in this book for four reasons. First, ideational interconnections are such that ideologies invariably draw in, either explicitly or implicitly, a wide range of concepts and values, thus facilitating the struggle of the political sphere to legitimate itself through pervading public discourse. The 24 26

Rawls, Political liberalism, 13. Dworkin, 'Liberalism', 197.

s

Ibid. 196.

Challenge of Philosophical Liberalism

235

exclusion of some areas from the impact of such discourse is unrealistic, because institutional constraints—the banning of legislation or action—are by no means sufficiently watertight. Second, the distinction between personal and external preferences is itself logically non-viable in some cases.27 For example, a personal preference for liberty must entail an external preference for others to behave in such a way as to permit the variant of liberty indicated by the personal preference. Third, the distinction is contestable and culturally conditioned, because of the flexibility of the boundary between the personal and the external, and because it embodies an individualistic ethos that demotes the value of reasonable concern for the conduct of others. If personal preferences alone could be legitimately practised, entire spheres of public debate and action would have to be abandoned. Fourth, a Bill of Rights may itself be decoded as an expression of strong external preferences. Precisely because politics is frequently the arena in which two external preferences clash—e.g. an external preference some individuals have for supplying the homeless "with housing may be considered by others to depart from the tenets of market economics—both the practising of external preferences and choices among them may be considered ethical and valid from other ideological viewpoints. In particular, not all sets of external preferences invade (as Dworkin claims) the right of citizens to be treated as equals, nor are they perceived as such even by those who are the objects of such preferences. The distribution of taxes in favour of the poor may be an external preference that some taxpayers will oppose, but it is one that is capable of moral justification and can be reconciled with concepts of equal treatment. Most importantly, Dworkin marginalizes the crucial problems raised by the cultural contexts of defining the nature of a preference. In a perfunctory remark designed to acknowledge a difficulty without meeting it, he notes with respect to external preferences that 'different liberals will disagree about what is needed at any particular time'.28 This observation about polysemic synchrony is the very reason for the unfeasibility of the proposed narrowing of the political. Parallel problems exist with Rawls's notion of comprehensive liberalism, which he has illustrated by reference to Mill's fostering of the values of autonomy and individuality. Rawls claims, rightly, that those values would govern much if not all of life. But so would Mill's notions of growth and freedom. Rawls thinks that comprehensive doctrines are perfectionist. This is not the case. 27

Dworkin acknowledges this in part. Ibid.

2S

Ibid. 197.

236 Liberalism: The Dominant Ideology They are inclusive; they may be perfectionist. Liberalism is opertendedly meliorist rather than perfectionist, and to subscribe to autonomy and individuality as desired, but not imposed, values is neither to recommend an end-state nor to enforce it.29 Moreover, individuality is, as we have seen, central to Mill's liberal core; it is not an adjacent option but defines and decontests his other core concepts. In a revealing passage Rawls claims that political liberalism 'must have the kind of content we associate with liberalism historically'.30 Yet he excludes individuality, a concept that has in one form or another been at the heart of liberal thought. The consequently limited historical tradition to which Rawls refers is, one would assume, a particular reconstruction of the American, rather than the British, French, or German, liberal tradition,31 Rawls is uncontroversial when he maintains that there are many liberalisms. He is on more dubious ground when he asserts that political liberalism may be detached from a comprehensive liberalism and reattached to other doctrines; when he draws the distinction between political and non-political values within liberalism which, even in its comprehensive version, is a political philosophy (for Rawls) and an ideology (on our understanding); and when he specifically locates values in comprehensive liberalism which are demonstrably part of the liberal morphological core. (c) THE KANTIAN HORIZON

At the centre of Rawls's approach is a Kantian view of human nature and capacities, a notion of 'our moral consciousness as informed by practical reason'.32 Though Rawls distances himself from Kantian theory on many points of detail, in particular with reference to Kant's teleological conception of the person, and although some scholars are inclined to identify a distinctive difference in this respect between Rawls's A Theory of Justice33 and his work from the mid-1980s onwards,34 his understanding of the just 29 31

30 See above, Ch. 4. Eawls, Political Liberalism, 175. See O. O'Neill, 'Ethical Reasoning and Ideological Pluralism', Ethics, 98 (1988), 708, 713. Moreover, that assertion is a partial misconception of the American liberal tradition, and will presently be tested against the history of that tradition itself. K Rawls, Political Liberalism, 99-101. 33 On the Kantian themes in A Theory of Justice see M. Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (Cambridge, 1982), 35-40, 118-20. 34 See e.g. S. M. Okin, 'Reason and Feeling in Thinking about Justice', in C. R. Sunstein (ed.), Feminism and Political Theory (Chicago, 1990), 17-21, who

Challenge of Philosophical Liberalism 237 society remains linked to an intemalization of Kantian fundamentals as well as to an ongoing debate in which Kant is employed as a point of reference. It is predicated on a conception of moral personality which regards all individuals as free and equal rational beings whose ends require respect,33 and consequently on a universalism in which all are equal in that sense. As Yack has commented, even when Rawls backs away from universalism and accepts the location of justice in a democratic constitutional culture, Kant's idea of a shared moral identity still permeates Ms approach to the notion of an overlapping consensus.36 Moreover, Rawls's notion of a person (as Nussbaum has argued) is characterized by a remoteness from the empirical world exemplified in his concentration upon the (two) moral powers of human beings.37 The current emphasis on autonomy as a central aspect of freedom also owes its force to Kantian arguments. Rawls distinguishes his position from what he terms Kant's 'comprehensive' view of autonomy38 (just as it is distinguished from Mill's 'comprehensive' notion of individuality) but this cannot belie the pervading impact of autonomy on his thought. For Rawls autonomy functions on three levels: first as rational autonomy—an artificial modelling device based on the capacity of citizens 'to form, to revise, and to pursue a conception of the good' and 'to enter into an agreement with others'. Second, in full, political autonomy, citizens act out the above principles 'by affirming the political principles of justice and enjoying the protections of the basic rights and liberties'. Third, as an ethical value which may apply to the whole of life. Strangely, Rawls cannot detect in himself what he finds in Kant. While Rawls disclaims the indispensability of the final form of autonomy to political liberalism, the first two are heavily indebted to Kant, as Rawls himself observes: 'Kant is the historical source of the idea that reason, both theoretical and practical, is self-originating and self-authenticating.'39 The historical source of that idea, certainly; nevertheless accepts the impact on Rawls of the Kantian notions of rationality and autonomy. 35 Cp. R. C. Sinopoli, 'Thick-Skinned Liberalism: Redefining Civility', American Political Science Review, 89 (1995), 612-20, on a contrast between Rawls and Mill on this issue. 36 Yack, 'Kantian Liberalism', 224-9; I, Shapiro, Political Criticism (Berkeley, Calif., 1990), 10. 37 M. Nussbaum, 'Aristotelian Social Democracy', in R. B. Douglass, G. M. Mara, and H. S. Richardson (eds.), Liberalism and the Good (London, 1990), 227, 242-3. 38 Eawls, Political Liberalism, 99. '" Ibid. 72, 77, 100.

238 Liberalism: The Dominant Ideology but not the only historical source which fashioned Western liberal conceptions of reason or liberty. For to argue as Rawls does about the relation of freedom and autonomy is to adopt a particular nonnegotiable view of freedom adjacent to a specific view of reason,40 It regards autonomy as an ineliminable component of the concept of liberty, while disregarding the possibility that heteronomy under certain circumstances can serve as a non-invasive, liberating force. It also disregards the possibility of the mutual influence of the banished external standpoints of individuals41 on the process of rational deliberation, or the possibility of a non-rational sphere of freedom. Although the absence of the word 'autonomy' in other liberal languages does not entail the absence of the concept, it must none the less raise queries. Concepts common in liberal vocabularies such as liberty, independence, or self-sufficiency cater only partially to the notions attached to autonomy and they appear in proximity to—and thus always shaped by-—the further range of core concepts explored earlier. Rawls wishes to specify the types of autonomy entailed by a conception of the rational individual capable of enunciating principles of justice and, in doing so, admits (partly intentionally and partly inadvertently) that aspects of autonomy are present in Ms political liberalism. The analyst of ideologies wishes to understand why autonomy is made to play a role in a particular political argument and what preferences for, and interpretations of, human conduct it supports. It may emerge that autonomy signifies a particular morally and inteEectually endowed individual whose presence does not grace other liberal variants. The emphasis on rational and political autonomy privileges a distinct conception of the person, in whom resides the potential for supreme political judgement and decisions—a potential removed from competing notions of the person in which autonomy is neither the paramount goal nor a practical way of life. In saying that, there is no need to dispense with individual agency. What is necessary is an appreciation of agency not primarily as unimpeded individual rule-setting but as a critical attitude to self and to others within constraining social and cultural frameworks. Kant was of course a salient force in European thought, and outside Germany influenced liberals such as Renouvier. None the less his impact on many key articulators of liberalism is questionable. In Britain, though he entered liberal thought via nineteenth40 For a discussion of the relationship between freedom and autonomy see G. Dworkin, The Theory and Practice of Autonomy (Cambridge, 1988), 14, 18. 41 Rawls, Political Liberalism, 73.

Challenge of Philosophical Liberalism

239

century Idealism, it was in a curtailed and muted form, through the works of Green and Ritchie but not in other central liberal treatises. Ritchie in fact observed that Herbert Spencer had enunciated his 'law of equal freedom' for thirty years before having learned that Kant said something similar'—a comment on the independent sources of such ideas in Britain. Moreover, Ritchie berated Kant for exaggerating 'the idea of humanity as an end-initself and overlooking the requirement for individuals to serve the needs of others. He cautioned that Kant's thinking was 'pervaded by the individualism which lies at the basis of the whole theory of natural rights', echoing Mill's earlier comment that the universalizing nature of Kant's law of rational conduct was meaningless without adding the concept of a collective interest.42 In Mill's political writings, Kant is mentioned only once, and then merely as an example of a philosopher worth studying.43 In American liberal ideography, the absence of Kantian philosophy is striking. Until the advent of Rawls, Kant was missing from American accounts of the history of its own liberal tradition. Hartz, to give one famous example, although critically aware of the European influences on American liberalism, did not invoke Kant at all but inflated a Lockean liberal consensus in American politics.44 Nor does Kant play a role in major nineteenth-century American debates on aspects of liberalism, or in progressivism, or in the New Deal. Hobhouse, admonishing against the impact of Hegelian metaphysics on British philosophy, once warned that the waters of the Rhine were flowing into the Ms. The Rawlsian enterprise seems committed to diverting the waters of the Pregel into the George. Ideologies are constantly engaged in reconstructing their own history, as Hartz's Lockeanism illustrates. Rawls is no exception to that rule, albeit given the Rawlsian reluctance to relate his liberalism to existing liberal practices, he does not engage in a conscious act of reconstruction. To the contrary, it is significant that in reinventing and redirecting the history of American liberalism—by introducing theoretical perspectives rooted in a different intellectual experience and school—Rawls alighted on Kant, a philosopher for whom history played a very limited role.45 The result is an ideological position in which history is itself dehistoricized, for 42 D. G. Ritchie, Natural Rights (London, 1895), 141, 252-3; J. S. Mill, Utilitarianism (London, 1910), 48-9. 43 MOL On Liberty, 162, 44 Sandel correctly observes that Rawls's Kantian-inspired liberalism 'departs significantly from Locke's' (Limits of Justice, 118). 45 See the remarks by W. Galston in 'What is Living and What is Dead in Kant's Practical Philosophy?', in Beiner and Booth, Kant and Political Philosophy, 209.

240 Liberalism: The Dominant Ideology a non-history is elevated to the rank of history. Contemporary moral philosophy is attempting to appropriate the title and garb of liberalism for its own principles, by claiming that its deontology, and its conceptions of human agency and purposes, constitute the liberal position itself. Are the various manifestations of liberal thought-behaviour timeless? Does individual rationality enable liberalism to sustain an overlapping morality which is the basis of generally just practices? And are they removed from the spatial grappling with the concrete problems of societies aspiring to implement a liberal ethos? It is highly doubtful that a reading of Mill can support these interpretations, which revert to older conceptions of political theory. Whether or not this intellectual venture will be successful in writing a new chapter in the history of American liberalism, one which will occupy a permanent place in the tome of liberal ideology, is too soon to predict. But what we can proceed to ask is: is philosophical liberalism in line with the American liberal tradition? And if not, what might its effect on that tradition be? Assuming philosophical liberalism were successful, the history of the Western liberal tradition itself would have to be retold from a new horizon of experience. Liberals of the Rawlsian persuasion would then be able to argue justifiably that the true liberal tradition lay dormant in Continental ideas which shaped the American constitution, but came into their own only with the belated importation of Kantian precepts into American political philosophy. From that point on, the argument could run, the strand of American liberalism which was connected to progressivism, and ideas about big government, and directed programmes of social justice, turned out to be a transitory stage, even a distortion of some liberal principles. It took a group of academic philosophers to alert liberals to the import and centrality of Kantian universalisrn and abstract rationalism and to its political consequences in terms of the neutral state, and of the centrality of autonomy as definer of human personhood. Kant's constructivism may appeal retroactively to Americans as a nation formed through a constitutive act. Seen thus, liberalism was not after all the sole achievement and export of the British empiricist political tradition, as it had been predominantly perceived hitherto, and was still perceived by many Continental thinkers. Continental Enlightenment theory had to wait two centuries before its brand of liberalism became the dominant member of the liberal family through the power of the American university system to penetrate into the liberal sanctum and rearrange its core significantly. As yet, this is conjectural history, though

Chalknge of Philosophical Liberalism 241 reading history backwards is itself part of the process of creating history. (d) IS EQUALITY A CORE LIBERAL CONCEPT?

The Kantian nuances of philosophical liberalism have predictably bolstered a universalism through which the concept of equality may be prioritized. But the location of equality within American liberal morphology has been problematic for much longer than that. The centrality of equality in its political (and legal) rhetoric has encouraged at least one theorist, Dworkkt, to advocate a conception of a liberal core at variance with those exhibited by the family at large. Dworkin is in basic agreement with the fundamental morphological view of political theory and ideology presented here, distinguishing generally between constitutive and derivative political positions.46 But he maintains that the constitutive principle of liberalism is a particular conception of equality. Specifically, that equality relates to the treatment by a government of its citizens 'as entitled to its equal concern and respect'.47 To that Dworkin adds a number of glosses: rough equal distribution of resources to be provided by the market, representative democracy, and a Bill of Rights which performs the function, noted above, of removing the possibility of its violation from the sphere of action of majoritarian institutions. It is never clear whether Dworkin is describing, as he claims, the American liberal ideology or enunciating a prescriptive set of beliefs,.'an authentic and coherent political morality'.48 On the whole he engages in the latter, but links it to a denial of the significance of diachronic analysis and of ideological change, through the debatable and ahistorical proposition that liberalism 'has remained roughly the same over some time'. Had that proposition referred to the liberal core, rather to liberalism pure and simple, it may have had plausibility, provided that the historical basis of the core was recognized. However, these prerequisites do not quite apply. 46 Dworkin insists, however, that constitutive positions are valued for their own sake, whereas I have suggested that their value is not independent of the complete configuration in which they appear; and he does not discuss the impact of the derivative positions on the core ones, 'Derivative', in other words, is not identical to 'adjacent' or 'peripheral' ('Liberalism', 408 n.). More than most scholars, however, Dworkin is sensitive to boundary problems when analysing political belief-systems. 4S *7 Dworkin, 'Liberalism', 190. Ibid. 183, 185.

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It must surely be questioned whether liberalism, or any ideology for that matter, can indeed have one constitutive principle sufficient to serve as morphological arranger; and the discussion of liberalism in earlier chapters would query why, if so, it would have to be that of treating people with equal respect. Three issues need examining. First, the exclusion of liberty from the status of a constitutive principle of liberalism—its etymological companion— has little analytical appeal. Liberty need not crowd equality out of the constitutive sphere, as Dworkin has argued. He is of course right to assert that the two cannot be weighted and balanced off as liberal constitutive principles.49 But the notion of a core suggests the ineliminability of all, or the great majority, of core concepts,50 not a quantitative relationship between them. On that understanding, each core concept may conceivably be optimized up to the point where it seriously begins to impinge on the presence of other core concepts. Second, the exclusion of liberty as a constitutive principle has little historical appeal. Empirical evidence establishes that liberals have invariably identified liberty as a constitutive principle, irrespective of other constitutive principles liberalism exhibits. Although Dworkin's predilection for equality as a core liberal concept undoubtedly reflects a cultural constraint whereby, as Pole has noted, America is distinguished by a 'strong and public rhetorical commitment to an unspecified egalitarian ideal',51 it is also the case that in the United States, the rhetoric of liberty, as well as a genuine adherence to one or more of its versions, is ingrained not only in liberalism, but in political culture in general.52 Moreover, if liberalism is reduced to the one constitutive principle of treating people with equal respect, would this distinguish between it and broad varieties of socialism? Third, the location of equality of respect as a constitutive principle is challengeable. It is plausible to argue (as has been done above) that equality of respect, as well as other kinds of equality, can be derived from core concepts of human rationality and individuality,53 or from the liberal core concept of the commonality and non-exclusiveness of the good, or from the universalization of liberty.54 It is because liberals subscribe to a certain idea of what a 49 51

'Liberalism', 186, 190-1. » Cp. Ch. 2 above, pp. 83, 87, J. R. Pole, The Pursuit of Equality in American History, 2nd edn. (Berkeley, Calif., 1993), 434. This, as shall presently be argued, does not necessarily transform equality into a core concept 52 See M. Foley, American Political Ideas; Traditions and Usages (Manchester, 1991), 15. 53 See above, p, 159. 54 On this latter point see J. Waldron, 'Theoretical Foundations of Liberalism', Philosophical Quarterly, 37 (1987), 130.

Challenge of Philosophical Liberalism 243 person is that we can demand equal respect for all persons. Equality would then identify an area of regard for individual persons who share some attributes and ends, seen from the external perspective of law or government/5 rather than the existential connotation of a collective, group-centred identity or similarity. Had we entertained different ideas about the nature and value of human beings, we might not have arrived at a concept of equal respect. At most, the American liberal tradition has co-opted equality of politico-legal treatment as part of the liberal core package, defining the other core concepts and defined by them. For many socialists, this latter shortcoming has been at the centre of their critique of liberalism. But to what extent have twentieth-century liberal theorists coopted equality into the liberal core? Hobhouse, it is true, noted the habitual association of liberty and equality, but qualified this link in two ways. First, he made it clear that liberty implies equality (specifically, the impartial application of law, which is close to Dworkin's equality of respect), rather than the reverse. Second, he made the link dependent on more exact definitions of liberty and equality; that is, he confirmed that the terms in Mo are not reconcilable but that some of their subsets, or particular decontestations, are. Hobhouse went on to criticize Benthamite utilitarianism precisely for setting up equality as fundamental while relegating liberty to the status of a means.56 More recently, and from within the American philosophical tradition, Gutmann has noted that, though equality enters into discussions of modern social justice, liberalism itself is not grounded in equality.57 Her scholarly endeavours have been directed at tracing the egalitarian themes compatible with the liberal tradition, which is altogether a different enterprise from Dworkin's. Gutmann's analysis takes her beyond Rawls in emphasizing the egalitarian consequences of Mill's participatory goals, and in identifying a stronger redistributionary welfare function than is evident from Rawls's own writings (by prioritizing basic welfare rights over his second 'difference principle'), a function already located in new liberal thinking. It also recognizes the contestedness of equality within the history of liberalism by suggesting that those strands denote two liberal egalitarian traditions.58 For many British interwar liberals, equality came to possess greater 55

This aspect is also present in many socialist theories but, as will be argued in Ch. 11, equality gains additional, and different, layers of meaning when set in a constellation of strong notions of organic community, welfare, and need. 56 L. T. Hobhouse, Liberalism (London, 1911), 17,28-9,39. See also p. 206 above. 87 See the definition in A. Gutmann, Liberal Equality (Cambridge, 1980), 3. 58 Ibid. 122-8, 175-6.

244 Liberalism: The Dominant Ideology salience in the liberal core, though usually still as a service concept to liberty. Hobson expressed concern about the American transition 'from the libertarian to the equaiitarian factor in democracy', but in the Tocquevillian sense of the pursuit of sameness, which denied the uniqueness of individual personality,59 For left-liberals, equality afforded the means to the expression of personality, exceeding the notion of equal respect fostered by Dworkin, but personality was also thought to have a social aspect. The more radical among them wished to advance equality by recognizing the importance of community and the classlessness it promoted. For other left-liberals, differences of persons could be the basis of corresponding differences of treatment, though functionless wealth was ruled out and distribution was geared to enhancing individual development through mutual aid. Equality was a concept adjacent both to individual growth and to community, reinforcing the harmony assumed between the two.60 Ultimately, however, the claim of American philosophical liberals about the centrality of equality must be diachronically assessed in relation to the culture of American liberalism. The early commitment of Americans to equality as well as liberty in the founding constitutional documents obfuscates its decontestation by liberals as equal rights, when rights were frequently attached to an individualistic ethic of self-development and the removal of governmental restrictions.61 It has been observed that 'in American history, equal rights meant equal claims rather than equal obligations',62 thus emphasizing their individualistic rather than communitarian idea-environment. Alternately or additionally American liberals have decontested equality as equal opportunities, when opportunities were broadly equivalent to rights in the above sense, promising reward for merit and unequal results.63 At most, in the era of progressivism, liberals offered the prospect of state intervention against concentrations of capital to ensure fair competition among individuals.64 Even reformist progressives such as Walter Weyl and Walter Lippmann did not radically depart from 59

j, A. Hobson, 'The Good American. The American Attitude Towards Liberty', Nation (7 Feb. 1920). 60 For a detailed discussion, see Freeden, Liberalism Divided, 246-57. 61 The historian Martin Diamond has noted that 'the Declaration does not mean by "equal" anything at all like the general human equality which so many now make their political standard ... equality... consists entirely in the equal entitlement of all to the rights which comprise political liberty' (quoted in Foley, American Political Ideas, 155). 62 a Pole, Pursuit of Equality, p. xvii. Ibid. 150-62. 64 A. M. Schlesinger, The Politics of Hope (Boston, 1963), 68.

Challenge of Philosophical Liberalism 245 this instrumental view of equality, Weyl proclaiming that 'what a socialized democracy demands is an equalization, not of men, but of opportunities'.65 Whether or not such a minimalist, or 'thin', conception of equality deserves core status in American liberal thought is debatable. Weyl's colleague on the progressive weekly The New Republic, Herbert Croly, one of the most original twentiethcentury American liberal thinkers, asserted in his classic The Promise of American Life that the Jeffersonian insistence on equality, even as equal rights, would limit the 'free and able exercise of individual opportunities'. Calling up the core liberal concept of the general interest, Croly believed that the balance between equality and liberty could only be struck if power were to be vested not in an 'apotheosized majority' but in 'the people as a whole'. The organic view of the national interest and of community to which Croly subscribed saw it as enlisting state intervention to secure liberty rather than the equality of averages. Quoting from the French thinker Faguet, Croly viewed fraternity as the linchpin between liberty and equality.66 No less significantly, John Dewey distinguished the aims of liberalism as liberty and the opportunity of individuals to secure full realization of their potentialities'."7 Here too, equality could at best be conjured up as an adjacent derivative from the notion of individual opportunity. As has been suggested, 'in contrast to some of the other central values in American politics (e.g. liberty, individualism, democracy), the status of equality has fluctuated quite markedly during America's development'.68 This indeterminacy reflects its position in American liberalism as well, so that a substantive concept of equality, co-equal with other core concepts, cannot be demonstrated to occupy a permanent place, irrespective of diachrony, in its core. In recognizing the ubiquity of the concept of equality in the language of the civil rights movement of the 1960s, these reservations must be borne in mind. The role of the Supreme Court in that movement was central, and through it 'the egalitarian melody was strong in procedural decisions', promoting equal political status, minimizing the disadvantages of the poor, and forbidding discrimination by government.69 The main tenor of the egalitarianism of the civil rights movement, in its determination to improve the 65 66

Quoted in Pole, Pursuit of Equality, 282. H. Croly, The Promise of American Life ((New York, 1909), 186-90, 207-8. J. Dewey, Liberalism and Social Action (New York, 1935), 51, Foley, American Political Ideas, 156. 69 A. M. Bickel, The Supreme Court and the Idea of Progress (New Haven, 1978), 103-4. 67 68

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standing of salient minorities, was to demand equal access of disadvantaged social groups to basic social goods and in particular to promote colour-blindness and integration. Though the practical radical impact of desegregation was great, inasmuch as these standards were now read in to the Fourteenth Amendment, the 'equal protection of the laws', the conceptions of equality it embodied were modest and traditional, no different in principle from the equal treatment and moderate equal opportunities ethos of the past. These amounted to the banning of legal and formal barriers to attaining social goods, and related to issues of preferment and life-chances. As one prominent legal analyst put it, 'Give each individual the same opportunity to qualify, it may be said, without regard to race, creed, colour, sex, or national origin; this is the very essence of Equality.' True, this was tempered by the understanding that affirmative action may be part of that essence/0 and by a genuine attachment to the rhetoric of equality in liberal discourse,71 if not to a strong and distinguishable core conception. Yet even affirmative action, now applied to women as well as to ethnic and cultural minorities, has been plausibly described by a commentator on American liberalism as resulting from the 'liberal belief in the individual' and hence as springing 'from the same values and ideals that prompted the eighteenth-century belief in limited government'.72 To assert, as does Rawis, that 'the same equality of the Declaration of Independence which Lincoln invoked to condemn slavery can be invoked to condemn the inequality and oppression of women'73 is a strangely ahistorical comment which treats equality as a simple generalizable and deductive principle, abstracted both from the practices that constitute it and from the different morphological configurations which bestow on it variable meaning. Rawls himself is a clear representative of this dominant liberal American mode of thinking about equality. His second principle of justice proceeds from the justification of social and economic inequalities provided they permit access, understood as 'fair equality of opportunity', to positions and offices. But the further contribution of the second principle to the notion of equality rests on a redistribution of benefits to 'the least advantaged'—a prevalent use of language during the 1960s.74 Thus employed, equaMty reflects a shrinking of the political in comparison to many communitarian 70 See A. Cox, The Role of the Supreme Court in American Government (Oxford, 1976), 56-66. 71 Foley, American Political Ideas, 155, 222. 72 P. M. Garry, Liberalism and American Identity (Kent, Ohio, 1992), 82. 73 74 Rawls, Political Liberalism, p. xxix, Ibid. 5-6.

Challenge of Philosophical Liberalism 247 views in which a more substantive and core equality is in evidence.75 It does not, for example, involve any decontestation of equality as a fundamental rearrangement of socio-economic practices, which would have introduced the general satisfaction of needs as a criterion of benefit, rather than a narrowly political notion of 'persons' needs as citizens',76 Nor does it suggest a strong communitarian interpretation of human relationships in which equality would emanate from the mutual interdependence of people. Rather, it presents a notion of primary goods which all individuals qua citizens require, one that identifies basic rights and liberties, freedom of movement and free choice of occupation, an indeterminate amount of income and wealth, and the social bases of self-respect77 All of these are central to the values espoused by salient voices from within American liberalism, with a non-radical decontestation of equality as a by-product of other core concepts. But these primary goods offer only one possible cultural path among the logical possibilities entailed by the Kantian-influenced 'capacity for moral personaEty' that Rawls postulates as the potential on which equal justice is predicated.78 Moreover, Rawls follows the wellknown route all ideologies endeavour to tread by anchoring that capacity in 'the general facts of nature'79—a powerful decontesting device through which he attempts to remove it altogether from the realm of social and political debate. Once again, the universality of the Kantian appeal to reason is the unconsciously employed peg on which ideological surplus meanings are hung, in this instance a liberal conception of equality long-present in American culture. By the time a more assertive conception of equality, linked to affirmative action, had emerged, not a few liberals regarded it as putting the prior principle of liberty at risk. Specifically, communitarian and participatory egalitarian ends applied to the perimeter concept of beleaguered groups, and equality was seen to be promoted at the expense of diminishing individual liberty. The entry of the concept of groups on the liberal scene profoundly split the ideological morphology of American liberalism. (e) LIBERALISM AND COMMUNITY

The concept of community deserves comment on its own, particularly in view of its recent reintroduction into philosophical liberal debate. Within the latter context communitarianism is subject to 75 77

7f> See Ch. 11 below. Rawls, Political Liberalism, 179,187-90. Italics added. 7ft w Ibid. 181. Ibid. 504-7. Ibid. 510.

248 Liberalism: The Dominant Ideology treatment similar to that meted out to utilitarianism by its philosophical opponents: an overly simplistic model is constructed which can then be demolished with consummate ease.80 This method of confronting an Aunt Sally with a sophisticated barrage ought to be ruled out as a 'no contest' situation. Certainly, there are many types of community incompatible with liberal precepts; but it is unreasonable to assume that community is any more monolithic than other political terms. The Rousseauist pedigree of community is no more exclusive or typical than the Aristotelian or Marxist, and while none of these is adequate for assimilation into liberal thought, it is a fact that communitarianism has been accommodated within liberalism. We have examined one such instance with respect to the organic analogy, but other nuances of community congruent with liberal premisses can be produced.81 To assert therefore that communitarianism is opposed to liberalism is true only if we take some instances of either term to represent their entire semantic fields. The initial so-called communitarian critique of philosophical liberalism was offered by Sandel, who pointed out the individualistic biases in Rawis's original position—the position in which only the thin theory of the good holds. Specifically, Rawis's theory is individualistic, argues Sandel, because its subjects are beyond the reach of experience and have a static existence independently of the values to which they subscribe. Conversely, common purposes and ends can inspire self-understanding, describe an individual in terms of others, and define a community as constituting a subject. For Rawls, Sandel maintains, a sense of community is only an attribute and not a constituent of a society.82 Three features stand out in Sandel's exposition as worthy of attention within the framework of our analysis. First, he claims that his is a strong sense of community, whereas Rawls employs community in a weak sense. It is only strong, however, in the sense of situating individuals within anthropological-cultural and ideational contexts, thus meeting part of the desiderata of ideological analysis, while failing to include historical contexts as well.83 Sandel's notion of community shares with the liberalism it criticizes the features of being suprahistorical, universal, and generic. Second, Sandel believes that his 80 81

See Ch. 1. See W. E. Connolly, 'Identity and Difference in Liberalism', in Douglass, Mara, and Richardson (eds,), Liberalism and the Goad, 77-81. 82 Sandel, Limits of Justice, 62-4, 83 Cp. E, Frazer and N. Lacey, The Politics of Community: A Feminist Critique of the Liberal-Communitarian Debate (Hemel Hempstead, 1993), 137.

Challenge of Philosophical Liberalism 249 critique indicates the limits of liberalism, rather than the potential expansion of liberalism to include community. And that is because, third, Sandel forges a proximity between the concept of community and the notion of individual identity, exploring the vertical roots of the individual in a constituting group, rather than forging—as did for instance the new liberals—a proximity between the concept of community and the notion of human interconnectedne$sf exploring the horizontal interdependences of social relationships. These interpretations, repeatedly reproduced by other participants in the debate, have eroded the power of philosophical liberalism to come to terms with the heritage to which it occasionally signals allegiance. The new delimitations of Rawls's political liberalism must cast doubt on which version of community it can accommodate beyond the notion of sociability as a rational choice of individuals. It certainly fails to recognize social groups as actors. As Rawls has explained, social co-operation is based on individual acceptance and begins from each individual's conception of his or her advantage or good.84 But there is a much more profound methodological issue at stake here. As Taylor has persuasively claimed of Sandal's approach, it is ontological because of its holistic perspective, but • fails to be concretely temporal and spatial as well.85 The liberalcommunitarian debate has on the whole not recognized that the abstract nature of the embedded, situated self to which it refers is of little assistance in understanding the forms it takes and the roles it plays in actual political debate. In sharp contrast, the liberal tradition has employed communitarian arguments with a considerable degree of success. We may remind ourselves of Skinner's useful caution that it is 'less convincing to suggest that a concept might be coherently used in an unfamiliar way than to show that it has been put to unfamiliar but coherent uses'.86 It is all the more the pity that these developments in the British liberal tradition are recent enough to commend themselves, one might have expected, to the attention of the disputants in the liberalcommunitarian debate. Many liberals, removed from Rawls's revised position, and refuting Sandel's criticism, have espoused a much more developed 84

Rawls, Political Liberalism, 16. C. Taylor, 'Cross-Purposes; The Liberal-Communitarian Debate', in N. Rosenblum (ed.). Liberalism and the Moral Life {Cambridge, Mass., 1989), 160-1. * Q. Skinner, 'The Idea of Negative Liberty: Philosophical and Historical Perspectives', in R. Rorty, J. B, Sdmeewind, and Q. Skinner (eds.), Philosophy in History (Cambridge, 1984), 198. 85

250 Liberalism: The Dominant Ideology conception of community while insisting that it nevertheless remained within the confines of the liberal tradition. That conception was the outcome of a specific convergence between the core liberal concepts of a common interest and of sociability: the opposition to elevating particular interests above the rest without general sanction, superimposed on a growing recognition of the existential interdependence of all individuals. Even at the level of a minimal common denominator, liberals often regard sociability as an original feature of human nature, rather than as the later evolution of a chosen common purpose. Beyond that, Sandel is himself a prisoner of the narrow vision of American philosophical liberalism, if we read him as arguing that his notion of community is outside the realm of liberalism. Furthermore, the strong communitarian notion of Sandel is overtaken by even stronger variants within the liberal tradition itself. It is an indication of the inward-looking nature of that school of liberalism, and of its entrapment within abstract and partially impractical assumptions, that Sandel debars even his moderate communitarianism from the liberal domain. Others such as Kymlicka are keen to rescue him from the clutches of communitarianism by displaying him—correctly, as it so happens—as a respecter of philosophical liberalism after all. Kymlicka believes that by relocating Sandel within the liberal tradition that allows persons to re-examine their ends, he has shown that Sandel is ultimately no communitarian.87 Obviously, if a communitarian viewpoint is so constructed as to rule out individual choice, that conclusion is warranted. But we have already encountered liberal communitarian variants that do not rule out individual choice and self-development as part of human flourishing. This methodological infelicity of an all or nothing approach (A/non-A) must remain in the domain of ideal-types or thought-exercises and cannot be helpfully applied to complex ideological constructs whose components move through a number of non-parallel dimensions. The current contraposition of liberalism to communitarianism88 reflects the general malaise of American liberals in particular with the notion of society and with the welfare functions with which a society, through its main political agent the state, may be entrusted. The broad agreement among American philosophical liberals that communitarians as a species have embarked on an attack on 87

W. Kymlicka, Liberalism, Community, and Culture (Oxford, 1989), 55-6. See A. E, Buchanan, 'Assessing the Communitarian Critique of Liberalism', Ethics, 99 (1989), 852-82. 88

Challenge of Philosophical Liberalism 251 liberalism is another symptom of the twofold impoverishment in liberal discourse examined here: its almost total detachment from its own antecedents and a selective obliviousness to the complexity of conceptual structure and ideological morphology. It goes without saying that there are illiberal versions of commumtarianism which intrude on and challenge the liberal tradition. These are not the subject of our discussion at present. What is more noteworthy is that among the multifarious meanings of community at least five can be, and have been, assimilated into liberal ideology. From the vantage point of an historically informed present-day observer, these meanings constitute cumulative horizons without which it is impossible to make sense of liberal discourse and practice. First, the political state that liberalism, from the days of the protoliberals of the natural rights doctrine and social contract theory, has regarded as a guarantor of individual rights may supply the framework within which rights are claimed and within which citizenship is bestowed.89 In that sense, individuals choose to form a political community that enforces and protects their personal claims in a network of rights and obligations. Its necessity is underlined by the fact that without it the moral ends of individuals cannot be realized; it is based on a notion of formal membership in a society, which entails the mutual respect engendered by the predicaments of the human condition—survival and conflicting interests—and is expressed in the recognition of the worth of each individual as a facet of human status.9" Whether or not that membership also entails the wider idea of citizenship will depend on the evolution of active democratic participation and sharing in social goods, aspects that call for stronger variants of community. The second variant of community perceives human nature as containing among its attributes some that are socially orientated. They maintain a society and support it. In addition to, or instead of, the initiative-taking, assertive features that characterize the market versions of liberalism, human nature is thought to be benevolent, empathetic, even altruistic to a degree, and these attributes are cultivated for the purposes of the mutual co-operation of individuals, while opposite attributes are discouraged. The possibility of community is contained in natural individual leanings, not merely in the expediency, moral intellectualization, or calculating self-interest so often at the root of contractarian theory. w

See D. Harris, Justifying State Welfare (Oxford, 1987); I. Shapiro, The Evolution of Rights in Liberal Theory (Cambridge, 1986). 90 See M. Freeden, 'Liberal Communitarianism and Basic Income', in P. Van Parijs (ed.), Arguing for Basic Income (London, 1992), 186.

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The third variant of community assumes, as with Green, that rational individuals have an area of joint interest—the common good—which secures important aspects of their welfare. Social membership is the condition of individual development, but society is never more than the arena in which rational interests of individuals coalesce. Emanating from the separateness of persons, it nevertheless identifies a common sphere fashioned consciously by individuals to their mutual advantage, which is an inescapable by-product of their rationality, and reacts back on them to ensure their full realization as individuals. All these versions of community are weak—though sequentially less so—because they take for granted the ineluctable existence of individuals alone as the units of society. All are entirely compatible with mainstream patterns of liberal thought; indeed, they are part and parcel of well-known liberal theories. The association of 'community' with those theories is apposite because they do not contain aggregative conceptions of society and they appreciate that certain interactions among individuals create a qualitatively distinct view of individuals located in the interaction itself. They also dovetail into another core liberal concept: the widely expressed concern for the promotion of a genuine general interest. Contrasted with them is the conviction that community is not a question of individual choice and preference, but that there is a deeper 'naturalness' of group membership as an existential social and biological fact of life. The weak sense of community allows individuals the choice of joining groups and forming a community or, at the very least (in the third instance), the choice of converting a mechanical social membership into a rational forum of self-realization. The strong sense of communitysees uman beings as creatures who inevitably experience group membership, a membership that crucially shapes their consciousness and ends. Individual choice still exists, but as a much more limited choice of and in groups, not the fundamental choice as whether or not to form them/1 Significantly, group membership becomes a universal condition elevated, on admittedly different subjective levels of awareness, to a determinant of human self-knowledge. This has been partly expressed by Sandel,92 but the foci of his analysis are none the less individuals, rather than the community those individuals simultaneously comprise. Sandel also associates with Rawlsian liberalism a sentimental conception of community, based on the feelings of belonging that 91 92

Freeden, 'Liberal Communitarianism', 188-9. Sandel, Limits of Justice, 147-50.

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93

attend social co-operation. However, although sentiment has been used by liberals to reinforce the rationale of sociability, it has not on its own formed an historical component of liberal thought, appearing rather as an adjunct to more powerful rational motives and justifications. If it is true that 'central to the argument of the communitarians is a sense of loss'94—a frequent theme in MacIntyre's writings95—this refers to a romantic communitarianism aEen to prevailing liberal versions, tapping into the emotion that arises out of a conservative yearning for the affective ties that stabilize and integrate a society. Two further liberal conceptions of community are of an intensity that exceeds Sandel's 'strong view'. The fourth version of community is alluded to by Walzer. He draws attention to the separation, in American discourse, between communal experience —locating human nature in structures natural to all societies— and liberalism, which denies that. Walzer observes: 'Liberal theory now seems to have a power over and against real life that has been granted to few theories in human history/96 The artificiality of American liberal theory, and its consequent failure to refer to empirically demonstrable political conduct, is a serious indictment of its viability as an ideology, irrespective of its merits as philosophy. The problem has been that it cannot make up its mind whether it is both or the latter alone. Walzer, too, is drawn to the emotive facet of community when he attempts to reintroduce the concept. But he does so in a way that combines the conservative location of individuals in concrete groupings and the liberal acknowledgement of community as the institutional location of the common good. In effect Walzer is talking about communities, not community, when referring to the groups that sustain individuals: neighbourhoods, class, families.97 This particularization and concretization of the notion of community98 shares with the liberal tradition a pluralist perception of social structure and anchors that structure in voluntary and semi-voluntary associations and in the individual choices of leaving, and frequently of joining, such 93

Ibid. 149. H. N. Hirsch, "The Threnody of Liberalism', Political Theory, 14 (1986), 427. 95 See e.g. A. Maclntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (London, 1981). % M. Walzer, "The Communitarian Critique of Liberalism', Political Theory, 18 (1990), 10. 97 See also A. Gutrnarut, 'Communitarian Critics of Liberalism.', Philosophy and Public Affairs, 14 (1985), 320-1. **s See also I. M. Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference (Princeton, 1990), 234 ff. 94

254 Liberalism; The Dominant Ideology associations. Such pluralism is particularly in evidence in the American political self-image, as well as in the methods of analysis adopted by American political scientists. In its most recent manifestation—with the additional cultural constraints of the Canadian experience—it has developed into an argument for multiculturalism.99 This version is a specific variant of liberalism in which (other core concepts aside) an intersection takes place between a particularized notion of community and the concept of individualism understood as differentiated uniqueness.100 It departs from the more comprehensive notion of community as a statement of the general liaison between any individual and his or her society as a whole— an overarching web of human relationships that constitutes not only the society of societies, but maintains a direct and central relationship with each of its constituent members. We arrive finally at the fifth version of community, the strongest of those still retaining affinity with the liberal tradition: the organicist liberalism discussed in Chapter 5. Its distinguishing mark is that human beings have an individual and a social aspect, and the latter—a result of constant and existential human interaction— may generate direct social interests and purposes irreducible to those of any individual. Groups, of which society is the most important and the most inclusive, have rights and needs that must be cultivated in order both for the society and for its members to flourish. The liberal nature of this commurdtarianism is preserved by insisting that individual liberty and development are intrinsic to social flourishing. For that reason, the contrast between the general good and individual rights is yet another false antithesis of which philosophical liberals seem unduly fond.101 This notion of community, while allowing for the direct promotion of communal interests, proffers an area of human action in which individual rights are necessary to social health and in which choice and autonomy are possible within the confines of a rational, directly accessible, common good regulated by a democratically controlled state. Conversely, the pursuit of the common welfare is a prerequisite for the protection of such rights. American communitarians such as Walzer have incorporated this conception into social democracy, although its liberal pedigree is indisputable. Finding similar arguments in favour of a welfare-promoting state in the writings 99 A representative of this new and burgeoning literature is C. Taylor (ed), Multiculturalism and 'The Politics of Recognition' (Princeton, 1992). See also W, E, Connolly, 'Pluralism, Multiculturalism and the Nation-State: Rethinking the Connections', Journal of Political Ideologies, I (1996), 53-73. m Wl See above, p. 146. See Freeden, Rights, 86.

Challenge of Philosophical Liberalism 255 of Dewey, Walzer sees them as tasks too extensive for a liberal state.102 Whether or not it is legitimate for liberalism to contain such a strong version of communitarianism cannot be answered adequately with the tools provided by philosophical liberals. It can only be dealt with by posing two questions. Can liberal ideological morphology accommodate such a notion of community in terms of the logical and cultural constraints operating on its core concepts? Has liberalism contained such a notion of community in any of its recognized and recognizable historical manifestations? Both questions elicit a positive response, The above argument may be supported by a few illustrations which suggest that relatively strong conceptions of community have a solid pedigree in the American liberal tradition. Dewey focused on a moderate, yet central, variant of community, closest to the views of T. H. Green who figures prominently in Dewey's survey of liberalism's history. Through Green and his successors, Dewey identified the ideals of liberalism as the conceptions of a common good as the measure of political organization and policy, of liberty as the most precious trait and very seal of individuality, of the claim of every individual to the full development of his capacities . , . These new liberals fostered the idea that the State has the responsibility for creating institutions under which individuals can effectively realize the potentialities that are theirs.103

Liberty was decontested not as a condition individuals were in but as a process of achievement. Dewey's was but one instance of the trail of influence of British left-liberalism on its American counterpart, a trail which seems to have gone cold in tine memory and consciousnesses of contemporary American liberals. Ironically, Dewey complained that earlier liberals lacked historic sense and interest', while noting that 'disregard of history took its revenge' by blinding them to the historical conditioning 'of their own special interpretations of liberty, individuality and intelligence'.104 Moreover, as did other left-liberals in Britain, he took Green's premisses to a conclusion that Green himself was reluctant to pursue fully, namely, an affirmation of the role of intentional social planning, of 'socially organized intelligence in the conduct of public affairs', because effective liberty required the 'social control of economic forces in the interest of the great masses of individuals'. An important perimeter concept attached by Dewey to these core 102 walzer, 'Communitarian Critique', 7, 19. 103 J. Dewey, Liberalism and Social Action (New York, 1935), 25-6. 104 Ibid. 32.

256 Liberalism: The Dominant Ideology and adjacent notions was the requirement to 'socialize the forces of production... so that the liberty of individuals will be supported by the very structure of economic organization'.105 Liberty was construed and secured from a perspective rare in American liberal argument—the communal harnessing of the means for the liberating development of self-initiated individual capacity. The New Republic echoed these views in a reassessment of the development of liberalism during the periodical's first twenty years. At one level, it had ceased to describe its economics as liberal, because 'liberalism in the historical economic sense means a belief in individual business enterprise and a system of laissez-faire' and the remedy for America's social and political ills lay in a strong, central government that would restrain the power imbued in capitalist private wealth formation. This desirable 'advance towards collectivism' suggested that 'under a socially planned order, controlled by the interests of the masses, we should, in a sense, have the opposite of liberalism'. Yet this new social order was an adaptation of liberalism, of its adjacent and peripheral concepts, to the requirements of the age: 'it is our belief that this order finds its justification in the very type of aim that gave to historic liberalism its most solid philosophical sanctions'. Welfare and freedom—as with the new liberals promoted as mutually conditioning ends— were currently restricted by a capitalist apparatus that denied the vision of Adam Smith and Mill through providing opportunities for growth and development only to a few. A distinct conceptual amalgam had emerged. The interests of the masses had to be furthered through collective and democratic action, such action regarding liberty as 'meaningless aside from the person who exercises it and the objectives for which he strives'. The notion of liberty as restricted to the pursuit of intelligent choice applied to societies as well, and 'becomes more extensively true as the life of that society becomes more closely integrated'. This conceptual compound constituted one major decontested version of community strongly endorsed by American liberals in the earlier part of the twentieth century.106 Not only moderate versions, but even the strong fifth conception of community, is evident in American liberal ideology. The ever-acute Croly observed that the ambiguities in the American constitution allowed the supplementing of individual justice by a new ideal of social justice, again attesting to the structural tolerance of liberalism. When the constitution was written it reflected 'a 105 m

Dewey, Liberalism, 43, 47, 34, 88. 'Liberalism Twenty Years After', New Republic (23 Jan. 1935).

Challenge of Philosophical Liberalism 257 conception which practically confided social welfare to the free expression of individual interests and individual good intentions. Now the tendency is to conceive the social welfare ... as an end which must be consciously willed by society and efficiently realized.'107 Society was not independent of the individual but nevertheless 'comes to be conceived as a whole, with certain permanent interests and needs, into which the different centers of association must be fitted'. The core concept of individuality was linked to this strong version of sociability, for 'genuine individuality is also essentially an ideal which does not become of great value to men or women except in a society which has already begun to abstract and to cherish a social ideal'.108 This lent sustenance to the liberal core concept of a general interest effectively insulated bom from atomistic individualism and from class interests. It was Croly's view of nationalism: the public and common interest represented by the state, imposing conditions which ensured that individual liberty be as efficient as possible.109 One commentator, writing about American liberalism in me early twentieth century, observed: 'The fundamental fissure in American Liberalism is found... between the Liberty-Liberals and the Welfare-Liberals.' These positions seemed reconcilable as both sought to enhance liberty. More importantly, they indicate that 'thoroughgoing interventionists' were considered to be well within the range of liberal variations.110 There is little appreciation in contemporary philosophical liberalism of the strong interventionist tendency in American liberalism. It appeared in the antimonopolist form of progressivism, emphasizing social reform and mutual responsibility but also the constraining of power through its distribution. It also emerged in the form of the New Deal, employing the state to promote communal ends as well as to relieve the disadvantaged—although it backtracked on the accountability and dispersal of power by curbing it through overreliance on the democratic process itself, now attuned to the concerns of a rising political majority. Indeed, the concept of democracy, in its evolution over the years, has been referred to as a 'supervalue' of all American ideologies. This is not, however, tantamount to locating it at the core of any American ideology but rather an adjacent consequence of adopting certain core patterns.111 107 108 110

H. Croly, Progressive Democracy (New York, 1915), 148-9, Ibid, 197-8. "» Croly, Promise, 188-97 and passim, R. Hugins, 'Confusion Among the Liberals', American Mercury, 15 (Dec, 1928), 419-25. Cp. K. M. Doibeare and L, J. Medcalf, American Ideologies Today: Shaping the New Politics of the 1990s, 2nd edn. (New York, 1993), 30. 111 Doibeare and Medcalf, American Ideologies Today, 22.

258 Liberalism: The Dominant Ideology There is no space here to explore how the New Deal, with its notions of big government, developed this theme into a central connotation of the term liberal' in public discourse. As Hamby has noted, 'the New Deal made coilectivist democratic liberalism the norm in American polities'. If from a European perspective this view of collectivism may appear slightly sanguine, it is decontested more plausibly as containing adjacent and perimeter concepts such as a mixed, welfarist economy, the protection and promotion of civil rights and liberties, and large-scale bureaucratic organization, and an increasing periphery of marginalized concepts such as property rights and entrepreneurial opportunity.112 The emphasis on the common interests of the American people, on rational social intelligence exercised through government, became the hallmark of liberal ideology, first as applied to the economic sphere and later to the affirmative action of the 1960s. The role of leadership gravitated across the morphology of liberalism towards a position uncharacteristically adjacent to its core.113 Here was a clear cultural preference for a liberal conceptual configuration that departed from the ostensibly non-committal proceduralism associated with philosophical liberalism.114 What does all this indicate about liberal morphology? Philosophical liberalism in America—judging by the Rawlsian paradigm and its offshoots—is equipped with most of the core liberal concepts, with the declared exception of individuality. But the reading of its core is affected by the status of two concepts, equality and community. That status displays considerable disparities in comparison to the ideational configurations which have characterized the actual discourses of American liberal ideologies over time. Competing decontestations of equality pull the structure of liberal argument in different directions, and its intermittent celebration as core concept is severely eroded in significant samples of liberal thinking. When proffered as part of the liberal core, equality tends to be thin and minimalist; when in adjacent position it can bolster liberty through open access to opportunities, or reinforce community by providing arguments for social goods. The 112

A. L. Hamby, Liberalism and its Challengers (New York, 1985), 4. See e.g. Garry, Liberalism and American Identity, 62, 65. This liberal morphology was also far removed from interest-group liberalism which, as Lowi has persuasively argued, deviated significantly from the American liberal tradition by installing a market-place in which pluralist groups competed for the imposition of their interests on public policy (T. J. Lowi, The End of Liberalism: Ideology, Policy, and the Crisis of Public Authority (New York, 1969), 70-1). 113 114

Challenge of Philosophical Liberalism 259 varying strengths of the concept of community serve to decontest other core liberal concepts in a manner entirely unfamiliar to contemporary philosophical liberals. They have in effect invented an artificial dichotomy by garnering, in defiance of time and space, all the conceptualizations of community under one word and then proceeding spuriously to exclude it—and consequently also much of human sociability—from the liberal core.115 The omission of many communitarian strands isolates philosopical liberalism from the usages and potentials of American liberal ideology according to which, to take a typical contemporary view, 'liberalism has combined its individual and community values by seeking to empower all individuals to participate freely and equally in their community'.116 In addition, liberty as autonomy is not entirely reconcilable with a configuration that includes a strong notion of community, nor is it easy to exclude some implicit version of individuality from Rawls's commitment to growth, personal reason, and choice, and the exercise of the full moral powers of citizens—yet another instance of the surplus of meaning carried by Rawls's political liberalism. Hence the reinvention or redirection of liberalism has been purchased at the cost of an oversimplification of its ideological complexity and flexibility, and at the cost of delegitimizing ideational combinations that still bear temporal and spatial meaning in late twentieth-century ideologizing. (/) LIBERAL NEUTRALITY

Not the least salient, and certainly the most startling, aspect of American philosophical liberalism is its recurring espousal of neutrality with respect to competing conceptions of the good. Yet unless severely circumscribed, the notion of liberal neutrality is a contradiction in terms, as is the idea that any ideology can be neutral, even when donning the mantle of a political philosophy. Most of the following discussion enters only incidentally the debate over the logical viability or intellectual attractiveness of such neutrality. Its prime focus is an assessment of the relationship between ideas concerning neutrality and the liberal tradition as it exists outside the school of American philosophy. Attention is thus directed not to the moral or logically entailed rights and wrongs of neutral 115

For a similar observation, see S. Holmes, The Anatomy qfAntiliberalism (Cambridge, Mass., 1993), 179-80, 116 Garry, Liberalism and American Identity, 131.

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perspectives but to their intellectual affinity or disaffirtity with liberalism. What does the assumption of neutrality entail and what effect does it have on liberal morphology? The most prominent promoter of liberal neutrality, Dworkin, understands neutrality as the independence of political decisions from any particular conception of the good life, or what gives value to life."7 For this to be true, a number of provisos have to obtain. First, liberalism simply cannot be an ideology. Because ideologies are decontesting devices that produce action-oriented public programmes of political change or conservation, a neutral state (the normal executor of such a programme) would be constrained from expressing any preference that could further individual or group preferences. Second, the arena of politics must shrink to exclude the spheres of human ends and of non-coercive persuasion. Third, there can be no call for the interpretation of rules and procedures. They are assumed to be all-inclusive as well as incontestable or determinate. Interpretative or hermeneutic perspectives would have no place in the procedural universality of DworMn's approach. Fourth, all individual preferences must be considered equally valuable from a public, if not private, viewpoint—valuable not only in their entitlement to express themselves but to draw equal support for their realization from the public domain. This last point has remarkable consequences for the structure of liberalism, for it would legitimate any decontestation of political concepts; serious doubts would then be raised whether it is possible to detect any patterns whatsoever in liberal discourse,118 In other words, the neutrality proviso cannot satisfy the function all ideologies serve to discharge: the channelling of private preferences into publicly acceptable statements of priorities.119 Nor can liberalism then be regarded as a group product endowed with identifiable social meaning. Instead, it is reduced to a procedure that ensures the integrity of all private decontestations of political concepts. All core structures, all adjacent and peripheral concepts, become indistinguishable from each other as guidelines for action, so that liberalism, being of all substances, is devoid of any. This 117

Dworkin, 'Liberalism', 191. 118 This has also been seen as a consequence of a 'weak' hermeneutics whose relativism eschews the possibility of any preferential epistemology (cp. N, Smith, 'Charles Taylor, Strong Hermeneutics, and the Politics of Difference', Radical Philosophy, 68 (1994), 19-27). That understanding of hermeneutics is not endorsed in this study, as explained in Ch. 3. 119 Cp. Shapiro, Political Criticism, 39.

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view of neutrality can mean one of two things: either—as intended by Dworkin, but dependent on an unsustainable divide between a political 'public' domain and a non-political 'private' domain-— a normativety archimedal point embedded in an agreed procedure from which equal treatment for different personal Weltanschauungen can be dispensed; or—as presumably unintended by Dworkin, but an inevitable consequence of the character of ideologies—a fragmented, normless, plethora of political ideas from which no ideology, let alone liberalism, can emerge. Ricoeur's admonition is pertinent here: the death of ideologies would be the most sterile of lucidities; for a social group without ideology and Utopia would be without a plan, without a distance from itself, without a self-representation. It would be a society without a global project, consigned to a history fragmented into events which are all equal and insignificant.120

At the root of Ehvorkin's characterization of liberal neutrality, and its critical assessment, lies a distinction between a conception of liberalism that merely imposes restrictions on the range of decisions a state may make and a conception of liberalism that adumbrates the legitimate meanings that political values and concepts, and their implementation, may adopt, be the span of that legitimacy ever so generous. Historically, the first conception evolved out of reactions to tyranny and represents a profoundly felt need to throw off the fetters that have inhibited human action. The second conception inquires beneath that surface reaction into the nature and social context of the human beings who are supposed to benefit from such release, and seeks to optimize rather than maximize the liberty they can secure from their political institutions, while arguing that the state may have to provide additional goods in order for an individual to have a good life. Hence within the liberal core, a strong notion of individuality coupled with a weak notion of sociability will lead to the quasi-sovereignty of individual choice and morality that Dworkin's comprehension of liberalism favours; while an emphasis on the social conditioning of that individuality coupled with acknowledged criteria of human progress will pull liberalism—as it has usually been pulled— in the direction of an explicit preference for some forms of human activity over others, namely those that also have both individual and social benefit. Because, of course, no ideology can avoid decontestation without 120

P. Ricoeur, Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences, ed. J. B. Thompson (Cambridge, 1981), 241.

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collapsing into total shapelessness, there is no reason to suppose that Dworkin's notion of neutrality is free from value-assumptions, nor that a state applying his criteria can avoid the implementation of preferences. Hence his employment of procedural arguments has itself to be tested for immunity from particular views of the good life, both in terms of its underlying assumptions and in terms of the practicability of a state remaining neutral while undertaking the residual decisions to which Dworkin entitles it. It is theoretically possible to claim that one is prepared to regard all particular conceptions of the good life as outside the sphere of the public interest, which is in effect what Dworkin proposes. But this must remain an abstract philosophical position, with no practical implications for the world of politics, of which liberalism is a product and which it addresses. Let us consider some of the reasons for this. First, treating people with equal respect in Dworkin's sense signals that all private conceptions of the good have equal value, even if that is not in fact what most members of a society or their government believe. It implies at the very least a level of toleration that liberals may not wish to concede. While liberals have as a rule been prepared to listen to all viewpoints and to accord them the equal right of expression, liberalism has frequently subscribed to a notion of foundational, ethical truth which suggests that values and opinions may be better or worse, in the sense of correct or erroneous. That was, of course, Mill's position.121 Hobhouse, too, reiterated Mill's conviction that the truth would be amplified by confronting it with error, allowing the latter a fair hearing while asserting that 'the Liberal does not meet opinions which he conceives to be false with toleration, as though they did not matter'.122 Those formulators of liberal theory would have severely limited the notion of neutrality promoted by the contemporary philosophical position. According all views equal status enervates the concept of neutrality. Neutrality (or some onomasiological equivalent) has more properly been employed as a device for the emergence of a definitely preferred viewpoint which then obtains general and commanding public appeal, subject to reassessment. The language of neutrality may conceivably acquire rhetorical weight in promoting a particular set of opinions, that is, be part of the arsenal of the ideologist, while the authentic concept of neutrality may be unavoidably absent. In diachronic perspective, one of the few past liberal theorists to 121

Mill, On Liberty, Ch, 2.

m

Hobhouse, Liberalism, 63.

Challenge of Philosophical Liberalism 263 commend liberal neutrality, Constant, assumed that a constitutional monarch could act as a pouvior neutre. His defence of neutrality was historical and political rather than philosophical—based on his understanding of the English monarchy or his aspirations for Louis XVIII—and not more convincing for that. No concrete monarch could be designated as neutral by any stretch of the imagination (was not monarchy habitually conceived as a constitutional arrangement that could, at best, conciliate among different interests?}. Moreover, Constant's views on public and private morality required fundamental agreement within a society.123 Similarly, when a leading German Liberal politician, Johannes von Miquel, spoke in 1880 of his role as mayor of Frankfurt, he regarded it as occupying neutral territory in which all the different and conflicting opinions could co-operate towards the 'good of the whole'. But this good incorporated a preference for the paternalistic and non-democratic community politics of Germany, with a clear agenda for tihe protection of local interests and the furthering of communal responsibility, as well as the partly unconscious promotion of the values of the educated bourgeoisie as a universal norm.124 Second, we may proceed to query DworMn's conviction that, in order to protect individuals from majorities or from the sectionalism of governments, a liberal society must be debarred from promoting any external preference it regards as essential for individual flourishing or social well-being.125 This is not a broadly representative liberal position. It is not only that Eberals assume that the truth will out in a free market of ideas, but-—as we have seen—mainstream liberal variants do promote some values deliberately and intentionally, and the mark of those liberalisms lies in the priority accorded to those values. Moreover, they attempt to secure a rational convergence of external and personal preferences, while allowing the securing of such convergence limited leeway, through the reasonable coercion of individuals to adhere to the general interest, and through the reasonable constraint of governments and majorities from intervening in individual practices, even socially expensive ones. The range and cost of that leeway is established by the need to protect other core liberal values from extinction or serious impairment. 123 See Ch. 4 above, and S. Holmes, Benjamin Constant and the Making of Modern Liberalism, 145-6. 124 See D. Langewiesche, Liberalismus in Deutschland (Frankfurt, 1988), 209, 203; J. J. Sheenan, German Liberalism in the Nineteenth Century (London, 1982), 26,172. 125 Dworkin, 'Liberalism', 197.

264 Liberalism: The Dominant Ideology The central problem here is to distinguish between the justified fears that liberals entertain about paternalism—the imposition of external standards of behaviour on individuals, ostensibly for their own good—and unjustifiable objections to the setting of such standards when they are agreed on the basis of enlightened deliberation and factual knowledge about human needs and flourishing,126 No public decision (or, for that matter, non-decision) is entirely costless in terms of individual liberty. For liberals its adoption must be scrutinized on the basis of humanitarian ends, subject always to criticism and adaptation in the light of new understandings. The imposition of viewpoints is inevitable if decisions have to be made, and decision-making is an essential communal need entrusted, primarily in terms of scope and ultimately in terms of authority, to the state. The question then shifts to the grounds for that imposition and the area in which it takes place. For Dworkin, a constitution with a scheme of civil rights is the mechanism enforcing standards of human conduct, but it is chimerical to assume that a totally consensual support for a constitution, one that could set our concerns about paternalism or imposition of viewpoints at rest, has ever existed. It is equally illusory to assume that the abstraction of all human preferences from the value of those preferences can be sustained on moral or psychological grounds that satisfy different liberal tests of spontaneity or rationality. Constraint in the choice of values is of course not eliminated by Dworkin. Rather, its focus is transferred to separate sharply between the private and the public and to insist that all human choices should have equal chances of realization. These two features are ideological statements with potentially illiberal consequences, for if all types of life-plan are allowed as equally 'good' in the public eye, even within the constraints of a bill of rights, society may be pulled apart into 'autistic' spheres of noncommunication, and come to depend entirely on voluntary private decisions to facilitate essential co-operation. Those features are far from typical spatial and temporal manifestations of liberalism. Even Rawls has come to accept that neutrality of aim can only apply to permissible conceptions of the good, though it is a moot point whether within such a severe constraint neutrality still applies, because in any practical political sense neutrality of aim becomes an abstraction detached from the effects or influence of the basic political conceptions. As Rawls has acknowledged: It is surely impossible for the basic structure of a just constitutional 126

See above, pp. 92-3.

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regime not to have important effects and influences as to which comprehensive doctrines endure and gain adherents over time , . . We must accept the facts of common-sense political sociology.'127 But in identifying a distinctive range of the effects of political ideas, Rawls seems propitiously near to conceding that there is more to political thinking than political philosophy alone, adumbrating instead a key role for ideology itself. If the accusation of paternalism is to be levelled at liberal variants, Dworkin's cannot be spared, either. It displays a 'paternalism' that demands respect not merely for human rational and moral potential, but for actual outcomes of personal choice. To insist on the value of human autonomy, as philosophical liberals do, cannot be tantamount to extolling the virtues of all choices. If the object of liberalism is to preserve the humanity of individuals, it must come to terms with the fact that some choices are dehumanizing and hence not of equal value to choices that do not dehumanize, nor deserving of equal support. Current philosophical debate is moving close to construing liberalism as a theory that grants the individual full sovereignty over his or her actions and appoints that individual as arbiter of his or her good, when that good is simply understood as wishes or rfesires.128 Most modern types of liberalism have specifically avoided entrusting the choice of the good either to the individual alone or to society alone, insisting on the sharing of that responsibility. It was after all a pre-eontractarian state of nature, in which individuals exercised a highly dangerous private sovereignty, that was considered intolerable by the forerunners of modern liberal theory. Third, another relevant distinction, at the heart of Mill's project, is that between enforcing values and promoting them. Philosophical liberals seem to equate the role of society with that of the state, and then to equate state activity with coercion. Were state coercion the only option available for promoting a point of view, a theory endorsing an active state would indeed deserve to be challenged by liberals. But that is not the case. Social standards and norms may be set that are not state or governmental norms, as Mill and Tocqueville realized. In a liberal society, as in any other, moral agreement and the establishment of scientific criteria of human welfare may develop independently of the state. All that liberals insist on is that those criteria be subject to constant critical 127

12g

Rawls, Political Liberalism, 192-3.

If it is understood as good in a shared or 'objective' sense, it cannot be neutral with respect to those who do not share it.

266 Liberalism: The Dominant Ideology re-examination in the light of evolving humanitarian standards and current understandings of human needs and functions. Liberals see people as social beings, not just in the sense that personal failings require the setting up of a state to constrain irrational action. They claim that people rely on the wisdom and assistance of others in order to pursue their plans and assess their worth. In the informal domain of society and its groupings, operating far beyond the sphere of the market-place, individuals learn to attach value to thoughts and actions. Much of that domain is not voluntary, inasmuch as socialization processes are not entirely deliberate, nor is the cultural 'market' from which we derive our ideas completely subject to rational choices on our part. Too many theorists of liberalism argue within a framework that postulates a stark dichotomy between coercion and paternalism on the one hand and free autonomous choice on the other. Faced with that alternative it seems obvious to them that liberals are characterized by the latter. Perhaps, though, liberalism is best described as an ideology of preference, in which decontested patterns of thought are not imposed or insisted on, but are nevertheless clearly there for the taking; in which courses of action are recommended, even facilitated, but the refusal to adopt them is legally penalized only in exceptional circumstances; in which the wholesale repudiation of those patterns by the individuals towards whom they are addressed would result in the abandonment of recognizably liberal ideologies. It is only because there are theorists who associate the state with coercion alone that some liberals hold that liberalism must be anti-statist. To suggest that there is no resting place between the options of state compulsion and the market-place displays a paucity of sociological understanding, and to pin liberalism to the latter option for fear of the former is to deplete it in terms of the institutional arrangements its core can accommodate. As we have already seen, a facilitative rather than a coercive state may be the very instrument required by liberals concerned with the conditions for full human flourishing in order to realize their hopes for humankind. Power and influence assume many guises, the least prevalent of which is coercion. Governments or majorities may signal their preference for a particular way in which people could develop and contribute to their society, without coercing individuals to do so. There are gentler degrees of encouragement that indicate approval for courses of action which, it may be argued, would be perfectly in order for liberal polities to adopt. If asbestos has been discovered to contain noxious substances it may be prudent to

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warn people against using it, even to divert public funds to its eradication, without implying paternalism or employing coercion,129 The liberal interest in the adjacent concept of education, as a means of expressing individuality, or personal life-plans, or working out private conceptions of the good, could quite plausibly justify making an educational system (basic or otherwise) available to all, out of public funds that would have to be provided even by those who reject that notion. Making use of the educational system, and its form, could be optional; its existence could not—it is therefore a quasi-contingent liberal component. Obviously, some liberals might claim that the private market can supply educational needs, and that only those who expressed preference for education should pay for it. But the dissemination of liberal values, without which no liberal conception, Dworkin's included, would be viable, is not something that a liberal can leave to the sphere of private decisions. Education is a prerequisite to operating a democratic system or to respecting the constitution to which Dworkin attaches such import. There would be a liberal case for providing education if, say, the private market failed to do so adequately, and moreover, education in particular values rather than in all. One must be careful to avoid a further confusion here: a feature of liberalism, unlike some of its ideological rivals, is that even when politically dominant it does not aspire to impose itself on all members of the polity. Naturally, it is not imposed on its adherents either, but if they refuse to accept it, they cease to subscribe to it. Liberalism does not insist that ail be liberals; it does not insist that anyone be a liberal. But it must insist that those who wish to be called liberals freely choose to adhere to the set of beliefs it attempts, in its peculiar non-coercive way, to promote. They cannot remain liberals while dismissing its tenets; perhaps even, because of the strongly reflective nature of liberalism, without adopting them consciously. Arguably, liberalism may also demand, by emphasizing the adjacent concept of democracy, decontested as majoritarianism, that pronounced anti-liberals be debarred from deposing a politically legitimated dominant liberal ideology through means unacceptable to liberals. This latter point is not a sine qua non. The frequent failure of liberalism to protect itself in the past by its own preferred methods has been regrettable for liberals historically, but not always a sufficient incentive to defend themselves by illiberal means. Nor does the promotion of a viewpoint entail intervention in all 129

Cp. Mill's bridge example (On liberty, 151-2).

268 Liberalism: The Dominant Ideology spheres of human activity. Underlying that assumption is an impoverished conception of politics. Current American philosophical discourse has depoliticized liberalism, abandoning it as a political theory and retaining it only as a moral doctrine. Whatever its strengths may be, as political theory the American variant is incapable of performing the institutional and ideological roles that liberals have always embraced. Its suspicion of politics arises out of a confusion between the generality of the political process and its invasiveness. All human activities exhibit facets of decisionmaking, conflict resolution, and the exercise of power. These are the political aspects of human conduct, and they occur at any level of human interaction. To accept this is not, however, to believe that state or social intervention, necessary though they are in some areas, involve the total regulation of the individual and the exclusion of free choice within reasonable or sociologically given limits. The promotion by the state—failing other agencies—of crosscultural goods such as health services could hardly be called paternalistic. To suggest that they involve the idiosyncratic imposition of values by a government on a society ignores those aspects of humanity, shared by human beings, without which they would be diminished. Although liberalism eschews forming the moral character of individuals, it is deeply concerned about that character and frequently engaged in providing the conditions for such formation, or in improving other human attributes not directly related to one's character. The elevation of character, in the form of virtue or autonomy, above those other attributes is a residual Victorian article of faith. It is a proclivity of philosophers that distorts the totality of being human and suggests misleadingly that positive intervention in some aspects of human existence—say, physical well-being or the adoption of humane standards of living—is less desirable or important than furthering the moral attributes of the person,130 Ultimately, we are confronted with the role of the state in liberal theory. Liberals have moved some way beyond an indiscriminate fear of the power of the state to oppress the individual. They have, as a rule, endorsed a strong state precisely because they have entertained a passionate respect for the integrity of the individual and the need to protect that integrity from harmful intrusion. The areas to which the strength of that state has been applied have mirrored the changing interpretations of the domains in which m

See Freeden, Rights, 45, 52.

Challenge of Philosophical Liberalism 269 individuals are considered most vulnerable. In pre-constitutional and non-democratic periods and cultures, the rise of liberalism was accompanied by a concern with the physical security of individuals. It therefore channelled state power into the demarcation of clear boundaries, designed to block the impingement of one individual on the other (although individuals have in turn insisted on and obtained the right to control the state in similar fashion). As scientific knowledge combined with a social conscience and with more sophisticated theories of social structure and operation, the liberal state was harnessed as a defence against new human vulnerabilities without abandoning the old. The precariousness of physical survival has been extended to cover the kind of qualitative existence that wealthy and humane societies are expected to promote and guarantee. It is entirely in the eyes of the beholder whether that sphere of state intervention and regulation is more or less acceptable than its predecessor. What remains constant in liberal theory is an adjacent concept of the state servicing the particular decontestation of the core principles, as they are read and comprehended in different cultural contexts. The non-interventionist state is a chimera, in liberalism as in any ideology; the issue at stake is one of domain and degree and that in turn depends on the priority accorded to competing conceptions of what constitutes being human. For all these reasons, bearing in mind the noncoercive aspects of state behaviour and the nature of ideologies as political instruments, it is difficult to endorse Kymlicka's distinction between neutrality in the consequences of government policy and neutrality in the justification of government policy.131 Justifications as public utterances have consequences for political practices; indeed, they contribute to the shaping and identifying of such practices. Fourth, this conducts us to a different kind of argument, running parallel to the critique of political liberalism levelled at Rawls. The procedure of treating people with equal respect is itself the crystallization of a certain set of values. This comes as no surprise to the ideological analyst; nothing else would be logically or culturally conceivable. In cultural terms, behind Dworkin's positionas behind so many American political theorists, including Rawls —lies the overriding intellectual and emotional appeal of the 131 W, Kymlicka, 'Liberal Individualism and Liberal Neutrality', Ethics, 99 (1989), 883-4. Kymlicka's approval of justificatory neutrality as refraining from acclaiming any particular way of life is facilitated simply by denying that the making of rational, autonomous, responsible choices is itself one way of life. See also J. Raz, The Morality of Freedom (Oxford, 1986), 110-33.

270 Liberalism: The Dominant Ideology American constitution, presented as a framework which defines the compass of the political, and is instrumental in shaping the belief that the political, or political liberalism, or a fundamental theory of justice, can be subject to an overlapping consensus. Dworkin's assertion that Bills of Rights embodied in constitutions can actually remove issues from the political arena and democratic decision-making, however imperfect its majoritarianism is, is indeed astounding, as is Rawls's claim that the Supreme Court serves as the institutional exemplar of public reason,132 Europeans may be slightly baffled by the formative and unique experience of the eighteenth-century constitution which the American historian Bailyn has discussed with great insight.133 The French, for instance, may have developed a wariness of constitutions, if the large number of such documents they have produced since 1789 is any indication. Be that as it may, the idea of a constitution, let alone its concrete incarnations, has had a fundamental impact on American political culture. What Europeans often fail to grasp is the peculiar American notion that constitutions are endowed with the potential to solve contested areas of social and political disagreement not, as Europeans may feel, because they allocate authoritative power to particular groups and offices, but because they seem to offer the possibility of impersonal decisions—codes or sets of rules that appear to transcend conflicting human wills and to appeal to an extra-political common denominator, thus fulfilling the same function for politics that religion or science have been called upon to perform in the past. Rawls has revealingly shown his hand on this matter when querying the possibility of procedural neutrality, and casting aspersions on the identification of neutrality with the common ground of an overlapping consensus that focuses on the basic structure of a constitutional regime.134 The constitution provides an interesting mix of substantive beliefs dressed up in procedural neutrality.135 Its values, as Foley has asserted, 'are variously described as natural, or eternal, or universal or divine'.136 And Croly commented: 'ever since the Constitution was established, a systematic and insidious attempt has been made to possess American public opinion with a feeling of its peculiarly sacred character'.137 With this strong set of cultural 132 133

Rawls, Political Liberalism, 231-40, B, Bailyn, Faces of Revolution (New York, 1990), 225-78. 134 Rawls, Political Liberalism, 191-2. 135 For a critique of procedural neutrality as itself ideological, see I. Mesziros, The Power of Ideology (Hemel Hempstead, 1989), 232-4. I3t m Foley, American Political Ideas, 201. Croly, Progressive Democracy, 22.

Challenge of Philosophical Liberalism 271 constraints it is understandable that some American liberals are disposed to enshrine constitutional values in a palimpsest and depoliticize constitutional procedures. Latter-day academic liberals have themselves been taken in by the political myths perpetuated by the constitution in popular political debate. A partial explanation for this lies in the period following the Second World War, when this conception of the constitution was reinforced by marrying a renewed interest in Kantianism with legal and moral philosophy.138 The resultant moral universalism was employed both to counter the spurious scientism of Nazism and to fit in with the new global role of American foreign policy, offering a valuesystem composed of self-evident truths. One variety of cultural constraint, a European intellectual argument invigorated by a large number of academic emigres furnished with Kantian loyalties, blended with another variety, the perceived political need to set agreed and uncontestable standards of national and state conduct. But how neutral is a procedure? We have already observed that in cultural terms a constitution is a remarkable exemplar of ideological discourse. It is a relatively static, texrually embodied, configuration of political concepts, fashioning a time- and space-bound decontestation of political ideas and methods for their implementation.139 The common interest is thus predetermined by a particular, culturally inspired attempt to formulate it. The reinterpretation of the constitution by later readers entails, of course, the imposition of an alternative freeze-frame taken from the ideational and historical contexts that inform the new consumers of the document. Whether neutrality was a principle designed by the original drafters need not concern us here. Suffice it to note that there is no case for arguing that an unintentional principle of neutrality can be discerned in the constitution; nor is there evidence in histories of American political thought that neutrality was intended to form part of eighteenth-century American notions of liberalism. Rather, the constitution has been recognized as an instrument for attaining partisan, decontested ends. As Farr has contended, 'for the Constitution to realize the actions that the Framers intended, there had to be ... a large measure of agreement between authors and readers that certain forms of self-governance and certain individual 138

Galston, 'What is Living', 207-8. See Ch, 3 above. On the 18th-cent. nature of the American constitution, see 'Introduction', in T, Ball and J. G. A. Pocock (eds.), Conceptual Change and the Constitution (Lawrence, Kan., 1988), 1-12. 139

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rights against government itself amounted to "liberty" ,.. and that "liberty" was a blessing deserving of the highest commendation'.140 Nor are neutrality or impartiality values consciously adhered to by American liberals. Croly remarked that 'whether in any particular case the state takes sides or remains impartial, it most assuredly has a positive function to perform on the premises. If it remains impartial, it simply agrees to abide by the results of natural selection/ Yet, Croly did not ignore the political value of the myth of supra-politics: 'While preserving at times an appearance of impartiality so that its citizens may enjoy for a while a sense of the reality of their private game, [the state] must on the whole make the rules in their own interest. It must help those men to win who are most capable of using their winnings for the benefit of society'.141 The link between emphasizing neutrality and the Kantian nature of contemporary American liberal theorizing is not merely an ideological feature of that theorizing142 but, as Maclntyre, himself no friend of liberalism, has asserted, is a product of a shift in the traditions of moral philosophy: At the heart of Greek moral philosophy is the figure of the educated moral agent whose desires and choices are directed by the virtues towards genuine goods and ultimately towards the good. At the heart of distinctively modern moral philosophy is the figure of the autonomous individual whose choices are sovereign and whose desires are, in one version of such moral theory, to be weighted equally along with those of every other person, or, in another version of such theory, to be constrained by categorical rules which impose neutral constraints upon all desires and interests,143

From yet another viewpoint, American philosophical liberalism is made to look suspiciously like the latest link in the great chain of Western moral philosophy itself: a retrospective re-creation of an artificial tradition. Does then moral philosophy currently offer a neutral procedure, as Larmore has argued?144 This is improbable, as Rawls now notes, for it 'affirms the superiority of certain forms of moral character and encourages[s] certain moral virtues'.145 But the truths of (liberal) moral theory are the options of ideology. The individual '*, J, Part, 'Constitutional Change and Constitutional Innovation', in Ball and Pocock (eds.). Conceptual Change and the Constitution, 16-17 and passim, 141 ul Croly, Promise, 192-3. Cp. Galston, Liberal Purposes, 82-6, m A, Maclntyre, "The Relationship of Philosophy to its Past', in R. Rorty, J. B. Schneewind, and Q. Skinner (eds,), Philosophy in History (Cambridge, 1984), 38. 144 C. Larmore, 'Political Liberalism', Political Theory, 18 (1990), 339-60. 145 Rawls, Political Liberalism, 194.

Challenge of Philosophical Liberalism 273 who benefits from the supposedly neutral procedure of the state is rational, autonomous, and responsible, very like the preferred model of liberal ideology, very different from the prototypes to be found in conservative ideology and lacking some of the attributes with which socialists endow people.146 Philosophical liberals have always argued that their individuals may still choose to be socialists or conservatives. That is hardly the point, even were it true. The point is rather that certain attributes of human nature have been selected as fundamental and universal, while others which may seem no less significant are crowded out.147 For philosophical liberals man is the rational choice-maker, rather than the speciesberng, the vehicle of tradition, the bearer of duties, or the enjoyer and self-expressor. Only the abstracted trait of rational choicemaking can logically induce theorists to recommend state neutrality; for neutrality is irrelevant to the furtherance of the other conceptions. This methodological elision overlooks the ways in which political procedures incorporate preferences and values; in which procedures are simply the institutionalizations of practices that entail social and political choices among available courses of action, and hence involve both questions of value-options and of conceptual intension. The rigid distinction between procedure and substance is incompatible with the analysis of political concepts as historical and spatial patterns of thought-behaviour. The philosophical liberal core overlaps with the cores of its liberal affiliates, though it is also unusual in comparison with them. Liberty as autonomy, and rationality, are overdeveloped at the expense of the other components that have always coexisted with them and informed their specific meanings. In particular, commonly recognized forms of development and sociability are either optional—that is, removed to adjacent positions—or marginal, and no longer constitute necessary aspects of human nature. People are defined as choice-makers independently of the choices they should be encouraged to take in relation to their cultural milieux— a stance close to tihe libertarian position, as will be seen below, but alien to the historical manifestations of liberalism. Indeed, by refusing to acknowledge that the relationships among the components of the liberal core are both unintendedly diachronical in their meanings and intentionally attached to proposals for concrete 146

See e.g. the critique of neutrality in L. Alexander and M. Schwarzschild, 'Liberalism, Neutrality, and Equality of Welfare vs. Equality of Resources', Philosophy and Public Affairs, 16/1 (1987), 109-10. 147 See Freeden, Rights, 50-2.

274 Liberalism: The Dominant Ideology historical change,148 philosophical liberalism has isolated its concepts from the political arena that has formed the language of liberalism. It is of course quite possible for a state to carve out areas in which the points of view of different individuals are given equal hearing and preference is accorded to none. But that149would severely shrink the domain to which neutrality applied. And the more restricted it is, the less central it would be to the liberal profile. Croly employed impartiality as contemporary liberals employ neutrality. But a concept of impartiality distinct from neutrality would more adequately depict the role accorded to liberal conceptions of the state. The state, and the society it represents, may have widely accepted non-neutral goals and norms, and it will make their pursuit beneficial and rewarding. Within that sphere it will be possible to treat people impartially. As Mill maintained, Impartiality... as an obligation of justice, may be said to mean, being exclusively influenced by the considerations which it is supposed ought to influence the particular case at hand',150 not being uninfluenced by any considerations. Thus if human development is the goal, anything regarded as development will be encouraged. If welfare is the aim, welfare may be construed widely enough to include all activities not demonstrably harmful to the self or others. Conversely, there will be areas where neutrality in terms of support will simply sanction existing distributions of power. In other areas neutrality will be impossible because of a clash between zero-sum notions of particular goods. A certain religion may incorporate animal sacrifices offensive to the promoters of animal rights. For the state to support both sides is impossible. Were such a sacrifice to occur, state action condemning it or praising it, as well as state quiescence, would be equally offensive to one side or the other. As Montefiore has remarked, when the structures of a society are called into question, 'those who would want to be liberals may have to abandon all present pretence of political neutrality'.151 It is intellectual humbug to assume that neutrality, even if possible, would be acceptable to the very intellectual elites who have advanced its cause in the first place; and it is historically and sociologically incorrect to proceed as if 148

On this latter point see M. Francis and J. Morrow, A History of English Political Thought in the Nineteenth Century (London, 1994), 236, 245-6, 278. 149 Cp, J. Waldron, 'Legislation and Moral Neutrality7, in R. E, Goodin. and A. Reeve (eds.), Liberal Neutrality (London, 1989), 80. 150 Mill, Utilitarianism, 42. 151 A. Montefiore (ed.), Neutrality and Impartiality (Cambridge, 1975), 16.

Challenge of Philosophical Liberalism 275 liberalism did not appeal to a rational and moral intelligentsia to supply models of human conduct. Those philosophers who advocate neutrality are themselves one such self-appointed intelligentsia; the models they supply are, regrettably, deficient. Twentieth-century Anglo-American political philosophy has abandoned both the importance of time as a factor in the analysis of liberalism, and the notion of politics as grounded in adjustable social practices. In jettisoning these two features it has returned to a pre-nmeteenth-century conception of political philosophy, rooted in the priority of the universal over the particular, in synchronicity rather than in real or imagined diachronies, and in norms determined abstractly by knowledgeable and rational individuals. It cannot account for changing configurations within an ideological family; nor can it account for liberal politics as a reflection of the political languages adopted by identifiable groups, shaped through infra-ideological struggles over the legitimate meanings of the concepts liberals employ.

7

Mistaken Identities and Other Anomalies: The Liberal Pretenders

, , . the apparent agreement of the different kinds of liberalism on the demand for freedom of the individual... conceals an important difference.., The decline of liberal doctrine, beginning in the 1870s, is closely connected with a re-interpretation of freedom ., -1 (a) LIBERTARIANISM: AN ATTENUATED IDEOLOGY

HE past chapters have examined a number of examples of libT eral ideology, including an American version which contains considerable departures from what has normally been identified as liberalism. We now have sufficient evidence to confirm our hypothesis in Chapter 4 that Mill's morphology is central to the liberal family. But there is a further category—libertarianism—which claims to be part of the liberal family but which on closer observation appears to be seriously attenuated, lacking many of the attributes which bestow on the liberal profile its distinctive contours. It is etymologically related to liberalism through the concept of liberty, but eschews the unique configuration of concepts that typifies liberalism, preferring instead to overemphasize heavily one concept (liberty) at the expense of the others. In some of its variants libertarianism can lean towards anarchism, when the core concept of power as dispersed or—if centralized—accountable, is replaced by the absence of any centralized power. In others organized political power is retained, but as the guarantor of individual liberty alone, and the question of accountability diminishes in importance. Libertarianism may also differ from liberalism in 1 F. A, Hayek, Neio Studies in Philosophy, Politics, Economics and the History of Ideas (London, 1978), 132, 134.

The Liberal Pretenders 277 surrounding liberty with adjacent concepts drawn from a political culture that displays conservative characteristics, without itself being wholly conservative. It may be asked why libertarianism is proposed as a marginal member of the family of liberalisms, particularly given that its semantic field typified liberal ideology in the early stages of the latter's development and preceded historically the variants examined in previous chapters. Those who deny the existence of a libertarian cuckoo in a liberal nest might plausibly challenge Mill's status as a paradigmatic liberal and regard him, as did Hayek, as the watershed marking the departure of so-called liberal thinkers from the bask tenets of their creed. When people with divergent beliefs call themselves liberals, this may ensue from their allegiance to different diachronic or synchronic rules concerning liberalism, and the minimum number of features it is thought need to obtain in order to be termed a liberal. In this struggle over the legitimate use of the term 'liberalism' one may appeal to historical precedent, to majority usage, to the main figures of the liberal tradition, or to the persuasiveness of the intellectual cases made. If we were to conform to the Skinnerite project, tracing later deviations from the foundational purity of a political language, we could indeed label libertarianism, in some of its manifestations, as liberalism, and condemn many modern modifications for breaking with key aspects of the liberal tradition. But the analysis of political concepts as ideologies is positioned at the juncture of the historical and the contemporary, with the present horizon both determining, and constituted by, the view of the past. It proceeds from the state of the ideology at the point in time when the analysis is conducted, taking into account the historical weight of the terms and traditions that nourish it. The retrospective view of what liberalism has achieved, as seen by its proponents, is a significant one. Because Mill considered himself, and is now regarded as, a liberal, his version is in contention as a liberal variant. It is no accident of usage that the term 'libertarianism' had to be coined in order to denote some divergence from liberalism. Nor can libertarians simply explain away the emergence of Millite liberalism or the new liberalism by displacing them into other ideological families. We shall see in Part IV that socialism is structurally dissimilar to those liberalisms. Because ideologies such as liberalism undergo evolution they may reach certain levels of maturity both in terms of the internal sophistication of their arguments and of their applicability to their societies. On those tests, we shall argue, libertarianism falls short

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of the mark. It lacks concepts, both in core and adjacent positions, available in more complex liberal structures. Though complexity is not a recommendation in itself, it is regarded as characterizing evolutionary movement. That is why the evolved forms of liberalism deserve earnest consideration. That is why the jury must still be out on one of liberalism's ideationally most complex forms, American philosophical liberalism, even if its applicability, as an explanation of social conduct and as a practical guide to political action, is questionable. And that is why libertarianism is not a serious contender for the current mantle of liberalism—a mantle whose web and patterns had been plainly visible by Mill's time— because it is not an ideological development arising out of the broad cultural requirements of a society, as distinct from the economic demands of some of its elites. This is not to assume that Millite or new liberal versions pass such tests with flying colours. But broad support, force of argument, and relevant political impact must be three criteria for assessing the successes and failures of ideologies. Note that the reference is to success, not to moral worth. As for the future, viewed from a late twentieth-century perspective, we are confronted with many liberalisms,2 and the futility of predicting which configuration will be in the ascendant can only be matched by the certainty that it, too, will in time give way to rival conceptions. For the moment, the rich liberal paradigms discussed above are demonstrably stiE central to West European liberalism, and the complexity of their core and adjacent structures reflects the liberal tradition in its current maturity. This must hold even though liberals have been challenged both intellectually and politically by groups professing to operate within their tradition, just as they have been confronted by groups who, while rejecting the liberal label, have adopted some of the principles promoted by liberals past or present. This chapter will explore the purportedly internal challenge, whereas the pursuit of liberal principles across ideological boundaries will be reserved for later sections of the book.3 libertarianism is a loose collection of ideological structures, characterizing well and lesser known individuals and a few groups, but not linked closely to any specific political movement. We pick it up at the point when it became a distinct ideological position, during a period in which liberalism was undergoing crucial changes to which some 2

Cp. J. Gray, Liberalisms (London, 1989), 217-38. This is not to dismiss the adoption of conservative principles by liberal ideologies, nor to deny give and take between liberal and socialist ideologies. 3

The Liberal Pretenders 279 of its adherents, fast becoming alienated from a more progressive liberalism, reacted unfavourably. In its later manifestations, particularly in recent years, libertarianism has allied itself with conservatism. We shall look briefly at the continuity of ideas, especially through the views of Hayek as a self-styled liberal, and also explore the affinity of libertarianism with anarchism, but leave the question of the current libertarian allegiance to conservatism to Part III. An appropriate starting-point is the political thought of Herbert Spencer who, although not the most typical representative of the late nineteenth-century libertarian political and ideological backlash, was chosen by many libertarians as the anchor point of their ideological propensities and group-political activities. Spencer served as an unusually good popularizer and disseminator of libertarian ideology and his central role as an ideological producer is justified by the wide echo his writings had in the USA as well as in Britain. Nevertheless, he cannot be studied in synchronic isolation. A number of second-level, and secondrate, libertarian ideologists—many of whom constituted a conscious grouping with Spencer as their mentor—will also be sampled. (b) THE INDIVIDUAL AND LIBERTY: THE RETREAT TO NON-CONSTRAINT

When libertarian ideas first appeared they were not denoted as such, being close to the rising ideology of liberalism. It is only with the further developments of that ideology that libertarianism broke off from a fast-moving mainstream. Needless to say, libertarians asserted the reverse: they were the true liberals and the liberal tradition was departing from its own precepts. Spencer, more than most, was conscious of the parting of the ways and fought hard to 'conserve' the liberal tradition and prevent it from abandoning what he believed were its core principles. His failure to accomplish those ends teaches us something about the relationship between ideological ascendancy and socio-political relevance, and about the manner in which influential political thinking reflects the historical and sociological realities of powerful, articulate, or vocal groups. To understand Spencer a diachrortic perspective is also necessary. His views were moulded in the mid-century and were strongly influenced by the doctrines of 'economic liberalism', the late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century theories disseminated in particular by Adam Smith and the political economists, although

280 Liberalism: The Dominant Ideology Spencer did, when younger, advocate land nationalization and diverged from the political economists in important ways.4 Their brand of liberalism was a specific reaction to a particular set of events and intellectual problems, and it is as mistaken to generalize that variant as liberalism as it would be to attach liberalism permanently to any other set of historical contingencies. Indeed, from the wider perspective of the faces of liberalism over the past two centuries, the political economy version is as exceptional and as unusual in its components as the libertarian one, with which it shares many features. Libertarianism is largely the product of a time-specific interchange between liberalism and economic theory. Liberal ideology achieved take-off in the early nineteenth century while flying the colours of political economy, even though its famous predecessor, Lockean proto-liberalism, was notably different from this later version. That cultural contingency played a major part in the initial definition of liberal ideological parameters, and has been notoriously difficult to shake off in some political and scholarly circles. In the main, political economists decontested liberal premisses by emphasizing the individual as the centre of the social world and the repository of the qualities needed for progress and economic flourishing. Whereas liberalism had previously relied on natural rights theory to carve out an area of individual action outside the potential intervention of tyrannical government, that theory had supplied individuals with vague claims to respect and dignity rather than with rationales for certain activities. Now political economists began to equip liberalism with clear ideological functions that explained, justified, and further encouraged an entire politico-economic system. Not only were societies divested of group structures and communal allegiances, so that individuals alone were units of political analysis, but those individuals were the product of a conception of human nature that coloured liberal core concepts. They were characterized as self-seeking, competitive, initiative-taking entities, an outlook that dovetailed neatly into the psychological theories dominating utilitarian thinking. As each individual5 had in view 'his own advantage . . . and not that of the society', that conception was opposed to the one embedded in natural rights theory, guided by the prevalent ethical precepts of 4 J. D. Y. Peel, Herbert Spencer: The Evolution of a Sociologist (London, 1971), 63, 137; D. Wiltshire, The Social and Political Thought of Herbert Spencer (Oxford, 1978), 119-23. 5 Quoted from Adam Smith, in A. Bullock and M. Shock (eds.), The Liberal Tradition (Oxford, 1956), 25.

The Liberal Pretenders 281 the Christian religion, and endowed (except in the non-liberal case of Hobbes) with a fundamental altruism institutionalized by a social contract. Whereas Millite and post-Millite liberal paradigms placed human action within the context of development, this earlier genre, both in its political economy and in its utilitarian versions, attached itself to the notion of maximization as a desirable and obviously quantitative value. But though human beings were maximizing creatures, there was a divergence of approach over the internal or external nature of that maximization: was it a psychological drive for pleasure or happiness, or a productive drive to increase financial gain? Both possibilities decontested human rationality in a distinctive way. They located it in subjective individual conduct, unchecked by external standards, and equated it with the attainment of the largest possible number of units of whatever good the individual wished to pursue. The clever device of the invisible hand, suggesting that social benefit accrued mainly, if not solely, through the pursuit of private gain, was instrumental to that argument. This rationality was dressed up in an intersubjective scientific garb, and self-seeking quantitative maximization was described as a universal human trait, thus maintaining the generalizing appeal that liberalism had inherited from natural rights theory.6 The effect of this doctrine on liberal core concepts is instructive. The notion that the private pursuit of individual benefits was mutually advantageous implied an aggregative conception of social structure which utilitarians like Bentham were quick to attach to their psychological constructs. Sociability could no longer be a central liberal tenet, if the scientific study of human beings attested to the importance and the survival value of the isolated selfserving individual. It was relegated to the status of a by-product of economic laws that ensured mutual exchange and dependence as a matter of calculating choice, not existential fact This process was abetted by Bentham's insistence that society was the sum of the individuals composing it, by his rejection of the internal dynamics that groups may evolve on their own, and by his refusal to refer to the community except as a fiction or phrase of convenience. The centrality of the general interest in mid-nineteenthcentury liberalism and beyond was catered to by the invisible hand, but certainly not via a direct mechanism that could deliberately produce it. Bentham stated categorically: 'The interest of the 6

Cp. G. de Ruggiero, The History of European Liberalism (Boston, 1959), 22-50.

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Liberalism: The Dominant Ideology

community, then, is what? The sum of the interests of the several members who compose it.'7 In addition rationality, divested of religious and ethical undertones, became an instrumental attribute, as Weber was later to argue.8 Quantitative maximization prompted liberalism to look at human productivity as the criterion of ability and to foster an interest in economics as the arena where human achievement could be measured and human worth put to the test of the market. The need to protect individuals from political tyranny was transmuted into the need to insulate them from contrived or accidental intervention in the exercise of their natural prowess for manufacturing, trading, and entrepreneurship, Adam Smith could therefore talk of liberty as a condition that emerged when the individual was left untouched, not so much physically as through the artificial devices of government; 'All systems of preference or of restraint... being thus completely taken away, the obvious and simple system of natural liberty establishes itself of its own accord/9 One result was the ideological marriage of liberalism and the peripheral concept of free trade as the global expression of laissez-faire. The concept of the state was adjacent to the liberal core only as a guarantor of such natural liberty, and beyond that was relegated to a marginal position it had not known before nor since. Parallel practices followed suit in the mid-nineteenth century. Locked into the ethos of laissez-faire which decontested the concept of liberty was a conception of human nature that thrived on rivalry, was innately aggressive, and whose purposive conduct was aimed at improving material conditions of existence through consumption and rationally calculating reinvestment. Under the aegis of political economy a new human being was introduced into liberalism, reduced to want-fulfilment and bereft of more than a superficial gregariousness, of a sense of community, or of mutual obligation. Individuality was reduced to a formal and uradimensional meaning. The utilitarian promotion of the individual as the sole unit of analysis captured none of the richness of human behaviour and the sophistication that later liberal 7

J. Bentham, Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (Oxford, 1960), 126. * See M. Weber, Economy and Society, ed. G. Roth and C, Wittich (Berkeley, Calif., 1978), L 26; H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (eds.), From Max Weber (New York, 1958), 292-301. 9 Bulock and Shock, Liberal Tradition, 27. Smith, it must be emphasized, allowed governmental intervention in economic affairs beyond the minimalist position often ascribed to him.

The Liberal Pretenders 283 theories could attribute to human interaction. The decontestation of individuality as a liberal core concept was narrow, inasmuch as self-realization or self-development were not yet perceived as worthwhile ends. It focused on the recognition of separate human beings as the loci of action and knowledge. Development and improvement were translated into terms of wealth, so that the core liberal concept of progress, too, persisted mainly on the level of the technical and the scientific. Its open-endedness was the consequence not of the infinite needs or imagination of the human species, but of the infinite cardinal sequences through which the accumulation of wealth could be represented.10 Post-Millite libertarianism is thus an offshoot of an earlier liberal tradition, one that in Spencer's day no longer matched political practice nor served as an adequate response to the perception of the socio-economic issues arising from poverty, and the increasing pressures to extend the meaningful circle of citizenship. When more than one version of the same ideological family is in evidence, the question of its relevance requires assessment alongside the theoretical and intellectual standards that apply to the analysis of a configuration of political concepts. Spencer and other libertarians took an ideology which, in a particular context, in early and mid-nineteenth century, was radical and innovative, and unwittingly transformed it into a static, and partly conservative, one by imposing it on a set of circumstances which it could neither explain nor fashion. The logical adjacency that the libertarians traced among the concepts they employed was not buttressed by the standards of cultural adjacency employed by the predominant groups who had recourse to similar political concepts, but drew its inspiration from cultural assumptions of previous generations that had lost their attraction for most social thinkers as well as for most ideological consumers. Late nineteenth-century Britain is of special interest to the ideological analyst because two increasingly diverging semantic fields were competing over the denotation liberalism'. The political beliefs of the libertarians stand out against liberalism precisely because they were contemporaneous with a maturing progressive variant which was politically and intellectually dominant, as well as the one most acceptable to the adherents of liberalism at the time. Two themes stand out in the libertarian defence of an older liberalism against the encroachments of the new: a passionate 10

A representative view of this stage of liberalism is in F. Watkins, The Political Tradition of the West (Cambridge, Mass., 1948), 149-77,

284 Liberalism: The Dominant Ideology resistance to the coercion of individuals in all but a few narrowly circumscribed spheres, and a belief in the self-balancing capacity and evolution of the social order. The one relates to protecting the core liberal concept of liberty; the other provides the purpose that liberty serves and projects the confidence that the extension of liberty will be necessarily beneficial. That appeal to self-balancing natural forces was by the end of the nineteenth century no longer located at the innovatory frontiers of science. Above all, it did not elevate the notion of a deliberately willing and controlling individual. This is why we shall reconsider this second theme as a core conservative belief, and that will prompt the examination of the affinities of libertarianism with conservatism.11 At this stage it is worth noting the kinship of the notion of a self-balancing social order to theories of natural harmony. The latter originated as part of the radical assault of political economy and utilitarianism on the centralized and restrictive regulation of the economy, and contributed significantly to the release of the individual from the fetters of political autocracy. But they suffered the same fate as theories of natural rights through the strategy, employed by their proponents, of attaching 'naturalness' to existing arrangements and to certain areas of human conduct. Spencer thus bridged important aspects of the liberal and conservative ideologies of the late nineteenth century. As he himself wrote, with some regret: 'if the present drift of things continues, it may by and by really happen that the Tories will be defenders of liberties which the Liberals, in pursuit of what they think popular welfare, trample under foot'.12 Spencer, of course, claimed true liberal pedigree for his ideas and he could do so with some justification by carefully selecting his reference groups. It seems needful', he wrote, 'to remind everybody what Liberalism was in the past, that they may 13perceive its unlikeness to the so-called Liberalism of the present'. Here was an acknowledgement by a contemporary, not just a later analyst, that two different strands of thought were competing over the epithet 'liberal'. That contest can only be settled, if at all, by reference to the criteria of the period, compared against the longer perspective provided by current horizons. It reflected the growing " See Ch. 9 below. W. H. Greenleaf, who has devoted much space to libertarian beliefs, divides them into anti-statist and conservative without offering a theoretical rationale for the distinction: The British Political Tradition, ii. The Ideological Heritage (London, 1983). 12 Spencer, The Man versus the State (Harmondsworth, 1969), 81. 13 Ibid. 66.

The Liberal Pretenders 285 confusion over ideological boundaries, largely the product of a fixation with words rather than with meanings and contexts, and was maintained through the growing artificial unity of the Liberal party, as it struggled to retain the loyalty of its centrifugal factions. Spencer declared of liberalism that it stood for individual freedom versus state coercion, that its roots lay in the right of private judgement, that it was realized through the relaxation of restraints in the way of the happiness of individuals, and that it disputed the assumption of unlimited authority to either monarch or parliament. His notion of liberty is interpreted as the non-constraint of individuals by the coercive actions of others, in particular governmental authority, seen as a main, though not sole, source of constraint. Hence 'the liberty which a citizen enjoys is to be measured ... by the relative paucity of the restraints it imposes on him'.14 As with the previous advocates of laissez-faire, Spencer was perturbed by legal constraints far more than by the straightforward coercive acts of individuals. As with them, he did not identify constraints in the realm of the social conditions that operate on individuals, a realm he regarded as beyond human control or, if within such control, only so in the sense that human intervention would have catastrophic effects on the future of the nation, operating against the law of the survival of the fittest. The free contracts that Green had criticized were deemed the model for the just institutionalization of voluntary human intercourse. (c) IN DEFENCE OF PROPERTY

Some of Spencer's assumptions displayed strong similarities with the precepts of the political economists. His concept of liberty was decontested in like manner: 'when [a man] is under the impersonal coercion of Nature, we say that he is free'.15 The notion of 16a self-balancing order is adapted from political economy as well, though instead of an invisible hand Spencer was more prone to talk about a natural justice extending well beyond economics, applying to Malthusian principles concerning the inevitability of some evils, and most importantly to theories of evolution and of biological selection, operating in discernible patterns. Although voluntary human co-operation was essential to individual well14

t5 Ibid. 67, 70, 78, 330, 79, Ibid. 316, M. Taylor, Men versus the State: Herbert Spencer and Late Victorian Individualism (Oxford, 1992), 146-7, 175. 16

286 Liberalism: The Dominant Ideology being and thus to social progress, the emphasis was not on the activation of the market mechanisms that ensured such cooperation but on the uninterrupted maintenance of individual rights to liberty of action and private property, and the deliberate forbearance from offering artificial succour to those whose qualities were of no use to others. Spencer succinctly formulated this position as follows: 'every proposal to interfere with citizens' activities further than by enforcing their mutual limitations, is a proposal to improve life by breaking through the fundamental conditions to life'.17 By surrounding liberty with private property, established as a core liberal concept by an older liberalism though demoted to an adjacent role by the new, Spencer decontested liberty within the idea-environment of being 'left secure in person and possessions to satisfy [one's] wants with the proceeds'.18 Here a law of equal freedom' was the epitome of justice, allowing individuals to proceed with the gratification of their faculties: 'Every man is free to do that which he wills,19provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other man.' That want-satisfaction was dependent on the accumulation of property.20 The invasion of property by the state in particular was thus an anti-evolutionary restraint on liberty affecting the vital conditions to life.21 These views were similar to those of the Liberty and Property Defence League, founded in the 1880s, for whom Spencer came to serve as the ideological focus and inspiration.22 The LPDL was however a loose grouping of libertarians who propagated a relatively simple creed, lacking Spencer's theoretical sophistication. It consisted of members of some of the groups that lost out in the radical economic and political changes undergone in late-Victorian Britain, such as landowners, major employers, and the petty aristocracy. A particular cultural adjacency was consequently superimposed on the logical relationships among the political concepts to which they subscribed, reflecting the experiences and costs these changes had inflicted on them. The high salience given to state regulation in governmental legislation and action directed them to focus on the threat of the 17 19

w Spencer, The Man versus the State, 83-93, 181. Ibid. 181. H. Spencer, The Principles of Ethics (London, 1900), ii. 46. For an assessment see Taylor, Men versus the State, 204-5, 238-43. 20 See Greenleaf, Ideological Heritage, 65. 21 Spencer, The Man versus the State, 182. 22 See N. Soldon, 'Laissez-faire as Dogma: The Liberty and Property Defence League, 1882-1914', in K. D. Brown (ed.), Essays in Anti-Labour History. (London, 1974), 208-33.

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state at the expense of other logical decontestations of its role, but without the broader evolutionary analysis that Spencer had brought to bear on the issue. The LPDL's central tenet was that 'the League opposes all attempts to introduce the State as competitor or regulator into the various departments of social activity and industry . . . [The State's] apparently disconnected invasions of individual freedom of action by central authority are in reality so many instances of a general movement towards State-Socialism'.23 Its members held that 'freedom of enterprise and security of property were the corner stones of prosperity'.24 A core ideological structure was forged which surrounded individual liberty with its material guarantee in the form of private property, moved from an adjacent position virtually to the brink of core status itself, and which incorporated as a further core concept a narrow version of the liberal wariness of concentrated power. Characteristic of the LPDL's stance were the views of Wordsworth Donisthorpe. His preoccupation with the limitation of the state contained two main elements. On the one hand, Donisthorpe (like Spencer) extolled the absolute principle of civil liberty25 and reduced the concept of the state to that of a centralistic wielding of coercion, thus claiming to equate—as was the wont of antistatists—most state intervention with state-socialism. Interestingly, in thus qualifying the role of the state, Donisthorpe traced his beliefs back to Hobbesian origins (even if physical coercion was now largely replaced by legal coercion) and rejected the Lockean version whereby the state could be formed while retaining some fundamental individual liberties.26 If libertarians perceived themselves as discoursing in the Hobbesian tradition and questioning Lockean insights, there is surely a case for scrutinizing their liberal credentials carefully. A state charged with limiting individual conduct would inevitably play a conserving role. Whether or not this approach was a component of a conservative ideology depended on the comprehensiveness of that constraint, the areas in which it applied, which activities were released by it, the consequences for the progress of individual and society, and the reasons given for the value of liberty. It is significant therefore that the state was 23 24

At the back of LPDL pamphlets published in mid-18808. Lord Pembroke, Liberty and Socialism (London, 1885), 5. 25 W. Donisthorpe, Liberty or Law? (London, 1885), 16. See also J. N. Peters, 'Anti-Socialism in British Politics c,1900-22: The Emergence of a Counter-Ideology', D.Phil. thesis (Oxford, 1992), 88-95. 26 W, Donisthorpe, 'The Limits of Liberty', in T. Mackay (ed.), A Plea for Liberty (London, 1892), 54-5. See also Ch. 9.

288 Liberalism: The Dominant Ideology allotted a more repressive task in defending individuals against violence, while relaxing its control over private utilitarian arrangements.27 Libertarians could not dispose with the need for coercion because, unlike some evolutionary anarchists, they entertained no perfectionist view of human nature. Instead, they shifted coercion to an adjacent position, where it serviced their particular concept of liberty—liberty qua non-constraint on individual actions alone— while refusing to protect through coercion the other concepts that liberals placed at the core of their ideology.28 Donisthorpe, however, was not dogmatic about state intervention, permitting it on empirical and expedient grounds,29 and berating his own co-libertarians for an exaggerated concern with the state alone as a restrictor of liberty.30 By denying the existence of a hard and fast line between state interference and individual freedom, and by insisting that each case had to be decided on its merits, he allowed a certain flexibility to obtain among the concepts constituting his ideological structure. Because Mbertarianism emphasized two core principles above all, namely, liberty and the restriction of power, and as the state was conceived merely as the prime agent of power-wielding and bereft of other major functions, the concept of the state was, unusually, adjacently conjoined only to liberty, and that in a highly restricted manner: its role being to limit harmful force applied to individuals. However, a culturally conditioned reluctance to lay this down as an absolute principle meant that the state could be brought in to protect liberty of individual action in general, yet occasionally employed to curtail the misuse of power by private agents, as when preventing cruelty to children and the helpless.31 (d) THE BREAK WITH LIBERALISM

Two morphological features distinguished the libertarian concept of the state from its liberal counterpart. First, a refusal of libertarians to link it directly with other liberal core concepts. Second, an insistence that it be employed as a maximizer of the values it was attached to, rather than—as was the case with liberalism—a less persistent optimizer. Inasmuch as individualism-cum-individuality, rationality, progress, and the common interest are mutually 27 28 29 30

Donisthorpe, 'Limits of Liberty', 68. See e.g. E. S. P. Haynes, The Enemies of Liberty (London, 1923), 20. See Taylor, Men versus the State, 157, 193-4. Ponfsthorpe, 'Limits of Liberty', 79. 31 Ibid. 64, 93.

The Liberal Pretenders 289 sustaining concepts, ineliminable from the liberal core, libertarian ideational configurations differ from predominant liberal paradigms. Although all these concepts may be found in, say, Spencer's thought, they are decontested in such a way as to ensure their distance from the core area of his ideological morphology. At most, being polysemic, some of them appear in that core bearing an alternative meaning that sharply distinguishes them from their mainstream liberal conceptual counterparts. The individual whose release from the aggression of his fellows and from the tyranny of governments was a paramount object of libertarian concern was endowed with characteristics befitting the prevailing economic model of rational behaviour. Spencer attacked the 'socialist' ascription of altruism to people as unsubstantiated by the facts of human nature. Unless 'men's natures will be suddenly exalted', it was the pursuit of private interest that propelled individuals and that constituted their motive power.32 Self-development was thus a possible individual option but unnecessary and unobtainable as an intended universal end. It would be achieved, if at all, only through long-term impersonal laws of evolution. Dissociating himself from the sociability that both the originators of the liberal tradition in its pre-mass ideological mould and newer liberals attributed to human beings, Spencer further rearranged the core components of liberalism. Whereas the utilitarians had referred to society only as shorthand for an aggregate of individuals, the political economists had accepted society's existence, although restricted to a market sphere umpired by a state subservient to economic laws. From them Spencer adopted a resistance to the rising notion of community that the liberalism he confronted in his later life had begun successfully to develop, Because he identified the state with coercion alone Spencer could not conceive of a community seeking through the agency of the state both its own ends and those of its members. State and society were sharply demarcated.33 Spencer was hence unable to attach the core liberal concepts of rationality and the common interest to the new mutation of the 32

Spencer, flic Man versus the State, 330. Ibid, 205. In contradistinction, other libertarians, by concentrating too hard on the dangers to the individual from others, confused the two altogether, Thus the LPDL activist Lord Pembroke moved imperceptibly from asserting that there was 'no simple principle to be found limiting the rights of Society against the individual, and of the individual against Society' to discussing in the following paragraph the impossibility of 'the limits of individual and state rights' (Pembroke, Liberty and Socialism, 55-6). 33

290 Liberalism: The Dominant Ideology liberal common interest: community. He frequently warned of the uselessness of planning and reform—perimeter decontestations of the communal rationality of the new liberals—because of the unpredictability of tampering with the natural social order. He continued to marginalize the state by assigning it to the protection of formal justice and natural rights—alone the components of a 'common' good. Consequently, he made government 'more and more the servant to these essential prerequisites for individual welfare', through limiting it to 'protecting its subjects against aggression external and internal',34 and by denying it any role of initiation or enablement. This view of the state was far more minimalist than the one espoused by more utilitarian libertarians, who (following Adam Smith) were not averse to state intervention in areas such as the Poor Law.35 On the basis of Spencerian premisses, however, social progress was but an umbrella term for individual liberty, secured primarily in the face of a tendency to state aggrandizement.36 The diminished, almost non-existent, role of society was evident in LPDL arguments as well. Donisthorpe reinforced the libertarian predilection for contracts as the main form of mutual combination of individuals: an egoistic motive for social ties that forestalled any sociable tendencies liberals would claim. Nevertheless, 'a State held together by too many compacts will perform all or most of its functions ill. What we have to find is [the] Least Common Bond.' Individuals would not benefit from being thrown together excessively. Typically the state had a major role to play in stamping out behaviour unconducive to contract, such as fraud and stealth.37 The libertarian partiality to maximization, a direct inheritance from its utilitarian and economic forerunners, identifies a major difference between liberalism and libertarianism. We have already discussed the optimalization by liberals of a basket of core values, because maximizing them all is impossible in view of the potential conflicts that may arise among them if they are pursued to their logical conclusions. A controlled enforcement of these cores, when other means fail, is still a legitimate means of ensuring the realization of liberal ends, provided that enforcement will not seriously damage the one core concept most vulnerable to that modus operandi —liberty. Libertarians reject that alternative, preferring to concentrate on maximizing liberty, and liberty alone, and assuming that 34 35 34 37

Spencer, The Man versus the State, 271, See Taylor, Men versus the State, 18, Spencer, The Man versus the State, 163. Donisthorpe, 'Limits of Liberty', 68-70.

The Liberal Pretenders 291 it will cany along with it many other values, such as progress and rationality, which are frequently demoted to positions adjacent to liberty. They adopt that attitude because they presume the total compatibility of those values with liberty, and their automatic advancement by any increase in liberty. Spencer drew this distinction with great conviction and clarity when explaining the difference between the old and new liberalisms: the welfare of the many came to be conceived... as the aim of Liberalism. Hence the confusion. The gaining of a popular good, being the external conspicuous trait common to liberal measures in earlier days (then in each case gained by a relaxation of restraints), it has happened that the popular good has come to be sought by Liberals, not as an end to be indirectly gained by relaxations of restraints, but as the end to be directly gained.38

The new liberal morphology, conversely, had bestowed co-equal status on liberty and welfare. Many concepts that played an important adjacent role in liberal ideology fared badly in libertarian hands. Instructive in this connection was Spencer's attitude to equality. By the late nineteenth century, liberals were decontesting equality as an adjacent corollary of individualism and rationality in a far more generous manner than hitherto, though not, as we have seen, to the extent of regarding it as a core liberal concept. Spencer would have none of this, remaining firmly planted in a world in which formal political equality was the most that could be institutionalized; a view that was increasingly becoming a mark of conservatism. The role of the state was hence as protector of the law of equal freedom, not of any substantive equality. Here again diverging conceptions of human nature coloured the interpretation of political concepts. Spencer asserted that 'the defective natures of citizens will show themselves in the bad acting of whatever social structure they are arranged into. There is no political alchemy by which you can get golden conduct out of leaden instincts/39 To the contrary, turn-ofthe-century liberals mitigated the differences in human wants and capacities through the similarity of human needs and the high favour in which they held multiple ways of human flourishing. They located in social reform that very improvement of human conduct—based on their belief in the interaction between human nature and environment—which Spencer had deemed impossible in the short run. For Spencer, justice was the rewarding of merit and desert, whereas to enable the thriving of the poorly endowed 38

Spencer, The Man versus the State, 70.

39

Ibid. 110.

292 Liberalism: The Dominant Ideology would create a mischief interfering with evolutionary processes.40 Even on the subject of democracy, Spencer was grudging and patronizing, confining the role of representatives—because of their inferior level of intelligence—to 'the comparatively simple duties of protector' of existing rights, rather than policy-making.41 Democracy was not adjacent to rationality and sociability, but an adjunct to the limitation of power alone. Spencer's views did contain some departures from the precepts of political economy. His conception of a natural balance drew sustenance from evolutionary principles rather than from market principles. He did not elevate prosperity as the end of human activity as starkly as the political economists did, nor see liberty as the prerequisite to prosperity alone. In that sense Spencer was atypical. Most other libertarians regarded human beings primarily as wealth-producers rather than self-gratifiers. Though wealthproduction had a part to play in liberal ideologies, people were never reduced to that function in terms of their internal purposes as well as of their external interaction. Even when liberal theory began again to disengage from strong models of sociability, as was the case after the First World War, it did not reincarnate homo economicus*2 Libertarians, on the other hand, proceeded with these time-frozen themes unabated. Francis Hirst, sometime editor of the Economist, provides such an instance. Like many libertarians he turned to the sphere of commerce and industry in order to continue the traditions of 'economic liberalism'. Already when a young man Hirst regarded 'the legitimate freedom of the individual' as endangered by the rise of monopolies.*3 He consequently launched an appeal to the old principles of liberalism, emphatically detaching it from collectivism— frequently equated with socialism—and attacking 'the organic unity of the State' as 'one of those pretentious metaphors'.44 In addition Hirst purged his creed of a core liberal concept by warning against progress for its own sake, if progress meant change. What else it could mean was left unclear, though in later writings progress was once again linked to liberty.45 Hirst's decontestation of the concept of limited power invites examination. The opposition to monopolies was a liberal tenet, 40

Spencer, The Man versus the State, 136-7; D. Miller, Social Justice (Oxford, 1976), 186. 41 Spencer, The Man versus the State, 269, 42 See M. Freeden, Liberalism Divided (Oxford, 1986), 127-76. 43 F. Hirst, 'Liberalism and Wealth', in Essays in Liberalism by Six Oxford Men (London, 1897), 34, 44 4S Ibid. 53-4, 60. F. Hirst, Liberty and Tyranny (London, 1935), 16.

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extended from concentrations of religious and political power to the economic field. The liberal right wing, as well as libertarians, was reluctant to grant central government control over all but a few natural monopolies. This followed from their desire to promote the non-restraint component of liberty by emphasizing the economic aspects of human nature. That nature was revealed as efficient wealth-creating and the instrumental forging of relationships among individuals, and fostered the concept of competition in the key adjacent role of allowing the expression of liberty and the maximization of its value. As Hirst later wrote: 'rivalry and competition are regarded not as abominations, which an all-wise Government should eliminate from life, but as salutary and healthful incitements to native energy'.46 Another noted libertarian, Ernest Benn, extolled the dual aims of national security and prosperity as central to his creed, while criticizing the public organization of comfort and happiness.47 His writings resurrected the Victorian interest in character as conduct securing the respect of others, as self-sufficiency, and the assumption of responsibility over one's life—another view that converged on conservative thinking.48 The conceptual triad of liberty, property, and security contained the valorized components of that version of libertarianism,49 security being the only aspect of power admitted to the ideological inner sanctum. The state guaranteed all three in a strictly circumscribed manner. Human rationality figured adjacently, mainly in its economic forms and not as a universal feature. The common interest, let alone natural gregariousness, was hardly addressed, unless assumed to emerge from the pursuit of private interests. The temporally parallel new liberal cluster had raised to the fore a self-developing and expressive notion of human nature, serviced by the beneficial consumption of healthy and invigorating material and social goods, concerned with a broad understanding of human welfare, and anxious to contain, if not eliminate, the wasteful and aggressive consequences of competition that propelled the concept of liberty into promoting a different form of power struggle. The libertarian opponents of state centralization did not recognize the possibility of harmful private pockets of power emerging as a result of competition and eroding the liberal principle of widely, rather than fortuitously and irregularly, dispersed power, and of 46

Ibid. 289. E, J. P. Benn, Account Rendered 1900-1930 (London, 1930), 10, 13. See also Greenleaf, Ideological Heritage, 295-308. 48 Benn, Account Rendered, 23-7. 49 See also Freeden, Liberalism Divided, 127-37, 47

294 Liberalism; The Dominant Ideology democratically accountable, rather than market-controlled, power. They deliberately assigned a deficit of meaning—by contemporary standards—to their concepts. The peripheral notions of libertarianism reflected, on the whole, the negativist content of their core. Opposition to increased and progressive taxation and to the social reforms of the pre-1914 Liberal administrations followed from an attitude to mutual help that saw it as inimical to evolutionary patterns or as destructive of the incentives that powered economic entrepreneurship. The demand for balanced budgets arose from a strong feeling for individual accountability and a fear of the wastefulness of large bureaucracies. Increased governmental centralization was met with general outrage. Free trade remained high on the libertarian agenda as a policy cure-all for the evils of unemployment and overproduction, as well as the recommended road to international harmony. The rise of trade-unionism was seen as providing an illegitimate alternative power centre and as an unacceptable tampering with market laws.30 As a standard against which to measure the validity of the analysis of libertarianism proffered here, we may refer to a contemporary ideological consumer-participant, F. C. Montague. In a wide-ranging survey of the concept of liberty, Montague observed: the party of progress are still embarrassed by exhausted traditions and obsolete watchwords. They are Liberals; Liberals are friends of liberty; and liberty means that everybody should do as he likes. Such freedom we may allow to be in some degree requisite of all intelligent or moral life; but just now, and in England, it is not the thing most wanted, or the thing which rational Liberals should most strenuously endeavour to supply. The reconstruction of society, not the liberation of individuals, is now their most pressing task... We profess to be successors of Bright and Cobden, to be the disciples of Ricardo and Mill; but we conform our action to the urgent necessities of the age, nor does the great reputation of Mr. Herbert Spencer shame us out of constraining our children to go to school.51

Overlooking the arguable interpretation of Mill, we have here an acknowledgement of the changing meaning of concepts, in the light of cultural constraints that demanded a consequent restatement of the meaning of liberalism itself. If an ideology retains its name while its main concepts are the subject of new decontestations, it will begin to represent new ideas, even if in old bottles. 50 51

Soldon, 'Laissez-faire as Dogma', 222-7. F. C. Montague, The Limits of Liberty (London, 1885), 15-16.

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Montague was unusually sensitive to those changing meanings. Of the core liberal concept of rationality he wrote; 'If fifty years ago it was rational to abridge, and it is now rational to enlarge the functions of the state, there must be some principle in the philosophy of politics by which both of these contrary endeavours are justified/52 What had happened was that cultural contingencies, broadly subsumed under the 'condition of the people' question, had conspired to attach new adjacent concepts to rationality. The principle Montague alluded to was simply that the values incorporated in the core concepts of liberalism were now seen to be better preserved through different means, by dint of new social theories, perimeter achievements of reformers and government, and the sheer necessity of a reassessment of the chief problems of national life. Ethics and utility had combined, despite the demurral of some modern philosophers, to attain both individual and social goods through whatever instrument was considered most efficient, rather than endowing certain instruments with an inherent disutility that was also counterproductive to morality—two common but divergent facets of rationality. The diachronic mobility of the adjacent concepts of liberalism had become a feature of that ideology. That very feature provokes some analysts to deny that liberalism is an 'ideology', a term they reserve, as has been seen, for rigidly closed systems. Libertarianism, as understood by roost of its adherents in Spencer's period and by his disciples, admirers, and intellectual descendants, overlaps with liberalism, but does so in a manner insufficient to constitute the liberal profile. Its conception of liberty supports an ideological structure as restrictive as that of any ideology and more restrictive than some. It establishes areas of exclusion of conceptual meaning that would appeal to philosophical purists but are in fact a reflection of culturally and historically contingent options that override the logical relationships among its permitted concepts. It subscribes to a modest view of politics because politics employs means and encourages institutions that are, on the libertarian view, essentially inimical to the good life. Individuals alone are regarded as sovereign decision-makers, their 'good' being on the whole coterminous with their wants and desires. Form rather than content carries the day here: if people are choice-making entities, they are so independently of the choices they make. Virtue and ethics, which play a major role in Millite liberalism, the new liberalism, and their Continental counterparts 52

Ibid. 16.

296 Liberalism: The Dominant Ideology —whether attached to individual ends or to social ones as well— are conceived of as extra-political. That is not to say that libertarians do not hold to strong notions of propriety, but that they derive those notions from the sphere of 'civil society' and economic relationships and involve the political machine only to coerce those who fail to play by the rules or to be guided by economic and utilitarian rationality. Otherwise, the power required to control human conduct is unintentionally shifted to the rules of the market, which become the prevalent constraint on individual behaviour. Libertarians, who are blind to such types of constraint, define them out of the sphere of power. They do not acknowledge the existence of coercion that is not the inevitable result of aggressive individual action, or the deplorable result of misguided governmental legislation. For Spencer, as we have seen, nature's coercion was not coercion at all, but significantly freedom. This laxity with conceptual definition is ironical in view of the protests from libertarian and conservative groups when new liberals employed a parallel method, justifying social insurance by identifying state compulsion with freedom. Each side refused to assign the term 'coercion' to a practice they regarded as beneficial, even though individual choice was absent. The dividing line between what was natural and what was artificial was itself an instance of defining reality through conceptual interpretation. The one ideological view assumed the relationships among its core concepts to be natural, hence immutable; the other allowed for deliberate modifications that assisted individuals and their societies in securing the optimal realization of those concepts. Liberalism, not libertarianism, is characterized by the internal flexibility of its core concepts which, rather than bolted rigidly together, are capable of bending with the pressure of contingency to avoid snapping completely. We find in libertarianism both liberty and the limitation of power, but a liberty that is want-based and that lacks the current philosophical concern with choice and autonomy as essential aspects of an individual's moral capacity; and a power distribution that places a low premium on the responsibility of its guardians and a much higher one on the traditional respect for individual rights. We also find rationality, but it is self-seeking and competitive. Liberalism and libertarianism both hold a view of the world as rationally controllable, but while the former shares control between individual and society (the latter entity expressing its rationality by harnessing the state as planner and systematic manipulator of the human environment), libertarianism incorporates the notion of individual control and responsibility, regarding the state as a sub-

The Liberal Pretenders 297 servient instrument rather than as the agent of a society that may even attain co-equal partnership with the individual. Progress comprises tite voluntary activities of a material 'social' order for whose more general thriving wealth is a precondition, and that is left undisturbed by combined intelligence. Libertarians who embrace evolutionary principles see them as impersonal and not subject to human modification, thus placing change and development beyond the organized direction of societies. It is an error, argued Spencer, to see society 'as a manufacture; whereas it is a growth'; while the new liberal Ritchie retorted that such a choice was spurious, that societies both grow and are made.53 Individualism is the uninhibited assertion of the sovereignty of the private, anchored in an elevated regard for personal property ownership. This is a clear and consistent ideological position, but whatever we call it, it differs sufficiently from Millite, new liberal, dominant French and German, or American liberalisms to validate its recognition as a separate ideological entity. Above all, this illustrates forcefully that even when the internal conceptual structure of an ideology can remain virtually unchanged, its interpretation may undergo considerable diachronic modifications; whereas the removal of merely one or two concepts from its core will cut off the family resemblance that assigns it to a particular place in a classification. The important methodological point is that it .is entirely insufficient to characterize a system of beliefs as a member of a particular ideological family on the basis of its central and most salient terminology alone, without ascertaining the ideational environment that serves to lock its main concepts into particular modes of meaning. Social and cultural factors conspire to reformulate the denotation of a specific configuration of political terms, and their onomasiological identity with another ideological instance should not obfuscate the possibility that they no longer bear the same meaning. The family allegiance of a given ideology may be transferred, intentionally or not, as the particular configurations of its concepts are put to the test of cultural and ideational context, and as some of its internal decontestations change, and adjustments are made to core and peripheral conceptual positioning. In view of this possibility, the movement of a system of ideas from the liberal to the conservative family of ideologies is a plausible occurrence, and one that will receive attention later on. 53

Spencer, The Man versus the State, 147; D. G, Ritchie, Principles of State Interference (London, 1891), 49.

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Liberalism: The Dominant Ideology (e) HAYEK: AN APPEAL TO THE OLD LIBERALS

The main justification for including Hayek in a study of modem ideologies is the increasing influence his writings have wielded in recent years. This study acknowledges the challenge posed by herrneneutics, which is to assess the past from the viewpoint of what is currently the present, while reappraising the present in the light of that continually changing perspective. Inadvertently Hayek has become an ideologue whose ideas have been reproduced at different levels of articulation and exactitude, and who has attracted numerous ideological followers. The first task, to evaluate the ideology produced by Hayek, will be briefly addressed in this section; for reasons that will become clear in Chapter 8, the second task—the reappraisal of his ideas in a recent context—is more appropriately left to Part III. Hayek was a sophisticated thinker who defies easy ideological categorization, though most of his disciples do not. Because of the complexity of his ideological structure, his theories pose a challenge to the analysis of contemporary liberalism more serious than that of Spencer and the nineteenth-century libertarians. Hayek's views were also clearly at variance with the philosophical liberals discussed in the previous chapter, so that he is yet another competitor over the meaning of liberalism, one who partly drew from past traditions yet brought material from recent philosophical and anthropological debates to bear on his scholarly interests. Indeed, Hayek was a very important player in the conversation over the nature of liberalism because he illustrates how much of it is informed by reference to different traditions, both historical and artificial, which retrospectively redefine the conceptions we entertain about the present product. In signalling attachment to a political discourse, Hayek recognized the paramount British component in the development of liberal thought, and regarded Continental liberalism as dominated on the whole by British liberal thinkers.54 Whether liberalism is Hobbesian, Lockean, Kantian, or even Humean, is not a question that should unduly concern ideological analysts, unless those philosophers figure centrally in the public perceptions of most liberals or, at least, can be demonstrated to have had direct and crucial influence on the categories into which liberalism is divided. The fashionable attachment of a known philosophical system to an ideology in order to facilitate its 51

Hayek, New Studies, 126-8.

The Liberal Pretenders 299 comprehension may instead have an obfuscating role, inasmuch as the system will have extraneous components irrelevant to the ideology in question. It may also confusingly cut across ideological structures and diminish our understanding of the ideology in question as an ideational entity in its own right, rather than a hybrid and indistinct offshoot of succinct philosophical constructs. An examination of Hayek's position is especially revealing with respect to the currently available conflicting perceptions of liberalism. Because he was a forsworn opponent of rationalist constructivism and yet called himself a liberal, the question arises: if we accept his self-definition, what type of ideology has liberalism now become? The dominant view among modern philosophers regards liberalism in a light similar to the contractarians of yore, namely, as a view of human nature and society that has great rational appeal, that is morally attractive, and that is ultimately both just and, because it is just, efficient. Above all, it is a set of political ideas that can be acquired by individuals and put to work to create a good society. Hayek is situated towards the other end of the pole (though not at its end) in that he saw liberalism as the evolved expression of a set of attitudes and rules, mainly concerning liberty, necessary to protect certain ways of life that naturally develop at the heart of a well-functioning society. The concepts of rationality and progress, so central to the liberal tradition, were extended by Hayek to include not only a characterization of human essence and activity—the subject-matter of liberalism—but to provide a battleground over the meaning of liberalism itself. Hayek mounted a challenge to some of the most notable twentieth-century perceptions of liberalism, both philosophical and ideological. Instead of being seen as a philosophy created to solve problems of well-being and justice, he presented it as a philosophical anthropology that grows under certain conditions but cannot be imposed or transplanted. Instead of being based on assumptions relating to an abstract Rawlsian individual, furnished with a pre-social moral and intellectual disposition, Hayek proffered an individualism that locates its subjects in concrete societies prior to the expression of their relationships in liberal terms. And instead of an automatic alliance between the liberal tradition and the idea of guided rational progress, he expressed a deep scepticism concerning the attainment of malleable public knowledge. Rather than signifying improvement, progress was reduced to the adaptability that is a consequence of liberty itself. The debate is a contemporary reworking of the choice between societies that grow and those that are made, the choice that Ritchie rejected. The

300 Liberalism: The Dominant Ideology synthesis offered by Ritchie is an apposite comment on liberalism itself, for liberalism is neither contained in the notion of a normative theory that can shape human relationships, nor in the notion of a reductionist approval of the unconstrained relations that actually emerge among individuals. Seeing it as a system of political ideas that evolves to the point where it controls aspects of its future development may assist in accommodating the tensions between a socially located view of liberalism and the notion of maximal rational choice that many liberals cherish. How does all this tie up with the morphological analysis of liberalism as an ideology? Current philosophical liberalism approaches the structure of liberalism as a matter of designing in advance the optimal decontestations of the concepts that permit the expression of philosophical value-preferences. Ideological structure, according to this view, is initially malleable and can be shaped by philosophers-cum-ideologues to ensure the protection and attainment of certain ends—justice, reason, and liberty, for example. Its basic concepts can be tailored so as to obtain maximal mutual compatibility. Once finalized, however, because it reflects rather determinate pre-applied theories on the meanings of concepts, the structure is relatively unbending and impervious to perimeter notions (though not as rigorously as many ideologies outside the liberal family are). Hayek, on the contrary, referred to concepts whose meanings evolve naturally, embedded within the traditions of a society. His method was ostensibly to limit the deliberate design and decontesting of concepts to those (such as the rule of law) necessary to protect the ideas that proved adaptable and efficient in the course of history. Obviously, his interpretation of the liberal tradition—an interpretation lacking in contemporary philosophical liberalism because unnecessary to its scheme—is the area most vulnerable to assertions of misguided decontestations on his part. If American philosophical liberalism is open to accusations of abstract preconceptions concerning human capacities and of glossing over the historical complexities of culture and politics, Hayek is open to counter-accusations of an arbitrary and historically inaccurate selection of the dominant traits of liberalism as it has evolved. In his specific writings on liberalism Hayek differentiated between British liberalism, evolving and concentrating on individual freedom as 'protection by law against all arbitrary coercion', and Continental liberalism, incorporating 'a rationalist or constructivist view which demanded a deliberate reconstruction of the whole of

The Liberal Pretenders 301 55 society in accordance with principles of reason'. As we have seen, this does an injustice to both sides of the channel. Hayek focused his attention on 'classical British liberalism', nurtured by Hume, Smith, Ferguson, and, tellingly, Burke;56 however, he charted no non-classical British variant and the radical changes introduced by Mill and Green are noted as movements towards a moderate socialism and a positive conception of liberty. Hayek was virtually silent on liberal intellectual developments after that, but significantly remarked that Campbell-Bannerman's 1905-8 administration 'should be regarded as the last Liberal government of the old type, while under his successor, H. H. Asquith, new experiments in social policy were undertaken which were only doubtfully compatible with the older liberal principles',57 We are not informed what the newer liberal government or principles could have represented. In another major work Hayek referred briefly to the introduction of the French tradition of liberty into British liberalism, but did not actually discuss the merging, as distinct from the difference, of the 'empiricist' and 'rationalist' traditions in British liberalism.58 He had thus little to say on the symbiosis of Continental and British thinking through the influences of Comte, SaintSimon, and von Humboldt on Mill, and of Kant and Hegel on Green,59 when he dismissed Continental constructivist liberalism as lacking, unlike the British evolutionary type, a definite political programme. Notably, when Hayek approvingly quoted Kant as the source of the tenet that the freedom of each must be compatible with an equal freedom for all,60 he not only put Kant's ideas to work in a manner remarkably different from the American philosophical liberals, but ignored his lack of impact on the British, preGreenian, classical liberalism Hayek condoned. Hayek's substantive discussion of liberalism relied heavily on the early nineteenth-century British model. He regarded political and economic liberalism as inseparable and their analytical distinction as false, because economic activities are natural and to direct them would minimize the knowledge available from a selfgenerating spontaneous order. That knowledge was essential to 53

Hayek, 'Liberalism/ New Studies, 120; "The Principles of a Liberal Social Order', in F, A. Hayek, Studies in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (London, 1967), 160. 56 57 Hayek, Studies, 160. Hayek, New Studies, 130. 58 F. A. Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty (London, 1960), 56. * This latter point appears in one sentence in a footnote (ibid. 425). *° Hayek, Constitution, 196-7.

302 Liberalism: The Dominant Ideology achieving a multiplicity of human ends. The political sphere imposed rules of law within which this negative conception of liberty could be attained. It was important for Hayek that these rules or laws be general, not specific, commands, their function being simply to guarantee the co-ordination of the overall order of actions by which individuals pursued their own ends, through 'defining the protected domain of the individuals'. It was equally important that those rules were the outcome of experimental social evolution and not imposed by arbitrary fiat. Unusually for a supporter of classical liberalism, Hayek's approach diverged from the laissez-faire position, because he did not believe in a natural harmony of interests. But neither did the English utilitarians, whom he saw as an objectionable example of constructivism and who, contra Hayek's analysis, had a major input into the British liberal tradition. How, then, could Hayek reconcile a negative view of liberty with the need for co-ordinating human activities? The answer lies in his sociological and historical premisses, which pointed him, albeit protesting loudly,61 in the direction of conservatism. Though Hayek entertained an experimental and dynamic conception of historical change, he did not subscribe to a theory of progress. Instead, in terms not far removed from Burke, he saw social evolution as a repository of collective human wisdom, and the source of guidelines and procedures which adjust human relationships.62 The legal underpinning of liberty is simply the safeguard of an evolving harmonization of human activities, learnt through the trial-and-error experiences of generations and, crucially, bereft of an identifiable end or telos (human knowledge was too fragmented for that to be possible). Hence the law acted merely as the 'essential condition for the maintenance of a self-generating or spontaneous order',63 Liberty, law, and property are core concepts of Hayek's selfdeclared liberalism, though liberty is allotted 'supreme principle' status.64 Rationality, progress, individualism, and sociability appear in somewhat idiosyncratic guise and occupy a less than central position in the structure of his ideology. These morphological divergences from mainstream liberal configurations require further exploration if we are to determine whether sufficient family resemblances exist to affirm Hayek's membership of the liberal 61 62 63

See the discussion of 'Why I am not a Conservative', in Ch. 9 below. See J. Gray, Hayek on Liberty (Oxford, 1984), 42. 64 Hayek, New Studies, 135. Italics added. Hayek, Constitution, 68.

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club. One thing is quite clear: Hayek's position was not an unadulterated restatement of the classical liberalism he admired. The analytical issue is not therefore one of adopting the approach of many late nineteenth-century libertarians, namely, ascertaining the nature of liberalism by employing a temporal trajectory and dismissing its later manifestations as erroneous deviations from the straight-and-narrow path of the original doctrine. Rather, Hayek intriguingly shared with various schools of the reformulated liberalisms he rejected some aspects of post-classical liberal theory, such as a version of evolutionism or the embedding of individuals in concrete social settings, but a closer inspection is necessary in order to determine whether that apparently common ground really exists. On the decontesting of liberty Hayek's position was relatively straightforward. Liberty is a state 'in which a man is not subject to coercion by the arbitrary will of another or others'.65 Although Hayek was rightly conscious of the subjective meaning of words, he noted that the meaning he chose was the 'oldest meaning of freedom'—a reassuring observation for his system of ideas, which relied heavily on tradition as an analytical Archimedian point. Crucially for Hayek, liberty describes one thing only and can therefore be distinguished from other things, mistakenly also called freedom.66 This remark however suggests strongly that the meaning of words ought to be determined by reasons unconnected with actual usage, and that the conceptual craftsman, preferred by many philosophers, does after all have a role to play in an approach that emphasizes an anthropological social evolution and the errors of a guiding constructivism. Importantly, freedom is the absence of coercion rather than the absence of intelligent choice, or the blocking of the 'freedom of the will', or the absence of obstacles to one's desires. Hayek thus decontested the ineliminable component of the concept of liberty, non-constraint, in a specific manner, one that 'describes the absence of a particular obstacle—coercion by other men'.67 The concept of liberty, Hayek readily conceded, is dependent on the meaning of the concept of coercion. It was therefore fashioned by the following definition he offered: 'By "coercion" we mean such control of the environment or circumstances of a person by another that, in order to avoid greater evil, he is forced to act not according to a coherent plan of his own but to serve the ends of another/68 This remarkably value-laden definition amply illustrates 65

Ibid. 11.

66 Ibid. 11-12.

6?

Ibid. 19. Italics added.