The Economist's fourth contribution to the discussion on the characteristics of contemporary liberalism deals with the thought of three of the most important political philosophers of the post-war period, all of a liberal orientation but with very different nuances in the definition of what can be called liberal: Isaiah Berlin, John Rawls and Robert Nozick.
We are pleased to offer our readers the complete translation of the Economist article which constitutes the fourth episode of the series on the liberalism of the future.
A definition of liberal
A liberal is a person who affirms individual rights and opposes arbitrary power. But which rights matter most? The question remains unanswered. Some activists, for example, respond that it matters to free transgender people, women and minorities from unfair social norms, hierarchies and abusive language. Their opponents argue, however, that this means limiting individual freedom of expression with the consequence of preventing discussion of gender or prohibiting the development of minority cultures. Supporters of this type of "identity politics" claim to fight for the defense of everyone's rights against oppression. But their opponents also say the same thing. If they both say they are "liberal", what does this word mean?
Ithe meaningicate of liberal for Isaiah Berlin
The problem is not entirely new. At Oxford in 1958, Isaiah Berlin identified the crucial dividing line of liberal thought, the demarcation between "negative" freedom and "positive freedom." Negative freedom is freedom without interference. Negative freedoms ensure that no person can take his neighbor's property by force or that there are no legal restrictions on parole. "Positive" freedom, on the other hand, allows people to pursue a satisfying and autonomous life, even if this requires accepting interference.
In positive freedom, Berlin saw a sort of viaticum of "evil". Born in Riga in 1909, he lived in Russia during the 1917 revolution, an experience which gave him a "permanent horror of violence". In 1920 his family returned to Latvia and later, after suffering anti-Semitic persecution, he moved to Great Britain. As his brilliant academic career progressed, Europe was ravaged by Nazism and Communism.
Under the reign of positive freedom, the state found the justification for intervening to correct private vices with "public virtues". The state felt empowered to decide on people's behavior, regardless. In the name of freedom he could therefore impose compulsory behavior. Fascists and Communists usually claimed to have a greater truth, an answer to all ethical questions. A truth that was revealed only to their group. Who, then, could feel the need to make an individual choice? The risk of a contraction of freedom becomes particularly great, Berlin argued, if the revealed truth belongs to a group identity, such as a class, a religion or an ethnic group.
Rejecting positive liberty does not mean rejecting any form of state, but recognizing that there are compromises between desirable things. For example, redistributing money to the poor actually increases their freedom to act. Freedom must not be confused with "the conditions of its exercise," Berlin said. “Freedom is freedom, not equality or equity or justice or culture or human happiness or a clear conscience.” The goals are many and even contradictory, and no government can infallibly choose the right ones and avoid the bad ones. This is why people must be free to make their own choices about their lives.
Rawls and the veil of ignorance
However, determining the right sphere of that kind of freedom has always been a great challenge. A pole star can be the principle of damage. Governments should interfere with individual choices only to prevent harm to other individuals. But that's not a sufficient principle for wielding power, because there are many kinds of harms that liberals end up accepting. For example, one entrepreneur could harm another entrepreneur, bankrupting him. The most significant attempt of the 20th century to draw a more definite line between the state and the individual was made in 1971 by the Harvard philosopher John Rawls.
A theory of justice by Rawls has sold over half a million copies, reinvigorated political philosophy and influenced the debate on liberalism for decades. He has suggested an interpretative hypothesis based on the veil of ignorance theory. Behind the veil, people do not know what their place in society will be, they do not know what role their natural predispositions, class, gender will play, or even ignore the generation they belong to in history. Reflection on what people might accept behind the veil, Rawls speculated, can ascertain what is right.
To begin with, Rawls argued, a broad scheme of inalienable "fundamental freedoms" should have been constructed, to be offered, on equal terms, to all.
Fundamental freedoms are those essential rights for human beings necessary to exercise the inalienable exercise of their moral law. Just as Berlin thought that the ability to choose between conflicting ideals was fundamental to human existence, so Rawls thought that the ability to reason imprints humanity with its value. Fundamental freedoms therefore include freedom of thought, association and profession, as well as a limited right to own personal property.
But the extensive property right, which allows unlimited accumulation of wealth, is not contemplated. Rather, Rawls thought that the veil of ignorance could provide two principles for building a just society. First, equal opportunities in social position, status and wealth must be realised. Secondly, inequalities can only be allowed if they respect the principle of the "less well off", called the "principle of difference". If wealth is generated, it must be circulated down to the lowest rung of social status. Only such a rule, Rawls argued, could keep the society going as it does in a cooperative enterprise among its volunteer participants. So even the poorest will know that they have been helped, not hindered, by the success of others. In “justice as fairness” – Rawls's definition of his philosophy – “men agree to share each other's destiny”.
Rawls attributed his book's success to its interaction with the political and academic culture of the day, including the civil rights movement and opposition to the Vietnam War. He demonstrated that left-liberalism was not a hallucination of hippies floating in a cloud of marijuana smoke, but something rooted in serious philosophy. Today, the veil of ignorance is commonly used as an argument for any redistribution policy.
Nozick and the minimum state
Ironically, since 1971, the year of publication of A theory of justice, the rich world has mostly gone in the opposite direction to that advocated by Rawls. Having already built a welfare state system, governments started to liberalize markets. Tax rates for top incomes have fallen, welfare benefits for the least affluent have been reduced, and inequality has increased. True, the poorest have benefited from the resulting growth. But the reformers of the 80s, especially Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, were not Rawlsians. They would have found more harmony with Rawls' contemporary at Harvard: Robert Nozick.
Nozick's book Anarchy, state e utopia, published in 1974, was an assault on Rawls's idea of redistributive justice. While Rawls's liberalism relegated property rights, Nozick elevated them. Other forms of freedom, he argued, were excuses for the immoral coercion of individuals. People who develop their talent cannot be forced to share the fruits that are produced.
Nozick even questioned the consistency of distributive justice with this argument. We assume that there is a just distribution system of wealth. Let's also assume that a large number of people are each willing to pay 25 cents to watch Wilt Chamberlain, then the best player in the NBA, play basketball. A new distribution would then result, with a Mr. Chamberlain much richer than the others since he would benefit from the accumulation of contributions from each subscriber willing to pay for his talent. In this type of transaction, people have engaged in a purely voluntary exchange using unquestionably their own resources, assuming, of course, that the initial distribution of wealth is truly just. In this case what is the problem with the latter? Freedom, Nozick said, overturns all models. Justice is not compatible with a preferential distribution of wealth.
His work contributed to the emergence of a philosophy that was overwhelmingly appearing in his era, the philosophy that theorizes a minimal state. In 1974 Friedrich Hayek, Thatcher's favorite thinker, had won the Nobel Prize for economics. Two years later the award went to Milton Friedman. But while the world has moved to the right, it hasn't changed enough to become completely Nozickian. Anarchy, state e utopia he wanted a minimal state, a kind of "night watchman", to protect property rights. But vast government spending, taxation, and regulation continued under Thatcherism and the Reagan presidency. Even America, despite its inequalities, remains more Rawlsian than Nozickian.
Un useless surplus of utopia
Some of Rawls's fiercest critics come from the left. Those concerned with racial and gender inequality have dismissed his work as pompous irrelevant political philosophy. Both Rawls and Nozick worked on an "ideal theory" – trying to outline the characteristics of a perfect society, rather than suggesting solutions to existing injustices. For example, it is not clear whether Rawls's principle of equality of opportunity could include something like "affirmative action" or any other form of positive discrimination. Rawls wrote in 2001 that "the grave problems arising from existing discrimination and distinctions are not on the justice as fairness agenda." Nozick acknowledged that his views on property rights would apply only in the event that there was no injustice in the acquisition of property (such as the use of slaves or the forcible seizure of land).
Rawls was more interested in institutions than in day-to-day politics. Consequently, on today's issues, his philosophy may seem helpless. For example, feminists say he has done too little to develop a theory about the family. His main indication of the interactions between men and women was that of their voluntariness. This isn't much help for a movement that is increasingly concerned with the social norms that condition individual choices.
Rawlsianism certainly provides few tools for asserting identity politics. Today's left increasingly sees "freedom of expression" as an exercise of power, in which the arguments presented cannot be separated from the identity connotation of those who support them. On some college campuses, conservatives who do not question the concepts of patriarchy and white privilege, or who argue that gender norms are not arbitrary, are treated as aggressors whose freedom of expression needs to be restricted. The definition of "mansplining" is expanding to include people who express a pontificating or obvious opinion, even in a written form that no one is forced to read. Arguments, argue the new identitarian liberals, should be rooted in a "lived experience."
Consent by intersection
This is not how the liberal society as outlined by Rawls is supposed to work. Rawls's theory hinges on the fact that human beings have a shared and disinterested rationality, which is accessible through the veil of ignorance and is strengthened by freedom of speech. If arguments cannot be separated from identity and if the right to speak is in fact a battlefield where groups vie for power, the project is doomed from the start.
Rawls thinks that the stability of an ideal society is based on an "overlapping consensus". All must be sufficiently engaged in the exercise of pluralism to remain involved in the democratic project, even when their opponents are in power. Polarized politics in America, Britain and other countries, where neither side can tolerate the opinions of the other, destroys the basis of the liberal state.
The more group identity is raised above the level of universal values, the greater the threat to society. In America, some leftist groups call their followers "the awakened ones." Some fans of Donald Trump - who led the Republican party very far from Nozickian libertarianism - say they have been "redpilled" (a reference to the film "The Matrix", in which a red pill allows the characters to understand the true nature of reality, which occurs is hidden by the "blue pill", which develops social hypocrisy). In both cases, the respective vision pierces the veil that hides a hidden wisdom and truth that only the enlightened are able to see. Which is to say that such a revelation is the basis of true freedom: an argument that Berlin felt was the first step on the road to tyranny.
The good news
The good news is that pluralism and truly liberal values remain popular. Many people want to be treated as individuals, not part of a group; they judge what is being said, not just who is saying it. Many wounds plaguing public life reflect the climate of social media and campuses, not that of society at large. Most students do not subscribe to the vision of the radical left active on college campuses. However, advocates of liberal democracy would do well to remember that the great postwar liberals, in one way or another, have all argued that individuals must have the strength to resist the oppression of large groups. This, surely, is where liberal thinking begins.
