notes on liberalism 1

my academic project this term -- try and get a quick historical grasp of the development of liberal political theory starting from the english civil war
and when i read liberal theory that picture above is always in my mind

some general themes:
1) the idea of equality (de jure): a state based on equality, commonality, identity -- of interests, of reason
2) the idea of peace: all citizens share a common interest in peace, prosperity, stability
3) this idea of equality hides the reality of inequality (de facto) and difference
4) this idea of peace hides the reality of conflict

in Calais recently the celebration of VE day as a historical victory over fascism: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YQXEZ9Fhjg
nearby, the CRS after yet another violent raid on Africa House scrawl swastikas on the wall: http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2010/04/449134.html

notes 1 -- english origins -- hobbes & hume vs. the diggers

1. In his Evolution of the Social Contract, Brian Skyrms identifies two "traditions" of thought running through social contract theory from Hobbes until today. The first is "the tradition of Hobbes and -- in our own times -- of John Harsanyi and John Rawls" which "approaches the social contract in terms of rational decision". The second tradition "of Hume", with which Skyrms himself identifies (as does that other leading game theory moralist Ken Binmore), asks not about reason but about "how can the existing implicit social contract have evolved? How may it continue to evolve?"

2. Of course Hume himself vociferously rejected the idea of an "original contract". In re-situating a Humean account of moral and political institutions in terms of convention within the social contract tradition, Skyrms and Binmore perhaps put themselves at odds with a more traditional interpretation in which Hume set himself in opposition to that line. However we draw up our categories, here I will agree that they are right to emphasise the commonality between Hume and social contract theorists. In both Hobbes and Hume, political society can reach an implicit accord, truce or compromise -- in game theory terms, an equilibrium state -- which rests in some way on the commonality of interests of its members. There are two key traits here: 1) all members of a political society share interests in common; 2) this commonality of interests both (a) is causally involved in processes by which we arrived at the status quo -- a more or less stable political or social settlement; and (b) provides the ground for its legitimacy.

We may or may not want to call this status quo settlement a social contract. But that's not the main issue I'm concerned with: with Skyrms, the main difference between "Hobbesian" and "Humean" "traditions" that becomes relevant here is rather about how such a state is achieved: that is, the role of "reason" or "evolution" in the process by which the statis quo is reached and maintained.

3. Whilst we're naming political philosophy "traditions", the third one I'm going to invoke is what Michel Foucault, in the lecture course Society Must Be Defended, calls "the tradition of Nietzsche". This differs quite radically from both Hobbesian and Humean thinking. Without wanting to get stuck into a discussion of the meaning of liberalism, it is perhaps roughly accurate to say that these Hobbesian and Humean traditions are both strands within liberal political thought -- whereas the "Nietzschean" line comes from somewhere well outside of liberalism, whether to left or right.

While Foucault calls this "Nietzsche's tradition", it certainly does not begin with Nietzsche -- just as social contract theory doesn't begin with Hobbes. Foucault himself traces such ideas back through representative voices in Hobbes' own time: the radicals of the English Civil War, levellers and diggers (and ranters), John Lilburne and Gerrard Winstanley, as well as many less well known and anonymous thinkers, writers, pamphleteers. For these radicals, the political order is not seen as an accord made by or for all people (whether issuing from a divine plan or from human agreement) but as an imposition by some people, a dominating group. In mid-17th century discourse this is the "Norman Yoke" or rule of "Anti-Christ" which has emerged victorious in a history of struggle, expropriation, oppression, "theft and murther". Foucault goes so far as to see in Digger texts: "the first formulation of the idea that any law, whatever it may be, every form of sovereignty, whatever it may be, and any type of power, whatever it may be, has to be analysed not in terms of natural right and the establishment of sovereignty, but in terms of the unending movement -- which has no historical end -- of the shifting relations that make some dominant over others." (109)

4. I will characterise this other position in terms of its differences from the two traits identified above. Noting that this is not necessarily the same as Foucault's characterisation -- I think there is a lot more in what he is saying than the limited characterisation I will try to give here. In any case, for the tradition of Winstanley and Nietzsche: 1) members of a political society, rather than sharing common interests, have interests which are radically opposed; 2) the status quo is not then an outcome of a process (evolutionary or rational) grounded in common interests -- but of a process of conflict and struggle between opposed interests.

A few questions to flag up here. Even with this radical move away from common interest, can we maybe still think of a political settlement or outcome in terms of an agreement, accord, compromise (or equilibrium)? That is, not so much a mutually beneficial agreement but a treaty imposed by the victors and accepted grudgingly by the losers -- possibly even a treaty with which no party is truly satisfied? And what implications does this have for the notion of legitimacy of an accord? And what implications do these different ways of thinking have for how we conceive of the dynamics of social change -- for the stability of any political settlement?

5. In the fifth lecture of Society Must Be Defended, Foucault reads Hobbes, against the usual grain, not as a theorist of war but as an anti-conflict theorist who "wants so much to eliminate war". This doesn't just mean that Hobbes' system is based fundamentally on the desire for peace, and particularly to avoid the great catastrophe of civil war; but that his work is all about disappearing the "secret" history of conquest and domination in a theory of contract and consent.

In fact Hobbes, unlike some other social contract theorists, is quite open about the fact that states originate and change hands not with voluntary agreements but in acts of violence -- conquest and usurpartion. His move is not, then, the brazen historical denial which Hume witheringly exposes. Rather the key step (Leviathan chapter XX) is to identify "commonwealth by acquisition" -- i.e., institution or takeover of a state by force -- as simply another form of "sovereignty by institution". In both cases subjects enter a contractual relationship in which they consent to the sovereign becoming their representative, and are motivated to do so by fear for their lives. The two cases "differeth ... onely in this, that men who choose their sovereign, do it for fear of one another, and not of him whom they are afraid of." The moment where sovereignty appears is not in battle itself but in the aftermath where the loser surrenders to the victor in return for her life. This interaction is simply a particular case of contract; and the particular circumstances that led up to this interaction -- war and violence -- are irrelevant for questions of right and duty, which are fully addressed in the theory of contract.

To put it another way, Hobbes' theory is indeed one which, in Hume's terms, seeks to establish the "tacit consent" of subjects for their subjection. Hobbes and Hume are then at odds in terms of theories of consent: what Hobbes sees as a valid contract is for Hume a case of coercion or involuntary submission "from necessity". (Treatise 3.2.xxx, Essays 2:.12.22).

This difference, in so far it goes beyond terminology, is of course about the origin of a legitimate political obligation. Hobbes agrees that conquest in itself cannot source legitimate sovereignty. His stated alternative is a theory of contractual obligation which sites the transfer of sovereignty in a moment of consensual agreement. On one level at least this is a position which puts him close to positions common in parliamentarian theory of his day -- for example, John Cook's view that until "the people consent and voluntarily submit to a Government, they are but Slaves, and in reason they may free themselves if they can" (Sommerville p65) -- the difference, again, lying in how voluntary a submission this is taken to be.

Without delving too deep into theories of consent and coercion, 17th century or 20th, one point we can make is that Hobbes does not believe that consent to a sovereign is just a certain speech act -- merely "saying yes" at a given moment (or written act such as a signature). On the one hand, no formal act of promising is in fact necessary for obligation to arise: the subject can covenant "either in expresse words, or by other sufficient signes of the Will." On the other, only covenants on certain terms are sufficient to create the obligation: specifically, terms that guarantee the subject's life and "corporal liberty". So for example, the asking of "Quarter", which only defers deliberation on the granting of life, cannot create sovereignty; and we can imagine other forms of agreements between masters and slaves which do not go far enough to grant "corporal liberty", and so stop short of turning the slave into a "free" servant.

The corollary, which Hobbes acknowledges (at least in Leviathan), is that the obligation disappears once a sovereign ceases to guarantee the subject's life and corporal liberty, either because she herself threatens the subject's life or because she fails to protect her subjects against other aggressors. "The Obligation of Subjects to the Sovaraign is understood to last as long, and no longer, than the power lasteth, by which he is able to protect them." The subject can never relinquish the natural right to self-protection, and "the end of Obedience is Protection" (Leviathan 21).

Once this point is made, in fact little of the force of Hobbes' theory of obligation rests in the idea of of a covenant or promise. As Johann Somerville elucidates, Hobbes' discussion of obligation and protection in chapter 21 of Leviathan can in part be read as a contribution to the debate on the legitimacy of the Engagement of 1650, in which all Englishmen over eighteen were required to "declare and promise ... to be true and faithful to the Commonwealth of England, as it is now established, without a king or House of Lords." Hobbes made the promise, but many of his former partisans on the Royalist side refused. On his theory, however, an Englishman living in England would still be bound by an obligation to the new state even if he refused the Engagement; because the Parliamentary government had become the effective protector of his life and corporal liberty. The source of this obligation is not then any promise, but rather the true nature of the subject's interests, of her need or "natural right" to self-protection, whether or not she is aware of, or acknowledges, how this right is in fact guaranteed.

In this sense it is right for Skyrms to identify Hobbes with a tradition "which approaches the social contract in terms of rational decision". The Englishman who refuses the Engagement fails to make a promise that he should, rationally, make. He is all the same subject to political obligation -- on grounds of reason rather than of commitment.

6. In On The Original Contract, Hume demolishes pretences that any government (or its legitimacy) has ever been established through an act of voluntary covenant by its subjects -- rather than in histories of violence and conquest. But, on the reading above, this does not address the core of Hobbes' version of the social contract. Where Hume more clearly differs from Hobbes is, as Skyrms identifies, in his understanding of the processes by which political legitimacy arises or "evolves".

But before the differences, we can start with how much both theories share. First, Hobbes and Hume are both theorists of peace, in the basic sense that both desire above all a political society to guarantee "peace and public order" (Essays 2.12.35). Hobbes is characteristically, notoriously, more bare in his decomposition of the underlying interests or fundamental goods that motivate adherence to political society, which he reduces to individual self-preservation. Hume can talk less individualistically about "the interest and necessities of society" (2.12.45). But, despite different psychological underpinnings, Hobbesian and Humean political theories converge on a shared vision of a stable, well-ordered, prosperous, property-owning society.

Of course there is no reason why a convergence of individual and "social" interests shouldn't take place -- if we take it that society is made up of individuals who all share the same fundamental interests and necessities. The common or social interest in peace and public order is shared by all individual members of society.

(At least on these terms, the possibility of a conflict between individual and general "wills" does not arise for either Hobbes nor Hume. It's worth noting here that, while Hume is claimed as a founding father by contemporary game theorists, his accounts of the origin of conventions -- of justice and property, or of political allegiance -- do not grapple with freerider problems.)

Second, for Hume as much as for Hobbes, it is this underlying interest that grounds the obligation. "The general obligation, which binds us to government, is the interest and necessities of society; and this obligation is very strong." The differences with Hobbes are rather about how this grounding reason -- or interest -- creates political obligation.

For Hume the naturalist, moral virtues and vices are no more than sentiments or impressions of approval and disapproval (Treatise 3.1.2). To say that human beings have a moral obligation to the state is indeed to say that human beings feel such an obligation. (??) In The Treatise, political obligation, or the virtue of "allegiance", is presented as an "artificial" virtue (though he drops this terminology in later texts). An artificial virtue is one that will "produce pleasure and approbation by means of an artifice or contrivance, which arises from the circumstances and necessity of mankind." (Treatise 3.2.1) In one contemporary jargon, we might say that it is "socially constructed"; in another, perhaps, that it is a product of human cultural -- not biological -- evolution.

One possible consequence of this view (at least on some readings) is that political allegiance is not universal to all human beings and communities across space and time: at least in the past there were human communities which had not yet developed conventions of government (and property, and promising) as we know them; such "virtues" or obligations did not then exist for these people; and there are histories to be told about how they first "arose".

And yet, says Hume, at least the rules of justice (i.e., private property conventions), though artificial, are "not arbitrary ... nor is the expression improper to call them Laws of Nature; if by natural we understand what is common to any species, or even if we confine it to mean what is inseparable from the species." Here Hume does assert that, at least in the stage of (cultural) evolution we have reached as modern humans, artificial virtues are universal -- they have been evolved, constructed, and internalised by all humans, and become "inseparable" from human being.
This universalisation is such that the ground of allegiance is available to the reasoning of any rational human being.

However, this inseparably human reasoning needs to be actualised, as it were, in any individual human through a process of experience or learning. We need exercises of "reflection and experience" to learn the "pernicious effects" of disrespect for property; similarly "a small degree of experience and observation suffices to teach us, that society cannot possibly be maintained without the authority of magistrates, and that this authority must soon fall into contempt, where exact obedience is not payed to it."

Hume continues: "the observation of these general and obvious interests is the source of alll allegiance, and of that moral obligation, which we attribute to it." For Hume, as for Hobbes, the existence of a (common) rational interest in social order is what underlies allegiance: but for Hume, the mere existence of this interest is not sufficient, it needs to be actualised in an experiential process.

Hume offers an evolutionary story about the origins of the virtue -- or sentiment -- of political allegiance; and an accompanying story about what happens to obligation in transitions between sovereigns. Of The Origin Of Government gives a complex account of the gradual development of conventional subjection through a combination of force, consent, and habituation. The account of regime changes in On The Original Contract shows how these processes are re-worked each time that a "people" has to reaffirm the bonds of allegiance to a new ruler. Subjects are "commonly dissatisfied" with a new government and "pay obedience more from fear and necessity"; but "time, by degrees, removes all these difficulties" as the people come to cast the new sovereign in the role of legitimate ruler and so re-establish the relation of subjection to which we are already well habituated.

Thus Hume does set out to answer Skyrm's second question -- "how can the existing implicit social contract have evolved? How may it continue to evolve?" But this question, for Hume, is not in opposition to the other "Hobbesian" question of reason: in fact the two questions are complementary.

This complementarity, however, rests on the claim that the evolution of political allegiance is non-arbitrary and "inseparable from" the rational interest of the species. After Darwin -- and after Nietzsche -- Hume's identity of universality, reason, and non-arbitrariness of conventions and moral norms appears less straightforward. Now we're accustomed to the idea of evolutionary contingency we might ask: could it not have been the case that some, or all, human cultures developed their artificial virtues very differently?

7. Now to move away from Hobbes and Hume to the alternative "Nietzschean tradition". Though there might be a number of ways to conceptualise this alternative as an attack on the position outlined above, here I will focus on the first step: the idea of shared fundamental interests. In particular, we can see at least two ways in which an alternative line might attack that position: 1) it can say that members of society have interests which are so opposed that they lead to radically different and conflicting desires for a social settlement; 2) it might question altogether the notion of "interests" at work here.

Here I'm just going to note the possibility of the second, more radical, attack. It could be found in Nietzche and in Foucault. In The Birth of Biopolitics Foucault discusses the origins of "the subject of interest" in early modern theory -- and its later development as "homo economicus" accompanying the growth of economic thought from Adam Smith to 20th century neoliberalism (see lecture 11). At the core of this conception of the human individual, for Foucault, is the principle of "an irreducible, non-transferable, atomistic individual choice". Irreducibility means: there is a bottom line in any explanation of human behaviour in terms of a basic disposition which itself "does not refer to any judgement, reasoning or calculation" -- for example, self-preservation in Hobbes, or the avoidance of pain in Hume (Enquiry CPM appendix 1) and later writers. This irreducible stratum of individual subjects' interests forms the fixed foundation of "liberal" political conceptions. A challenge to such theory is the idea that individuals' interests are not fixed but must be understood as constructed within the social world; and the more we have a conception of this social world as unstable and tumultuous, the less firm such foundations will be.

8. But even if we leave aside such questions about the very idea of a political theory founded on individual interests, a "Nietzschean" position attacks Hobbesian and Humean liberal theories on their understanding of what these interests amount to. Nietzsche himself rejects outright the idea that human beings are interested in peaceful coexistence: contra Hobbes (and Spinoza), he believes that humans (and other organisms) seek not preservation but growth and "self-overcoming". As growth, for Nietzsche, means growth in power at the expense of others -- power is always domination -- individuals' interests are irredeemably irreconcilable. However, we do not need to share Nietzsche's "tragic pessimism" to reject the idea that a state of peace -- a stable social order -- is always a good for all humans.

Hobbes admits (xxx) that there are some people who love strife, risk, and disorder. But even if these are meant to be rare cases, the main point is that an individual's interest in peace or strife does not stand on its own, but is related closely to how their other interests are realised in a social settlement. Put simply, those who do well from the status quo are more likely to desire its persistence. Those who are dispossessed may pursue their claims for a just re-settlement even at the cost of war. The idea that all members have a common interest in maintaining social peace, for both Hobbes and Hume, is thus tied to the idea that the status quo is a victory for all, rather than a victory of some over others. The idea is that all members of society gain in terms of realisation of their other basic interests -- whether these basic interests are understood on a bare Hobbesian model or a richer Humean one.

In fact there we might identify two propositons. (1) That all members gain in the status quo. This gain can be seen as relative to some other available outcome: e.g., a "state of nature", or a state of strife or civil war that will result if the status quo is effectively challenged. (2) That all members gain more or less equally.

I think one interesting question is why, in fact, (early) liberal theorists often advance not just the first but also the second, stronger, proposition. Why is it that equality of gain from political society is emphasised, and inequalities downplayed -- or ignored altogether?

9. For example, there is an elephant in the room in Hume's account of justice. For Hume, as for Locke, the original need for the state is to act as an administrator and guarantor of property rights. The state arises because the artificial virtue of justice -- adherence to property conventions -- is not strong enough alone to protect us from the strife that arises once humans become able to produce, and lust after, large amounts of transferable goods. Political allegiance bolsters justice in serving the same interests of prosperity (associated with a regime of private property) and peace.

The process begins with the observation of common interest: "I observe, that it will be for my interest to leave another in the possession of his goods, provided he will act in the same manner with regard to me. He is sensible of a like interest in the regulation of his conduct. When this common sense of interest is mutually express'd, and is known to both, it produces a suitable resolution and behaviour. And this may properly enough be call'd a convention or agreement betwixt us ..." (Treatise 3.2.2).

Hume's political theory thus begins with a fantasy picture of a world of possessors who all have "like interests" in maintaining their property holdings. Of course in reality Hume, like us, lived in a highly unequal world where the majority of people owned little or nothing, subsisting in near poverty. How can the idea of "like interests" survive once we introduce political theory to reality?

A more subtle pro-status quo position contents itself with the weaker proposition: even admitting that people have very different outcomes under the social settlement, all are meant to do better than under any available alternative. Discussion here is usually then about what range of alternative positions are available: whether the choice is only between the existing unequal social settlement and civil war (return to the state of nature); or what other possible social settlements are available.

We can find both these lines, coexisting, in liberal theory going back to the 17th century. On the one hand, emphasising commonality and downplaying -- or simply ignoring -- difference and inequality; on the other hand, admitting difference but re-asserting commonality with reference to a baseline of feasible alternatives.

In either case, we have theories that ground obligation and legitimacy in reasoning from common interest.

10. Now to the questions flagged up earlier. First, can we still think of a status quo as a social settlement of some kind even in the tradition of conflict? Yes -- where now the "social contract" may be seen as a peace treaty or ceasefire agreement which at least some parties may hope is only a temporary settlement until a time when the balance of forces has shifted.

What goes, though, is an idea of legitimation. On the accounts of Hobbes and Hume developed above, we de-stressed the notion that legitimacy -- moral obligation -- comes from an act of promising. (Hume, of course, sees covenant as at most a secondary source of legitimation for the state; and in Hobbes too, I argued, the real force lies elsewhere.) Similarly, the conflict theorist is unlikely to put much weight in the obligatory force of a covenant -- even if she believes that such a covenant ever took place.

Then if legitimacy derives from rational interest, the temporary peace treaty remains legitimate for a party only so long as it remains in the party's interest to observe it. If the underlying balance of forces does shift so that a party believes it has the power to demand a new treaty, won't such a demand become legitimate? (Or perhaps in a Humean version there will be a lag before the evolution of articificial moral sentiments catches up with a shift in underlying interests?)

In The Birth of Biopolitics Foucault gives another characterisation of liberalism as the doctrine that first creates the subject of interest -- and then collapses the distinction between the subject of interest, bound to follow her irreducible choices; and the subject of right, bound by juridical obligations, for example obligations to uphold covenants. Foucault sees Hume's move away from social contract theory as a key step in this shift: now it is only ongoing interest in the status quo that maintains allegiance, and legitimacy evaporates if this interest fails. Though I have been arguing that this turn begins even in Hobbes ...

(Note: the other characterisation involves how liberalism sets the boundaries of politics and civil society. If the distinction between right and interests collapses, then these realms have to be distinguished in terms of spheres of common vs. individual interests. Everything said here about the identity of common and individual interests applies only in political theory -- not in the market; and in fact this can be what distinguishes the political realm from private affairs.)

11. Liberal political theory is then about identifying true interests that underly legitimate obligations to the status quo. But then liberal theory is vulnerable, on its own terms, to assaults which contest its identification of common interests and instead point out the reality of unequal and different interests.

This is the field of conflict opened up for political theory in the 17th century. Liberal theorists make new legitimacy claims for the status quo by identifying commonality of interest: with two complementary strategies of, on the one hand, downplaying or ignoring (writing out) differences of interest; and where differences are identified, in relativising them by the limitation of feasibility. Against them, radical theorists contest the legitimacy of the status quo by showing that the existing settlement is not in the true interests of the people; that it is in fact an unjust and oppressive settlement imposed by enemies; and that in fact the balance of forces is now shifting, the time has come where a new settlement is possible.