One of the benefits of returning to university as what we term in Australia a "mature-age student" is having the time and opportunity to read work that was either unavailable back when I was an undergraduate or which a working person just doesn't have the time or energy to get through. In that context, I'd like to share some choice quotes I recently came across in Will Kymlicka'a "Contemporary Political Philosophy". In a section entitled "The Politics of Liberal Equality", Kymlicka unloads against the political failures of (non-socialist and non-Marxist) liberal left in terms that are both accurate and devastating.
Kymlicka begins by positing the underlying radicalism of the egalitarians:
"The link between the philosophy of liberal equality and the politics of the welfare state is so strong that many people call liberal egalitarianism 'welfare state liberalism'. [But] Rawls argues that a [socialist*] democracy would be superior to the welfare state, not only in reducing the need for ex post redistribution, but also in preventing relations of domination and degradation within the division of labour. . . . Liberal egalitarians, therefore, should be concerned not only to redistribute income from the advantaged to the disadvantaged, but also to ensure that the advantaged do not have the power to define relations of dominance and servility in the workplace."
*The original term used by Rawls was 'property-owning democracy', but this is Orwellian. In A Theory of Justice, he defines a 'property-owning democracy' as aiming to "sharply reduce inequality in the underlying distribution of property and wealth". It's clear Rawls is describing something much closer to democratic socialism.
"In short, liberal egalitarianism's [political] commitments have not kept pace with its theoretical commitments. [T]his has led to a 'bifurcation of liberalism', One stream clings to the traditional institutions of liberal practice, and exhorts people to lower their expectations of justice and freedom. The other stream reaffirms its principles, but [this] . . .is increasingly matched by [its] disengagement from practical issues.. . . .This may help explain the 'surprisingly conservative' tenor of many of Rawls' and Dworkin's work. Faced with the New Right, liberal egalitarians have indeed been concerned to preserve what is left of the welfare state."
Former Greek finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis (somewhat conspiratorially) also advances this view in a recent Jacobin interview. But, Kymlicka continues, this approach is ultimately counterproductive:
"Partly as a response to New Right critiques that the welfare state penalizes the hard-working and rewards indolence and irresponsibility, [liberals have] tried to emphasize that the welfare state can be made more choice-sensitive. [But] the liberal egalitarian emphasis on ambition-sensitivity, may have unintentionally reinforced the popular perception that the main problem with the welfare state that it coddles the irresponsible."
As a result, we get what is derogatively referred to by critics as the "oppression Olympics":
"[I]n order to overcome this distrust, the disavantaged must enage in . . . 'shameful revelation', - i.e. they have to prove they do indeed suffer from some involuntary disadvantage, whether in their natural talents or childhood upbringing. The inevitable result . . . is to erode, rather than strengthen, the bonds of solidarity and mutual concern between citizens. Elizabeth Anderson . . . argues that liberal egalitarianism's emphasis on distinguishing voluntary from involuntary inequality leads to a disrespectful pity towards the 'deserving poor', and paternalistic hectoring of the 'undeserving poor'."
Kymlicka advocates the same perspective as I do:
"So it might be part of the 'ethos' of a good citizen that we do not pry into the (ir)responsibility of others, but rather trust that they are trying to be as responsible for their own choices and demands as we are in ours. Of course, this means we may be taken advantage of by some of our less scrupulous citizens. . . .[but] a scheme of justice that encourages everyone to view their co-citizens as putative cheats is not a promising basis for developing trust and solidarity."
Bingo. How much do you trust fellow citizens to make their own decisions? How much can you tolerate uncertainty about the behaviour of others? From these essentially psychological metrics, we find the core of the difference between right and left.