Virtue and the aristocratic tendencies of liberalism

Liberalism, as a collection of philosophical, political and economic beliefs, is a universalising ideology that shares with the messianic religions a transcendental and utopian character. Like organised religions, liberal societies therefore must confront the fundamental challenge of a material existence that does not usually confirm to ideological expectations. Whereas for many Christians, the assumption of a Good God creates the Problem of Evil; for liberals, who value above all Liberty or Freedom, their perennial challenge has been and remains to explain the problem of Unfreedom: why is it that liberal societies fail to emerge spontaneously, why do so many prove to be unable or unwilling to deliver on their utopian promises, and why do even modern liberal subjects so often come to rebel against its most cherished values?

The God that failed

From the perspective of the early twenty-first century, the elitist tendencies of early liberal philosophers seem obvious; the popular franchise - even for men - wasn’t established practice in the Anglo-Saxon world until the mid-nineteenth century. Locke was heavily invested in slavery, as were many of the US Founding Fathers; Locke famously had a hand in drafting a constitution for Carolina that would have entrenched serfdom and a hereditary aristocracy. In addition to his shockingly racist prejudice, Immanuel Kant was an elitist who believed the ‘unthinking masses’ could achieve enlightenment 'only slowly’. Adam Smith, Rousseau, Montesquieu - all the greats adhered more or less to a republican or ‘aristocratic’ form of liberalism, one I have previously called ‘Liberty for me but not for thee’.

“Liberals were not democrats in the nineteenth century. They were (by definition) against universal suffrage. They were neither reactionary nor politically radical. . . .[M]any types of liberalism had limited political demands when judged from a democratic perspective. . . .[T]he aristocratic liberals’ elitism was a trait widely shared by liberals [and so] liberal discourse, while preserving its democratic potential, tended to adhere to this elitist reality” [Hollinger]

Democracy and liberalism, therefore, have always had a tense relationship - the two are not nearly as joined at the hip as we like to think. Philosophers and politicians have responded to this tension in various ways. How can the apparent hypocrisy between the egalitarian promises of liberalism and the lived experience be resolved without engaging in wholesale critique of either limb? In moral philosophy, there are three main approaches one might take to the resolution of an ethical problem like this: virtue ethics, consequentialism (or utilitarianism), and deontological (or rule-based) ethics. Since liberal capitalism has tended to produce the strongest sustained increases in average standards of living, utilitarians such as Bentham and Mill (and also to some extent, Hayek, Marx and modern neoliberals) saw the trade-offs in terms of individual suffering and alienation as worth paying. This bargain comes under strongest threat when capitalism lurches into crisis and those gains are wiped away, as they are right now. On the other hand, deontological liberals such as John Rawls and Elizabeth Anderson argue that the liberal social contract, despite its elitist origins, can be purified and reformed - their liberalism is aspirational and utopia remains achievable. This is the version of liberalism that most people on the centre-left hold to be true.

But, as I will argue here, mainstream liberalism has not entirely broken with its aristocratic past, and this ‘brahmin liberalism’ (as Thomas Piketty calls it) dips into the well of virtue ethics of explain, and justify, the inherent tension between liberty and equality. In fact, in responding to the anti-democratic critique of the counter-enlightenment, many of liberalism’s greatest defenders in the early twentieth century - including Joseph Schumpeter and Hannah Arendt - held firmly elitist views often drawing explicitly on Kant. Arendt, for example, thought that regard for the masses - who could only ‘labour’ - constituted a betrayal of liberalism and it was only ‘men’ of ‘action’ who could defend a narrow, negative form of liberty from an overweening democracy. The preferences of some in society (the elites) are better ‘informed’ than those of others; their reason more dispassionate, their temper cooled by virtue. For neoliberals, elites know what is in everybody’s own best-interest, and democracies should just get out of the way.

Beyond Good and Evil

So for liberal elites, including those in the mainstream media, what justifies their own [unequal] position in society, as they simultaneously propagate an ideology of equity and equal dignity? I believe the most crude and unsophisticated justification of this equality is based in virtue ethics: the idea that some individuals have a superior character to others, and in they can be, in their actions, presumed to be good and noble even if they perpetuate a system of inequality, hierarchy and oppression. In general, liberal elites know that others are virtuous when they perform the social roles which signal virtue: including rote denunciations of racism, sexism and homophobia, the avoidance of taboo words and topics, the use of dispassioned, technocratic language and the disdain of working class or vulgar aesthetics. Since elites are liberals and liberals are elites, the aesthetic tastes and preferences of elites are presumed to also be liberal. Liberal elites could therefore never support an avowedly leftist political project, the tactics and purposes of which is anathema to their worldview, the cross-class solidarity building inconsistent with their purity of form. For the modern Democratic party in the US, ‘suburban, Facebook empathy moms’ are potentially virtuous, whereas Bernie Bros are not.

The problem with virtue politics is that it lacks a theory of change. How could we hope to change society when goodness is unequally distributed? The working class bogans of the American South, or Western Sydney in Australia, are seen as irredeemable - transgressive, reactionary, incapable of change. Their un-woke political views and xenophobia a sign of immorality, not a contingent response to the anxieties of alienated living under capitalism. The only way to rule is to form a centrist party of the dinner-party elites, fronted by a charismatic neoliberal-in-a-suit, and to hold on to power by any [undemocratic] means necessary. Such a politics also tends to support a mindset of developmental imperialism abroad and domestic fascism towards colonised and subaltern social groups. Pete Buttigieg, Justin Trudeau or Emmanuel Macron is their ideal avatar. There’s an almost Calvinist strain to this kind of liberalism, which sees the fates of vast swathes of the population as fixed and determined, poverty and social alienation their divine punishment.

“One of the ironies of this dark side of liberalism is that education was supposed to lift up the unwashed masses so that democracy could gradually be extended to all (but only in the limited sense of the vote). This [is called] ‘developmental democracy’. But as liberals became more pessimistic about the ability of people to become rational, even through education, the humanist values that education was to bring to the masses - high culture, rationality, self-control, respect for the value of diversity, the ability to make informed judgments - [became] values to which only a small minority could aspire. These would become the people qualified to be members of the cultural and political elite”. [Hollinger]

It turns out, people do not respond well to liberals castigating their moral failings from the bully pulpit. They tend to take on the fallen political identity that liberals ascribe to them - as deplorables, reactionaries and bigots. Liberals enable fascists to create an alternative moral universe in which ignorance and xenophobia are worn as badges of honour. Even those that might want to better themselves largely find that the price for entry into high society is too high, and disengage from social and cultural life altogether - withdrawing their tacit support for the liberal society whose high representatives hold them in such disdain. I have argued elsewhere that the only way liberalism can be defended is by expanding and perfecting the circle of equal dignity with which we treat our fellow human beings - any attempt to reify hierarchy and inequality under liberalism, in response to its manifest failure to deliver on its promises, ends up undermining the legitimacy of the whole liberal project which is essential to its long-term survival.

Don’t be an elitist jerk

So for my fellow progressives, including very many well-meaning members of the liberal intelligentsia, left-liberals and social democrats, my advice is as follows: be wary of either consciously or unconsciously, ascribing the political beliefs of others to either malice or ignorance. In game theoretical terms, an individual’s strategy is just their best available heuristic response to the strategies of others. By assuming that those who don’t support one particular vision of aristocratic liberalism must be either inherently illiberal, stupid or evil, liberal elites are walking an ever-shrinking tightrope towards disaster. As we think about how we’re going to get out yet another global economic recession, and as consequentialist defences of liberalism are weaker than they’ve ever been, we need to expand the liberal/progressive base more than ever. That means seeking and accepting the support of the virtuous and unvirtuous alike.

Myths of the Old Order: Education as the Solution

This series of posts will examine myths or tropes that I hear progressives repeat in order to make sense of the "New Dark Age" that is our fragmented social reality. Conservatives likely have their equivalents but I don’t feel as qualified to offer critiques. If you have an idea for a trope to address, contact me at anthony.skews@gmail.com or on Twitter @Askews2000.

One of the classic paradoxes parties of the left seeks to understand is why so many economically- and socially-disadvantaged voters, who would have the most to gain from challenging the status quo, ‘vote against their own interests’ in supporting conservative parties. The quixotic quest by politicians to reach out to ‘working class whites’ (in the US) or ‘Western Sydney’ (in Australia) reflects profound, and justified, confusion by progressive leaders about why such a large pool of potential votes is so politically unreliable. The technocratic instinct in response to right-wing policy proposals is often therefore to try and demonstrate why those specific proposals would be bad for the hip pockets of certain categories of voter.  

"Politics for the New Dark Age" offers an alternative analysis: those with the least opportunities and facing the most day-to-day risk are pre-disposed to rely on coping strategies which lend support to leaders who offer to ease their anxieties and (re-)impose a sense of certainty and order. The right is extremely adept at exploiting fear and insecurity (often of ‘the other’) for their own ends, a solution progressives cannot (and should not) credibly employ. Instead, I argue, we should tackle the root causes of voter anxiety by levelling inequality, socialising risk and opportunity, and guaranteeing a decent quality of life for all.  

But what I often hear from well-meaning progressives in response to this paradox is that ‘educating voters is the solution’. It’s the catch-cry of Vox.com wonk types, former Obama administration officials, and the West Wing generation. Since policy-making should be done on the basis of the best available evidence and our own policy positions are so obviously correct, the reason people disagree with us is they lack the evidence or the training in critical thinking necessary to make rational political decisions. It is a strategic outlook that orthodox Marxists have criticised as educational dictatorship, and it is shared by “communist authoritarians, philanthropic do-gooders and bourgeois liberals” alike.

As examples, the left appeals to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to marshal the world’s most sophisticated  evidence in response to widespread climate denialism. We commission social research, hire think tanks and consultants to accumulate data and package it for the masses. We also go to great lengths to expand access to tertiary education, at least in part so that the next generation behaves more like us: the urban-dwelling recipients of a liberal arts education. We are less consistent on supporting other, non-university based forms of tertiary education because elites struggle to relate to the graduates of trade schools.

My argument is that, though education is a good in its own right, as a political strategy this approach is not only objectively wrong, but also actively counterproductive. The net response of most voters to contrarian facts is to ignore them. Exposure to inconvenient facts and evidence only hardens prejudices. Humans (including progressive intellectuals) use our reasoning capabilities to build arguments that support and rationalise our pre-existing biases and positions: we’re not endlessly flexible utilitarians, who change our minds based on the best available evidence. We are complex moral animals, whose behaviour and prejudices are shaped by our genes and our social circumstances in ways over which we have very little daily control.

The reason why the ‘education-centric’ approach is actively counter-productive is because it establishes a hierarchy of knowledge which emphasises the inequality of social position between those setting policy directions (with ‘education’) and those we are asking to support it (without). Since education thus becomes a marker of virtue, those without it stigmatised as morally flawed and unfit to take part in the decision-making process. Often progressives can be condescending and undemocratic elitists - and voters know it. Not only does reinforcement of social hierarchies tend to increase authoritarian and conservative sympathies amongst voters, but it has incited the backlash against elites that has so roiled Western democracies. Expert opinion against Trump or Brexit failed to convince voters to support the status quo, and a silent majority also actively rebelled against those (in London and Washington) who set themselves up as their social and educational betters.

To be fair, when pressed on this point, most progressives I know will concede that when they say ‘education’ what they really mean is ‘diversity of experience’. This is a better approach. Tertiary education (in whatever form) has value because it exposes us to diverse viewpoints on our societies and economic, and on race, gender, class and sexuality. Exposure to contextual diversity leads to greater tolerance of complexity in social identity, and more tolerance of out-groups. Such exposure calms anxieties about difference and reduces uncertainty (although it occasionally also has the opposite effect), creating positive effects for political and economic behaviour. Thus fears of immigration, famously, are not correlated with the number of immigrants in a community, but rather the exact inverse.

LGBT+ rights have advanced similarly: the war for marriage equality (still unfortunately stalemated in Australia) is not going to be won by converting educated people in cities. Social change occured in the hearts and minds of rural and suburban voters who discovered that (contrary to their expectations) LGBT+ individuals were just regular people who wanted the same things – home, family, relationships – as straight or cis- couples. 

So next time you hear a politician or activist say ‘educating people is the solution’ or that voters just ‘need educating’ or 'more information' about a particular social or political problem, stop them and ask how, precisely, they envisage that happening. We don't need to offer better facts, we need to offer better stories. And rather dismissing and devaluing the concerns of those who haven't been socialised to instinctively agree with us, we should instead listen to what they have to say.