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May 09, 2005
Where's My Liberal Conspiracy?
I'm not one to buy into the smug pronouncements Jonah Goldberg hands down venerating the deep philosophical roots of conservatism and the Vulcan mind-meld each young Republican performs with Burke and Kristol, but, if nothing else, it's certainly true that the conservative ideology is treated as a topic more worthy of study than its liberal counterpart. While browsing Amazon last night, I stumbled upon a whole galaxy of books detailing the movement's intellectual evolution: The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America, The Right Nation, The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot, A Time for Choosing, and so forth. Believe me, that's barely a partial list. Meanwhile, nothing similar seems to exist for the liberal side of the divide, with the closest analogue I could find being James Weinstein's lonely exegesis of American socialism, The Long Detour.
So what's going on here? Rawls, Dewey, Niehbur, Schlesinger, Locke...there's a plenty long development to track, but nobody seems interested in doing the spadework. Is that because, unlike Burke and Kristol, Rawls and Dewey are philosophers studied unto themselves rather than as cogs in the development of a certain thought system? Am I just not finding the books I'm looking for? C'mon all you liberal philosophers in the blogosphere, enlighten me on why I can't enlighten myself.
--Ezra
May 9, 2005 in Democrats | Permalink
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Comments
Yeah, it is what it is, Ez: without Conservatism, conservative philosophers are on the outside looking in.
Posted by: jim | May 9, 2005 4:25:20 PM
You mean, "...atop his throne...", eh?
Posted by: Rob McMillin | May 9, 2005 4:38:21 PM
The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America? Isn't this a bit like The Art of English Cuisine?
It's conservative. It moves. The other part . . . ?
Posted by: urizon | May 9, 2005 4:46:11 PM
Orlando Patterson had a pretty good book, I believe, called The Liberal Millenium or something like it.
Posted by: Tony the Pony | May 9, 2005 5:00:18 PM
Have we liberals had an intellectual movement? I mean, Rawls is fairly obscure; I’d not heard of him until I took a class on contemporary political thought that turned out to be dedicated to him. Is there anyone seriously advocating anything resembling the Difference Principle? Hell, besides Ezra, is there anyone who call tell me whether or not Freedom of Speech is lexically prior to Fair Equality of Opportunity?
Which is weird, because if we had an intellectual movement, Rawlsian ideas are exactly what we would expect to be debating. Rawls himself seems to have arisen in a vacuum, with no serious work of Political Theory having been done between the mid 1800s and 1971, and I can’t think of a single one since…
I suppose that’s better than the Right, however, where Goldberg himself seems to pass as an Intellect of serious merit…
Posted by: Andrew Cory | May 9, 2005 5:29:17 PM
"with no serious work of Political Theory having been done between the mid 1800s and 1971, and I can’t think of a single one since…"
Good grief.
I suspect that liberalism, once you extract the "Liberalism" (e.g., individualism, freedom of expression) that belongs to both sides, too often shades left towards anarchism, socialism and communism to leave a real comfort zone.
There has also been since Marx & JS Mill a conflation of economics and political theorey. "Political economy."
Aristotle started his "Politics" on the question of the distribution of resources, and Rawls bent over backwards to avoid economics.
There is the interesting question as to whether "classical economics" was a late 19th century construction designed to disguise the political nature of our economies, and the economic roots of our politics. Asking such a question probably moves my reputation left of "liberal."
Posted by: bob mcmanus | May 9, 2005 5:53:23 PM
The conservatives have several publishing houses devoted to printing the books of conservative intellectuals. If we had similar support mechanisms for liberal writers, we'd get more liberal books.
Posted by: pansauce | May 9, 2005 5:56:33 PM
Hangon: Ezra, you're aware that the history of the last six centuries is pretty much the history of liberalism, right? Little episodes of statism, communism, fascism, but for the most part, we've been drifting Nader-ward since 1588.
Posted by: Tony the Pony | May 9, 2005 6:04:56 PM
Mr. McManus;
That’s what Political Theorists said in 1971. That’s what they continue to say today. Perhaps You’d like to tell every single one of my Political Theory professors that they’re just wrong, but...
This is not to say that people do not study political theory, don’t talk about political theory, but there haven’t been any new works that attempt to define and elucidate new thoughts in political theory...
Of course, if you care to name a serious and groundbreaking work of political theory written from about 1900 to 1970, be my guest. Adaptations of Marxism into real-world situations simply don’t count. Nor would warmed-over libertarian-utilitarian arguments...
Posted by: Andrew Cory | May 9, 2005 6:06:41 PM
"Adaptations of Marxism into real-world situations simply don’t count. Nor would warmed-over libertarian-utilitarian arguments..."
Well, that's kinda my point. If you are going to exclude stuff like Hayek and Nozick and Amartya Sen because they are more about economics than polysci; or say the feminists are really doing sociology; or exclude all the Marxists...then you have refined political philosophy into a purity that will indeed be hard to break into.
What great metaphysical or ethical books have been written this century?
I am very very ignorant of current academic polysci. But I do know there is a lot of politics going on, and there remain many very smart people. So if there is no recent great work in political philosophy, we either have all the answers we need, or are asking the wrong questions and too narrowly defining the field.
Posted by: bob mcmanus | May 9, 2005 6:20:12 PM
Mr. McManus,
I was actually specificly thinking of Hayek and Nozick (I have books from both of them sitting on my desk as I write this) and a host of others, I can say that they were, by and large, responding to Rawls. Weirdly Hayek seems not to have read Mr. Rawls, and Nozick to have misunderstood...
I would suggest that we are A) asking many of the wrong questions and also B) being to narrow in our fields of though. What would Rawls/Marx/etc do may make for a tenure-procuring paper, but will not significantly advance human knowledge...
Posted by: Andrew Cory | May 9, 2005 6:31:48 PM
The American Left in the 20th Century by John Patrick Diggins is a lively little book written in the early 70s. He expanded and revised it in the early '90s, retitling it something like The Rise and Fall of the American Left.
I get the sense that post-war American conservatives were very set on creating an intellectual legacy for themselves, perhaps because "fusionism" required a whole new set of ideas. That's why you see so many books on conservative intellectual history.
Posted by: rakehell | May 9, 2005 6:47:48 PM
The problem is, and always has been that "Liberalism" doesn't exist, at least, not in the same way that Conservatism does. It's not a movement with a head. Contrary to what Anne Caulter says, Chairman Mao and Emma Goldman did not sit down one afternoon and hash out plans for world domination, and then pass the talking points on to the AARP.
Comapring Conservatives to Liberals is like comparing apples to not just oranges, but every other sort of citrus fruit you can think of.
Posted by: Keith | May 9, 2005 6:49:08 PM
Empire and Multitude, I think, should count as significant, if academic, works on liberal philosophy.
To my knowledge, the trend Ezra is pointing to is certainly real; people don't seem write general-audience books any more defending the right to autonomy. If you want to read these works, you can turn to modern political philosophy or contemporary and modern philosophy of law.
But, what does liberal philosophy need to convince people of? National health care? A living minimum wage? Pro-choice? Each of those topics seem like they are better handled by more specialist works on the subject. I suppose some arguments against censorship and for personal autonomy and privacy rights would be nice. But, these things have already been argued, which reduced the impetus to write about them again.
Any other ideas? What should liberal philosophy be arguing, either for or against?
Posted by: Michael | May 9, 2005 6:58:33 PM
The conservatives have several publishing houses devoted to printing the books of conservative intellectuals. If we had similar support mechanisms for liberal writers, we'd get more liberal books.
I don't think that is a good idea. The core philosophy of liberalism, assuming there is a consensus definition, needs to survive on its own. Just imagine what would happen to conservative ideology if its publishing machinery broke down.
Posted by: Mimir | May 9, 2005 6:58:52 PM
The core philosophy of liberalism, assuming there is a consensus definition, needs to survive on its own.
Once ideas have had time to develop, absolutely they need to stand on their own. But an intellectual incubator can be useful in getting to that point.
Just imagine what would happen to conservative ideology if its publishing machinery broke down.
Their ideas would stagnate, the way liberalism has since the end of the Great Society. The fact that they have an array of think tanks and publishing houses gives people on the right the opportunity to develop ideas that they can use in the future.
Posted by: pansauce | May 9, 2005 7:47:48 PM
I'm still rather fond of the term 'political economy' (though I suspect it will never come to fashion again), since such a large part of what today's 'liberals' believe is precisely at the intersection of politics, political theory and economics (and perhaps international relations) that it would be difficult to tweese them apart.
Tick off some the issues we often discuss:
- Health care
- Retirement security
- Government taxes and spending
- Corporation and Labor power
and opposing solutions are a mix of politics and economics.
There are some issues that seem without economic effect, like civil liberties, equal rights, personal freedom, privacy, etc., but each of these also is often discussed in terms of economic impact.
But yeah, we Dems/Liberals/Progressives do seem to need the broadband thinkers who can put all this into a nice intellectual and consistent basket.
Maybe that is part of why we have such difficulty in winning and we seem to be opposing more than proposing.
Posted by: JimPortlandOR | May 9, 2005 8:17:09 PM
Andrew Cory:
Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition and On Revolution
John Dewey, The Public and its Problems
That's just for starters, I've got more...
Posted by: djw | May 9, 2005 9:18:21 PM
I haven't read multitude, but if it's anything like Empire, it may be left but it's sure not liberal.
Posted by: djw | May 9, 2005 9:19:54 PM
So what's going on here? Rawls, Dewey, Niehbur, Schlesinger, Locke...there's a plenty long development to track, but nobody seems interested in doing the spadework. Is that because, unlike Burke and Kristol, Rawls and Dewey are philosophers studied unto themselves rather than as cogs in the development of a certain thought system? Am I just not finding the books I'm looking for? C'mon all you liberal philosophers in the blogosphere, enlighten me on why I can't enlighten myself.
One "problem" is that liberal philosophy is, by nature, not given to bumper-sticker sentiment. Liberalism is itself analytic, not reflexive. Another "problem" is that Burke and Kristol are not reflexively conservative, but disparate ideological revolutionaries. Burke's philosophy describes a hard-core 'natural' conservative point of view; Kristol the Neocon is a mutated moron a la Ayn Rand.
Boiled down, the liberal/conservative battle is empiricism v ideology. It is far easier to cite a principle than to reconcile it with history; the former requires only theory, the latter requires justification.
Posted by: Ranty | May 9, 2005 9:59:19 PM
Galbraith. It's all about Galbraith.
Posted by: Kimmitt | May 9, 2005 10:03:22 PM
Multitude moves more liberal and not just leftist. It's the best analysis of the world over these last few years that I've read.
What about Homo Sacer? I haven't read him, but it seems as if his name should come up.
Posted by: Michael | May 9, 2005 10:22:16 PM
Galbraith. It's all about Galbraith.
You are correct.
Also, this movement in economics is interesting.
Posted by: jbou | May 10, 2005 1:08:24 AM
I've read a bit of Agamben, Michael, and I enjoy it, but I think it's going to be of more interest to a certain kind of political theory geek than to political activists. a friend of mine has written a book that leans heavily on Agamben to get a handle on the way we should think about the issue of homelessness ('bare life') in a democratic polity (for more on the book click on my name). It's a pretty creative use of a concept of Agamben to advance an important progressive argument. So that's a potential data point for you, but it's still pretty much in the realm of academic theory.
Posted by: djw | May 10, 2005 12:43:07 PM
Bob McManus asks, "What great metaphysical or ethical books have been written this century?"
Metaphysics: Charles Hartshorne, everything he ever wrote is about metaphysics and it's all brand-new stuff. He builds on A.N. Whitehead who is a turn-of-the-century guy, but it's new.
Ethics: Alasdair MacIntyre. John Rawls (oops, already noted). Robert Nozick. Alan Gewirth. Reinhold Niebuhr. H. Richard Niebuhr. John Howard Yoder.
Google, read, learn, enjoy.
Posted by: Kent | May 10, 2005 12:48:56 PM
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