Stuart White on “Orange Book” liberalism

Yeah, shame about civil liberties, but it’s really not Labour’s fault and at least UK society is much more equal than it ever was under the Tories …

I’m sorry, but that is utterly ridiculous. If Labour slavishly gave the police and security services every power they asked for, or tried to, and didn’t realise that it was their job as the government to balance those requests against the need for protection of fundamental civil liberties, they still take the lion’s share of the blame, Home Office agenda or no. Additionally, are you really telling me that your explanation is a more plausible one that the idea that, post-9/11, Blair wanted to outflank the Tories on security issues to make them look soft? Furthermore, if Blair was secretly not as neo-con on these things as the Home Office, why didn’t he appoint ministers to that brief who would fight the Home Office over the issue? His having appointed Blunkett, Straw, Reid et al. suggests to me that he wanted especially rabid populists in there who wouldn’t care much for the civil liberties agenda.

The Home Office may have had an institutional bias. It’s the job of ministers to identify those biases and work around them to get what they want done. If they didn’t do that, they’re still culpable, they just look less draconian. But i think they were fully draconian, and i think you should try to avoid airbrushing history.

And ASBOs (Anti-social behaviour orders) introduced in 1998, were a very specifically Labour kind of authoritarianism, intended to criminalise the kind of minor nuisance behaviour most common in some ‘rough’ areas, and less so in the Tory suburbs; David Blunkett was always going on about how important such crackdowns were to ordinary people on estates. New Labour didn’t have to be authoritarian – it chose to be ‘tough on crime’ and not to be ‘tough on the causes of crime’ as a cheap headline winner. You can’t make them the heirs of Roy Jenkins.

Again, one should be wary of the fact that US ‘liberalism’ = the socialism that dare not speak its name; whereas UK liberalism = a longstanding political tradition of not being socialism, because we actually had that as well to compare with. If you want UK liberals to be full-blooded egalitarians, you are going to want for a long time.

It has been an unusual experience over the last week “next left” postings in duplicate in this place. Next left, and crooked timber is broadly correct in its analysis that, given the coalition situation the liberal democrats are broadly adopting the orange book model of liberalism. Egalitarian liberalism has not left the party, but, given the current economic climate it is not a view much in vogue because to quote the labour party there is no money left. Given this situation, the challenge for the commons, that labour has simply ignored is too produce spending plans that. I do laugh at the characterisation that laws is somehow close to libertarianism though, i shall have to re-read ayn rand for its commitments to raising capital gains and . Much closer to the mark is http://www.demos.co.uk/ ‘s liberal republic.

#8 not to people who voted Labour anyway

Again, one should be wary of the fact that US ‘liberalism’ = the socialism that dare not speak its name

If only! But I’m afraid that strain of US liberalism has been practically moribund, and without political influence, for quite a while now.

‘a concern for distribution is less relevant in conditions of scarcity’

Or as Phil Ochs put it: ‘ten degrees to the left of centre in good times, ten degrees to the right of centre when it affects them personally’

It would be a bit more accurate say US liberalism is the social democracy that dare not speak its name. .

That’s both true and relevant. Back in the 1930s or so, US social democrats adopted the rhetorical strategy of liberalism, arguing for policies on the grounds they would increase freedom:freedom from want.

Plenty of times and places have seen nationalists adopt essentially the same rhetoric: freedom from foreign oppression.

There’s even a sci fi series by Harry Turtledove that features alt-history US Nazis calling themselves the . Sadly, it’s terribly-written, but I bet it would make a great HBO series.

If they can avoid making any major mistakes, they will go far.

When White describes Orange Book liberalism as “to a considerable extent a movement grounded in conventional economics”, what economics is he considering “conventional”? Is it the school of thought we Yanks refer to as “freshwater” or “Chicago”, or something else?

Where did the phrase about “a generation of economically conservative liberals meeting a generation of socially liberal conservatives” come from? Hague used it in his US interviews, but I think it was around before then. Labour’s early opposition to the new government is concentrating on the first part of that equation. Given the context, that’s fair enough: social authoritarianism splits the Labour movement; the economic equivalent unites it.
But this is to take things from a Labour viewpoint. It’s an interesting discussion, and it will determine how Labour fares in opposition. But in a broader political context, it’s the Tory opposition that most interests me.
And it’s worth noting that they too are concentrating on the same economic agenda. John Redwood is pushing back on capital gains tax – not yet, as you might have expected, on European attempts to regulate the financial sector. People keep asking whether Cameron has had his “Clause 4 moment”, and some commentators have decided that the act of entering a coalition has served that function. I’m very sceptical.
What’s more, I think there’s a better analogy. Cameron needs a Bophuthatswana moment. Unexpected allies are attempting to build constructively on the middle ground between them. Intransigent opponents are attempting to frustrate this. At some point these reactionary forces will miscalculate and overreach, at which point they need to be crushed in full public view. I have enormous doubts whether Cameron has it in him to do this, and the botched coup at the 1922 committee (the backbench candidate won the chairmanship; ministers will attend but not vote) does nothing to inspire confidence.

“Neatly put, though of course the other question to ask might be – which of these do you want to be, and why would you want other people to be different?”

One of the whole points is that some people (for example my mother) would prefer the latter, while others (for example my sister) would prefer the former. People really do have different preferences. Even on very important things involving them personally.

” that the original LD intent to cut the fund was to use the money instead to fund better education for poor kids – it wasn’t an antipathy towards redistribution per se.”

I think it’s also worth observing that one doesn’t particularly need to invoke political ideology in order to explain the cutting of the fund – as a measure it’s longterm in nature and is likely to provoke less anguish through its abolition than doing something with an immediate impact, like cutting benefits. Viewing through that lens, it’s not at all impossible that a Labour government might also have axed it.

I think it might be a bit of a mistake to look for a single entirely consistent political philosophy underlying the whole Lib Dem manifesto.
IIRC the party opposed tuition fees in 1996 when the Conservatives brought them in, and that was long before Vince Cable or Nick Clegg or David Laws were anywhere near setting party policy – none of them were even MPs back then. The CTF is a much more recent phenomenon; their attitude on tuition fees I would describe as a legacy commitment.
Richard’s point is also a good one.

“IIRC the party opposed tuition fees in 1996 when the Conservatives brought them in, and that was long before Vince Cable or Nick Clegg or David Laws were anywhere near setting party policy – none of them were even MPs back then. The CTF is a much more recent phenomenon; their attitude on tuition fees I would describe as a legacy commitment.”

I am slightly puzzled by the Lib Dem no-tuition fees policy myself. It seems completely at odds with classical liberal thinking. Especially given the Oxbridge and the great London universities do need the tuition fees to stay financially competitive as first-rate universities, if the State isn’t going to kill itself in the processing of funding them.

At an abstract level, it comes down to a commitment to an individualist vs. communitarian thinking. If you think the universities are collections of individuals pursuing individual love of knowledge (again, abstraction), you will be in favour of fees, while if you think of them as merely an organ of the large community meant to achieve a part of the goals of the larger community, then tuition fees would be ludicrous. Extent it to other areas of social and economic policy, and you get the divide between classical and Rawlsian liberals.

It’s not clear to me that the latter position has many adherents in the post-Cold War Western world. To a great degree, the tragedy of serious, whole-scale collectivism in the 20th century has made it something of an intellectual taboo.

“The coming battle for liberalism” was fought 30 yeas ago wasn’t it? And neoliberalism, individualist liberalism, was the result.
“Reading someone like David Laws, for example, there is at times a clear sense that the free market produces a distribution of income and wealth which is a kind of natural or moral baseline.”

I’ve linked to it before but this sounds like the Tony Judt on Robert Reich with Brad Delong’s mocking rejoinder. It’s good that these fights are happening but they’re battles refought, and refought now under different terms. Judt is very much a conservative in some ways.

I recommended Derick Bell on Brown v Board of Ed for a similar reason. How do you deal with culture? Not by pretending it doesn’t exist, or that it exists only for others. The fight now is not going to be resolved in favor of Rawlsian or Dworkian liberalism, of governmental (top down) regulation and manipulation ex post facto of what’s seen as otherwise all powerful individual self-interest, and it’s going to engage a discussion of the malleability of human values and the need for moral choices. The culture of research institutions is just that a culture and a culture is not reason it’s a historical development. I was raised by professors to value teaching, to think of it as a calling. I’ve dated women of the same academic rank of my parents, for whom teaching is a chore to be avoided at all costs. And one of them tells her graduate students they should not have time to clean their own apartments: they should have cleaning ladies. I hid my shock. All of this is culture. Culture changes. Maybe we change culture too. I hope so. But easy assumptions of intent and reason do not work. The critical response to modern liberalism is not modern conservatism which is just as torn between corporatist functionalism and higher morality, but something else, more aware of the inevitability of culture and more humble in the face of it. We do not need more enlightened leadership and laws to lead stupid people, we need less self-absorbed, less narcissistic, more observant and more generous people. I grew up in an academic culture where wealth and the pursuit of wealth were considered distasteful. There are cultures where American individualism is frowned on. In Norway I think there are no schools for gifted children. It’s a matter of social ideology. Is that less “scientific” or rational than American Darwinism? It’s what they value. How did this value system come to be? How did the culture of graduate students having servants come to be? How do we change it?

We do not need more enlightened leadership and laws to lead stupid people, we need less self-absorbed, less narcissistic, more observant and more generous people.

Must…resist…urge…to quote…Brecht….

someone who disagreed with Labour on civil liberties but voted for them anyway in the election is one of the “well fed and well restrained” type – sees civil liberties as less important than economic equality

Speaking as someone who’s criticised Labour’s authoritarianism for the last 15 years, abandoned them for most of that time in favour of the Greens and parties to the left of Labour, but voted Labour in 2010 in the hope of stopping the Tories getting in, I find it slightly difficult to recognise myself in this description.

“I went into politics because, from a very early age, I was very passionate about politics and making the country a fairer place because I’m a Liberal who does believe in liberal economics but also believes that that can be complemented with a social liberalism which tackles problems which surround the inequality of opportunity, making sure that there is a strong safety net underneath everybody and trying to tackle some of the injustices that there are in capitalist societies.

And although free market economics, up until recently, has made big gains in terms of its acceptance throughout politics, I think one of the areas where the strongest advocates of free market economics have shown to be completely wrong is in the area of assuming that a meritocratic society would be one in which there was opportunity for everybody. And societies like Britain and America are meritocracies where the chances of acquiring merit are very unequal. And I think one of the things that I’m most passionate about is trying to, in a free society and in a liberal, free market economy, trying to take action through Government that gives everybody a chance and doesn’t mean that the inequality that arises from freedom is embedded in inequality of opportunities.”

David Laws in the FT, the other day: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/5826134e-6435-11df-8618-00144feab49a.html (It’s an interview transcript, hence the ungrammar.)

I’m starting to get a sense that White’s current project, and that of other Fabians, is the quiet rewriting of what “egalitarian liberalism” means, and the extent to which it was ever espoused in the party. No-one could read the Laws interview and not be satisfied that he has a basic commitment to safety nets and to all the interference necessary to provide proper equality of opportunity, which he specifically recognises does not arise naturally even in meritocracies. That actually is the baseline for a lot of liberals. And yes, so is a default position to “leaving money in people’s pockets” if there’s no pressing reason to remove it.

But there seems to be this offended sense from White and others that the Lib Dems have somehow failed to live up to their retrospective expectations as equality-of-outcome socialists. The CTF post is a classic example. He’s offended that minimal asset redistribution at age 18, which is beset with its own problems and isn’t even particularly effective as an equality-of-outcome tool anyway, isn’t at the top of the Lib Dem list, and makes no attempt (until pressed in the comments) to recognise the fact that the Lib Dems may have other priorities (like, er, collective pooling of those assets to provide better primary and secondary education), never mind making any honest attempt to argue that they matter less than the CTF.

Brad Delong called Tony Judt of a Stalinist hack? Don’t be ridiculous. Next you’ll be telling me he called Gunter Grass ‘Nazi scum’…

As a socialist, not an ‘egalitarian liberal’, and one who tries to pay more attention to what the British Left actually wants rather than what Bruce Ackerman (or whoever it is this week) thinks we ought to want I continue to believe that education, like health care, should be free and available to all on the basis of need, or ability to benefit, rather than ability to pay. And I’ve always thought that Bruce Ackerman’s stakeholder grants were a silly idea and I can’t say I’m suprised or sorry to see them scrapped. I am a bit surprised to learn they had such a cult following among left-leaning Oxford dons though.

[aeiou] I agree with Judt. Civil society in a general sense (I don’t want to get caught up in the implications of one person’s use of it) is the result of attitudes and behavior, not laws. Laws follow the general consensus, though recently through the celebration of judicial review that’s been more complex, and more of a problem. That’s another reason I linked to Bell.

Bell thinks black children would have been better off if Brown had been decided differently, and that integration would have been more stable in the long run; but liberal good intentions won out. As it is Atrios minimizes concerns about urban gentrification while living in a neighborhood that before government money and redevelopment, was majority black. The black population is now 17%. Liberals are as credulous regarding themselves as they are cynical about others. It’s up to others to point this out, but people have to be willing to listen. They have to be curious.

We live in a very selfish society in a specifically selfish time, and the language of selfishness pervades the language even of those who oppose it. Selfishness is seen as natural but its pervasiveness (not the fact of it) is the result of historical process. The language of individualism and entrepreneurialism is the product of culture not reason. There’s a fixation on progress extending from technology to a general sense of value: everything’s a race. Towards what? And running forward you don’t pay attention to what’s not in your way. You become less curious.

Specialization is a form of myopia. You ignore your own effect on a neighborhood. You’re more capable of having the blind-spots or phobias of DeLong. Why does education now focus curiosity more and more on less and less? Is this good for a democracy? These are cultural changes in favor of a teleology of technological advancement and the myth of the lone inventor or ‘creator’. Even artists are seen as inventors rather than observers. Invention is asocial. And without the focus on individualism in the culture, libertarianism wouldn’t even exist, but it’s tempting to people who already see themselves as free produces rather than representatives,
Judt is opposed to the egalitarianism of rules and the sociability of ants. And he’s teacher who teaches. If that makes him a caveman so am I.

One issue that hasn’t been mentioned is that authoritarianism itself can lead to inequality, because the more people are criminalised, the harder it becomes for them to be employed or play a full role in society in the future. This is clear in the US with its vast prisoner and ex-prisoner population, but it’s also increasingly true of the UK as well, especially with the ever expanding use of CRB checks on past convictions. The Guardian highlighted one case of a young man who got turned from medical school for a conviction aged 16. I also remember reading (sorry, can’t remember details) of someone working at an inner-city school who said that their supply of parent-helpers dried up after CRB checks were introduced, because parents didn’t want the school to know about irrelevant past convictions they might have. These parents helpers, working on things like reading to children, helped not only the school, but also themselves, developing their own knowledge and skills. The authoritarian edge of New Labour has helped exclude more and more people from society in this way.

someone who disagreed with Labour on civil liberties but voted for them anyway in the election is one of the “well fed and well restrained” type – sees civil liberties as less important than economic equality

“Although somebody is a civil libertarian, because they are also opposed to economic inequalities we will pretend that they are not.”

I do indeed expect to see a great deal more of this sort of tosh in the months to come.

@49 – you may well be right, but this may also be to do with the facts of increasing global competition. It may turn out that it was only possible to have a ‘nice party’/social democracy while our economies were still surfing on the residual flow of structural inequality – between ‘us’ and the rest of the world – generated by imperialism. In a ‘West’ that is no longer possessed of such extraordinarily favourable terms of trade as it has enjoyed for most of the last 300 years, niceness may not be a viable political option. Not without global social revolution, anyway.

Civil liberties are more important than economic equality to me, but be that as it may, the fact of the matter is that economic inequality has stagnated (on a high level) / or risen (depending on how it’s measured) during 12 years of Labour, so I really don’t see how Labour supporters have any right to lecture us on these matters here. Meanwhile Labour did everything they could get away with to curtail civil liberties…

Sweden?

Unless you restrict your definition of imperialism to the presence of armed men in pith helmets, yes, Sweden. Why not?

I’m surprised that, assuming capitalism, Alex even regards his point in 51 as contentious or hypothetical.

60: A bit zero-sum, no?

62: well, first of all, the equality v liberty theory is in the context of deciding who to vote for in an election, and an election is pretty much a zero- sum game; if one party gains votes, the other parties lose them. If one party wins the election, then none of the other parties do. International trade isn’t a zero-sum game and it’s far less clear why the rise to prosperity of China, India etc should necessarily mean that the UK and Europe are going to be fcked over in any meaningful sense.

Second, see 26. “I don’t think that’s actually the choice we’re presented with; it’s just what I think Stuart White thinks the choice is. The economic outcome seems a lot hazier than the civil-liberties one; it’s possible that a Labour government wouldn’t be able to manage a fast recovery anyway, or that the coalition’s policies might work out a bit better for equality than White (and Bertram) think they will. The civil liberties thing seems more definite, so I’ll vote on that. Ideally, I’d like well-fed and free-range, but that doesn’t really seem to have been on offer.”

where people working in the arts, humanities and social sciences have jobs

Well, as someone with degrees in philosophy and English, I think that sounds great; but unless the gov’t hires us all as instructors, I’m not quite sure about what to do re: the public’s (= the market’s) sad lack of interest in English literature and continental philosophy.

I would love to hear a plan, however!

The problem for centrist libs like me is perhaps that I don’t see much daylight between the market and democracy. Both are driven by people’s preferences. We can notice how those preferences can be influenced or manufactured; we can seek to reform how both are subverted by and for monied interests; we can resign ourselves to a certain mediocrity as a tradeoff for (hopefully) evading the abysmal lows of depression and tyranny. And just as the majority isn’t supposed to tyrannize the minority, so certain economic “rights” (food, shelter, healthcare, infrastructure) ought to be guaranteed.

But that said, when Mr. Laws treats the free market as a “moral baseline,” if that’s what he does — well, isn’t it?

Very interesting. Not so blatant in America yet; indeed, in English, programs take far too many grad students, to cover the comp courses that professors don’t want to teach. But you knew that already.

What I find remarkable is how many universities and colleges have kept on their philosophy departments, out of sheer tradition it seems. Lucky thing, that.

(My solution to the humanities-degrees problem was originality itself: law school.)

The problem for centrist libs like me is perhaps that I don’t see much daylight between the market and democracy.

The market makes no pretense of allowing people with different levels of wealth equal voice. In democracy, the wealthy *in fact* speak somewhat louder, but that’s at least recognized as a flaw in the system that is open to correction, and the effect isn’t as large — they have to work through propaganda, not by literally buying the outcome. In the market, your wealth *is* your voice, and the social norms surrounding markets state that this is the rightful outcome.

That’s why I trust democracy more than I trust markets (although I trust neither one completely).

A high-wage Chinese economy, with its own innovation sector, won’t need anything we make, or have to offer, except perhaps quaint tourist destinations.

This is wrong but I will leave it to people who are better at writing about economics than me to explain why. Start from the principle of comparative advantage and crack on from there would be the best route.

Chris @ 69: Good point, tho I would note that the combined effect of many consumers can and does drive the market. They’ve just been organized by Madison Avenue in the past. Which is why I can never find anything I want in the record store, for instance.

One question about the internet is its potential for allowing “grassroots” *market* forces to have something like their comparable political effect. Time will tell.

But you are of course right to note that it’s an imperfect analogy (aren’t they all).

A high-wage Chinese economy, with its own innovation sector, won’t need anything we make, or have to offer, except perhaps quaint tourist destinations.

By the same logic, we and Germany can’t usefully trade with each other today. Neither of us needs anything the other has to offer, because we could make it all domestically.

To me, this suggests that there is something wrong with your reasoning.

Labour may have muted structural problems of inequality with tax and spend policies but:
a) these spending policies are partly responsible for the need for more retrenchment now. It is kind of like in baseball when a starting pitcher gets charged for baserunners he leaves on base when he hands over to a reliever. Some of the pain from cuts should count against Labour for excess spending in the good times;
b) the guy from IFS mentioned *income* inequality. What did Labour do to close the gap of *wealth* inequality
c) not all of the structural tendency in rising inequality is exogenous to what falls under HMG’s sphere of influence. There might be a structural pull because of increasing returns to education in a knowledge economy and inherited benefits to education etc; a structural problem of social networks and social capital in securing good jobs, internships etc; maybe a lack of Land Value Taxation reinforces the ‘plug hole’ effect of business congregating in the south-east which piles wealth upon wealth. The point is, Labour focused on ‘standards, not structures’, to quote a former Labour education secretary.

Finally, it is rather irritating to see so many of the Labour party so adamant that ‘the Left’ won the last general election to excommunicate the LDs for doing what was in the national interest and muting the Tories right-wing, but there is a better way. Groups like Compass and the Social Liberal Forum are establishing overlapping groups of like-minded activits, Demos have brought party thinkers together. As we have seen, the two parties tend to be strong in areas in which the other is weak. The trick is to make the two parties work together, not start some Jacobin willy-waving competition.

Good point! Chinese prosperity also has some effects in Africa, hasn’t it.

I like the Alex with capital letter much better by the way. He seems much less angry

To go back to Richard at no. 8 and his quotes from Henry Porter: I agree with Porter’s first and second points but I have difficulty with his first one because Henry is making the words “far-left” do a lot of work. Reid was in the CP, but Clarke was a non-aligned libertarian leftist in the heady post-1968 period. The Clarke of 1971 and the Clarke of 2001 are very different, both in appearance and in politics. The Father Christmas critic of the Greek colonels became the Fungus the Bogeyman authoritarian Home Secretary.

For me, a much more important factor is the New Labour is a party that spends a lot of time worrying over what will help it to win elections and very little over whether policies are logical or useful. It has convinced itself that it has to appear tough about crime (or terrorism or whatever) in order to win elections, so it brought in authoritarian legislation. And because the Party rarely discusses whether a policy is logical or useful, it appears unaware what lines it has crossed line by locking people up without trial or charge, or creating databases: the only discussion will have been about what the reaction of cetain newspapers will be.

After being in SocSol at Cambridge, Charles Clarke also went on to be an NUS apparatchik and to join the Labour Party. The authoritarianism comes from the later phases, not the earlier ones. People like Clarke have spent the last 35 years over-compensating for their libertarian far-left youth: they seem desperate for acceptance into the British political establishment, which involves trying to live down their views when they were young. It is interesting how often people like Clarke saying they aren’t the Loony Left even when it isn’t really relevant to the subject in hand. People tough on crime, being friendly with the Americans is part of a process of being accepted in the political mainstream.

80: That it was The Telegraph wot did it augurs ill for the coalition.

Are we sure imperialism wasn’t founded on European prosperity?

Well, obviously it was; the question is whether there is some kind of vicious cycle where European prosperity enabled Europeans to loot non-Europe in a way that made Europe even richer *and non-Europe poorer than it would have been with no colonialism*, and if so, whether that type of interaction is going to end in the near future, and if so, what the ramifications will be.

After a certain point in history, some places that aren’t geographically part of Europe would need to be grouped with Europe for the analysis to make sense.

d) Sweden got rich despite never having an empire.

Can you not hear the wailing of the oppressed Livonians & Pomeranians calling down through history?