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Not all liberals are
pleased with what they have created. Clive Hamilton is a leading
left-liberal thinker here in Australia. He has written a lengthy 50 page
article titled
The
Disappointment of Liberalism.
In this article, Clive
Hamilton describes very well what liberals set out to do. The basic idea
of liberalism is that we should seek a particular kind of freedom, namely,
a freedom to shape who we are and what we do according to our own
individual will and reason.
The main impediments to
this kind of freedom are the important parts of our personal and social
identity which we don't choose, but are born into, such as our gender,
race and class. If only, thought the liberals, we could abolish the
"oppressive" influence of such things, we could create an autonomous,
independent, self-defining individual, free to pursue his own happiness.
Here is Clive Hamilton
himself telling this story of how liberalism has made people "free" to
define themselves according to their own will and reason:
"Now that the constraints
of socially imposed roles have weakened, oppression based on gender, class
and race is no longer tenable, and the daily struggle for survival has for
most people disappeared, we have entered an era characterised by 'individualisation'
where, for the first time, individuals have the opportunity to 'write
their own biographies' rather than have the chapters foretold by the
circumstances of their birth. For the first time in history, the ordinary
individual in the West has the opportunity to make a true choice."
We are today "free" in
this liberal sense in a way no-one has been before. As Clive Hamilton puts
it,
"... the shackles of
minority oppression and social conservatism have been cast off. The
traditional standards, expectations and stereotypes that were the target
of the various movements dating from the 1960s - the sexual revolution,
the counter-culture and the women's movement - ushered in an era of
personal liberty that could barely have been imagined by the classical
advocates of liberalism."
Problems
In
theory, the success of liberalism should have brought a new wave of
happiness and contentment to Westerners. Hamilton, though, observes that
something has gone wrong with the theory and that liberalism hasn't
delivered what it was supposed to.
He writes
that although "the citizens of rich countries have never enjoyed greater
political and personal freedoms" that people are no happier today than
were their parents and grandparents in the 1950s and that,
"the
extraordinary proliferation of the diseases of affluence suggests that the
psychological wellbeing of citizens of rich countries is in decline. These
diseases include drug dependence, obesity, loneliness and a suite of
psychological disorders ranging from depression, anxiety, compulsive behaviours and widespread but ill-defined anomie.
"Perhaps
the most telling evidence is the extraordinary prevalence of depression in
rich countries ... Newspapers report that nearly one in four French people
are taking tranquillisers, anti-depressants, antipsychotics or other
mood-altering drugs."
For
Hamilton the conclusion to be faced is that "These disappointments of
money and freedom must be seen as a profound challenge to liberalism, and
especially its more dogmatic child, libertarianism."
Right
liberalism
What then
does Hamilton suggest has gone wrong? To understand his answer it's useful
to note the distinction between right-wing and left-wing liberals.
All
liberals begin with a view of society as a collection of individual
wills, with each individual trying to pursue his own desires. Once
liberals adopt this view, they then have to solve a significant
problem: how do you regulate a society made up of millions of
competing wills?
Liberals have given two main answers to this question. Right-liberals believe that the free market can regulate competing wills
to the overall benefit of society. Even if we selfishly pursue our
own profit, this creates beneficial outcomes for the whole of
society.
Left-liberals, though, don't like the idea of the "hidden hand" of
the market regulating competing wills. They believe that individual
wills can be regulated by rational human intervention, especially
via the influence of the state.
In
this contest between left and right forms of liberalism, the left
seems destined to lose. Once the traditional, more conservative
forms of culture and identity are broken down by liberalism, there
is little to stop the growing influence of market forces in people's
lives.
Left-liberals are revolted by this "commodification" of life, even
though they have helped to bring it about. They really do not want
the market to define or control human existence.
So,
when Clive Hamilton answers the question of "What has gone wrong
with liberalism?" he does so from the point of view of a
left-liberal who dislikes the domination of the free market. His
explanation for the failure of liberalism is that people are not
making considered free choices, despite their new liberties, because
they are being manipulated by capitalism to make spontaneous or
impulsive choices which don't serve their real interests.
Market rules
Exactly how does Clive Hamilton express his objections to the
market? He writes,
"The very purpose of the marketing society is to make us the slaves
of our passions ... What does it mean to have personal freedom if
one's choices are formed and manipulated by powerful external
forces..."
"In
recent decades, the market itself has evolved into an instrument of
coercion. Modern marketing actively sets out to deceive us; it prays
on our insecurities and doubts to convince us that we will be
persons of lesser worth in our own eyes and those of others unless
we do as we are being urged..."
"Is
not the absence of inner freedom ... the dominant characteristic of
modern consumer capitalism, a social system that cultivates
behaviour driven by momentary impulse, temporary emotions and moral
and intellectual weakness? ..."
"Do
we enjoy political freedom when we are conditioned to believe that
the only responsible vote is one that elects a party that promises
to put the interests of the economy before everything else?"
Clive Hamilton does not blame "conservatives" for this dominance of
the market. He correctly sees that it is free market liberals who
have triumphed in modern culture (he does not call them right-liberals, he uses the terms neoliberals and libertarians).
Some conclusions
Clive Hamilton's own solution to this market dominance is clear
enough. He believes that people need to reach a state of "inner
freedom" in which they make decisions not on short-term
impulsiveness but through,
"a
more considered position based on reflections on our moral values
and longer-term interests ... what may be called 'considered
awareness'".
This argument has some advantages for a left-liberal. It suggests
that the true liberal, the one who maximises individual autonomy, is
the one who has "sufficient command of their own reason and moral
strength" to resist the influence of market forces.
I'm
not sure, though, that Hamilton's argument will become generally
popular amongst left-liberals. Many such liberals won't like the
idea that true freedom requires an inner self-discipline, which only
the most morally strong can achieve. Even though this turns left
liberals into a kind of elite, it means that the whole liberal
project has limited applicability and that freedom will necessarily
be held unequally.
And
what of conservatives? How should we react to Hamilton's ideas?
There are some aspects of Hamilton's arguments which are likely to
appeal to conservatives. Hamilton's criticism of the market means
that he is opposed to the "crass materialism" of modern culture, as
are conservatives. Similarly, Hamilton does not believe in the idea
of happiness as a pursuit of hedonistic pleasures in a consumer
society. He suggests that there are more meaningful forms of
happiness that need to be better understood, and conservatives would
wholeheartedly agree.
Hamilton also openly admits that the liberal project, in its current
form, has some serious failings. For instance, the whole purpose of
rejecting unchosen forms of identity, like gender, race and class,
was to allow people to be self-defined, independent and autonomous.
But Hamilton quotes studies which show that young Americans are
increasingly tending to believe the very opposite: that rather than
being self-authored their lives are being controlled by outside
forces. In Hamilton's own words,
"On
the face of it, the rise of individualism and the falling away of
the social constraints on people imposed by their class, gender,
race and so on should have given rise to a much stronger internal
locus of control in the populations of rich countries.
"After all, we are told endlessly, not least by the advertisers and
Third Way politicians, that the course of our lives is a matter of
personal choice. The evidence, however, shows that the opposite is
the case. Compared to the 1960s, young Americans today are
substantially more likely to believe that outside forces control
their lives ...
"Even more remarkably, the same studies show that despite the
dramatic decline in patriarchal attitudes and institutions and the
enormous expansion of opportunities for women the increase in
'externality' is greater in young women than young men."
In
other words, young people don't feel themselves to be more free and
independent even after they have been "liberated" from the
"oppressive" influences of class, race and gender.
For
the left-liberal Clive Hamilton this is because the market has
distorted the process of individual choice. For conservatives,
though, there is a deeper explanation.
If
people feel less free today it's because the liberal conception of
freedom is wrong. True freedom means an ability to fulfil
important aspects of our nature - even if such aspects of our
nature are simply given to us or inherited, rather than being
individually chosen.
We
do not, for instance, choose our sex, but this does not mean that
our gender identity is experienced as an oppressive constraint on
our freedom to be self-defined. A man doesn't become free by
destroying his own unchosen manhood.
Rather, we are free when we are free to be men, and when our culture
supports our instinctive efforts to develop the stronger and better
part of our masculinity.
The
task for conservatives, therefore, must be to go beyond the terms of
political debate set by liberals, both of the left and the right, so
that the first principles of liberalism can finally come under
critical examination.
Related articles:
Do supermarkets make us free?
When liberalism fails
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