Liberalism

24. Thomson, England in the Nineteenth Century (20 Nov 2017)

by kurto

A dense yet lively account of the United Kingdom from 1815-1918, identifying the overarching themes of piecemeal reform, the political economy in the world’s first industrial power, and the rise and fall of Liberalism. Key points:

Reform
• Political reform followed significant economic change, and was initiated by Parliament-appointed commission
• The 1832 Reform Bill was the first big event, although it maintained the ascendancy of property over population. Over the long run, industrial concerns won ground at the expense of landowners, while religious disabilities were continually eased
• Implementing the new Poor Law (of 1834) and criminal justice (police work) catalyzed elected local bodies (municipal councils) and simultaneously built conduits for central (Parliamentary or Whitehall) direction
• British government was transformed in the 1840s: ordinary citizens gained civil and economic rights, sacrificing some freedoms
• Gladstone’s first ministry (1868-74), which simplified taxes and also government finance, laid the basis for the 20th-century state by reforming the civil service, military, and judiciary through introduction of competitive exams
• The schools reform of 1870, which the author says was required by continuing extension of the vote (furthered in 1884-85 and reaching full suffrage by 1918), set up local boards to monitor quality and attendance of public schools
• The curtailing of the House of Lords, the arrival of Labour as the Conservatives’ principal opposition, and the suffragette movement together heralded a more violent politics
• Poor relief transformed into demand for ‘social security’, notably through the 1909 Beveridge report, the Insurance Act of 1911, and the establishment of a Labour ministry in 1916

Political Economy
• Toward the start of the century, Commoners came to be the cabinet equals of peers, while Radicals were coequals with Liberals (Whigs) and Conservatives (Tories), through the limited franchise delayed Parliamentary recognition
• Durham’s response to Canadian riots presaged the Commonwealth and allowed for ‘responsible government’ while binding the colonies to the metropole
• Palmerston represented a pre-reform (of 1832) outlook, and acted as a brake up to 1865
• Trade unionism gained momentum after 1870, when economic growth was checked by the US (hitherto expanding westward) and united Germany. The balance of trade was now negative, most food was imported, and money once invested (and reinvested) in colonial enterprises now became vital domestic income
• Britain opted out of the de facto international system in the first half of the 19th century, largely avoiding foreign wars, but could not halt the convergence of Ottoman and Habsburg decline and the dynamics of the German naval race

Liberalism
• Social hardship entered public consciousness when it was no longer taken for granted
• Britain’s sovereign Parliament was more adaptable than continental monarchs
• Each of the Victorian era’s three phases grappled with rapid, broad changes in the country’s political economy. Mid-Victorian complacency (Palmerston, Macaulay, Russell) produced its own reaction (Dickens, Arnold, Carlyle). But reformist zeal sometimes produced overbearing results for the working classes — loss of freedom
• Bentham’s ‘greatest good’ principle animated each era of reformers. Although associated with Liberalism, there was no intrinsic connection. Separately, Liberalism viewed the state as a negative force: laissez faire worked so long as the economy was expanding
• ‘Socialized liberalism’, a fusion of archetypal utilitarianism and an activist state, took root after the panic of 1873
• Reforms often came not from Liberals but Radicals or Tories. Liberals focused on ‘adequate’ moral values; Christianity checked Victorian complacency. The Liberals sought to promote voluntarism and Radicals vied for better elections (faith in democracy); the Tories were paternalistic
• Britain’s sense of historical community and faith in its institutions was challenged in the last phase, most obviously by Home Rule, as progress through conflict turned to a zero-sum worldview
• Yet the Liberal residue in latter-day socialism tempered confrontational instincts — Marx and Engels played little role in England — and set it apart from the continent

8. Gray, Isaiah Berlin (17 Apr 2018)

by kurto

Isaiah Berlin’s liberalism, premised on liberty to choose from among incommensurable goods, yields to pluralism as the irreducible condition of humanity. Straddling Enlightenment rationalism and Romantic will, albeit favoring natural law and so closer to the latter, Berlin’s work shows choice is the essence of human nature, and that philosophy can help think about dilemmas presented by competing ideas; but it cannot solve them. Man’s nature is a result of choices, and so is malleable. On the Enlightenment side, Berlin sees Kantian freedom consisting of obedience to rational will. But it is a negative liberty: if positive freedom were true, conflict could be a symptom of disorder. Instead self-creation (not autonomy) gives value to freedom. Thus he rejects a universal worldview or perfect life: goods cannot be hierarchically assembled or ranked. Contra Plato and Aristotle, Berlin contends human truths are competitive, not unifying. Turning toward the Romantic, which is also the author’s preference, laws of historical development are indefensible while Berlin asserts choices are ‘inherently intelligible’ to others and so deserving of respect. Gray revisits Berlin’s contention that the German Romantics, especially Herder, shattered prototypical Enlightenment rationalism. The author then extends Berlin’s work, contending his ‘agonistic liberalism’ is what remains of rational, moral characteristic of humanity once pluralism is established. But the ground does not hold, in Gray’s view: a choice derives from recognition there is no universal authority. (Grey asserts the Romantics ironically defend Liberal liberty more completely than the Philosophes.) The impression is Gray has enlisted Berlin for postmodernism, as a bridge from respectability to radical claims. As to Berlin himself, it seems he is willing to prove the philosopher’s claim that we don’t know much – and then stops trying. Berlin searches for answers instead of revising the question in the modern context. Perhaps he abandoned philosophy because pluralism is inconsistent with the search for knowledge? Separately, it is annoying that Berlin is perpetually running down Burke as a forerunner to radical nationalists, defined as group choice premised on folkways. (In correspondence with Conor Cruise O’Brien, published in the latter’s Great Melody, Berlin says he doesn’t understand Burke very well!) A strangely enjoyable book, for all its political baggage, because it clarifies the left’s worldview.