Kenneth Wain
Defining liberalism
Ranier Fsadni's and Louis Cilia's articles on liberalism (January 29 and February 14) make interesting reading.
The first, in particular, constitutes an erudite exercise in the clarification of political terms, namely liberalism and Christian democracy, which could well be extended to that other area of confusion in our political discourse in Malta, between socialism and social democracy, which our politicians in the Labour Party (PL) insist on using interchangeably.
It is not correct to identify the beginnings of liberalism, as Mr Cilia does, with "the presumption that state intervention was unnecessary and futile (the doctrine of laissez faire)". This doctrine is true only of one kind of political liberalism.
Nor is Dr Fsadni correct in asserting that liberalism's influence today is restricted to the academia, although liberal political theory is strong in university departments and research institutes in the Western world.
The preoccupation of the intellectual founding father of political liberalism, the English philosopher John Locke, was not with economics at all but with defining an area of individual liberty in the face of the religious intolerance that marked life in the 17th century.
Locke identified three basic areas of protection for individuals from arbitrary state interference, namely to the enjoyment of their life, their property and their freedom.
From Locke we get the political theory of the minimal state; that is, a state that is small and intervenes in the lives of its citizens only to the minimum necessary to protect these freedoms - not as an agency to redistribute their wealth on the basis of some principle of equity. Minimal state theory underpins what we call neo-liberalism today with its unrestricted faith in the free market.
Liberalism grew into a powerful moral theory with Immanuel Kant's notion of the autonomous human agent, that is, one who has the maturity to judge for himself/herself about what is good and what is right but who also recognises a moral obligation to treat the whole of humanity as deserving equal moral consideration.
John Stuart Mill later amplified this understanding of autonomy by distinguishing self- from other-regarding acts and arguing for the non-interference of anyone with the former. Mill emphasised the importance of recognising the consequences of actions in assessing their rightness or wrongness. The protection of individual freedoms was from the start the central liberal preoccupation. Mill's essay On Liberty identified three such freedoms: of lifestyle, of conscience and expression, and of association. The first is integral to the notion of autonomy, the second to the freedom of the press and of artistic, religious and other forms of expression, the third to the existence of political parties, pressure groups, movements, trade unions, etc.
The recognition of these civic freedoms is fundamental to a democracy that does not want to degenerate into a dictatorship of the majority. It signifies respect for persons and tolerance towards cultural, ethnic and sexual difference. It extends this sense of tolerance to the principle that the state must be neutral between all cultures and beliefs in the protection of these freedoms.
Fundamental to liberalism is the view that the individual must be the arbiter of his or her own interests (this is the meaning of autonomy) and free from arbitrary interference in situations where what is at stake are decisions that regard oneself. Liberalism decries cruelty of all kinds, mental or physical, and sets harm to others as its limitation on individual freedom.
Dr Fsadni is wrong to restrict the relevance of liberalism today to academia because liberalism is the political culture that has sustained and continues to sustain modern democracy. It is inscribed in modern democratic constitutions, the American being the first of its kind. This is why academia, namely philosophers (like myself) and social scientists, continue to address it - it has produced some of the richest writings in political theory by the likes of John Rawls, Jurgen Habermas, Robert Nozick, Michael Walzer and Bernard Williams, to mention but a few.
It would not be an exaggeration to say that liberalism today constitutes the moral and political culture of the Western world and its influence extends far beyond. Western states of Anglo-Saxon influence declare themselves liberal democracies.
It is a mistaken to identify liberalism with neo-liberalism. Its other influential branch, which I, for one, ally myself with, aligns itself with social democracy (not socialism). It rejects the neo-liberal notion of the minimal state and supports the politics of state intervention on the free market in the interest of people's welfare. In short, it supports a welfare state that practises distributive or social justice and, therefore, a principle of equality to balance with that of freedom.
The political "centre" that is fashionable today with the collapse of the confrontational politics of right and left, is a liberal centre. The move of the Labour left to the centre and away from socialism in Europe and the US some years ago meant endorsing the market economy (but not surrendering to an unbridled capitalism as Barack Obama has recently shown) and the defence of liberal freedoms. In short, it is not true that liberalism has grown unfashionable in the practical politics of the West. To the contrary the parties of the West have become liberal parties.
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Joe Zammit
Feb 21st 2009, 20:44
Those who are in favour of divorce - we pity them - are not liberals but slaves. Those who are in favour of abortion - we pity them - are not liberals but slaves. Those who are in favour of same-sex marriage - we pity them - are not liberals but slaves. Those who are in favour of euthanasia - we pity them - are not liberals but slaves. We are the winners, we are free, we are liberals, we, we. we all practising Catholics!
Joe Zammit
Feb 21st 2009, 20:40
We are liberals, so we are strongly in favour of marriage between one man and one woman for ever. We are liberals, so we are strongly in favour of life from conception to natural death. We are liberals, so we are strongly in favour of the sound teaching of the Catholic Church. We are liberals, so we are free to do God's Will first and foremost. We are liberals, so we strongly want Malta and Gozo to remain Catholic for ever and this in the public interest.
Joe Zammit
Feb 21st 2009, 20:36
We are liberals, so we are strongly against divorce. We are liberals, so we are strongly against abortion. We are liberals, so we are strongly against same-sex unions. We are liberals, so we are strongly against euthanasia. We are liberals, so we are strongly against the culture of death.
John Zammit
Feb 21st 2009, 15:43
Join Malta's Liberal Party - www.freewebs.com/liberalalliance
Ranier Fsadni
Feb 21st 2009, 15:06
3) So it is a point I usually have an entertaining time making. But three reasons made me delete just such a clarification from an earlier draft of my column. It would have made it too long (Prof. Wain himself takes an entire newspaper article to establish the point). I was also afraid it would make the article too didactic.
Above all, however, I thought that in the given context it might serve to confuse rather than illuminate. As Prof. Wain says, ‘the parties of the West have become liberal parties’ (in the broad sense). But for me to write, in my column, that when the DPM said that his party was not a liberal party, what he had in mind was European economic liberalism and not US social liberalism (which is what I wrote) but that nonetheless his party was really a liberal party in a third broader sense: well, that struck me as unbearably intricate and convoluted for a newspaper article, even one written by me.
Ranier Fsadni
Feb 21st 2009, 15:05
2) To say that the most creative contemporary liberal thinking does not have enough influence is not the same as saying that the liberal canon does not exercise a decisive influence, for the reasons Prof. Wain gives, on the nature of Western political order today, way beyond the confines of parties that adopt ‘liberal’ as their identifying proper name.
In my column, despite discussing only two meanings of liberalism, I spoke of the ‘multiple’ (not two) meanings of liberalism, precisely because ‘liberal’ can also be the generic name given to the kind of democratic order that is enjoyed in the West. ‘Liberal’ here would be in contrast to, say, ‘authoritarian’ or ‘feudal’.
It is a meaning that, as a university teacher, I highlight. This broad definition would make of Malta a ‘liberal society’ (however insipid or precarious liberal guarantees may be in certain areas), a point that never fails to jolt some students. In my table talk, I enjoy drawing out that implication, together with the corollary that Deputy Prime Minister (DPM) Tonio Borg is a liberal politician, just when my companions are sipping their cappuccino, to see them splutter the milk all over themselves.
Ranier Fsadni
Feb 21st 2009, 15:02
I agree with Prof. Kenneth Wain about liberalism's influence on Western culture and political order; one cannot disagree without making a fool of oneself. My disagreement concerns the view he attributes to me but which I did not express in my column, nor do I espouse it.
I did not state, as he says I did, either that liberalism’s ‘influence’ or that its ‘relevance’ is today restricted to academe.
What I wrote was: ‘The best of liberalism (US and EU) today is ensconced in academe.’ Clearly, ‘the best of liberalism’ is not the same thing as ‘liberalism’s influence’ or ‘liberalism’s relevance’ (just as ‘the best of whisky’ is not the same as ‘whisky’s influence’ or ‘whisky’s relevance’).
The remainder of the paragraph indicates that I believe that what many contemporary liberal political theorists are writing is of considerable relevance to Western societies today. I wrote of such work as ‘ensconced in academe’ because, regrettably, in my judgment, it is not having the influence that it should have on practising politicians. (It remains to be seen whether this will change once a political theorist-turned-politician, Michael Ignatieff, is ratified as leader of Canada’s Liberal Party in May.)