Crito-liberalism
noun; neologism; up-dating traditional, classical liberalism for subsequent learning; a grown or more advanced stage of liberalism; emphasis on liberty of the individual as a socially-situated being, acknowledging the validity of critical theories founded around empirical observation and analysis, of American pragmatism and of consequentialism.
Establishing a coherent liberal-pragmatic-critical realist and systems-based synthesis
Introducing Crito-liberalism
Adam Smith described political economy as “a branch of the science of the legislator.” What happened to that scientific branch?
We are in polycrisis. So what should we do?
Taking as a starting point Robert Heilbroner’s 1985 definition of political economy as “a study of how politics shapes the economy and how the economy shapes politics,” the effort to define a renewed, functional and beneficial political economy must engage with questions surrounding the contribution of economics through the political process to the emergence of the conditions of polycrisis. It will address specifically the question: “If economics is so useful in policy-making, (i) how did we get in to the mess in which we find ourselves (i.e., polycrisis)? and (ii) how can political economy help us to ameliorate and resolve the contributory elements of polycrisis? The first question can be expanded to consider: “What has failed? (a) economics; or (b) political economy; (c) politics; or (d) something else entirely? And how and why has the failure(s) arisen? Who and what have contributed to the failure(s)? How can the knowledge that interrogating these issues may reveal help us to emerge minimally scathed by polycrisis and what steps will be required to facilitate that process?”
While our approach will be closer to classical liberalism that any other contemporary ideology or philosophic position, liberalism, appropriately, must always evolve. We will call our approach crito-liberalism. Mostly, it looks like modernised Millian liberalism (from John Stuart Mill). However, Mill's liberalism, based on his great On Liberty, has been updated in several different directions, which require careful clarification.
The first clarification is Austrian-turned-British economist Friedrich von Hayek's innovations describing the price-discovery role of markets, that is, their role as information aggregators. While Hayek worked within the Austrian framework of Ludwig von Mises' distinction between praxeology (a theory of purposeful human behaviour) and tâtonnement (iterative market determination of price), his extension of the work of his teacher were profound.
The second clarification is a rejection of the anarcho-capitalism of the American libertarians, also heavily influenced by Mises. This approach advocates extreme laisser faire economics with a mininal state. It is neither practicable nor desirable. While the state should only be as large as is required to realise efficiently a comprehensive vision of liberal rights, our modern concept of rights has expanded signficantly (for example, Berlin's distinction between positive and negative liberties). Similarly, the clarification of conditions of market failure & market imperfections has offered a more balance evalution of the relative performance and failure conditions of markets and of government action.
The third clarification is the extension of liberal political philosophy by American John Rawls, whose thought experiment the veil of ignorance is an essential extension to liberal thinking.
The fourth clarification concerns incorporation of the central tenets of American pragmatism, from Peirce, James and Dewey; notably recognition of the importance of consequentialism and of James' abductive reasoning to the practical philosophy of science, especially social science.
The fifth clarification is the incorporation of social dynamics and social systems, suggesting cybernetics, which emerged from studying scientifically the basic laws ruling self-regulation, self-organisation, autonomy, communication, adaptation, and complexity. Important exrly contributors to cybernetics include biologist Ludwig van Bertalanffy, Norbert Weiner, Claude Shannon, Gregory Bateson, Ross Ashby, Jimmie Savage, Kurt Lewin and Warren McCulloch
The sixth clarification is a very broad one. The vital importance of critical reasoning must be included in any realistic, modern liberal philosophy. The major stands of critical reasoning are:
(i) the Frankfurt School of Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse & Fromm and the second generation, particularly Habermas;
(ii) the empirically-based power theorists, primarily, in the US: C. Wright MIlls & Bill Domhoff;
(iv) the cognitivists, linguistic theorists & psycho-linguists, especially Penrose, Vygotsky, Chomsky, Searle, Ryle and, recently, MacGilchrist;
(v) the social constructionists, the later Wittgenstein, Peter Berger & Thomas Luckmann,
(vi) the post-structuralists and post-modernists, especially Lyotard, Barthes, Beaudrillard, Bourdieu, Foucault, Deleuze, Derrida & Lacan, and more recently, Chantel Mouffe (although most of the decontructionalist content here can safely be avoided as sophistry turned on itself);
(viii) the critical realists, most notably Roy Bhaskar and, in economics, Tony Lawson.
The contributions of these thinkers, and many others, add both realism and vitality to traditional liberalism and provide a stronger base for dealing with the complexities of modern life and the contraditions that have manifested in modern capitalism as it has been implemented in Western social democracies.
It is partly from these critical strands of thought that crito-liberalism draws its name.
The other source of the name is the original Crito, by Plato, portraying Socrates' dialogue with his wealthy friend Crito, who advocated that Socrates escape , in which Crito offers to aid him practically and financially, prior to his execution. Plato presents Socrates' arguments on the nature of justice and duty to the Athenian Republic.
The use of 'crito' in our re-definition of liberalism refers to this concept of both reciprocal and corresponding duties to the rights bestowed by in the modern Lockean conception — of rights to life, liberty and property (or 'pursuit of happiness' in the Jeffersonian interpretation). While it is neatly captured by Mill's harm principle, it bears reinforcement in the modern context of rights-based social dialogue in which attendant duties and obligations are frequently disregarded. These reciprocal and corresponding duties are a vital component of any active debate over the roles of the individual relative to the state and are critically important to establishing a modern, viable and publicly-endorsed liberalism.
Clarifying the distinction between the use of ‘liberal’ or ‘liberalism’ in the US and elsewhere
And on ‘political correctness’
In November 2016, immediately after the first election of Donald Trump as US President, professor of humanities at Columbia Mark Lilla penned an op-ed in the New York Times excoriating what he called identity liberalism. In the article, he used the term liberalism in the US sense of reflexive progressivism, which is wholly unlike the traditional or classical liberalism — of either the early American or European variety — from which the term derives. Lilla is the author also of The Shipwrecked Mind: On Political Reaction, published earlier in 2016 in which he describes a reactionary as . . .
❝ someone shipwrecked in the rapidly changing present, and suffering from nostalgia for an idealized past and an apocalyptic fear that history is rushing toward catastrophe. ❞
Lilla’s Introduction to that book notes that, while there are many studies of the causes and consequences of revolution, there are very few on reaction. As he notes, in relation to theories abut revolution:
❝ We have no such theories about reaction, just the self-satisfied conviction that it is rooted in ignorance and intransigence, if not darker motives . . . The reactionary is the last remaining “other” consigned to the margins of respectable intellectual inquiry. We do not know him. ❞
In The Shipwrecked Mind, Lilla pleads that we should seek to understand the sources of nostalgia of the reactionary, rather than dismiss him. He argues that:
❝ . . . the engaged political reactionary is driven by passions and assumptions no less comprehensible than those of engaged revolutionaries, and develops theories no less sophisticated to explain the course of history and to illuminate the present. It is nothing but a prejudice to assume that revolutionaries think while reactionaries only react.
As he explains, the reactionary feels his views are more justified and grounded in real experience than those who are the advocates of perpetual change:
❝ The revolutionary sees the radiant future invisible to others and it electrifies him. The reactionary, immune to modern lies, sees the past in all its splendor and he too is electrified. He feels himself in a stronger position than his adversary because he believes he is the guardian of what actually happened, not the prophet of what might be. ❞
He continues
❝ To live a modern life anywhere in the world today, subject to perpetual social and technological change, is to experience the psychological equivalent of permanent revolution. The reactionary comes closer [than Marx’s imaginings of revolution abolishing capitalism] to the truth in his historical myth-making when he blames modernity tout court, whose nature is to perpetually modernize itself. Anxiety in the face of this process is now a universal experience, which is why anti-modern reactionary ideas attract adherents around the world who share little except their sense of historical betrayal. Every major social transformation leaves behind a fresh Eden that can serve as the object of somebody’s nostalgia. And the reactionaries of our time have discovered that nostalgia can be a powerful political motivator, perhaps even more powerful than hope. Hopes can be disappointed. Nostalgia is irrefutable. ❞
That is, as long as we have change, we will have reaction against change, as Machiavelli also noted six hundred years ago.
In his NYT essay, Lilla addresses directly the phenomenon of political correctness in a refreshingly clear-sighted analysis. He begins thus:
❝ It is a truism that America has become a more diverse country . . . [a development he celebrates]
❝ [H]ow should this diversity shape our politics? The standard liberal answer for nearly a generation now has been that we should become aware of and “celebrate” our differences. Which is a splendid principle of moral pedagogy — but disastrous as a foundation for democratic politics in our ideological age. In recent years American liberalism has slipped into a kind of moral panic about racial, gender and sexual identity that has distorted liberalism’s message and prevented it from becoming a unifying force capable of governing.
❝ One of the many lessons of the recent [2016] presidential election campaign and its repugnant outcome [Trump’s first presidential term] is that the age of identity liberalism must be brought to an end. ❞ (emphasis added)
Lilla, a self-confessed “liberal,” notes, with direct reference only to America:
❝ [I]t is at the level of electoral politics that identity liberalism has failed most spectacularly, as we have just seen [with Trump’s first electoral victory]. National politics in healthy periods is not about “difference,” it is about commonality. And it will be dominated by whoever best captures Americans’ imaginations about our shared destiny . . . Identity politics, by contrast, is largely expressive, not persuasive. Which is why it never wins elections — but can lose them. ❞
Although both its historical and contemporary experience of diversity is different, much the same could be said of the UK. Lilla continues:
❝ The media’s newfound, almost anthropological, interest in the ‘angry white male’ reveals as much about the state of our liberalism as it does about this much maligned, and previously ignored, figure. A convenient liberal [i.e., progressive] interpretation of the recent presidential election would have it that Mr Trump won in large part because he managed to transform economic disadvantage into racial rage — the “whitelash” thesis. This is convenient because it sanctions a conviction of moral superiority and allows liberals to ignore what those voters said were their overriding concerns . . .
❝ [T]he whitelash thesis is convenient because it absolves liberals [progressives] of not recognizing how their own obsession with diversity has encouraged white, rural, religious Americans to think of themselves as a disadvantaged group whose identity is being threatened or ignored. Such people are not actually reacting against the reality of our diverse America (they tend, after all, to live in homogeneous areas of the country). But they are reacting against the omnipresent rhetoric of identity, which is what they mean by political correctness. ❞
He notes
❝ We need a post-identity liberalism, and it should draw from the past successes of pre-identity liberalism. Such a liberalism would concentrate on widening its base by appealing to Americans as Americans and emphasizing the issues that affect a vast majority of them. It would speak to the nation as a nation of citizens who are in this together and must help one another. As for narrower issues that are highly charged symbolically and can drive potential allies away, especially those touching on sexuality and religion, such a liberalism would work quietly, sensitively and with a proper sense of scale. (To paraphrase Bernie Sanders, America is sick and tired of hearing about liberals’ damn bathrooms.) ❞
Lilla’s analysis is important for two quite separate reasons:
It highlights the difference between the meaning of liberal as it is used (or misused) in the US to mean “progressive” and how it is used in Europe & the UK, where it has mostly retained its original pro-liberty meaning.
It emphasises that liberalism and reflexive progressivism (what Lilla labels identity liberalism or political correctness) are two very different things. While, often, the results will be similarly emancipating, traditional liberalism promotes the right of all citizens to live as they see fit, unencumbered by the interventions of the state and unharmed by others, as long as they do not cause harm to others. That is, all can live as they wish, but that liberty does not extend to causing harm to others. While this leaves open the definition of harm and immediately invites relativistic assessment of harm (traditionally resolved on utilitarian principles), it eliminates the self-absorption of identity-based progressivism that demands rights without acknowleding the corresponding and reciprocal duties of others.
Because individuals’ rights-based demands located in difference from others are covered by fundamental tenets of traditional liberalism (along with the recognition of harm-based limitations thereof), we, too, reject the glibness of reflexive progressivism (i.e., Lilla’s identity liberalism) and political correctness. And we could not have expressed it better than Lilla. So we haven’t.