LIBERALISM 2 page

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 357.

The great strength of fundamentalism is its capacity to generate political activism and mobilise the faithful. Fundamentalism operates on both psychological and social levels. Psychologically, its appeal is based upon its capacity to offer certainty in an uncertain world. Being religious, it addresses some of the deepest and most perplexing problems confronting humankind; being fundamentalist, it provides solutions that are straightforward, practical and, above all, absolute. Socially, although its appeal has extended to the educated and professional classes, religious fundamentalism has been particularly successful in addressing the aspirations of the economically and politically marginalised.

The main criticisms of religious fundamentalism are that it breeds, or legitimises, political extremism and that it is implicitly oppressive, even totalitarian. While the popular image of fundamentalists as bombers and terrorists is unbalanced and misleading, it is impossible to deny that some forms of religious fundamentalism have expressed themselves through militancy and violence. The most common fundamentalist justification for such acts is that, as they are intended to eradicate evil, they fulfil the will of God. The association between fundamentalism and oppression derives from its insistence upon a single, unquestionable truth and a single, unchallengeable source of political authority. This creates profound tension between religious fundamentalism and core features of the Western political tradition such as pluralism and *liberal democracy.

SOCIAL DEMOCRACY

Social democracy is an ideological position, usually, but not necessarily, associated with democratic *socialism, which endorses a reformed or ‘humanised' capitalist system (although the term was originally used by Marxists to distinguish between the narrow goal of political democracy and the more radical task of collectivising, or

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democratising, productive wealth). Social democracy therefore stands for a balance between the *market and the *state, a balance between the individual and the community. At the heart of the social democratic position is an attempt to establish a compromise between, on the one hand, an acceptance of *capitalism as the only reliable mechanism for generating wealth, and, on the other, a desire to distribute social rewards in accordance with moral, rather than market, principles. The chief characteristic of social democracy is thus a belief in reform within capitalism, underpinned by a general concern for the underdog in society, the weak and vulnerable.

However, social democracy can take a variety of forms. In its classical form, associated with ethical socialism, it embodies an underlying commitment to *equality and the politics of social *justice. Nevertheless, social democracy may also be informed by modern liberal ideas, such as positive *freedom and even by a paternalistic conservative emphasis upon social duty, as in the case of the One Nation tradition. In terms of public policy the three traditional pillars of social democracy have been the mixed economy (and therefore selective nationalisation), economic management (usually in the form of Keynesianism, the use of fiscal policies to achieve the goal of full employment, as recommended by J. M. Keynes, 1883–1946), and the welfare state (serving as a redistributive mechanism). Modernised or ‘new' social democracy is usually associated with a fuller acceptance of market economics, and with sympathy for communitarian ideas such as mutual obligations and responsibility, breaking, or at least weakening, the traditional link between social democracy and egalitarianism.

Significance

Social democratic ideas and policies had their greatest impact in the early post-1945 period. Advanced by socialist and sometimes liberal and conservative parties, they resulted in the extension of economic and social intervention in most Western states. Social democracy has therefore often been credited with having contained the vagaries of capitalism and delivering wider prosperity and general social stability. However, the ‘forward march' of social democracy went hand-in-hand with the ‘long boom' of the post-war period, and, when this came to an end with the recessions of the 1970s and 1980s, the underlying contradiction of social democracy

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(between maintaining capitalism and promoting equality) came to the surface. This has resulted in a widespread abandonment of traditional social democratic positions and the adoption of more market-orientated values and policies. However, just as the flaws of the social democratic pro-state position created opportunities for the *New Right in the 1980s, growing doubts about the New Right's pro-market position may open up fresh opportunities for modernised or ‘new' social democracy.

The attraction of social democracy is that it has kept alive the humanist tradition within socialist thought in particular. Its attempt to achieve a balance between efficiency and equality has been, after all, the centre ground to which *politics in most developed societies has tended to gravitate, regardless of whether socialist, liberal or conservative governments are in power. From the Marxist perspective, however, social democracy amounts to a betrayal of socialist principles, and attempts to prop up a defective capitalist system in the name of socialist ideals. Nevertheless, social democracy's central weakness is its lack of firm theoretical roots. Although social democrats have an enduring commitment to equality and social justice, the kind and extent of equality they support, and the specific meanings they have given to social justice, have constantly been revised. For instance, to the extent that social democracy has been recast in terms of the politics of *community, it can be said to have assumed an essentially conservative character. Instead of being a vehicle for social transformation, it has developed into a defence of duty and responsibility, and so serves to uphold established institutions and ways of life.

SOCIALISM

Socialism is an *ideology that is defined by its opposition to *capitalism and its attempt to provide a more humane and socially worthwhile alternative. The core of socialism is a vision of human beings as social creatures united by their common humanity; as the poet John Donne put it, ‘No man is an Island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main.' This highlights the degree to which individual identity is fashioned by social interaction and the membership of social groups and collective bodies. Socialists therefore prefer cooperation to competition, and favour

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*collectivism over *individualism. The central, and some would say defining, value of socialism is *equality, socialism sometimes being portrayed as a form of egalitarianism. Socialists believe that a measure of social equality is the essential guarantee of social stability and cohesion, and that it promotes *freedom in the sense that it satisfies material needs and provides the basis for personal development. The socialist movement has traditionally articulated the interests of the industrial working class, seen as systematically oppressed or structurally disadvantaged within the capitalist system. The goal of socialism is thus to reduce or abolish class divisions.

Socialism, however, contains a bewildering variety of divisions and rival traditions. Ethical socialism, or utopian socialism, advances an essentially moral critique of capitalism. In short, socialism is portrayed as morally superior to capitalism because human beings are ethical creatures, bound to one another by the ties of love, sympathy and compassion. Scientific socialism undertakes a scientific analysis of historical and social development which, in the form of *Marxism, does not suggest that socialism should replace capitalism, but predicts that it inevitably would replace capitalism.

A second distinction is about the ‘means' of achieving socialism, namely the difference between *revolution and reform. Revolutionary socialism, most clearly reflected in the communist tradition, holds that socialism can only be introduced only by the revolutionary overthrow of the existing political and social system, usually based upon the belief that existing state structures are irredeemably linked to capitalism and the interests of the ruling class. Reformist socialism (sometimes termed evolutionary, parliamentary or democratic socialism), on the other hand, believes in ‘socialism through the ballot box', and thus accepts basic liberal democratic principles such as *consent, *constitutionalism and party competition. Finally, there are profound divisions over the ‘end' of socialism, that is, the nature of the socialist project. Fundamentalist socialism aims to abolish and replace the capitalist system, viewing socialism as qualitatively different from capitalism. Fundamentalist socialists, such as Marxists and communists, generally equate socialism with common ownership of some form. Revisionist socialism aims not to abolish capitalism but to reform it, looking to reach an accommodation between the efficiency of the market and the enduring moral vision of socialism. This is most clearly expressed in *social democracy.

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Significance

Socialism arose as a reaction against the social and economic conditions generated in Europe by the growth of industrial capitalism. The birth of socialist ideas was closely linked to the development of a new but growing class of industrial workers, who suffered the poverty and degradation that are so often a feature of early industrialisation. For over two hundred years socialism has constituted the principal oppositional force within capitalist societies, and has articulated the interests of oppressed and disadvantaged peoples in many parts of the world. The principal impact of socialism has been in the form of the twentieth-century communist and social-democratic movements. However, in the late twentieth century socialism suffered a number of spectacular reverses, leading some to proclaim the ‘death of socialism'. The most spectacular of these reverses was the collapse of communism in the Eastern European Revolutions of 1989–91. Partly in response to this, and partly as a result of *globalisation and changing social structures, parliamentary socialist parties in many parts of the world re-examined, and sometimes rejected, traditional socialist principles.

The moral strength of socialism derives not from its concern with what people are like, but with what they have the capacity to become. This has led socialists to develop utopian visions of a better society in which human beings can achieve genuine emancipation and fulfilment as members of a community. In that sense, despite its late-twentieth-century setbacks, socialism is destined to survive if only because it serves as a reminder that human development can extend beyond market *individualism. Critics of socialism nevertheless advance one of two lines of argument. The first is that socialism is irrevocably tainted by its association with statism. The emphasis upon collectivism leads to an endorsement of the *state as the embodiment of the public interest. Both communism and social democracy are in that sense ‘top-down' versions of socialism, meaning that socialism amounts to an extension of state control and a restriction of *freedom. The second line of argument highlights the incoherence and confusion inherent in modern socialist theory. In this view socialism was only ever meaningful as a critique of, or alternative to, capitalism. The acceptance by socialists of market principles therefore demonstrates either that socialism itself is flawed or that their analysis is no longer rooted in genuinely socialist ideas and theories.

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THIRD WAY

The ‘third way' is a slogan that encapsulates the idea of an alternative to both *capitalism and *socialism. It draws attention to an ideological position that has attracted political thinkers from various traditions. The term originated within Italian *fascism and was first publicly used by Mussolini (who claimed to have coined it). The fascist ‘third way' took the form of *corporatism, a politico-economic system in which major economic interests are bound together under the auspices of the *state. The organic unity of fascist corporatism was supposedly superior to the rampant *individualism of profit-orientated capitalism and the stultifying state control of communism. In the post-1945 period a very different ‘third way' was developed in relation to Keynesian *social democracy, found in its most developed form in Sweden. The Swedish economic model attempted to combine elements of both socialism and capitalism. Productive wealth was largely concentrated in private hands, but social *justice was maintained through a comprehensive welfare system funded by a steeply progressive tax regime. More recently, the idea of the ‘third way' has resurfaced in association with ‘new' social democratic or post-socialist thought. Widely associated with the Blair government and ‘new' Labour in the UK, but also influenced by the Clinton administration in the USA, this ‘third way' is defined as an alternative to ‘top-down' state intervention (and therefore traditional social democracy) and free-market capitalism (and therefore Thatcherism or Reganism). The ideological character of this post-social democratic ‘third way' is, however, unclear. In most forms it involves a general acceptance of the *market and of globalised capitalism, qualified by a communitarian emphasis upon social duty and the reciprocal nature of *rights and responsibilities.

Significance

The recurrence of the idea of a ‘third way' highlights deep, but perhaps incoherent, dissatisfaction with the two dominant twentieth-century models of economic organisation: market capitalism and state socialism. Proponents of ‘third way' politics in effect attempt to develop a non-socialist critique of an unregulated market economy. Although the philosophical and ideological basis of this critique changes, the major reservations about capitalism remain remarkably

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similar: a concern about the random and often immoral implications of market competition. The flaw of capitalism, from this point of view, is that it is a constant threat to social cohesion and stability. At the same time, however, ‘third way' thinkers reject socialism because of its association with state control and because they believe that *collectivisation and planning fail to provide a viable alternative to the capitalist market. Two key criticisms are advanced of ‘third way' politics. The first is that the idea of the ‘third way' is merely a populist slogan devoid of political or economic content. The second is that ‘third way' theories are inherently contradictory because, whilst criticising competition and market individualism, they are not capable of looking beyond a capitalist model of economic organisation.

TORYISM

‘Tory' was used in eighteenth-century Britain to refer to a parliamentary faction that (as opposed to the Whigs) supported monarchical *power and the Church of England and represented the landed gentry; in the USA it implied loyalty to the British crown. Although in the mid-nineteenth century the British Conservative Party emerged out of the Tories, and in the UK ‘Tory' is still widely (but unhelpfully) used as a synonym for Conservative, Toryism is best understood as a distinctive ideological stance within broader *conservatism. Its characteristic features are a belief in hierarchy, *tradition, duty and an organic society. While ‘high' Toryism articu|ates a neo-feudal belief in a ruling class and a pre-democratic faith in established institutions, the Tory tradition is also hospitable to welfarist and reformist ideas, providing these serve the cause of social and institutional continuity. One Nation conservatism can thus be seen as a form of ‘welfare Toryism' or ‘Tory democracy'. Tory democracy is an idea developed in the late nineteenth century by Randolph Churchill, who proclaimed that the way to generate wider popular support for traditional institutions was through advancing the cause of social reform.

Significance

Toryism amounts to the vestiges of the feudal political tradition, the remnants of the ideological stance of the landed aristocracy. Tory

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ideas survived because they were absorbed into conservative *ideology, their attraction being both that they served the interests of new capitalist elites and, because they are not expressed in terms of abstract principles, they proved to be ideologically flexible and adaptable. However, the match between Toryism and conservatism has always been imperfect, as the latter has accommodated, to a greater or lesser extent, capitalist values such as *individualism, self-striving and competition. The rise of the New Right in the 1970s pushed Toryism, and its associated One Nation ideals, to the margins of conservative politics. The attraction of Toryism is that it advances a vision of a stable, if hierarchical, social order, in which the strong take some responsibility for the weak and vulnerable. The disadvantages of Toryism are that it legitimises the class system and articulates values that are entirely out of step with a modern, meritocratic society.

FURTHER READING

Barry, N. P., The New Right (London: Croom Helm, 1987).

Bobbio, N., Left and Right (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1996).

Bryson., V., Feminist Political Theory: An Introduction (London: Macmillan, 1995).

Clarke, P., Liberals and Social Democrats (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978).

Eatwell, R. and O'Sullivan, N. (eds), The Nature of the Right: European and American Politics and Political Thought since 1789 (London: Pinter, 1989).

Giddens., A., The Third Way: The Renewal of Social Democracy (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998).

Gray, J., Liberalism (Buckingham: Open University Press, 1995).

Griffin, R. (ed.), Fascism (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1995).

Heywood., A., Political Ideologies: An Introduction (London: Macmillan, 1998).

Kenny, M., The First New Left: British Intellectuals after Stalin (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1995).

Kolakowski, L., Main Currents of Marxism, 3 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978).

Marty, M. E. and Appleby, R. S. (eds), Fundamentalisms and the State: Re-making Polities, Economies, and Militance (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1993).

Matchan, T. R. (ed.), The Libertarian Reader (Totowa, NJ: Rowan and Littlefield, 1982).

Miller, D., Anarchism (London: Dent, 1984).

Scruton, R., The Meaning of Conservatism (London: Macmillan, 1984).

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Smith, M. J., Ecologism (Buckingham: Open University Press, 1998).

Tam, H., Communitarianism: A New Agenda for Politics and Citizenship (London: Macmillan, 1998).

Vincent, A., Modern Political Ideologies (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995).

Wright, A., Socialisms: Theories and Practices (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1987).

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Approaches

BEHAVIOURALISM

Behaviouralism is the belief that social theories should be constructed only on the basis of observable behaviour (as opposed to behaviourism, which is the school of psychology that holds that human behaviour can ultimately be explained in terms of conditioned reactions or reflexes). The behavioural approach to political analysis developed out of *positivism, adopting its assertion that scientific knowledge can be developed only on the basis of explanatory theories that are verifiable or falsifiable. Behavioural analysis typically involves the collection of quantifiable data through research surveys, statistical analysis and the construction of empirical theories that have predictive capacity.

Significance

The so-called ‘behavioural revolution' of the 1950s made behaviouralism the dominant force in US political science and a powerful influence elsewhere, notably in the UK. The attraction of behaviouralism was that it allowed political analysis to break away from its concern with *constitutions and normative theory, and gave the study of *politics, perhaps for the first time, reliable scientific credentials. This fuelled the belief, expressed by political analysts such as David Easton (1979) , that politics could adopt the methodology of the natural sciences through the use of quantitative research methods in areas such as voting behaviour and the behaviour of legislators, lobbyists and municipal politicians. Behaviouralism, however, came under growing pressure from the 1960s onwards. In the first place, it significantly constrained the scope of political analysis, preventing it going beyond what was directly observable. Although behavioural analysis produced, and

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continues to produce, invaluable insights in fields such as voting studies, a narrow obsession with quantifiable data threatens to reduce the discipline of politics to little else.

Moreover, the scientific credentials of behaviouralism were called into question, in that its claim to be objective, reliable and ‘value-free' is compromised by a range of unstated biases. For instance, if *democracy is redefined in terms of observable behaviour, it means what goes on in so-called democratic political systems in the developed West, and is disengaged from ideas such as popular participation and public accountability. Behaviouralism has, finally, been criticised for treating human behaviour as predictable and determined by the interaction of objective factors, when in fact it is shaped by a variable mix of psychological, social, cultural and historical circumstances. The now more common stance of post-behaviouralism differs from behaviouralism in that it goes further in recognising the role of theory in imposing meaning on data and acknowledges the degree to which theoretical perspectives may impinge upon seemingly objective observations.

DIALECTIC

A dialectic is a process of development brought about by conflict between two opposing forces. Plato's (427–347 BCE) method of developing a philosophical argument by means of a dialogue between Socrates and a protagonist is thus referred to as dialectical. G. W. F. Hegel (1770–1831) explained the process of reasoning and both human and natural history in terms of a theory of the dialectic. According to this, both thought and reality develop towards a determinant end-point through conflict between a ‘thesis' and the negation it embodies, the ‘antithesis', producing a higher stage of development, the ‘synthesis', which, in turn, serves as a new ‘thesis'. By contrast with Hegel's *idealism, Karl Marx (1818–83) gave the dialectic a materialist interpretation in identifying the driving force of history as internal contradictions within class society that are manifest in the form of class conflict.

Significance

The strength of the dialectical method is that it draws attention to tensions or contradictions within belief systems and social

structures, often providing important insights into the nature of change. In addition, in emphasising relationships and interdependence, dialectics can feature as part of a holistic perspective and be used to analyse ecological processes. Nevertheless, dialectical thinking plays little part in conventional social and political analysis. Its main drawbacks are that, in always linking change to internal contradictions, it over-emphasises conflict in society and elsewhere, and, as in the writings of Hegel and, later, Friedrich Engels (1820–95), the dialectic has been elaborated into a metaphysical system supposedly operating in nature as well as human society. ‘Dialectical materialism' (a term coined by the Russian Marxist Georgi Plekhanov (1856–1918), not Marx), refers to a crude and deterministic form of *Marxism that dominated intellectual life in orthodox communist states.

DISCOURSE

Discourse, in everyday language, refers to verbal communication, talk or conversation. However, discourse has been adopted as an analytical concept or theoretical approach by a variety of academic disciplines, including linguistics, literature, philosophy and, most enthusiastically, cultural studies. In its technical sense a discourse is a specialist system of knowledge embodied in a particular language, a kind of mind-set that structures understanding and behaviour (examples could range from legal jargon and religious rituals to ideological traditions). Discourse theory thus uncovers meaning in objects and practices by recognising their discursive character and analysing the part they play in particular discourses and within a wider framework of meaning. Following Michel Foucault (1926–84), an emphasis upon discourse, or what he called ‘discursive formation', reflects the belief that knowledge is deeply enmeshed in power, truth always being a social construct.

Significance

Political and social theorists sympathetic to *postmodernism have been attracted to discourse theory for a number of reasons. These include that it recognises that meaning is not implicit in social objects and practices but is historically and politically constructed,

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and that it can uncover social antagonisms and struggles for *hegemony that conventional theory ignores.

Criticisms of discourse theory are either philosophical or substantive. Philosophically, an emphasis upon discourse may reduce everything to thought or language and deny that there is a reality independent of our ideas or conceptions. It may also imply that everything is relative because truth or falsity can be asserted only in relation to particular discourses. Substantive criticisms include that discourse theory limits or discourages the analysis of political and social institutions, and that, insofar as discourse displaces the concept of *ideology, it shifts the attention of political analysis away from issues of truth and falsity.

EMPIRICISM

Empiricism is the doctrine that sense-experience is the only basis of knowledge, and that therefore all hypotheses and *theories should be tested by a process of observation and experiment. This was evident in John Locke's (1632–1704) belief that the mind is a tabula rasa (blank tablet) on which information is imprinted by the senses in the form of sense-data. For David Hume (1711–76), empiricism also implied a deep scepticism which, in its extreme form, should lead us to doubt the existence of objects independent of our perception of them – for instance, does a tree exist if no-one can see it, touch it and so on? In the twentieth century, empiricism has been closely associated with pragmatism, as an epistemological theory. Philosophical pragmatism is the belief that the only way of establishing truth is through practical application, by establishing ‘what works out most effectively'. All forms of empiricism draw a clear distinction between ‘facts', propositions that have been verified by experience, observation and experiment, and ‘values', which as subjective beliefs or opinions are always to be distrusted.

Significance

An empirical tradition can be traced back to the earliest days of political thought. It can be seen in Aristotle's (384–22 BCE) attempt to classify *constitutions, in Machiavelli's (1469–1527) realistic account of statecraft, and in Montesquieu's (1689–1775)

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sociological theory of *government and *law. In many ways such writings constitute the basis of what is now called comparative government, and gave rise to an essentially institutional approach to the discipline. The empirical approach to political analysis is characterised by the attempt to offer a dispassionate and impartial account of political reality. It is ‘descriptive' in that it seeks to analyse and explain, whereas the normative approach is ‘prescriptive' in the sense that it makes judgements and offers recommendations. Empiricism thus provided the basis for *positivism and, later, *behaviouralism. However, the high point of philosophical empiricism was reached in the early twentieth century and it has subsequently been subjected to considerable attack. Strict empiricism has been criticised because it is linked to a simplistic model of science that has been badly damaged by advances in the philosophy of science. It also fails to recognise the extent to which human perception and sense-experience are structured by concepts and theories, and is of limited value in dealing with matters that are ethical or normative in character.

FUNCTIONALISM

Functionalism is the doctrine that social institutions and practices can be understood in terms of the functions they carry out in sustaining the larger social system. As functions are the actions or impacts that one thing has on other things, functionalism suggests that social and political phenomena should be understood in terms of their consequences rather than their causes. In the functionalist view the whole is more than merely a collection of its parts, in the sense that the various parts are structured according to the ‘needs' of the whole. A variety of political theories have adopted a functionalist methodology. These include the tendency of *historical materialism to interpret the *state, *law and *ideology in terms of their function in sustaining the class system, and the general *systems theory approach to political analysis.