Liberalism and postliberalism
First, let
me address a terminological matter that will not throw off readers who have
been closely following the recent debate over postliberalism, but does
sometimes confuse those who are not familiar with it. Pilkington frequently refers to the “liberal
conservative” approach to cultural and economic issues. American readers who use the word “liberal” to
connote views of the kind associated with the Democratic Party are liable to
misunderstand him. They may find the phrase
oxymoronic, or perhaps will suppose that Pilkington must be referring to
socially liberal Republicans or the like.
But “liberal conservative” is not intended to refer to such people (or
not them alone, anyway), and the phrase is perfectly sensible when properly
understood.
In political
philosophy, the word “liberal” has a broader sense than it has in contemporary
American politics. It refers to a broad tradition
that goes back to thinkers like John Locke, Adam Smith, and John Stuart Mill,
and that has among its fundamental themes individualism, the thesis that
political authority is the product of a social contract, and the principle that
the state ought to be neutral between competing religious doctrines. Secondary themes would be an emphasis on the
market economy and limited government, though these are not per se liberal. (To be sure, doctrinaire or ideological
versions of market economics and limited government are essentially liberal, but my point is that a non-liberal could
favor non-doctrinaire or non-ideological policies of a free market or limited
government sort.) In the twentieth
century, thinkers like John Rawls took liberalism in a more egalitarian
direction, and thinkers like Robert Nozick took it in a more radically
libertarian direction. In the American
context, the word “liberalism” has come to be associated with egalitarian liberalism
in particular. But in reality, that kind
of liberalism is just one species
within a wider genus.
Now, many
modern conservatives are liberals in the broader sense in question. They are not egalitarian liberals and they are not libertarian liberals, but they are still liberals in the sense that they regard the work of thinkers like
Locke and Smith as foundational to a sound political philosophy, and more or
less take for granted liberalism’s commitment to individualism, the idea of
political authority as deriving from contract, and state neutrality on matters
of religion. This is especially true of
conservatives influenced by the “fusionism” of Frank Meyer, which came to be
associated with William F. Buckley’s National
Review. Fusionism is essentially the
idea that a commitment to individual liberty as understood in the Lockean
tradition can and ought to be “fused” with a commitment to traditional morality
as enshrined in the Judeo-Christian tradition.
“Liberal
conservatives” in this sense are, accordingly, as prone as libertarians are to
argue for market-based approaches to social problems, and to see government
action as itself part of the problem rather than a possible solution. Accordingly, they deploy the rhetoric of
“freedom” as often as, or even more often than, they appeal to tradition,
family, or religion. That they would put
Edmund Burke alongside Locke and Smith in their pantheon of early modern
thinkers, and prefer F. A. Hayek to Nozick or Ayn Rand among contemporary
free-marketers, is what makes their liberalism “conservative.” But, again, it
is still a kind of liberalism in the
broad sense.
Now, the postliberal Right is defined by its
rejection of liberalism in this broad sense no less than in the narrow sense,
and thus by its rejection of fusionism and any other attempt to marry
conservatism to the liberalism of Locke, Smith, and Co. For postliberals, the paradigmatic political
philosophers are thinkers like Plato, Aristotle, Augustine and Aquinas. For theoretical articulation and defense of
the foundations of political morality, they would look to Thomistic natural law
theory (or something in that ballpark) rather than Lockean natural rights
theory. They take the family rather than
the individual to be the basic unit of society, and regard the state as a
natural institution rather than the product of a social contract. In addition, Catholic postliberals tend
toward the “integralist” position that it is preferable at least in theory for
the state to favor the Church rather than to remain neutral on matters of
religion. (Whether it is better in practice, and exactly what it would look
like for the state to favor the Church, are complicated matters that I
have addressed elsewhere.)
Naturally,
the views of individual thinkers of either a liberal conservative sort or a
postliberal sort are bound to be more complicated than this summary
indicates. A liberal conservative might count
Aristotle and Aquinas as influences too, and a postliberal might acknowledge
that there are insights to be drawn from a Burke or a Hayek. What I am describing here are the general
tendencies and basic commitments that differentiate the two points of view.
I wouldn’t
want to put words in Pilkington’s mouth, and perhaps he would disagree with or
qualify some of what I’ve said so far.
But that is how I understand liberal conservatism and postliberalism,
and I am supposing that that is more or less how he understands them too.
From culture to economics and back
again
In my own
essay, I discussed the famous Marxist distinction between the economic “base”
of society and the political, legal, and cultural “superstructure” constructed
on that base. The distinction provides
the organizing theme of Pilkington’s article, and he appeals to it in order to
characterize the different approaches to economics and culture represented by
Marxism, liberal conservatism, and postliberalism.
The Marxist
position, of course, is that the economic base determines everything else. Law, politics, and culture merely function to
keep in place the prevailing economic order and its ruling class, and have no
other significance. By contrast, liberal
conservatives, says Pilkington, take the economic and cultural spheres to be
autonomous. They take the market economy
to be a neutral wealth-generating mechanism that can and should be left to
itself or at most tinkered with slightly so as to improve its output. They take the real action to be at the level
of culture, and they think that advancing their goals in that sphere is simply
a matter of convincing people to adopt them by making good arguments (as
opposed, say, to changing basic economic structures).
Postliberalism,
says Pilkington, rejects both of these positions. Like Marxism and unlike liberal conservatism,
it holds that economics influences culture.
But, unlike Marxism, it holds that culture also influences
economics. Hence, like liberal
conservatism and unlike Marxism, it rejects economic reductionism and takes
culture and argumentation to enjoy some independence of economic factors. But it also rejects the liberal conservative
view of the economy as a neutral mechanism that should largely be left
alone. Securing cultural goals requires economic
change, and not just making good arguments.
In short, economics and culture significantly affect one another, so
that policy cannot focus just on one to the exclusion of the other.
So far I warmly
agree with Pilkington, though there is a terminological difference between us,
albeit one which is – probably – merely
terminological rather than substantive.
Throughout his essay, Pilkington retains the Marxist jargon of economic
“base” and cultural “superstructure.”
Again, he rejects Marxism’s claims about their relationship, and
emphasizes their mutual influence. But
to keep referring to economics as the “base” leaves the impression that it is
still somehow more fundamental. I
imagine that Pilkington does not intend this, and that he retains the
terminology merely for ease of exposition.
But I would prefer to speak of economic and cultural “spheres” (or some
such term) rather than maintain the loaded terminology of “base” and
“superstructure.”
On the other
hand, some of what Pilkington says might at least give some the impression that
he does indeed take economics to be fundamental. In particular, he discusses several examples
of phenomena that might at first glance appear to have purely cultural significance,
but where, he argues, closer inspection will reveal underlying economic
factors. To be sure, his point may be
merely that economics and culture interpenetrate in these cases, without either
being the more fundamental. And I
suspect that that is indeed his view.
But it seems to me that even in the cases he discusses, the cultural
factors are indeed the more fundamental ones, even if he is right to note that
there are crucial economic factors as well.
Hence,
consider what Pilkington has to say about modern changes in family
structure. Liberal conservatives, he
says, attribute this mainly to moral decline, and in part to the welfare
state. But he notes that other crucial
factors are the dramatic decline in the birth rate and the entry of women into
the modern workforce. Pilkington emphasizes
that while women worked in earlier ages (for example, in agriculture) what is distinctive
about modern women’s workplace is that it has separated work from home and
family life. Now, these changes are
economic in nature. Hence, it seems, we
have a clear case where economics has driven cultural change.
That is fair
enough as far as it goes. But I’d point
out that the story doesn’t end there.
For why have birth rates
declined, and why have women entered the modern work force in such large
numbers? The answer, in large part, has
to do with the legalization of birth control and the rise of modern feminism,
with the political and legal changes that went along with it. And those factors, in turn, were the result
of cultural changes. Notice too that, despite the tremendous
influence of Western capitalism on the rest of the world, the birth rate and
the economic situation of women has not changed nearly as radically in Muslim
countries. Why not? Because of legal, political, and cultural
factors. So, as I argued in my earlier
essay, we see once again that lurking behind economic factors are deeper cultural
preconditions.
Something
similar can be said even of the most seemingly crudely material of
factors. For example, it is often claimed
that the birth control pill changed sexual mores more than all the propaganda
of sexual revolutionaries could have.
And the pill is a drug that directly affects body chemistry, not people’s
ideas. But the birth control pill did
not fall from the sky. It had to be
invented, produced, and marketed. And
its mere existence doesn’t force anyone to take it. Tobacco also still exists, but the number of
people using it has dramatically declined.
Nor does the fact that tobacco poses health risks entirely explain that,
because alcohol and marijuana also pose risks, yet alcohol use has not greatly
declined, whereas marijuana use has increased.
The reason,
of course, is that there has been vastly greater cultural pressure against tobacco use than against alcohol use, and
also cultural pressure in favor of
marijuana use. And cultural pressures
are also responsible for the development and use of the pill. It was precisely because of changes in sexual
attitudes that the pill was developed, marketed, and used in the first place,
even if this in turn went on to accelerate the changes in sexual
attitudes. Hence even the pill is not a
purely material factor, nor indeed even primarily material in nature, all
things considered.
Pilkington
also argues that changes in economic policy can improve the health of the
family, and that improving the health of the family will in turn bring about
cultural changes. For example, “studies
show that strong families tend to vote more conservative than atomised
individuals.” Hence, he suggests, “it
may not be too much of an exaggeration to say, given how integrated personal
and economic life are in today’s intensive consumption-production economy, the
only way to engage in meaningful reforms is to tackle them first at an economic
level.”
But here too
the idea that economic policy is more basic than culture, or even equally
basic, collapses on closer inspection.
For suppose we were to try to follow Pilkington’s advice and focus for a
time just on the economic question of what sorts of policies would contribute
to strengthening the family. What counts
as “family”? And what counts as a
“strong” family? Woke ideologues will
have answers to those questions, and they will be very different from the
answers a postliberal would give. And
the difference in the answers will reflect different assumptions of a moral and
philosophical nature – in short, of a cultural
nature. Yet again, lurking behind
purportedly purely economic considerations are deeper cultural issues.
Similar
points can be made in response to Pilkington’s other examples. And then there is the fact that, no matter
how important some specific economic reform is, actually to achieve it will
require political action, which
requires changing minds. That, in turn, will require convincing a
critical mass of people of the importance of such-and-such economic factors
relative to other considerations. And
that is an essentially philosophical task rather than an economic one.
Pilkington may well agree with this. Indeed, as I have discussed elsewhere, Pilkington is well aware of the philosophical assumptions that underlie economic lines of argument. Again, there may at the end of the day be less of a substantive difference between our views than there is a difference of emphasis, or perhaps at most of short-term strategy. And I certainly do not deny that economics is a crucial part of a complete postliberal program. But that is not because economics is more basic than culture, or even because it is equally basic. It is because culture works in part through economics, and indeed because economics is itself a part of culture.