Ethos: Why the right gets it wrong and the left don’t get it.

“The Coalition is following where New Labour led – just as New Labour followed where Thatcher led. And, like New Labour and Thatcher, it is doing so, not because its members are wicked people, but because it is hard to do anything else in a culture from which the language of the public good and civic duty has been banished.” (David Marquand.)

Philip Blond, creator of the think-tank ResPublica, recently made a series of radio broadcasts in defence of traditional British institutions – the monarchy, the House of Lords, and the Church of England.  Those of us who identify as left-liberals have historically had a difficult relationship with these institutions.  They are perceived as at best irrelevant and unfit for purpose, at worst corrupt and dangerous.  Taking our inspiration from the Levellers’ “Agreement of the People”, Paine’s “Rights of Man”, and constitutional developments in other countries, left-liberals have often been ardent and radical constitutional reformers.   Our argument is not merely that the traditional institutions are dusty, hierarchical and irrational, but also that they serve to cloak and concentrate power in ways which are antithetical to a civic and democratic life.  This is, indeed, one of the points of departure between left-liberalism and Fabian Socialism: Labour has never challenged the concentrated power of the British State, indeed, have enhanced it with centralising, Benthamite zeal, whereas left-liberals have always sought to democratise, decentralise and liberate.

Blond tries to make a “democratic” case for these traditional British institutions.  He argues that these institutions help to create a more stable and qualitatively superior form of government, protecting us against base populism and arbitrary power.  On a theoretical level, he makes some valid points.  It is nothing very new or original, of course, merely the warmed up residue of Aristotelianism, but sometimes to restate an old truth is a good as to discover a new one.

Blond’s constitutional analysis, however, couldn’t be more wrong.  He has no theoretical, comparative or analytical grasp of the roles and functions of non-executive heads of state or second chamber.  His understanding of British political institutions is woefully lacking – as exemplified by his wrong-headed insistence that the monarchy provides a check against the power of the Prime Minister, when of course it does no such thing.

{to be continued; still a work in progress}

Liberty, Equality, Fraternity

There are two interesting strands of thought which, although yet to be recognised by mainstream political parties in the UK, are beginning to reshape the academic and ideological debate.   These are the “democratic republican tradition”, at present advocated most forcefully by David Marquand, and the “Red Tory / Blue Socialist” line of thought, emerging from Christian Social Teaching and the Radical Orthodoxy of John Milbank.

Although presented as critiques of liberalism, both of these strands of thought have much in common with the Left-Liberal tradition.  Like Left-Liberalism, they transcend the extremes of both Crony Capitalism vs Bureaucratic Socialism.  They seek a more humane economy, a more civic politics, and more ethical and integrated way of life.  They both object to the view that human beings are mere instruments of the State, or buyers and sellers in a Market, to be tagged and commodified; rather, both regard us as social and ethical creatures, who find our own true good only in, with and through the good of others.

Left-Liberalism embraces as its motto the republican trinity of  ”Liberty, Equality and Fraternity“.  It is only through these principles that justice and the common good – and thus the flourishing life – can be attained.  Yet, too often in the past, these noble words have been interpreted in a mechanistic way, as abstractions which have little bearing on reality.  Democratic Republicanism, with its emphasis on active citizenship and public participation in the determination of common goods, and Red Toryism / Blue Socialism, with their concern for the intermediate institutions of social and civic life, such as the family, the church, the local community and the trade union, offer insights into how to bring these principles more authentically to life.

Democratic Republicanism and Red Tory / Blue Socialist thought are opposed to the individualist, atomised, materialist understanding lies at the hollow and vacuous centre of “Hobbesian” forms of liberalism.  Instead, they ground their account of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity in a communitarian worldview which is rooted in a a civic, social, ethical and organic understanding of the human condition.

For Democratic Republicans this understanding is secular and classical.  It looks to the Roman Tribunes of the People and to the Athenian assembly for its images and archetypes.  For those who are influenced by Radical Orthodoxy, the imagery is unambiguously Christian in character.   After all, what could be a better representation of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, than the shared communion cup?  For both, however, the origins of their ideas are Aristotelian.  It seems that Aristotelian ideas - telos, eudaemonia, zoon politikon, arete, elutheria – are at last back in fashion.

How would Aristotelian ideas help shape a new Left-Liberal understanding of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity – one which is sufficiently convincing, compelling, and coherent, to enable us to fight back against the hegemony of amoral crony capitalism?  What follows is an attempt to answer that question.  It is only an initial sketch.  I hope to develop a more detailed and considered answer in future posts.

(a) We should develop a theory of liberty which is based on the common good and on democratic participation in civic and social life, rather than on reductionist individualist materialism. This demands personal liberty, in the form of the constitutional rights and guarantees against oppression.  It also demands freedom from want, ignorance, squalor, idleness and disease, as Left-Liberals have long realised.  More than that, it demands genuine democracy, so that we can be citizens and not merely consumers, and can develop our talents through self-government, office-holding and deliberation.

(b) We should develop a notion of equality which is rooted in the dignity, and the all-too-flawed-reality, of man; which demands that we be able to look one another in the eye as equal citizens, that none are slaves and none are masters. This requires civil and political equality, but it also demands a limit on material inequalities, so that no-one is reduced to dependency on others or to a condition which is undignified, and so that no-one is so wealthy that they can lord it over others. (It does NOT require massive state ownership of industry or the abolition of private property, and here it diverges from Social Democracy as usually portrayed; neither is it satisfied with mere “equality of opportunity”, which does nothing to protect or promote the dignity of those whose talents lie outside of the commercial sphere).

(c) We must recognise the importance of fraternity - the third principle which is too easily forgotten by mechanistic and individualistic theories.  Fraternity acknowledges that we are social and associative creatures, that individual liberty is meaningless if we are locked into the crowded solitary confinement of an atomised, depersonalised existence. In order to be fully human and to be happy we need family, community, village, friends, colleagues, comrades, associates, partners, public spaces, and a good pub.

A new Left-Liberalism which embodies those three principles, understood through an Aristotelian lens and informed by the insights of both the Democratic Republican and Christian traditions, would offer a genuinely radical and humane way forward for the centre-left.

To thee, old cause: Regaining Milton’s Paradise

To thee old cause!
Thou peerless, passionate, good cause,
Thou stern, remorseless, sweet idea…

(From Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass”).

It was John Milton, the puritan prophet, propagandist, political theorist and poet, who coined the term “Good Old Cause”.  He did so in the last days of the great republican experiment (1649-1660).  It was a time of chaos, disappointment, nostalgia and fear.  Despite abolishing the monarchy and the House of Lords, England had failed to establish a lasting, stable, effective form of republican government.  Restoration of the monarchy seemed like the only way to restore peace to a shattered people.  Milton railed against this defeatism.  Monarchy would bring back the bowing and the scraping, the doffing of caps and the tugging of forelocks, which condemned the people to servile status, and would subordinate the State to the needs and whims of one man or one family; only in a free republic could people look one another in the eye as fellow-citizens, and, through frank discussion and a rigourous exchange of views, elevate the common good over all selfish, partial motives.

Milton’s plan, entitled, “A Ready and Easy Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth” proposes a republican model which drew on classical and medieval notions of the “mixed polity”: the highest body of the State was to be a Grand Council elected for life, or according to a system of perpetual partial rotation, somewhat in the manner of the Roman Senate or the Israelite Sanhedrin.  This would have powers of war and peace, of finance.  It would also appoint and direct the Council of State, a sort of executive committee to co-ordinate its work and oversee the administration.  The legislative power would be shared between this Grand Council and county assemblies.  The county assemblies would consist of the people in assembled in the chief town of each county: proposed bills were to be submitted to every county assembly in the land for approval or rejection, with a majority of the counties deciding the issue.  The county assemblies were thus sites of participation and deliberation, bringing real politics to within reach.  This idea is Dutch in origin (Clark, 1915), and replicates the relationship between the States-General and Provincial Estates of the old Dutch Republic.  It is also deeply influenced by the Presbyterian order, which is here translated from the ecclesiastical to the political realm, with the Grand Council playing the part of a perpetual “General Assembly” and the county assemblies acting as local Presbyteries.

The specifics of Milton’s plan, influenced as they were by his place and time, are less important than the general principles which his proposals are intended to embody.  The mixed constitution, the frank and free condition of citizenship tempered by due regard for virtue and excellence, the avoidance of domination, rotation in office, the distribution of power between institutions and levels of government, local forums of deliberations – these are themes which echo, sometimes clearly, sometimes with interesting distortions, throughout the republican tradition.  They can be found in Aristotle and Cicero, in Milton, Harrington, Paine and Jefferson, and on to contemporary political thinkers and activists such as Philip Pettit, Maurizio Viroli, Vaclav Havel and David Marquand.  These are the principles which, if we are serious about freedom, justice, and the common good, ought to guide any future constitutional reform.