Digressions&Impressions

Michael Polanyi on the collapse of liberalism and the Rise of Fascism: Religion and Liberty

Anglo-American liberalism was first formulated by Milton and Locke. Their argument for freedom of thought was twofold. In its first part (for which we may quote the Areopagitica) freedom from authority is demanded, so that truth may be discovered. The main inspiration of this movement was the struggle of the rising natural sciences against the authority of Aristotle. Its programme was to let everyone state his beliefs, and to allow people to listen and form their own opinion; the ideas which would prevail in a free and open battle of wits would be as close an approximation to the truth as can be humanly achieved. We may call this the anti-authoritarian formula of liberty. Closely related to it is the second half of the argument for liberty, which is based on philosophic doubt. While its origins go back a long way (right to the philosophers of antiquity) this argument was first formulated as a political doctrine by Locke. It says simply that we can never be so sure of the truth in matters of religion as to warrant the imposition of our views on others. These two pleas for freedom of thought were put forward and were accepted by England at a time when religious beliefs were unshaken and indeed dominant throughout the nation. The new tolerance aimed pre-eminently at the reconciliation of different denominations in the service of God. Atheists were refused tolerance by Locke, as socially unreliable.

On the Continent, the twofold doctrine of free thought — anti-authoritarianism and philosophic doubt — gained ascendancy somewhat later than in England and moved on straightaway to a more extreme position.--Michael Polanyi (1951) "Perils of Inconsisency" in The Logic of Lberty, p. 117 (in the Libertyfund edition.)

In The Great Transformation, Karl Polanyi popularized (recall here; and here) for many Marxists and progressives a fairly straightforward narrative about the rise of fascism, totalitarianism, and national-socialism (sometimes I'll just use 'fascism' for this whole group): by undermining social cohesion the markets promoted by liberalism give rise to fascism. And (echoing a trope from Adam Smith himself) the workplace in the capitalist economy undermines cognitive proper functioning and the functioning of wider culture (this is especially so when it is accompanied by violence as it was under imperialism and even domestic development). In particular, because markets are also inherently fragile, they generate disruptive crises which fatally undermine the authority of ordinary politicians and open the doors to strongmen of various types (or 'fascism') who take advantage of a wider sense of despair and humiliation.

Sometimes people also add an idea (recall) derived from Lenin to this argument: that is, that capitalist economies naturally become monopolistic. And (partially drawing on the liberal Hobson) such monopoly promotes violent imperialism and/or militarism (and not to mention opens the door to the a concentration of power in the hands of few oligarchs). And from there it is small step to a strongman (if a worker's revolution doesn't stop the process). 

By contrast, market friendly liberals (e.g., Austrians, Ordoliberals, and neoliberals) when confronted with the collapse of liberal civilization after World War I and the aftermath of the Wall Street crisis, offered a different analysis one that also harkened back to Hobson's views: while on the surface the nineteenth century looks liberal, liberals were never so powerful as to defeat mercantilism (which historically preceded it). And depending on the liberal thinker the details will differ, but all agree that in its political guise liberalism suffered setback after setback from the 1870s onward (or even earlier). On this view the early partial success of liberalism actually enhanced the rent-seeking and militaristic forces of mercantile imperialism. On this view, monopoly is not a necessary byproduct of market economies, but the effect of political decisions (tariffs, especially). And one may add, even if monopolies were the consequence of market economies left to themselves, this only shows the need for robust antitrust (ordoliberals especially argued this). The problem for this 'solution' is that it has to prevent rent seeking even though the view itself predicts its likelihood.

It should be noted that both explanations suggest that democracy (broadly conceived) cannot save itself if the economic circumstances are dire enough. And it is no surprise that some theorists thought that democracy inevitably led to Bonepartism (or military dictatorship by plebiscite), also sometimes known as caesarian democracy (recall here). Marx's The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon offers a nice expression of the idea, and as I recently learned (recall) it became a staple of the so-called Italian Elite school. 

In particular, as James Burnham notes, while drawing on Michels' (1911) Political Parties: A Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy in his (1943) The Machiavellians, because of mechanisms that drive elite capture (recall) and because of the doctrine of the general/popular will, it is actually fairly predictable that a leader of a democracy can turn himself into the true representative of the general will of the people. And so rather than Bonepartism being at odds with democracy it is actually its "logical culmination," (Burnham, p. 145). To be sure Bonepartism itself is not totalitarianism, but the step to it may not be so difficult.

But all these explanations suffer from an obvious problem: some states managed to remain broadly liberal warts and all (Switzerland, Holland, the United Kingdom and many of its Dominions, as well as the United States), despite suffering many of the same evils as the countries that did succumb to various strongmen. And this opens the door to alternative approaches.

As I noted before (recall), Karl Polanyi's brother, Michael Polanyi went in a different direction, one of the attendees of Lippmann Colloquium in 1938. (Today he is primarily known for ideas about tacit knowledge in the philosophy of science. In what follows, i will first be alluding to his (1941) "The Growth of Thought in Society, Economica). He noted that in places where fascism (now broadly conceived) succeeded, there had been a previous successful ideological and violent campaign attacking society's intermediaries: these partially self-governing intermediary societies (within science, art, law, the crafts, engineering, medicine, the press, etc.) are for him constitutive of liberal society. This form of liberalism partially harkens back to features we now more often associate with Burke's little platoons and with continental corporatism. But in his Rationalism, Pluralism, and Freedom, Jacob T. Levy has shown that what I here call Michael Polanyi's move is, in fact, a recurring theme within liberalism (that we can also find in Adam Smith).

And in fact Michael Polanyi thereby provides a mechanism for an observation that had figured prominently in Karl Polanyi's argument: that liberal authority seemed to collapse in the face of an organized but not especially threatening minority.  The collapse may look sudden, but it builds on a period of successful intimidation of the ordinary functioning of lots of intermediaries that stabilize liberal society. And if I can glance obliquely to our own time, one crucial lesson of this is that it is really important to bring the rule of law down on those that intimidate these intermediaries. It's to be feared that our own governments have not really learned Michael Polanyi's lesson.

Michael Polanyi himself must have felt that this account leaves out a crucial bit: motivation. Where do the would-be-elites and early cadres of fascists come from in a liberal society? In "Perils of Inconsistency," first published in his collection The Logic of Liberty (1951), Michael Polanyi tackles this question. Echoing and anticipating themes one finds in Hayek, Polanyi thinks that the difference maker is to be found in differential uptake of certain philosophical ideas. (And this also echoes Russell's views in The History of Western Philosophy then recent.) 

For Michael Polanyi, liberalism has its roots in a rejection of religious fanaticism and Church authority (p. 116). Both were replaced by a conception of liberty involving intellectual freedom. And for Polanyi this conception was internally contradictory (see above).* He claims one cannot simultaneously obtain a market place of ideas in public opinion -- notice that he does not attribute this idea to Mill -- and profess a mitigated skepticism at the same time. 

And simply put: on Polanyi's view, because of the demands of religious toleration (p. 122), Locke taught some places how to live with this inconsistency, while maintaining the authority of conscience and ideals pertaining to reason and justice formerly associated with church authority. (This is the bit, I think, is also in Russell--apologies that I lack an exact reference.) To put this amusingly, Locke taught the virtue of hypocrisy to Anglo-Saxon political culture--one continues to pay more than lip-service to certain ideals and so prevent their popular collapse. (On Polanyi's view this one also sees in Utilitarian practice.) As Polanyi puts it (again echoing Russell): "I believe that the preservation up to this day of Western civilization along the lines of the Anglo-American tradition of liberty was due to this speculative restraint, amounting to a veritable suspension of logic within the British empiricist philosophy." (121) One person's shallowness, is another's heroic self-command.

But, by contrast, under the influence of the French Enlightenment, other places tried to remove the inconsistency and replace Church authority with the authority of a public and objective reason. And to simplify greatly, nineteenth century continental philosophy -- special animus is directed by Polanyi at Hegel and Fichte, and then Marx and Nietzsche -- showed that this cannot be done, and that a species of nihilism is a result:

The process of replacing moral ideals by philosophically less  vulnerable objectives was carried out in all seriousness. This is  not a mere pseudo-substitution, but a real substitution of  human appetites and human passions for reason and the ideals  of man.

This brings us right up to the scene of the revolutions of the twentieth century. We can see now how the philosophies which guided these revolutions and destroyed liberty wherever they prevailed, were originally justified by the anti-authoritarian  and sceptical formula of liberty. They were indeed anti-authoritarian and sceptical to the extreme. They set man free  from obligations towards truth and justice, reducing reason to its own caricature : to a mere rationalization of conclusions, pre-determined by desire and eventually to be secured, or already held, by force. Such was the final measure of this liberation: man was to be recognized henceforth as maker and master, and no longer servant of what had before been his ideals.

This liberation, however, destroyed the very foundations of  liberty. (p. 126)

And this opened the door, on Polanyi's view to fanatics that could mobilize the serious moral passions of individuals who had been taught contempt for public morality. So, crucially, rather than seeing the varieties of fascism as inherently "savage," Polanyi sees fascism as building on a moral inversion  developed by Marxism. On this view, where public reason and public morality are seen as ideological, or merely a fig leave for the operation of power, fascism and authoritarianism can appeal to the moral sensibility of dissatisfied (and ambitious) individuals.

The important point here is that rather than seeing the success of strongmen as merely the success of cynicism, Polanyi glimpses that they can win in contexts where liberal society has lost its inner faith because they (the fascists) manage to channel moral grievance and moral disgust into a politics of violent renewal. 

Polanyi's own conclusion is that that liberalism and certain forms of religion are natural allies. (He is greatly cheered by the Christian Democratic defeat of Communism in Italy, and elsewhere.) Historically this was an important move because it prefigures the fusionism (of market friendly and religious conservative types) that made the Republican Party so successful in the latter half of the twentieth century (and so interestingly studied by Melinda Cooper in Family Values). And confronted by the success of Trumpism, I have been tempted by the idea (recall), in dialogue with Thomas Pink, that liberalism needs the help of religion, a revitalized Catholic Church, especially.+ 

Okay, let me wrap up. I don't mention all of this because I think Polanyi's history of philosophy is especially accurate or insightful. Nor do I mention it because I think we should go back to fusionism Stateside or Christian Democracy in Europe. But rather, I think Polanyi, is insightful that a successful public culture must do some justice to, or find a way to channel to proper public ends, the moral sensibility of the population. This means, I think, that liberal neutrality needs to be rethought without giving up on the virtues of liberalism.

 

The Case Against Hume (I)

The king, sensible that nothing kept alive the ideas of military valour and of ancient glory, so much as the traditional poetry of the people, which, assisted by the power of music, and the jollity of festivals, made deep impression on the minds of the youth, gathered together all the Welsh bards, and from a barbarous, though not absurd policy, ordered them to be put to death.--David Hume History of England

Edward I's mass murder of the socio-cultural leaders of the Welsh in 1284 is called 'barbarous,' but not absurd. It's not absurd because Hume recognizes the significance of what one might call a 'civic culture' -- poetry of the people...assisted by the power of music, and the jollity of festivals, -- for possible future (national) political resistance. That is to say, Hume recognizes the instrumental rationality of the English king's pacification of the Welsh which requires forceful methods to succeed. 

That despite finding Edward's policy intelligible from the perspective of (Machiavellian) statecraft, one might well naturally think that Hume also condemns Edward's mass murder, even cultural genocide because he calls it 'barbarous.' And it is certainly case that the sociological contrast between barbarous and civilization, which is an important empirical distinction in Hume, is also normatively laden. For Hume, to be civilized is to be normatively better, more advanced, than to be barbarous. So, the natural thought is not silly here.  I return to this below.

Yesterday, Mauricio Suárez called my attention to an article in The Scotsman, where academics protested the removal of David Hume's name from a university building at the University of Edinburgh. At first sight the critics are correct to suggest that Hume did not get honored belatedly by the university (which infamously refused him a post while living) in virtue of his racism, but for other “great and locally relevant [intellectual] achievements.” Let's stipulate this is true (although below I make an important qualification). It is also an  interesting and tough question (recall Neil McArthur -- himself a distinguished Hume Scholar - here)  how much imperfection one can tolerate in a scholar before certain academic honors for genuine intellectual achievements become off-limits. Jacob Levy (here; here) has done important work on this topic, which has influenced my own evolving sense. 

The critics' defense, as reported (which is an important caveat), of Hume involve at least five other claims: first, that his (acknowledged) racism toward "blacks [is] nonetheless marginal to his body of ideas." It is merely "one racist footnote." Second, that the university process was shoddy (“This is an area which requires sensitivity, tact, procedural transparency and patience.") Third, that the decision potentially negatively impacts the reputation of scholars who work on Hume ("suggests the university also regards these colleagues’ work as dubious or disreputable.”) Fourth, “Hume’s views on race...were common in his day." And, fifth, that the actions of the past are in a certain sense irrelevant today (“History contains many offensive things that cannot now be undone. What matters is how those living in the present conduct themselves towards one another.”)

Since I am a Hume scholar -- even got my first lucky intellectual break to write on Hume for the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy --, you may expect me to be sympathetic to the critics and worry about my reputation. But, in fact, Hume scholarship has tried hard to confront Hume's racism (and I discuss some of this scholarship in my book on Smith). Anyway, my concern here is not with the reputation of Hume scholars, but with how to think about Hume's legacy.

I agree with the critics that the University of Edinburgh has done itself a disservice by it's unintellectual and uninformative explanation for its decision (here, so you can make up your own mind; ht Dailynous). But it does not mean the critics are right that there is no case here. As I have explained here, that infamous footnote occurs in a text which is also quite clearly anti-semitic. Hume's attitude toward the Jews (which sometimes could be more sympathetic) contrasts strongly with (say) Toland's advocacy of Jewish emancipation (a generation earlier).

In addition, Hume's views on the Irish (in his History) are not exactly sympathetic. I think (and will argue another time) that Adam Smith's one real fight with his close friend, Hume, involved Hume's prejudice toward the Irish (where Hume takes the side of the English, recycling its propaganda) in his treatment of the Irish (1641) rebellion. But today, I link you to Clare Moriarty's tweet which presents another's testimony. (Moriarty is a scholar of Berkeley's mathematics, who has called attention to his eugenic interests, anti-Irish prejudices, and slave-owning in the past.)

So, it is not true that in Hume's age, Hume's racial views were uncontroversial. Philosophers are endlessly taught, on the authority of both Hume (“that bigoted silly fellow")* and Kant, that James Beattie was a philosophical idiot. But whatever the merits of this claim against Beattie's arguments on causation, Beattie was also a fierce critic of Hume's racism (and may have even influenced Hume to moderate his racism).

So, the scholarly critics of the University of Edinburgh, rely on a flawed modern historicist defense of Hume which itself presupposes moral progress, where we know better and the mythical past was uniformly bigoted, as I have argued here (one of my better blog posts--go read it!) And while Hume was a critic of (ancient) slavery, his views on race were (predictably) used by contemporary defenders of slavery (recall here) and fiercely debated by English abolitionists.** 

So, the case against Hume is that his racism is not a minor aberration in his thought, but a significant element of his larger views. In my view this is so not because Hume was especially animated by cultural prejudice or racism, but rather because he was a proponent of civilization -- which he associated with being governed by rule of law, commerce, humanity, and progress -- and thought it okay, on balance, if civilization was spread, even by force. And this returns me to his comment on Edward I.+ For, while if we only look at the passage above, it might seem Hume condems Edward's brutal policy of pacification, Hume himself offers the following summing up a bit later in the History:

The enterprizes, finished by this prince, and the projects, which he formed and brought near to a conclusion, were more prudent, more regularly conducted, and more advantageous to the solid interests of his kingdom, than those which were undertaken in any reign either of his ancestors or his successors. He restored authority to the government, disordered by the weakness of his father; he maintained the laws against all the efforts of his turbulent barons; he fully annexed to his crown the principality of Wales; he took many wise and vigorous measures for reducing Scotland to a like condition; and though the equity of this latter enterprize may reasonably be questioned, the circumstances of the two kingdoms promised such certain success, and the advantage was so visible of uniting the whole island under one head, that those who give great indulgence to reasons of state in the measures of princes, will not be apt to regard this part of his conduct with much severity. But Edward, however exceptionable his character may appear on the head of justice, is the model of a politic and warlike king: He possessed industry, penetration, courage, vigilance, and enterprize: 

Here Hume quite clearly suggests that Edward I was the best king England ever had before or since ("any reign either of his ancestors or his successors").++ And one of the reasons for this is the very brutal annexation of Wales and the model it provided for the subduing of Scotland. And while Hume grants that from the vantage point of equity and justice Edward can be criticized, the consequences of this brutality are so excellent that the means justify the ends (the expansion of civilization). It is a very natural reading of Hume's History -- which was the source of his initial fame -- that brutal conquest in the name of reason of state is fine as long as you promote and secure the rule of law. This is a consequentialist argument.

Notice that Hume is not shy about judging characters of the past as exemplars worth emulating or not. Hume would reject the historicist argument of his defenders.

And while I have no doubt that British (racialized) imperialism in the name of civilization would have happened without Hume, Hume did help give this ideology (which goes back to earlier times [cf Petty's conquest of Ireland]) extremely wide currency and respectability (despite Adam Smith's and his student Millar's attempts to undo it). So, while this ideology does not influence the problem of induction, I do think it ties together many elements in Hume's moral and political philosophy and defense of commercial society. And I sometimes fear that despite Hume's scepticiam and irreligion (which made him ineligible for a university position), it is this proto-imperialist ideology that made Hume so widely and publically highly regarded (assuming most were uninterested in his metaphysics and the fine points of his epistemology). That's compatible with the claim that there are resources in his philosophy to combat this ideology.

Let me close. I do not think the case against Hume is simple or without complexity. And I do not wish to suggest that one cannot paint a better picture of Hume than I did today. (I have done so myself and will do so again.) But the case against Hume is wider and more relevant than his defenders realize. And ignoring that case means we do not confront the complicity of our heroes in justifying really important evils that ought to be repaired if we still can. 

 

On Quentin Skinner's neo-roman criticism of classical liberalism; or Hume vs Skinner (IV)

I...concentrate...on the other and more knock-down objection commonly levelled against the theory I have been laying out. According to a number of eminent critics, the analysis of the concept of liberty underlying the claim that it is only possible to live freely in a free state is itself misleading and confused. Those who have raised this objection commonly mount their attack in two waves. First they reaffirm the Hobbesian principle that the extent of your individual liberty depends on the extent to which the performance of actions within your powers is or is not physically or legally constrained. As Paley, for example, puts it, 'the degree of actual liberty' will always bear 'a reversed proportion to the number and severity of the restrictions' placed on your ability to pursue your chosen ends. But the neo-roman theorists, according to Paley, are not talking about this situation. They are talking about the extent to which the performance of such actions may or may not be free from the possible danger of being constrained. But this, Paley goes on, is to confuse the idea of liberty with a wholly different value, that of enjoying security for your liberty and the exercise of your rights. So the neo-roman writers 'do not so much describe liberty itself, as the safeguards and preservatives of liberty: for example, a man's being governed by no laws, but those to which he has given his consent, were it practicable, is no otherwise necessary to the enjoyment of civil liberty, than as it affords a probable security against the dictation of laws, imposing arbitrary and superfluous restrictions upon his private will'
The second wave of the attack then follows at once. As soon as this confusion is uncovered, we can see that the basic claim made by the neo-roman theorists to the effect that you can only be free in a free state is simply a mistake. The extent of your freedom as a citizen depends on the extent to which you are left unconstrained by the coercive apparatus of the law from exercising your powers at will. But this means that what matters for civic liberty is not who makes the laws, but simply how many laws are made, and thus how many of your actions are in fact constrained. This in turn shows that there is no necessary connection between the preservation of individual liberty and the maintenance of any particular form of government. As Paley concludes, there is no reason in principle why 'an absolute form of government' might not leave you no less free than the purest democracy'.

...It seems to me, however, that Paley's line of criticism fails to come to terms with the most basic and distinctive claim that the neo-roman theorists are labouring to make about the concept of civil liberty. The claim is implicit in the analysis I have already given, but it is now time to spell it out.
The neo-roman writers fully accept that the extent of your freedom as a citizen should be measured by the extent to which you are or are not constrained from acting at will in pursuit of your chosen ends. They have no quarrel, that is, with the liberal tenet that, as Jeremy Bentham was later to formulate it, the concept of liberty 'is merely a negative one' in the sense that its presence is always marked by the absence of something, and specifically by the absence of some measure of restraint or constraint. Nor have they any wish to deny that the exercise of force or the coercive threat of it must be listed among the forms of constraint that interfere with individual liberty. Despite what a number of recent commentators have implied, they are far from merely wishing to put forward an alternative account of unfreedom according to which it is held to be the product not of coercion but only of dependence.

What, then, divides the neo-roman from the liberal understanding of freedom? What the neoroman writers repudiate avant la lettre is the key assumption of classical liberalism to the effect that force or the coercive threat of it constitute the only forms of constraint that interfere with individual liberty. The neo-roman writers insist, by contrast, that to live in a condition of dependence is in itself a source and a form of constraint. As soon as you recognise that you are living in such a condition, this will serve in itself to constrain you from exercising a number of your civil rights. This is why they insist, pace Paley, that to live in such a condition is to suffer a diminution not merely of security for your liberty but of liberty itself.

The issue, in short, is how to interpret the underlying idea of constraint...

If you are a subject of the sultan, you will be less free than a citizen of Lucca, simply because your freedom in Constantinople, however great in extent, will remain wholly dependent on the sultan's goodwill. But this means that in Constantinople you will suffer from a form of constraint unknown even to the humblest citizen of Lucca. You will find yourself constrained in what you can say and do by the reflection that, as Harrington brutally puts it, even the greatest bashaw in Constantinople is merely a tenant of his head, liable to lose it as soon as he speaks or acts in such a way as to cause the sultan offence. The very fact, in other words, that the law and the will of the sultan are one and the same has the effect of limiting your liberty. Whether the commonwealth be monarchical or popular, the freedom is not still the same...
...

By the end of the nineteenth century, Henry Sidgwick felt able to declare in his great summation of classical liberalism that the errors underlying the neoroman theory of liberty are beyond dispute. To speak of individual liberty, Sidgwick first reminds us in his Elements of Politics, is to speak of an absence of external impediments to action, either in the form of 'physical coercion or confinement', or else of coercive threats that inhibit us by 'the fear of painful consequences'. Once this is understood, we can see that to think of the freedom of citizens as possible only within free states is simply to fall into 'the confusion which the common use of the word "Freedom" is apt to cause'. The truth is that individual freedom has no necessary connection with forms of government, since it is perfectly possible for a representative legislature to 'interfere with the free action of individuals more than an absolute monarch With this reiteration of the classical utilitarian case, Sidgwick dearly felt that the neoroman theory had finally been laid to rest.--Quentin Skinner, Liberty before Liberalism, 79-99.

This is the concluding post ((recall here; here; here; here; here) in my series on Skinner's Liberty before Liberalism , and the one in which I disagree with him. One important feature of Skinner's treatment of the debate between the "neoroman theory" and the "liberal," even "classical liberal" response to it is that the main representatives of the latter he discusses, from Paley to Sidgwick, are all utilitarians. And of these, Mill goes entirely unmentioned (except for in Skinner's "preface"). This subtly skews the terms of the debate. 

For in Skinner's hands the neoroman litmus test for freedom is the ability to speak one's mind at court by those"devoted to public service by acting as advisers and counsellors to the rulers and governments." (87ff) Since utilitarians often conceive of their own science in terms of such (philanthropic) service -- they model their own activity in terms of social planner or philanthropy -- this is entirely fair. And, indeed, in their public service, in so far as policy-advisors become dependent on the whims of the prince, and, as Machiavelli (recall) already noted, incentivized to flatter the prince and disagree among themselves, the neoromans are right to regard it as a mistake to treat them as paradigmatically free in such an unstable political environment. 

Why then do I say that the debate is skewed? First that there is nothing distinctively liberal about these utilitarian responses to the neoromans. By this I do not mean to imply that the utilitarians are hostile to liberalism. I agree with, say, Foucault (recall) that they constitute the epitome of the "radical" tradition within liberalism. But it doesn't mean that in all things utilitarians are constitutive of liberalism or especially liberal in their sensibility. When in  Considerations on Representative Government, Chapter 3. Mill, who himself has a tendency toward paternalism, warns against the attractions of "good despotism" he is attacking the fondness for Enlightened dictatorship to be found in (other) utilitarians (and earlier the physiocrats). Again, I do not mean to deny that within otherwise eminently liberal thinkers there is a recurring lapse toward the attractions of the wise legislator who resolves political problems by fiat.

My point is that so-called negative liberty by itself is not especially liberal. For, one thing notably missing in the presentation of the liberal response to the neoroman account of freedom, as presented by Skinner, is the significance of the rule of law.+ The classical liberals granted the neoromans that one was not free under despots. For, example the sultan's mastery "of the life and fortune of any individual" is treated as a danger to and restriction of freedom by Hume. This despite the fact that the sultan was, according to Hume, constrained in his ability to impose taxes. 

But informed by Machiavelli on the significance of mechanism design, the classical liberals also claimed that the rule of law was compatible with a variety of constitutional and political formats. What's needed, in addition to the rule of law, is a separation of powers capable of resisting the executive so that impartial and general rule of law is secured. As Hume, who is by no means the greatest friend of liberty among the classical liberals, writes in remarking on the "struggle" between "authority and liberty:"

The government, which, in common appellation, receives the appellation of free, is that which admits of a partition of power among several members, whose united authority is no less, or is commonly greater than that of any monarch; but who, in the usual course of administration, must act by general and equal laws, that are previously known to all the members and to all their subjects. In this sense, it must be owned, that liberty is the perfection of civil society;

Notice that in the quoted passage, Hume accepts the neoroman claim that you can only be free in a free state. The problem with the neoroman position for Hume is not that the neoromans confuse freedom with constraints on freedom (and should adopt the Hobbesian, negative conception of freedom). Skinner is entirely right that this line of argument that is ground in the idea that "individual liberty is basically a matter of non-interference" (116, in context this is a criticism of Isaiah Berlin) begs the question against the neoroman account of liberty. Hume does not beg the question in that way.*

Rather, the neoroman theorists call the wrong kind of states free. This needs to be corrected. For Hume, the problem with the neoroman account is that, as (recall Constant) any reader of Rousseau's Social Contract will have recognized, the neoroman theory facilitates what one may call democratic despotism. (This was noted in Berlin's Two Concepts.") And in so far as republican theorists recognize this, and introduce  institutional safeguards against it, they move toward the liberal position articulated by Hume (and Montesquieu, etc.), and, indeed, Livy.++

I do not mean to deny that lurking here is an important disagreement over the best form of life. Classical liberals do not sign up for the neoroman idea that devoted public servant is the paradigmatic citizen,  although Hume and Smith felt the pull of it. And from a neoroman perspective this is indeed troubling. But the liberal rejoinder is that in their kind of free state, which is compatible with a whole range of constitutional forms (but not despotism/tyranny, etc.), the public servant is no more dependent or unfree on the ruler than any other citizen is. But that's because the liberal espouses the idea when, in a free state (in the corrected sense), the citizen exercises her judgment in order to make meaningful choices, she can express her personal freedom in a diversity of ways in the pursuit of many valuable ends.

 

 

On Foucault on 17 January 1979: On Dynamics of Liberty or Method and Enemies (V)

Undertaking the history of regimes of veridiction—and not the history of truth, the history of error, or the history of ideology, etcetera—obviously means abandoning once again that well-known critique of European rationality and its excesses, which has been constantly taken up in various forms since the beginning of the nineteenth century. From romanticism to the Frankfurt School, what has always been called into question and challenged has been rationality with the weight of power supposedly peculiar to it. Now the critique* of knowledge I would propose does not in fact consist in denouncing what is continually—I was going to say monotonously—oppressive under reason, for after all, believe me, insanity (déraison) is just as oppressive. Nor would this political critique of knowledge consist in flushing out the presumption of power in every truth affirmed, for again, believe me, there is just as much abuse of power in the lie or error. The critique I propose consists in determining under what conditions and with what effects a veridiction is exercised, that is to say, once again, a type of formulation falling under particular rules of verification and falsification. Michel Foucault, 17 January 1979, lecture 2  The Birth of Biopolitics. translated by Graham Burchell, 35-36

One strain easy to miss in the fascinating ambitions of lecture 2, is Foucault's polemic with the Frankfurt school. That is to say, I missed it when I taught last year it only to be taken by surprise (looking ahead) in lecture 5. His main criticism above seems to be that ideology critique lacks originality (it goes back to romanticism) and is tired old hat ("etcetera;" "once again;" "well- known;" "constantly" "always"). The more subtle criticism, which is a consequentialist argument from authority ("believe me") is is that if the effect of ideology critique is a regime of unreason or error, it is no better. That is to say, and this has been noted by critics of Foucault, there is a kind of status quo bias built into Foucault's methodology; it is not sufficient to show that the status quo is problematic if you don't have a path toward a better outcome. 

It would be tempting now to turn to Foucault's methodology, but, as it happens, the polemic with Frankfurt is not finished yet. A few pages (or since these are lectures, minutes) later he claims that:

We should keep in mind that heterogeneity is never a principle of exclusion; it never prevents coexistence, conjunction, or connection. And it is precisely in this case, in this kind of analysis, that we emphasize, and must emphasize a non-dialectical logic if want to avoid being simplistic. For what is dialectical logic? Dialectical logic puts to work contradictory terms within the homogeneous. I suggest replacing this dialectical logic with what I would call a strategic logic. A logic of strategy does not stress contradictory terms within a homogeneity that promises their resolution in a unity. The function of strategic logic is to establish the possible connections between disparate terms which remain disparate. The logic of strategy is the logic of connections between the heterogeneous and not the logic of the homogenization of the contradictory. So let’s reject the logic of the dialectic and try to see—this is what I will try to show in these lectures—the connections which succeeded in holding together and conjoining the fundamental axiomatic of the rights of man and the utilitarian calculus of the independence of the governed. (42-43)

The heterogeneity he has in mind (recall) is liberalism's two traditions/concepts of liberty -- the contractualist-republican and utilitarian ones. And the significance of his claim, to liberalism, and this anticipates structurally something Jacob Levy has recently emphasized (recall;and recall) in a slightly different fashion, is the creative tension, a dynamics of liberty, within liberalism of these non-identical yet coexisting conceptualizations of liberty. And strikingly, Foucault wants to adopt a logic of inquiry that does justice to and can convey precisely these dynamics, "the connections which succeeded in holding together and conjoining the fundamental axiomatic of the rights of man and the utilitarian calculus of the independence of the governed. " As I signaled earlier in the week, by adopting what he calls strategic logic, Foucault's rewriting of the tradition is simultaneously a means of extending it because it facilitates the expression of this creative dynamic. 

At this point it is unclear whether Foucault thinks that by so doing one gives liberalism a new lease on life or one helps to push it over the precipice. But he is explicit that dialectical logic (which I take him to associate with the Frankfurt school, especially Horkheimer and Marcuse [both mentioned later in the lecture series)) is both simplistic and incapable of respecting the creativity lodged within the liberal tradition. De facto he is saying that the unity they offer is not worth having.

I could stop here, but it is worth noting what liberalism's rule of reason he is willing to apply strategic logic to is. He writes:

Governmental reason in its modern form, in the form established at the beginning of the eighteenth century with the fundamental characteristic of a search for the principle of its self-limitation, is a reason that functions in terms of interest. But this is no longer the interest of an entirely self-referring state which only seeks its own growth, wealth, population, and power, as was the state of raison d’État. In the principle to which governmental reason must conform, interest is now interests, a complex interplay between individual and collective interests, between social utility and economic profit, between the equilibrium of the market and the regime of public authorities, between basic rights and the independence of the governed. Government, at any rate, government in this new governmental reason, is something that works with interests....In its new regime, government is basically no longer to be exercised over subjects and other things subjected through these subjects. Government is now to be exercised over what we could call the phenomenal republic of interests. (44...46)

The rule of reason is thus the rule of interests, and this is, quite clearly, itself in constant motion a moving target. And in part it is a moving target because as interests are both shaped and pursued, perceived needs and how these perceptions are constituted evolve. So, we  may say that in this phenomenal republic there is lodged a further complex dynamics that has, in turn, a complex interplay with the dynamics of liberty. 

These complex, multi-faceted dynamics come together in the market which is (recall) a stupendous machine that helps coordinate the pursuit of our needs. I put it like this because here in lecture 2, Foucault has already signaled, without mentioning his name, that Hayek is not an aberration from liberalism but central to the tradition. But the lecture ends on alerting to the reader to the significance of James Buchanan's research program (e.g. Calculus of Consent):

The fundamental question of liberalism is: What is the utility value of government and all actions of government in a society where exchange determines the true value of things? this question encapsulates the fundamental questions raised by liberalism. With this question liberalism posed the fundamental question of government, which is whether all the political, economic, and other forms which have been contrasted with liberalism can really avoid this question and avoid formulating this question of the utility of a government in a regime where exchange determines the value of things. (46)

This is, of course, precisely the research agenda of public choice theory (Buchanan, Tullock), which goes unnamed in the Birth of Biopolitics (and perhaps everywhere in Foucault's work). And, of course, if we look at Buchanan's research project closely it mixes the two traditions noted by Foucault. The contractualist-republican element is (recall) exhibited in the significance to Buchanan of the constitutional moment; this is the part of Buchanan where he is very close to Rawls.  But within the constitutional order Buchanan inherits (what Foucault calls) the radical tradition and applies in Foucaults terms the utility value of government and all actions of government in a society where exchange determines the true value of things.* That is to say, Foucault helps explain why the Virginia school is, itself, an expression of the central problematics of liberalism. 

 

Getting Thrasymachus right, the Comfort College, and the Fate of Liberal Education

Thrasymachus, a post-modernist a couple of millennia ahead of his time, denies there is such a thing as justification — there is only motive and cause. There’s only one answer to the question Why should I be just? Swords and spears.

It took 2,400 years, but Thrasymachus has won in the comfort college. When objectivity is scorned, when justification is considered only subjective, when reason and logic are taken to be only the tools of oppression and the province of the oppressor, then all that is left is power.

To ask the reason for something can only mean to ask for the motive or cause. The study of logic has a name for what happens when we confuse the origin of a belief with its truth, or the origin of an argument with its validity. It’s called the genetic fallacy.

The comfort college’s acolytes make the figurative fallacy literal. It is the arguer’s genes that determine truth and validity, not facts or reason. That is why, in the comfort college, testimony has come to substitute for rational argument. When students (and more and more faculty) demand a new policy, their arguments often begin as (and rarely go beyond) accounts of victimization; the account is justification enough.

This ritual institutionalizes the denial of rational justification. It corrupts the healthy multicultural idea, built on Enlightenment universalism and cosmopolitanism, that different perspectives matter, and that what one sees often depends on where one stands — and that we are all better off from listening to those who stand in different places, who see the part of the truth that is blocked from our particular vision. The liberal ideal of the pursuit of knowledge is that by cooperating we all can see and understand better. But identity politicians reject the Enlightenment’s hope of mutual understanding and reason’s path to get us there. In the fragmented comfort college, the only tool is power — the power to enforce the dogma.--Steven Gerrard "The Rise of the Comfort College" Bloomberg, Opinion.[HT Leiterreports]

Yesterday, when I first read this I was prompted to snark. I won't withhold from you my more critical reflections of Gerrard's self-understanding and analysis. But that will not be the main point of this post: what I really want to do is discuss and grasp the sense of "loss" (a word he uses more than once) that Gerrard describes of a college in transition from one regime to another kind of regime. Not to put too fine point on it, this transition is clearly traumatic for some (the ones who feel loss). And maybe their trauma can help us start to reflect on the nature of this transition.

But before I get to that it is notable that Thrasymachus (and since Plato is a leitmotif in Gerrard's two-part essay, I will assume that 'Thrasymachus' refers to the persona in the Republic) is misrepresented. Socrates explicitly marks the fact that Thrasymachus (somewhat originally [348e]) treats injustice as objectively (!) a part of virtue/wisdom. And Thrasymachus has offered a justification for this claim. The status of the justification is complex because it draws on empirical features, but in virtue of treating injustice as properly part of virtue/wisdom, the argument is also normative. Moreover, Thrasymachus alllows that while the content of what is called 'justice' is regime dependent, its structure is regime invariant. (There is a formal sense in which this anticipates Aristotle, but there are also non-trivial differences, including differences in how to express the insight.) And while one easily imagine this being the grounds of ideology critique ('justice' serves the interests of the locally strong), a natural reading of Thrasymachus position is that this state of affairs can be endorsed upon reflection (hence it is properly part of virtue/justice). It's possible, of course, that Thrasymachus'  argument is flawed, but it's not because Thrasymachus denies that reasons can be given or that he is a moral nihilist or a caricature post-modernist.* 

I mention this not just for minimal historical accuracy, nor to note that this is an instance of a more general phenomenon that those that bewail the fall of civilization and invoke Plato are such odd readers of Plato, but rather that Gerrard slides a bit too quickly from presenting Thrasymachus as the anthithesis of "Enlightenment universalism and cosmopolitanism, [and the idea'] that different perspectives matter" to a critic of objectivity. In some respects Thrasymachus prefigures the (non-trivial) strain in Enlightenment pluralist thought that as a matter of objective fact recognizes differences in institutional and political arrangements and simultaneously acknowledges that they can instantiate common commitments. And while there is plenty of resistance of Enlightenment thinkers to the idea that local might makes right, many do think that (to echo Adam Smith) the law exists to provide the powerful rich nighttime "security."

Once upon a time, those that defended the Enlightenment were proud of the fact that it was thought capable, perhaps uniquely capable, to develop a tradition of internal critique (including critique of critique, etc.)--such that ideology critique became a mainstream feature of it. Gerrard proudly notes that he taught Mill, but he seems to have missed that chapter 2 of Mill's Of Liberty (recall) presents a straightforward account of ideology that generalizes to all societies: "Wherever there is an ascendant class, a large portion of the morality of the country emanates from its class interests, and its feelings of class superiority."  Ideology critique is not something to be ceded to Marxism, but it is a reflexive feature of the liberal strand of the Enlightenment. The tools of ideology critique are immanent in Thrasymachus (and arguably developed in the rest of the Republic). This is no easy matter because there is a genuine threat that any ideology critique can be corrosive. But to echo Socrates (and Spinoza), the excellent things in life are not easy.

Gerrard tells us that his trials started when some faculty at Williams tried to have their institution "sign a national pledge of allegiance to principles of free expression that originated at the University of Chicago, adopted which he calls "the mainstream liberal principles." Now, I don't think these new principles are very liberal (either in the sense of classical liberal or in the modern sense of liberal); I have discussed (early articulations) of those new principles (recall here; here) critically and treated them, agreeing with Jacob T. Levy, unfavorably in light of the (earlier) the University of Chicago statement on freedom of expression and the Kalven Report, "which are much better statements of governing academic principle."

Now Gerrard's own position seems that censorship or event cancellation is a mistake, but rather that "we just have to work to maximize the educational mission of all our events." It is notable that somebody who happily invokes Plato throughout his essay fails to pause at the fact that, at least according to Plato (or Plato's Socrates), the educational mission of students (let's leave maximizing aside), and citizens, requires (extensive) censorship and non-trivial policing of what can enter into a curriculum and course of study. Plato was no liberal and, I am leaving aside his views on political speech. But the very idea of a curriculum presupposes decisions about what viewpoints can and cannot be heard and how the interaction among these decisions can shape a course of study. And while those decisions do not reduce to power, it is peculiar to fail allow that, in practice power enters into them.** 

Now, Gerrard inscribes his analysis into a fourfold division (mostly indebted to  Frederick Rudolph) of the evolution of colleges: 1. the Christian college; 2. the gentlemen’s college; and 3. the consumer’s college; 4. the comfort college. In Gerrard's schema were transitioning between 3 and 4, and "are on the cusp of this new era." He then makes his most important observation:

The controversies over free speech, safe spaces, trigger warnings, microaggressions and the like are symptoms of this shift. They are currently considered controversies because the colleges are in transition, and many do not realize that the old standards no longer hold. Once the transition is complete, the “correct” side of the controversies will become central to a school’s identity — just as faith was to the Christian college, self-confidence was to the gentlemen’s college, and alumni devotion and achievement were to the consumer’s college.

While no era was homogeneous, I agree with Gerrard that a transition is occurring. {I learned (recall) from Bejan that the concern with microagressions goes back to Hobbes.} That is to say, while a lot of the public writing about the transition is simply a business-model on the intellectual right (I note with amusement that Gerrard published this in Bloomberg!--and I defend markets:)), even a form of virtue signaling (of which I am no critic), the vehemence of the response to the ordinary ebb and flow of american elite campus life does indicate something. One reason I am focusing on Gerrard is that unlike those who turn campus life into click-bait, he recognizes that given the educational mission of a university "insensitivity toward people’s identities should be self-censored, and social pressure to do so is a helpful tool."  He is a serious educator.

Now, Gerrard thinks that new (comfort) college devalues "the pursuit of knowledge."+ And he thinks this is indicated, in part, by the willingness of Williams' students to claim that “We hold the truth of discursive and institutional violence to be self-evident.” Presumably the students find this self-evident in the manner that Jefferson (and the other Enlightened Founders) held, against the manifest evidence of their senses--and perhaps also their actions, "that all men are created equal." What that manner is is not easy to articulate and since I am not a student at Williams I wouldn't wish to speak on their behalf.

But the students' statement does point to the costs and harms of the pursuit of knowledge and also the harmful effects of its application. We can study that within the Enlightenment project as a species of inductive risk. Even given the unfavorable gloss offered by Gerrard, the students seems to be asking for the responsible pursuit of knowledge one that recognizes the harms done along the way and is willing to be held accountable for the conditions that make it possible (hence the obligation to Williams College of "reparation and reconciliation to Indigenous peoples").

Let me close with a final note, Gerrard asserts that "Our students are comfortable in their opinions but uncomfortable with their lives, finding their world and the Williams campus a threatening place." He interprets his students as wanting to be comforted and sheltered by the college. I hope he forgives this sentence, but it strikes me that in dealing with genuinely unpleasant disagreements he is so traumatized that he misses a more plausible and also more generous interpretation.++ For the very evidence he presents suggests that at least his more vocal students are eager to confront the very real threats the world poses and to make education and knowledge an engine to try to change them materially and confront them symbolically. I am enough a historian of Enlightenment philosophy to recognize that in so doing these students are children of the very Enlightenment he claims they deride and he wishes to preserve. 

For a liberal higher education serves multiple ends. But one of the fundamental ends is to provide individuals and society with the means to confront the many biases of the status quo. The liberal's preference for markets and education also entails a willingness to live with the uncertainty that the past is not reproduced, but challenged. How to educate students to be democratic activists is no easy matter (and I leave to others who have expertise). But a true liberal education, in fact, is committed to the risky (recall) idea that students will take our teachings and surprise us with their uses of it including the inadequacy of our dogmas. 

 

On Total Humanity, The Origins of Human Rights, and Unreasonable Pluralism

[T]he totalitarian rebellion of our time is not only directed against nineteenth-century liberalism and democracy. It attacks the sum total of the tradition of the Western world, its religion, its science, its law, its State, its property, its family, its morality, and its notion of the human person. But I insist on emphasizing especially that this attack threatens a common ruin to all sorts of interests that, until now, were considered separated by irreconcilable differences [oppositions]. Today we are confronted with an extraordinary sight: theologians and scholars, believers and non-believers, Catholics, Protestants, Jews and free-thinkers, monarchists, democrats, managers and workers, in sum all the parties, all the factions, all the sects, all the interests of which the antagonisms have posed problems the two past centuries, are forced to recognize that if they do not find common ground in defense against the will of totalitarian States to dominate, they will all be ruined together.
   That should teach them that the disputes and the divisions they have had for such a long time do not derive from irreconcilable conflicts, but from their intellectual inability to discover the principles of unity that conceal their apparent disagreements. These principles of unity do exist, however, and one will be able to discover them one day: the proof of it lies in the fact that totalitarian philosophy attacks each of these diverse interests in its vital center. In the totalitarian system, there is no more room for the theologian than for the scholar, for private property than for free labor, for aristocracy than for democracy. And if all these diverse interests must today defend themselves together, it follows they must implicitly hold in common many of the things that are worth defending.
   That, I believe, is the great mission of contemporary thinkers: uncover and formulate, make explicit that which civilized men hold in common, that which men, seemingly holding such different biases and opinions, find today necessary to defend together. A great work of analysis of the old conflicts and the old confusions will be necessary so as to build a great synthesis in which all the permanent interests of civilized humanity will find their rightful place and rank. The world that we have known before the war is dying of its confusion and its incoherence. But in the agony that it goes through and has yet to go through, the civilized world can only seek and find a universal philosophy that, by its total humanity, will be able to maintain the tradition of civilization in spite of a totally inhuman enemy.
III
Some among you may deem all of that to be far removed from the immediate political questions confronting [us] in our time. I do not apologize for this, because I am profoundly convinced that this revision of human ideas, that this analysis and this synthesis that we will call the reconstruction of liberalism, is the necessary discipline, the indispensable experience in which the vital energies of the civilized world must unite in order to defend themselves against the danger that threatens them.--Walter Lippmann (1938) in "The Walter Lippmann Colloquium." The Birth of Neo-Liberalism. Edited by Reinhoudt & Audier. (2018), pp. 108-109.

It's not much of a stretch to suggest that the doctrine of 'human rights' became the unity that Lippmann sought for a post-war, reconstructed liberalism. By this I do not mean to suggest that the 1948 Declaration is itself indebted to Lippmann (about that below). Rather, what Lippmann discerned is that humanity,  total humanity, would be the glue with which anti-totalitarianism, now recast as 'inhuman' came to understand itself.

There is a two-fold (modest) irony here in that (for example) the Nazis were more than willing to treat many of their targets as sub-human/Untermenschen. Second, the conceptual and normative connections among 'humanity,' 'civilization,' and 'non-factionalism' (and even 'interests' albeit rightly understood) were forged, as Ryan Hanley shows, by David Hume in the eighteenth century. David Hume the philosopher would remain controversial for many in the 'common ground' ascribed by Lippmann.* (I think that ironic.)

While Lippmann is far more interested in articulating and reconceptualizing the nature of the rule of law (which is crucial to his argument in the book), Lippmann himself recognizes the significance of human rights in The Good Society (the book to which the 1938 colloquium is devoted [recall here; here; here; here]). While his discussion of human rights is brief, I want to note three features: first, he sees them as work in progress (that are "developed" through time). Second, for him the core feature of human rights is the right not to be treated arbitrarily by anyone else (and a concurrent duty not to treat others arbitrarily; p. 348); in particular, it is directed against "arbitrary power." Third, he thinks that human rights express underlying "moral commitments" which support what he calls the "true law" (346). In the colloquium lecture he captures this (a bit further down) with the idea that what must be protected are the "essential elements of human life."  

Of course, that to be attacked in common requires that some (reasonably interesting) principle of unity among those attacked is presupposed can reasonably be doubted. Since Rawls settled for a rather pragmatic, overlapping consensus most liberals do doubt it. Lippmann's hoped "synthesis" that would absolve all political contradictions is remarkably utopian. But what he points toward are two significant features. 

First, and I think this is a somewhat tragic tendency in (mid) twentieth century liberalism -- I have discussed the conceptual roots in scholarly fashion here -- that there must be some hunkering toward a fundamental consensus.  (Lippmann here echoes Lionel Robbins, with whom he corresponded in 1937.) That hankering was, while understandable, a technocratic mistake (that supplied Isaiah Berlin with one of his overarching themes). But in Lippmann it is expressed with a conflicting and more interesting impulse...

Second, and more important, Lippmann recognizes that from a certain vantage point ordinary, rather vehement partisan political opposites within a working (for lack of a better word) system may well share something in common against those that wish to blow up that system. The interesting point here is not when they understand that their foes are antagonists (losing to whom is painful but not disastrous) rather than "inhuman enemies" (losing to whom is a disaster). But rather the insight that the antagonists may well in an important sense be dependent on each other. (Andy Sabl [HT Jacob Levy] made the point very nicely recently in an essay on the possible future character of the ways parties in a party-system might influence each other.)**

This mutual dependence of competing antagonists is, for Lippmann, both practical -- at the level of functioning and surviving -- and spiritual. (It is no coincidence that Lippmann's language echoes Hegel at times.) For Lippmann liberalism is (recall) itself a multi-generational, open-ended spiritual project that aims to be transformative of the human condition (and this is where some of his eugenic sensibilities also enter in). While for Lippmann the content of the ideal is itself left open, it does (and this makes it partially utopian) require conditions under which war is largely banished. 

That is to say, in the moment of its possible defeat, the liberal vision grasps that for a non-totalizing liberalism to survive and thrive it may well require a political structure in which illiberal parties and commitments are present both to maintain liberalism's own vitality and then vitality of the whole. Liberalism then simultaneously comes to endorse its own fundamental commitments and a commitment to a kind of unreasonable pluralism. It is this affirmation that is forgotten in victory.

Liberalism, Politics, and the Spirit of Mercantilism (Crisis of Liberalism: V)

The widely read, widely traveled, superlatively observant author of the Wealth of Nations need not be told so obvious a thing as that self-interest entered also political life....

Smith gave a larger role to emotion, prejudice, and ignorance in political life than he ever allowed in ordinary economic affairs. The mercantile policies directed to the improvement of the balance of trade with particular countries have their origin in “national prejudice and animosity” (I, 497 [441]). The legislation against corn traders is so perverse as to lead Smith to compare it to laws against witchcraft (11, 41 [ 5001 ) ; indeed, “the laws concerning corn may every where be compared to the laws concerning religion” (11, 48 [507]). In fact all unwise economic legislation from which no politically strong constituency drew benefits must be nonrational legislation....

In general, however, Smith’s attitude toward political behavior was not dissimilar to that of a parent toward a child: the child was often mistaken and sometimes perverse, but normally it would improve in conduct if properly instructed...

One may give--for generations of economists have given-advice lavishly without taking account of the political forces which confine and direct policy. In the absence of knowledge of these political forces, the advice must often be bad and usually be unpersuasive. Why tell the sovereign that free trade is desirable, if one has no method of disarming the merchants and manufacturers who have obtained the protectionist measures ? Why tell the French sovereign to abandon the taille and capitations and increase the vintiemes, when only a revolution could dislodge the tax-favored classes? Why believe that better turnpikes await only the appointments of a better class of commissioners (11, 248 [ 684-851 )? George J. Stigler (1971)  "Smith's Travels on the Ship of State" [HT Glory Liu]

This post is part of a larger series on the Crisis of Liberalism (recall here;  here; here; (see also here, here, here, and here).

Here's a useful, undoubtedly mythical narrative about the origins of liberalism: it arose as an ameliorative project in opposition to mercantilism in the seventeenth and eighteenth century. (Yes, there were other targets, including feudalism and certain species of theocracy.) Here mercantilism is understood as a theory of state capture by interested classes who use the state to promote their own economic interests either through so-called rents, conquest (imperialism), slavery, or the tax system (or all of them). In the Wealth of Nations, Smith calls the whole violent ideology against which he hones his fire, "the Mercantile Spirit." From that vantage point, liberalism is a reformist appeal to the interests of other classes as well as enlightened self-interests of the business classes.  The key conceptual move is to turn zero-sum logic into a win-win agenda that promotes, as a political program, a moral vision (the good society) that is all about the expansion of individual freedoms (note the plural). Depending on one's taste one may well come to privilege particular features of the liberal program (free trade, rule of law, individual choice, harm reduction, mutual respect, free press, free speech, elections, separation of powers, freedom of religion, etc.)

Notice that the mythical narrative presupposes the existence of states with non-trivial capacities and societies with complex division of labor and different perspectives on their interests. (This narrative is not identical to ones one finds circulating among some kinds of libertarians.) Notice, too, that what is commonly called capitalism is neutral between liberalism and mercantalism. So, for example, many (recall) of the ills that Marx (and Engels) diagnose in capitalism, are, from the vantage point of a liberal, really ills of mercantile variant thereof (e.g., "the executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.") This is one reason why, for example, social democracy (which borrows from liberalism and Marxism) is conceptually possible.

Now, one historical (stylized) fact is that the very success of liberalism can give rise to forces that make a worse form mercantilism possible. This is really the story of the first wave of liberalism during the 19th century and its collapse in World War I (recall). And this has generated throughout the development of liberalism other important intellectual and institutional innovations, including ideas about anti-trust (to prevent concentrated market power), the progressive tax rate (to prevent concentrated economic power), the promotion of meritocracy in government hiring, the development of international law, and, alongside many attempts at liberalizing the economy, the mobility of people (open borders, etc.), the development of many international institutions (so characteristic of the second wave of liberalism). 

Notice that the mythical narrative now reveals, which was also true at first, that sometimes liberalism entails strengthening the state institutions and their functioning, even attacking (to use a useful term coined by Samuel Bagg) concentrated powers in the private sector (or, as Gorden Arlen reminds me, 'sinister interests') and sometimes entailed strengthening the forces of civil society, including of businesses and religions. (Jacob T. Levy has nicely articulated a more sophisticated version of the tactical vacillation in (recall) his book Rationalism, Pluralism & Freedom.)

At any given time, the ameliorative, mitigating spirit of liberalism demands from us imperfect judgments about what the greatest/most urgent dangers are and what the right way to respond to them might be (see Peter Boettke on that very challenge today). At no point does liberalism expect to destroy the spirit of mercantilism because this would require a reform of human nature and (as anarchists urge) the total abolition of the political power of the state. 

What liberalism then also requires is a theory of how politics operates (which can constrain the judgment). As Stigler notes, the very idea of state capture presupposes that people are self-interested and know what they are doing when they influence or have power.  One may say then that the diagnostic use of public choice economics is co-extensive with the history of liberalism. (Of course, public choice insights were known to critics of democracy and liberal ideas before liberalism was invented.) This was obscured a bit in the long period when utilitarianism was dominant because it often presupposed philanthropic legislators.  Alongside his paper on Smith, in 1971 Stigler published a piece on the nature of rent-seeking, "The Theory of Economic Regulation" on the demand and supply of regulation that itself became  wildly influential (this morning it had over 12,000 citations). For those who wish to amuse themselves, they can compare Stigler's  two brief essays (the Smith one and the one on rents) and note that they include the same kind of examples and the same rhetoric against the mistakes of economists.

Now, sometimes liberalism is tempted -- and this Stigler diagnoses -- by two other theories of politics (which are opposed even if the same side of the coin because they tend to black-box politics): one suggests that in politics unreason rules. I think one finds this attitude in some Hayekians, but, as Stigler notes correctly, one can find traces of it going back to Smith (even if I think Stigler misreads some of his own examples). On this view, politics is simply unpredictable and corrosive to any rational ideals (or both)--it often is accompanied by the idea to keep one's distance from politics and reduction of state power. The other [black-box theory] is one that implies that good normative ideas are automatically implemented [by benevolent and truth apt legislators] and then executed by a rule following bureaucracy. As Stigler notes nobody would assent to holding such a theory explicitly, but a lot of policy advice assumes it in practice. 

As an aside, part of the inside-baseball joke of the closing line of the quoted passage by Stigler is not just that economists are volunteering themselves as a particular class of (rent-seeking) job-seekers, the impartial and truth-apt commissioner, who is not to be found in his models, but that Smith -- the apostle of free trade -- himself ended up as a high customs commissioner to the British Crown.

Short of revolution (which liberals tend to abhor), Stigler advocates a different (fourth) understanding of policy. It requires not just the diagnostic features of  public choice, but also knowledge of "the political forces which confine and direct policy." This requires knowledge of the sort that empirical political science and sociology can supply. So, from this perspective, any policy advice must include a constituency or coalition that can promote the policy effectively (and have a grasp of the ways bureaucracies may react to them). Recent political philosophy can treat these as belonging to a certain class of feasibility constraints. Obviously, the promise is that this may increase the chances of uptake; it also makes all policy proposals much more status-quo friendly. Sometimes the concession to feasibility makes liberalism appear as a handmaiden to conservatism even if the path is honorable. 

What Stigler refuses to countenance, and I think here he underestimates Smith, is that morality itself can be mobilized.+ In addition, alongside most readers of Smith, he misses the role systematic theory has in shaping long-term policy. 

Let me wrap up. When liberal solutions to the problem of mercantile spirit (rent-seeking, state violence, etc.) themselves generate worse problems than the one they were aiming to solve then liberalism runs the risk of collapsing and becomes unattractive if not unpersuasive to the young. As regular readers know I think we have reached such a stage in the wake of the great financial crisis. The very survival of the financial system was taken to require great handouts to the rich and powerful. Few believe, when listening to self-described libertarian billionaires plotting interplanetary escape, that capitalism can solve the environmental/climate challenges ahead. It is no wonder that the spirit of mercantilism with its embrace of national state sponsored violence against immigrants and trade barriers with its fondness for grand building projects (etc.), has grown so bold since. But since that is the very ground of the existence of liberalism this is no reason for despair; it's our permanent challenge. 

On Democratic Betrayal

Donald Trump has praised Chinese leader Xi Jinping over his handling of the protests in Hong Kong, after a weekend that saw police fire tear gas at demonstrators and a mob launched a vicious attack on pro-democracy campaigners. The US president told reporters at a White House meeting with Imran Khan, Pakistan’s prime minister, that the weeks of protests had been “relatively non-violent”, adding that Mr Xi should be applauded for letting them continue.  “I think [China] could stop them if they wanted . . . I’m not involved in it very much but I think President Xi of China has acted responsibly, very responsibly,” he said. The comments come after the Financial Times reported earlier this month that Mr Trump agreed to tone down criticism of Beijing’s approach to the protests in order to revive talks to resolve the US-China trade war.--Primrose Riordan and Nicolle Liu reporting in the Financial Times, July 23, 2019.

An idea going back to the ancient Greeks is that (among Greek city-states) democratic regimes support each other, while oligarchic regimes instinctively offer mutual aid. (Part of the empirical support for the idea was the Athenian practice to install democratic leaning regimes in places they conquered and the Spartan practice to install olicharchic regimes in places they controlled.) The idea has had an after-life in the liberal faith (articulated by Addison and Kant) that liberal democracies tend toward peace with each other; just as the post-Napoleonic restoration involved monarchies supporting monarchies. During the cold war the idea was transformed to mutual support among liberal democracies and (against) among communist states.

There are sufficiently large number of exceptions to such generalizations, to treat these as mere tendencies. Even so, at various moments one may be tempted into thinking that for democracies, grounded on the normative ideal of equality, the support of democracy elsewhere is itself an important interest that guides their statecraft. From that vantage point, one non-trivial blemish (recall) on President Obama's record is the collapse of the Arab Spring on his watch (alongside the disastrous support for the Saudi war-machine in Yemen). Given the importance of American weapons and cash to the Egyptian army, his Administration was more than merely complicit in the downfall of the only legitimately, democratically elected Egyptian President (the recently deceased Mohamed Morsi). 

For many democratic leaders, their legitimacy is grounded in being elected by the people. And this gives them, in their own eyes, legitimacy in the eyes of others. Why this would be so may be hard to say, but presumably it appeals to the egalitarian thought that each of us have a respect for the consent and judgment of others as we would expect them to have it for ours. If the contrast is a (divine) right grounded in the accidents of birth or arms, this may well survive some scrutiny. To disparage democracy would be self-undermining to a certain democratic leader.

In the paragraph above the previous one, I use 'interest' to grant that democracies treat the achievement of democracy elsewhere legitimately as defeasible. There will be circumstances in which a democratic state naturally sacrifices the democratic aspirations of others to reach vital objectives (e.g., survival, prevention of dangerous war, avoid enormous economic damage, etc.). Sometimes pro-democracy rhetoric only incites aspirations that can only be best described as false promise(s) (e.g., Hungary 1956; Syria during the past decade, etc.) Moreover, in some epochs mutual non-interference is a sufficiently strong norm, then states happily ignore each other's constitutional arrangements (or religion, etc.). 

Even so, alongside equality, liberal democracies are also committed to the idea that the world can and ought to be made into non-zero-sum relationships. Part of the liberal faith is that such win-win outcomes are more easily attainable with other liberal democracies. Why this would be so is not obvious empirically. But the thought is that most dictatorships and franchise restricted oligarchies have political economies where one person/group always gains at the expense of others. Whether is this is true empirically may well be worth debating, but it is notable that strongmen all use rhetoric of us vs them and advance the cause of cronyism and in-group rent-seeking. Casual empiricism suggests that a strongman is especially eager to concentrate power and to prevent other sources of countervailing powers to be developed.

Obviously, it's conceptually possible to have enlightened despotism just as it is known to be possible to have democracies elect strongmen who embrace illiberal, zero-sum logic (something I already noticed before Trump was elected; recall also this post). Given the considerable history of savagery by liberal democracies toward the disenfranchised and conquered, one may well think, with justice, that thinking in terms of win-win may be the exception that proves the rule.  An embarrassed silence, perhaps presented with an knowing appeal to political realism, about an expanding community of democracies may well be the appropriate stance. 

Even so, given that President Trump and his administration clearly view China as a rival if not enemy, and opportunities for public embarrassment may well be relished, their lack of interest in its human rights violations (especially toward the Turkic Muslims) and lukewarm support for Hong Kong protesters reveal part of the underlying instincts. It is obvious that this Administration is willing to sacrifice human rights for possible financial gain (the last sentence of the quoted newsreport supports that).

To say that Trump's attitudes towards democratic norms and practices are conflicted is intended as an understatement. That he, thereby, undermines democratic practice abroad and at home is to be expected by now. As Jacob Levy helped me see, Trump's rhetoric is a form of political action that is intended to undermine trust in democracy, the rule of law (cf. his hectoring of Sweden this week), and even minimal ethnic/racial cohabitation.+ Jacob T. Levy's writings (see here) have also convinced me that in a certain sense Trump's attitude is an effect of the Republican party's more general tendency to understand itself (correctly) as a minority (and so to use non-democratic means to 'win' elections).* Lowering mutual trust is a sound strategy if you are a minority and want your opposition disunified.++ 

And in reflecting on these last few sentence, and then looking over President Trump's comments, I had one of those terrifying duck-rabbit gestalt-switches. Trump does not understand President Xi's power as illegitimate in virtue of representing the rule of force; Trump admits he has no interest in the democratic protest(er)s, rather he identifies with the prudential restraint of a minority in control of state power armed to the teeth. 

 

 

On Habermas on (The Ideal Type of) Liberalism

According to the “liberal” or Lockean view, the democratic process acomplishes [sic] the task of programming the government in the interest of society, where the government is represented as an apparatus of public administration, and society as a market-structured network of interactions among private persons. Here politics (in the sense of the citizens’ political will-formation) has the function of bundling together and pushing private interests against a government apparatus specializing in the administrative employment of political power for collective goals...(1)

According to the liberal view, the citizen’s status is primarily determined according to negative rights they have vis-8-vis the state and other citizens. As bearers of these rights they enjoy the protection of the government, as long as they pursue their private interests within the boundaries drawn by legal statutes - and this includes protection against government interventions. Political rights, such as voting rights and free speech, not only have the same structure but also a similar meaning as civil rights that provide a space within which legal subjects are released from external compulsion. They give citizens the opportunity to assert their private interests in such a way that by means of elections, the composition of parliamentary bodies, and the formation of a government, these interests are finally aggregated into a political will that makes an impact on the administration....(2)

In the liberal view, the political process of opinion- and will-formation in the public sphere and in parliament is determined by the competition of strategically acting collectivities trying to maintain or acquire positions of power. Success is measured by the citizens’ approval, quantified as votes, of persons and programs. In their choices at the polls, voters give expression to their preferences. Their voting decisions have the same structure as the acts of choice made by participants in a market. They license access to the positions of power that political parties fight over in the same success oriented attitude....(3)

Both the liberal and the republican model presuppose a view of society as centered in the state - be it the state as guardian of a market-society or the state as the self-conscious institutionalization of an ethical community.
According to the liberal view, the democratic process takes place exclusively in the form of compromises between competing interests. Fairness is supposed to be granted by the general and equal right to vote, the representative composition of parliamentary bodies, by decision rules, and so on. Such rules are ultimately justified in terms of liberal basic rights....(6)

Whereas the separation of the state apparatus from society elicits a polemical reaction from the republican side, according to the liberal view it cannot be eliminated but only bridged by the democratic process. The regulated balancing of power and interests has need of constitutional channeling, of course. The democratic will-formation of self-interested citizens is laden with comparatively weak normative expectations. The constitution is supposed to tame the state apparatus through normative constraints (such as basic rights, separation of powers, etc.) and to force it, through the competition of political parties on the one hand and that between government and opposition on the other, to take adequate account of competing interests and value orientations. This state-centered understanding of politics can forego the unrealistic assumption of a citizenry capable of collective action. Its focus is not so much the input of a rational political will-formation but the output of sensible and effective administrative accomplishments. Liberal argumentation aims its salvos against the potential disturbance of an administrative power that interferes with the spontaneous forces of a self-regulating society. The liberal model hinges, not on the democratic self-determination of deliberating citizens, but on the legal institutionalization of an economic society that is supposed to guarantee an essentially nonpolitical common good by the satisfaction of private preferences...(7)

On the liberal view, democratic will-formation has the exclusive function of legitimating the exercise of political power. Election results are the license to assume governmental power, whereas the government must justify the use of power to the public....(8)

Liberalism opposes this with the more realistic view that in the constitutional state any authority originating from the people is exercised only “by means of elections and voting and by specific legislative, executive, and judicial organs.” (9)--- Jürgen Habermas (1994) "Three normative models of democracy." [HT Uğur Aytaç]

In his famous article, Habermas creates ideal types or normative models of liberal and republican theories in order to present his own procedularist-deliberative modal as an attractive alternative to both. Above I have cut and pasted most of the texts that represent the liberal approach in Habermas' argument. This approach he explicitly associates with Locke and the (constitutional) Basic Law of the Federal Republic of Germany. But it is pretty clear that when he writes about liberalism he is thinking of Schumpeterian and Hayekian views as mediated by some of the Ordoliberals.

While I am critical of his presentation of liberalism in what follows, it is worth noting that Habermas is right to claim that liberalism is state-centric in a certain sense even if I don't like his way of putting it ("a view of society as centered in the state.") For, the liberal view of society is precisely that it is in many respects/dimensions autonomous from, and, when functioning properly even a check on, the state. But historically and conceptually, liberalism is a mitigation of the ills of the mercantile-imperial state which is a successful war-making and economic extraction machine. The two key points here are that liberalism both always presupposes considerable state capacity (along many dimensions) as well as wishes to redirect this capacity to less harmful ends (and ideally win-win ends) and to utilize it to turn the state into a guardian of the individual and voluntary cooperative projects she may engage with others (as long as these don't harm non-participants). The former entails that where state capacity is absent it is an open question if liberalism is the right political theory. The latter entails that there is a constant vacillation in liberal reflection on where the greatest danger lies--in an overbearing state, in state capture for illiberal ends, and the harms the powerful inflict on the less powerful.

The polemically useful mistake -- and it is an error that too many friends of liberalism fall into, too -- is that Habermas identifies the liberal conception of society, and the private sphere more generally, with market relations (" society as a market-structured network of interactions among private persons.") Now liberals, even skeptical liberals like myself (recall), do not view market relations with suspicion. But it is important to be clear about the fact that markets are themselves merely one instance of voluntary actions, even joint actions. And that society is not merely a market structured network, but also a whole range of other voluntary projects, including associations (religion and non-religious), clubs, and even non-market solutions to allocation projects and the stewardship of common goods. (This is why (recall) the Ostroms are so important to late twentieth century liberalism.)   

Because the liberal view of society is so heterogeneous, liberalism can better accommodate the important idea that the interests and preferences of people are multi-dimensional. This means that neither voting nor market transactions (nor jointly) exhaust the ways in which voluntary and collective agency can be legitimate or be legitimated. The previous two sentences indicate that liberalism is much more skeptical about single measures of success or the capacity of a representative agent construct* to do justice to this heterogeneity. (It also entails that value pluralism is much more multi-dimensional than is often thought.) To be sure some liberals have anti-democratic sensibilities, but I view that as aberration (and I hope Jacob Levy can cure them).

I do not deny that there is a technocratic strain focused on output legitimacy in twentieth century liberalism. But Habermas' presentation makes it sound as if the administrative power is there, for the liberal, to satisfy the preferences of individuals (as one can encounter in utilitarian government house attitudes). But the point is that liberals suspect that the administrative power is fatally unaware of too many of the preferences of individuals -- which are not revealed in voting nor only in market actions -- to accomplish this task (of preference satisfaction) nor capable of accomplishing preference satisfaction of individuals without risking other harms. Rather the purpose of the liberal, administrative state is to facilitate -- through provision of public goods, public culture, and stewardship of the rule of law -- the life projects of individual and associated citizens (including highly politicized ones expressed through single issue NGOs, demonstrations, political parties (sure!) and public opinion formation) many of which orthogonal to individual voting preferences. 

One final point: liberalism  does not expect the constitution (or constitutional courts) to tame the state. This is just one mechanism, and because the rule law presupposes rather fallible judges and prosecutors, a rather fragile mechanism, for mitigating the dangers from effective state capacity. Obviously, it is welcome when judges have an esprit des corps informed by impartiality, fairness, and justice, but liberals are always aware that they, too, are subject to human imperfection and temptation. 

So, at the level of an ideal type liberalism is messy. That's a feature, not a bug.

Adam Smith on Three Types of Bad Political Leadership

In this post I argue that according to Smith there are three kinds of bad politicians: (i) a decisionist type; (ii) an ideological type; (iii) a factional type. In practice the qualities that belong to each can be blended.  I discuss them in turn and that point to some commonalities. Consider the following passage:

To insist upon establishing, and upon establishing all at once, and in spite of all opposition, every thing which that idea may seem to require, must often be the highest degree of arrogance. It is to erect his own judgment into the supreme standard of right and wrong. It is to fancy himself the only wise and worthy man in the commonwealth, and that his fellow-citizens should accommodate themselves to him and not he to them….This arrogance is perfectly familiar to them. They entertain no doubt of the immense superiority of their own judgment….they seldom see any thing so wrong in it as the obstructions which it may sometimes oppose to the execution of their own will. They…consider the state as made for themselves, not themselves for the state. (TMS 6.2.2.18, 234)

In context Smith is describing the dangers of acting from the ‘idea of perfecting of policy and law’ (that’s ‘that idea’ in the first quoted sentence). But the problem that is diagnosed is not unique to it. Rather, what’s being rejected is what we would call ‘shock therapy’ (“establishing all at once;”) when it comes to policy and institutional change, Smith promotes gradual change. He worries that fast economic changes will generate dislocations that are inhumane and disorderly (WN 4.2.40, 469.) But he also thinks that shock therapy shows an arrogant lack of respect to other people’s opinions (‘in spite of all opposition.’) Such political arrogance generally presupposes a moral arrogance: one’s ‘own judgment’ is  turned ‘into the supreme standard of right and wrong.’ This is a moral failing because this standard – the ‘idea of exact propriety and perfection’ (TMS 6.3.25, 247) – can only be set by the feelings of impartial spectator (TMS 7.2.1.49, 249). 

The arrogant leader assumes that fellow-citizens will accommodate themselves to him. Smith presupposes here that leaders are not rulers over subjects, but their servants We can discern here a commitment to a species of republicanism, where non-domination is a ruling virtue. What’s key for my present purposes is that such arrogant leaders detest delay (‘at once’), constitutional process, and compromise; they are fond of unitary authority, which facilitates their decisiveness (‘obstructions which it may sometimes oppose to the execution of their own will.’) In context Smith is clear that such arrogance comes naturally to royal princes (“imperial and royal reformers” (TMS 6.2.2.18, 234) and, perhaps, also those with great inherited wealth).[*]

The second kind of bad leader, the ideologue, is one who has excessive fondness for a particular ‘system’ of thought. To understand Smith’s criticism we need to be clear about the role of aesthetics as a legitimate political motive to action in his thought. A key passage is the following:

The same principle, the same love of system, the same regard to the beauty of order, of art and contrivance, frequently serves to recommend those institutions which tend to promote the public welfare. When a patriot exerts himself for the improvement of any part of the public police, his conduct does not always arise from pure sympathy with the happiness of those who are to reap the benefit of it. It is not commonly from a fellow-feeling with carriers and waggoners that a public-spirited man encourages the mending of high roads…The perfection of police, the extension of trade and manufactures, are noble and magnificent objects. The contemplation of them pleases us, and we are interested in whatever can tend to advance them. They make part of the great system of government, and the wheels of the political machine seem to move with more harmony and ease by means of them. We take pleasure in beholding the perfection of so beautiful and grand a system, and we are uneasy till we remove any obstruction that can in the least disturb or encumber the regularity of its motions. All constitutions of government, however, are valued only in proportion as they tend to promote the happiness of those who live under them. This is their sole use and end. From a certain spirit of system, however, from a certain love of art and contrivance, we sometimes seem to value the means more than the end, and to be eager to promote the happiness of our fellow-creatures, rather from a view to perfect and improve a certain beautiful and orderly system, than from any immediate sense or feeling of what they either suffer or enjoy. There have been men of the greatest public spirit, who have shown themselves in other respects not very sensible to the feelings of humanity. (TMS IV.1.11, 185)

Smith clearly thinks that the love of system can be aesthetic, and this also includes systems about “those institutions which tend to promote the public welfare.” Aesthetics has motivational pull because it is “pleasing.” What is notable is that according to Smith such aesthetic judgment can compensate for a lack of (or ‘imperfect’) sympathy with those aided by one’s institutional reform project. True public spirit may, in fact, be more a consequence of such aesthetic motives than concern for the lives of those one claims to be helping; this fact does not undermine (recall) the reality of ‘public spirit.’ (Again, there are republican sensibilities here.)

I do not mean to suggest the significance of the passage is only in its focus on the nature of aesthetic motivation. The key point is that there is a mismatch between why one may desire to improve the constitution of a state – recall from section 1 that this refers to the underlying social structures which give a particular state its stability --  and the proper normative grounds or justification for doing so. For constitutions “are valued only in proportion as they tend to promote the happiness of those who live under them. This is their sole use and end.” That is, when it comes to social affairs, Smith is an egalitarian consquentialist. Imperfect motives, the aesthetic pull of the harmony or fitting-ness of intellectual systems, can lead to good outcomes. Smith also allows that “the perfection of police [that is, public policy], the extension of trade and manufactures, are noble and magnificent objects.” The aesthetic pull of a system that aims to achieve such ends is not illusory; these really are noble objects worth pursuing. This helps explain the comment quoted above that the ““some general, and even systematical, idea of the perfection of policy and law, may no doubt be necessary for directing the views of the statesman.” (TMS 6.2.2.18, 234) Smith thinks (recall) policy must be governed by an ideal vision of society.

The problem is that the aesthetic pull of an intellectual system can displace the public spirit  it should be animating: “This spirit of system commonly takes the direction of that more gentle public spirit; always animates it, and often inflames it even to the madness of fanaticism.” (TMS 6.2.2.15, 232) Smith thinks that such an aesthetic attachment to an ideology is dangerous. For Smith fanaticism is always associated with violence (TMS 3.3.36-7, 152-3; TMS 6.3.26, 249). Not all fanaticism is associated with an ideology taken too far, Smith often treats religion and faction as likely sources of violent fanaticism. Either way, fanaticism enhances readiness to use violence and undermines the working of our moral sentiments: “Of all the corrupters of moral sentiments, therefore, faction and fanaticism have always been by far the greatest” (TMS 3.3.43, 156). So, Smith warns against certain kind of political leaders, of an intellectual kind, who are in the grip of a beautiful ideology and turn violent to achieve their ends.

As the passage reveals (TMS 3.3.43, 156), Smith clear also thinks that the spirit of faction, we would say partisanship, is very dangerous. Smith concern with faction runs through TMS (for example):

The animosity of hostile factions, whether civil or ecclesiastical, is often still more furious than that of hostile nations; and their conduct towards one another is often still more atrocious…It is needless to observe, I presume, that both rebels and heretics are those unlucky persons, who, when things have come to a certain degree of violence, have the misfortune to be of the weaker party. In a nation distracted by faction, there are, no doubt, always a few, though commonly but a very few, who preserve their judgment untainted by the general contagion. They seldom amount to more than, here and there, a solitary individual, without any influence, excluded, by his own candour, from the confidence of either party, and who, though he may be one of the wisest, is necessarily, upon that very account, one of the most insignificant men in the society. All such people are held in contempt and derision, frequently in detestation, by the furious zealots of both parties. A true party-man hates and despises candour; and, in reality, there is no vice which could so effectually disqualify him for the trade of a party-man as that single virtue. The real, revered, and impartial spectator, therefore, is, upon no occasion, at a greater distance than amidst the violence and rage of contending parties….Even to the great Judge of the universe, they impute all their own prejudices, and often view that Divine Being as animated by all their own vindictive and implacable passions. (TMS 3.3.43, 156)

For Smith factions are cohesive because they are echo-chambers of mutual sympathy (“general contagion”).[**] And in so doing they create a robust form of partiality which does not respect, even comes to loath (“hates and despises”) truth and equity. Religious factions are inclined to innovate theologically, and create theological justifications for their own otherwise immoral behavior. Smith notes that it’s very difficult and lonely to avoid becoming factional in the midst of other people’s fanaticism. A key problem of the existence of polarizing partisanship is that a robust willingness to stick with one’s independent and impartial judgment becomes itself a matter of suspicion and antagonism; who has not heard ‘you are either with us or against us.’[+]

And in fact, he thinks that partisan leaders may well themselves be less fanatical and partisan than they let on,[11] but that they cannot reveal their true feelings amidst great partisanship: “Even though the leaders should have preserved their own heads, as indeed they commonly do, free from this fanaticism, yet they dare not always disappoint the expectation of their followers; but are often obliged, though contrary to their principle and their conscience, to act as if they were under the common delusion.” (TMS 6.2.2.15, 233) So, a factional leader will, if she does not willingly encourage fanaticism, be unwillingly be carried along by the zeal and madness (“delusions”) of their fellow partisans. That is to say, while an arrogant leader tramples on the opinions of the people, a factional leader must flatter his followers to stay in power.

These three types of bad leadership have in common some features: they are not impartial, they lack public spirit, and, most notably, they facilitate the corruption of moral life. In sum, they presuppose political life as a zero-sum activity and act accordingly. They also fail to find the right balance between respecting people’s opinions and guiding them. It follows from this that Smith thinks public spirited leaders, who are impartial and promote good morals (or mores) as well as promote policies with (to adopt Jacob Levy's claim about Montesquieu) the grain of society, are laudable.