In the United States of America, I understand that the word 'liberal' means pretty much
anybody politically left of Sauron. But in my country, the UK, we make a distinction
between Liberalism with a capital L and the Left Wing, which is even further Left than that.
Liberalism is a very popular and influential position with a fascinating history. So, in
this 4 episode series, we are going to meet the Liberals.
Liberalism is an ideology. What does that mean - what is an ideology?
Well, ideologies determine what facts are important and what actions are acceptable. So for instance,
it is a fact that the Sun is 93 million miles away. Okay, that's interesting
and it is a fact
but it doesn't really form the central plank of anybody's political ideology: to political ideologies that fact, although interesting, isn't really that relevant, whereas
other facts would be much more important.
For instance, it is a fact that the human species is diverse: we have different body
types, skin colours, hair colours, eye colours, all sorts. To a liberal ideology the facts about diversity
might not be very important when it comes to deciding how we build a society - liberalism tends
to say that diversity of peoples and ideas is a good thing, with some exceptions as we'll be seeing
later on. Compare that to a fascist ideology, which might take a fact like, 'Human beings are
diverse' and make it a very, very important fact, and say off the back of it that some people
who don't fall into certain categories should be treated differently. There we see how the ideology works: it takes certain facts, prioritises them,
and then says, "These facts mean that this action is what we should be doing."
So we can see that no matter how much somebody insists their ideology is based "purely
on the facts" that's never the full picture. Nobody's ideology is based on every single
fact there is; an ideology determines which facts are the most relevant, even which things
get to be called facts, and what actions are okay given the facts it decides to focus on.
Interestingly, liberalism often markets itself as not an ideology. Other ideologies, like
fascism, often own it, but liberalism has a continuing history of claiming to be
neutral, objective, and based purely on the facts. So much so that Francis Fukuyama
famously claimed that Liberalism was "the end of history" - the final answer to
politics, rather than just another ideology that will someday pass away. Of course, we've seen already that this
image Liberalism projects is a false one: It is an ideology and like all ideologies
emphasises and even constructs the facts that it finds relevant. There's nothing more
ideological than claiming to not have any ideology.
It's appropriate that we just mentioned fascism actually, because that ideology highlights
an important job of political ideologies specifically - a political ideology identifies
who are the acceptable targets of violence. So fascism might say that violence is okay against
people who don't meet the definition of whiteness that fascists use. A Left-Wing ideology
like Leninism might say that violence is acceptable if it's aimed at certain oppressive classes. And
what about Liberalism? Who are the acceptable targets of violence there? Well, here we've
hit on something very interesting.
Liberalism often markets itself as nonviolent. As essentially benevolent, wanting "liberty and justice for all."
And those are great ideals to have. But every ideology says that. Everybody believes that they're the good guy and nobody seriously says, "My ideology is incredibly
violent and nasty and horrible!" Liberalism also markets itself as "moderate" or "centrist," and again, yeah,
everybody thinks that their ideas are moderate and sensible, but just saying that doesn't make it so: the devil is always in the details.
If we look at the history of liberalism we notice a trend. It places a lot of emphasis
on things like civil rights and freedoms. Great! But if we go back to the founding texts, writers
like John Stuart Mill and John Locke, they build explicit exceptions into their systems.
And making exceptions to the normal rules is a defining characteristic of liberal ideology in practice.
Classical liberals like John Stewart Mill and John Locke wanted liberty but they made
exceptions for "barbarians" and "savage races" - it was okay if they didn't
have liberty. And the kicker is, men like Mill and Locke were to be the deciders of
who is savage.
Mill loved the idea of liberty but he didn't think Indian people should be at liberty to
run India. At least, not until British people had taught Indian people how to run India
"properly," where "properly" was a) to be decided by the British, conveniently,
and b) basically meant in a way that allowed Britain to profit, also conveniently. Locke
did the same thing with Indigenous Americans and Canadians, as we've discussed on the
show before.
This practice of making exceptions doesn't just appear on the pages of philosophy but
also on the pages of history. For instance the founding fathers of the USA
preached "liberty and justice for all" but we know that they made some exceptions to "all"
because they also owned slaves. One thing my country is very good at today is preaching all kinds of freedoms and nice things
for people, but denying those same things to immigrants. The fact that somebody is an
immigrant is deemed to be very morally relevant and so apparently legitimises certain kinds
of behaviours towards them, like imprisonment without trial, that otherwise would be against
the rules. There we see liberal ideology in operation: making exceptions to the ordinary rules
in order to justify violence against somebody on the basis of some fact that it thinks relevant.
Incidentally, it's important to realise that although all political ideologies legitimise
violence somewhere and all claim to be moderate and objective, that doesn't mean they're
all the same or all equally good choices. It just means that it's not enough to believe
the marketing: you've really gotta dig down into an ideology and understand its guts to
decide whether it's for you.
So we've said that liberalism is an ideology and that despite its marketing it likes to
makes exceptions to its own rules. What else can we say about it? What else does it mean to be a liberal? Well liberalism is often quite individualistic.
What do we mean by that? Well a shallow take would be that liberals view people as individuals.
The reason that's a shallow take is because yeah, everybody thinks that
No matter what their ideology is everybody agrees that people are individuals.
What we mean then is that liberalism says when we look at a society, the units we
should be using are the individual. We analyse a society in terms of the decisions
that individuals make, we describe a society as basically a collection of individuals,
and when we explain what happens in a society the kinds of explanations will reference individuals.
Margaret Thatcher, once famously said, "There is no such thing as society. There are individual
men and women, and there are families." That's a Liberal way of looking at the world.
Actually that's a good point: although Thatcher was a Conservative, and normally we might
think of liberals and Conservatives as opposites, in fact she was still a capital L liberal.
She still bought into the individualism, still talked about rights and freedoms but made
exceptions in a lot of cases, and still as if Liberalism was an invisible ideology.
She's still what you might call a "Classical Liberal," as is a lot of the American Republican
party, despite also being small c conservative.
Compare Liberalism's focus on the individual with, say, a Marxist ideology, which might say that when we look at
a society we should understand it in terms of class and how different classes conflict. Or fascism
which says that we should understand society in terms of a superior white race struggling against inferior other races.
There's one last big feature of Liberalism, and that is capitalism. And we're gonna be learning all about that
in Episode 2. In this Episode we've learned that Liberalism is an ideology and
what that means in terms of the violence it legitimises and the facts it deems relevant. We've also seen that it markets
itself in a certain way but it makes exceptions to its own rules sometimes. If you'd like to learn any more there's a whole bunch of recommended reading in the doobleydoo.
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