Liberals and Leftists Redux

by Joe Miller

A couple of weeks ago, a threw together a post in which I attempted to distinguish liberals from leftists. Or at least that's how the post started; looking back, I'm not sure that I really did say all that much, other than to offer some vague claims about anti-Americanism and a soapboxy rant that while criticism is important, so too is remembering all the things that the U.S. does pretty well. The post, however, drew a number of comments (see here, here, here, and here), several of which deserve some following up. That's not to say that I'm actually going to follow up on all of them; hell, lots of people don't get what they deserve. Besides, following up on comments is hard work. Instead, I'm going to try to offer a slightly more rigorous formulation of what I take (as of today anyway) to be the difference between liberals and the left.

A few caveats first. Matt McIntosh offers a couple of rough and ready ways of distinguishing between liberals and leftists. His suggestion: leftists are anti-wealth while liberals are anti-poverty. Another: leftists tend to sneer at the very mention of Adam Smith while liberals are generally pretty fond of the guy. Matt's definitions are not meant to be philosophically rigorous. Indeed, as he responds to one commenter:

I explicitly was shooting for something less aridly philosophical; this litmus test is more geared toward operational attitudes. Does someone seem motivated more by sincere desire to see everyone do well, or are they motivated more by resentment of the wealthy? (A related test might be to ask whether they basically see all of society as “in this together” or if they frame everything in terms of oppressors vs oppressed.) It’s intended to be more anthropological than philosophical.

I'm going to aim at something slightly different here. I want something slightly more theoretical than Matt's definition (not because I disagree with his characterization; I am a political theorist, though). At the same time, I'm not going to give anything all that rigorous. Not that this should be much of a surprise. This is a blog, you know. Anyone looking for detailed analytic rigor should look to a different forum. I'd suggest here for a start.

Let me start by saying what my view is not. Jeremy, of Social Memory Complex, objects that my distinction between liberals and the left is better characterized as a distinction between radicalism and incrementalism. As he puts the point:

In the context of the topics Miller discusses, therefore, I think it makes more sense to talk about radicalism vs. incrementalism. The left he’s describing seeks a more “in your face” approach to reform, while the liberals you describe seek more gradual change within the system. There is both a theoretical and strategic distinction there that informs the differences you point out. Both sides have advantages and drawbacks, and indeed both sides may have different goals from time to time. I’m just saying that if you’re going to fault the left for their rhetoric, you should fault the “liberals” for theirs as well. It’s my opinion that neither group is served by the image they project, and that is the real problem with realizing actual reformist goals. I’m all for uniting behind those goals, but until liberals can be a little more left and vice versa, established interests are not likely to be successfully defeated - or even convinced to compromise.

If I gave the impression that what I really object to about leftists is that their approach is more radical than the one I prefer, then I'm worse at this whole communication thing than I thought. My objection to leftists is not with their methods. It's their goals that I dislike. I don't, for example, view the welfare state as a small step on the way toward some eventual socialist utopia. I don't think that socialism works...unless what you want is for everyone to be poor together. Hell, I think that the welfare state lowers overall wealth; I just think that we are a rich enough society that we can sacrifice some rate of growth to help out the poor sods who currently are struggling. Incidentally, this is a still-developing view on my part. I've been slowly moving from a sort-of Rawlsian liberal to what I guess one might call a Clintonite neo-liberal. I suspect that it has something to do with spending way too much time interacting with libertarians. I hate it when my cherished theoretical arguments fail to correspond with, you know, actual science. Damn you economists! But I digress.

So if I'm not really a slow-moving leftist, then what am I? That's a bit harder to say. Indeed, this is a part of Jeremy's challenge: if I want to distinguish liberalism from leftism, then I really ought to start by explaining what I take liberalism to be. Roughly, then, I take liberalism to consist of three main theses:

• Respect for individual autonomy.
• A commitment to equality of opportunity.
• State neutrality.

What these theses boil down to is that I have to allow people the freedom to choose for themselves how they will live their lives (that is, allow each person to determine her own conception of the good), treat each person equally regardless of those choices, and not use the state to privilege some conceptions of the good over others. Pretty straightforward, right?

Yeah, right. There is a whole hell of a lot of wiggle room within those three theses. Enough so that people with pretty radically different political positions can still claim to be liberals. When we start trying to cash out what these three theses really entail, we can get a lot of different results. Perhaps, for example, equality of opportunity is merely formal: we have equal opportunity as long as the law specifies that all of us are equal. On the other hand, maybe it is impossible to have real equality of opportunity as long as some parents have more money than others which will in turn entail that capitalism is inconsistent with equality of opportunity. In short, my three theses distinguish small-l liberalism from non-liberal theories, but doesn't really do much to distinguish Liberals (in the contemporary everyday sense) from Leftists.

Here's another shot then. Liberals accept that there are certain universal truths, while (most?) leftists deny the idea of Objective Truth. For example, I think that there are certain basic rights and that all humans have those rights regardless of time or culture. Thus, I think that everyone has a right to not be killed unjustly, to not be interfered with without his consent, to acquire property, and to do as one pleases (provided that doing so interferes with no one else). Roughly these are the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuits of property and happiness. I think, too, that human nature is more-or-less fixed, that humans are naturally rationally self-interested (i.e., I think that the 'homo economus' model, while obviously oversimplified, is nonetheless basically accurate). Moreover, I think that one can use reason to determine these truths. And I think that it's a good thing to export these sorts of views to societies that do not currently hold them (not by force necessarily, though in extreme cases, I don't rule that out of bounds).

Now no one of those views would exclude all leftists. But if we take a liberal to mean someone who is committed to the three theses that I outlined above and who also accepts all (or at least most) of the Objective Truths that I offered in the above paragraph, then I think that we have a position that will accurately characterize what I take to be the distinction between liberals and leftists. Marxists, for example, will object to the fixed-human-nature claim. And the right-to-property claim. Deconstructionists will object to the discoverable-by-reason claim. Post-colonialists object to exporting views. And so on.

Again, I make no claims that this distinction will hold up under a sustained, rigorous assault. Indeed, perhaps it's not particularly theoretical at all, but is rather just a more detailed anthropological account. But then you are probably all better judges of those sorts of questions than I.