Political Illiberalism

A Defense of Freedom

Peter L.P. Simpson

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781412855747
• eBook ISBN: 9781351498906
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book deconstructs the story of liberalism that John Rawls, author of Political Liberalism, and many others have put forward. Peter L.P. Simpson argues that political liberalism is despotic because it denies to politics a concern with the comprehensive human good; political illiberalism overcomes this despotism and restores genuine freedom. In Political Illiberalism, Simpson provides a detailed account of these political phenomena and presents a political theory opposed to that of Rawls and other proponents of modern liberalism. Simpson analyses and confronts the assumptions of this liberalism by challenging its view of liberty and especially its cornerstone that politics should not be about the comprehensive good. He presents the fundamentals of the idea of a truer liberalism as derived from human nature, with particular attention to the role and power of religion, using the political thought of Aristotle, the founding fathers of the United States, thinkers of the Roman Empire, and contemporary practice. Political Illiberalism concludes with reflections on morals in the political context of the comprehensive good. Simpson views the modern state as despotically authoritarian; consequently, seeking liberty within it is illusory. Human politics requires devolution of authority to local communities, on the one hand, and a proper distinction between spiritual and temporal powers, on the other. This thought-provoking work is essential for all political scientists and philosophy scholars.

1

Liberalism in Practice

The Official Story about Liberalism

Liberalism is a doctrine about the state and society and their interrelations, and in particular about the interrelations between the state and the thinking and desires of those who make up society. As such the doctrine of liberalism is intrinsically tied to the idea of the state. Here lies a first fact about liberalism that needs to be more carefully noticed, for the assumption is typically made that the state is the organ of political power in communities, and that what disagreement concerns is not whether there should be states but what form these states should take. The assumption is further typically made that the state is the political power wherever and whatever the power is, so that the state is a universal phenomenon found (if in different forms) as much in the ancient and medieval worlds as in the present one. Little argument is forthcoming on behalf of these assumptions, but they are by no means self-evident. Indeed, as will be argued shortly, there is good reason to think them false.

As for liberalism itself, it is thought to be a distinctively new and modern way of confronting and answering questions about the state, namely about what power the state should have, what things it should preserve, protect, and promote, and on what grounds or with what justification. For according to the liberal claim, prior to the modern world, there was no liberalism, but there were states. These states were all in principle illiberal, in the sense that they taught and imposed on society a distinctive view of the good life, and more often than not a distinctively religious view of the good life. Those who disagreed with this view or religion imposed by the state had to be resisted or expelled or incarcerated or killed. The premodern and illiberal state therefore led inevitably to war, and above all to religious war. The wars that followed the Protestant Reformation in Europe furnish a standard example of the fact, but the earlier history of Europe in particular during the ancient and medieval eras is said to be similar in kind, if not always in degree.

There are still today non-liberal or illiberal states in the world, as in particular communist states like North Korea, and Islamic states like those in the Middle East and Far East. Moreover, the wars these states produce are not only against dissidents within them but also against the liberal states of the West. For liberal states do not do what these illiberal states say should be done: namely to impose the true religion, or the true account of the good life, on society. The imposition takes the form principally of restrictive legislation whereby those who reject the true religion or true doctrine are denied rights and privileges equal to the ones enjoyed by those who accept that religion or doctrine; or they are subject to various kinds of coercion to make them embrace the state’s imposed truth. Illiberalism, therefore, is intolerant, discriminatory, and coercively repressive, and even if it does not always provoke open war, it always denies to the oppressed members of society the pursuit of their own happiness in their own way. In the end, it makes everyone miserable, because even if it does not deny the true believers happiness (for the true believers have a state that supports and promotes true believers), it does deny them freedom. For no believer is permitted, for any reason (and least of all because of sincere conviction) to become an unbeliever or to act against the rules of the true belief. Those who do so are condemned as heretics and enemies of God, or of the state, or both. Classic examples are the banishment of such unbelievers to the Soviet gulags by the communists, or the beheadings of them by Islamic sharia courts, or the burnings of them at the stake by Catholic grand inquisitors or Protestant witch hunters.

Such are the results of illiberalism in politics. Modern liberalism is the solution to this state of affairs, because it removes the cause. It separates the state and its coercive authority from questions of the true religion or the true doctrine. These questions it leaves to the free choice of individuals within society. All it requires, and all it needs its coercive force to do, is to prevent individuals, not from living the good life they want, but from imposing their vision of the good life, or the true doctrine, on others by force. All are rather to be left free to pursue whatever life and beliefs they choose, provided only that they allow to all others the same freedom. The state’s job is to provide the necessary conditions for this free pursuit of happiness by all, and for this purpose alone may its coercive force be legitimately used.

The Mythical Character of This Story

This story about liberalism (thus schematically stated), about its rise and its superiority to illiberalism, is almost entirely mythical. It is a colorful story so universally taught and so universally believed that few are able, or able very easily, to see through its colors to question its truth. The myth has become a sort of instinctive state of the public mind, whereby people are caught up into the belief that liberalism, or something analogous to it, is the only acceptable doctrine about political life. This belief, however, generates a paradox on the one hand and insinuates a falsehood on the other.

The paradox is that while liberalism claims to free people from the oppression of states that impose on everyone the one true doctrine espoused by the state, liberalism itself imposes on everyone such a doctrine: namely liberalism itself.¹ Liberal theorists have long been offering solutions to this paradox. Whether they have succeeded in theory is questionable.² Whether they or any others have succeeded in practice seems plain to view. They have not. All those in professedly liberal states who, for whatever reason, do not accept the liberal doctrine, or are suspected of not doing so, become enemies of the state. They must at the very least be watched carefully, and if their unbelief in any way proceeds to attack against the liberal state and its interests at home or abroad, they must be hunted down and rendered harmless. The liberal state has proved itself as ruthless against its opponents as any illiberal state is supposed to have done.

The falsehood is that the liberal state, contrary to the myth, is not a solution to some longstanding political problem. It is rather the invention of a new problem that before hardly existed. For the state is not a timeless human phenomenon whose history can be traced far into the past. On the contrary, it is almost entirely an invention of liberalism itself, first in theory by theorists and then progressively in practice by men of power and influence who, whether sincerely or insincerely, embraced the theory. This claim, which may seem more startling than the paradox, needs extended explication and analysis.

The Idea of the State

The first question to ask, for it is key to correct analysis, is what is meant by the state. An answer to this question is provided by Max Weber,the founder of modern sociology, who in a perceptive insight seems to have to the heart of the matter. Here is the appostite quotation:

Today the relation between the state and violence is an especially intimate one. In the past, the most varied institutions… have known the use of physical force as quite normal. Today, however, we have to say that a state is a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory.³

By the state, then, is meant that special organization of political power that takes to itself a monopoly of coercion; that is, of the use of force to impose obedience to laws and policies. Note too, then, the novelty of this idea, for what Weber brings to our attention in this quotation is the difference between what existed before and what exists now. Before the modern emergence of the state, no institutional structure had a monopoly on coercive enforcement. The power to coerce has, of course, always existed and always been part of communal human life. Weber is not saying anything new by associating force with politics. What is new in his analysis, and in the state he is analyzing, is how this force relates to politics. In the past the power to coerce was not concentrated at any one point but diffused through the mass of the population. The nearest approach to the state in premodern times (though Weber does not mention the fact) was tyranny, where one man or a few did possess something close to a monopoly of coercion over everyone in a given area. For this reason was it typically called a tyranny: instead of all the citizens sharing control, only one or a very few did. Even kingships were not tyrannies in this sense, since kings ruled through powers of coercion diffused in the general mass.

One sign of the accuracy of Weber’s definition is the absence of organized police forces in the premodern world. The police force is the institutional locus of the state’s ordinary coercive power and holds a place analogous to that held in the past by the armed guard of the tyrant. The functions we now depute exclusively to the police were performed previously by the citizens, who relied on themselves and their relatives and friends for the enforcement of rights and for defense and protection. Another sign is the professional armies that exist in our modern states. What we call a professional army used to be called a standing army, and standing armies were considered a threat to peace and liberty. They constituted a permanent power of violence in the hands of the rulers, one that the rulers could use to impose on the people whatever they wished and whenever they wished it. Liberty and peace were to be secured, not by such permanent forces of coercion, but by occasional armies, composed of the people themselves, which rulers could only muster at such times and for such purposes as the people might approve of and willingly pay for, and which, when the time and purpose passed, naturally disbanded themselves.

The liberal state is not of this kind. It is comprehensively coercive. The very self-assertions of liberalism indicate the fact. For liberalism claims for itself a comprehensive neutrality. It says that it is able to reconcile all the visions of the good life and all religions into a harmonious community. For it espouses no comprehensive vision but secures instead the conditions under which all visions can live in peace. It secures, that is, the conditions where all are able to pursue the vision they prefer without interfering with or preventing anyone else who pursues a different vision. Comprehensive coercion is claimed by the state in the name of such peace and freedom. Only if no one may forcibly impose his vision on others are all free to pursue in peace the vision they prefer. Freedom is the freedom to pursue one’s own comprehensive vision. Comprehensive coercion is the means to guarantee the freedom.

This feature of the liberal state points to certain key questions raised by liberalism: is freedom the freedom to pursue one’s own vision of the good, and as guaranteed by the comprehensive power of the state? If so, why? If not, why not, and what is freedom instead? These questions need a separate treatment and will have to be dealt with directly later (in Chapter Three). Here it is sufficient to note that liberalism’s freedom and the claimed neutrality of the liberal state between rival visions of the good are more apparent than real. Nevertheless, the appearance in question remains stubbornly attached to liberalism, especially among its supporters, and not surprisingly. Liberalism does in fact offer people, or many people, freedom to live life in their own way. Illiberal regimes, on the other hand, old and new, impose on their people some one vision of the good life and forbid or restrict the pursuit of any other. The good life, or some vision of the good life, is the principle and goal of illiberal regimes, and according to the liberal reading of history, nothing has thrown nations into more turmoil, strife, and war than disagreement over the good life. For to disagree about the good life and to try to pursue some different and opposed vision of the good is to attack the being of the existing regime, and so to become, in thought if not in fact, a subversive or a traitor. Liberalism avoids this consequence, not because it does not require agreement (all regimes require agreement if they are to be communities at all), but because it does not require agreement about the good life. By an ingenious trick that we owe to Hobbes, it requires only agreement to disagree about the good life. (Such is the essence of Hobbesian peace, to be discussed Shortly under the state of nature doctrine.)

The agreement to disagree is a reflexive agreement, not a direct one. It is concerned not with some good life or vision of the good life, but instead with the attitude one may take up toward visions of the good life. That attitude must be one of tolerance toward other and different visions. Such a requirement is no mean or trivial one. It forces moderation and humility on every pursuit of the good. Forcing one’s good on others, or pursuing a good that includes within itself the forced denial of others’ good, is, for liberalism, the great evil.

Liberalism is, therefore, in one sense neutral and uncontroversial, but in another sense it is the reverse (here we return to the paradox). Liberalism is neutral and uncontroversial because it regards all the visions of the good life as equal and does not choose or judge between them. It is controversial because it demands that none pursue their vision of the good life to the forced suppression of any other vision. This demand is controversial because in the light of one vision of the good, the other visions are, or always threaten to become, an offense and a stumbling block, and require to be marginalized or suppressed if the true vision, the true good, is to prevail. Liberalism, by contrast, declares that no tolerable good requires the forced suppression of any other tolerable good. No good, it says, is worth fighting all the others to the death for. No good warrants extremism and fanaticism in its pursuit.

But what liberalism calls fanaticism, the followers of the true good call zeal; what it calls extremism, they call piety; what it calls tolerance, they call halfheartedness or even treachery. Liberalism has to root out this “zeal” and “piety” if it is to secure the peace on which its freedom is based. It has to war against all the particular visions of the good life and tame them and make them harmless. Otherwise it cannot work. Liberalism can only offer the freedom that is its badge and pride because it first imposes its own form of peace. This peace is non-negotiable and absolutely required. It is not something one is free to choose or not to choose. Liberalism may proclaim openly how it sets the people free; it keeps hidden how it also at the same time binds them.

The hiddenness of this constraint at the center of liberalism can be traced still in contemporary writers. The recent Rawlsian account of liberalism rests itself on a notion of a neutral core of morality, or of an overlapping consensus between rival visions of the good, which all such visions are supposed to be able to accept and live by.⁴ This core or consensus is supposed to be neutral and overlapping because it takes those moral convictions that are common to rival visions and tries to make them a sufficient basis for peaceful coexistence. The core-morality lays down conditions of respect and tolerance that, while permitting each person to pursue their vision as they wish, forbids them so to pursue it that they forcibly prevent others from pursuing other visions.

This core is indeed neutral in the way described: it does not favor one vision of the good life over any other. But it is thus neutral only because it imposes on them toleration of their rivals. This toleration is not natural to these visions; indeed it is alien to them. By themselves they reject it. The core-morality that is abstracted from them to justify toleration is distorted in being so abstracted. For while respect and toleration of others can indeed be found in them, it is respect and toleration of those who share and honor the true good, or who at least are willing to live peaceably in a community dominated and formed by a good that they themselves do not accept (the way, for instance, that Christians and Jews have lived in Islamic nations or Jews and Muslims in Christian ones). Those who openly deny and dishonor the true good, because they assert and honor some other good, are at best misguided and at worst evil. It might not always be necessary to suppress them by force (although assuredly sometimes it is), but it will always be necessary to guard against them. They...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• 1 Liberalism in Practice
• 2 Historical Illustrations
• 3 Liberalism in Theory
• 4 First Principles of Illiberalism
• 5 The Personalism of Illiberalism
• 6 Political Principles of Illiberalism
• 7 Justice and Political Forms — Aristotle versus Rawls
• 8 Devolved versus Centralized Rule
• 9 Temporal and Spiritual Empire
• 10 Illiberal Morals
• Bibliography
• Index