Post-Liberalism and the Left

[Martinus]

Urbanization had a huge role in this, I think. Living in a big city makes you anonymous and changes the way you think about your interactions with others. Any collective solution to anything created by such people is going to have a less-connected feel to it because that's the kind of lives they lead and the way they know to interact with the world. It will by definition be more done in bulk and uniform in approach.

And now that anonymity is going away.

Maybe it's a language thing but you make it sound like it's a development that makes it worse.

I think it's the contrary (of course in sane, non-Orwellian framework) - because of this anonymity going away, traditional means of soft social control (such as ostracism etc.) are going to catch up with the new social media and start to rebuild social cohesion. An example of this is a recent trend to have public websites require you to log in with your Facebook account to post comments e.g. about politics and the like, rather than do it anonymously - this makes people self-censor more (and, mainly, in a good way, i.e. by avoiding trolling and offensive form).

We will of course see a lot of clashes along these lines - and some aspects of the loss of anonymity will need to be resisted - but this is the direction we are going imo.

[Tamas]

God forbid people making political comments without the government being able to track their every personal details via their facebook accounts!

[Neil]

I don't mind at all.  I think that it's a good idea that Martinus be punished in real life for his internet thought crimes.

[Berkut]

Don't fret. You're taken more seriously than Raz.

Ouch, that is harsh Jake.

[crazy canuck]

Here is an interesting Canadian take on the left on a similar theme from the Globe.

In the wake of the NDP leadership convention, party unity problems were anticipated. There would be a gulf between party traditionalists, those echoing Ed Broadbent's sentiments, and those supporting the perceived move to the centre of Thomas Mulcair.

Thus far, it's quiet. Good poll numbers tend to soften frictions and New Democrats are now tied with the governing Conservatives, who are embroiled in allegations of electoral fraud as well as other controversies.

To be considered also is that Mr. Mulcair isn't offering anything that should embitter large numbers of New Democrats. He is only following the historic trend line of the Canadian left. From its early days a century ago, when it favoured the overthrow of the capitalist system, the movement has made steps in a moderate direction. Leaders like Mr. Broadbent, who initially supported the party's radical Waffle wing, were no exceptions. Nor was Jack Layton.

One of the reasons Mr. Layton did well in the 2011 election was his positioning of the party near the centre. Writing in The Canadian Election of 2011, Saskatchewan academic David McGrane notes that that "Under Layton's leadership, more traditional social democratic positions, such as increased taxation of wealthy individuals (i.e. an inheritance tax), the acceptance of deficit spending, the rapid creation of new universal social programs, and references to expanding public ownership were gradually eliminated from the party's discourse."
Mr. McGrane notes that in the campaign, the differences between the NDP and the Liberals were slight on such issues as cap-and-trade, health care, budget-balancing, child care, education, criminal justice, limiting prime ministerial power and a range of other platform proposals.

While the NDP convention of 1999 rejected the middle way or "Third Way," as it was called, of Tony Blair's British Labour Party, Mr. McGrane's study concludes that Mr. Layton moved the party slowly in that direction. For example, his campaign included promises not normally associated with the NDP, such as aid to small business, increased military spending for shipbuilding and fighting crime with more police officers.

It's a party that has come a long, mushy way. Early political formations like the Socialist Party of Canada would have scoffed at today's so-called social democrats. Ian McKay's book Rebels, Reds, Radicals, reminds us of the prominent role the Communist Party of Canada played in the building of industrial unions and of the left generally through the period 1917 to 1937. While the majority on the left did not embrace Leninism, CPC leader Tim Buck had such a following that, upon release from prison, Maple Leaf Gardens overflowed with supporters in a rally to greet him.

The Co-operative Commonwealth Federation became the leading left-side force in the 1930s. Some of its ambitions, as contained in the Regina Manifesto, would have NDPers running for cover today. So would, with its advocacy of comprehensive and systematic state planning, the 1940s bible of the left – David Lewis and F.R. Scott's Make This Your Canada.

As NDP leader, David Lewis scaled down the rhetoric and the ambitions, as did Mr. Broadbent. The Waffle Movement of the 1960s tried to rekindle the spirit of old in advocating an independent socialist Canada but was turned back. Mr. Broadbent helped organize the Waffle and favoured its overall agenda, but its rhetoric was too hot and he dropped it. "We disagreed on style, not on substance," he told biographer Judy Steed.

In Mr. McKay's analysis, the NDP, unlike earlier left-side parties, gradually became deeply implicated in the liberal order. Its radicals have been left to bark on the sidelines. Political pragmatism has taken over and, given the enhanced potential for power that such pragmatism brings, New Democrats don't seem to mind.

[Razgovory]

Don't fret. You're taken more seriously than Raz.

Ouch, that is harsh Jake.

I regret buying his story.

[Sheilbh]

Goodhart again, with UKIP rising:

The big divide that politicians ignore
Ukip is quick to exploit voters' disenchantment, but the London-based elite should pay more attention to the reasons behind its success

Labour will comfortably retain the Wythenshawe and Sale East seat in Thursday's by-election, but the headlines are likely to be about the advance of Ukip and how it wins votes in Labour as well as Tory places.

The fascination with Ukip is galling for the big parties but fully justified – not only because the Ukip vote will be one of the key factors in the 2015 election, but also because of what it tells us about modern Britain.

To many voters, Ukip is just a convenient vehicle for a grumpy protest vote, accompanied by vague feelings that politicians are self-interested and remote. But the rise of Ukip is also a corrective signal, a reaction to the overprofessionalisation and overcentralisation of politics in London and Brussels and a symptom of a new fault line in political values between a London-centric graduate elite and much of the rest of the country.

Our political system is not in crisis – indeed, the emergence of Ukip is evidence of its responsiveness – but it promises too much and delivers too little. Democracy has come to mean not just a way of peacefully changing governments but also a way of controlling one's individual and communal destiny. Yet democracy is also unavoidably collectivist and compromise-based; you cannot achieve control as a democratic citizen in the way that you can as a shopper on Amazon.

Moreover, democracy's promise of control conflicts with the logic of the markets that generate our wealth. The market is restless and disruptive, giving you the iPhone and cheap flights but also exporting your job to China and then importing east Europeans to compete with you at home.

So the puffed-up politician is bound to be deflated by our semi-internationalised economies, and by promising a control he cannot deliver he fosters the cynical attitudes of today's voters.

But there's another reason for the sense of lassitude that drives populism. As left vs right has faded, the value divide between the political class and the ordinary voter has grown wider. This is especially true on the "security and identity" issues such as welfare, immigration and national sovereignty, but also in education and the labour market – partly explaining the "you're all the same" response from so many voters.

The political elite used to represent a range of experiences and interests. Now, MPs may have different starting points but, like other members of the upper professional class, they mainly leave home in their late teens to go to university and thence into a world of physical and social mobility with an identity based on career and achievement. Most non-graduates are less mobile and draw their sense of themselves much more from place and group. (About 60 per cent of Britons live within 20 miles of where they lived when they were 14.)

Our elites tend to be liberal both economically and socially, the ordinary voter communitarian or post-liberal. Post-liberalism is a policy wonk term, but it essentially means sticking with what works in the market liberalism of the 1980s and social liberalism of the 1960s but responding to their failures and unintended consequences and paying greater respect to the intuitions of more rooted citizens.

It combines ideas from left and right and post-liberals can be found in both main parties. Several coalition policies – including welfare reform and reducing immigration – appeal to the latent post-liberal majority, and Jon Cruddas (among others) is nudging Labour in a more post-liberal direction.

Post-liberalism is comfortable with the "individualism plus rights" basis of modern politics but wants to balance it with ideas that mainstream liberalism has neglected: the value of stability and continuity in communities, character, the dignity of labour. It favours particular allegiances over universal claims, and is uneasy about the unconditional openness imposed by globalisation: it knows that change is often experienced as loss and wants to cushion it.

By contrast, many upper professionals favour wide but thin attachments and a more universalist outlook – and therefore tend to think public goods should be distributed mainly according to need. Most people believe support should be based on contribution or on past service.

Another point of tension between the elite and the majority is over social mobility. Nobody in Britain is against bright people from whatever background travelling as far as their talents will take them, and who is against getting the best qualified people into the right jobs? But listening to politicians talk about social mobility it often sounds like the upwardly mobile (or the already privileged) insisting that everyone should become more or less like them. Not only is that logically impossible, but it also presents a very narrow vision of what a good life entails.

Post-liberalism is not against aspiration or ambition, especially for those at the bottom, but it prefers the idea of vocation; aspiration implies a moving up and out which casts a shadow over the lives left behind. The focus in the past 15 years on reforming higher education and the continuing neglect of technical/higher manual skills reflects the concerns of a graduate elite whose own children are insulated from the negative aspects of the "hour glass" labour market in which about 40 per cent of people are in skilled, well-paid work but a bottom third are stuck in poorly paid service jobs.

A good society is not a collection of ladders; it is a circle of mutual interest. The best and brightest still rise to the top but all contribution is valued. Michael Young's famous critique of meritocracy is more relevant today than ever.

All mainstream political leaders will be getting tough on populists like Nigel Farage in the coming months, but let us also be tough on the causes of populism – and one cause is the ascendancy of a liberalism that rubs up against the values of too many decent people. Post-liberalism is the reasonable answer to the march of the populists.

David Goodhart, director of the think tank 'Demos', discusses post-liberalism in the new 'Demos Quarterly' (quarterly.demos.co.uk)

[MadImmortalMan]

When I was 14, I lived 2300 miles from here.

[Tamas]

paying greater respect to the intuitions of more rooted citizens.

Rooted citizens, if meant as "your average dude who lives his life in the same small" are the cornerstone of intolerant extremist parties. Last god damn thing any healthy country needs is paying more attention to them.