The New Left?

I wonder whether it is possible for a new pragmatic Left to emerge from the wreckage of John Kerry's presidential campaign. One major obstacle to this development is the depth of attachment to erroneous idées fixes. Matthew Yglesias's comment on "social justice" is a case in point.

A true demand for social justice necessarily calls into question the legitimacy of the social order, the legitimacy of my having what I have, and does not just ask me to sacrifice some of my property and my position, but admit to myself that my possession of my property and position is, to some extent, unjustifiable and unjust. This is a hard thing to admit,..

Gavin and Dick might like to note that this is actually a pretty good example of the type of "incorrect opinions" to which Peter Nolan referred. Yglesias reveals that the primary concern of the "social justice" advocate is not, as one might suppose, to uphold the interests of the less advantaged in society but rather to validate a method of organising society which promises an egalitarian redistribution of all that "unjustifiable and unjust" property. It may seem like an abtruse distinction but the emphasis of the contemporary Left on the redistributionist means at the expense of the ends to which redistributionism is supposed to effect is why it is heading into a cul de sac.

There remains a deleterious obsession with intentions over outcomes. But intentions are ultimately worthless, it is "incorrect" to imagine that a good intention - to wipe out poverty - somehow justifies a bad outcome - perpetuating poverty - and it is also "incorrect" to complain of the "bad" intentions - tax cuts for the "greedy" rich - if the outcome of that "selfish" policy is a reduction in unemployment. I should note that it is possible, even likely, that good intentions lead to good outcomes and bad intentions lead to bad outcomes, but the point remains: it is the outcome which matters.

If it is hard to divorce the two, perhaps a thought experiment might suffice. Let us imagine two neighbouring countries, Laissaferia and Equalistan. Each are autocratic regimes. In each case the government is a secretive cabal which never reveals its "intentions" to the public. In Laissaferia, there is no public health system, no welfare safety net, no public education system. The payoff is that taxes are very low and there is little regulation. In Equalistan, there is an extensive public health system, no quibbles welfare and an extensive public education system. Balancing this is the redistributionist tax system which maintains wages in a very narrow band in the middle. Let's say there is very little difference between the richest and poorest Equalistanis.

Now, it is probably no surprise to anyone who has read this blog that I would prefer to live in Laissaferia, but my point is not so much to argue the merits of a liberal society over an egalitarian society as to point out that we may have that discussion and carry on the argument without any reference at all to the intentions of each governing cabal. It may turn out to be the case that Equalistan is governed by good hearted individuals and Laissaferia a bunch of rogues. Conversely it might be the case that Equalistan is managed by a nihilistic Borg-style collective and Laissaferia run by idealistic cavaliers. Or they could be both governed by computer programmes. In each case the merits and demerits of each society remain.

The point is that, what matters is what is achieved, what is likely to be achieved and not what leftist tradition says is the "correct" means for achieving the ends. The fact is that an economy is not one fixed pie which will remain the same size no matter what tax and redistribution regime applies to it. The economy can grow, slowly or quickly or not at all. Extensive redistribution generally acts against growth. Conversely, the type of regime which encourages growth will tend to increase "inequality" by the simple fact that when poor people get richer, richer people get richer still.

The best way for a new pragmatic Left to keep from crashing on the rocks is to ignore the siren call of egalitarianism. If the aims of the Left may be achieved by methods other than redistributionism - and they surely must be as redistributionism has failed miserably so far - those methods ought not be spurned just because they do not comform with leftist tradition. They might indeed turn out to be "correct".

Comments

[Peter Nolan]

I think I'm being labelled with a catchphrase, but I do indeed think this is an inaccurate analysis. Rather than red or blue, most of America is fairly cloudy purple.

Someone directed me towards some of the recent academic work, and it seems that political scientists don't, for the most part, think that the values of the American electorate are very polarised. Morris Fiorina's book looks at state and individual voter survey data and finds that there are no very strong polarisations, except in approval of homosexuality and gay marriage, where support in red states v blue states comes out about 35% in favour compared with 45%. These values surveys show only slow movement since 1968.

The interesting point about the election is that the US parties, being mostly nothing but collections of various interest groups, seem to becoming more extreme as time goes on. Like Greek tragedy, their essential nature will push them towards self-destruction. For the Dems, I'd expect that they want to have clear blue water between them and their rivals and the activists - the Sierra Club, the AFL-CIO, NOW and so on will push their true believers forward as candidates. So, expect Hillary Clinton to be nominated in 2008.

Bush, Clinton, Bush, Clinton? History repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce.

[Frank McGahon]

I do agree that America is a lot "purpler" than people make out. But, the Democrats shouldn't allow that the delude them into "one-more-heave-ery". They do need a New Labour style reinvention if they want to return to power and that will probably mean new thinking on health, education and matters economic.

[Tony Allwright]

Intentions are for God; results are for man.

There are however countless examples of "good" and "bad" being defined not by results but by intentions, and in particular by the perverse equations Good = Left and Bad = Right.

For example, people's revulsion of mass murder seems often to be dictated not by the magnitude of the crime, but by the perpetrator's intention or even his political leaning.

Killing, when that is not your direct intention, or when perpetrated by left-wingers, seems for many to be less heinous, though the victims are just as dead.

Hitler made moral judgement easy. A right wing fascist, he has been reviled for the past sixty years for intentionally slaughtering six million Jews.

Mao and Stalin, on the other hand, were killers of Communist hue, whose slaughter (whether by famine, deportation, forced industrialisation, Gulag, execution) were merely byproducts of policies that were supposedly aimed at the long-term wellbeing of the working man. So throughout their tenures, and even to this day, excuses were/are made in the West and blind eyes turned, even though their death rates exceeded Hitler's by a factor of five.

Mao is so unreviled that there are even restaurants named after him. Can you imagine a restaurant called Hitler ?

A couple of other examples.

+ Everyone hates the right-wing, business-friendly General Pinochet for his killings and repression (though he certainly perked up the Chilean economy).

+ But great swathes of Western opinion support Castro despite his continuing killings, repression and economic destruction, simply because he dresses to the left and says he's on the side of the worker.

Meanwhile, in the 20 years since Bob Geldof's Live Aid, Ethiopia's poverty has got worse not better (income down from $190 to $108 pp, food production from 450 kg to 150 pp, population doubled to 68m).

Yet because the thug Meles Zenawi, a practicing Marxist who has run the country for the past 11 years, says he is "focused on the peasants ... genuinely wants them to have a better life" he is praised as a "saint" by the BBC's Michael Buerk.

There is a saying that “the road to hell is paved with good intentions”.

Actually, the reverse is true because God values intentions more than results. If I try to shoot you but miss, in God's eyes I am more culpable, because of my evil intent, than someone who tries to miss you but ends up killing you. Under man-made laws however, I will get a lighter sentence than the other guy, who will be banged up for manslaughter.

In the world of man, results are what should count. Nothing else. He who kills more is worse, he who improves the lot of others is better.

(See also http://www.tallrite.com/weblog/archives/january04.htm#MultipleMassKillers)

[Frank McGahon]

I would agree with much of what you say, particularly to the extent to which the (correct) social stigma which applies to the self-described fascist doesn't apply to the self-described communist (so much so that "Mrs Dick" aka Diana Perez Garcia of Backseat Drivers breezily owns up to supporting the creed of Mao and Stalin) but I'll have to differ on a few points.

First off, intentions behind actions do matter in one sense and I'm afraid it's the one which you identify, that of morality. Now, if I have the "good intention" of defeating Hitler and the axis forces but the outcome of that is bad (for some at least) in that lots of Germans and Japanese are killed, the morality of seeking to defeat Hitler isn't affected by the outcome. If you think that intentions don't affect the moral calculus consider the surgeon who inadvertently and unintentionally "kills" ten patients over the course of a career which saved many more and compare with the serial killer who sets out to kill a similar number. Where intentions become worthless from a moral point of view is when they are expressed intentions which differ significantly from revealed intentions. Thus somebody who knows full well what the bad outcome is going to be, yet still persists with a policy of "good" intentions doesn't actually have good intentions at all but merely professes to have them.

And the other point (and bugbear of mine): Hitler was not "right wing". That he is popularly considered to be so doesn't make him so. National Socialism was not an oxymoron. Hitler, avowed anti-Bolshevik as he might have been, took his socialism very seriously. That the popular perception of Nazism is that it is "right wing" is a consequence of an unholy mix of his attraction to far-right anti-semitic nationalist groups and generations of left-leaning historians who abhor the notion that they share any intellectual heritage with Hitler.

[Todd]

All of this “good intention” vs. “bad intention” soul searching seems a bit of a slippery slope because the values placed on these motivations are based on a superficial judgment of whether they are selfish or altruistic in nature. However, if we accept that each individual is driven by unique “motivators” -- the gratification of which are always positive for the actor -- it is questionable whether or not purely altruistic action is ever possible (regardless of whether or not those actions are deemed to be altruistic by current societal norms).

Self-reported motivations are of dubious value: Hitler claimed to represent the interests of the German Volk; Castro labors for the Cuban proletariat; Duvalier fought the Mulatto elite on behalf of the common black Haitian; Saddam Hussein represents the pan-Arabist nationalism of the Iraqi Sunni minority; and Mao, Franco, Milosevic, Ceausescu, Pinochet, Ne Win, Suharto, etc., all of these men saw themselves and/or were viewed by many of their countrymen as altruistic national saviors – but their actions had devastating results.

It seems to me that the obvious problems with the illiberal-New-Left worldview are: 1) that it has not been able to accept (or to take responsibility for) the horrible results of its own doctrines where given the opportunity to test them; and 2) and it is not able to see (or admit to) the positive results of laissez-faire policy. This is because New Left ideology is inexorably bound to a radical egalitarian utopian vision that forces its adherents to delude themselves – you simply cannot remove egalitarianism from “Leftism” any more than you could remove individualism or capitalism from liberalism.

Einstein said ”There is nothing that is a more certain sign of insanity than to do the same thing over and over and expect the results to be different." Let’s accept that the Left’s intentions are “good” and agree that they are well-intentioned but apparently insane.

I have no doubt that they also question my sanity without giving my intentions the same benefit of the doubt… so much for the notion of a new pragmatic Left.

***

Red, blue, purple, green... I think this color coding of the American populous is the height of silliness. My deeply blue county of Dekalb in Georgia has a population of nearly a million -- represented by a tiny little speck on the Red vs. Blue map. Meanwhile, the entire vivid-Red state of Montana has about the same population. These maps are very pretty, but they don't really covey any meaningful information.

It might be fun to fantasize about the lessons the Democratic Party will learn from this defeat and how they will reform their party. But, please remember: They did not attempt to win a wide victory nor did they wage a campaign designed to attract the broadest possible constituency. Their strategy was to win by a narrow margin, focused on the most heavily populated urban areas of the northeast and the Pacific coast. What they learned is that they came up a few thousand votes short and a couple of points shy of a victory. What they will do with that information is work hard to find the right wedge issues, the right special interest groups and the right entitlement programs to ensure those tight margins swing in their favor next time around. And they will likely succeed.

[Frank McGahon]

Einstein said ”There is nothing that is a more certain sign of insanity than to do the same thing over and over and expect the results to be different." Let’s accept that the Left’s intentions are “good” and agree that they are well-intentioned but apparently insane.

That's probably right in many cases, but there is some part of the left which professes to critical rationalism.

What they will do with that information is work hard to find the right wedge issues, the right special interest groups and the right entitlement programs to ensure those tight margins swing in their favor next time around. And they will likely succeed.

Perhaps for the Presidency, but not for the Senate and the House. Republican dominance of both will tend to inflate the Democrat vote: many people might feel more comfortable electing a Democrat President if he is constrained by gridlock than if he had a free run.

[Todd]

Republican dominance of both will tend to inflate the Democrat vote: many people might feel more comfortable electing a Democrat President if he is constrained by gridlock than if he had a free run.

It is well and good for the chattering classes to rehash the relative pros and cons of divided government but it doesn't matter a damn to the average American voter.

Here in the blogosphere folks tend to discuss politics as being fundamentally a rational, intellectual process -- and we tend to focus on the extremes. However, the reality is the US political process is primarily an emotional experience. Most Americans perceive that there isn’t much substantive difference between the two parties and for all the talk of red and blue, right and left, conservative and liberal, they will typically vote for the candidate with whom they feel most comfortable regardless of his party affiliation.

The cultural divide is mostly fantasy. If you look at good polling of the opinions of the US electorate, there is very little division: the vast majority of Americans identify themselves as Christian, individualist, both socially and fiscally conservative, as well as (paradoxically) supporters of a limited-welfare state.

Both the Republicans and Democrats claim to represent the interests of this majority, but they approach the electorate on these issues from very different perspectives. Forget about the technocrats, policy-wonks and the corrupt and the power hungry politicos for a moment and consider the typical voter whose sole contribution to the process may be to write a check for fifty dollars, to stick a campaign sign in his yard, or simply to show up at the polls to vote. Those who typically support the Democrats honestly and fervently believe in that a more "Christian" society (meaning a more responsible, caring, tolerant, and charitable society) will be achieved through their party. Those who typically support the Republicans just as honestly and just as fervently believe these goals will best be achieved by the GOP.

The problem for both parties at the moment is they have boxed themselves in by pandering to increasingly narrow interest groups over the past fifty years; Democrats cater to an ivy league elite, Leftist blacks, unmarried-college-educated women, gays, the labor unions, etc. etc. etc. while the Republicans must kowtow to the more fiscally conservative white middle-class and the much more socially-conservative evangelical Christians. (Republicans tend to win the national elections because their core constituencies are much broader. Democrats have a better chance at the local level because they can more easily target voters community by community.) In a national election, these (largely superficial) differences between the core constituencies of the two parties create an illusion of a much more pronounced cultural divide in the US than actually exists.