Monday, June 28, 2010

Liberalism and the Welfare State


This weekend I finished my book on the 1848 revolutions and started Roger Garrison's Time and Money (something of a restatement of Hayek's Prices and Production). The book was very good, but there was an interesting part at the end on the relationship between nineteenth century liberalism, revolution, the resolution of the "social question" (i.e. - unemployment), and the rise of the welfare state in the conclusion that I wanted to share. I know this might sound a little odd to some readers, but there is actually a contingent out there that believes that the American welfare state emerged out of Bismarkian authoritarianism, and that it wasn't derived from, say, long liberal struggles with the issue in the 18th and 19th century and an even longer history of poor relief in the colonies that was ultimately derived from Great Britain (here, here, here, and here for a start). They often ignore this broader history and highlight the work of German-ancestry progressives in the early twentieth century that contributed to an already robust reform movement (never mind the fact, of course, that a lot of these German immigrants - like the Kuehns who had left Hesse - were escaping conscription and repression in Bismark's Germany). Anyway, this was an interesting paragraph from p. 407 of the book:

"Namier's term, a 'seed-plot of history', can be applied to this aspect of 1848 because the revolutions of that year witnessed the fatal consequences of the perennial tension between, on the one hand, the liberal emphasis on political freedom and civil liberty and, on the other, the socialist stress on social justice, or the friction between the individual and society. Since 1848 this tension has provoked a wide range of responses, ranging from liberal capitalism to totalitarianism and all points between. Most modern democracies cope with the social question because it is debated within a constitutional framework on which all parties are (more or less) agreed and which protects democratic freedoms. In 1848, no such political consensus existed in most European countries. The 'social question' could therefore not be resolved within a peaceful, legal framework. So the revolutions faced the great challenge that confronts all modern states: how to integrate the masses into the state and to resolve the social question without provoking instability? Some states, such as the French Third Republic and Britain, managed to forge a political consensus by appealing to traditions (in the French case, to the democratic inheritance of 1789), which enabled them to offer some social reform through liberal, parliamentary systems. Others imposed reform from above through more authoritarian regimes, as in Bismark's Germany during the 1880s. A third solution was revolutionary, where integration of the masses failed, or was not even seriously attempted, and where alienation lead to a violent challenge to the old order, as in Russia, where the result was a totalitarian answer to the social question, in which the needs of society and, above all, the state took precedence over the liberty of the individual."

This probably won't move some people. There are of course those who see any constitutional expression of a social contract for solving social problems as threat to human liberty. Even among those who accept constitutional liberalism for whatever reason, there are those who will argue that Roosevelt and other 20th century progressives had more in common with Otto "iron and blood" Bismark than French and British parliamentarians. Nevertheless, I think the author's point that (1.) yes this is a tension, and (2.) it was resolved in a variety of ways, shouldn't be lost on people who claim the mantle of classical liberalism. Earlier in the text, the author notes that "the social question ulcerated the liberal regimes because there was no revolutionary consensus". Despite the absence of such consensus, claims are regularly made by modern libertarians that engaging this question is an abandonment of classical liberalism. A consensus on the social question, in other words, is retroactively imposed on the 19th century by these modern libertarians.

I'd also just note the strong Public Choice Theory/James Buchanan understanding of constitutionalism in the passage I presented above.

15 comments:

  1. "There are of course those who see any constitutional expression of a social contract for solving social problems as threat to human liberty."

    Well, Hume says all one needs to understand the notion of a social contract:

    "AS no party, in the present age, can well support itself, without a philosophical or speculative system of principles, annexed to its political or practical one; we accordingly find, that each of the factions, into which this nation is divided, has reared up a fabric of the former kind, in order to protect and cover that scheme of actions, which it pursues.*1 The people being commonly very rude builders, especially in this speculative way, and more especially still, when actuated by party-zeal; it is natural to imagine, that their workmanship must be a little unshapely, and discover evident marks of that violence and hurry, in which it was raised. The one party, by tracing up government to the DEITY, endeavour to render it so sacred and inviolate, that it must be little less than sacrilege, however tyrannical it may become, to touch or invade it, in the smallest article. The other party, by founding government altogether on the consent of the PEOPLE, suppose that there is a kind of original contract, by which the subjects have tacitly reserved the power of resisting their sovereign, whenever they find themselves aggrieved by that authority, with which they have, for certain purposes, voluntarily entrusted him. These are the speculative principles of the two parties; and these too are the practical consequences deduced from them." - David Hume, _Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary_

    I guess I could also go to the well and quote Lysander Spooner on the nonsense which the the notion of a social contract is.

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  2. "Some states, such as the French Third Republic and Britain, managed to forge a political consensus by appealing to traditions (in the French case, to the democratic inheritance of 1789)..."

    Oh, and I really question this claim. As Vichy illustrates, though Republicans/Jacobins thought they had forged a consensus by forcing everyone to speak French, etc., vast segments of French society resisted the efforts of the Republicans/Jacobins. Indeed, the Third Republic itself dipped into this well of anti-Republican sentiment during any time of crisis - thus the veneration of the French peasant soldier and the local, rural village during and after WWI.

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  3. Per our earlier discussion of religion: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mz_iGGGMddw&feature=related

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  4. Xenophon - and you know in the past I've ridiculed the idea of the social contract. I prefer Bentham's more succinct analysis: "nonsense on stilts". It's an analytically weak basis for any political philosophy.

    But what concerns me is that equally nonsensical approaches can so easily either (1.) discard democratic republics, imperfectly justified and executed though they may be, or (2.) simply equate republics with autocracies.

    That's the problem. Strictly speaking, the "social contract" is problematic. Pragmatically speaking it does provide the essence for the inherently contradictory reality of human liberty, which often juxtaposes the freedom of self-government with the freedom of individual action. We don't gain anything by pretending that you can discard one and expect the other to be preserved for long.

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  5. As for the French - so your argument is that a consensus that is later broken was never a consensus to begin with?

    That seems weak, Xenophon.

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  6. Daniel,

    Weak as it may seem, it is entirely true.

    It is not like it is a remotely controversial statement after all. After all, the only reason a Third Republic came into being was due to the fact that the architects of France after the Franco-Prussian war and the collapse of the Parisian Commune couldn't agree who would King. Only roughly a decade after the war did the Jacobins seize the state; but they were never strong enough to make that state into what they wanted it to be (the uber-centralized, anti-clerical entity that emerged with the Fourth and Fifth French Republics).

    The Third Republic existed as a place holder state because neither major faction in France could wield enough power to create either the Jacobin state that the Republicans wished nor the monarchy that the legitimasts/right wished for, not because it was some state which had forged a consensus on anything.

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  7. "We don't gain anything by pretending that you can discard one and expect the other to be preserved for long."

    So goes the claim about the need for a centralized state where everyone buys into some core (though mythical) national identity.

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  8. RE: "So goes the claim about the need for a centralized state where everyone buys into some core (though mythical) national identity."

    Oh stop imputing - it's way too transparent, Xenophon. There's no implicit claim about a centralized state or a national identity.

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  9. RE: "It is not like it is a remotely controversial statement after all. After all, the only reason a Third Republic came into being was due to the fact that the architects of France after the Franco-Prussian war and the collapse of the Parisian Commune couldn't agree who would King."

    And really this passage needs to be read in the context of the whole book. When he talks about "consensus" he's talking about consensus around a liberal constitutional order of some sort - including a constitutional monarchy. And that was a common denominator on which there was some consensus, even among the legitimists, Orleanists, etc. This passage came after working through the events of 1849. A constitutional monarchy looked pretty decent at that point, regardless of lingering disagreements over where to take France.

    The point, as I tried to impress upon you earlier, was the stark contrast with Germany and Russia.

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  10. Daniel,

    I am not imputing anything.

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  11. "When he talks about "consensus" he's talking about consensus around a liberal constitutional order of some sort - including a constitutional monarchy."

    I disagree with this as well. It only looks that way from Paris and Ile De France - it does not like look that way in Bretagne or Languedoc. Which is why the Jacobins spent so much of the period of the Third Republic trying to force the country to speak French, adopt French dietary and sartorial customs, squash the influence of the church, destroy various aspects of customary law and local political power, etc.

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  12. Across the social landscape of France - from education, to the church, etc. - you have a highly contested claim of propriety, etc. with regards to which major faction has the appropriate social order. In other words, Vichy France is not some sort of aberration - it is exactly what one should have expected when one of those major parties was knee-capped and taken from the field.

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  13. Xenophon you're reviewing various dietary, linguistic, eccelesial, and partisan disputes that have nothing to do with the point he was making. I don't think I or the author denied any of that stuff (in fact in the same conclusion he discusses the volatility of French society in the century between 1848 and 1945.

    Your confusing your own concerns about social stability (which no one claimed existed) with the simple contrast between some sort of French and British constitutional order with an autocratic German order. Nobody said there wasn't infighting and nobody said everyone got along or agreed.

    Trust me, your providing an entirely different context to the passage.

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  14. Daniel,

    There was no political consensus during the Third Republic; there was a stalemate or breathing space where both major combatants spent their time waiting for a period where one could destroy the other.

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  15. Anyway, time to listen to Russ Roberts' latest gem.

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