Marc Cooper points me at an interview with Fred Halliday, historian and one of the former editors of the New Left Review.
Halliday’s journey – from the ‘indecent’ to the ‘decent’ Left matters, as does Norm Geras’ (and mine, for that matter), because the tropes we hear on the news are pale reflections of the ideas we read in places like TAP, which are in turn less-strident reflections of what is being said in the Academy. Which are echoes of what was said there a generation ago.
Just as the project of creating an environment for reform in the Islamic world is a generation-long one (read Thomas Kuhn if you’d like to know why), the process of recapturing the Western, Social-Democratic Left from the place where it fell off the tracks in the late 1960’s will take a generation as well.
Halliday:
The issue of rights is absolutely central. We have to hold the line at the defense, however one conceptualizes things, however de-hegemonized, of universal principles of rights. This is how I locate my own political and historical vision—it is my starting point. What this means very practically, to cut a long story short, is the issue of intervention. It seems to me that certain interventions in defense of rights are justified—Bosnia and Kosovo, to take two obvious examples, or the defense of the Kurds in Iraq in 1990-1991. The New Left Review and others on that wing of the Left attack not just these particular interventions, but the very concept of rights—and are consistent in doing so. My fundamental disagreement with the Review, and with Tariq, is really about this.
Once you start talking about defending individual rights, you are fundamentally talking about some variant of Enlightenment liberalism. That’s a good thing, in my view, and deserves to be encouraged. Read the whole thing, and be happy that this change is starting to happen.
Individual rights is a bit too vague for my taste. How about the right to have work, something assumed by European Social Democrats as a fundamental right. How can work be guaranteed without overweening government intervention that will eventually impact other rights? Is property a fundamental right? How about the right to bear arms and defend one’s home? I happen to suscribe to the goodness of the latter two rights, but you will find them given scant attention in the social democracies.
Another fundamental issue is group rights. I don’t suscribe to that idea, yet it is the basis of preferential admissions policies. I believe these policies are fundamentally destructive to the American polity and perpetuate racism and the whole idea of race. Look at Europe.
So, I think if you are going to base your political stance on rights there is a lot more that has to be said.
Let us be clear about it: the U.S. role in international medical and family-planning policy, its opposition to contraception and abortion, and its mishandling of the issue of AIDS—it’s criminally irresponsible and will lead to the deaths of many millions of people. George Bush should be indicted for mass murder because of his policies on AIDS. As should the Pope—both this one and the previous ones.
And this doesn’t impress me much. The man is like a recovering alcholic still nostalgic for the booze. Sorry, I can’t find it in my heart to lend much credence to these folk. And if he can defend the USSR in Afghanistan as the more progressive side, I don’t see why he can’t defend the US in Vietnam on the same basis. But I doubt he will ever reach that stage, the Vietnam War was probably too formative an experience. And let us examine what he says about Afghanistan. Look at the situation in the erstwhile Soviet provinces of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Khazakstan, or Russia itself with its endemic racism after 74 years of Soviet rule and tell me that the Soviet Union really was more progressive than the mujahideen. Perhaps it was not worse, but I don’t think it was clearly better.
I think the best thing is to write off the Left altogether. They still have to be dealt with because they are pervasive and destructive to education and self defense but I don’t think a great deal of intellectual compromise is called for.
I have not seen ever an articulation of the “properness” for lack of a better word for the US to act unilaterally in defense of it’s citizens. That the US even deserves to exist. That it’s government should favor US citizens over the people of other nations living in other nations. That American interests for example should trump the interests of the people of Chad.
Instead we get crazy conspiracy theories. Cindy Sheehan asserting that the “US War Machine” killed Bobby Kennedy when he was in fact shot by Sirhan Sirhan, a jihadi Palestinian, in retaliation for Bobby’s speech in support for Israel.
The Left’s journey has been complete, from Bobby’s support for Israel to the desire to join with Ahmadinejad to “wipe Israel off the map.”
I believe that the George W. Bush administration has pledged more money for fighting AIDS internationally than any previous administration.
Want a starting point?
Remember Hume. Denounce *AND* renounce Marx.
Acknowledge the superiority of Western Civilization (…how the hell do you think you got to where you are now?) and stand ready to defend it.
Understand, and appreciate the Founders of this nation [America]; they were ten times the ‘revolutionaries’ you’ll ever hope to be. Try reading the Federalist Papers; you won’t burst into flames when you do, trust me.
Seeking that golden nugget of wisdom that will transform the world? Don’t cast your eyes _first_ to the horizon; look down, look around you. The answer may closer that you think.
Nothing says ‘blind and stupid’ more than some clown (or clownette) waving a Bush=Hitler sign while wearing a Kim Jong Il button. Any political movement that will tolerate something that vile is _*finished*_.
As long as the Left puts the State before the individual, the Left will only attract those who seek power to rule, for whatever noble or ‘glorious’ reason.
One last piece of advice: talk _to_ a conservative, not down to them. Just because we’re practical and, results oriented, doesn’t mean we’re evil.
I tried to read the whole thing, and it seemed that he was trapped in his own dustbins from the mid 20th century. Radical this and critique that, capitalism sux, and everyone else’s a rightwinger but me – and by the way, I’m smarter than everyone else because I speak a gazillion languages and read a lot. In this sense, a fairly typical leftie.
The good thing is he seems to be repudiating the double standard of the recent left, fanatically attacking the US and the West while ignoring or justifying Third World awfulness. This is a good start.
Now if only I could trust these lefties to not be totalitarians trying to go after my wallet first, followed by my soul, I could be a bit more happy with them. But their ideas about rights are about things the All-Powerful State can give you, not your rights as an individual.
CPT,
I’d settle for them understanding Marx: that there is no point in ending capitalism until it is no longer profitable.
Which is why Marx often complained “I’m no Marxist”.
A.L.,
Perhaps you didn’t get the memo: S o c i a l i s m is Dead.
Lieberman is the only major Democrat who gets capitalism, and the Dems are trying to run him out of the party.
There is only one hope for the left. Disintegration.
It really hurts when a world view you have held all your life crumbles in your face. I gave up on s o c i a l i s m when I was about 35. It can be done.
Funny that s o c i a l i s m is an illegal word.
Halliday talks about faith in markets.
Me? I don’t have no faith in markets. I’ve actually seen them work.
Halliday is an idiot,
He can’t think clearly about the simplest issues.
He promotes planning and yet decries authoritarianism. How can you have a planned society without some one with the authority to enforce the plans?
And then he goes on about (economic) injustice without recognizing it as a necessary component of progress. The more opportunities an economy provides the greater the spread in incomes.
As DeSoto points out the greatest force for economic advancemet is to have a system where any one can join in. Which requires secure property rights.
He talks about a left stuck in the 1930s and yet he is stuck too.
Hayek must not have been on his reading list. Or DeSoto even.
At least he says some very good things (for a s o c i a l i s t) about capitalism.
#8
“Gets capitalism”?
Since we all know how Republicans define “capitalism”, I can only think that if Lieberman “gets it” he must be part of the corporatist takeover of the country.
In my naive view, true capitalism requires a fair and open (free) marketplace, where the govermnent’s role is to prevent the natural tendency of business to seek monopolization of a particular industry, which in the end works against the very system that allowed its rise to begin with.
Net neutrality is a great example of this; Republicans are in full support of giving more control of the internet to fewer and more powerful companies.
The same can be said for the increasing control of the major media outlets by a few large corporations. In response to this favor, they have now largely become either an overt organ of the Republican propoganda machine, or at least treat the Republicans with much greater deference than Democrats, who are widely ridiculed (or even slandered; see recent comments by CNNs Glen Beck comparing Al Gore’s film to Nazi propoganda, and Ann Coulter on CBS fomenting hate of the 9/11 widows to sell her books).
Republicans and the bought-and-sold Democrats that play along, like Lieberman, are anti-capitalists, if anything.
It should be easy for “new” Democrats to fashion a pro-capitalist message that will be very popular with the large number of entrepreneurs and companies who are not among the favored patrons of the current corrupt government (Repubs and Dems alike).
I’m sure there are plenty of other companies besides Halliburton who would like a chance to provide disaster relief or reconstruction services….
Halliday:
Yeah, we noticed. But there’s a good reason why most leftists aren’t as frank as Halliday on this issue. It points to the unavoidable conclusion that the leftists who proclaim “solidarity” with the so-called Third World are actually the mortal enemies of the people who live there. They are – and always have been – the staunch and highly valuable supporters of the tyrants who murder and oppress the Third World.
Start what? Reforming the Third World? Your typical “revolutionary” strongmen don’t need some visiting peacenik who lectures them about human rights. They can get 500 peaceniks who won’t. They have legions of people who will defend everything they do and savagely attack anybody – left or right – who criticizes them. What do they need decent leftists for? Look at it from their point of view: where’s the “useful fool” payoff?
Halliday, to his credit, wants to turn his back on obscene leftist apologism. But he wants to save the romantic trappings and bogus moral superiority of internationalism; obsolete and nonsensical terms like “Third World” and superstitious jujus like “solidarity”. He’s being very conservative in a bad way, clinging to a noble past that never existed. In the end, you’re still on the side of the butchers and enslavers, you’re just trying to feel appropriately guilty about it.
As for universalizing principles, what f–king principles? The whole rationale of “solidarity” is that westerners like Halliday are born rich, white, and guilty, incapable of communicating principles.
Halliday is not going to reform the left with this stuff, but he might reform himself right out of the left.
#11 Walter,
I think the points you have made are an excellent reason for limiting what government can do in the economic sphere. When politicians control what is bought and sold the first thing bought and sold is politicians.
==============
Lieberman understands that without capitalism soc”ialism has no goodies to redistribute. He is quite interesting on the subject.
Personally I’d like to see the medical cartel disrupted. That means ending the DEA and the FDA as anything but information agencies. You up for it?
BTW Walt,
Clinton signed the Haliburton contract.
The demise of the left has been greatly exagerated. As a human being, to prefer a system where there is such a difference between the rich and the poor over a system where everyone is equal is just wrong. To bring up the Stalin and Moa death toll is correct, but let’s not forget the wars that Capitalism has been the cause of, one could even argue that the 2 World Wars of the last century were caused by the European grab for resources and markets to further it’s capitalist dreams. After decades of being bashed over the head with the Communist USSR and China’s human rights violations, the left has fractured but with the swing to left wing governments around the world, it is the right who should be running scared. We have not gone away.
Lucy,
Its a shame you haven’t gone away. Evidently more than 100 million murdered in the name of your false “equality” wasn’t enough for the Left.
Ah, yes. “Socialism” blocked because the word contais a spam-promtoed drug. I thought about keeping that, especially when I noticed the 2000+ spams it blocked over the past week. But we’ll remove it for now, and I’ll try to figure out how to create an execting regex that gets only the drug.
Look, there are good and valid reasons to oppose the Left. Having said that, it exists.
If you want to think of it in unconventional terms, its existence fulfils a political market need – otherwise, an ideology that has had the very foundations upon which its ideas were based ripped from the ground and destroyed wouldn’t still exist. While it fulfils this need, therefore, it may never become something you support – but its essential character still matters.
Imagine, for a moment, that the Left retained some of its views and predispositions, but removed the gloating support of evil and hate that now sit at its core. If that was replaced with a commitment to enlightenment values as a key starting point. It would still call itself the Left, and it would still differ with many of us here. Many of my arguments with it would not go away, and we would continue to have them – but the most morally damaging issue, its transformation into fascism, would go away and that would matter.
Indeed, the result would be so different from its current incarnation that one could consider it destroyed.
I’ll add that it’s one thing to want the vicious modern Left ‘destroyed,’ another thing to think through what that really means and what’s necessary to get there in practical terms. \or what the signposts along the way and preconditions might look like.
its existence fulfils a political market need
Replace political with religious and I will agree with you. It’s appeal is Christianity without God, Heavan on earth, not in the after-life.
Imagine, for a moment, that the Left retained some of its views and predispositions, but removed the gloating support of evil and hate that now sit at its core.
I can’t imagine this. Hatred is too much of it’s appeal. Look at Robespierre, Marx, Lenin, Che, the Nazis, etc. Now some such as Stalin and Mao I think were merely pathological personalities, but on the whole I have always been struck by the role hatred of the devil, in whatever human avatar he enjoyed at the time, played in the life of the leftists I knew.
If that was replaced with a commitment to enlightenment values as a key starting point. It would still call itself the Left, and it would still differ with many of us here.
Then it wouldn’t be the left. The search for social justice is incompatible with the other enlightenment ideals in my view. I think it needs to be replaced with the more practical goal of equality before the law and individual rights, such as the right to property and security within one’s home. But once the ideal of social justice is given up and enlightenment ideals promoted then the left ceases to exist as the left. What it becomes already has a name for its adherants, they are called neocons.
#17,
Joe, I think the groping you see on the left for a new coalition is a sign that the market is shifting. The current coalition is breaking up.
Re-read my socialism is dead piece. My timing expectations were off (a Kerry defeat was not enough to put the pieces in motion) however, the direction of the shift that I saw still holds.
The war is just about off the table as a political force, because the Americans of today are too decent to do what we did to the Vietnamese. We do have that recent history as a guide.
That leaves economics. Even Halliday sees a valued place for capitalism, and without admiting it, sees socialism as parasitic on capitalist wealth generation.
The fleet is dumping its garbage and breaking up.
Let me state my position more clearly.
There will be two parties. A libertarian party with a transnational anti-fascist/imperialist view, and a party for conservatives of an aproximately religious bent.
The main difference between the two parties will be on civil liberties grounds (government regulation of the moral order). Economics and the international spread of property rights and general liberty will be common to both parties. Only tactics for achieving results in those areas will differ greatly.
Socialism will never die for the same reason that a completely socialized system will never work: human nature. It is, alas, not perfectible.
There will always be people willing to ignore the track record to achieve high-minded goals. And there will always be other people who are eager to get something they haven’t worked for.
As Elbert Hubbard (not the same as L. Ron) responded when asked if he were a socialist “When 51% of the people want to give rather than get, I’ll be a socialist”. And as H. L. Mencken (I believe) wrote: “When party A wants to tax party B to give to party C, smell a rat.”.
AL,
Here’s the problem in a nutshell, as I see it. Same problem with KOS and his rediscovery of “democratic libertarianism.”
When you talk about individual rights, that applies in both positive and negative. Rights to have X. Rights to not suffer Y. Put in other terms, framing the debate over Gyges’ ring, “freedom from” and “freedom for.”
I have never seen one person on the left who truly appreciates the vast differences between the two, and what the utilitarianism that results in focusing on “freedom for” means in terms of collective utility trampling on individual rights. So long as the left fails to comprehend this difference, reforms on that side are fundamentally doomed to failure.
Guys, I’m not shocked to note that the audience here trends more right-libertarian than social-democratic, and these are not unfamiliar arguments.
I’ll leave you with one simple question (actually a nested set of them), and maybe we’ll make it into a post:
What’s property?
Who says?
How do we get to those definitions?
Because if the role of government is to define and defend property, then the art lies of course in the definition of it.
A.L.
Property is anything relatively scarce that assists present and future life support.
Primitively it might be land, domestic animals , and tools.
In more advanced places it might be something as esoteric as intellectual property.
The primitve rules are almost universal. So we can say those evolve out of natural law. The more advanced form of property are at this time (since experience with them is limited) established by law rather than common law.
You might wish to look at what DeSoto has to say about the importance of tradeable property rights. He claims (drawing on historical experience) that such tradeable property rights are a condition of society wide wealth generation. He believes that the problem is not property , but the fact that only those with power and influence had access to the property system.
http://powerandcontrol.bl*gspot.com/2004/11/property.html
It general DeSoto is of the opinion that the job of government is not the creation of property rights, but their codification. He is a natural law kind of guy. Me too.
A.L.,
If you are one of thoe “property is theft” kind of guys that would make socialist and communist governments the biggest thieves of all.
Property is instinctive. Any parent knows this. Children barely old enough to talk can assert quite clearly that “this is MINE.” Sometime later they’ll grudgingly admit that something might be yours.
Any social system which tries to tell a three-year-old that her doll doesn’t belong to her is a) insane, and b) doomed.
In the systems DeSoto looked at property was defined by general agreement.
In fact property rights are a very old system. Exemplified by the Egytian system, but clearly predating it.
Such systems are mentioned in the Bible (do not move property boundary markers).
Geometry came into being because of property. Angles and distances.
What’s property?
Who says?
How do we get to those definitions?
I think this is a rather trivial question. My house, for instance, is registered in my name. The mortgage company holds a lien against it so if I default, then the property passes to them, etc, etc. What I am saying is that property is determined by tradition and law, although sometimes acquired by war, as is also traditional.
So, I expect you think this side steps the question, and you are right. But the question is only significant if you are looking for an apriori definition and there ain’t no such thing. The stars are of no use here. Now I don’t believe in god, but as a god fearing physicist I naturally despise philosophers and all their worthless works. This too is traditional and avoids many problems that vex the less pragmatic.
Priceless:
“Now I don’t believe in god, but as a god fearing physicist I naturally despise philosophers and all their worthless works.”
As an engineer (electronic hardware) I totally concur.
Even birds kow about property. Surprising that some men don’t.
Note to physicists:
All science is based on philosophy.
Perhaps the problem some analytical folks have with philosophy is that it is meta-science, or perhaps a better term is “pre-science”. Philosophy describes and spawns the “hard” sciences. It does seem awful fuzzy and self-contradictory.
Get used to it. This is a political discussion, and people are non-rational. Therefore the discussion must be philosophical in nature. It’s not like you can “prove” that some system of property is correct and another is incorrect. You can, however, reason philosophically to reach an answer that works. Natural Law comes to mind right off the bat, but there are other methods.
“Now I don’t believe in god, but as a god fearing physicist I naturally despise philosophers and all their worthless works. This too is traditional and avoids many problems that vex the less pragmatic.”
I sympathize with the sentiment, but this is going too far. Physicists especially tend to have a certain strand of philosopher in them. Take symmetry as an example. While symmetry can be defined in purely geometrical terms, there is undoubtedly a philosophical connection that is hard to deny. How often do scientists instinctively gravitate towards a solution owing to its ‘beauty’? Now of course no one will try to prove a theory must be correct because it is so beautiful (ok, string theorists may be an exception), but it certainly does inspire scientists to explore one path before another.
As someone who knows more than a little about property law (real and intellectual) I’m amused to see the claim that it has deep roots in ‘natural law’. The concept of property, yes.
But the devil is, as always, in the details.
But where does it say how long Disney gets to keep Mickey Mouse? Why the changes over the history of IP law? Where does it say that ‘open and npotorious use’ is necessary to create an easement by adverse posession?
The fact of property law is a social construct that evolves over time. Older daughters didn’t get to inherit if they had a younger brother. Corporations didn’t exist, and so couldn’t own property.
I’d say those changes are all for the good, and they are changes that are driven by changes in the social conception of what property is, who can own it, and what it means to own it.
To suggest that the ‘laws of property’ are as immutable as the laws of physics, and are discovered rather than created is pretty absurd.
Over to you folks…
A.L.
You are correct, A.L., that “property” is a social construct rather than some immutable law of the universe.
However, we’ve learned that the lesser “laws” of economics tell us what happens as the relative strength of the individual concept of “property” drops below certain key values – specifically the tragedy of the commons.
Its also interesting to see how, historically, societies that did not have the ideological concept of “property” identical to ours ( e.g., feudal Europe ) nonetheless still managed to create ways to allow the alienage and monetarization of property.
I think the key question, AL, is whether or not property law is simply a socially evolving construct, unconnected with anything else, or if it is an evolving construct based on universal, or natural principles.
I believe the latter. Owning property implies the ability to use force to protect that property. The ownership of something implies that the thing in question can be clearly and unambiguously defined. Different forms of ownership must have clear definitions.
These principles do not change. We may continue to refine them. Or, as in the case of IP or women’s rights we may make changes based on what works and doesn’t. But when we make the changes based on expediency, what we are really doing is re-adjusting our view of the underlying principles.
This is a critical distinction, because it is the underlying principles that guide the application of the politics, imo.
But that’s all theorhetical. Partisan politics today has very little to do with true political theory, and much more to do with money chasing power. It’s always been that way to some degree, but in the past the politicians were a lot better educated about the underlying principles. Today it’s turned into amateur hour. That’s why the modern left has lost it’s foothold — they’ve preached there’s nothing to hold onto (there are no absolutes, only expediencies) for so long that now they all believe it. On the other side, the right is losing ground because some of them are so rigid that they are incapable of readjusting their view of these principles, because they’ve never been taught them in the first place.
The natural laws of property are:
1) Dominion. One can own property secreted upon oneself or by force of arms bar others from exercising dominion. But if the gold coin is shaken from one’s waistcoat or if one’s defenses are surmounted in a late night raid, then dominion passes to another.
The End.
LOL@PD
Sometimes I think quitting is easier than going forward too. The can of worms opened up here is not easily put all back together.
Unfortunately, “force of arms” also implies much more than real, immediate force. It also means the force of large numbers of people, the force of the vote, the force of threats, the force of law, etc.
Yes. If I have it and will fight to keep it, I can consider myself the owner. If others use real immediate force to take it, then I was proven wrong. Otherwise, might does make right. However, this basic construct MUST be continued to be defined in order for any kind of modern society to be formed. When in the modern world dominion is exercised by force of arms, the counter-argument is many times “but this is not the way we can have things in the modern world” The simpler version is not wrong, it is simply incomplete. The Devil, as AL put it, is in the details.
M. Simon did it, so I can too. For those interested in the history of the philosophy of property law my post, The Sound of Coins, may prove helpful. Short form: personal property from time immemorial, real property based on labor, intellectual property bootstrapped from real property. Unfortunately, theory of intellectual property is strained because it’s non-exclusive. Our Founding Fathers recognized this but also recognized that it’s a pragmatically useful construct and, consequently, gave the Congress the power to enact laws protecting intellectual property without recognizing a fundamental right to intellectual property.
Property seems to arise where ever there is human culture. The broad outlines follow a pattern. The individual rules vary according to circumstances and tradition.
DeSoto is really excellent on this. One of the examples he gives is the resolution of mining claims in the American West in the 1800s.
Another is the homesteading rules from the 1700s and 1800s in America. The progression is from common law to legislated law.
The fact that it starts as common law would tend to indicate that property is inherent in human nature.
#34,
Politics is not about power to the people.
It is beholden to money and acts as a safety valve to keep the masses from revolting.
Its job (other than protecting money) is to keep order, the better to do business.
If it ever gets any better than that – count yourself lucky.