The Illiberal Legacy of Liberalism

Phillip Blond at Villanova University: Well worth the 90 minutes.

http://www.youtube.com/user/villanovauniversity#p/a/u/1/S2LWc5DIQrc

Mr. Blond notes that we are witnessing the simultaneous collapse of the Left and Right because, at base, they are the same thing. One proposes a libertarianism of sexual morality: all "liberty" is about choice, and all choices are equal. Those who try to impose any restrictions interfere with liberty.

The other proposes an economic libertarianism, where isolated individuals make autonomous choices guided by the invisible hand. Behind both of these is a bankrupt account of liberty. We end with a society founded on "rights," rather than goods. In our radical individualism, we abandon all shared notions of good. Each person's good is incommunicable, therefore there can be no community of goods, only radically isolated individuals bound together only by thin, contractual relations, and the state can have no other legitimate function than to enforce contracts. Hence, it is small wonder that we have abandoned the old and don't care for the young.

Liberalism (of the Left or Right) cannot deliver what it promises: Liberty. Instead, the polity of self-interested individuals becomes the war of all against all as each isolated individual seeks to maximize his private good at the expense of all others. And the state, instead of shrinking to the mere guarantor of contracts, becomes the only force capable of policing the incessant warfare, becomes the supreme arbiter if all relations. Indeed, since the notion of objective good is discarded, the good itself becomes an arbitrary quantity, and each seeks as much of this as he/she can get. The state becomes the means to achieve the "greatest good for the greatest number," but has itself no mechanism to determine what the good is. "Push-pin is as good as poetry," as Jeremy Bentham noted, and the community has no interest in encouraging the Bard more than the game, and no right to do so. Only the market, whether political (one man, one vote) or economic (one dollar, one vote) can distinguish the relative worth of each. The only "good" in these markets is equality of men with men (and women).

In response, Mr. Blond proposes "The Civic State." This state is based on three principles: re-moralizing the markets, re-localizing the economy, and recapitalizing the poor. It is a state of shared values and objective truths. It is not a static society, since man's knowledge of this truth is always approximate; we are always in the mode of discovery, and hence we are always journeying through history. Still, there is sufficient confidence in what we have learned to state "this is good" and "that is bad" and "this is worth more" and "that is worth less." It is a state that admits not only of private goods, but of the common good as well.

This poor summary does not do the subject justice (and what makes no sense should be blamed on me rather than Mr. Blond). (There is a somewhat longer summary here.) But I think it would be a good thing if we, as distributists, began a conversation on Phillip Blond's work. So if any of our esteemed contributors would like to comment, I encourage them to do so. And if any of our readers would like to submit an article that is too big for them combox, please send it directly to me.