Liberal Egalitarianism and the Origins and Implications of Modern Politics

As our founders expelled the British monarchy, the American identity was forged largely from the rejection of hereditary political and economic power. During the first 150 years of our republic, our nation’s leaders carefully managed the troubling interrelation of accumulated economic power and concentrated political power, all the while holding closely the values of economic liberty and free enterprise.

Alexis De Tocqueville observed of the American people in his 1835 Democracy in America, “they will put up with poverty, servitude, and barbary, but they will not endure aristocracy.” As De Tocqueville predicted, and as many historians have argued, the Civil War was perhaps less a war waged against slavery than it was a reaction to the growing plantation aristocracy in the South.

Then, as the tide of industrialization swept across the Atlantic and into bays, rivers, and backstreams of neophytic North America, and as the yeoman farmers were replaced by factory workers, the excesses of the Gilded Age called for new mechanisms to protect the economic and political system.

When we look upon the state of our politics today, the nub of dissent—the point of defection between liberal" and "conservative," whatever the fuck these definitions have been bastardized to connote—seems to revolve around the split in the Liberal tradition that occurred at around this time. In other words, we can fairly accurately trace the origin of modern American politics at this nexus of two competing American values—old free market libertarianism and new liberal egalitarianism.

But is one of these philosophies more "true" than the other? Being spawned from the Enlightenment we Americans are inherently seekers of absolute "truths"—(a foolish project indeed, but more on that another time)—and we become uncomfortable when we cannot settle on one. To avoid these insecurities, we base our legal system on the idea of precedent and stare decisis, effectively raising Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton, Jay and Adams to demigod status, all of whose words we take as divine revelations of truth.

I will save my thoughts on such asininity for another time, because we are here dealing with what is publicly perceived and normatively understood, not necessarily with what is actually the case.

That said, given this notion that the essence of the founding myth ought to be the essence of American policy, I will here make a brief argument that liberal egalitarianism, not free-market libertarianism, is the best embodiment our founding viritues. In another post at another time, I will genealogically demonstrate how we can arrive at this same conclusion using proper descriptive assumptions.

In determining which definition is best suited to the American value system, it seems we must recall the inspiration for our founders—the doctrine of John Locke. In his Second Treatise on Government, Locke validates the possession of private property by the work one does to acquire it:

“The labour of [man’s] body…is properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the state that nature hath provided…he hath mixed his labour with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property…For this labour being the unquestionable property of the labourer, no man but he can have a right to what that is once joined to.” (Second Treatise, XLV)

At first glance, it may seem that Locke is making a similar argument to the one that Milton Friedman and other libertarians make: that a man’s property, earned by his talents and abilities, is absolutely his and no one else’s. But to understand the essence of Locke’s argument—and the foundation for American property values—we must recall the context in which he writes.

When Locke wrote in early 17th century England, the nascent post-feudal economy effectively relegated non-aristocrats into two categories: peasant serfs and tradesmen. While the peasant tilled soil for his local lord without sufficient compensation for his labor, the tradesman was forced to eek out existence often after years of unpaid apprenticeships. Furthermore, neither of these men was permitted to own land.

By basing his justification for private property on labor alone, Locke sought to redress these unequal, unjust and arbitrary circumstances of being born outside of the landed aristocracy. As is the case, the essence of Locke’s property rights—and that of our founding—is most consistent with the egalitarian tradition.

However, Locke did not foresee the rapid kind of industrialization that revolutionized socio-economics in the 18th and 19th centuries. More specifically, Locke did not foresee the vast diversification of jobs and the new types of skill sets (machine operating, telegraph typing, etc.) that, for all intents and purposes, “randomly” became marketable in an industrial economy.

Ironically, in such an advanced economy where one was rewarded in proportion to their talents, the importance of one’s natural endowments and circumstances of birth were even more important than they were in the feudal state. Simply put, Lockean property rights were no longer a sufficient remedy to the problem.

John Rawls, a champion of liberal egalitarianism, recognized this in the 20th century and sought to revise society, just as Locke did some 335 years before, to account for the randomness of birth in an industrial (and post-industrial) society.

Rawls argues that men do not “deserve” the talents, positions, statuses and wealth into which they are born and that “social fortune,” such as the sudden market for a certain skill or asset, is equally arbitrary and undeserved. As such material interests are distributed randomly (men certainly cannot choose the position into which they are born), why should society reward the best-advantaged man and punish the least-advantaged on such an arbitrary basis? Rawls writes,

“Surely a person’s moral worth does not vary according to how many offer similar skills, or happen to want what he can produce. No one supposes that when someone’s abilities are less in demand or have deteriorated…his moral deservingness undergoes a similar shift.” (Rawls, 310)

Clearly, Rawls’ response is that it should not. With this in mind, it seems that Rawls' liberal egalitarianism best represents the essence of Locke, and thus the essence of America’s founding virtues.

From this view, it seems logical that the truth seeking, 1776 worshiping American ought to make the same conclusion and support such egalitarian policies as the estate tax, universal healthcare, and other government welfare programs.

Yet these very people who are most desperate for such objective truths are in fact the least likely to support such policies. Why the head-to-wall banging hypocrisy?

Well, a substantial criticism of Rawlsian justice—especially by free-marketers and other Friedmaniac types—is that it seems to eliminate individual choice altogether. For whatever reason, individualism—the idea that the "individual" precedes a "society" that is merely a construct of mutually contracting individuals—has evolved over time to become a dominant part of the Western psyche.

There is really no reason for this. Its growth is merely a product of socio-economic and political coincidences that, over time beginning with the Renaissance, led to its increased popularity, a subject which merits a discussion all its own. Nevertheless, individualism and individual choice is a part of our founding myth.

Yet, what I believe is misunderstood, is that at the core of Rawls’ justice is not only such a concern for choice, but the utter lack of choice in determining the initial constraints on who a man is to become, and what type of life he will lead—perhaps the most important decision a man can never make.

Understood as such, we ought to consider Rawlsian justice not as a restricting, confiscatory force, but as one that liberates, and ultimately unshackles man from the chains of his birth.

Indeed, liberal egalitarianism is not as rabidly individualistic as, say, Friedman's inviolable individual, but there still remains a concern for the individual as a contributing member to the social co-operative. Still, I think it is fair to say that this is the sort of social vision that Madison, Hamilton, Jefferson and Jay had in mind when they founded our nation. Likewise, if these men and the decisions they made almost 250 years ago are to be considered the moral justification for our policy, then I believe the liberal egalitarian vision is the one which best corresponds to these ideals.

That said, while I advocate the liberal egalitarian project, I have a hard time justifying my support for liberal egalitarianism in these terms. I prefer to look at liberal egalitarianism as the moral solution to Foucauldian post-structural nihilism.

But my fingers hurt and I'm hungry, so you'll just have to wait for that argument.

Lakers for the win, two down fourteen to go.

Why the hell do we blog?

As is somewhat customary to the tragedy that is the blogosphere, my first post in this forum shall entail an unsolicited self-absorbed discussion. Big surprise, right?

In being drawn to this space and having already spent at least 45 minutes playing around with the interface, I cannot help but wonder why the hell I am here, or for that matter, why anyone else is either.

Perhaps it is indicative of the hyper-individualism that plagues the West into thinking that, as persons, we are somehow obligated to verbally defecate on the internet. Perhaps it is because we are disturbingly aroused by seeing our names in print. Perhaps, as prisoners to McWorld, we are just starved for some kind of real intellectual discourse. Or, maybe, its a confluence of all of the above.

In any event, here I am, there you are, and here we go.

The purpose of this blog is to explore the ideas that will be a part of the discourse that will shape the world we leave behind after we are all dead and rotting underground. I will do my best to relate these ideas to the happenings in the world around us, while being sure to include as many irrelevant personal digressions and introspections as possible. (Such as the fact that tonight the LA Lakers play the Denver Nuggets at the Staples Center in the second game of a first round playoff match-up. Kobe for MVP, Lakers for the win...Updates later.)

It is my hope that this page might contribute to the marketplace of ideas that has been so badly detached from the realm of the common man. If this page accomplishes anything, I would hope that it excites someone about these ideas in the way that they excite me. If not, then at least no one can hold me accountable for the inflammatory drivel I am liable to publish.