Essay Instructions: Most of the ideologies that we have looked at this week embrace some idea of equality, but equality does not mean the same thing to all of them. Choose two ideologies and
discuss what equality means to each(Note: I take a more liberal stance). Below is the the reading:
Everyone who engages in political activity does so according to some political ideology, whether they are aware of it or not. An ideology contains within it three components:
· a worldview that describes and (either implicitly or explicitly) criticizes the world as it is;
· a vision of an ideal world; and
· a plan of action for achieving this ideal vision
Ideologies may be subject to dispute – in whole or in part – even by those friendly to the particular ideological tradition. These ideologies are living traditions and are, because of these disputes, continually evolving.
Liberalism
We begin our consideration of ideologies with liberalism. (This should not be confused with “liberal” or “conservative” positions in American politics for reasons that will become clear.) Heywood suggests that liberalism is in fact a meta-ideology. We’ll see that the other ideologies we discuss either adopt or respond to some of the key values and assumptions of this ideology. We’ll also see that this ideology encompasses most of the political debate within the United States. American conservatives have traditionally adopted a position best described as anti-state liberalism. This view is also called neoliberalism. Those of you who hold conservative political values probably found Thomas Paine’s views of the state as a necessary evil (Heywood, p. 45) to be close to your own position. The composition of the American right has undergone something of a transformation with the rise of the religious right and the neoconservatives, but the traditional American right has been, like the American left, squarely within the liberal tradition. As we explore liberalism further, you will undoubtedly recognize some of these values and ideas from your own knowledge of American government.
Heywood identifies some key attributes of liberal political thought:
· Individualism – individuals are seen as more important than the group or, more specifically, the government. Society has value for liberals to the extent that it promotes individual well-being. If it fails to protect or benefit the individuals living within it, the political system loses its legitimacy.
· Freedom – individual freedom in, economic, political, and moral matters, is a priority within liberalism. Liberalism opposes unnecessary restrictions on freedom – they instead favor individuals’ possession of the greatest possible set of rights and liberties that is consistent with everyone having the same set of rights and liberties. Liberalism focuses on civil and political rights – also called “negative rights” – over economic and social rights.
· Reason – liberals believe in the capacity of human reason to resolve problems and contribute to progress.
· Equality – most political ideologies embrace some form of equality, but the question becomes: equality of what? For liberals, the answer is two-fold. First, liberalism endorses an equal share of civil and political rights for everyone. Second, they support equality of opportunity with respect to economics. There are two branches of thought on this point: laissez-faire liberalism and welfare liberalism. While the former conception focuses solely on negative rights (specifically equality of opportunity), the latter view favors some redistribution of wealth within society so that people may make use of their equal opportunity.
· Toleration – because individuals hold equal civil and political rights, liberals endorse toleration of different beliefs and practices. Are there limits to toleration? What about the toleration of views, such as racism, hostile to liberalism? These are contentious issues within the liberal tradition, and we can take them up on the discussion board.
· Consent – liberals invented the metaphor of the social contract to capture the idea that governmental authority properly depends on the consent of the citizens. In exchange for the government’s protection, individuals give up a portion of their liberty, which is unrestricted in the state of nature. If the government fails to fulfill its obligations to its citizens, then it has broken this contract. The selection from Locke in the Hazan reader is an early example of this social contract tradition.
· Constitutionalism – there are limits to governmental authority even when the government is performing its legitimate functions. These limitations on authority set liberalism apart from authoritarianism or totalitarianism, in which the government enjoys almost unlimited authority over its members.
Liberalism evolved as a response to absolutist monarchy. While the propositions that government should be subject to peoples’ consent and that individuals are entitled to rights such as free speech may now seem commonplace to us, they were controversial at the time that they evolved. Liberalism, and ensuing democratic revolutions (especially in France), led to rapid social change, which gave rise to conservative political ideologies.
Conservatism
Conservatism is so called because it seeks to conserve some aspect of the current order. Conservative thinkers seek change through gradual reform rather than sudden revolution, and preservation rather than upheaval. Heywood highlights key elements of the conservative tradition:
· Tradition – conservatives advocate respect for the continuity of authority, institutions, and customs. These elements of society are seen not only as politically significant, but also culturally important.
· Pragmatism – while liberalism embraces the capacity for human reason to solve problems, conservatives are skeptical about the potential of reason to improve the condition of humanity. Human reason is fallible and, even when we are well-intentioned, we can be wrong about the way to solve social problems. Instead of abstract reason, conservatives place their faith in experience, especially in the body of accumulated experience.
· Human imperfection – conservatives are skeptical about human nature, and seek to keep out worst impulses in check, with a strong state capable of maintaining law and order.
· Organicism – the social contract metaphor employed by liberalism sees society as the outcome of an agreement among individuals who retain their individuality. Instead, conservatives see society as a single, cohesive whole. Their model is of society as a single living organism that we cannot reduce to smaller parts.
· Hierarchy – although they see society as an organic whole, not everyone within this society is equal. Conservatism is, in this respect, an elitist ideology. The natural elite, in their view, should rule and the rest of society should follow. At the same time, the elite owe an obligation to those who are worse off than they are.
· Authority – conservatives see authority in society as top-down. Those who make up the natural elite take a leadership in society and the rest of society should defer to their leadership. Authority is inherited from previous generations in an unbreakable chain, as discussed in the Burke selection.
· Property – property plays an important social and political role in the conservative ideology.
Within conservative thought, we find several different strands of thought that embrace these elements to differing degrees. Alongside the anti-state liberalism already mentioned, we find what Heywood calls paternalistic conservatism, neo-conservatism, and the rise of the religious right.
The paternalistic version of conservatism is exemplified by Burke, from whom we have a selection in the Hazan reader. In this variant of conservative thought, society is characterized as organic – a living thing – that cannot thrive under conditions of individualism or social upheaval. This brand of conservative thought is most prominent in European conservative parties. Europe’s feudal past facilitates the view of social roles and responsibilities. Americans (and not just conservatives) feel discomfort with the idea of individuals’ life prospects being shaped by their social position. Individuals possess, in the paternalistic conservative view, a place within society. While the more privileged positions entail greater opportunities, they also obligate those who hold them to care for those less fortunate.
The anti-state liberal or neoliberal position represents the mainstream conservative position in the United States. These conservatives embrace the free market in a way that the paternalistic conservatives do not. They believe that the market and its participants can guide the economy more effectively than can the government. Because they fear the effects of a large state on the economy and individual freedoms, these conservatives favor as small a state as possible. This aspect of neoliberalism sometimes puts these conservatives into conflict with other, emerging strands of conservative thought.
Neoconservatives, for example, advocate the promotion of socially conservative, or “traditional,” values. Because of this commitment, neoconservatives (often abbreviated to “neocons”) oppose what they see as threats to cultural unity. These neoconservatives are skeptical about multiculturalism and multilateralism. In terms of their origins, many neocons are former welfare liberals who became disillusioned about the capacity of the government to achieve social goods.
The religious right shares many of these commitments, though they reach them through different reasoning. To the extent that neocons and the religious right favor legislation to enforce their values (for example, a ban on gay marriage), they encounter resistance from mainstream conservatives who object to such enlargement of state authority. These tensions came to the surface during the most recent GOP convention, particularly when Republicans were drafting their party platform.
Socialism
The United States has no major socialist party, which makes it exceptional among the Western polyarchies. Nevertheless, this ideology has been influential globally and the Marxist critique prompted the development of welfare liberalism. Like conservatism, socialism evolved in response to liberalism. Modern socialism emerged as a response to the industrial revolution. The economic inequalities and the working conditions in factories prompted the Marxist insight that these conditions were endemic to the unregulated free market. Elements of Marxism include:
· Historical materialism – this element of Marxist thought addresses the influence of the economic system on social and political life.
· Dialectical change – Marx incorporated into his theory Hegel’s dialectical model. In the simplest terms, this model means that any social system contains some element of its opposite, and this dynamic transforms it into something new. For example, the capitalist economic system, based on free market competition, contains economic forces that lead to the opposite result, consolidation.
· Alienation – unlike earlier economic systems, in which people maintained control over what they produced, in capitalist economic systems peoples become alienated from the products of their labor. Workers no longer feel an attachment to what they produce or their fellow laborers.
· Class struggle – private property, in particular the ownership of the means of production, creates a struggle between those who own property (bourgeoisie) and those who do not (proletariat).
· Surplus labor – the value that goods hold derives, in the Marxist view, from the labor required to make them. To crate the value of the goods they need to survive (to reproduce themselves, in Marx’s parlance), workers must perform a certain amount of labor. Let’s say this is 5 hours. If the workday is 10 hours, as it was when Marx wrote, then the 5 “surplus” hours enrich the owner of the means of production.
· Proletarian revolution – the workers, as a result of this exploitation, will develop a revolutionary class consciousness that will lead them to revolt.
· Communism – Marx saw the state as a tool of the bourgeoisie to suppress the working class. After the communist revolution, this function would no longer be required. With property held in common and the end of class conflict, the state would wither away.
In the early part of the twentieth century, the revolutionary variant of socialism was the most influential. Marx expected that the first communist revolution would occur in the West, where conditions for the working class were dire. Instead, Lenin led a revolution in Russia, which had not even industrialized, much less developed a proletariat with a revolutionary class consciousness. The conditions in Russia required some amendment to Marx’s theory. Lenin developed the idea of a vanguard party to lead the revolution in lieu of the proletariat. This vanguard party would wield power in a temporary dictatorship of the proletariat – a dictatorship that, in the Soviet Union, became permanent.
Since the collapse of the USSR, the more influential branch of Marxism has been the reformist social democracy. As Heywood notes, this socialism rejects revolution in favor of gradual reform. In addition to their differences over means, they also disagree in terms of their vision. Reformist social democracy does not insist on common ownership of all property, but instead seeks a balance between the free market and state management of the economy.
Heywood also outlines other ideological traditions: fascism, anarchism, feminism, environmentalism, and religious fundamentalism. The latter three have been to some degree embraced by the two major parties. In other countries, these ideologies form the basis of separate parties. When we get to the differences between electoral systems, some of the reasons for the narrowness of the American political system will become clear
