Labour’s betrayal of society

Published 24 September 2009

The dominant legacy of the left is state authoritarianism and private libertarianism

Some electoral defeats are merely episodic; others are epochal. The defeat of New Labour in the spring of next year will be both. The coming rout is a function of natural intellectual exhaustion and unprecedented external revulsion. The diagnoses of the party's condition are manifold. The most sanguine speak of a nervous breakdown, with dysfunction and incompetence stemming from inertia, and paranoia at the very top. More extreme theorists locate the present disaster in longer-term betrayals - they speak of a historic and fatal pact with capitalism, of an acceptance of Thatcherism and a consequent and persistent failure to address the core issues and needs of the labour movement.

Neither position truly grasps the crisis: the former suggests that a change in prime minister will be enough to deliver renewal; the latter that a back-to-basics strategy will secure the core vote and also, inexplicably, deliver mass support. If these views constitute the opposite poles, and therefore range, of contemporary left analysis, then many of the opinions in between offer little comfort or succour, either. In short, the Labour Party does not know why it is failing, and so has no idea what to do to arrest the decline or where to turn to avoid the disaster.

In truth, the source of Labour's difficulties goes back much further, and is far deeper and more problematic than is commonly supposed. Put simply, the Labour Party is being rejected by society because it has repudiated and vilified the very structure and basis of society itself. At first sight, this sounds a ridiculous claim; after all, isn't socialism about society? Isn't the essence of the left all about creating collective structures so that individuals, regardless of their circumstances, can succeed and prosper?

Well, no - because the post-1945 British left can think of nothing but collectivism, and the post-1968 "new left" only of individualism. Neither left position seems able to think coherently about society. The statist left thinks of society as a collective uniformity underpinned by universal provision, while the '68-ers think that society is the realm where each unconstrained individual or group pursues subjective interests of its own, untroubled by any objective concern, value or need. So, for the different strands of the left, we are either all the same or we are all alone. By contrast, a proper society is relational; individuality and community emerge together in a group identity that creates both communal and individual identity. A proper society is the kind that reaches beyond itself to recognise the claims and needs of others. Crucially, a society is itself a group identity of all the diversity it includes. A society moves beyond sectional and self-interest when a common good binds all difference into a shared identity.

But the dominant legacy of the left is not this commonwealth of shared interests and hierarchical association: it is what is most destructive of society, state authoritarianism and private libertarianism. It is a condition and a philosophy most elegantly and perfectly attained by New Labour and all its acolytes and advocates.

How can this be? Why and how is the political philosophy that is most evidently social, and claims all righteousness and power as a result in fact so asocial and unilateral? The answer is that, for the most part, socialism is founded on liberalism and liberalism is founded on a hatred of society. Modern liberalism begins with Rousseau and Rousseau begins with the idea that our emergence into society constitutes our original imprisonment: "Man is born free but he is everywhere in chains." Society so conceived is fundamentally sinister because it compels man to inauthenticity. As such, the task of an individual in a society is to construe a settlement that protects individual will and insulates its subjective desires from the corrupting influence of others. Society for a liberal is valid only if it is composed of others exactly like himself. Rousseau invents the "general will" through which the individual, in obeying others, is obeying only himself because all have become the same.

But this autonomy can be protected only if others do not violate its bounds; and this is a role that can be played by the state only. The state then becomes the great policer and equaliser of humanity, and through the general will it must reconcile each individual with every other. As such, the state must strip society and people of all differential ties, beliefs and values in order to ensure equality and fairness; naked and denuded we now stand equal and alone before the state as the ultimate guarantor of our freedom.

Thus does modern liberalism underwrite all the great totalitarianisms of our age, from the terror of revolutionary France to the Cultural Revolution of Mao in China.

A rampant individualism demands a community exactly like itself. This repressive lineage passes directly into the left through Marx, and after Marx the left became both statist and individualist - a disastrous dialectic that has progressively and aggressively erased culture, custom, difference and ultimately society itself. "Socialism" so conceived is indeed the enemy of society; it despises the world as it is and seeks instead to eradicate differential values and tradition, in the mistaken belief that we must all be the same if we are to be free.

The Labour Party, if it is to recover from inevitable defeat, must restore its earlier traditions and once more become communal and civic, relational and intermediate. It is only when we embrace the common good that we can escape the leftist oscillation between collective oppression and autonomous self-interest that has robbed Britain of so much of its binding culture and moral framework.

Phillip Blond is a philosopher and director of the think tank ResPublica

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9 comments from readers

terence patrick hewett
24 September 2009 at 10:57

Phillip Blond's assertion that the Labour Party is being rejected by society because it has "repudiated and vilified the very structure and basis of society itself," is certainly true. Western civilisation is based upon the set of absolute moral values given to it by Christianity; buttressed by Roman Law it became the West’s great reforming force and the basis and structure of society itself.

The words "fairness," "equality" and "progressive," all words much loved by politicians, become subjective and meaningless, when not measured against these absolutes. One is tempted to invoke John Milton's argument in his epic poem Paradise Lost; that Satan, an heroic but flawed figure, is brought down by Pride. Tortured by the knowledge of is reliance upon his Creator, he argues that he should have equal rights to God and that Heaven is an unfair Monarchy. Satan is cast as a classical hero but because of his arrogance and delusion ends as a dust eating serpent unable to control even his own body. The devils logic, “The mind is its own place, and in itself, can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven." is a world where everything changes and nothing is absolute. Paradise Lost is not an idle analogy. When Labour abandoned its Christian roots, it sublimated God to Self and so ceased to resemble a still mostly

Theist people, and in the process abandoned the bedrock of European culture.

Ireland never took this path and legislated to include the value of the unborn child. The result is they are a nation of young people and we are a nation of old people, our future disposed of as medical waste; a socially corrupting human sacrifice, offered up on the altar of selfishness and hedonism and justified by the self-delusional concepts of equality and self-fulfilment.

taghioff.info
25 September 2009 at 05:51

Why do British philosophers always talk as if the UK were the universe?

The liberalism founded on negative liberty is very much a feature of Anglo-Saxon liberal democracies, such as the UK and US. It is not necessarily typical of the rest of the world. The points that Phil makes about Rousseau and Individualism are interesting, and the debates about emerging from collectivism vs individualism towards ideas of "complex agency" were raised by RG Collingwood 50 years ago, but are still interesting politically.

But the dominance of "negative liberty" in international debates is very much to do with US Hegemony and attempts to avoid any substantive and binding comittments to the poor both domestically and internationally.

What the left has done in the UK is Capitulated to that framework. It is not an essence that all left-wing politics carries within itself, that is bunkum, and philosophically untenable. Remember Phillip it is man, not gheist, that makes history.

There are models of positive liberty out there, of a supportive state that underpins the flowering of human talent, thus making a positive interpretation of socialism possible. Scandinavia does it to an extent, Cuba attempts it, Southern India and Sri Lanka have achieved it to some extent.

UK political philosophy really needs to be more grounded in the lived lives of material history, and more grounded in world affairs. To make universal claims about the left centered on a reified notion of negative liberty is woeful.

Luddite.
25 September 2009 at 15:42

The truth is Labour will never form another government in England again the left can talk to itself all it wants no one else is listening...........

john problem
25 September 2009 at 18:26

'....robbed Britain of its binding culture and moral framework.' Quite. The first big question is - when things get to be so bad, can they ever be re-made? The second big question is - why don't we have an agency that can punish politicians for incompetence and serious damage? We don't have democracy any more. Well, OK. a semblance. Every five years. Big deal. Our ghastly leader is still there for another nine months unless they Brutus him. And in the meantime he says he has 'a job to do.' Who is his employer and what is his job spec? The leaders of the RINKZ Group think he's a marvellous world statesman. Beats me.

Alasdair Maclagan
25 September 2009 at 20:20

taghioff.info is surely missing Blond's crucial points. First of all, he IS talking about the recent British left. Secondly, the continental versions of 'positive liberty' deriving from Rousseau are really versions of negative liberty after all, as Blond implies. Here the State enacts a general will but this general will is for the autonomous liberty of each individual.So even if the state is 'positively' trying to ensure equal opportunites and non-interference by some with the liberties of others, its goal is still the 'negative' increase of freedom of choice. Moreover, the frredom of the state as such has tended to be expressed as the 'negative' liberty of the nation state from outside interference and its freedom to extend its own bounds and choose its own role in the world. By contrast, a true, 'strong' version of positive liberty lies in the antique, not the modern Republican tradition. Here real freedom lies in the choice of virtue, political participation and the life of contemplative wisdom. The state then exists to promote this true freedom and thereby the genuine flourishing of its citizens. However, this promotion cannot be done by central bureacratic control. It can only be achieved 'socially' through the cultivation of habits of excellence in community life and the production of goods. The Christian invention of the Church as an extra-legal community beyond the state vastly increased this sense of the priority of 'society'. As Blond suggests, real freedom for the individual depends upon cooperation with others in networks of interpersonal relationships. But the Rousseausist caricature of antique positive liberty destroys tradtioned communities as preventing the pure freedom of the individual as supposedly something 'uninfluenced'. Scandinavia in fact proves Blond's point here. Its peacable equality depends on conservative tradition and shared values; its constitutionalism, like Britain's, has deep medieval roots owing little to France or the US.

Bruce Smith
25 September 2009 at 21:23

Unilateralism, Libertarianism and libertinism to my mind go even further back than , William of Ockham’s, John Locke’s, the Founding Father’s and Karl Marx’s Liberalism to when men raided other tribes for women and the development of farming meant you were reluctant to share your crops with anybody else and when money came along your wealth. Like Phillip though, I believe it’s the ever-increasing narrow ownership and control that is largely responsible for the problems we are experiencing in society. Consequently, the solution has to lie in reversing the current forms of ownership and control whilst retaining the responsibilities as well as the benefits.

upbeatskeptic
26 September 2009 at 10:59

This is certainly interesting - I particularly like the suggestion that the average British voter rejects both statism and unfettered individualism, and is therefore both more to the right (on liberty) and more to the left (on society, or rather, on ‘community’) than NewLabour.

I do wonder though, in the account of the homogenising tendencies of modern liberalism, where enforced differentiation fits in. That is, the political classes have often seemed to champion a slew of special interest ‘rights’, often to the discrimination of the mainstream. The most obvious example – though certainly not the only one - would be the now discredited (though nonetheless still powerful) ideas and prejudices of multiculturalism. Whereas I would put this down to a peculiar post-colonial angst on behalf of the ruling classes, I nonetheless think it would be significant enough to include in any account of the left’s bizarre attack on British society.

AlfredMarshall
26 September 2009 at 12:26

Enlightenment thinking was supported by the rise of the global economy and the start of industrialisation. The consequent growth in tangible and portable property production demanded a system that facilitated trade and established an individual’s control over moveable, tangible items. The previous outlook, which was shaped by the dominance of the subjective and immaterial (ie religion and feudal relationships) was rejected.

The new economics of globalism and manufacturing supported the liberal idea of society as an association of rational individuals governed by codified legal systems that enshrined personal private property. But once property rights were systematically institutionalised, enlightenment thinking raised questions about other sorts of rights, many of them irreconcilable. Which takes us to where we are now.

The rise of services is demolishing the infrastructure supporting the enlightenment conception of society. More than 80 per cent of UK workers produce services, intangibles that only exist in our minds. This not only makes property claims unenforceable (how can you own something you can’t see or touch?), it invalidates a philosophical outlook based on rational individualism.

The rise of intangible production requires a new system that separately deals with the objective, the focus of enlightenment thinking, as well as the intangible, the supreme factor in the UK economy today. The objective, mainly tangibles, can continue to be handled through liberal-era arrangements. But the intangible component of production is beyond rational management, either by the state or business. Only an individual’s subjectivity working through unmediated human interaction within intuitively-defined communities can make sense of the intangible factors which now drive advanced economies.

A new vision is required where the community is seen the defining organisation and obligations, freely accepted and willingly discharged, become the engine of human progress.

taghioff.info
05 October 2009 at 15:46

taghioff.info is surely missing Blond's crucial points.

>>> Am I now? Do elucidate, please...

First of all, he IS talking about the recent British left.

>>> Except when he isn't

"and the post-1968 "new left" only of individualism"

The New Left is a broader phenomenon than the confines of the UK. It extends to a turn in social movements across the world.

To say, in such a blanket way, that the New Left is the main driver of individualism is a sneaky way of pretending that the right, and Neo-liberal reform, is not the main source of that.

Blonde is saying it is ideas, ghiest, ideology which has caused the lamentable fragmentation of society, totally ignoring the economic praxis that the Conservatives introduced to the UK under Thatcher, and which is still pushed like methamphetamine on countries too weak and indebted to resist by those lovely folks at the World Bank and the IMF.

This gaping, yawning, elephantine omission does not seem like intellectual laziness, it seems far more like dishonesty for political expedience.

>>>

Secondly, the continental versions of 'positive liberty' deriving from Rousseau are really versions of negative liberty after all, as Blond implies.

>>>Ooh there goes Gheist again. So everything they do on "The Continent" (of course we mean Europe, where else counts?) is determined by that whiley Coyote Rousseau is it?

Doh, rationalist fallacy 101.

Come on, there are variations in state - populace relations across the space and time of Europe that make such a statement more than just slightly ridiculous. Or is the ghost of liberty at large in the world of men?

>>>

Scandinavia in fact proves Blond's point here. Its peacable equality depends on conservative tradition and shared values; its constitutionalism, like Britain's, has deep medieval roots owing little to France or the US.

>>> Or is it something to do with the strong union movement, excellent public services and highest tax rate in the world?

No - "values" rofl