I’m not the first to
spot that the world is a funny old place, nor that recent political
developments have created strange bedfellows.
Here’s a new example, prompted by this thread about the fundamental importance of
the “freedom to transact”, i.e. the freedom to use money. The point the thread
makes is that the effective exercise of various freedoms, e.g. to express one’s
views or practise one’s religion, will tend to require spending money. If
people refuse to take your money – or if the government stops you from being
able to use it – then your freedom is infringed. If your cards stop working and
your bank account is frozen, whether that’s because a private company doesn’t
like your politics or because a government diktat stops you, then you have less
freedom. Seems plausible, right?
But if that is right then surely it follows that, in normal circumstances,
people who have more money, and can therefore transact more, have more freedom,
and there’s something a bit odd about that.
Let’s go back a few years. The standard right-wing position was to be deeply
concerned about whether people in a society have freedom, by which they meant freedom
properly so-called, i.e., the freedom to associate as they want, say what they
want, make the most of their own lives etc etc. If that resulted in some people
becoming rich and other people becoming poor then tough, said the right-wing
people, so be it.
The left-wing
position, by contrast, was to be more concerned about the distribution of
resources in society. Left-wing people took the view that if remedying that
distribution meant infringing on people’s freedom to make profits or accumulate
wealth then, again, tough and so be it. And so the battle lines were drawn up.
The right-wing position in that debate was that money is nothing to do with
freedom. Money was understood to be a good thing, but just one of the many assets
with which you might try to persuade other free agents in a free society to do
things that you wanted them to do. They can refuse your money, just as they can
refuse any of your other attempts at persuasion (you could try using your charm
or good looks or family connections or ...), and no question of force or lack
of freedom would arise. More money means more options, just as being able to
run faster means that there are more places you can get to within a given time
period, but none of that is anything to do with coercion, none of that is to do
with people with guns putting you in prison or the kind of stuff that
affects freedom properly so-called, i.e. the stuff that really
matters in politics.
Another battleground
in the same war used the terminology of human rights. The Left tried to expand
the scope of human rights beyond the old-fashioned ones to do with freedom from
torture and arbitrary imprisonment, freedom of speech and so on to include newer
economic, social and cultural rights. These, the UN
tells us, “include the rights to adequate food, to adequate housing, to
education, to health, to social security, to take part in cultural life, to
water and sanitation, and to work.” The Right pushed back, saying
that these rights are nothing to do with freedom, that they are stretching the
concept of “human rights” beyond what it will bear: these kinds of “rights” are
just demands for the redistribution of assets and nothing to do with the
fundamental freedoms that human rights protect.
So that was the old debate: narrow freedom and traditional human rights on the
one hand, versus redistribution and expanded “rights” on the other. Nice and
clear.
One of the most
interesting contributions to that debate came when the socialist philosopher GA
Cohen once delivered a paper at All Souls arguing that lack of money really did
mean lack of freedom properly so-called, freedom in the sense that the Right would
have to accept. I’m not going to go into it now, but you'll get the idea if you think of banknotes as being like little State-endorsed vouchers that permit you to take potatoes from a shop, say, or ride on a train: if you don't have the little vouchers and you try to exercise your 'paper' freedom of movement to wander into the shop and out again with potatoes, or onto the inter-city train, then you will find yourself physically restrained and eventually jailed.
You can also get some flavour
of the idea from the thread that I linked to at the start. That thread was
prompted, I think, by the Canadian truck protests, i.e. by a right-wing concern
rather than a left-wing one, but the point holds good either way: if you don’t
have money (or the ability to use your money) then your freedom to go about
your life in the way you wish, including your freedom of
movement/expression/religion etc, is severely impaired. Do you really have freedom of movement if you can't afford to get on the train, or if the petrol station won't take your money and refuses you petrol? We might even decide to park
the debate about whether it is really ‘freedom’ that you don’t have if you have
no (usable) money in your wallet, but we can at least agree that you lack something valuable
to do with freedom, or something that gives value to freedom.
Let’s return to everyday life, where money can be used and bank accounts are
not frozen. Having the “freedom to transact” (or, if you prefer, having the
wherewithal to make your paper freedoms valuable and usable) will inevitably
entail having money. To be someone who values the “freedom to transact” as part
of a narrow definition of freedom will, I think, mean being someone who is at
least receptive to the idea that living a free life in a modern society
requires a certain amount of money. It will mean being someone who is at least
willing to entertain the notion of the redistribution of wealth or income, and therefore
willing to entertain the entire freedom-infringing state paraphernalia that
comes with such redistribution.
That’s quite a shift
in standard right-wing thought. But you’ve probably seen a lot of that kind of
thing recently. You’ll have noticed that the thinking Right (and Right-adjacent
thought) has become much less sympathetic to untrammelled capitalism over the last
few years. I think it’s fair to say that these kinds of consideration, namely
an awareness that the operation of private entities in a market economy can
have a profound impact on the exercise or value of freedom, are part of the
reason why.
But I wouldn’t want
to leave this discussion without reminding you of the kinds of argument that
caused the thinking Right to try to separate questions of how much money (or
other assets) individuals should have from questions about what the State
should be doing with its time and powers. To do that, I am going to take you to
Scott Alexander’s recent post about “Justice creep”, i.e. the way that apparently everything is about justice nowadays: “Helping
the poor becomes economic justice. If they’re minorities, then it’s racial
justice, itself a subspecies of social justice. Saving the environment becomes
environmental justice, except when it’s about climate change in which case it’s
climate justice. Caring about young people is actually about fighting for
intergenerational justice”, and so on.
Alexander followed
up his post expressing some concerns with this rhetorical development with a compilation of comments he had received. Inspired by one comment in particular,
Alexander says this:
“The argument for why poverty is a justice issue goes something
like this:
- Some people are suffering terribly
- It’s not their fault, and they’ve done nothing to “deserve to
suffer”
- Other people have much more than they need
- This has been brought about through the choices of individuals
and governments. Maybe nobody specifically says “I choose for Jeff Bezos to be
a billionaire and Somali orphans to starve to death.” But a lot of people keep
giving more money to Jeff Bezos and not helping Somali orphans. And governments
generally enforce (or at least refuse to intervene against) the economic system
that makes this keep happening. And voters keep re-electing the politicians who
allow this.
- Therefore, there is injustice.”
He then
takes the case of incels. “Not necessarily actually-existing incels”,
he hastens to add, “but some hypothetical best-case scenario for the
philosophy. Let’s say a guy with a birth defect that makes him horribly
deformed, nobody will date him, and this makes him depressed and suicidal.”
Think about that disfigured man, replace “poverty” in the argument above with “being
highly off-putting to the opposite sex” and, well, you can see how the argument
goes.
And that takes us
back to our starting point. You will recall that I said above that the
traditional right-wing view was that money was just one of many assets that a
person might have that can be used to get what he or she wants. As I said,
instead of using money, “you could try using your charm or good looks or
family connections or ...”: you may find one or more of those stand you in
better stead in your search for a mate than money does.
Or you could think
about it this way. Here are some good things in life: a happy lifelong romantic
relationship; a full panoply of old-fashioned freedoms/human rights to
associate and speak freely; and enough food to live on. What is your rationale
for saying that the State has to work hard to give you some of those good
things but can leave to it chance as to whether you get others?
You will recall
famous quotations of the likes of “The law, in its majestic equality,
forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and
to steal their bread” and “In England, justice is open to all—like the
Ritz Hotel”. These are the kinds of jibe which, as we saw above, the modern
Right is perhaps now willing to concede might have some force: perhaps a
certain freedom and wherewithal to contract are a necessary part of freedom.
But what about this: “In England, marriage is open to all—like the Ritz
Hotel”? Or “The law, in its majestic equality, permits socially able and
losers alike to ...”. You get the picture.
I’m sure you agree
that this is all crazy and that the distribution of sexual favours is nothing
to do with politics. But of course, Amia Srinivasan and many others would disagree: they’d say that it’s a central concern
of modern politics.
I think the fear of
this kind of craziness was a motivation behind the Right’s desire to draw a
firm line in the sand around a narrow definition of “freedom” and to object to
the expansion of the sphere of “human rights”. Let’s go back to the UN’s list
of expanded rights. This right to “take part in cultural life”: does that
mean going to concerts? Going to concerts on dates? And if we can always “take
part in cultural life” why we shouldn’t we also be entitled to “take
part in non-cultural social life”, in much the same way that freedom to
practise a religion means freedom to practise no religion?
All of which, I am
afraid, is to take us back to a conclusion rather similar to that I reached in
when discussing freedom of speech, namely that it is probably not possible to resolve these kinds
of issue solely by reference to principle. Judgment and sound instincts are required
instead. Sadly, however, many of the sound instincts that were built up over
time, buttressed by perhaps insufficiently thought-through justifications based
on liberalism, and deployed without much thought only a few years ago now seem outmoded.
It does not seem like a positive development to me, but it is at least very
interesting to watch.
