G’day. Webdiary has been discussing the death of Liberalism in the ‘Liberal’ Party for a while now, and the effect of this on the health of our democracy (see, for example, Why conservatives fear John Howard, Rekindling Liberalism: a beginning and Can liberalism fight back?). The need for Austalian citizens to set aside their political differences to fight for our democracy and to return liberalism to its central place in it is the theme of my book, “Not happy John!”.

 

Liberal Party elder and former ally of Howard John Valder first broke ranks with the PM when Valder wrote to Howard seeking answers on the fate of the Australian citizens detained in Guanatamo Bay and received a “non-reply” in response. He’s since become an anti-war and pro-refugee activist. After the publication of my book, Valder founded a Not Happy John! Campaign to bring together Bennelong voters from across the political spectrum to try to unseat the Prime Minister at the election.

Here is Valder’s manifesto, then a fantastic piece on the consequences of the death of the old right, “Rethinking Right and Left”, by Dr David McKnight of Sydney’s University of Technology. It was first published in the Australian Financial Review.

***

MANIFESTO OF JOHN VALDER CONVENOR OF THE �NOT HAPPY, JOHN � CAMPAIGN

A wide range of men and women from right across the political spectrum are coming together to oppose the re-election of Prime Minister John Howard in his own electorate of Bennelong.

The plan is to mount a major campaign under the banner of “Not Happy, John”, the title of Margo Kingston’s new and highly successful (if critical) book about John Howard.

A former Liberal Party President, John Valder, has agreed to head the “Not Happy, John” organising committee.

This committee has attracted the immediate and enthusiastic support of a great many individuals and refugee support groups.

We are now compiling a long list of names of prominent men and women from a wide range of activities who have already indicated their support for our “Not Happy, John” project. Their names will be made public at one of our planned campaign events after the election date is finally announced.

We are now attracting both the financial and volunteer help vitally necessary for success in any campaign.

The campaign is being developed in response to widespread and growing community concern with a variety of John Howard’s policies and attitudes.

In particular has been his role in the aggressive invasion of Iraq which, for all of 16 months now, has been inflicting constant violence and awful suffering on the Iraqi people.

Combined with the Iraq issue has been widespread dismay at Howard’s unquestioned acceptance of virtually every U.S. decision, opinion or assurance given by President George Bush, not just on Iraq but on issues like the the continuing rough and gross injustice imposed on the Guantanamo Bay detainees.

All this has caused damage to our international reputation, especially in Asia and Europe, and at home to our own sense of self-respect, in contrast to the situation in New Zealand.

Then there has been his long-held harsh attitude towards asylum seekers which continues to be a cause of so much anger.

In addition there have been many other less specific but nevertheless significant issues disturbing the community’s mood and prompting the formation of the ” Not Happy , John” campaign. They include:

* Taking the Liberal party too far to the right and thereby challenging its own basic, traditional democratic values.

* His assumption of a too dominant personal control of cabinet and the parliamentary Liberal party, thus both stifling internal party debate and silencing diversity of opinion.

* Strongly discouraging objective public service advice.

* Usurping some of the roles of the Governor General.

* Spending on government advertising for political purposes. * Condoning breaches of his own ministerial code of conduct.

* Allowing his own honesty and integrity to come into question.

Many now believe that these and other factors are producing a growing fear of what happens when too much power falls into the hands of any one leader. Even without another term in office, John Howard is already show9ing the first ominous signs of being ready to use his growing power to start threatening our fundamental freedoms – freedoms that every one of us, no matter where we’ve been born, have always been able to take absoutely for granted. Never before have they been under such threat.

The ” Not Happy, John!” campaign does not intend to advocate support for any particular candidate opposing John Howard.

Despite our joint opposition to Howard himself, many of us, myself included, wish to see a Liberal Government returned but with a swing back to a much fairer, honest, decent and less divisive party based on true Liberal principles.

Many others of us are expected to support Andrew Wilkie (Greens), Nicole Campbell (ALP), or an independent candidate.

However, the one object we have in common is TO BRING THE HOWARD ERA TO AN END.

August 9 update: Since publication, Valder has slightly amended the text of his manifesto, replacing the second last paragraph. The altered paragraph originally read: “Many others of us are expected to support Andrew Wilkie or Nicole Campbell, the ALP candidate, or other independents.”

***

Rethinking Right and Left

by Dr David McKnight

This article is based on ‘Rethinking Right and Left’ a book to be published next year by Allen & Unwin. Dr McKnight is a senior lecturer in the faculty of Humanities at the University of Technology, Sydney.

While the death of socialism was the headline news in the 1990s, the death of the Old Right is no less dramatic.

The ideological revolution of the Right which began in the 1980s has transformed the political agenda in Australia, the UK and elsewhere. But the price of this has been the destruction of the Old Right.

This revolution on the Right represented the triumph of the subordinate strand of fundamentalist liberalism over classical conservatism and old style ‘social liberalism’. Hence today more people are referring to economic globalisation as the expression of “neo-liberalism”. In parties of the Right both liberal and conservative strands were historically intertwined and mutually supportive. Today we are seeing a disentangling of this whose consequence is that it no longer makes sense to talk monolithically about ‘the Right’ or about ‘the conservatives’. Judith Brett’s Australian Liberals and the Moral Middle Class and Marian Sawer’s The Ethical State? document this disentanglement.

The political Right no longer exists, but nor does ‘the Left’, as if that meant some kind of unified world view. The defining idea of the Left – socialism – is now not even part of the vision of one part of the modern Left, the cultural left based largely in the middle class. We can no longer capture the meaning of politics by a spectrum of Right and Left where the Right is defined as conservative and the Left as socialist.

In their place are many competing political philosophies. This is a good thing because it raises the possibility of new alliances and of new ways of grappling with old social problems which persist and with new challenges like the global economy, terrorism, the environment crisis and biotechnology.

From conservatism to neo-liberalism

To carry through a revolution, even on the Right, requires vision and daring, risk-taking and radicalism. The last element, radicalism, proved to be the unexpected quality of the free market revolution.

Once the socialists and the Left were the radicals wanting rapid social change, but now the visionaries who want to overturn the established order are the neo-liberals. Setting in place market mechanisms in almost every aspect of life leads to a society being constantly transformed.

The more far sighted conservatives are beginning to see that free markets corrode old values and the social fabric, as well as economic monopolies. The culture of the 24/7 economy, lean and mean, is based on a shrunken moral universe where competitiveness, and self interest rule. It is a society dominated by commercial values and, increasingly, only commercial values. It is in conflict not only with the Left but with the philosophical conservatives, who base themselves on a moral order that increasingly clashes with the New Capitalism.

Classical conservatism is quite different from the systematic ideologies of Marxism or of liberalism. It is much more a range of attitudes and values. Conservative philosophers like Roger Scruton (inThe Meaning Of Conservatism) talk about a “conservative attitude” and “an attachment to values which cannot be understood with the abstract clarity of utopian theory”. The British philosopher Michael Oakeshott talks about a conservative “disposition”. This is because conservatism is a pre-Enlightenment philosophy which arose organically from traditional society.

Central to its attitudes are notions of authority both within the family and within the clan or tribe as well as obligations of kinship. It is an outlook borne of a society frequently at war. Loyalty to the group is at a premium and loyalty is repaid through group protection of members. Both at the social and familial level the power of males is central along with heterosexuality. Ideas based on these practices were loosely codified as a political philosophy in response to liberalism 300 years ago.

Conservatism explicitly value traditions, institutions and the wisdom of the past. It is skeptical of novelty, experiments and utopian plans. Promises of progress and reform, especially those based on rationalist schemes, are greeted warily. A classic example of this is the recent work of former Thatcherite Professor John Gray and his attacks on the rationalist utopia of the globalisers in hisFalse Dawn.

While systematic ideologies appeal to reason and logic, conservative ideas are often powerful because they appeals to deep emotions, instincts, intuition and passion in humans’ psyche. In the glory days when conservatism dominated liberalism within the Right, this emotional-moral appeal (rather than its literal “policies”) was one of the secrets of its success.

Given all of this, conservatism has two sides. Its ugliest side can be a virulent nationalism and hatred of foreigners. Its war-like roots predispose it to militarism and the rule of the physically strong. But this is not the whole story.

Love of the nation and group loyalty can mean a belief in a common good. This is a belief that because we share something, we all have obligations to each other. It can also mean that it is possible to speak of a legitimate public interest. This was the basis on which classic conservatism and the ‘social liberalism’ of British Liberal governments began to support public health care, age pensions as of right and public education as well as other public goods.

But this conservative acceptance of a common good has been trampled by free market liberalism and individualism of the modern Right. While conservatism was rooted in the nation, the neo-liberals are militant globalisers.

Conservative values are part of matrix which gives rise to an ethic of care and protection which is antagonistic to free market economics. This is what the ‘Third Way’ sociologist Anthony Giddens was getting at when he noted -What might be called a “philosophical conservatism” – a philosophy of protection, conservation and solidarity – acquires a new relevance for political radicalism today.’

Valuing the family or the clan can mean valuing the deepest possible emotional ties that humans can have, and those which can give us the deepest personal satisfaction: love, as well as friendship and companionship. But family values are being destroyed by the New Capitalism’s demand for longer working hours, its denigration of altruism and its inability to recognise the unpaid care given by family members.

Remarkably the alarm bells about the attack on family are being rung by a new trend within feminism, typified by Nancy Folbre, (The Invisible Heart: Economics and Family Values), Arlie Russell Hochschild, (The Commercialization of Intimate Life) and Ann Crittenden (The Price of Motherhood).

The significance of all of this is that the values of classical conservatism have been cut adrift from the neo-liberal Right. They are now looking for a home in the world of politics. The vast number of instinctive conservatives know there is something wrong with the New Capitalism. Some of their desires connect with some of the values of the Left and this fact holds great significance for the direction of social change in a globalized, post-socialist world.

Green ideas and conservatism

The rapid rise of the green movement is an example of this, because it appeals to traditional conservative values.

First, Green politics have a significant component which involves the conservation of natural and heritage values, and indeed its origins lie in what was originally called the conservation movement. It aims to protect the natural world (and the heritage of the built world) from predatory forces which see the existing world as a mere raw material. Concepts such as the sustainability of the biosphere are conservative concepts.

Second, unlike the Left, green politics are not based on class and their analyses are not reducible to class. The enemy is not capitalism but relentless expansion of an industrial system aimed at generating products to satisfy a consumerism which, past a certain point, substitutes for other meaning and value in the peoples’ lives. Rather than abolishing markets, it arguably makes more sense to increase the market price of timber, of coal, of oil, and of fresh water in order to lower their destruction or wasteful use.

Third, Green ideas and conservatism have intersections at the deeper philosophical level. Consider the words of one of the classic conservative thinkers, the British philosopher Michael Oakeshott. The general characteristics of conservatism, he said, “centre on a propensity to use and enjoy what is available rather than to wish for or look for something else; to delight in what is present rather than what was or what may be”. He adds: “To be conservative then is to prefer the familiar to the unknown, to prefer the tried to the untried, fact to mystery, the actual to the possible, the limited to the unbounded , the near to the distant, the sufficient to the superabundant, the convenient to the perfect, present laughter to utopian bliss.”

To prefer the “sufficient to the superabundant” could well be the motto of a society which rejects consumerism and which does not seek fulfilment through ever-increasing material goods.

In conservative thought tradition is important because it represent the refinement of wisdom of that past. As well as the traditions of humans, tradition presents itself to us through the existence of the ecology of the planet. The inter-dependence of living organisms which has evolved though millions of years is a tradition indeed! Allied with tradition is the conservative notion of stewardship on behalf of our ancestors and for our children’s children, which fits perfectly with green philosophy. Such conservative notions are central to indigenous and first nation peoples whose societies are extremely conservative.

Linked to attitudes toward tradition and stewardship is a skepticism towards “progress” which has shared roots in environmental and conservative outlooks. By contrast, Enlightenment-based theories of liberalism and socialism share a notion of unending progress based on the accumulation of material goods.

Finally, another important contribution from conservatism is its notion of the common good. This is recognizable in forms of nationalism or in the uniformity demanded by conservative moralists in matters of sex and private life. But another side simply recognises that we are social animals who have always lived in communities and that the community has a legitimate reason to demand that members obey certain rules.

The death of ‘socialism’

On the Left the crisis of ideas is no less dramatic. The ideas of socialism and Marxism dominated conflict and debate in the West for most of the last 100 years. In the last 10 years the intellectual framework of socialism has collapsed.

For many this is not news, nor even of interest. The undoubted flaws in the socialist and Marxist frameworks have been identified for many decades. Many of today’s intellectual and cultural Left actually have no investment in a concept of socialism which is in itself revealing of the changes underway in the meaning of the Left-Right concept of politics.

The pivotal moment for the death of modern socialism was the collapse of the Soviet Union and the liberatory revolution which swept it and Eastern Europe. These momentous events crystallised quite unrelated problems of socialist ideology which had begun with the rise of social movements in the 1960s and 70s whose analysis and vision was not based on class.

The latter was hardly recognised and the collapse of the Left at the same time as the collapse of the Berlin Wall appeared paradoxical. Almost no-one on the Left held any illusions about the Soviet model of “socialism”. Except perhaps one: that under a genuine reformer like Gorbachev it might be possible to destroy the party dictatorship and introduce democracy, elements of an economic market and political liberties.

The dream ended when it became clear that forms of democracy and freedom could not be combined with the continuation of an entirely state owned economy. It also became clear that an extensive form of market economy was needed.

Thus if socialism needs markets, indeed if it needs a significant degree of private enterprise, then what is socialism? Certainly not a radical negation of capitalism – perhaps a significant modification.

Can socialism survive as set of ideas around existing ideas of the welfare state and equality? There are problems here too.

First, both social democratic and socialist views of the world see equality as primarily an economic notion, but is it? Economic equality has today much less power to explain the causes or solutions of a range of urgent problems. Increasingly today what appears as poverty (economic inequality) is generated by the crises at the level of the family, by substance abuse, mental illness, poor education or often by a combination of these things. I happen to support equality and also a welfare state but too often these involve an idea that enough money, shared by enough people, will solve most problems.

This is inadequate and misleading because it depends on a crude kind of rationalism. It assumes human needs can be expressed in almost exclusively in material terms – food, shelter, income level and so on – and can be satisfied in those terms. In a society of scarcity these are obviously vital. Unless they are satisfied it is difficult to see how other more subtle and more elaborate human needs can be met. It also fails to acknowledge that social order and mutual respect are needed. In some communities — black and white – these are lacking in spite of material support. This has been the brave and creative insight of people like Noel Pearson.

Notions of material scarcity still anchor the paradigm of politics held by the neo-liberals and the Old Left. Neo-liberals demands ever more material abundance and productivity based on the assumption that this will lead to human happiness. The Left, Clive Hamilton argues, shares a paradigm of material deprivation for which it prescribes greater economic growth but a fairer distribution of proceeds of this growth. These rationalist paradigms assume increased happiness and wellbeing are based on increasing material wealth.

But this rational-material approach to politics based on rising living standards has great difficulty in coping with the physical limits of the world in terms of energy, minerals and productive land. To generalise to all human beings the current living standards of countries like Australia, Britain and the USA is simply not possible, given the finite natural resources of the world.

Related to the assumptions about living standards is another assumption – that the most important side of life is the public world of parliaments and other institutions and not, for example, the private world of the family or of ethnic identity.

In the 1970s and 80s feminism adopted a rationalist philosophy under the influence of liberalism and socialism.

This meant a key strategic goal was to enter the public world of work and to do so on equal terms with men. Over many years all sorts of formal and informal barriers were broken down to allow this.

But one of the unforeseen consequences of this was the continuing devaluation of what is called caring work or emotional labour both within the family and beyond. One of the most obvious signs of this (though not the most important) is the “fertility crisis” in many advanced industrial countries. This reflects the refusal by many women to pay the financial and emotional penalty for bearing and raising children.

Another is the “work-life collision” described so well in a book of the same name by Barbara Pocock. Family life and caring is placed under enormous pressure through parents’ work requirements and in which the remaining family functions are being commodified and provided by the market. Originally this problem was thought to be solved by men/husbands undertaking caring work, but this has not occurred largely because the strategy for liberation left caring work is still devalued.

The rational public world of work undermines and swamps the needs of the non-rational caring world. Production swamps reproduction. Caring work must still be done and many mothers feel this far more keenly than their husbands. To give this care many mothers tend to orient their paid jobs around caring for small children (part time jobs during school hours). But according to the dominant liberal-rationalist current of feminism this falls short of equality. But rather than trying to make mothers fit this goal of equality, the goal itself needs to be reconsidered as part of a rethinking of a new vision.

Conclusion: the need for a moral vision

We need a new moral vision beyond right and left. The 300 year process of modernization has seen scientific and rational thinking combined with a tapping of self-interest result in the ability to produce an enormous level of material wealth. Despite the terrible cost of producing this wealth, this now benefits (Western) humanity enormously and may benefit the other 2.5 billion people.

But part of this process, which Max Weber called “rationalization” is progressively replacing all values with the commercial values of the market. We are reaching the point where the process of rationalization is conflicting with the deepest human needs. It is reducing ethical values to matters of economic calculation. It is commodifying all human relationships and perhaps most dangerous of all, it is bumping up against the physical limits of the planet.

A values-based political movement is then the key and can validly draw from the ideals of parts of liberal, conservative, socialist theories and from religious philosophies. These ideals involve a society meeting human needs which include but go beyond the material wherewithal of life. They include justice, fairness, equality, the valuing of human lives, in both the public rational world and in the private life world of emotion, and of caring and altruism.

At its deepest a renewal of these ideals involves an integration of rational and non-rational values. At a less philosophical level these must be expressed in a political vision that is grounded primarily in ethical and moral values.

Comments welcome: David.mcknight@uts.edu.au