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According to John Kenneth Galbraith, the celebrated economist,
there exists only one class, the middle class, commonly referred to with
exaggeration as the hardworking middle class. At least, in 'advanced' countries
such as the United States. There is no reference to a rich upper class:
they have taken cover behind a more 'politically defencible' middle class;
and there is equally no reference to a lower class: that would be socially
indecent. Add to this an electorate dominated by relatively fortunate people
quite capable of providing most (if not all) social services for themselves
and the result is sure to be an adjustment in popular attitude so that
government provision for the under-class has come to be seen as an especially
oppressive role.
Those programmes aimed at the comfortably affluent are
not, in this context, regarded as a burden, those for the socially invisible
underclass are. Medical care for the poor, urban education, public housing
for the otherwise homeless and above all the welfare safety net (including
for young mothers and their children) are heavy burdens. Simply put, a
burden is a burden only when it provides for the less fortunate. This attitude
adjustment accompanies a marked shift of influential public concern from
stagnation and unemployment to inflation. For the majority enjoying modern
well-being, unemployment is not a danger: it is something suffered by someone
else. Far more threatening is any substantial and persistent inflation
that devalues savings and other financial assets, and depletes salaries,
pensions and other fixed or largely fixed returns. In fact, disregarding
the diplomatic language, society has begun to welcome a certain level of
unemployment as an assurance of price stability, and stagnation and unemployment
are better alternatives than inflation. Government intervention aimed at
addressing these social needs are seen to be the biggest causes of inflation:
this is the Keynesian legacy.
In response the upper class would claim that the joint
phenomena of corporate downsizing, restructuring, 'slow growth' and declining
productivity has meant that its standard of living is being increasingly
threatened. The fact, however, is that there has been a massive redistribution
of income and wealth from the lower to the higher brackets. In the last
years the upper one per cent of income recipients in the US has had a huge
gain in income and wealth, and the upper 10 per cent have done very well.
Differences in incomes are greater now than at any other time since the
1930s, giving the US the most inequitable distribution of income in the
advanced world. The under-class has lost ground, and again, although this
allocation goes largely uncriticised, government intervention to remedy
the situation is bemoaned.
The first premise of liberal political theory is that
only individuals count. Liberal individualism is the substance and strength
of the liberal tradition, and as only individuals count, individuals need
think only about themselves, about their shares, and about whether their
rights have been respected or violated, and whether they have received
or failed to receive their fair share. People can best secure the means
to be effective agents by carving out for themselves the most extensive
set of rights, and the largest bundle of commodities, they can obtain.
In this book, however, David Johnston argues that this
is wrong, that the whole of modern society has been suffering from liberalism
'misinterpreted'. Rather, he argues that any good society would enable
its members to develop the skills required to be agents and to have a sense
of justice, that the major institutions and practices of any good society
should be shaped by the recognition of the claim that all human beings
share an equal interest in having the means (or resources) necessary to
pursue the projects they formulate and to try to realise the values they
conceive and finally, that in a good society resources would be fairly
distributed, although the equality of outcome would depend on the differences
in individual values.
Johnston begins by examining the three pillars of liberalism:
rights-based, perfectionist, and political, and demonstrates their respective
weaknesses with such devotion to careful argumentation that the book is
indeed valuable as an introduction to liberal thought, and goes on to suggest
that a different approach could be found in 'humanist liberalism', which
although still based on the traditional emphasis on rights, involves a
different way of thinking about it, based on the claim that human beings
have a 'generalizable interest in having the means necessary to pursue
the projects we formulate and to try to realise the values we conceive.'
In developing this new approach he betrays the fact that liberalism has
not, as he contends, been misinterpreted but rather that the present approaches
have inherent failings observable on implementation.
Considering the 'Dworkinian position' that utilitarian
reasoning has a legitimate role in deliberations about public affairs,
but that it is valid only up to the point where it meets a right, Johnston
suggests that utilitarian thinking should not play a role in public affairs
reasoning at all, but that what we should think about, in assessing policies,
institutions, and practices, is the impact they have or are likely to have
on the means available for people to pursue their values and goals. This
argument stems from the logic that when reasoning about public affairs,
considerations of rights occur from the start, and avoids the tension between
the ideas of right and good, implicit in Dworkin's approach, as utility
does not count. What counts rather is the means available for individuals
to pursue their values and goals, eliminating the distinction between a
good society and a just one.
Unlike Dworkin, who develops his theory of distributive
justice without formulating any list of goods to be distributed, Johnston
argues, rather weakly I believe, that any theory of distributive justice
'is only as good as the account of the things to be distributed on which
it relies', and follows this by asserting that mental and physical powers,
liberties and opportunities and resources such as income and wealth and
status and recognition are rightful items on any list of primary goods.
Thus he attempts to develop a 'means index'. The spinoff of this addition
is that by placing individual values at centre stage, Johnston can argue
that intervention toward compensation for inequality is inappropriate and
that the state and its agents should not be important agents of social
and political change.
However, it is in his discussion of the distribution of
goods that Johnston could be clearer. He contends that distribution should
meet two desiderata: first, to the extent that goods are necessary for
individuals to be able to participate fully as equals in the life of their
society, including its political life, regulation and redistributive measures
should aim to guarantee that all individuals receive those goods. Second,
to the extent that goods are value-dependent, their distribution should
be value sensitive. It is in this latter regard where value-dependent goods
are distributed in ways that are sensitive to individuals' values and not
merely their purchasing power that Johnston risks being labelled a closet-utilitarian.
It is surprising that Johnston does not seem to realise that fence-sitters
invariably draw criticism from both sides.
Johnston says from the outset that he has written a book
to defend liberal values, to guard against liberal complacency and to provide
for a reinterpretation of liberal principles to restore it 'to a position
of intellectual leadership from which it can guide political and social
reforms'. It is probably my bias, but when confronted with a system that
has such a ruthless and oppressive result when implemented, whose three
major contemporary schools of thought are so demonstrably incomplete, and
considering how prone it is to 'misinterpretation', I wonder whether energy
would not be better spent in evaluating and advocating a more communitarian
approach. Johnston's volume, nonetheless, is essential reading for the
heated debate it is bound to spark.
Reviewed by Ashley Frank |
