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Socialism as the Extension of Democracy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 June 2009

Richard J. Arneson
Affiliation:
Philosophy, University of California, San Diego

Extract

Are socialists best regarded as those who are most truly and consistently committed to democracy, under modern industrial conditions? Is the underlying issue that divides liberals from socialists the degree of their wholeheartedness in affirming the ideal of a democratic society? On the liberal side, Friedrich Hayek has remarked: “It is possible for a dictator to govern in a liberal way. And it is also possible that a democracy governs with a total lack of liberalism. My personal preference is for a liberal dictator and not for a democratic government lacking in liberalism.” No doubt many socialists would wish to quibble with Hayek's free-market oriented conception of liberalism. But I am wondering whether the conceptual map implicit in Hayek's remark is apt. Hayek appears to assume that there are two independent lines of division, one marking greater and lesser commitment to liberal values, the other marking greater and lesser commitment to democratic procedures. According to the conception of socialism as democracy that I wish to examine, a better picture of the political landscape would show one line of division with gradations indicating greater and lesser commitment to democracy. On this continuum, socialists are located at the extreme pro-democratic end, those who favor autocracy at the other end, and liberals somewhere in the middle. The analyst who finds this latter conceptual picture the more illuminating of the two will say that Hayek reveals his rejection of socialism by being less than wholehearted in his support of democracy.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Social Philosophy and Policy Foundation 1993

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References

1 From a 1981 interview with Friedrich Hayek, cited after Bowles, Samuel and Gintis, Herbert, Democracy and Capitalism (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986)Google Scholar. I owe this reference to Van Parijs, Philippe. Hayek makes a similar observation in The Constitution of Liberty (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960), pp. 103–4.Google Scholar

2 Hayek's liberalism is of the classical, nineteenth-century variety that emphasizes individual freedom under a rule of law that offers wide scope for free-market activity. The liberalism that I take to have affinities with socialism is the contemporary philosophical liberalism exemplified in the writings of John Rawls. See Rawls, John, A Titeory of Justice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971)Google Scholar; and Kymlicka, Will, Contemporary Political Philosophy: An Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990)Google Scholar, ch. 3, “Liberal Equality,” and ch. 5, “Marxism.”

3 For some skeptical thoughts on this topic, see Przeworski, Adam, “The Neoliberal FallacyJournal of Democracy, vol. 3, no. 3 (07 1992), pp. 4559.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 Cohen, Joshua, “The Economic Basis of Deliberative DemocracySocial Philosophy & Policy, vol. 6, no. 2 (Spring 1989), pp. 2550.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 Ibid. See also Elster, Jon, “The Market and the Forum: Three Varieties of Political Theory,” in Foundations of Social Choice Theory, ed. Elster, Jon and Hylland, Aanund (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 103–32Google Scholar; Walzer, Michael, Spheres of Justice (New York: Basic Books, 1983), pp. 291303Google Scholar; and Barry, Brian, “The Continuing Relevance of Socialism,” in his collection Democracy, Power, and Justice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), Pp. 526–42.Google Scholar

6 Przeworski, Adam and Wallerstein, Michael, “Popular Sovereignty, State Autonomy, and Private PropertyArchives Européennes de Sociologie, vol. 27, no. 2 (1986), pp. 215–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see p. 215. It should be noted that Hayek explicitly disavows popular sovereignty in this sense. More popular sovereignty rather than less is not always on balance desirable, according to Hayek. He writes: “The crucial conception of the doctrinaire democrat is that of popular sovereignty. This means to him that majority rule is unlimited and unlimitable. The ideal of democracy, originally intended to prevent all arbitrary power, thus becomes the justification for a new arbitrary power.” See Hayek, , The Constitution of Liberty, p. 106Google Scholar. See also Hayek, , “Economic Freedom and Representative Government,”Google Scholar reprinted in Hayek, , Economic Freedom (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991), pp. 383–97.Google Scholar

7 Joseph Raz makes a parallel point regarding the question of whether or not it is valuable from the standpoint of individual freedom that an individual should have greater rather than lesser freedom to do evil. See Raz, Joseph, The Morality of Freedom (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986).Google Scholar

8 By “egalitarian” here I intend to refer to the position that better-off persons are morally obligated to lend aid to worse-off persons, when they can do so at tolerable cost to themselves and when the cost-to-benefit ratio of this aid would be favorable. These obligations come into play quite independently of whether or not the better off have voluntarily committed themselves to provide such aid; and the obligations are legitimately enforceable, in appropriate circumstances, by third parties. For discussion of egalitarianism in this sense, see Nagel, Thomas, Equality and Partiality (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991)Google Scholar, and the references cited by Nagel. See also Arneson, Richard, “Liberalism, Distributive Subjectivism, and Equal Opportunity for WelfarePhilosophy and Public Affairs, Vol. 19, no. 2 (Spring 1990), pp. 158–94Google Scholar; and Arneson, , “Property Rights in PersonsSocial Philossophy & Policy, vol. 9, no. 1 (Winter 1992), pp. 201–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9 The statement in the text is controversial, because some authors who have drawn negative lessons from the Yugoslavian Communist experience with workers' self-management schemes have offered analyses that would not be affected by the substitution of a democratic government in place of the actual autocratic Yugoslavian state. See, for example, Comisso, Ellen, Workers' Control under Plan and Market (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979)Google Scholar; Furubotn, E. and Pejovich, S., “Property Rights, Economic Decentralization, and the Evolution of the Yugoslav Firm, 1965–1972Journal of Law and Economics, vol. 16, no. 2 (10 1973), pp. 275302CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and the voluminous literature on the “soft budget constraint” in centrally planned public-ownership economies experimenting with decentralization of authority and control.

10 Cohen, , “The Economic Basis of Deliberative Democracy,” p. 27.Google Scholar

11 The formulation in the text leaves it unspecified what individual moral rights are at stake here. I leave this matter unspecified because I believe that on any remotely plausible Position on the content of justifiable, important individual moral rights, under modern conditions a democratic mode of government provides the best chance of fulfilling them.

12 See Roemer, John, “The Morality and Efficiency of Market SocialismEthics, vol. 102, no. 3 (April 1992), pp. 448–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13 With respect to a group of people, to maximin is to make the position of the worst-off person as advantageous as possible (or in other words, to maximize the minimum resource holding of the worst off).

14 See the Supreme Court opinions on the constitutionality of the provisions of this act in Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U.S. 1 (1976).Google Scholar

15 Mill, John Stuart, Considerations on Representative Government, in Collected Works, vol. 19, ed. Robson, J. M. (Toronto and Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 1977), ch. 7.Google Scholar

16 See Hayek, Friedrich, The Road to Serfdom (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1944)Google Scholar, for a simple exposition of this line of thought.

17 Mill, John Stuart, Considerations on Representative Government, ch. 16.Google Scholar

18 Mill, John Stuart, Chapters on Socialism, in Collected Works, vol. 5, ed. Robson, J. M. (Buffalo and Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1967)Google Scholar. The first quote is from p. 743; the second is from p. 744.

19 For the argument above, see Hayek, , The Road to Serfdom, ch, 8Google Scholar. See also Hayek, , The Constitution of Liberty, ch. 6Google Scholar; and Hayek, , Law, Legislation, and Liberty, vol. 2, The Mirage of Social Justice (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973)Google Scholar. In calling attention to Hayek's arguments to the conclusion that refraining from socialist policies and a regime of central-planning preserves political democracy, I do not mean to imply that these arguments from democracy exhaust his case against socialism. Hayek asserts that the attempt to run an economy by state planning must destroy the rule of law, governance by general and abstract rules that are not directed at helping or hurting particular individuals. In turn the rule of law is closely connected to the maintenance of individual freedom, for Hayek holds that an individual is free “if he is not subject to unjustifiable coercion” (Kukathas, Chandran, Hayek and Modern Liberalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990], p. 132)Google Scholar. The rule of law does not unjustifiably coerce, hence does not limit individual freedom. In Hayek's mind, sustaining a genuine rule of law requires that the state limit itself to legislating rules of procedure that facilitate the working of the extended order constituted by property rules, common-law rules, and traditional moral rules enjoining socially useful virtues, including honesty and forbearance from theft and aggressive violence. Once the state goes beyond rules that facilitate private ordering and legislates social goals, the rule of law is eroded, for with changing circumstances the rules enforced on individuals must change erratically in order to meet these goals. I do not attempt a full survey of Hayek's arguments here, and a fortiori I do not try to assess the full range of his arguments.

20 Hobbes, Thomas, Leviathan [1651], ed. Macpherson, C. B. (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books Ltd., 1981), pp. 109, 111, 120, and 166.Google Scholar

21 The textual warrant for including conflict of interests between talented and untalented individuals as a source of exploitation is in Marx, Karl, “Critique of the Gotha Program,” in Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Marx-Engels Reader, ed. Tucker, Robert (New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 1978), p. 530Google Scholar. The best discussion of the possible underlying moral bases of Marx's views on exploitation is a pair of articles by Roemer, John E.: “Property Relations vs. Surplus Value in Marxian ExploitationPhilosophy and Public Affairs, vol. 11, no. 4 (Fall 1982), pp. 281313Google Scholar; and “Should Marxists Be Interested in Exploitation?” Philosophy and Public Affairs, vol. 14, no. 1 (Winter 1985), pp. 3065Google Scholar. See also Arneson, Richard, “What's Wrong with Exploitation?Ethics, vol. 91, no. 2 (01 1981), pp. 202–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

22 For more careful and nuanced discussion of the ordinary-usage concept of exploitation, see Feinberg, Joel, The Moral Limits of the Criminal Law, vol. 4, Harmless Wrongdoing (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), chs. 31 and 32.Google Scholar

23 Perhaps the deontological element should be retained via the notion of deservingness. Arguably, a liberal-egalitarian theory of justice should include a ground-level notion of deservingness in such a way that one's deservingness status affects the treatment one should receive.

24 Rawls, , A Theory of Justice, p. 62.Google Scholar

25 Engels, Friedrich, The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the StateGoogle Scholar, reprinted in The Marx-Engels Reader, p. 751.1 say only that “perhaps” this quote expresses an egalitarian-liberal perspective. One can also read this passage as merely asserting that it is futile to attempt now to determine what the content of the future socialist ethical culture will be or should be. On this reading Engels, is neither asserting nor denying that in a mature socialist society public opinion will be a law to individuals on matters of individual sexual conduct, a law that will exert repressive force on individuals who would wish to deviate from the majority norm.

26 Egalitarian liberalism encompasses two doctrines: (1) a view about the fair distribution of resources that individuals need in order to lead good lives according to their own values, and (2) a view about fair and worthy processes by which individuals acquire their values. Freedoms of association, thought, and expression fall under (2). My discussion ignores (2) not because it is unimportant but because the socialist tradition has little to say by way of contribution to it.

27 See Arneson, Richard, “Meaningful Work and Market SocialismEthics, vol. 97, no. 3 (04 1987), pp. 517–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Arneson, , “Is Socialism Dead? A Comment on Market Socialism and Basic Income CapitalismEthics, vol. 102, no. 3 (04 1992), pp. 485511CrossRefGoogle Scholar; sec esp. Pp. 486–88.

28 Tawney, R. H., The Sickness of an Acquisitive Society (London: Fabian Society, 1920)Google Scholar. Compare Hayek's more sympathetic construal of the motivations of agents successfully pursuing their aims within an extended order, in The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), p. 81.Google Scholar

29 The absence of any theory of motivation change vitiates much of the interesting discussion in Titmuss, Richard M., The Gift Relationship: From Human Blood to Social Policy (New York: Random House, 1971)Google Scholar. See also Arrow, Kenneth, “Gifts and ExchangesPhilosophy and Public Affairs, vol. 1, no, 4 (Summer 1972), pp. 343–62Google Scholar; Singer, Peter, “Altruism and Commerce: A Defense of Titmuss against ArrowPhilosophy and Public Affairs, vol. 2, no. 3 (Spring 1973), pp. 312–20Google ScholarPubMed; and Arneson, Richard, “Commerce and Selfishness,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy, supp. vol. 8 (1982), pp. 211–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

30 For good discussion, see Elster, , “The Market and the Forum”Google Scholar; and Cohen, Joshua, “Deliberation and Democratic Legitimacy,” in The Good Polity, ed. Hamlin, Alan and Pettit, Philip (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989)Google Scholar. See also Habermas, Jürgen, Communication and the Evolution of Society, trans. McCarthy, Thomas (Boston: Beacon Press, 1979).Google Scholar