Socialism and civil liberties

I think about this problem a lot lately, as a socialist for whom the foundational principles and structures of democracy, the codified guarantees of inherent human rights and liberty, have shone a light on every other political problem I've thought about through my adult life.

Over the last few years, like many of us, I suspect, I've spent a lot of time shocked and appalled first of all by the Bush/Cheney torture regime, but then secondly, very disturbed by how far the bastards managed to move the cultural consensus on civil liberties. Some of the smartest and nicest people I know (in a virtual sense) are Merkins who are frustrated unto tears by this shift. Not long ago, one of them wrote to me and other friends that most Americans had begun to think of the Bill of Rights as though it were a left-wing fringe obsession, and he is observably right.

The same thing is happening here. I think that most lefties have assumed for a long time that the commitment to the Charter is kindergarten, and then we go on to do more serious things. And then we met Stephen Harper. Well: then we met Michael Ignatieff. And the world is suddenly coming undone.

At the same time, civil libertarians like me suddenly find ourselves having to defend from the left as well. You can be worrying and working for a long time to defend, eg, freedom of conscience from powerful bigots with an agenda (see Jason Kenney, or anyone, really, who is promoting the "clash of civilizations" and the war on terra), and then suddenly a former ally will swoop in to inform you that your defence of the inherent rights of all humans, simply because they are human, is impossibly bourgeois and superficial, individualistic, and not practical if we're going to get organized properly and change the world tomorrow.

The uncomfortable relationship of the left with civil liberties disturbs me. I won't carry on with my thoughts unless someone wants to discuss further. But I worry. The left has experience -- world-historical experience -- of socialist experiments and projects that were not anchored in absolute respect for the negative freedoms, which is what our codes of rights and liberties are. I don't expect the left to be taking power anywhere any time soon, so that's not my first worry. But I worry to think that allies could give in to bossy-talk that could become commissar-talk.

I grew up with a mum who used to warn me that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and when I was a kid, I saw that enacted irl by good people who thought they were doing "misguided" people -- like, eg, the Sons of Freedom Doukhobors -- a favour by forcing them to become just like us. If there is one thing that real democracy can take, it is minorities who don't actually love democracy, and if there is one thing that a just international system should be able to take, it is a recognition that others may share our human aspirations without sharing our history or customs, and we have outraged many others by failing to grasp that distinction.

great post skdadl and i do agree with your views and concerns here... not sure what to say on it, but i share your thoughts and thanks for communicating them here in this context...

What's the context? Are we talking about the 70, or so, so-called "dissidents" in Cuba? Or are we talking about Maher Arar or some other victim of the "War on the Abstract Noun"? Are we talking about a war or an occupation by a foreign power? Or do you mean Canada, today?

Anyway, if you mean our own country, Canada, then whoever trivialized basic rights is an ass and doesn't deserve the lofty title of "leftist". But that's just my own lefty intolerance showing, maybe. Heh.

I'm worried that the Left in Canada is being steamrollered into submission, just like it has been in the US.

Well, I once said I didn't believe in human rights. I didn't mean by that, for example, that I don't believe in free speech. I meant that I do not think it works to ground these things (and yes they are important) in "human rights". In fact, I tend to think that is dangerous and it worries me to see "the left" talk about "human rights". I have philosophical reasons for that which I can competently elucidate and defend, though, perhaps, not with sufficient brevity. But, I repeat, it's not that I want to establish some kind of totalitarian state. 

For some reason (the more or less complete dominance of the liberal paradigm, I suppose) people seem to think that there is only one way to believe in what skdadl calls "negative freedoms" and that is to appeal to "human rights". i reject the appeal to human rights. That doesn't mean I reject what she calls "negative freedoms" or that there isn't some other (and better) way to ground and defend them. 

Moreover, I think all this agonizing (this is far from the first post on such a topic) over the possibility of some kind of latter day Stalin is a waste of time. It's extremely unlikely! On the other hand, there are all kinds of very real evils and highly probable dangers to worry about. (I tend to see it as a swipe at the "far" or "hard" left.)

Rosa: The most sacred political document in Canada is the Charter. Yes, we have the notwithstanding clause, and the current government seems to specialize in trying to worm its way around this sacred document. But don't kid yourself for a second. The Charter has made Canada a better country, a more law-governed country, a more politically mature country. Don't back up an inch on the Charter. It's our own Canadian Magna Carta and we have every reason to be extremely proud of it.

"we"?

But I'm not for a moment saying the Charter hasn't made Canada a better country or that we should dump the freedoms or defenses therein enshrined. Not for a moment. My argument is with how we justify or ground such freedoms and defenses (as well as greater ones yet to come - I hope). I don't seem to be making myself understood, though.... 

Well, perhaps make your remarks by quoting skdadl somehow, or making reference to the ideas expressed in her post(s).

Or wait till she comes back and replies at least once.

I thought I had! I'm not an idiot. I actually have some expertise in this area. But I think I have to face the fact that my perspective is sufficiently different that I'm just not going to be able to make myself understood here. You can't explain something radically foreign to people in a little box

All I was suggesting, in my OWN clumsy way, was that if you wanted to make another contribution then you might consider doing so by finding something in skdadl's remarks that you disagree with, that you can sink your teeth into, etc.  Sorry if I'm re-iterating the obvious.

I thought I understood Rosa's point quite clearly - but maybe I just understood it my way. Here's what I think: "Human rights" ought not to be grounded in some mystical sacred aura of the Free Human Individual. They must be defined in terms of society, and not place the individual outside of or above human society. If that's what she meant, I fully agree with her, and I think respect for the Charter and its primordial role is quite consistent with that understanding.

Oh, and to conclude, I think that skdadl's offering, however eloquent and thought-provoking, didn't deal with that aspect at all, so I'm left wondering how she (skdadl) views it.

I'll try again. It isn't easy  Skdadl seems to assume that "civil liberties" must be grounded in "human rights" and that a denial of human rights must mean a denial of civil rights. I think 1) there are better ways to establish and defend "civil liberties" than appeal to "human rights" and 2) it is entirely coherent to say, "there is no such thing as a human right" and "I believe in civil liberties". 

Thank you. that's pretty good  

OK, good. Time for tea for me, however.

I will come back; it's just a li'l early for me and I need more coffee before I try to explain myself better, partly in theory and then with a practical example. But as a start, in answer to N. Beltov's first question, this has more to do with discussions about international politics, although the problem arises within Canada in the kind of context I mentioned in the OP, the well-intentioned but coercive treatment of the Sons of Freedom in the 1950s.

Human rights are not just an airy-fairy idea; when one has a problem the only solution is to listen to a group of well informed and involved(property rights or prodgeny holding) groups. We do not have an excess of humans, we have an excess of un-righted humans.

Universal Declaration of Human Rights

http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/

Thank you for that link, Caissa.

Maybe you could just tell us what "allies" you're talking about and what they said or did. 

At least one can excuse the US left.  They had to deal with massacres and lynchings;we have poor media coverage.

Sacred?  Unless you're a Hegelian who thinks that The State is God walking on Earth (look at all the wackiness that has ensued from that concept), or you're just a yanqui who venerates his country, I'd avoid such language.

Recall that Magna Carta gave the aristocracy more power relative to the Monarchy.  Our kind were still f***ing peasants despite the power shift.  Come to think of it, Trudeau's boojwah-liberal charter left us as peasants too, so maybe you're right.

Just a reminder that the concept of human rights should not be up for debate on babble

Ok, I know that I need to respond to this, RosaL (nice handle), and to Unionist's rewording of it, so I will try, but I have to do that from my own direction.

Am I essentializing to write of human rights? Appealing to some mystical spiritual aura? I dunno. That was the question that Derrida pursued in his reading of Rousseau, and of course as a good Derridean I would hold that we always talk ourselves out of our own simplest positions, which is what I think Derrida demonstrated in his reading of Rousseau, whom he clearly deeply admired.

I'm sure that a lot of people here already get this, but I'm also sure that some, at least in the wider world, don't, so I'm going to be boring for a moment. *wink* To civil libertarians, rights are inherent. That is, nobody gives you rights. The state does not give you rights, and your fellow citizens do not grant you your rights by voting on them. You have certain rights because you are alive, and democratic states call those rights and codify them in charters and bills and declarations to spell out what the state and your fellow citizens cannot do to you. Bills of rights are negative in that sense: they mainly say "These are things we cannot do to other human beings if we wish to build and maintain a democracy."

I believe in them in that sense. This is just the theory part of what I started to discuss above; I'll come back with concrete examples of problems later, because I find this too hard to do all at once. I honestly don't see how, eg, freedom of conscience can be socially negotiable. For example, I think it is ok and often necessary to lock some people up because we can't stop them from doing terrible things, but I do not think it is ok, even in those cases, to muck with their minds -- srsly not ok unless they volunteer and can ask for help (and even then ...).The Charter should definitely be our defence against clockwork-orangery, which, like torture, is what it means to violate freedom of conscience.

Were Rousseau and all his contemporaries and predecessors who were trying to think so fast about these problems as they saw the prospect of democratic governance approaching essentializing? Well, I mean, I guess they were. "We hold these truths to be self-evident" is kind of essentializing.

Rousseau lived under a randomly vicious tyranny, and beyond that he was a pretty cranky, anti-social, if romantically attractive guy. To him, the question was: how do we organize ourselves so that we are humane to one another, avoid the horrors of the European past (revenge cycles, international and domestic, etc), and yet keep that organization minimal enough that we can stand to live with one another? Always in the back of his mind was the thought that we are animals and we have as a last resort the liberty that all animals have -- self-defence. We cannot live together once the King is gone and do anything productive together unless that profound impulse is not recognized and protected in law. All animals will do the same: corner me, and I will either rip your guts out or I will die trying.

Is that essentializing?

Practical examples to follow, referring much more to social history and all that.

Where did you see any prohibition on debating the "concept" of human rights, Ghislaine?

For example, if I put forward that Nazis have no right to teach in Canadian schools, will I be thrown off babble - even though that would appear to deny "freedom of association" to teachers?

Even the "sacred" Charter puts society ahead of individual freedoms:

The devil is in the application and determination of such "reasonable limits".

I would have trouble defending any individual right in the abstract with no exceptions whatsoever. There is a balance between individual rights and the rights and needs of human society. When the babble policy refers to "human rights", I am not convinced that it gives priority to one type of human right (individual) over the other (social).

This promises to be an interesting discussion. I'll be back! 

Me too, but I'm always doing ten things at once, so gimme a few hours.

Boy oh boy. As if I didn't get all bothered enough when skdadl talks about the Charter, then she goes off on Rosseau! Be still, oh heart of mine...

For one, this would be an example of the concept of individual human rights - where your rights end where mine being. Each student at a public school has a right to a certain level of education that is free from racism, etc. The teacher's freedom of association and freedom of conscience would not be violated if he were fired. There is no human right to be a teacher, only a right not to be fired without just cause. He is still free to think as a Nazi and associate with Nazis - just as we are free to tell him what a idiot he is. Also, the concept of freedome of association applies to a school being able to hire who they want as a teacher, as long as it is within labour law - which is also based on human rights.

How do you know this? Do you intuit it? Does it come to you in some kind of dream or revelation?

Unfortunately, politics attracts people who mostly just want to screw with other people.   Assignations of left or right, republican or monarchist, capitalist or socialist are quite secondary in their considerations.   Tollerant people have little taste for politics.

Skdadl: You can understand Derrida?   The student has indeed surpassed the master.  I doubt Derrida understood Derrida.

I don't see that in the Charter - do you?

So Wal-Mart can fire Jews and Catholics, because they're still free to believe and worship? And employers can fire workers who join a union, because they're still free to be members of their union? Uh-uh.

There is no human right to be a teacher, but there is a prohibition against discriminating, among teachers, on the basis of sex, religion, disability, national origin, sexual orientation, etc. Should we allow airlines to fire pregnant flight attendants (as they used to) because there is "no human right to be a flight attendant" - on the grounds that the flight attendant is still "free" to give birth or abort? By the way, there is no "right" in Canadian law not to be fired except for just cause, either. Non-union employers may fire employees without cause, subject only to advance notice (or pay in lieu) as prescribed by law.

I know I've been away too long, but the problem is, I gave myself too big an intro, and now I have stage-fright about coming back. Ahem.

And so far I'm only doing a detail. I see where Unionist thinks we're disagreeing. He is talking about equality. I hadn't got that far. I've just been talking about liberty. I think that our charters and bills and declarations are fairly good in laying out how liberty has to be protected in society, and in fact from society.

Achieving equality is more complicated. In part, it is just a stipulation about the inherent liberty of designated groups who, for a long time, were not considered fully human. In stipulating the equality of those designated groups in general terms, the Charter is still speaking to liberty -- it is saying, eg, that I am no less human than a man is, with all that that entails, including the animal-reaction parts.

But taking the further steps that, eg, Ghislaine has raised, is, I agree, more political, and not something that the Charter guarantees. We (us DFHs) think that people can't truly be equal without a number of social guarantees that level the field from the beginning, and the Charter sticks a toe into some of those waters, but not much and not very effectively. We don't have a social consensus on equality, and that is our political problem. Me, I think that basic democratic principles imply everything that socialists believe in, but clearly most of the population don't, and furthermore, from the other direction, most socialists don't agree with me.

So I guess that's why we need socialism. Practical example of my problems still to come.

Ha!  I'm glad to see you posting here more regularly, skdadl...you add a level of intellectual curiosity and insight to babble that is refreshing and challenging.

When you refer to "level[ing] the field from the beginning," are you referring to equal opportunity or equal results?

I think there is a significant degree of consensus in society regarding equal opportunity for all. Consensus breaks down at the point where a segment of the population wants to push that further towards equality of results.

Sven, I'm not sure what you mean by results.

I do believe that every human bean (and I will get to other animals eventually) needs food, clothing, and shelter 24/7 for a lifetime. Different kinds of societies can do that in more or less humane ways. In ours, given how huge and bureaucratized it has become, it would mean something like a GAI, and a revitalized public housing industry. It would mean a society that took the trouble to ask thinkers like architects and environmentalists how we recentre our economy.

To me, the people who worry that people like me might be demanding "equality of results" are the people who still believe in the Disney dream -- I can be rich! Richer than anyone else! Srsly, Sven. There's only one thing to do with that thought: get over it.

As it happens, we don't even have the level field on opportunity, never have in my lifetime, now regrettably long. I was in my forties before it became illegal to discriminate against me in terms of how I was paid, and that inequality will follow me through the rest of my life -- the guy in the next office who did the same work and was paid more just because he was a male will have a bigger CPP, eg. And even then, the change has only been formal -- the discrimination continues, as any statistician will tell you.

But that's not even what matters. Human beings do not have to "earn" their very lives. There's something very sick about a society where powerful people have convinced so many that that is true.

I think various US governments have had problems with the wording in UN declarations for basic human rights to food, shelter etc. and especially children's rights. So some of this would probably seem strange to someone like Sven. Is that right, Sven?

It's an unrealistic dream to believe a person can be "Richer than anyone else" (only one person can be the richest person).  But it's not an unrealistic dream to achieve a significant degree of individual autonomy by making good choices in life (good choices don't "guarantee" a greater degree of individual autonomy but good choices increase the probability of achieving a greater degree of individual autonomy than a person otherwise would have).

As I've said before, there is a spectrum where at one extreme is absolute equality (where everyone is in an identical condition) and another extreme where there is absolute freedom (essentially, anarchy).  The former has never existed and the latter only existed eons ago among the earliest humans (or perhaps even further back in time among pre-humans).  My point, however, is that there is a fundamental tension between equality and freedom (more freedom means less equality and more equality means less freedom).

Actually, what sounds strange to me is when people worry, in the name of "equality," about protecting middle class entitlements in rich countries like Canada and the U.S. while about two billion truly poor people in this world live (and die miserably) on $2 a day or less.

You see skdadl, the rest of us dolts have been merely amusing him in your absence.

This dominant consensus surrounding equal opportunity involves bootstrap theory for the most part, as in, if 'they' would only work hard enough like the 'rest' of us. Even so, results become suspect more often than not in the absence of understanding the systemic challenges, and the resulting need for levelling initiatives to redress imbalances due to historic and continuing oppression.

Capitalism has an inherent difficulty with facilitating social equality at any rate, with its structures being diametrically opposed to the concept of equal opportunity. It's a system geared towards internalizing individual and dominant threat assessments when it involves the question of sharing ones status, and begrudging others to obtain a share of the society that one feels they've invested in, and thus appearing to lessen the overall value if too many ‘unworthy' people apply. Threats are intensified when the others are seen as different.

Sven, I do not think so. We can guarantee the liberties that matter (see the Charter), and then we can organize for the general basic health of all, and doing both does not have to be a zero-sum game. I don't know who first convinced so many that it does, but I just don't see it.

I'm not saying a society cannot guarantee certain liberties and organize the society to provide for basic services (health, food, shelter, clothing).  But, it's still a matter of finding a general consensus as to where the appropriate point is along the equality-freedom spectrum.  It's probably fair to say that you aren't in favor of unfettered liberty (you only want to protect those liberties "that matter").  Others may think individuals should have more (or less) liberties than those which you think "matter" (I, for example, am probably in favor of more economic liberties than you are).  And, you may have a certain idea about what an equal society is, while others may think people should be even "more equal" than what you envision.

And that is essentially the "consensus problem".

Leo Strauss described the fountainhead (the name fits a STraussian acolyte) of rights in his Natural Right and History (1950). "Natural right is then rejected today not only because all human thought is held to be historical but likewise because it is thought that there is a variety of unchangeable principles of right or of goodness which conflict with one another, and none of which can be proved to be superior to the others."

But, of course, Leo finds it in the philosopher king (which makes the Straussians such a closet menace).

I'm quite sure that history dictates principles...just as the condition of human beings dictates what they do about it.  And on an increasingly crowded planet, I'm also sure we will (must) bend more toward concensus.

My rough understanding of the Marxian socialist view of (Charter) rights is that rights are a foundation or a platform from which people can fight for further rights. Of course, I mostly mean social rights here. I certainly would not want to isolate a rights struggle from the general political struggle of the day.

What right struggle mobilizes the most people? etc. The next link in the chain, and all that Leninist stuff that is still useful to think about, is what I'm pointing to here. Anyway, others who share similar views to mine can add their own.

The bourgeois liberal philosopher, John Rawls, advanced a principle something like "society ought to help the most disadvantaged first". Going by that principle, our own society should be helping First Nation women first. I'm fine with that. But, like I mentioned already above, I think it's harmful to isolate rights and the struggle for those rights from the general political battles of the day.

The Charter of Rights and Freedoms forms Part I of the Constitution Act of 1982. That act (PARTS 1 AND 2) protects aboriginal rights and title WHICH CANNOT BE EXTINGUISHED BY LEGISLATION IN CANADA (BY VIRTUE OF THAT VERY ACT). I'd say that's pretty sacred for aboriginal peoples in Canada. And I think you would agree, judging by your remarks on the closure of the FN college in Saskatchewan by the right wing regime in that province.

The Charter can stand on its own as worthy of being venerated, which is much better than venerating some deity I might add, but taken as part of the Constitition Act of 1982 it's a slam dunk.Am I wrong?

Edited to add: I'm not averse to making use of terms like "sacred" if the shoe fits. It fits.

Whose definition of anarchy is the one you are using?  Anarchy is not the lack of structure; that is chaos.  If you have no cites for using the term in that above fashion then you might want to pick a different word without a specific meaning.

Anarchy is the absolute freedom to join with other workers to determine your collective future by owning the means of production and using the production to enrich the community not capitalist owners. No real anarchist thinker has ever proposed that in a syndicalist enterprise every worker would have the absolute freedom to do what ever they want to .  The key to anarchist thinking is democratic ownership and decision making at the economic level not in either the state or boardroom. 

If you've said this before, I managed not to step in it. I've seldom seen such a steaming pile of false dichotomy.

And as Kropotkin writes in Mutual Aid, this is a natural way of human organisation, and that hierarchies and power relationships are artificial.  He cites many examples in nature of co-operation between different animal species to show that co-operation, not "war of all against all" (a liberal individualist concept, articulated by Hobbes at the beginning of the Capitalist Era),  as we're repeatedly told, is how humans would act if their naturally anarchic impulses were freed from modern societal constraints.

This seems to me to be an illusory construction, and one that serves the American political mindset very well. The French certainly didn't think there was a tension between freedom and equality when they proclaimed the three tenets of their democracy to be Liberté, égalité, fraternité. I'm certainly no political philosopher, but it seems to me that whatever is deemed a "freedom" in liberal capitalist terms always comes at the cost of another "freedom" obscured by an ideological veil. Not being an economist, it's difficult for me to give an economic example that doesn't sound equally ideological, but the example I like to use is the popular American myth of the "freedom" of the Open Road (Cf. Kerouac, Jack.) While we may feel "free" in our car, driving coast to coast and doing as we please (what cross-country driver hasn't felt that?), this freedom is purchased by the obligation to remain confined to roads, to buy gasoline, to remain stuck inside the bubble of the car's interior, to put up with traffic, laws of the road, etc. Equality, as it were, seems to be on a completely different spectrum, a different conversation.

Given that France is currently considering banning any kind of Muslim head scarf in public buildings, I'm not sure they're a great example of how to best strike a balance.

Well, no, it just plain is not. The consensus on those liberties that must be protected if democracy is to be possible is overwhelming, over time and among many nations. We're talking since the C17 here, Sven. Like, in theory, there should be no debate. "More economic liberties" just doesn't cut it at the same level as freedom of conscience, Sven, not in theory.

Unhappily, we have yet to live up to the theoretical promise of democracy since, among others, so many of those who believe in "more economic liberties" are willing to do a lot of filthy things to undermine the more fundamental rights that are supposed to be guaranteed to all. The current and previous administrations in the U.S. seem happy enough to have more or less tossed their Fourth Amendment (search and seizure) and now the Fifth (due process) and First (the freedoms). If you've got a substantial part of the population freaked out by security scares, which you may yourself find useful in power, then you don't risk your re-election by standing on principle, eh?

Anyway, I still haven't segued to the more practical problem I wanted to, in which I have to argue from a quite different direction because it has to do with privileged Westerners sneering at other cultures whose "rights" records they find deficient. Some of that is patently obviously cynical, when it comes from our governments, but it emerges on the left too. I will come back and describe a specific instance.

Aha. That would be one of my specific instances. Thank you, Snert.

The head scarf law basically denies all three so it is a good example of what the French thinkers would have opposed.  Seems to me that Moslem women from some denominations are being denied their freedom and equality and are being treated as the "other" not as part of the fraternity.  Equality must include the freedom to belong to whatever group you choose and to follow the customs of the group. [leaving aside customs that infringe on others]

A "false dichotomy" is a binary matter (i.e., someone is arguing that there are only one of two choices -- and that there are no other choices, including a blending of the two choices).  But, I'm not arguing that it's either all freedom or all equality.  I'm arguing that there is a spectrum where more individual freedom generally means less equality [freely-acting people will result in people succeeding and failing] and more equality generally means less individual freedom [because equality must be imposed by "the group" and individuals must act within the constraints of the group-imposed equality].

The opposite of freedom is not equality. Your spectrum does not exist.

I'm not so sure that it "serves" any particular political view.

A libertarian (such as myself) may argue for more individual freedom in a particular area of life.  But, a lefty might correctly note that giving individuals that additional freedom may result in less equality.

I don't think that "serves" any particular viewpoint - it's more descriptive.

I think that underscores my point that two people might exercise freedom differently (make different choices, value things differently, etc.), resulting in, say, economic inequality between those two individuals.  Perhaps that's what you mean by one person's freedom "comes at a cost" of another person's freedom?

Thus declareth the Lard Jeezus.

That's all you've got?

*raises eyebrow and taps foot*

...*considers smacking desk with meterstick*

...and I'm looking at more than one person!

I was really, really enjoying just lurking in this thread until it was so stupidly derailed.

I'll happily promise not to post here again if the false dichotomist will take leave also.

Where do we find the examples in time where there has been the most "equality" among people?

Well, probably in those societies where there are no private-property rights and no private profits (not to mention no civil liberties).  People get what the government tells them they get (if they're lucky) and they have extremely limited individual control over their material world.  To me, that represents a condition where there is an absence of individual liberty (lots of equality but virtually no liberty).

I think the concepts are inseparable.

No man is an island is a true statement and therefore since one end of your spectrum does not exist your spectrum is fundamentally flawed.

Your view reminds me of the the Bill Bennett saga.  When he burst onto the political scene he was hailed a self made business leader who had made a fortune in his own merits.  I always laughed at that because it presupposes that when WAC's son went into a boardroom to pitch a business deal he would be acting as an independent actor and would get the same reception as any young entrepreneur pitching a deal.

Your 'concepts' are fictitious and arbitrary, and very much constitute a false dichotomy.

LTJ, you made your point, but now you are just hectoring. Please let it drop.

I would expect even this "most" to fall far short of actual equality. I don't think equality is really possible (which is not the same as saying I don't think we should try to get closer to equality anyway). If we take economic equality, for example, and decide to divvy up all the money and resources and distribute them equally, I think we'd find two things. First, it wouldn't be long before there was inequality again; someone would find a way to gain more of this money and resource share, and someone would correspondingly lose some of theirs. But second, even if we were somehow unable to gain or lose our share, I think we'd find that the new "rich" (since everyone has exactly the same amount of money) would be the beautiful, or the young, or probably those with both youth and beauty. I don't think humans are conditioned to imagine a state of complete equality.

I completely agree with you that no person is an island (people live in complex societies, sub-societies, and meta-societies).  So, I agree that pure freedom does not exist in reality -- just like I don't think there has ever been a society in which pure equality exists, either.  But, that doesn't negates the concept of pure freedom or of pure equality and it certainly doesn't mean, other than by pure declaration, that the equality-freedom spectrum doesn't exist.

....but I'm the one hectoring, right?

Y'see, Sven, in historical terms, you've got this exactly backwards.

We derived the underlying principles and structures that guarantee at least the potential for democracy not by imagining some fantasy island of perfect equality that has never existed, but by looking hard at the horrors of what were, for the thinkers of the Enlightenment, recent European history, and trying to figure out what it takes to avoid that/those. Revenge cycles, eg, micro (domestic) and macro (international): how do we stop them? From that one question, pondered for two centuries by some very fine and intensely committed minds (because they were not living in safe places), came the basic structure of our legal system. Shame that not everyone has learned to respect it or even make it work very well, but potentially, it could work.

We don't learn from fantasies, Sven. We learn from what we have done wrong.

Thanks, skdadl.  I had almost given up on seeing the historical perspective or record mentioned (again).  Just finished reading Pearson's excellent bio on Voltaire, and enlightenment folks all around him were imagining what kind of society(ies) they had emerged from. Certainly, there was neither freedom nor equality at the time.

But I'm not sure that our libertarian will concede anything, because, like Strauss, he will not admit that the concepts change over time, are a response to a lived situation, His concepts are fixed in some sort of ideal image created for American audiences in the TV universe of Father Knows Best. Remember Strauss:

And neither will our libertarian come to internalize the MEANING of Donne's thoughts when he wrote : "No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were. Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind. And therefor never send to know for whom the bell tolls: it tolls for thee."

To all those who value this most important understanding of the individual in what all societies should look like.  I could not see it abused as some sort of statement about  individualism and its opposites. Not with Sven in full, nonsensical flight.

The systems which have attempted to mandate equality in fact have been among the most oppressive in modern times.  They are oppressive because those systems necessarily and severely restrict personal liberty.

I don't know what "underlying principles and structures" you have in mind for guranteeing sustantial personal liberty (both civil and economic) while simultaneously delivering equality in fact (as opposed to equality in opportunity).

Hmm. I'm not sure I agree, skdadl, although I dread taking you on when it comes to the enlightenment--as long as nobody mentions Rousseau, I should be fine. The dynamic you seem to be describing here is similar to the one presented in Walter Benjamin's "Angel of History":

I'd be the last to discount the importance of history, which certainly figures centrally in the construction of utopian thinking, unless we take utopia to heart, there is a certain lack of agency present in Benjamin's image. Why can't we look forward? What has happened to our political imaginations that we can no longer envision, say, an end to private property, racism, sexism? Full, global employment and productivity? A world where no one--really, no one--goes hungry anymore? As Slavoj Žižek is fond of saying, it is easier for us to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.

Fredric Jameson decries the way utopian thinking has departed the left over the twentieth century, and chalks it up variously to the immiseration of the working class, (perhaps ironically) a weakening sense of history, and the increased association of otherness, even criminality, to any radical political programme. Without sounding naive--which is always the risk when one speaks of utopia--I would argue that democracy needs both a rigorous lesson from history and exercise in recalibrating the imagination for possibility, even if that process is itself historically determined. Otherwise, how do we move forward?

One of my favourite quotes from Jameson's Utopia work is from Marge Piercy's Woman on the Edge of Time (1976) (which I haven't read). The Mattapoissett utopian time-travellers, who come from a future which, they admit, may not, or never will, exist, warn us:

I have never said and would never say that we cannot look forward. In fact, I believe that somewhere earlier in this thread I made a distinction between the necessary defences of liberty and the ongoing struggle for equality, which is maybe an oversimplified contrast, but useful.

Anyway, I believe that we have to have somewhere to stand before we look forward.

I am, frankly, terrified of people who look forward without having absorbed and taken responsibility for the worst that humans can do to one another, and ensured that that, at least, will not continue.

My whole argument about liberty has to do with the difference between structural thought and advancing socio-political thought, or however we put that. I think that debates about "values" are immensely important -- obviously I do, since I'm a socialist. But I want to toss up every time I hear our distinguished parliamentarians equate the law of the Charter with ongoing debates about "values." The Charter is no forkin' sentimentalized Americanized Disneyfied codification of our "shared Canadian values." It is the law; it is the necessary and sufficient for going forward; defend it, or lose everything.

skdadl: "My whole argument about liberty has to do with the difference between structural thought and advancing socio-political thought, or however we put that. I think that debates about "values" are immensely important -- obviously I do, since I'm a socialist. But I want to toss up every time I hear our distinguished parliamentarians equate the law of the Charter with ongoing debates about "values." The Charter is no forkin' sentimentalized Americanized Disneyfied codification of our "shared Canadian values." It is the law; it is the necessary and sufficient for going forward; defend it, or lose everything."

"Values", skdadl, is a concept developed by the structural functionalists on the right. As for the Charter...you will recall the battle to make it more comprehensive (Penney Kome's The Taking of Twenty-eight: Women Challenge the Constituion. The FN people also found recognition as a result of the feminists' struggle. Now we should be concerned that Steve has seen to the removal of funding for legal challenges under the Charter. And we should be concerned with funding for many, many more peole put upon by those who can afford $200 and hour legal assistance. In fact, if we stopped worrying about rights and socialism (in the absence of anything socialist, and with disappearing opportunities for the marginalized and dispossessed in a conflicted (economic growth vs environment) human dilemma, we might really challenge the bastards who are circling their conservative wagons even as we dither.

Googling structural functionalism and values we find, from sociology's recent history:  .

The functional approach tends to argue that there is consensus within the social system. Individual behaviour is governed by social norms or rules that are generally accepted and agreed upon. These are like Durkheim's social facts or moral regulation in that they govern behaviour, and while they are coercive, they are also generally agreed upon. These norms and values are consistent with the equilibrium state of society, or normal state of affairs. There are aspects of these norms that return the society to a normal state of affairs in the case of a disturbance - for example, sanctions, punishment, social approval, and social disapproval.

6. Consensus - Norms and Values

Functional analysis does not emphasize conflict, does not consider conflict to be an integral part of the social world, and generally does not consider change to be dramatic but rather to be evolutionary. While the writers who take this approach often advocate reforms, these may be minimal, thus providing support for existing structures. At the same time, the structural functional approach is in the tradition of western liberalism - arguing for equality of opportunity, a liberal democracy, and social reforms that would encourage these. Politically, this approach has often been used as a means of countering radical reforms, at other times it has contributed to more modest reforms.

C. Origins and Influence

Unlike the other major theoretical approaches, the structural functional model comes from a variety of authors. Usually it is associated with Talcott Parsons, although the single most famous article is a short summary article on social stratification by Kingsley Davis and Wilbert Moore. Robert Merton is another well known sociologist who provided some important structural functional theoretical statements. All of these were sociologists who were from the United States and spent most of their academic life there. As a result, this approach is often associated with sociology in the United States.

Ah, yes, the United States.