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When historians look back on the 2015 General Election, they may well see it as a watershed moment in British Politics. By securing a majority at the end of a decade in the wilderness and a half-decade of hung parliament, David Cameron won what is increasingly looking like a decisive victory for Conservatism. His opportunism in seizing on the economic crisis in 2008 to reverse his prior acceptance of the Labour Government’s spending plans was a cynical but shrewd manoeuvre which began a period of politics in which he set the terms of debate around vague, ill-defined notions of “austerity” and fiscal responsibility.
But Cameron’s success is not all of his own making. He has been fortunate in his enemies as well. In the period since 2008, the qualities required of any progressive leader (whether you wish to use the label “liberal”, “socialist” or “social democrat” makes little difference here) have been an understanding both of the public concern about the nation’s finances and of the need to protect and update the public sector to provide a bulwark against unrestrained market power. No leader of either the Labour Party, nor the Liberal Democrats, nor any other party has successfully fitted the bill.
For Labour, Gordon Brown mistimed the calling of an election before misreading the public mood of concern at the impending economic crisis. Cameron outmanoeuvred him by calling for cuts while Brown was still committed to investment. Ed Miliband was an admirable character who understood that the central mission of the times should be establishing a fairer version of capitalism. But apart from the possibility that some policies such as price freezes and rent controls might have proved unworkable, his biggest failure was his incapability of gaining the public’s trust. Even with spending plans that barely differed from those of the Conservatives, he hadn’t made the right tactical choices nor deployed the correct narrative to reassure voters that their money was safe with Labour. Neither he, nor Brown could reasonably have been expected to foresee the rise of Jeremy Corbyn as a result of all this (and Tony Blair has to take his own share of culpability for losing his party’s respect), but Corbyn’s brand of impossibilism has turned out to be the result, and it’s a disastrous one.
For all the criticisms that can be levelled at Labour’s recent leaders, they did all at least project some measure of responsibility. They could all attract a solid base of votes and seats in an election and pursue their rivals with enough vigour and credibility that they maintained Labour as a serious party of government or potential government. Corbyn neither will nor can do any of this, save for a miracle. He will shed votes from eminently reasonable people who may in some cases have voted for Labour all of their lives.
So where are the Liberal Democrats to step into the territory left vacant? Their leaders too could not have foreseen the opportunity that would arise for them from Corbyn’s ascendancy – but their party will struggle to profit from it because of their own mistakes. Nick Clegg was dealt a difficult hand by the result of the 2010 Election. But his choices have nevertheless bequeathed a toxic legacy to his successor. That legacy consists of a party that has alienated its own voter base with policies that did not represent a fair compromise with the Conservatives, and rhetoric that failed to distinguish them from their coalition partners until it was too late. The subsequent electoral mauling has returned them to anonymity at precisely the same time (and it may not be a coincidence) that multiple rivals have sprung up to challenge its status as the third force in British Politics. UKIP, the Greens, the SNP and Plaid Cymru all now potentially stand in the way of a Liberal revival. It took Clegg’s predecessors nearly a century just to recover a fraction of the influence the Liberal Party once enjoyed. Now they are right back at the bottom of the same electoral mountain again, and this time without the ability to monopolise “none of the above” status.
Yet, Tim Farron cannot simply hide behind Clegg’s grave errors. Along with most of his party, he chose to publicly support the terms of the coalition agreement and nearly all of the worst policies both that resulted from it and that were conceived later on. Furthermore, since becoming leader he has so far failed to identify a single mistake his party made in coalition. Added to this, his thinly-veiled theological views on same-sex relationships are hardly the sign of a leader in touch with popular liberal sentiments. He hasn’t allowed it to affect his political views (I still can’t decide if this is a cop-out or not), but it is hard to respect a man who presumably views a significant section of the population as sinners merely for wishing to express their love for each other in the same physical manner as everyone else does.
David Cameron’s attempt to capture the centre ground in his conference speech last autumn by pitching his party once more as progressive one-nation conservatives fixing the country’s ills and governing on behalf of the many rather than the few was remarkable in its audacity. The message ran contrary to nearly his entire record in government thus far, and even more so to the nature of his party’s manifesto commitments in the recent election. But he is getting away with it, and his successor as Tory leader may receive an overwhelming mandate from the electorate to continue pulling the wool over their eyes in 2020. This speaks volumes. A Tory Prime Minister who lacks a principled and effective progressive opponent can contort his or her government in any direction they like. They can tell us that up is down, that black is white, that narrow factional governance is compassionate one-nation conservatism. And they will go on doing it until they are effectively challenged. If Labour and the Liberal Democrats do not get their houses in order soon, they will be lumbered with successive leaders who fail to provide this challenge for decades to come. That is a grim enough prospect. But what is worse for many on the liberal centre-left at the moment is the feeling that no party even deserves their support. You could right now be an arch-Blairite or an admirer of Charles Kennedy or Ed Miliband, yet still find no current leader worth looking up to, and no party you felt comfortable supporting. Let us hope this changes soon.
1
When I signed up as a registered supporter of the Labour Party a few days after the election defeat in May, there were three things I had no idea were going to happen. The first, it wont surprise you to hear, was the rise of the new (old?) left and its candidate Jeremy Corbyn. The second was that I would only receive my ballot with two days to spare before the deadline to vote. And the third was just how long, how painstakingly long, it would take me to decide who to vote for should my ballot ever arrive. Now that I have finally been enfranchised, Ive also made my mind up who to vote for. But it wasnt easy, for which I chiefly blame the electoral system (which I may write about later). I cast my ballot earlier this afternoon, and opted to put Andy Burnham first, Yvette Cooper second, and Liz Kendall third. Boy, is this going to take some explaining
As someone who generally admired Ed Milibands leadership, and had wanted him to beat his brother in 2010, I had only gradually lost confidence in his merits as a leader over the last five years. Before the election, I still thought he had many noble qualities despite one or two significant flaws, and my instinct upon Labours disappointing defeat was to choose a new leader who could stand on a similar policy platform, and stand up for similar values, but who would have the charisma and leadership skills to communicate this to the electorate far more effectively, keeping business and the media onside without jettisoning the core approach. And broadly, with one or two caveats about how certain policies such as mansion taxes and tackling zero hours contracts would work, I still think this. But what I think it ought to look like in detail probably has changed, in part because Ive been listening to an audiobook version of Tony Blairs autobiography this summer (which turned out to be less like torture than I expected), and also because I looked long and hard at the detail of the election results. It is chiefly Tory swing voters that Labour will have to pitch itself to in 2020, and this makes a big difference to how the party ought to communicate with voters. Not only this, but messaging and policy dont come apart from each other completely. However good the messenger, and however well presented the message, you cant get away from the fact that some factual details in the message might be off-putting to the voters you need to win over, and thus might need to slip down your list of priorities, or off it completely. Otherwise you jeopardise the ability to get anything good done at all.
All of which found me surprising myself by my openness to considering Liz Kendall for my first preference. I was worried by Yvette Cooper and Andy Burnhams attempts to sound like all things to all people. I was especially worried by Coopers insistence on not conceding a single shred of blame for the pre-crisis state of the finances (good economics maybe, but terrible politics), and Burnhams statements to the effect that he wanted to repeat a core vote and turnout boosting strategy that had just failed badly. I dont blame myself for concluding in 2010 that the size of the Lib Dem vote in Lab/Con marginals allied to their poor handling of the coalition was a huge opportunity for Labour, but it didnt work out that way. It seems that appealing to Lib-Lab voters like myself puts off too many Lab-Con voters. And now, there is not a big enough pool of voters sympathetic to this sort of programme/messaging left to be won over.
If I had any doubts about Kendall, it was that she might be prepared to go too far on issues like welfare for my liking, and that she would struggle to unite the party in the wake of Jeremy Corbyns surge. Unity is a precondition for winning, and thus I wasnt ruling out giving my first preference to Cooper instead.
But its that surge that changed my mind in the end. Corbyn is widely considered to be (at the very least) a serious contender to win the contest, and despite all the denials and protestations of his supporters, this would be an unmitigated disaster for the Labour Party, for the country, possibly for the EU, and particularly for the most vulnerable people in society who are going to need a Labour government in 2020 (or as soon as possible) more than they have needed one for at least a generation. All the evidence suggests that Tory swing voters will reject Corbyn out of hand, and that non-voters are not especially any more left wing than the rest of us. I also think theres much more reason to believe that Burnham would stand the best chance of the three moderate candidates in defeating Corbyn were he to reach the final round of voting. I cant know this for sure, and if Corbyn does win, Ill probably never know if I was right or not, but in these circumstances I think it would be self-indulgent to prefer anybody who I feel would have less chance of beating Corbyn than Burnham would. Yes, Cooper might still prevail, but at least my vote will transfer to her in the event that she beats Burnham. Yes, putting Kendall first would send a strong message to those inside and outside the party, and strengthen her hand in the future- but if she were to do better than expected and just slip past Burnham into third (or even Burnham and Cooper into second), and if Corbyn were to win as a result, I couldnt forgive myself. There might be a significant gulf between the way things would look after 5 years of Burnham as leader, and 5 years of Kendall or Cooper as leader- but it is as nothing compared to the gulf between futures under Burnham and Corbyn.
So, Ive surprised myself, and then surprised myself again. But I am confident now that Ive got it right. The risk of Jeremy Corbyn becoming leader and ruining Labours prospects of electoral success for who knows how many years has to be minimised. And Burnham-Cooper-Kendall is the best way to do it.
0
Five painfully long years ago, something historic happened in British Politics. The Liberal Democrats, long sidelined to the role of near-irrelevant third party in our national life found themselves holding the balance of power on Westminster’s well-worn green benches. They chose to enter a coalition with the Conservatives, and thereby found themselves in government for the first time since the Second World War, and with serious influence in government for the first time in nearly a century. Nick Clegg instantly became the most important Liberal leader since Lloyd-George himself. But if those events of 2010 now seem like a hazy memory, it’s because an awful lot of murky water has flowed under Tower Bridge since then. At the end of their momentous half-decade of power, the Lib Dems have been left looking somewhat dishevelled as a party, having been battered repeatedly by storms of negative press and public reaction to their role in government, storms which have swept many of their councillors, MEPs and MSPs overboard in second-order elections.
If you listen regularly to the speeches of prominent Lib Dems, or read the tweets and independent comment pieces of the party’s footsoldiers (those of them that remain anyway), you’ll know that they feel rather hard-done-by at the almost overwhelmingly negative reaction they’ve received. They feel that the public, media and other parties have widely misunderstood their motives for entering coalition, the circumstances under which they did so, and their subsequent record in office. For some of them, coalition apologetics has become something of an art form, exemplified perhaps by government minister David Laws’s book “22 Days in May”, with its painstaking account of the coalition negotiations and the thought-processes of those involved.
So, have we given them a raw deal? Or did they give us one after all? As a disillusioned Lib Dem voter myself, I’ve decided to collect all the different slogans, justifications, musical apologies and other strands of argument I’ve seen in support of continuing to vote Lib Dem (plus any others I could think up myself), so we can examine them each in turn. I know, you’re eternally grateful, but there’s no need to thank me- I’m just acting in a grownup fashion, doing my duty to the country, not taking the easy option by running away from my responsibility to anchor this debate in the centre ground of Cleggisms. So, let’s begin.
1) To build a stronger economy in a fairer society #SEFS
This is the slogan which is meant to encapsulate the entire Liberal Democrat philosophy in 2015. They are unashamedly a party of the centre, resisting lurches to the left or right by anchoring either a Labour or Tory government in the centre ground. An economy run by Labour will be stronger with Lib Dem involvement, and conversely, if the Tories are in charge, society will be fairer overall with the Lib Dems keeping them honest. Let’s start with the first contention. It rests on the idea that the last Labour government was profligate in office, recklessly racking up debts. Whilst it’s true that running a small deficit before the financial crisis and not regulating the banks properly left us more exposed to the global crash when it came (and Vince Cable deserved credit for warning of this), the crash itself and the necessary bank bailout it led to was overwhelmingly the largest factor behind the increase in the deficit. The media have allowed the Tories to get away with pretending they’d opposed pre-crisis spending and supported more regulation. It’s a great shame that the Lib Dems have chosen to help propagate these myths. What’s also a shame is that the coalition’s economic policy has largely failed, by delaying growth and tax receipts and thereby missing its deficit reduction target by around half. In the next parliament, Labour wants to balance the books about 2 years later than the Lib Dems, reducing the deficit every year. Any rational economic analysis would admit this is much more likely to work than the Tories’ bizarre slash-and-burn plans for the next parliament which the Lib Dems have rightly criticised. So who is the most fiscally responsible party here? Even if it’s not Labour (and they will have to make fewer cuts to public services), then on the Lib Dems’ own analysis they still must be a lot more responsible than the Tories.
Which leaves the question of a fairer society. Is Britain in 2015 fairer than it would have been under a Tory majority government? Yes. But, the thing about coalitions is- they happen when no party has such a majority. So we shouldn’t just expect things to be a teeny tiny bit fairer, we should expect them to be quite a bit fairer. Of course, this is always going to be a subjective judgement, but I believe the coalition’s record is not impressive. And no, this is not just about tuition fees (see 11)- it goes so much further than that. In the last five years, we have had: an unnecessary shake-up of the NHS which has fed into an AE crisis; welfare cuts so punitive that they raised the spectre of a UN investigation into human rights violations and forced a million people to rely on food banks; the hated “bedroom tax” (which mercifully shamed the Lib Dems into a u-turn); a tax cut for the very richest people in society, right in the middle of a period of austerity; failure to support funding for EU search-and-rescue operations in the Mediterranean (where over 1,500 migrants have drowned in 2015 alone); drastic cutbacks in central government funding of local councils; a failure to treat climate change with urgency by setting early decarbonisation targets; flood defence cuts in some of the very same areas that subsequently flooded; worries sparked by privatisation of UK search-and-rescue helicopters; the closure of nearly half of all coastguard centres; the end of universal access to justice through legal aid cuts; other civil liberties abuses (see 12); and the lowest level of housebuilding in peacetime since the 1920s. During a housing crisis.
We do of course have to balance all that against the coalition’s achievements- it was right to fund the pupil premium and take people on low wages out of income tax, the delivery of same-sex marriage was a historic moment, and yes- at least the deficit has been halved. But even if this does leave us in a better place overall than we were five years ago, that isn’t good enough. To judge a government’s record (or the contribution of each party to a coalition), the comparison that matters is not between the respective states of affairs at the beginning and end of that government, but between the actual state of affairs at the end and all the likely alternatives that could have played out instead. Many of which in this case would still have been coalitions between the Tories and Lib Dems, but with different deals, different policies and different outcomes. Which leads us onto
2) We had to do a deal with the Tories- there was no other option
In politics, there are always other options- it’s just that some of them are easier options than others. When the results of the last election were declared, the numbers didn’t look good for a Lib-Lab deal. The two parties in question had 315 seats combined, leaving them 8 seats short of 323 (the magic number needed for a majority when the speaker and abstentionist Sinn Fein MPs are removed from the calculation). There was an anti-Tory majority when you factored in MPs from other smaller parties, almost all of whom agreed more with Labour’s view on the deficit and public services in 2010 than they did with the Conservatives (including Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionists- First Minister Peter Robinson even stood on a joint platform with Welsh Labour’s Carwyn Jones and the SNP’s Alex Salmond to criticise the coalition’s economic policy in late 2010). However, it would have been an extremely fractious coalition, not all of the parties to the deal would have been prepared to act as government MPs who could be relied on in every vote, and Labour were not in a good place with the public having just lost their own majority after a long stint in government. For all these reasons and more besides, a Lib-Lab deal of some kind was far from the best option at the time.
However, as mentioned above, framing the question as a simple counterfactual choice between the Tories and Labour is highly misleading. In fact, even framing the choice as being between a confidence-and-supply agreement and a full coalition is misleading. We know this from David Laws’s aforementioned book. In it, he presents negotiations between his party and the Conservatives (negotiations he was directly involved in) as having been extremely smooth throughout. Resistance they expected to meet on thorny issues such as electoral reform simply never materialised. In part, this was because the Lib Dem negotiating team decided to take a tougher stance on the deficit than they had done in public during the campaign (see 3). But it was also because the Tories had done their homework on what the Lib Dems were likely to ask for- they had spent 13 years in opposition and didn’t want power to slip through their fingers at such a crucial moment. It’s for that reason that despite Labour’s weak position as an alternative partner, the Lib Dems nevertheless had a lot of leverage. Just how much it’s hard to tell- but that’s because they didn’t use most of it. One of the most interesting sections of Laws’s book is his account of the crucial meeting of the Lib Dem parliamentary parties (members of both Lords and Commons) on the 11th May 2010, five days after the election and a few hours before David Cameron moved into 10, Downing Street. Although all ordinary members of the party had to approve the coalition in a special conference vote on the 16th May, by then the coalition was effectively a done deal. To have put one foot in and then taken it back out again, in the process undermining not only their leader but all of their MPs too would have been a kamikaze gesture. Only those members feeling utterly betrayed and ready to tear up their party cards should have seriously contemplated this. So, the meeting on the 11th was the crucial moment. And Laws describes the atmosphere as being one of unanimity and elation. Surprising as this is, it’s worth considering that the document they had in front of them (published in Laws’s book) was scant on detail, and even omitted several items that formed part of the final agreement released to the press a few days later. Of course, many of the details could not be decided upon until legislation was actually written by ministers, though much of the worst of it could still have been prevented at these later stages too. Nevertheless, a slower, more deliberative process of negotiation and consultation within the party might have thrown light onto areas that caused problems later on, and might have allowed the party to discover the Tories’ true red lines and thus emerge with a significantly better deal. Which leads us onto
3) We had to reassure the markets or we would have become the next Greece
This is the main reason given for the rushed negotiations. There were lots of jitters about the situation in Greece and the Eurozone, and the markets had been reacting negatively to the uncertainty around the election result. As they held the balance of power, the Lib Dems were afraid that the media and the public would seek to blame them for any escalation in the economic crisis that might result from a collapse in market confidence. Britain is not used to long, drawn out coalition talks, and thus they wanted to conclude a deal as quickly as possible and deliver an emergency budget early in the parliament so as to reassure the markets that they were serious about reducing the deficit. This also led them to u-turn on their official economic policy, and agree with George Osborne that some of the cuts needed to be brought forward to within 2010/11.
First, let’s take the market reaction itself. The fall in the FTSE 100 in the week after the election was fairly unremarkable, and not even the only big drop of that year. Meanwhile, UK Government bonds (unlike Greek bonds) had been performing quite well an indication that we were not in any danger of defaulting. But suppose there had been a big reaction in the markets. Of course it’s important in any market economy to keep an eye on market performance- weak markets damage our economy in all kinds of ways, and that will ultimately have an impact on peoples’ wages, government tax receipts and our ability to fund public services. But there is a limit. We must always draw the line at allowing markets to decide who governs us. Democracy works on the principle of “one person, one vote”, not “one penny of shares, one vote”. Liberal Democrats explaining their motives for entering coalition are dangerously close to justifying many of the controversial policies mentioned earlier simply on the basis that they had to sate the markets. I don’t know about you, but that makes me profoundly uncomfortable about the way our society works, and I would like to believe that many of the coalition’s awful policies were avoidable without turning the markets against us. The alternative is pretty unpalatable.
4) To give the Tories a heart, and Labour a brain
No Dorothy, DO NOT follow the yellow brick road (see 1).
5) If we hadn’t dealt with the Tories they’d have called a second election and won
Perhaps. But this is both extremely presumptive about how people would have voted and also falls foul of the earlier argument that the Lib Dems could simply have done a better deal with the Tories and avoided this anyway. In any case, politicians that are so terrified of voters that they’ll agree to almost anything to avoid an election might want to consider a different profession.
6) Vote tactically to avoid the ugly spectre of “Blu-kip”
If you take a look at the latest seat forecasts, you’ll see that the electoral system (long the bugbear of the Lib Dems) is about to deal a hammer blow to the new third party, UKIP. They are about to win probably no more than 5 seats, and possibly as few as 1 on what might be up to 15% of the vote. This would actually be a more disproportionate result than most of those that have befallen the Liberals themselves ever since they fell into the “third party trap” in the 1920s. David Cameron is more likely to rely on the 8-10 seats of the DUP for support. They’re not a great party either, but then nor are the Tories themselves, and that doesn’t seem to stop the Lib Dems from propping them up. Which brings us to
7) We can’t set out our red lines, or we wouldn’t have any leverage
There is certainly a grain of truth here. If you give away your hand entirely before a negotiation, then you won’t be able to achieve as many concessions as you had hoped for. The trouble is, if you have a record of negotiating a deal that your voters weren’t very happy with, it’s not unreasonable for them to ask you to set out more detail before they’re prepared to hire you to negotiate on their behalf again. No trust with voters means no votes. No votes means no seats, and no seats means no leverage at all. What we do know is that the Lib Dems will demand that all of their key front-page manifesto pledges are delivered. As in 2010, there are some good pledges here- particularly on mental health, climate change and the education budget. But the party’s record is of being very good at getting the Tories to say “yes” to proposals like this, but completely spineless when it comes to saying “no” to many of the Tories’ own proposals. A Lib Dem leaflet thrust through my letterbox during this campaign boasts of Tory plans “blocked” by the Lib Dems in government. Tellingly, they could only come up with three they thought worth mentioning: regional pay in the public sector; the power for employers to fire people more easily; and allowing state schools to be run-for-profit. Compare that with all the policies set out in number 1 earlier, and it looks like a paltry effort. The retort to this will be that the coalition is about “give and take”, and that you have to do both. But how much you ought to give depends on who you’re dealing with. Many voters were shocked by this coalition because it seemed to be between two parties with very different philosophies. That doesn’t preclude a coalition, but it should restrict its scope.
8) Vote tactically more generally #WinningHere
You can probably see where I’m going with this given the answers to 6 and 7. There are still some reasons in some constituencies to consider voting Lib Dem. But there are probably more reasons not to do so. This puts me at odds with the Guardian, which has put out the traditional call for progressive voters in the South West to back the Lib Dems so as to deprive the Tories of too much influence in parliament. If (as I do) you live in a Tory-Lib Dem marginal then it’s true that the best chance you have of putting Ed Miliband in Downing Street instead of David Cameron is by voting Lib Dem. But it’s pretty difficult to hold your nose and vote for a party with such a terrible record in government. It’s even harder when they don’t rule out putting in the same lot again, especially when that lot have worse plans than before. And when they only rule out supporting one of those plans (a further £12bn of welfare cuts- but not necessarily cuts of 7, 8, 10 billion etc.), that hardly inspires much confidence either.
I have reached the conclusion that for a party to manage its first stint in government for aeons so poorly, and then not get punished for it at the ballot box risks sending that party entirely the wrong message. It risks the party making a permanent shift to the right, safe in the knowledge that it has our votes in perpetuity, and can do whatever it wants with them. And on the tactics at least (if not on the whole argument) the Liberal Democrats themselves ought to agree with me. Hundreds of Lib Dem candidates up and down the country are fighting hopelessly unwinnable seats, but they want to establish a party presence to build up strength for the long term. Whatever kind of change you believe in, it can take more than one election to achieve it- and it could ultimately be realised either by a third party eventually winning outright, or a first party responding to defeat by a second party that got in through the back door (as it were) in the right way. Which leads us to
9) But my local Lib Dem MP is great
Lots of Liberal Democrat MPs have built up a great reputation for themselves by working hard to help people in their area over a long period. My own MP Nick Harvey is one of them. But I’m afraid “local issues” do not and should not always trump “national issues”. Indeed, most national issues are local too. What happens to the NHS, benefits, jobs in defence etc all affect people at a local level. In fact, almost every issue decided in parliament has some impact on the lives of any given group of people in a small area, or else it would never have become an issue in the first place. Before you vote, scrutinise your MP’s record. If you didn’t like the policies mentioned in 1, then I’m afraid you’ll find precious few Lib Dem MPs who consistently rebelled against the whips in parliament. Even the biggest rebellion (on tuition fees) only brought out less than half of the party. This is why it’s mystifying to me that Nick Clegg is reported to be in more trouble in his seat than many of his colleagues who have supposedly less safe seats. They all marched into the lobbies behind him, they all deserve to suffer the same fate. The only two (out of 57) who I feel do deserve special mention are Andrew George and Julian Huppert. They both opposed nearly all of the coalition’s worst policies, and whilst it’s a little confusing that they seem to think the party is still a force for good anyway, at least they have had the guts to do the right thing and put their principles first on several occasions. Incidentally, George is fighting to hold onto St Ives in Cornwall, a straight two-horse race with the Tories. It was he who single-handedly engineered a u-turn on the bedroom tax with his backbench housing bill. Any individual who operates as a more effective brake on the Tories than the rest of his party combined deserves to be re-elected.
10) Look left, look right, then cross
Why do I feel like a flattened hedgehog all of a sudden? (See 1).
11) Tuition fees aren’t that bad after all- they’re actually a progressive graduate tax
We’ve heard an awful lot about tuition fees already (which is why I’ve deliberately placed them so far down this list). We know it was awful to blatantly break the pledge. We know it was ridiculous to apologise for making the pledge instead of for breaking it. But, putting trust issues aside, what about the substance of the policy? The good news is, some of the funding universities need to provide courses has been met. Although teaching grants were cut at the same time as fees were raised. What’s hard to believe though is the ineptitude of Vince Cable as a minister. The same man who undersold Royal Mail in this parliament also oversaw the tuition fee rise. And because the increase in the fee cap to £9k was combined with a new repayment threshold of £21k, the new regime is actually costing the taxpayer more money than the one it replaced.
So what about the graduate tax argument? That by raising the repayment threshold, Liberal Democrats in government have ensured that only graduates who can afford to repay their debts do so. Well, it’s not bad that some people are now paying less for their degree overall. But to what extent does the system really operate as a progressive tax? There are only two bands, under 21k pays nothing, over 21k pays everything. That doesn’t look like any progressive tax system I ever saw. Then there’s the serious question- why do we need a specific tax that is only targeted at some members of society? I’m reminded of the US state (I can’t remember which one) where citizens who’ve opted out of paying taxes towards the fire service fend for themselves as their house burns, whilst the hapless firefighters look on, waiting for the fire to spread to a property which did pay for the service. Ideally (though not until the public finances look prettier), higher education should be funded out of general taxation. Yes, not everybody goes to university but higher education is still a public good. I don’t think students should be encouraged to view their education as a product which they buy purely in order to get a nice cushy career. They should view the knowledge and skills they pick up as something to put back into society (whether through the public or private sector). A properly reformed tax system wouldn’t need to require those who didn’t go to university to pay any extra for this. Unless they were much wealthier of course, in which case they’d no longer get away with paying less tax than wealthy graduates.
12) All the other options are more illiberal
Labour were the party that brought us the Iraq War, attempted 90-day detention of terror suspects without trial, ASBOs and plenty of other questionable policies. The Greens don’t live in the real world (they want to abandon economic growth), the SNP and Plaid Cymru are obsessed with independence above all else. And UKIP- well, let’s not even go there shall we.
I’m not going to get into the Greens or the nationalists here, people will probably have their own strong views about some of those parties- which I may or may not agree with. But I do want to point out that even in a multi-party system change in a democracy sometimes comes about within parties (especially large ones) as much as it does through competition between parties. Since becoming Labour leader, Ed Miliband has deliberately moved his party in a different direction. Whatever you think about Iraq, you can’t accuse the younger Miliband of supporting the invasion. He apologised for it in his first speech as leader, couldn’t vote for it at the time because he wasn’t an MP, and had even telephoned his old boss Gordon Brown from America to try in vain to persuade him to veto it. Miliband has also (somewhat accidentally) kept us out of intervening in Syria, which looks a better choice in hindsight than it did at the time.
The thing to remember about civil liberties is that they don’t just include the freedoms we have to go about our daily lives without intrusion from the state, they also include the freedoms we exercise when we walk down the street without being shot at, beheaded or bombed. Labour did not get the balance right when it was last in office, and it’s not changed enough (or perhaps not revealed its hand enough) in opposition. But this is just one important issue among many. And we also have to recognise that the Lib Dem record in government on civil liberties has been a mixed bag too. TPIMs (Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures) aren’t a lot less restrictive than the Control Orders they replaced, but there is evidence that they’re a lot less effective (only 1 person is currently on a TPIM, others have successfully absconded). Charities and trade unions have found themselves with less campaigning power during election time thanks to the unusual effects of the highly partisan lobbying act. And I couldn’t quite fathom how a Liberal Democrat minister (not the Tory home secretary) could initiate a policy quite as illiberal as Norman Baker’s PSPOs (Public Space Protection Orders). Although I prefer Labour, anyone really incensed by the single issue of civil liberties abuses would surely choose the Greens rather than the Lib Dems?
13) Because we are the party of IN
Ominously, I’m going to end on a thirteenth reason. And this is the assertion that the Liberal Democrats are the party most likely to keep us in the European Union. I’m afraid this is just straightforwardly false. Labour support staying in too, and crucially, do not support holding an in-out referendum unless there is any significant further transfer of powers. Meanwhile, “the party of in” hasn’t ruled out agreeing to a referendum as part of any deal with the Tories. Perhaps this is an appropriate place to finish. After all, we have for decades been told that there is nothing Liberal Democrats are more passionate about than being pro-EU. And yet they might actually allow a government to form which risked taking us out. I think that sums up just how much of a muddle this once great liberal party has got itself into. It is drifting ever further to the right almost without noticing at all. This is especially tragic because Britain would be so much worse off without a strong, liberal voice (a voice prepared to say no sometimes as well as yes). We can only hope that if a new leader is installed after the election, they will not only learn lessons from defeat, but the right ones. Until then (and possibly beyond), I’m voting Labour.
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This post was amended on the 4th September 2014, to correct the figure given for the number of seats the Labour Party has in England. It now reads 191, it originally read 216 (which is actually one out from the rUK figure of 217).
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Ive been meaning to write a post about the great referendum for some time now, and with less than a month to go I realised I ought to get a move on, so here it is.
A while ago, I came across a particularly good summary of the case for the union by the businessman and blogger Kevin Hague (which you can find here. This is probably the most intelligent pro-union piece Ive read anywhere throughout the long neverendum campaign, so I decided that this post would mostly form a reply to it (although I will touch on several other points as well).
There have been some pretty shockingly poor arguments made on both sides during the last 3 years or so, so its refreshing to find a piece like Kevins (even when there are important parts of it that I disagree with). Im not even remotely an expert on economics, EU law etc, so its mostly the section of Kevins post titled We should Decide who Governs Us that Im going to concern myself with. This is based on a longer post which he made here (also well worth reading).
I will only make two quick points about the economics. First, to remind readers of both yes and no persuasion (and all shades in-between) that the choice in the referendum is for the long-term, not just for the next 5 years, or even the next few decades. Several of the arguments Ive seen against independence (and many for) have been so bogged down in the fine details of the present workings of the union that they dont seem to acknowledge this fact. On the pro-union side this has tended to manifest itself in arguments which focus on the inevitable instability of the first few years of independence, without acknowledging the potential benefits that might follow thereafter. There is plenty of scope for both potential future independent Scottish governments and (conversely) potential future UK governments to re-order Scotlands affairs, re-balance its economy and trade links, change its currency, alter its tax arrangements, and so on. There are many possible futures for Scotland, both inside and outside the union- the choice on the 18th September is only between which group of possibilities will remain open the following day.
Second (and this point is strongly related to the getting what we vote for argument that ensues), even if you sincerely believe the overall size of Scotlands pie will not increase, or might even get smaller, you still have to accept that arguments about social justice rely on the size of each individuals slice of the pie. It is no accident that polls on referendum voting intention so far have revealed an uncomfortable division along socio-economic class lines. Many of the haves are more-or-less content with the status quo, and see no reason to try changing the constitution. Many of the have-nots are not content with the way things are, and believe they have nothing to lose from independence. Try convincing someone below the poverty line that they are enjoying the benefits of the union and they will probably laugh in your face. They may be wrong to do that, there may be some benefits that we all share, but its hard not to sympathise with them for gambling on a different future. If Scotland consistently votes to the left of rUK (the rest of the United Kingdom), then it doesnt take a Nobel prize winner to see that wealth might be distributed more fairly in an independent Scotland. But more of this later.
The autobiographical bit
Some of my argument in this post is going to get a bit dry and complex, so I thought Id start with the obligatory, twee my journey to yes story.
Im English, and Ive just moved back to England, but I spent the last six years of my life at university in Scotland. When I first moved north, I was fairly instinctually unionist, though I couldnt have articulated why any better than something like because Im British (fortunately, Kevin Hagues argument is a lot more sophisticated than that). Nevertheless, I had some strange notion that I shouldnt really exercise my vote in Scotland because this would somehow be interfering in other peoples business (a notion Im entirely disabused of now, although I no longer have such a vote in any case). I saw myself as a Lib Dem politically, then after the great betrayal of 2010 and Labours post-defeat course-correction, as a supporter of that party instead. But once Id convinced myself I should vote in elections in Scotland, and surveyed the options available for the Holyrood vote in 2011, I found that I wasnt overly enamoured with the Scottish version of Labour.
Most Scottish Labour politicians are rude, frequently resort to personal insults of their opponents, and appear wedded to a set of policies that would be appropriate for a party seeking to govern the whole of the UK- but not one seeking to govern a devolved administration which is barred from running deficits (witness the whole we cant afford free tuition when we have debts to pay down argument). The SNP dont cover themselves in glory either, and between them the two parties seem to have created a Celtic and Rangers political culture. But I just couldnt understand (from a centre-left perspective) why so much bile was directed at a party which also stood on a centre-left platform. Werent the Tories the real enemy? I sympathised with the SNP (who seemed the more prepared of the two for government), but split my vote between Labour and the Greens in hope of some coalition or other.
Nevertheless, I was still unionist. Gradually, the independence issue started to dominate the agenda, and various arguments for and against began to emerge from the woodwork. I expected to find myself agreeing with the pro-union case, but every argument I saw just didnt make sense. Fallacy after fallacy after fallacy. Deep thinking ensued, and as I began to entertain the prospect of independence for the first time, and tested the arguments for it in my head, I was increasingly convinced. The big sell for me was the Scotland doesnt get what it votes for argument, particularly as I so strongly oppose the values driving Conservative governments in the UK, who do not rely on many votes in Scotland. The argument cant be put as simply as this however, so Ill proceed to set it out in more detail in the rest of this blogpost.
What is Nationalism? And is it dangerous?
Before I move on, I need to deal briefly with an argument that is often advanced against independence- that nationalist movements are inherently small-minded, racist, jingoistic and inward-looking. This is sometimes referred to as the but Nazis argument. Apologies to those who already see through this (Kevin Hague being among them I would suspect, since he focuses his argument on the size of nations), but a lot of otherwise intelligent folk do seem to have fallen into this trap, so its important to address it.
First of all, there is the distinction between ethnic and civic nationalism. The first label is broadly meant to refer to nationalist movements which are xenophobic in tone, displaying prejudice against people not of their own nationality and/or skin colour etc. Nationalist movements of this character are usually found opposing immigration and believing that people of their blood are somehow superior to everyone else. See the Nazis, Golden Dawn in Greece, and so on. Civic Nationalists, by contrast, are those nationalists who believe in governing their own affairs for the benefit of everyone (regardless of origin) who happens to live in their nation. They dont believe theyre better than anyone else, and they want to play their part on the world stage in just as constructive a manner as anyone else.
The majority of those seeking independence for Scotland deliberately shunned the ethnic nationalist route long ago. Probably the last important event in this struggle (so far as it could be called a struggle anyway) was the expulsion of the extremist Siol nan Gaidheal internal group by then SNP leader Gordon Wilson in the early 1980s. Even long before this incident, the SNP committed itself to a civic nationalist platform, and has become a party seeking (among other things) continued membership of the European Union for Scotland, and increased immigration to Scotland. The other significant pro-independence party (the Scottish Greens) can be similarly characterised.
The sharper-minded among you will note that the civic/ethnic distinction doesnt only have to be seen as an either/or distinction, and that there may be points along a scale between the two positions (so to speak). This is true, and I dont deny there are some voices in the Yes campaign who may at times sound too close to expressing anti-English sentiment, or giving the impression that they believe Scotland is somehow uniquely brilliant and capable of anything under the sun (not that it gets much sun). But I expect you will also note that such voices can be found among those supporting the union as well, by those who are patriotically British and those who are anti-immigration from a whole-UK perspective (naming no names, *cough* Nigel Farage *cough*).
You might nevertheless wonder why even the civic nationalist wants to divide us and create borders among us (as indeed many on the pro-union side do wonder, frequently). This seems like a good question, until you consider the larger context. This referendum is not about a choice between nationalism and internationalism, its a choice between Scotland being in the UK or not being in the UK. Its a choice between being a small dot on the map, or part of a slightly less small dot on the map. Both dots are, however, very small in the context of the whole map. It is ludicrous to suggest (as many have done) that independence (let alone independence in Europe with potential membership of NATO and continued spending on international development) would constitute shutting the door on the world.
Of course, you could hold to the position that any division whatsoever is against the spirit of internationalism, but then you would have to decide whether you really support the status quo anyway. If you believe in abolishing all borders, would you seek to bring this about tomorrow, or in the much longer term? If you see the EU as a necessary stepping stone on the way to this goal, is an additional layer of union between the 4 (or 3 and a half) nations of the UK really also necessary?
Speaking of the EU, bringing it into this debate is actually incredibly helpful, because it teaches us something about both unionism and nationalism. We tend to use the term unionist specifically within the context of British politics, to describe a particular view on the constitutional position of our United Kingdom. But the principle involved is of course no different to that behind any other political union in the world. The obvious examples that spring to mind are the United States and our old friend the EU. Obviously, there are important differences between the various unions around the world, the most significant being the distinction between federalist unions and unions run on something like the principle of subsidiarity. I dont have space to get into that here, but of course neither the US nor the EU perfectly fits just one of these labels when we scrutinise them closely.
What they do both have in common (but not with the UK) is a relatively large number of constituent parts (in their cases the member states, in the UK historic nations with a weird mixture of constitutional statuses). There are roughly 50 states in the US, and just under 30 in the EU, and as some of the founding fathers of the first of these unions (those behind the federalist papers) noted, a union that is apt to avoid factionalism must not have one member who outnumbers all the others, enabling its domination of the union. Sadly, this is exactly what happens in the UK.
Something else to note about these unions is their ostensibly national character. This is very evident in the US, where American nationalism at times seems worryingly close to the ethnic variant, but opponents of flag-waving nationalism cant ignore the way British identity (largely reinvented by the Victorians) has grown up largely in the lifetime of the UK itself. Even the EU has a flag, some of the more ardent federalists are obsessed with being pro-European and speaking of common European values, and encouraging as many common European institutions as possible. View nationalism and unionism in the full context of history and you will see that they are peas in a pod. Most nations began their life as loose alliances between kings, princes or dukes of different areas, initially as wartime alliances, later as full-blown political states. Sometimes this occurred by conquest instead, but co-operation has always been a (much more noble) incentive too. Nationalism of the civic variant is underpinned by exactly the same principle as unionism, they are both about enlarging your polity and co-operating with each other. Its just that not all national unions make sense.
The State of the Union: doing the electoral maths
Its time now to turn to Kevin Hagues argument (apologies for not getting there sooner). Kevin makes (at least) two very important points, one of them I believe is absolutely right, the other less so. What I think he is right to say is that nobody should support independence unless they sincerely believe that the benefits (and were not just talking economically here) outweigh the costs. He riffs on the theme taken up by Gordon Brown (who, as a Scottish ex-prime minister of the UK embodies the fact that Scotland has had at least some influence in the union), emphasising the extent to which union allows Scotland to pool and share both resources and risk with its neighbours.
Kevin is quite right to assert that supporters of independence have to believe in their cause despite the downsides of breaking the union, not in denial of them. As I hinted at earlier, not all of those downsides are guaranteed to be downsides in the long run, but we can at least acknowledge that we know some kind of benefit will accrue from union with rUK simply by observing the principle of union itself- that whatever belongs to rUK will by extension belong (in part) to Scotland too. It is disingenous to pretend otherwise. However, this cuts both ways and thus unionists must also sincerely believe that the benefits of independence are outweighed by its costs. Several of those in the No camp have displayed a similar disingenuousness on this score.
So, what are the benefits of independence? As I set out at the beginning of this post, my argument will be limited to exploring the main benefit (as I see it)- namely, the capacity for Scotland to choose its own governments and control its own affairs.
The reason it has been possible for this referendum to take place at all is the significant divergence in voting patterns that has occurred between Scotland and rUK (but principally England, especially the South of England) over the last 50 or so years, accelerating even more in the last 25 or so years, and now probably having reached its peak.
Scotland used to vote very similarly to England, generally electing Conservative governments when the whole of the UK did, and Labour governments when the whole of the UK did. Actually, this isnt quite true- there was a sort of golden age of electoral harmony existing in roughly the first half of the twentieth century, prior to which Scotland had for a good while elected Liberal MPs even when Conservatives triumphed south of the border. Perhaps ironically, the gradual extension of the franchise and the fusion of Scottish Conservatives and Liberal Unionists (in the wake of Gladstones attempts to secure home rule for Ireland) greatly bolstered the Tories in Scotland. But this Tory strength came to an end in the 1950s and dramatically declined (in several stages) over the next half-century.
Kevin Hague claims the trend since 1945 is not stark. I strongly beg to differ. The Conservative Party has not won a majority of constituencies in Scotland at a UK General Election since 1955. Conversely, the Labour Party (on its own- not requiring Liberals, Nats and Independents to be factored in) has won a majority of seats in Scotland at every UK General Election since then. Thats every election from 1959 to 2010 inclusive. The last fourteen elections in a row. That kind of thing does not happen when all is well within the union. And it isnt as though devolution has healed the breach- We all know the panda joke off by heart
We are told that this is just the normal workings of representative democracy, that you get your way in proportion to your size. One person, one vote. Five million people, five million votes. 59 representatives in parliament, 59 votes in parliament. But this brings us to Kevins second important point, which I think is partly right and partly wrong. He argues exactly this, that we should seek to be part of an optimally sized polity, one within which we attain the best possible balance between risk-pooling and resource-sharing on the one hand, and getting what we want on the other hand.
I say this is partly wrong, actually its not wrong at all- the problem is, rather, that I dont think Kevin applies this point consistently. Perhaps I have misunderstood, but in places he appears to suggest that it is illegitimate to use the getting what we want argument at all. Once you are inside a union, you have to accept the terms of that union, and you have to accept that your influence is proportionate to your population size, and thats just fair.
Except, this is an instance of the naturalistic fallacy. It is subtly stacking the deck against the supporter of independence to tell them they are opposing the outworkings of a representative democracy by questioning who ought to constitute that democracy in the first place. If we are allowed to weigh up the benefits and costs of the union, then the electoral mathematics themselves can legitimately be included among the costs. The fact that the English Right consistently outnumbers the Scottish Left/Poor/Disadvantaged/Whomever is itself a cost of the union.
Lets return to the numbers. Of those last 14 elections in which the majority of Scotland has opted for Labour, 6 of them (less than half) have resulted in a Labour government at Westminster, 2 of them featuring wafer-thin majorities of 5 seats or less (1964 and October 1974). Meanwhile, in the 8 elections since 1979 the Conservatives have won a majority of seats in England 5 times, and formed a majority at Westminster on 4 occasions (I apologise for not going back further but I have a list of UK election results for Scotland and not one for England, and I didnt want to be number-crunching forever. Its possible that the Tories might have squeaked English majorities in 64 and at least once in 74, 2005 was a hung result in England). Simple maths tells us that you can win elections in the UK without doing particularly well in Scotland, but you cannot win at all unless you capture a hefty proportion of seats in England, usually a majority.
This also gives the lie to the argument that independence will abandon rUK to perpetual Tory governance. If you remove roughly 8% of a countrys electorate (nearer a 9% share of seats at Westminster), then even if nearly all of their representatives are of a centre-left persuasion, it will only have a limited impact on the remaining 92%. Meanwhile, the removal of a bloc of voters many times larger than the 8% (and even in 1997 the Tories outnumbered all of Scotlands MPs put together by a factor of between 2 and 3, the reduction of Scottish seats since devolution would make it nearer to 3 now) will have a profound impact in the other direction. In other words, the Scottish Left stands to gain considerably more from Scottish independence than the rUK Left stands to lose. It is not selfish for centre-left Scots to break away, indeed it may actually be selfish for anyone on the centre-left elsewhere in the UK to demand that they stay.
One final point on these numbers- it may be contended by supporters of proportional representation that first-past-the-post exaggerates the extent of the divergence in voting patterns. This is true, but it nevertheless persists. The Conservatives have shrunk from a 50% share of the Scottish vote in 1955 to just 17% in 2010 (compared to 36% in the whole of the UK). Remarkably (considering the UK-wide reduction in two-party dominance since then) Labour records almost the same share now as it did back then- 42% in an election which it lost in 2010 (compared to 29% in the UK as a whole), down from 47% in 55. Labour has never during this period recorded less than 35% share of the vote in Scotland. The Tories havent got above 35% since 1970. Furthermore, in the aftermath of the failed attempt to implement AV, and considering the Scottish Parliament is already elected using a form of PR, might it not be the case that the best chance supporters of PR currently have of seeing it implemented for all national elections in Scotland at least, is to vote for independence? Worth mulling over.
The great democratic jigsaw puzzle
We all have to decide then what is the optimum size of nation or union to be a part of. Who would be in the union? What unifying interests would they all have? What conflicting interests would they have? If the whole world is a giant jigsaw puzzle, then each one of us individually is a little tiny piece of that jigsaw. It is unworkable at the moment to fit the entire jigsaw together, since there is too much argument, too much hostility against co-operation, and not enough willingness to share out our resources in a manner conducive to the liberty of each individual (no its not Scotlands oil, but who said it was Britains either?).
So, we have to decide how big a part of the jigsaw we can be part of. Shared history, shared values and shared culture have grouped several pieces of the jigsaw in our corner of the world into one British piece. But they have also created groups within this group, namely Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Whats more, weve all joined up collectively to a larger piece of the jigsaw, by joining the EU.
In this context, with long-term cleavages having opened up within the UK, this additional layer of union (the UK) no longer makes sense for Scotland. Granted, devolving more powers would be entirely welcome, but it would not fully solve the problem, and we are increasingly drifting towards a complicated dilemma over just how a federal United Kingdom would work (our UK executive is currently the same body as our English executive, and its composition is determined by our mixed UK and English legislature- this creates significant obstacles to federalism).
One other point to consider is the status of areas of the UK that vote differently to the whole without being seen as nations in their own right. Ill only look at a left-leaning example since my argument against secession of a right-leaning area would be a simple this will be bad for many of its citizens, and I hope the majority doesnt vote for it. Kevin Hague gives the example of Greater Manchester, but we could equally broaden this out to the whole of the North of England. For secession to work of course, the state seceding would have to be economically viable, and it would have to avoid abandoning those it left behind to an enormous shift in electoral forces. If both Scotland and the North left the UK, the impact on the remainder would be pretty severe, probably too severe. Scotland and Wales leaving would be more serious than just Scotland, but probably not intolerable (Labour currently has 191 seats out of 533 in England, after an election which it lost). The Welsh economy is of course presently much weaker than the Scottish economy. But if you could find a suitable area that met the criteria, should it secede? Perhaps. Maybe we will see such secession movements in the future. But many people in England see themselves as English and will probably still value this particular national union for quite some time. This probably reveals that Scottish history, culture and identity (even though all such identities are socially constructed) probably has something to do with the fact that independence for Scotland is seen as an option in the first place.
Summing it all up: Scotland should play its own part in the story of human co-operation
Putting all of this together then, we are left with a simple cost-benefit analysis. Kevin Hagues piece is very good at summing up all the costs of independence / benefits of the union, but a little too dismissive of the main benefit of independence / cost of the union. Scotland is inside two unions, one European, one British. One of these unions is lopsided, a union in which one member (England) is dominant. This might not matter if nobody saw themselves as English or Scottish any more, and it would be a slumbering beast if voting patterns were presently aligned. But they are not, the beast is wide awake, and it is injuring many individuals in Scotland by delivering control of their affairs to a centre-right bloc of voters in Southern England.
Poverty would not be wiped out in an independent Scotland, politics would be far from perfect, centre-right arguments may even do a lot better in the long run than they do currently. But, anyone who shares with me a centre-left perspective (even if they will ultimately come down in favour of the benefits of the union rather than the costs) must concede that independence would at least allow Scotland to give greater control of its affairs to those who are committed to social justice, without crippling this aim in the rest of the UK. The real objective for us all, in the long term, should of course be to work towards greater peace, greater co-operation and social justice for the whole world- in the context of which, both Scotland and the UK are just a small part of that struggle.
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RECAP: I *think* we have finally reached the last post in this series (which if I had any sense I would have found some way of grouping more obviously on this site- basically, every blogpost earlier than and including this one makes up the series, as its the first thing I wanted to blog about).
Ive been setting out the bare skeleton of my ethical/metaethical/political worldview, my belief structure (as philosophers sometimes call it), and explaining the links in the chain. Last time I began explaining how I would get from the ethical principles of a version of rule-utilitiarianism to a set of political principles, which I was about to name
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If we (as utilitarians) are concerned ultimately with the happiness of individuals, then we must ensure that our political decisions are aimed at bringing about precisely that. We could just do what seems to be in vogue among certain quarters in modern politics, and just blunder about following our instincts about what will produce our desired result, all the while dressing this up as pragmatism and following where the evidence leads. Of course there is room for both pragmatism and direct factual evidence in forming policy, but there is a broader kind of evidence which comes from the thinking we have already done about ethics which points clearly to certain secondary (political) principles which we can establish to help guide us.
People are happy when they are free to be happy. This is a fairly simple, but very important point. You cannot be happy when anything gets in the way of your happiness. It therefore makes sense for us to make freedom or liberty (I will use these terms interchangeably) one of our political principles. Now, it is important to distinguish two different conceptions of liberty (which I think were first pointed out by Isaiah Berlin). These are positive and negative conceptions of liberty. Put simply, a positive liberty is a freedom to do x (where x is some action that you want to carry out- or alternatively you could have a freedom to be x, such as the freedom to be happy). A negative liberty is a freedom from y (where y is some threat or other that will limit your freedom). It is entirely possible to conceive of liberty in either way, but it will make a big difference if you arbitrarily rule that it must only be conceived of in one of these ways. If (for instance) you only conceive of it negatively, you may be tempted to place too much stress on the removal of freedoms from people who already have a lot of them, and too little stress on giving more freedoms to those currently without them. It is much better to acknowledge that every freedom is both a freedom to do a particular something, and a freedom from interference with your ability to do it. For example, if I am free to walk down the street, then I must also be free from anything or anybody stopping me from walking down the street. If somebody chops off my legs, then I have lost this particular freedom both from a positive and from a negative view.
Notice also that although its possible to talk of freedom in abstract, we can be much more precise about what we mean by referring to particular freedoms belonging to particular persons. And then we can make another distinction, between formal and autonomous freedom. Formal freedom is the freedom to do what you want, autonomous freedom is the freedom to do what is actually best for you. If you recall my earlier post, then youll know that I dont (strictly speaking) think there is any difference between these two things! But because you have to unpeel a lot of layers of moral reasoning before you get all the way down to our basic want, the distinction is still useful. Autonomous individuals will be happy individuals, and it follows that we may sometimes have to coerce people for their own good. This is where we have to walk a tightrope to make sure that we really are making things better overall by intervening. Overly authoritarian policies will undermine the very autonomy they are trying to create by frustrating and upsetting people through unnecessary levels of coercion. On the other hand, extremely libertarian policies (we wont concern ourselves with the appropriateness of this label at the moment) will rely too much on peoples ability to make good choices that will lead to their own happiness.
We should now discuss the second major political principle which I think is necessary. And this is equality. If we have (as egoists) decided that we will each ultimately be best off by working in co-operation with each other, then we must be prepared to accept some notion of society. The French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau made famous the idea of the social contract, a sort of unwritten agreement between all the members of society, whereby we tacitly give our consent to be governed, and subject to laws. There is of course a huge debate about whether or not we really consider ourselves to be part of such a contract, and the extent to which it applies (can any of us opt out? should the state coerce anybody who has opted out?). I dont have space to discuss all the technicalities here, but I think these potential problems can be ironed out.
If we are concerned with pursuing mutual ends, then we must accord every individual invisible signature on our tacit agreement equal standing. This is what I mean by equality (others may mean something else, but I wont go into that here). All of the members of society must be treated as equals. Each members happiness is equally important, and thus each members liberty is equally important.
This may seem like an odd place to conclude. There is, naturally, a lot more that could be said about the implications of adopting these principles, not to mention the extrememly difficult (and potentially very controversial) debate over various ways they can be implemented (indeed, fixing our principles does not prevent the possibility of some quite enormous political arguments and divisions emerging). But I only wanted to arrive at the basic principles, and clear up some potential confusions about how they ought to be interpreted, and I hope that is done clearly enough to understand now.
Liberty and equality then, are to be our fundamental political principles, derived from our ethical principles. In slogan form, we might say something like Every citizen should have the equal right to the freedom to be happy. The only thing that remains to be said is to make a point about ideology. I touched on this in my previous post, but it should hopefully be clear now. There is absolutely nothing wrong with a politician having principles, indeed there is nothing wrong with having an ideology, provided it is based on the correct principles. Actually, its impossible not to have an ideology- since even a vague belief in pragmatically following your instincts and cherry-picking evidence to suit it is an ideology, it just happens to be a very poor ideology. I would dearly love it if we stopped using ideological as an insult, and instead replaced it with the accusation of being dogmatic. You might think theres no difference, but there is. It is entirely possible to be pragmatic (the opposite of dogmatic) within an ideological framework. If we (as utilitarians) are concerned with looking at the big picture, then we know that our principles demand that we do what is best overall, taking everyone into account, over the long run. This is almost the very definition of pragma, yet it springs from our principles- and any acceptable ideology we develop must also have originated in those very same principles.
So, thats it! If youre not completely bored out of your wits by now or arent reading this because you gave up round about the third or fourth post (or perhaps even earlier) then Id love to hear what you think of the many and various views I expressed along the way. If you think you have a better idea, or didnt understand something, or just want to direct general bile at me then feel free to comment on whichever of the posts seems most appropriate, or if you like you could chat to me about it on twitter @dunkindialectic *Expects absolutely zero response*
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RECAP: Ive been writing a series of posts (find them on my homepage) on my ethical worldview, on what system of morality I think is the right one, informed by what I think it means to talk about good and bad/right and wrong anyway. Its all been a bit grand and sweeping, and Ive deliberately not gone into very much detail- so if you think hard enough you can probably find lots of holes in it (which may or may not be fundamental flaws). To be absolutely consistent and well argued for, I would have needed to go into a lot more detail, but I only intended to lay out some bare bones.
Im going to finish off by moving from the ethical/moral to the political. I believe fundamental political principles should be (and can only be) grounded in moral principles, so Im going to attempt to explain how I would connect the two within my own belief structure. I should point out that this part also is going to be light on detail- political philosophy is another subject area where an awful lot has been written for and against various doctrines, so if you want a really thorough discussion youll have to find that elsewhere.
***
Morality is not something that politicians like to talk about any more. Or, at least, they think it only applies to certain areas of policy, such as laws on abortion or assisted dying. Similarly, politicians, commentators and journalists have come to use ideology as a dirty word. The ideologue is spoken of as a dangerous interloper in political discourse, who disregards evidence and pursues a dogmatic system of political principles as if it were some kind of religious creed. Dictionaries tend to agree with this definition of ideology, but I think it is an unhelpful way to characterise political philosophies.
We live in a scientific and information age, where it seems an awful lot can be established through empirical observation, trial and error, and analysis of data. This is a great thing, and it does allow us to greatly widen our knowledge, but there is a danger that we are allowing a creeping scientism to overtake us. The Ancient Greeks understood what science was, and (importantly) what it was not. They understood that all intellectual endeavour was ultimately philosophy: philo-sophia- the love of wisdom. Aristotle intoduced an early division of academic subject-headings, in which everything came under philosophy. What we could call science was referred to as natural philosophy (this is of course a slightly crude simplification of the way Aristotle divided up various disciplines, and we wouldnt agree entirely with some of the specifics- but the general principle here is correct). Science then, was seen as a branch of philosophy. Its name of course means much the same thing as philosophy, but its clear to see the difference in subject matter, and the sharper scientists out there can see that this is the correct order to put the two in. Science cannot answer everything. There is no scientific answer to the question why is there a universe? This doesnt mean that many of the non-scientific answers to such a question arent pretty awful (a lot of them are), but it is fundamentally a philosophical question. Meanwhile, any question that can be answered scientifically is still a philosophical question. Ask a philosopher why the sky is blue and they will tell you that most of that question requires an empirical method to be answered. Philosophy discovers science, indeed philosophy historically did discover science, and not the other way around.
Moral questions also fall under the category of questions that cannot be answered (in full) by the empirical method. Facts discovered empirically can certainly help inform ethical debate, but if you have no values then you cannot make the jump from the possession of facts to the conviction telling what you ought to do about those facts. And this affects political questions too, because every political question is fundamentally a question about what we ought and ought not to do, what it would be right to do, and what it would be wrong to do. They are, therefore, fundamentally moral questions, and rely for their answer on our ethical principles.
In my last post, I argued for a version of rule-utilitarianism as the correct system of ethics. So, what should rule-utilitarianism tell us about politics? The utilitarian part tells us that we should be concerned with the consequences of policies, chiefly with the levels of happiness and unhappiness that result from them. This is difficult to measure exactly (though theoretically possible if you accept that happiness is just the release of endorphins), but it is possible to use it as a general rule of thumb in policymaking (which is where the rule part starts to come in). We can also see that many laws fit rather well with the principle of rule-utilitarianism. Sometimes the law seems like an ass when it fails to make exceptions or allow for particular circumstances, but overall, most of the laws we have are necessary (or if you dont think so you can at least conclude that the principle of the rule of law is necessary). Laws are a useful guide to action, they decide for us what is right and wrong. They dont always get it right but thats why we have a parliament and elections to decide who updates our laws in it. In a world with no laws, the pure act-utilitarian would be forever wracked with indecision, trying to weigh up the consequences of their actions. They would soon discover the usefulness of rules and transform into a rule-utilitarian. Some of the rules would work as informal rules-of-thumb, others would seem to be so imperative that they are necessary to codify into laws.
There is more to say though. Following principles of utility will lead us into particular patterns of decision-making in the laws we implement. Asking what makes us happy will lead to the realisation that there are secondary and tertiary principles we can rely on time after time- principles which (when followed) are good at helping us make policy which leads to happiness. The principles Im referring to are what we usually see as being political principles. But this post is getting rather long now, so Ill save a discussion of them for next time. Ill also elaborate on what I said earlier about ideology and ideologues, though you may already be able to see where Im going with that
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RECAP: This blogpost wont make an awful lot of sense unless youve read the previous three, all of which you can find on my homepage. So far Ive argued that there is (strictly speaking) no such thing as good or bad, or if there are- then they are socially constructed concepts whose origin lies in our inability to prevent ourselves from wanting things. I argued that once all our layers of moral reasoning are unpeeled, what we fundamentally want is to be happy (which I asserted was nothing more than the experience of endorphins being released in our brains). I then argued that if we are ultimately concerned with our happiness, then we must be concerned with precisely that- our happiness (each of us individually). Finally, I suggested that this need not be as selfish a position as it appears (although it is technically selfish underneath it all, but lets not complicate things here). Its that theme which I want to pick up now.
***
We have a lot to gain by co-operating with each other. However mean-spirited you are, however much you find yourself hating other people, you have to admit that the evidence of the fruits of co-operation are all around you. None of us could self-sufficiently provide ourselves with all of the things which we utilise and enjoy on a daily basis, and it would take us each a lot more time and energy to attempt to provide ourselves with these things individually. At first, these observations may not seem directly connected to what Im going to say next, but hopefully it will all make sense later on.
There are two main dominant schools of thought within ethics (there is arguably a third, but its a lot harder to pin down so well ignore it for now). One group is made up of consequentialists put simply, people who think that what is good is intimately related to the notion of consequences. This usually takes the form of Act-Consequentialism- the view that actions have consequences, and therefore the right action is whatever has the best consequences. The main opponents of consequentialists are deontologists- people who believe that there are moral absolutes, actions and states-of-affairs which are just intrinsically bad or wrong.
A lot has been written in defence of these doctrines and there is no way I want to get into a detailed discussion of all the back-and-forth between them, so Ill just set out very simply my basic thoughts about them. Essentially, the deontological view seems entirely arbitrary to me. You cannot argue that an action is wrong or a state of affairs is bad on the grounds that it just is. No action is self-evidently wrong or there would be no need to exhort against it in the first place. Consequentialism makes a lot more sense to me, and the most famous version of it is Utilitarianism- usually summed up as being the doctrine which tells us to bring about the greatest happiness for the greatest number. Act-Utilitarianism (as a form of act-consequentialism) is regularly criticised for being impractical (you cant possibly know all the variables you need to know to judge what will produce the optimum happiness) and potentially resulting in various objectionable outcomes if followed to the letter (look up the repugnant conclusion if youre interested). Without going in to too much detail, I believe that something called Rule-Utilitarianism is the solution to these problems.
Rule-Utilitarians accept that its far too impractical to try and weigh up all the myriad pros and cons involved in every ethical dilemma you have to make in your life. As an alternative, they propose coming up with general rules of thumb which are designed to usually bring about optimum happiness. This might seem like a cop-out, but in the face of the impracticality objection its the best we can actually do to try and bring about optimum consequences, and thus it must actually bring about the optimum (or else there would be some other method that could be shown to do this better). We actually generate moral rules of thumb all the time. Its a time and effort saving device.
You might be thinking that rule-utilitarianism seems just as arbitrary as the absolute moral rules laid down by deontologists. But this is to fail to understand what rule-utilitarianism is meant to be about. Rule-Utilitarianism (as far as it makes sense to me anyway) is not about absolute, arbitrary rules because its rules derive their authority from act-utilitarianism itself. Act-Utilitarianism followed logically ought to discover quite naturally the usefulness of rules to further its ends, and so the two are ultimately one and the same doctrine, entirely compatible with each other.
One other sticking point is the idea of emergency exceptions. If the rules rest on act-utilitarian grounds, then how often should we be re-evaluating the rules weve come up with? If we felt the need to question the rules every single time then we would in effect have reverted to act-utilitarianism after all, wouldnt we? Well yes, we would. But theres no need to do this. The very discovery that rules are necessary for the utilitarian ought to go hand-in-hand with a realisation that we are not moral computers. The very reason weve come up with rules is because of our incapability to judge the best consequences in all circumstances. Sometimes we are under pressure, sometimes we dont have time to think, sometimes weve never done any moral philosophy or thought about whats right and wrong and could benefit from someone else having worked it out for us! There is no ban on re-evaluating the rules, they are not necessarily universally applicable in all times and in all places (though this probably depends on how fundamental a particular rule under discussion is). You use the rules when the specific circumstances (such as limited information, or limited time/energy) lead you to think it will be necessary, and conversely you question the rules and work out whether you think they properly apply when the circumstances allow you to do this instead.
The final thing to say about utilitarianism is that it is often thought to be at odds with egoism. So why have I argued for it as an egoist? Well, the egoist obviously doesnt adopt the greatest happiness for the greatest number mantra out of a view that we must achieve what is good for everyone just for the sake of it. The egoist can embrace utilitarianism because they believe in mutual co-operation. Your ends are achieved by co-operating with others and helping them to achieve their ends, so that they will reciprocate. And of course because it makes us feel good to help (as I mentioned last time). We might however have to tweak utilitarianism slightly, or lay down a few egoist ground rules. There is no direct reason for the egoist to concern themselves with non-existent (future) persons or animals, plants and so on that they cannot co-operate with, and who cannot be reasoned with to attain mutual goals. These are both obviously grey areas where we may be able to see things both ways- for instance: some animals can interact with us more than others, some people are extremely upset by watching animals suffer, some decisions that we make now will affect people who dont exist yet but will do long before we die. I wont go into a detailed discussion of these questions here, but they are potentially quite significant.
Right, Ive rushed this post a bit because I was keen to wrap up this series of blogs before it continued forever and ever amen, so my apologies if anything isnt entirely clear. Im particularly aware that Ive not come up with a lot of examples to illustrate points Ive made- this is mostly just because Im really bad at coming up with examples that dont make things more confusing because of all the details involved. Sorry about that. But we do now have our total picture of morality, a bare-bones ethical system to nudge us in the direction of working out what to do. And if Im right, every decision we make about what to do (however mundane) can be worked out according to this system (though it does obviously require an awful lot more flesh being put on the bones and can become very complicated and messy, which is why Im stopping here as far as ethics is concerned, and moving on to politics next). I will end then by summarising the entire argument in a sort of slogan form. I really hope it makes sense *crosses fingers*:
The right action is one determined by rules, rules designed to help us achieve the greatest happiness possible (the optimum endorphin-release over time) for ourselves. This is done by co-operating with all others that we can exist in society with to achieve our mutual end of optimum happiness.
Happy moralising
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This is the third in a series of blogs I started writing just after Christmas, in which I pretentiously lay out my entire moral-philosophical-political worldview in all its splendour/horror (delete to taste). Regretfully, I left things on a slightly awkward cliffhanger last time by declaring that we should all be egoists, selfishly pursuing our own good in preference to anyone elses. Sorry about that. The reason for the long hiatus was my ongoing quest to obtain the holy grail of an honours degree, which I have now failed in due to STRESS. So, having returned home with the wooden spoon of a general arts degree, its time to resume my blog. Are you all sitting comfortably? Then I shall continue
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Egoism is a terribly dirty word. Its one of those words which, once you understand its meaning, you want to tear its guts out and set it on fire. Or something. And no doubt, until I explain my reasons for being an egoist, youll want to do much the same to me. Which is fair enough I suppose. But Im going to argue that egoism is a much misunderstood child, that deep down, just wants to be loved. If only youd give it a chance *sniffs*.
First of all, remember the premise Im starting with from my previous blog- that we are compelled to be hedonists (pleasure-seekers and pain-avoiders). Its hard to think of us as being compelled that way as some kind of collective unit. We each think separately, we each experience emotion separately, and (crucially) we each experience the release of endorphins (which I take to constitute happiness) separately. At the most basic level, it seems that the hedonist must also be an egoist, since they cannot directly experience any pleasure which they seek to bring about in persons other than themselves. So, we cannot pick and choose here. If we accept that we are naturally compelled to be hedonists, then we must also be naturally compelled to be egoists.
Accepting this logic can be a pretty depressing place to find yourself in at first. We like to believe in caring for each other and the prospect of a selfish world in which everyone looks after themselves alone greatly saddens us. The idea that every good deed weve ever done for our neighbour was not in fact a good deed at all, but completely pointless seems hateful to us. But it should begin to become clear at this point that egoism cannot be caricatured quite as simply as it first appears. Consider some of the proverbs and sayings we are taught as children- do unto others as you would have done unto you. There is clearly mutual advantage in helping others. If you know your neignbour is just as hedonistic as you, then it stands to reason that you might be able to co-operate with them in bringing about whats good for you both. And thus society is born.
Nevertheless, this still might seem a pretty depressing picture of humankind. Which (given we are hedonists who dont like being depressed about things) suggests that there is still more to be said here. A society where we only help others so long as we can see how it will directly benefit us in return doesnt appeal to (most of) us very much at all. But the egoist can go much further than that without ceasing to be an egoist. First of all, we can all see ways in which we benefit from being part of a society where we do things that can sometimes seem very remote from our own ends. We worked out how useful the division of labour was a very long time ago. Fred develops his skill in hunting mammoths whilst Joe develops his skill in making tools. They would both achieve less if they tried to split their time between the two tasks and compete with each other for resources. There are all sorts of things you do every day that might not immediately appear to be in your interest which you can probably work out will have some benefit to you (however indirect) once the whole chain of cause-and-effect has been taken into account.
So what about altruism? Genuinely unselfish acts, intended to benefit others and not ourselves in any way whatsoever. Well, genuine altruism would indeed have to be inconsistent with egoism, and therefore to be ruled irrational. But I believe there are many cases of merely apparent altruism, in which seemingly unselfish acts can either have some selfish motive after all, or if they dont, could at least be justified that way should the agent want to square them with egoism. Consider a world in which everybody stopped acting altruistically overnight. Tomorrow morning, the world wouldnt be a very nice place to live in. I think (as an egoist) I would rather going on being nice to strangers and believing in solidarity with others than have to live in such a world. Because its in my interest, and therefore not inconsistent with egoism.
Finally, you might remember I mentioned in my first blog that I think its futile to try and struggle too hard against our irrational emotions. In fact, psychologists tell us that we will (ironically) be happier if we devote our energies to projects beyond our own immediate happiness. So, it follows that thats exactly what the egoist ought to do. Love is an irrational emotion but doesnt it just feel great when you do things for someone out of love alone? Helping others is actually good for the egoist in all kinds of ways, both in terms of their own direct psychological wellbeing when they help out, and in terms of the benefits they receive from being part of a complex, interconnected social web of human beings.
The only caveat Im afraid is that heroic people who lay down their own life for others (or seriously compromise their own wellbeing), in cases where they are almost certain they will die or end up worse off have got it wrong according to egoism. Unless there is some reason why their not sacrificing themselves would lead to a situation in which their wellbeing was severely compromised anyway, then they are being irrational, and ought to try and talk themselves out of it. But other than that, yes you can go and tell that man down the street who never helps old ladies across the road how much of a selfish bastard he is, and still be an egoist. Tell him from me. Tell him good. Selfish little bastard
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RECAP: In my first blog, I discussed the meaning of goodness, decided there was none, asserted that we nevertheless cannot avoid the irrational compulsion to seek pleasure and avoid pain (endorphin-whores that we are), and then went and cringed in a dark room over the fact something Id written was now on the internet
Now I want to talk about the system of ethics I think we should build as a result of these more fundamental beliefs. (Incidentally, if youre not well acquainted with philosophy and want to know what to call the sort of discussion that was going on in my first blog, its metaethics the study of the ideas, concepts and language employed in ethical discussion).
Of course (strictly speaking), if moral terms are totally arbitrary and meaningless, then so is any system of morality that trades on them. But if we are compelled to seek happiness irrationally, then were also compelled (ironically) to use our reasoning faculties in working out how best to get it. And as I said before, I think that means the endless pursuit of endorphin-release in our brains. This last point is probably controversial. It was the famous nineteenth-century philosopher (and liberal politician) John Stuart Mill who pointed out that there are different kinds of pleasure and pain, some more base (so-to-speak), others more intellectual, and a whole range in-between. His famous example was that anyone should prefer to be an unhappy human being than a happy pig. I think he might have been wrong about this. No really.
I think there are two questions to ask here. Firstly, under what circumstances is a pig happier than a human being? And secondly, if we really would be happier as pigs (and it were miraculously possible to instantaneously wish oneself into piggy form), why is it that we would prefer not to do this?
Pigs do not live as long as human beings. You could be an incredibly happy swine and still not experience as much happiness over your lifetime as a thorough misery guts (Morrissey, say). Of course you may also have experienced less pain and displeasure, so we would have to factor this in and do a sort of cost-benefit analysis, but once we had I think we would find that most human beings have better lives than pigs without any need to appeal to kinds of pleasure. In fact, the ability of humans to self-reflect to a greater extent than pigs probably allows greater appreciation of pleasure, and greater anticipation of it (and thus even more yummy endorphins).
Ok, so humans who are very unhappy for a long time, reflecting on their unhappiness and anticipating even more of it might still be unable to escape the conclusion that theyd be better off as pigs. So what? If none of us could actually bring ourselves to accept such an unusual transformation, I dont see that as proof of its irrationality. I think the instinct of self-preservation and disgust of otherness (in this case pigginess) are not themselves rational. Im incapable of overcoming my emotional attachment to continuing to be me in the form that I exist in, but that doesnt mean I have to skew my reasoning to accomodate myself to this feeling.
Consider another example. If endorphin-release is all that matters to us, then we would be rational to just hook ourselves up to futuristic machines that feed us a constant supply. The idea seems hateful to me, and probably also to you, but what would be any more irrational about it than the pursuit of happiness through other means? Nothing that I can see. We can listen to our emotions, we can decide its easier to surf their tides than struggle against them, but we dont have to agree with them.
So, we should be hedonists (or perhaps it would be more accurate to say we just are hedonists, like it or not). I think we should also be egoists (pursuing our own ends, not those of others equally). I was going to try and finish talking about the ethical system we should deploy in this blog, but that last point is going to need a LOT of explanation, and removal of potential misconceptions. So Ill leave it for next time.
Now youll have to excuse me, I have some muck to roll around in and I havent finished all my pigswill from dinnertime. Oink.
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This is my first blog. So be nice! I wanted to set out my general philosophical, moral and political views in a short series of blogs- in other words, a brief sketch of most of what philosophers would call my belief structure. Not because I want to preach to the world (though my father is a man of the cloth), but because it actually seems like quite a useful way to check that it all makes sense to me, and because I can refer people back to it when blogging about something more specific and not having time to explain basic premises of my thought. Im just a student, and I dont claim to be imbued with flowing chocolate fountains of knowledge (perhaps literally, as I think I might be a sceptic), or to have read anything like as widely as I should have done so far in life. So you can just take this as it comes- my ever so insignificant opinions on the world as of so far. In fact, youre very welcome to disagree with me in the comments or tell me what I should have read, or tell me that what I did read I didnt read carefully enough! Right, thats the humble pie bit over with
Now Im just going to get down to business without any attempt at a rhetorical flourish linking us to my first topic. Which is goodness. Because any talk of right or wrong (which politics is absolutely full of) essentially concerns this. Philosophers have puzzled over it for millennia. We all think we know what good means, but have you ever tried explaining it without chasing yourself in circles? I imagine it goes something like this: well, it means, yknow- good, doesnt it?! Like helping old ladies cross the road, and remembering your boy scouts pledge, and going to church. Well, maybe the last one depends. And possibly the one before as well. See, not everyone agrees on what is good. But everyone knows what it means!
Unsurprisingly, I dont find such a definition very helpful. We cant just define something by citing all of its instances, we need to explain the very nature of the thing, its very meaning. The 20th century philosopher G.E. Moore just sort of gave up on this task. He said it was an unanalysable concept which we just had to accept as it was (more-or-less). This isnt very satisfying either, as it doesnt tell us when something or someone instantiates goodness and when they dont. Nor does it eliminate the possibility that weve made the whole thing up.
We all make value-judgements. We attribute goodness and badness to people, things, states of affairs etc. But what is our reason to believe each of them has the respective moral value we place on it? It cannot just be obvious what is good and what is not, since there is so much disagreement between moral agents. I think this probably rules out the idea that goodness is a natural property, just found out there in the world. Or that we have any kind of moral sense (as was a popular view in some circles in the 18th and 19th centuries). Another answer is that we just express how we feel when we make value judgements. Such that the proposition cake is good means hurrah to cake!. But this doesnt explain how we could then go on to universalise ethical norms from such a view. Moving from hurrah to cake! to I/you/humankind in general should eat cake might seem obvious to us, but the introduction of the normative should here is arbitrary. Why should we act in this way?
Im more sympathetic to a view known as Error Theory, which says that (strictly speaking) there is no such thing as morality. Or if there is any such thing, its entirely socially constructed. Just to be clear what that means, its not to say that we construct notions of morality to suit some end of society- because without normative shoulds and oughts there is no rational end to human action whatsoever. Rather, it is to say that we invent the end arbitrarily. We move from the observation of facts, and the presence of irrational emotions to determine that some things/people/states of affairs are desirable and others are not, and that we should act on this. Completely irrational in my opinion. Yet, intriguingly, impossible to resist. I think we are compelled by our nature to seek our own happiness. Which I (perhaps controversially) take to be nothing more than the release of endorphins in our brains. It is impossible to stop yourself from wanting things, and I believe that whatever you want, once all the layers of reasoning behind your want have been unpeeled, it all boils down to the irrational but irresistible pursuit of more endorphins being released. And yes, that includes times when you believe you are being altruistic or acting deliberately against your interests. Because you have chosen to do so (it doesnt matter whether your reasoning is sound or not) in order to achieve some end which you think is good. And that makes you happy. Im going to sacrifice myself to save my lover because I dont want him/her to die. I dont want them to die because they dont deserve to die. They deserve to live because it is good that they live. I want what is good. Again, completely irrational, but I think they want what is good because they think it will make them happy. This may not even be particularly unsound reasoning on their part- after all, a life of bereavement might be pretty miserable. (I should also make clear that the fact good is being sought in this example doesnt mean it really exists mind-independently. Thats besides the point being made.)
So, strictly speaking, no morality. But what Im getting at is that I think were all compelled to be hedonists (pleasure-seekers and pain-avoiders) anyway. Many of us just dont realise it. And so we may as well build a kind of ethics (albeit a completely irrational ethics) on top of this discovery.
Right, that all felt insufferably smug so Im just off to cringe in a dark room for a while (dont worry- Ill get used to this eventually). Ill be back soon with the next part, on what kind of ethical system I think we should build.
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