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Gregor McLennan
© Gregor McLennan 2007
Erik Olin Wright nicely states that alternatives to contemporary capitalist society can be elaborated and evaluated in terms of three things: desirability, viability, and achievability. I want to focus here on the first criterion, which Wright plays down in his understandable emphasis on viability. Institutional arrangements and the articulation of first principles are in fact intimately intertwined. If, for example, you think that the principle of democratic equality today is best understood in multiculturalist terms, then you may accept, and even promote, faith schools. If on the other hand, you are disturbed by the development of educational segregation, then you may want to reconsider whether multiculturalism itself is an appropriate normative expression of 'deep democracy'.
The Left currently has no viable institutional programme partly because it is no longer obvious that we agree about what is desirable. With the term socialism apparently superseded, we are caught between various successor headlines carrying significantly different ethical and social implications - emancipation, social justice, equality, ecology, group rights, anti-globalisation, queer politics, and so on - each of which can be found in both impossibly radical and utterly bland forms. The further puzzle arises as to whether the Left is simply an ageing, redundant name for the plurality of all these oppositional currents, or whether it still carries the promise of their positive summation. Plus: just how culturally, morally and socially pluralistic is it desirable and feasible to be? With such difficult questions constantly in play, it is no wonder we have lost a sense of common ground, and lack the kind of 'social imaginary' without which motivation flags and solidarity fragments.
If the Left is to re-discover its potency, it needs to adopt what I would describe as 'a new progressivism'. Something of this mood can be discerned in academic thinking around cosmopolitanism, planetary humanism, deliberative democracy and the like, but the notes struck there tend to be muted, because progressivism, as we will see, breaches the prevailing intellectual comfort zone. Surprisingly, progressivism has also made a late run on the rails to get into the Compass picture of the Good Society - it did not figure in earlier murmurings of 'renewal'. So perhaps progressivism is now a veritable 'sign of the times'. To take this further, I give an interpretation of what I see as its main elements, leaning to some extent on the foremost progressivist theorist of the day, Roberto Mangabeira Unger. Since Unger himself does not tend to pause and 'dialogue' in a way that I think we must in this Soundings debate, I also interject some relevant critical probes as I go along.
1. Persons
Erik Wright says that in exploring what is desirable, we are framing the
moral principles that our social alternative will follow. I don't entirely
agree. Maybe there has been too much emphasis on principles and not
enough on people, on the type of person we might wish to nurture,
admire, and become. For example, along with Marx, I think we should be more
sceptical about the principle of equality, not least when we observe
the many leaden, ludicrous and oppressive things that have been done in
its name, whether by Stalinists in the old days or by social democratic
apparatchiks today, or for that matter by new managerialists who 'lead'
our organizations. The point is that whilst we should certainly strive to
eliminate the radical inequalities that prevent people living fulfilled
lives, it is not necessarily the case that equality of condition, equality
of regard, and equality of treatment are desirable in themselves. Instead,
we need to judge principles and policies according to whether they enhance
or restrict people's (everyone's) ability to think, act, learn, love,
appreciate, grow and achieve, both individually and collectively, in a situation
of sufficient material well-being. The desirable society is thus one in
which everyone is, or has been, or will become, or could choose to be such
a multiply accomplished and generous-minded person, working in close association
with other such persons.
Critical interjection: Isn't this just a latter day re-run of 'Socialist Man', with all its top-down and patriarchal connotations? And won't such a 'promethean' ethic inevitably come to grief on the rocks of the mundane priorities and murky sidelines that people will always have?
2. Majorities
Progressivism builds its politics on a sense of what most people share in
common rather than what divides them. Its outlook is majoritarian, partly
because a radical democratic society is one that should be good for all
of us, and should be perceived as such by most of us. And as
a political culture, deep democracy simply cannot function without turning
particularistic issues into general interests and majority concerns, with
decision-making mechanisms reflecting this. Yet the radical Left seems at
times to have forgotten these basic 'majoritarian' facts about political
motivation and the battle of ideas, settling instead for a minoritarian
moralism and victimology.
Critical interjection: Aren't you wiping out here all the gains made by the 'politics of difference'? What about the classic dangers of the 'tyranny of the majority'?
3. Capacities.
Where minoritarian and multiculturalist Left views emphasise the 'recognition'
of identities as a condition of both self-hood and democracy, progressivists
prioritize the development of our capacities. Identity politics is heavily
burdened by the power of the past and by present sectional interests; capacity
politics is more future-oriented, emphasising our ability, individually
and together, to go beyond where we have been and beyond what we
are now. Our cultures of education and learning are crucial here, with much
thinking on the Right and Left alike seemingly besotted with the notion
that our schools and universities must 'serve' and 'engage with' stakeholding
communities, whether these be socially classified neighbourhoods, city councils,
ethnic groups, religious creeds, or business enterprises. But instead of
this situation of interest-group capture, and despite favoured notions of
'situated knowledge', we need to re-emphasize the inspirational, intrinsic
qualities of disinterested knowledge, of world- and self-discovery
and invention. As Unger repeatedly insists, the idea is to produce
context-breaking, not context-reinforcing minds and energies
(though he consistently underestimates the structural constraints that established
contexts impose).
Critical interjection: You're surely not arguing that old elitist 'liberal' notions of disinterested knowledge are fine, just so long as we get the numbers up?
4. Productivism
Some years ago, the discovery of the fact and the pleasures of consumerism
in postmodern capitalism seemed to seal the fate of traditional Marxist
benchmarks around economic production and work. Green political arguments
had similar effect. But this critique of 'economism' was only partly valid.
This is because neither the politics of consumption, nor the politics of
stewardship, nor even the more recent emphasis on the politics of care
and concern can ever sufficiently motivate or sustain an alternative
societal programme. In fact, the wider meaning of productivism encapsulates
far more than an economically functional work ethic - though the continuing
need for this should not be underestimated. Progressivist productivism additionally
points up the necessity and value of purposeful labour wherever it occurs,
the more cooperative and self-directed the better. It emphasises that we
can all be both producers and carers, and that purposeful production
encompasses all the rigours and beauties and fantasies of disciplined creativity
too. Productive people want to make things happen, they want to innovate,
and they want results, whether in the workplace or in their own personal
space. The Left cannot cede these indispensable attributes to the Right.
Critical interjection:
OK, it's back to the early Marx, then. But all the talk of production and
labour conveniently sidesteps the issue of
5. The spirit of
science
Cultural radicals have too easily dismissed the intellectual and social
centrality of science, whether by rubbishing the high-minded search for
objectivity (which never means the attainment of absolute, timeless
truth), or by over-stating the social situatedness of knowledge. Meanwhile,
the faith placed on alternative notions such as 'reflexivity' has been more
than such sometimes rather flaky ideas can bear. Luckily, change is afoot,
with the logical dependence of reflexivity on positivity being increasingly
recognised, the robust public fallibilism of science appreciated, and its
astonishingly imaginative character grasped, especially, thankfully, by
young people. Progressive intellectuals therefore need to be more firmly
- though no doubt reflexively - on the side of science.
Critical interjection: Isn't this just good old bourgeois positivism rolling back the years?
6. Secularism,
humanism, atheism
With the current apparent revival of religion and spirituality, key components
of the progressivist outlook - secularism, humanism and atheism - have come
under increasing questioning and attack. The idea has taken hold that we
need to be 'friendly' to religion, and at all costs avoid being 'offensive'
to those with cherished beliefs that inscribe who they (think they) are.
Progressives need to respond to this challenge by fully accepting the right
of religious people (and anyone else) to say what they think in the terms
they prefer, and to carry out their faith-work freely, as long as this does
not involve aggressive or violent proselytising. People who happen to be
religious, like anyone else, are to be respected as people and citizens,
and insofar as all the major religions come in versions that are soft on
humanism, common cause can often readily be made. But we seem to have forgotten
that if the Left is to be worth anything, it must actually stand for
something, so it cannot be infinitely hospitable to all manner of faiths
and fancies simply out of common human respect.
With regard to secularism, therefore, progressivists need to argue that in fact 'we have never been secular'; that secularism is anyway not equivalent either to humanism or atheism; and that secularism has if anything been the saving of religion and religious toleration, not its enemy. As for humanism, progressivists need to emphasise that our understanding of the essential 'this-worldliness' of social problems and solutions differs fundamentally from any outlook in which a (genuine) concern for humanity comes only courtesy of God's will. Atheism, finally, is no more, but no less, than the considered view that there is no good reason to suppose that supernatural beings and agencies, especially those uncannily resembling human beings and social agencies, either exist, or influence our origins and destiny. None of this means that, in Dawkins's terms, religious people are straightforwardly or uniformly 'deluded', nor that religion ceases to be a fascinating and significant phenomenon in terms of the social and personal functions it serves. But wherever moral and political arguments in everyday life are said to be grounded in religious truths and entities, progressives should routinely counter such presuppositions, and they must urgently oppose any theocratic tendencies arising in the public political sphere.
Critical interjection: But does it really matter if 'progressive' causes, such as anti-imperialism, or the protection of cultural rights, are being pursued through ostensibly 'regressive' beliefs? And isn't even your sort of 'reasonable' atheism/secularism - indeed your progressivism generally - valid only in terms of a distinctly Eurocentric post-enlightenment world view?
In sum:
The various critical thoughts that I have interjected are fair and serious,
and take some time to clarify and answer convincingly. But I do think that
they can all be convincingly responded to. I also think that Unger
is right to hold that the kind of 'high energy' politics that sustainable
radical democracy requires can only be based on something like the progressivist
ethic outlined in this contribution. Of course, this hardly pre-empts Wright's
question of how to construct viable alternative institutions, nor does it
meet the concern that will be pressed by those standing to the Left of Wright,
namely: just how total must the transformation of capitalist social relations
be to fulfil the radical promise of progressivism? Even so, progressivism
of the sort discussed at least pushes both the 'old' and the 'new' Left
towards a much needed change of style in their political and intellectual
discourse.
Gregor McLennan is professor of sociology at the University of Bristol, and author of the recently published Sociological Cultural Studies: Reflexivity and Positivity in the Human Sciences (Palgrave).
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