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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 With the term socialism apparently superseded, we are caught between various successor headlines carrying significantly different ethical and social implications - emancipation, social justice, equality,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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