A freedom that needs redefining
Friday, 9 November 2007
John Lloyd
Democracy's friends," concludes Stein Ringen, "should now sound loud and clear a warning about democracy's quality." The conclusion is the book's subject: Ringen, a Norwegian sociologist at Oxford, believes that democracy has won in the world while losing the attachment of the people. This is not the fault of citizens grown careless of exercising their rights. "The citizens," Ringen believes, "are sophisticated, and their democracies are wanting."
On this premise, Ringen sets out a case for renewing democracy. It is a social democratic one (though he does not use the phrase), if shorn of the democratic illusions that the left has nurtured. "People's democracy" is bundled off the scene early, with the communist collapse in 1989; but so too is economic democracy, which, Ringen concludes after a careful examination, is generally rejected by those who would benefit politically. Though they may believe that the capitalists have too much economic power, they fear that a transfer to a broader ownership would mean a loss of efficiency. More perilous to the very rich in an image-conscious age is what he calls "outrageous or outrageously used income and wealth", which catches the attention of the majority, who may exert punishment through politics.
The main burden of his argument concerns the way in which freedom can be ensured for those who live under its conditions. He believes in what Isaiah Berlin called "negative liberty"', saying that "the fundamental sense of freedom is freedom from chains ... the rest is extension". But it is Berlin's "extension in which he is really interested indeed, he believes that only by extension are the chains truly struck off.
Freedom, he reasons, must have resources to be free: to be free to do or choose a thing, but lack the means to do or choose, is not to be free. The provider of the means must generally be the state: in his vision, the state has a great deal to do to ensure freedom. The classic liberals' difficulty with this -- the more the state has to do, the larger it becomes and the greater its temptation to constrain liberty -- is largely dismissed, usually tacitly.
The need to insure people against destitute old age through pension reform that will be at least state backed; to combat poverty through, first, an understanding that it cannot be tolerated in a wealthy society; to provide for increasingly better education -- all these are needed to ensure real freedom. Ringezi conducts a fascinating argument on the family and its centrality. He sees it as a largely social unit, and thus one in whose continued existence the state should take an active hand. Families, he says, have not changed much in the past four centuries, except that they have got smaller and both parents mostly want to work. Marriage should be encouraged by offering a subsidy for weddings. Subsidies for children should be increased and men must adapt to the consequences of sexual equality -- as women already have.
What Democracy Is For
On Freedom and Moral Government
By Stein Ringen (Princeton), $39.50
Full freedom needs reason as well as resources. He writes that where "a political leadership removes from you your ability to act freely, a psychological dictatorship removes from you the ability to decide freely why to act". This seems to me among the most interesting parts of his work: a reworking, in accessible and convincing detail, of others' insights (all the way back to Plato and Aristotle) that the person demanding freedom to indulge unexamined impulses is a slave.
But he pushes it too far and, in doing, betrays or at least dilutes the power of his earlier arguments. "We are what we are," he writes, "by virtue of our anchorage in community with others." What if being a member of the community comes, at the price of acquiescing in evil? He does not quiet suspicion that he has thought too little of this by his curious use of a literary analogy, saying that Henrik Ibsen, in his play, An Enemy of the People, was wrong to represent his hero as a man who drew strength from standing alone, saying that "he who stands alone is lost: strong is he who has the support of others". But the hero of Ibsen's play, Dr Stockmann, stands alone on a matter of conscience. His is the moral position -- akin to that taken by Fielding, the Englishman who betrays his caste" by siding with the Indians in E.M. Forster's A Passage to India. The support of others can be a betrayal of freedom, as much as its condition.
This is a strong and thoughtful argument for putting positive flesh on the skeleton of negative liberty. Liberty does need more than simple absence of chains. But "community" can stifle, imprison, even kill liberty, as well as amplify it. The past century -- and even the few years of the present one - bear enough witness to that.
Under syndication arrangement
with FE
Democracy's friends," concludes Stein Ringen, "should now sound loud and clear a warning about democracy's quality." The conclusion is the book's subject: Ringen, a Norwegian sociologist at Oxford, believes that democracy has won in the world while losing the attachment of the people. This is not the fault of citizens grown careless of exercising their rights. "The citizens," Ringen believes, "are sophisticated, and their democracies are wanting."
On this premise, Ringen sets out a case for renewing democracy. It is a social democratic one (though he does not use the phrase), if shorn of the democratic illusions that the left has nurtured. "People's democracy" is bundled off the scene early, with the communist collapse in 1989; but so too is economic democracy, which, Ringen concludes after a careful examination, is generally rejected by those who would benefit politically. Though they may believe that the capitalists have too much economic power, they fear that a transfer to a broader ownership would mean a loss of efficiency. More perilous to the very rich in an image-conscious age is what he calls "outrageous or outrageously used income and wealth", which catches the attention of the majority, who may exert punishment through politics.
The main burden of his argument concerns the way in which freedom can be ensured for those who live under its conditions. He believes in what Isaiah Berlin called "negative liberty"', saying that "the fundamental sense of freedom is freedom from chains ... the rest is extension". But it is Berlin's "extension in which he is really interested indeed, he believes that only by extension are the chains truly struck off.
Freedom, he reasons, must have resources to be free: to be free to do or choose a thing, but lack the means to do or choose, is not to be free. The provider of the means must generally be the state: in his vision, the state has a great deal to do to ensure freedom. The classic liberals' difficulty with this -- the more the state has to do, the larger it becomes and the greater its temptation to constrain liberty -- is largely dismissed, usually tacitly.
The need to insure people against destitute old age through pension reform that will be at least state backed; to combat poverty through, first, an understanding that it cannot be tolerated in a wealthy society; to provide for increasingly better education -- all these are needed to ensure real freedom. Ringezi conducts a fascinating argument on the family and its centrality. He sees it as a largely social unit, and thus one in whose continued existence the state should take an active hand. Families, he says, have not changed much in the past four centuries, except that they have got smaller and both parents mostly want to work. Marriage should be encouraged by offering a subsidy for weddings. Subsidies for children should be increased and men must adapt to the consequences of sexual equality -- as women already have.
What Democracy Is For
On Freedom and Moral Government
By Stein Ringen (Princeton), $39.50
Full freedom needs reason as well as resources. He writes that where "a political leadership removes from you your ability to act freely, a psychological dictatorship removes from you the ability to decide freely why to act". This seems to me among the most interesting parts of his work: a reworking, in accessible and convincing detail, of others' insights (all the way back to Plato and Aristotle) that the person demanding freedom to indulge unexamined impulses is a slave.
But he pushes it too far and, in doing, betrays or at least dilutes the power of his earlier arguments. "We are what we are," he writes, "by virtue of our anchorage in community with others." What if being a member of the community comes, at the price of acquiescing in evil? He does not quiet suspicion that he has thought too little of this by his curious use of a literary analogy, saying that Henrik Ibsen, in his play, An Enemy of the People, was wrong to represent his hero as a man who drew strength from standing alone, saying that "he who stands alone is lost: strong is he who has the support of others". But the hero of Ibsen's play, Dr Stockmann, stands alone on a matter of conscience. His is the moral position -- akin to that taken by Fielding, the Englishman who betrays his caste" by siding with the Indians in E.M. Forster's A Passage to India. The support of others can be a betrayal of freedom, as much as its condition.
This is a strong and thoughtful argument for putting positive flesh on the skeleton of negative liberty. Liberty does need more than simple absence of chains. But "community" can stifle, imprison, even kill liberty, as well as amplify it. The past century -- and even the few years of the present one - bear enough witness to that.
Under syndication arrangement
with FE