Dissecting 'Rightist' Statism

            ‘Rightist’ Statism, the ideology that politicians and ideologues considered to be ‘on the right’ of the political spectrum use to justify government intervention, consists of three main pillars: legislated ‘morality’, nationalism, and conservatism. We will examine and critique these pillars in this post to see what ‘right-wing’ statism is all about and why I think it is best to avoid most of it.

1. Legislated ‘morality’:

            One important pillar of right-wing statism is legislated ‘morality’, also known as socially conservative policies. According to this idea, it is the job of the State to ensure that people adhere to some code of personal morality, usually based on a religion. The result is a series of what libertarians call ‘victimless crime’ legislation: legislation that makes some personal behaviors which don’t involve a physical transgression on the person or property of other citizens illegal, restricted, and punishable. Prohibition of recreational drugs and restrictions on marriage between gay people are examples of such legislation.

            

           There are two main problems with such legislation. The first is that the subjective utility of the person whose activities are being restricted is certainly being reduced, for the sake of the questionable benefits of busy bodies feeling that their neighbours are ‘more moral’ now. Though such a statement cannot be made with scientific precision as subjective utility cannot be measured or compared interpersonally, I would venture to guess that the gay person who is prevented from marrying their partner, or the recreational enjoyer of marijuana from indulging in their pastime, are more injured than busy bodies being slightly more satisfied with the ‘good morals’ of their neighbours as a result of the legislation are benefitted.  

            

           The second main problem is the general principle such legislation embodies, or the precedents it sets for further government action. Once it is admitted that ‘personal morality police’ is a legitimate function of government, the ideological way is cleared for all kinds of tyrannical legislation. Forcing a particular religion on the populace, prohibiting the consumption of alcoholic beverages for being ‘immoral’, and even prohibiting certain classes of people from wearing certain styles of clothing through ‘sumptuary laws’ are all extensions of this general principle that governments have tried in the past. Prohibiting ‘unhealthy’ foods, or violent video games and movies, or pornography, are other ways that governments could extend this general principle, to say nothing about the possible further extension of the principle to political and cultural statements, censoring those that are deemed ‘immoral’.

            

           Ultimately, personal morality just seems too arbitrary to be profitably imposed by force, as opposed to the minimalist moral code that protects people’s persons and properties against physical violence, which is easy to define and the near-consistent following of which can be demonstrated to be materially beneficial for almost everyone in society. When a version of personal morality is to be imposed by force, the question always is: whose version of personal morality? The answer will be the loudest political interest group that manages to capture a share of political power, and there is no reason to believe that their version of personal morality is more worthy of being imposed on others by force than anyone else’s, to say the least.

2. Nationalism:

            Nationalism can be divided into two sub-categories: ethnic nationalism and civic nationalism. Ethnic nationalism is an ideology that says that the interests of ‘your ethnic group’ (however that is defined) takes precedence over the interests of any ‘other ethnic group’, and that one should usually try to advance the interests of your ethnic group even if by so doing the interests of other ethnic groups are demonstrably harmed. Civic nationalism is similar, but rather than ethnic groups, it refers to ‘your country (territorial political grouping)’ and any ‘other country (territorial political grouping)’. For example, French ethnic nationalism would be concerned with the French ethnic group, probably meaning French-speaking, light-skinned people whose families have inhabited the territory in the political grouping known as France for a relatively long period of time (although the concept of ethnicity is largely not grounded in biology and thus is quite malleable). French civic nationalism, on the other hand, would be concerned with everyone living and accepted as citizens in the territorial political grouping known as France, regardless of their ancestry, mother-tongue, or skin colour.

            

           In either case, those who identify with ‘right-wing’ ideology tend to be proponents of one of these nationalisms, or sometimes both. An example of an ethnic nationalist policy would be forcing the language of the majority ethnic group on the minority ethnic groups living in the country through public schooling, or the Swiss policy of banning minarets on any mosques that might be built. An example of a civic nationalist policy would be protectionism through tariff barriers, supposedly in order to develop certain industries in that country.

            

           These nationalist ideologies are often used to criticize free-market ideals because, it is alleged, putting these ideals in place might not immediately benefit the ethnic group or country of the criticizer. It is possible for there to be some truth in this statement, for the simple reason that ethnic groups and countries are not analytical units in economic theory. Free-market economic theory concerns itself with the individual, a grouping of individuals combined for a common purpose known as a firm, corporation, or association, and with the world market society as a whole. It does not say that economic freedom will especially benefit ethnic group A over ethnic group B, or territorial political grouping A over territorial political grouping B. It says that economic freedom will, in the long-run, tend to benefit the material interests of the world market society and the individuals who constitute it, over any other form of economic/political arrangement.

            

           The problem with nationalist ideologies intellectually is that they tend to be short-sighted and hypocritical. This is because they ignore the long-term consequences of their nationalist ideologies if they were universalized and nationalist policies were being carried out all over the world. For instance, take protectionist policies. Proponents of protectionism imply that members of their territorial political grouping should not be satisfied with the place that their territory will be assigned by market forces in a free-market, international division of labour, world market society. Rather, they want ‘their’ countries to develop certain kinds of industries which they deem ‘superior’, even if to do so they must put up tariff barriers to keep out ‘foreign’ competition in those industries. Nowadays, high-end manufacturing and scientific industries seem to be the protectionists’ industries of choice. The problem with this is that the whole point of an international division of labour, or any division of labour for that manner, is so that different people and different geographical areas can specialize in different things, and then can exchange their respective products. If every country has a copy of the industries of every other, kept artificially profitable through competition-excluding tariff barriers, than there’s no more international division of labour, and everyone is poorer as a result due to less specialization and less efficient utilization of the earth’s land and natural resources.

           

           I am not going to talk about protectionism too much more here, mainly because I have discussed it at length in a previous post, found here: http://thinkingabouthumansociety.blogspot.ca/2013/03/the-dark-side-of-historical-prosperity.html

            

           Here, suffice it to say that nationalist policies must, by their very nature, always be sectional policies: policies designed to benefit only a section of humanity. Fighting for these sectional advantages through policies that undermine the free-market order make the people of the world as a whole poorer, and would make the people of the world a lot poorer if nationalist policies were universalized and pursued consistently by every territorial political grouping.

3. Conservatism:

            ‘Right-wing’ and ‘Conservative’ seem to be almost synonymous in today’s political vocabulary, and many people identified as ‘right-wing’ adopt the title of ‘conservative’ with pride. What exactly does conservatism mean as an ideology though?

            

           From my understanding of it, conservatism seems to suggest that rapid change is to be avoided and that political ‘traditions’ must have something good in them and should not be tampered with lightly. Thus, American Conservatives often praise the ‘founding fathers’ of the United States and the Constitution that they drafted, and advocate for a return to their political ideals. Canadian Conservatives often sought to have closer political and cultural ties with the imperial/former imperial mother country of Great Britain, and nowadays want to keep the British monarchical traditions going strong in Canada.

            

           The tricky thing about conservatism is that it does not really represent a set of concrete political ideals, but rather an aversion to rapid change and a championing of whatever the political ‘tradition’ of their country happens to be. Thus, the original Conservatives, the ‘Tories’ of late 17^th century and early 18^th century Britain, sought a return to the days of hereditary absolute monarchy, as opposed to the ‘Whigs’ who supported the ‘Glorious Revolution ‘and constitutional monarchy. Absolute monarchy was not the political tradition on which the United States was founded, but rather limited-government, liberal republicanism, so it is this ideology that the American Conservatives of today are said to favor. However, American Conservatives also seem to be enamoured with presidents such as Abraham Lincoln, a protectionist, anti-states’ rights president, and Theodore Roosevelt, a ‘trust-busting’, imperialistic president, not exactly the governing styles that the founding fathers had in mind.       

              

           Thus, if we were to be ungenerous, we could just call conservatism an ideology that calls for slavish devotion to an arbitrary selection of the ‘traditions’ of an arbitrarily chosen historical period in the past. If we were to be more generous though, we could interpret conservatism as an ideology which seeks out what policies ‘worked’ in the past and calls for their implementation in the present. We could also interpret it as an ideology that recognizes that rapid societal changes are usually bad news, and that tried and true principles and slow progress are safer than schemes which seek to rapidly ‘remake’ society.

            

           To be fair to conservatism, it is this generous interpretation that we will focus our critique on. As for the first point, finding out what ‘worked’ in the past is simply another way of saying that empirical historical studies can be useful for social thinkers. I would agree with this statement: empirical historical studies, coupled with logical theorizing, can help keep the theory grounded in reality. Also, as I have noted in my issue analyses, social theories only come up with qualitative effects, not quantitative ones, and thus empirical research, though never completely decisive, can help suggest what magnitudes of the qualitative effects predicted tend to appear. The problem is that conservative ideologies tend to lead social thinkers to be too fixated on what happened in the past, to the detriment of their logical theorizing and their consistent recognition of the difference between correlation and causation.

The American Conservatives’ love for the founding fathers, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt mentioned above is a good example of what being overly fixated on the past can do. Ideologically, the policies of Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt were not logical outgrowths of the ideals of the founding fathers. But, for the Conservative fixated on the past, the founding fathers’ ideology seem to have ‘worked’ in one historical period, while Lincoln and Roosevelt’s ideologies seem to have ‘worked’ in another. But this is not helpful for deciding on which political ideology to adopt in the present, should it be the founding fathers’ limited government ideology, or Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, and their successors’ bigger government ideology? Which is, as American Conservatives like to put it, ‘more American’? Ultimately, only social and economic theories and targeted historical research to illustrate them and/or to help ascertain what the magnitude of their predicted effects are likely to be can decide this question, a procedure which conservative ideology is generally not conducive to.

            

           As for the second point, it is true that in the past, many political attempts at rapid societal changes, such as the radical stages of the French Revolution or the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, were bad news. But the rapid socio-economic changes, made possible by a certain political environment, which constituted the Industrial Revolution, and the pretty radical, for the time, American Revolution and experiment in republican self-government itself, are examples of rapid societal changes that probably worked out for the better. It is somewhat ironic that modern American Conservatives take the ideals of the founding fathers and their young, radical, experimental new republican country as the ‘traditions’ to be preserved if they are so against rapid societal and political changes.  

             

           In general though, there is definitely something to be said for the conservative emphasis on ‘tried and true’ principles and slow progress, as opposed to radical social schemes. I am very aware that the general principles represented by policies are very important, and that policies that set up a dangerous general principle are dangerous themselves. However, it is possible that the general political principles currently being applied are dangerous and bad principles, and thus should be reversed and replaced by better ones. For example, take Britain in 1980. Since the late 1940s, Britain had been run by both Labour and Conservative governments, whose policies were heavily influenced by social-democratic ideology and political principles. When Margaret Thatcher, as leader of the Conservative Party, became Prime Minister in 1980, rhetorically denounced social-democratic political principles, and made some fairly significant changes in policy direction, this was by no means a ‘conservative’ move. Some might say it was a ‘radical’ shift away from the prevalent political principles of the last three decades. Whether the old social-democratic principles or the new Thatcherite political principles were ultimately better then becomes the question for social thinkers.

            

           All this is to say that it is their theoretical and empirical soundness rather than their oldness or ‘tried and true-ness’ that makes a political principle, such as the sanctity of private property, worth preserving. A very old political principle, found in Ancient Egypt in the 3000s BC, that the ruler has the right to use slave labour to build himself a ridiculously expensive tomb, is not, I think worth preserving just because it is old, or because subtle variations of it were adopted by many absolute despots throughout human history.

            

          Thus, whatever is true in conservatism, can be adopted quite easily into social thinking by just recognising that material progress takes some time, even given the right institutional conditions, that empirical historical research can be useful, and that logically sound general principles should not be compromised based on political whim. The rest can be profitably discarded.