Though I
tried to confine myself to a factual, historical description in my last post,
regular readers of this blog will know which ideology for supporting free-trade
policies I favor: the classical-liberal one which was stronger before the First
World War. I posted this essay I wrote on political ideology issues surrounding
the 1911 and 1921 federal elections in Alberta for two reasons.
Firstly, the argument implicitly
challenges the viewpoint of many intellectual historians who recognize no
fundamental difference between classical-liberal political ideology and social
democratic, ‘modern-liberal’, political ideology. Alan Wolfe, a political
scientist who wrote a book about Liberalism, argues:
“The idea that liberalism comes in two forms assumes that the most fundamental question facing mankind is how much government intervenes into the economy. To me, perhaps because so little of the means of production lies under my control, this is a remarkably uninteresting subject. I think of the whole question of governmental intervention as a matter of technique. Sometimes the market does pretty well and it pays to rely on it. Sometimes it runs into very rough patches and then you need government to regulate it and correct its course. No matters of deep philosophy or religious meaning are at stake when we discuss such matters. A society simply does what it has to do.
When instead we do discuss
human purpose and the meaning of life, Adam Smith and John Maynard Keynes are
on the same side. Both of them possessed an expansive sense of what we are put
on this earth to accomplish. Both were on the side of enlightenment. Both were
optimists who believed in progress but were dubious about grand schemes that
claimed to know all the answers. For Smith, mercantilism was the enemy of human
liberty. For Keynes, monopolies were. It makes perfect sense for an eighteenth
century thinker to conclude that humanity would flourish under the market. For
a twentieth century thinker committed to the same ideal, government was an essential
tool to the same end.”[1]
Now, first of all, the fact that Doctor Wolfe finds the
question of government ownership versus private ownership “uninteresting” does
not mean it is unimportant. As for governmental intervention being “a matter of
technique”, who are the technicians qualified to prescribe whether private
ownership or government intervention is best in any particular case if not
politicians and social thinkers that subscribe to various political ideologies?
Is the answer really so straightforward, and does it really have nothing to do
with philosophy and value judgements? Were the differences between East and
West Germany, North and South Korea, differentiated primarily by the amount of
government intervention in their respective economies, really just “technical”
and “uninteresting”, and completely unrelated to “human purposes” and “the
meaning of life”?
The idea that somehow, completely uninfluenced by
political ideologies and philosophies, ‘society’s’ will simply ‘do what they
have to do’ economically and automatically decide on the optimal amount of
economic freedom versus government intervention in every area of human
endeavour is simply not true. Contrary to Doctor Wolfe, the answers to such
economic questions are vitally important for societal well-being, have very
deep philosophical implications (whether you are allowed to pursue your own
ends with the resources you own or are forced to pursue the ends determined by
political elites with the resources you once owned seems a pretty deep
philosophical difference to me), and as such, one’s position on these issues
constitutes one of the most substantial aspects of any person’s political
ideology.
Doctor Wolfe’s suggested criteria for being a ‘liberal’
thinker are very vague and relatively all-encompassing. Optimism, belief in
progress, belief in ‘enlightenment’, disbelief of ‘grand schemes’ (although one
could argue that Keynes’ plan for the government to ‘manage the economy’ was
indeed a ‘grand scheme’), there aren’t all that many modern thinkers who wouldn’t
match these criteria. The point of distinguishing phenomena in the world, be
they physical entities or ideas, is to increase our understanding of the world
and the things that make it up. Precise, exclusive definitions are more useful
in this regard than vague, all-encompassing ones, and thus Doctor Wolfe’s
criteria, I would suggest, does not aid our understanding of different
ideologies, but reduces it.
The argument of my historical essay is a clear
anti-thesis to the view of classical versus modern liberalism represented by
Doctor Wolfe. I argue not only that classical-liberalism and social-democratic ‘modern’
liberalism represent two different ideological traditions, but that even when
the same political measure (in this case freer trade) is supported by two
different political movements, one must still examine the respective
ideological backgrounds for their support of the measure. When the ideological
background has changed, one is no longer dealing with the same political
ideology and must recognize that historically in order to achieve a higher
level of understanding of the past, even if the two political movements are
supporting the same political measure and thus, superficially, seem to share
the same political ideology.
The second reason I wrote about free-trade politics in
Alberta in 1911 and 1921 is because the shift in ideological disposition recognized
in the essay serves to represent one of the most significant political-ideological
shifts in Western world history: the general post-WWI shift away from classical
liberalism towards social democratic ideas. Though classical liberalism had
been declining in popularity and social democratic ideology gaining in
popularity since the late 19th century, WWI was a watershed that
dramatically accelerated this process.
The reasons why WWI contributed to causing this
acceleration are undoubtedly numerous and complex. I will here suggest a few:
1. Marxist-inspired writers blamed capitalism for the phenomena of European imperialism,
and European imperial ambitions for the First World War, thus discrediting capitalism
in the eyes of those who believed this causal chain to be correct. 2. WWI and
its aftermath showed rulers and citizens that military might was once again
going to play a major role in human affairs, and that nations had to be ‘strong’
and ‘centrally directed’ in order to be able to survive in that climate, which
legitimised some interventionist policies in the name of ‘war-preparedness’. 3.
The victory of the Bolsheviks in Russia, which the war had made possible,
stirred revolutionary hopes in the minds of communists and fears in the minds
of anti-communists, which resulted in more frequent and more brutal clashes
between these forces in the post-war period. 4. Blame for the war fell, in the
eyes of many, especially younger, people, on the shoulders of the ‘old order’
and all that it represented. In the minds of many, classical liberalism and
free-market capitalism were part of this old order which had to be reinvented.
5. The unprecedented governmental powers taken on by the governments of the
belligerent countries during the war gave rulers and economic elites a taste
for expanded political power which inspired them to try to have the government
take on more responsibilities during peacetime in the post-war period.
In any case, this shift was a momentous one, and
suggestive evidence for it is presented in my historical essay.
[1]
Alan Wolfe, “A False Distinction”, The
New Republic, April 13, 2009. http://www.newrepublic.com/blog/alan-wolfe/false-distinction#
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