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Liberalising the European Union

By Barry Stocker
May 31st, 2013 at 10:41 am | 9 Comments | Posted in Uncategorized

A recent item at this blog posted by Editor, ‘EU-it really is getting sillier by the day’, refers to the attempt at an EU ban on serving olive oil in restaurants except in packaged bottles, and the reversal of this idea of by the Commission. While I think the item makes a very good point about the persistence of over-regulation by the EU, and proposals which rightly attract public ridicule, the headline at least was a bit harsh. After all the ban was reversed by the Commission. This reality also undermines the image of the EU as driven by out of control bureaucrats in the Commission dreaming up bizarre projects for an over centralised and over regulated Union. The post hints at, but does not quite reveal, the economic interests behind the proposal. It was driven by big olive oil producers in southern Europe, who claim to be ‘maintaining standards’. By extraordinary coincidence ‘maintaining standards’ in this case would have the effect of driving out competition by small scale ‘artisanal’ producers, who would find the cost of the required packaging less easy to bear than big producers.

The point here is not just that the EU often falls prey to this kind of attempted manipulation by sectional economic interests, but that regulation in the nation states of the EU, and nations all over the world, is driven by this kind of distortion of decision making through sectional interests able to undermine the common good, including that central good of depoliticised open competitive markets. The proposed olive oil in restaurants regulation was pushed by national governments in those EY countries which are large scale olive oil producers, and the political process is under the influence of the major producers in that sector. The liberal reform of the EU must include very strong, clear and enforceble measures against these forces which ravage all countries, and which are particularly necessary in the EU because it has failed to create a political system, on the whole that can resist the EU being defined by vulnerability to such forces.

As the original post points out, the Liberal Democrats, have been long term supporters of the EU, leaving open the question of what attitude the Liberal Democrats should have now, and what contribution Liberal Vision should have to make to debate on the matter. I’m sure there are differences of opinion within the Liberal Vision group on this, but we have overall taken the line of supporting a political union of European nations while questioning the form it should take. Some LV people present and past (before passing onto non-party political roles)have been deeply involved in the European Movement, and I did a few very minor things within EM and the Liberal Democrat European Group myself before I became an ex-pat academic in Istanbul.

My proposal is that we should stick to the policy of political union, but separate ourselves very clearly from the administrative centralism which is supported by the mainstream pro-EU groups. Of course the people concerned do not describe themselves in that way, but the reality is that their default attitude is to support any centralising measure, and to dismiss any  and all opposition and criticism, as populism coming from the fringe of the left or the right. The Euro crisis has dampened such attitudes, but they will keep coming back, and we should contest them. What we should aim for is clear but limited political union, a form of federalism but emphasising that federalism limits the power of the centre, We should aim for a limited number of areas of EU legislation and action, which are done well but kept within limits. I will list a series of proposals which I hope will be of interest to those who want a European political union without the drift to regulatory bloat and grandiose projects adopted regardless of the risk and the downside.

1. More of a role for national parliaments. Maybe a minimum number of national parliaments to give assent before legislation is passed.

2. All areas of EU legislation to be jointly legislated by the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers. A very easy to understand procedure to be adopted for how this works.

3. Abolition of the European Council, a deeply absurd addition to the EU institutions.

4. Abolition of the Commission, its best employees to be redeployed as EU civil servants.

5. Formation of a European government (probably with some less provocative name) on a roughly Swiss model, that is ministers from the main political groups in the European Parliament in accordance with representation in the EP. The idea of national style competition between political blocs across the EU has it charms, but is unrealistic for reasons which include linguistic differences and differences between national parties within the European ‘parties’. These considerations should be considered as fatal for any idea of  directly elected president of the EU.

6. Some form or EU basic law, or constitution (maybe with a less provocative name), designed to limit powers. Strong institutional arrangements to enforce limits on powers, and prevent centralist drift. This can be very difficult as US experience shows, but let the EU adopt more and stronger measures to prevent such drift.

7. A completion of the internal market to eliminate all barriers to trade, particularly with regard to contracting out of public services and cross border entry into ‘professional’ and ‘skilled employment’. The least onerous regulations of any nation to be the de facto regulation across all nations.

8. Internal market to be accompanied by equivalent (or near as possible) opening up to non-EU competition. Maybe there should be a law to bring this in within 10 years.

9. Tax competition to be allowed and encouraged.

10. The Euro, if it survives and I presume it will, to be optional for new EU countries, and to be based on a relatively clear set of enforceable restraints on debts and borrowing, and bail out conditions, with a presumption against bail out of private financial institutions, except as a genuine last resort.

10. Other big European projects, to be based on opt ins and coalitions of willing governments, not enforced uniformity.

11. Laws and institutions to be based on restraint of new regulations, with very robust tests regarding economic costs, before formulation, and certainly before enactment.

I do not make any claim to expertise on EU institutions and I recognise that not all the above are easy to combine. However, discussion of the EU has too long been the preserve of a few who understand its structures, and all political associations have some tensions within their institutions and constitutional arrangements. In any case, I offer these proposals as a stimulation to discussion, not as a prediction of where the EU is going.

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Marriage and the State

By Barry Stocker
May 27th, 2013 at 6:46 am | Comments Off on Marriage and the State | Posted in Uncategorized

Sara Scarlett recently put up the the post The Problem with Gay Marriagethe main point of course being to question the involvement of the state in marriage rather than to reject marriage rights for gay. I’m not in total agreement with Sara, but she raises some points which are important, and which should be discussed. We may end up one day, with no state sanctioned marriage, but that day is some way off, and I do not think it is absolutely necessary to liberty and equality.

The manner in which ‘marriage equality’ has been established in Britain is flawed. It is not complete equality since divorce for gays cannot be on the grounds of adultery, apparently because of lack of agreement on how to define the relevant sexual acts. Gays can have civil unions and straights cannot. Sorting these issues out is secondary though compared with the issue of whether the state should provide marriages.

There is a social evolution in Britain, and similar parts of the world (and within ‘cosmopolitan’ enclaves in other parts of the world) where marriage is considered less and less mandatory as part of life experience, and simply sharing living space is taken as a sign of commitment to a long lasting relationship. Does this make state provision of marriage unnecessary and even harmful? I have to say no, at least for the foreseeable future. No great harm comes to any couple, because other couples have a state licensed marriage.

Marriage is still a popular institution, and there does not seem to be any great demand to make it a matter of purely private contract and ceremony. The existence of a publicly sanctioned form of marriage, with associated legal rights and obligations, suits most people as a way of communicating and celebrating, their decision to commit to a life together, and put themselves under a certain amount of social and practical  pressure to stay together. State defined marriage is not a great burden on the tax payer and does not obviously harm people who do not participate it, so the case for eliminating it anytime soon is surely small. There are a lot of other state activities I would put ahead of state marriage as damaging, and I don’t see that it would be worth going to any trouble to dispose of it, except as a tidying up measure if the number of people using it does decline to a very small residue.

The other issues that Sara raises are around Victorian moralising and polyamory. On Victorian moralising, Sara makes the point that the equal marriage campaign has often been conducted in term of showing that gays are respectable moral people, who do not do sexual promiscuity. That is true to some degree. As previously, there was a prevalent cliche of gays as wildly promiscuous, this is perhaps no more than a useful corrective, though not to be taken too far. There is nothing new about a movement towards emancipation and equality being conducted in terms of the high moral character of those seeking emancipation, including a personal life of sexual restraint. That certainly came up around abolitionism (with regard to slavery), national liberation from empire, racial equality and the women’s movement. Mary Wollstonecraft’s feminist classic A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792) puts a great deal of emphasis on arguing that women do not need male guidance in order to avoid becoming the victims of seducers. Mozart’s operas which show aristocratic men as sexually promiscuous had a political point to make against aristocratic power.  Black victims of slavery and state enforced racism have wanted to created distance from racist stereotypes of uncontrollable lust, and to appear ‘virtuous’ in private life according to the standards of the time.

We should hope that we are coming to the end of the period where those who suffer discrimination, and out right oppression, should not feel the need to demonstrate sexual ‘virtue’. Despite changing sexual standards, and generally greater tolerance or openness (if tolerance seems to minimal a gesture of respect for others), there appears to be little in the way of a lobby for officially recognised polyamory. The biggest impetus in that direction probably comes from religious conservatives within Islam along with old school Mormonism and forms of officially sanctioned adultery within Orthodox Judaism. Realistically, these are all ways in which traditions from another time, when constant low level inter-family conflict diminished the number of men, are being maintained in ways which are discriminatory against women. One could argue that this is only damaging where it is enforced by that state, but my position is that in the world as it is, state discrimination against religiously sanctioned sexism is preferable in some circumstance to pure state indifference towards practices that had been sanctioned by the state for centuries, and is better for liberty overall. I’m really sure that w0men are better off in those Muslim countries where the secular state only recognises marriage between one man and one woman.

Polyamory, or what used to be known as ‘free love’, has been tried at least since utopian communities of the nineteenth century,  has never taken long term, and appears likely to mostly lead to patriarchal dominant males accumulating partners. There appears to be a very strong human inclination towards at least trying to have a long term unique relationship, often with attempts at strict monogamy. Of course such relationships often end, and covert polyamory often creeps in where they do last. However, the need to try to make such relationships last, and to push other relationships to the margins if they cannot be avoided, appears to be extremely strong and persistent. I believe we should discuss contracts suitable for polyamory, as well as those couples who do not find the standard marriage contract satisfactory, but unless polyamory greatly increases in popularity and marriage greatly declines in popularity, I very much doubt that the cause of liberty would be served by attempts to abolish state marriage or put polyamorous relationships on an equal legal basis.

Anyway, many thanks to Sara for starting this discussion. I hope she does not feel I have misrepresented her in any way. We should continue to discuss this, though I think the practical consequences should be greater flexibility in the public contracts on offer for intimate  relationships, rather than the more radical suggestions.

Finally, the philosopher Elizabeth Brake (currently at Arizona State University) published a book recently advocating something similar to what Sara suggests: Minimizing Marriage: Marriage, Morality and the Law (Oxford University Press, 2012). Further details about the book, and a podcast interview with Brake can be found  by clicking here.

Liberty related Links

By Barry Stocker
July 6th, 2012 at 7:08 am | Comments Off on Liberty related Links | Posted in Uncategorized

The latest edition of the BBC Radio 4 program Analysis is on The Gold Standard.  I’m not an advocate of the gold standard (that is the view that all currency should be based by gold reserves) myself, but it is important to keep discussing whether it or fiat (created at will) forms of money are better for economic stability and a liberal society.  We should certainly also welcome the BBC engaging with free market ideas.  The presenter does come down against the gold standard in the end, but gold stand advocates (sometimes known unkindly as goldbugs) are given a full chance to explain the case for it.

Bleeding Heart Libertarians has been in a long exchange with a prominent left leaning blog Crooked Timber about state regulation of employee rights.  It’s an entertainingly aggressive exchange between various contributors at these two group blogs.  There are too many items to provide links, but the relevant posts are easy to find by visiting the home pages.  At Liberal Vision we are supporting BLH arguments about the importance of choice between employers in a free market, as the basis of employee freedom, but checking the other side’s arguments at CT is recommended as well.  Tyler Cowen has intervened on the BLH side at Marginal Revolution.  Left leaning blogger Matthew Yglesias also weighs in at Slate, but closer to the BLH argument than the CT argument, which shows why we should be willing to talk to, and try to influence, anyone who is open to hearing classical liberal and libertarian ideas.

The leading online philosophy resource, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, has just updated an entry on Catherine Macaulay, an eighteenth century historian and philosopher, who was a prominent advocate of what was then called republicanism, which is what we would call classical liberalism now.  Beware of attempts by left-liberals to steal the republican heritage, since ancient Rome and Greece, for themselves though.  Catherine Macaulay does not appear to have been related to the famous Whig-Liberal historian and politician, Thomas Babington Macaulay.  She was a distinguished thinker and polemicist in her own right, a part of our heritage at Liberal Vision.  (Hat tip to Philosophy Feeds on Twitter).

Recently out in paperback, Gerald Gaus’ The Order of Public Reason: A Theory of Freedom and Morality in a Diverse and Bounded World.  First published in 2010, this work of  classical liberal thought has become one of the most influential books in political theory around.  A very academic approach, but for those who like that kind of thing essential reading.  Gaus is a Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Arizona, where his colleagues include David Schmidtz, a leading academic libertarian.  I’m hoping to meet Schmidtz soon at an international academic summer school in Istanbul, where I will contribute a session on Tocqueville,  Schmidtz is one of the star speakers/tutors.  Both Gaus and Schmidtz are involved in the University of Arizona’s Freedom Center (Schmidtz was the founding director), which brings together academics concerned with liberty form Arizona U and across the United States.  Gaus was the founding editor of a well known academic journal, Philosophy, Politics and Economics, which is a great place to find academic material of a classical liberal and libertarian orientation.  Gaus and Schmitdtz are a large part of the reason that Arizona U’s philosophy department is a world leader in political philosophy.  The leading exercise in ranking philosophy departments, The Philosophical Gourmet Report made that department the number one department in the English speaking world for political philosophy.

So lots of great news from Arizona about the rising influence of classical liberal, and libertarian ideas, in the academic world, and there is more from other places in academia, the blogosphere and so on.  Be of good cheer liberty lovers.

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John Milton (1608-1674). Areopagitica (1644)

By Barry Stocker
January 8th, 2012 at 2:24 pm | Comments Off on John Milton (1608-1674). Areopagitica (1644) | Posted in Liberal Philosophy, Uncategorized

John Milton (1608-1674)

Areopagitica (1644)

John Milton is best known as a poet, in English and in Latin,  particularly for his epic Paradise Lost, one of the major works in all English literature.  It is work with a religious structure, which also shows evidence of his opposition to (Satanic) tyranny, and support for republicanism as the most godly form of government on Earth.  As this suggests, Milton was also one of the major seventeenth century English republican thinkers.  Nineteenth century English liberals gave great importance to Milton as a forerunner, as in The Whig-Liberal  historian, politician and civil servant Thomas Macaulay who elevated Milton to the status of ‘martyr of English liberty’.   It is Milton’s strangely name Areopagitica which has made the biggest impression in the history of political thought.  Milton was a supporter of the English Commonwealth (1649-1660, though in the strictest sense it ended in 1653), which followed Parliament’s victory over the English monarchy, and the execution of Charles I.  He  argued for the Commonwealth on the basis of  a form of popular sovereignty argument (in which Milton thought that aristocratic bodies could be adequate to represent the nation) inThe Tenure of Kings and Magistrates of 1649.  He worked for Oliver Cromwell, commander of the Parliamentary army, and increasingly dominant in politics, as Secretary of Foreign Tongues (which meant chief translator and publicist for the government).  Cromwell can as much be regarded as the great traitor to English republicanism as its hero, but he did have republican supporters like Milton. Cromwell’s elevation to rank Lord Protector in 1653, along with his crushing of republican and democratic thinkers, his restrictions on parliament and religious dissenters, and increasingly monarchical pretensions, ended the hopes of a pure republic of liberty and parliamentary power, in England.  He was still the defender of the next best thing for Milton,  and for others. Areopagitica refers to the Athenian court of Areopagus which has secular and religious, legal and poetic, significance.  In secular terms it was a court of Athens, the most democratic and liberty respecting of ancient Greek states.  Ancient Greek tragedy links the Areopagus Hill with the transition from revenge to law, as it is the location of the trial of Oestes in the Eumenides (the last part of Aeschylus’ Oresteia), in which the Furies becomes the Kindly Ones.  As St Paul famously spoke there (New Testament. Acts 17: 24), it has an important place in the origins of Christianity.  This is very favourable to Milton’s interest in both Christian religion and antique literature. As was normal for republican and liberty oriented thinkers of the time, he drew on Ancient Greek and Roman history, along with the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, for examples of good and bad political forms.  In Milton, there is a particular emphasis on liberty, as the Protestant liberty for a Christian to seek an individual understanding of the Bible, and of God’s word.  Political liberty is necessarily bound up with this for him.

Milton quotes from Euripides’ tragedy the Suppliant Women at the beginning of Areopagitica, confirming the importance of Ancient Greek tragedy as a source of thought about liberty.  He also refers to the more strictly defined political thought of antiquity, as when he refers to Cicero in his account of  the value of publication freed from pre-censorship. In Areopagitica,  Milton is addressing parliament at the height of the English Civil War (1642-1651, also known, and more accurately, as the War of the Three Kingdoms) to appeal against the pre-censorship of books, which he refers to as licensing.  Milton’s argument in religion, in politics, and in all fields, is that truth emerges stronger for being challenged and then in the arguing for it. We can never be sure that we have found the highest truth, so we are bound to entertain counter-arguments to whatever we think is the highest truth we have.  Milton does make it  clear that he excludes atheism and Catholicism from the range of  thought which can be freely expressed, but this is not intolerance by the standards of the age.   It is the freedom of books in Athens that Milton refers to as a model in antiquity, and this extends to a suggestion that England is a particularly free nation, implicitly like ancient Athens, so we see the role of classicism, of nostalgia for ancient republics, in modern ideas about liberty.  Milton’s specific arguments for free speech include the idea that a right to free speech, and even demonstrable commitment to its exercise, is  a criterion of membership of a political community, both in legal terms and in terms of peer esteem.  Those who are not trusted in their actions, including the action of writing, even though their intentions are not known to be immoral or illegal, must be regarded as excluded from full citizenship, because of intellectual impairment, or citizenship of another nation.  Milton’s sense of liberty includes national self-government, and though his manner of referring to foreign residents may strike us as harsh, he does capture the idea that state power must be limited to what comes from the freely formed political will of the nation, and in responsible genuinely national political institutions, as opposed to the will of one person.  As a defender of free speech, and very few in his time went further in demanding liberty of expression, he is a great antecedent for John Stuart Mill, and all those who have argued for individual liberty, and for political institutions which act with rational deliberation, and which are accountable to public opinion.

 

A New Leader for European Liberalism

By Barry Stocker
December 1st, 2011 at 12:33 pm | Comments Off on A New Leader for European Liberalism | Posted in Uncategorized

Congratulations to Sir Graham Watson on becoming President of the European Liberal Democrat and Reform Party (ELDR). ELDR

Graham Watson

groups national parties in European Union countries into an EU ‘political party’, in practice an alliance of national parties. Watson’s acceptance speech, posted on YouTube, and available as an online transcript, is inevitably a balancing act between different  strands of liberalism, but on the whole is to be welcomed from a LiberalVision point of view. John Milton, Adam Smith, Immanuel Kant, Benjamin Constant, Wilhelm von Humboldt, John Stuart Mill, and Ludwig von Mises are all mentioned.  All of these  thinkers have already been covered in LiberalVision posts, apart from  Milton and Constant. Posts on the last two are coming soon.  One other notable

mention in the speech is Johan Norberg, a Swedish writer who is a Senior Fellow at the US libertarian foundation, the Cato Institute.  Norberg is not a big general thinker of the type covered in our posts on liberal thought, but he has made a notable contribution to the defence of capitalism and globalisation.

Returning to Watson’s speech, he relies on the now discredited belief that it is in Smith’s works other than An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, that Smith refers to regulation and public goods. As scholars now accept, Smith is committed to the merits of both individual economic action and broader public goods across all his writings. Watson also attributes the slogan ‘private  vices, public goods’ to Smith, which comes from the Fable of the Bees (1732) by Bernard Mandeville.  Though Mandeville foreshadows some of Smith’s ideas, Smith was an earnest moralist who was very uncomfortable with accepting ‘vices’ of any kind.  In his opinion ‘commercial society’ was moral all the way through, and he criticised Mandeville for advocating ‘vice’.

However, we are evaluating Watson as a liberal political leader, not a historian of liberal thought!  As a leader he has done well in the past leading first the UK Liberal Democrats in the European Parliament, and then the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe, a parliamentary group which gathers ELDR MEPs, with some  from outside ELDR.  These complexities of European Union politics are addressed in Watson speech, in which he discusses the inclusion in ELDR of parties who do not feel comfortable with the liberal label in their home countries, where it is largely taken to mean the same as very conservative.

That is not just a reference to the distinction between: classical or economic liberals on one side, left or social liberals on the other side.  In some countries, ‘liberal’ has become  too much associated with an old oligarch elite,  which defended existing property rights and social relations, and the division of governmental powers within the upper class only, which had difficulty in adapting to democracy, and which was not concerned much with life style liberties.

There is some admirable straight talking in general about the problems of European liberals, with regard to the lack of ELDR representation in all countries, the decline of the number of ELDR Prime Ministers,  and surrender to populism on the part of some European liberal parties.  Watson refers to the need to be open to parties like the Party of Values in Italy, which hosted the ELDR Congress, and is more motivated by a struggle for the rule of law in Italy than adherence to liberal political tradition.  He appeals to the general need for openness, alliance building,  smart thinking and risk taking on the part of European liberals.

The broad context for these very welcome words is that the European Union is suffering from a lack of politics of a kind, which engages  citizens.  It is a self-enclosed world of Brussels politicians and para-political personnel, where there is too much of a tendency to dismiss all criticism from outside a very small circle as populist and irrational. We need more EU political personalities in the sense of individuals who can lead, communicate and inspire, outside the political elite; and who are genuinely interested in why so many people are unengaged by the European project, or even actively hostile. That would go with a renewed political union which does not try to endlessly expand administrative power, intervention, regulation and harmonisation; and which is able to let go of unnecessary, and down right destructive, powers and fields of intervention. A political union which engages public opinion in issues of genuine pan-European concern, where lines of accountability are clear; and with leaders who do not insult and belittle those who are disturbed by detailed interventionism, decided in confusing and oblique procedures, remote from citizens. Graham Watson certainly shows sign of understanding this, let us support and help him in this.