Liberal Vision

Max Weber (1864-1920), Political Writings (1994 edition)

Max Weber was one of the greatest social scientists there has been, in a group which includes Weber, Adam Smith, Montesquieu, and very few others.  He is normally regarded as one the three ‘Classical’ sociologists who instituted the discipline.  Weber was born in Erfurt, Germany and pursued an academic career in Germany, with a period in the United States, and a longer period in Austria.  He also had periods as an indepedent scholar and in public service.

Weber early on leaned towards nationalist conservatism, though he was certainly never an extreme nationalist by the standards of the time.  Over time he moved to a liberalism strongly against socialism and conservatism.  Some define his thought to the end as ‘nationalist’.  It seems to me that his end point is a mixture of civic patriotism, in values, along with realism about the role of interests,  and competitiveness, in international politics, as in all forms of politics.

His academic work began with a mixture of historical work in law and economics.  From these starting points he moved into a vast synthesising enterprise, using a deep knowledge of the history of Europe in all its aspects, and knowledge of civilisations outside Europe.  He also did more detailed work on aspects of the German society and economy of his time.  The greatest product was the 1,000 page masterpiece Economy and Society, along with many other shorter works.

Weber’s interest in economics was as defined by the ‘Historical School’ in Germany, which was interested in historical comparisons of a kind that put differences between societies above general laws in economics.  However, time he spent as a professor in Vienna led him into a warm friendship with Ludwig von Mises, one of the great figures in liberal economics, and an advocate of economics as a science of universal laws.  If Weber had lived longer, there might have been some fascinating collaboration.  In any case, they certainly influenced each other, and it would be a fascinating though exhausting exercise to read Mises’ Human Action and Weber’s Economy and Society together.

Overall though, Weber was closer in thinking to Joseph Schumpter than Mises, amongst the ‘Austrian’ economists.  That is Weber was less inclined that Mises to shrink the state to almost nothing, beyond national security and its law and order functions.

He explores the nature of the state in the longest piece in Political Writings, ‘Parliament and Government in Germany under a New Order’.  This looks at the dysfunctions of the semi-democratic German Empire of 1871-1918, which gave real power to the Emperor and the north-eastern ‘Prussian Junker’ landowning families, who dominated the army and state bureaucracy.  Weber argues that this system was increasingly dysfunctional and that the effectiveness of the state can only be guaranteed, and limited, in the right ways, by democracy, that is from responsibility to a national electorate.

The state needs some central authority to maintain institutions and security, but there must be decentralisation and separation of powers.  Otherwise the state becomes a tool of the person in power, and of a social class that shares the interests of that person, leading to a mixture of authoritarianism and ineffectiveness.

The most famous essay, ‘The Profession and Vocation of Politics’, reflects on the role of political leadership.  He looks at the routinisation of politics as it becomes the preserve of full time professionals, and the role of individuals and of weakening political passions.  Weber throughout his thought fears the decline of individual responsibility, diversity and passion.  He thought socialism was a threat, but was just as much concerned with the way that general tendencies to bureaucracy in the state, and in private companies, threatens individuality, preparing the way for socialism.  Like Schumpeter, he was concerned that individual capitalists were seeking to protect themselves from the market, through anti-competitive activities and political influence.  He had great respect for those socialist leaders he regarded as genuine leaders, not just representatives of a party bureaucracy; similarly he respect the willingness of trade unionists to fight through industrial action, even if he rejected the economic arguments used.

Weber wanted a society based on individuality, and a willingness of individuals to struggle with each other, and against authority.  His sociological work showed how such ideas had emerged in history through the market, autonomy of cities from kings, individualistic forms of religious life, and so on, but also led him to fear the rise of conformism.

His ideas about political leadership, and related sociological concepts of charisma, have been widely misunderstood.  It’s often been assumed that when he talks about charismatic, or strongly personal, political leadership, that he was somehow anticipating Hitler.  Though Weber was very conscious that authoritarian leaders could use charisma, and personal appeal, he did not regard it as a necessary feature of authoritarian rule.  He was just as much concerned with voluntary forms of leadership in religion, and the positive role of charismatic liberal leaders, like Abraham Lincoln and William Gladstone, in overcoming bureaucracy and passionless routine in politics.  As strong passionate but responsible individuals, they gave positive examples of individualism, and moved people according to democratic principles towards liberal goals.

Happy birthday, Schumpy

Today is the birthday of Joseph A. Schumpeter, the Moravian philosopher largely responsible for the term “creative destruction”.

Here’s one quotation of his on the subject:

“The process of Creative Destruction is the essential fact about capitalism … it is not [price] competition which counts but the competition from . . . new technology . . . competition which strikes not at the margins of profits . . . of existing firms but at their foundations and their very lives.”

Liberal Vision’s Barry Stocker has previously summarised Schumpeter’s Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy text: click here to read it.

DAVID HUME (1711-76) ESSAYS MORAL, POLITICAL, AND LITERARY (1758)

David Hume was a great figure of the Scottish Enlightenment, even more so than his friend Adam Smith.  He was a great figure in the whole European movement and is one of the most influential philosophers who ever lived, as well as being a major historian, economist, and political thinker.

His contributions to political thought can be found particularly in the Essays, but also in sections of his two philosophical masterpieces, A Treatise of Human Nature (1740) and Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding and the Principles of Morals (1748-51), along with his 6 volume History of England (1754-62).  His History of England was a best seller and the dominant history of England, or Great Britain, for decades.  Despite these dazzling achievements Hume was not able to have a university career, due to his open religious scepticism.  Fortunately his subsequent career as tutor to the aristocracy, embassy secretary, and freelance writer did not impede his great talents.

The general structure of Hume’s political thought was that human society progresses in history, though he was deeply aware of the great crimes and disasters of human history.  He thought that human rationality makes us able to learn the benefits of cooperation, and to learn from those benefits in further cooperation.  That is cooperation of a voluntary and dispersed kind, which starts with production and exchange within a small community, and which develops into a global human community based on trade, freedom of communication, and liberty.

The rationality in humans is very imperfect, but sufficient to learn how to cooperate in order to first make life more secure from hunger and violence; and then for human character, and society, to keep improving through better morals, finer tastes, and greater liberty.  These capacities interact with a natural human morality of sympathy (that Hume thought some animals share), in which we naturally, and inevitably, see ourselves in other people, and find that our pleasure is improved by their pleasure.

We should not see Hume as a one sided optimist who only saw the best in people; he had a melancholic side underneath a sociable and optimistic manner, and his writings certainly show sensitive awareness, and even anger, at human cruelty and irrationality.

His overall achievement is that he had important explanations for why some human societies have become more prosperous, more moral, more sensitive, more free, and more governed by law and less by violence.  On that basis, he had good reasons for expecting more progress of the same kind.

On the more detailed aspects of his political thought, he defended the British system of the time for achieving as good a balance as existed anywhere between ‘republican’ liberty and ‘monarchical’ institutional stability.  Again this was not a result of complacency, he noticed for example how the state bought support from the upper class through a national debt which benefitted wealthy holders of government bonds, while others had to suffer from higher taxes and a stifled economy.

He certainly saw the need for some to become much more wealthy than others – preferably without state favours – as increased general wealth can only come from property rights and the possibility of individual self-enrichment.

In his economic essays, he argued against economic protectionism, then known as Mercantilism, and for free trade.  He pointed out that the French state caused starvation when it banned the export of wheat.  Farmers grow more wheat when there is a demand for it, from anywhere in the world, and that would benefit the poor and hungry in France more than trying to stop wheat being ‘lost’ to foreign countries.  Freedom from want and increasing prosperity come from the widest possibilities of trade, not from governments trying to prevent supposedly valuable products from leaving the country.

He pointed out the error of thinking that accumulating more money – largely referring to the Mercantilist belief that governments should acquire gold – makes a country richer.  Production stimulated by trade makes a country richer, not having more bits of gold currency.  History shows that where countries suddenly acquire gold, or any kind of wealth, from conquest that it is all wasted on non-productive expenditure very quickly.  Only  freedom to buy and sell, under humane, rational and consistent laws, can lead to genuine increases in wealth.

Hume’s views on the politics of the time are determined by two somewhat contrary tendencies. As mentioned above, he valued both liberty and continuity of institutions.  So on one side, he regarded radical change with extreme suspicion –including challenges to the British monarchy – as leading to war and social breakdown; while on the other side, he had a plan for a perfect British republic balancing different forms of representation and strong legal institutions.  That republican idealism combined with a pessimistic belief that politics inevitably corrupts, as government has to find ways of buying off interest groups, ‘factions’, so that it can govern at all.  Examples of how Hume’s rich personality, and thought, comprise many of the various impulses of liberal thought in his time, and ever since.

Liberal Philosophy button added

As a worryingly obsessive follower of Liberal Vision, you will no doubt have experienced eye-widening shock on 28th December when a new button was added to the menu (above).

“Liberal Philosophy?” you mused, “What treasures await for us now? How much better, by Jove, can this site possibly get?”

Ignoring pleas from your family / spouses / by-the-hour sex workers to return to whatever they wanted you to spend the bank holiday doing,  you clicked on the button to discover a chronologically-ordered list of Barry Stocker’s synopses of philosophical texts.

Most splendid, yes?

The list, I should say, is ever expanding, and I’m working on discovering some dark secrets about Barry’s past with which to blackmail him into reading more and more texts and summarising them so that I don’t have to do any of the hard work myself.

So click on the link, have a butcher’s around. His synopses will continue, as usual, to appear here as regular blog posts too.

Cheers  Baz.

ARISTOTLE 384-322 BCE, THE POLITICS

Aristotle is one of the main thinkers in world history.  Together with his teacher Plato, he established the main outlines of the philosophical tradition, and many other areas of human knowledge.  He was a tutor to the young Alexander the Great at the court of King Philip II of Macedon, and also an enthusiast for the self-governing institutions of the city-state of Athens where he studied, taught and wrote.

As a Macedonian born outside Athens, he was often an object of suspicion to the Athenians, because he was a foreigner and because the Macedonian monarchy had destroyed the independence of the Greek states.  Aristotle avoided the worst consequences by living for two major periods outside Athens.  The first period included his time teaching Alexander and a 2 years in Assos, Ionia (now the Aegean coast of Turkey).   Athens, in its ‘Golden Age’ at that time, represented a peak of individualistic commercial democracy, accompanied by some of the most distinguished drama, poetry, historiography, architecture, sculpture and philosophy ever produced.

The individualism, however, was very lacking by our standards. Conformity to majority opinion and state rituals was strong, as we see in Aristotle’s exile and the condemnation to death of Socrates, the teacher of Aristotle’s teacher Plato; slavery and the second class status of women were unchallenged fundamentals of the society.  Nevertheless, Athens was a great step forward for the Ancient world, and Aristotle was a large part of that.  The Ancient republics of Greece and Rome strongly influenced early modern freedom movements from the Italian city state republics to the French and American Revolutions; and Athens was the symbol of a commercial individualistic understanding of that tradition.  Aristotle represents a step towards liberalism compared with his teacher Plato, though we should look beyond the mid-Twentieth Century pop philosophy misunderstanding of Plato as the prophet of totalitarianism.  This was never accepted by Plato scholars, and is slowly receding, not fast enough to avoid continuing confusion though.

Whatever aspects of Plato are unacceptable from a modern liberal point of view, his position is based on the idea of a state based on law not force; and of a human individual with the capacity to subordinate immediate desires to reason in a healthy self-governing character.  Aristotle builds on these ideas in The Politics, while distancing himself from Plato’s suggestion of a class of philosopher rulers, sharing their property in a life devoted to wisdom.  Aristotle argues that property must be privately held in order for it to be used properly and its benefits realised.  Though he does not criticise slavery for ‘natural’ slaves he presumes that most people in a society should be free citizens, and that they should have equal legal and political rights.

The best state for Aristotle is a city, rather than a large territorial monarchy.  In a city, the citizens can be friends and can share the government in the city through a system based on law and agreement, not coercion to maintain the power of one person at the top.  Since the capacity for political affairs is a basic human capacity, all citizens should have some role in government.  Aristotle concedes that there could be good government, government moderated by law and virtue, giving power to one individual (a monarchy) or a minority group (an aristocracy), but the quality of this government depends very much on the quality of individuals and so is always close to collapse into the tyrannical rule of one, or the self-interested rule of an oligarchy.

The best kind of constitution is that of a ‘political state’, the natural form of the state.  In that kind of state, the people as whole have power assembled as a whole in a public assembly, as was normal in ancient city republics.  If that is the only source of decision making, that is pure democracy which Aristotle worries is vulnerable to manipulation by those who appeal to majority opinion of the moment.  He associates democracy with the rule of the poorest, in an unrestrained way, vulnerable to manipulation, just as the rule of the richest  is self-interested.  The government should be administered by people in the middle (presumably the less wealthy landowners), who are less influenced by extremes.

The extremes of democracy are restrained by courts and governmental bodies which are elected or are appointed, as opposed to mass assembly or selection by lottery to service on government bodies.  It is this structure which prevents the state becoming too powerful, and going beyond law.  In this best political system democracy is mixed with aristocracy and oligarchy, so that laws and decisions are made in the common interests, and the equal rights of all citizens are recognised.  Where the right balances and restraints are lacking, pure democracy emerges which tends to threaten law and property, leading to tyranny in order to stabilise the situation; or oligarchy emerges in which the rich destroy the rights of the majority.  These mixed nature of the best political constitution prevents the destruction of individual rights, as when the Athenians voted the least popular citizen out of the state, in fear that the city could be undermined, or taken over, by one or a few people.