What Does It Mean to Be a Liberal Today:
An Attempt to Find an Ideological Core in Democratic Party Politics
Josh Anderson '04
When Howard Dean proclaims that he represents the “Democratic wing of the Democratic party,” what does he mean? When asked to declare a party affiliation or a political viewpoint, what do I mean when I call myself a “Democrat” or a “liberal”?
When seeking to answer this question, the normal tendency—at least that which I’ve observed in myself and my peers—is to begin by enumerating stances on issues. “Well, let’s see,” said one classmate, “I’m pro-choice, I think it’s fine to euthanize someone who genuinely wants it, I’m opposed to the death penalty, I think gay’s should be allowed to marry or at least have civil unions, and I think we have no business being in Iraq.” “Oh, yeah,” she continued, “I also think Bush’s tax cuts are terrible, I’m pro-affirmative action and I think schools need more funding.” Clearly dated, this is a typical sort of response. Being a liberal or a Democrat, for most people today, simply seems to mean taking certain stances on a series of issues. And, the most fiercely debated issues are those which define party allegiance for most people. For example, I once heard a friend express incredulity when someone claimed he was a liberal, but also pro-life. “Well, then,” my friend replied, “you’re no liberal.”
This issue-based approach to the question clearly misses something, for being a liberal cannot simply mean that one believes in a woman’s right to choose. There has to be more to it than that—or, at least there should be. The obvious and devastating question that indicates the absurdity of an entirely issue-oriented approach is this: what did it mean to be a liberal thirty years ago before Roe v. Wade, before Bakke and before anyone was talking about gay marriage?
When you ask people to go a little deeper and search for some sort of ideology, which people might call liberal or Democratic, answers tend to be confused and unsatisfying. Some people’s inclination is to point to the mission of a “liberal” advocacy group like the ACLU while others are simply at a loss. It should not be surprising that there is such widespread confusion because our public representatives so rarely attempt to give deeper reasons for their positions or to connect the dots on the Democratic Party platform with a coherent theme. Thus I think that to look at the liberal policy agenda and reason backwards in search of unifying core principles is probably a hopeless quest.
So, where do we begin then? I think it makes sense to begin by looking at the very word that defines us: liberal. There is an obvious connection to the word liberty. So, then, liberals are those who believe in and seek to defend and expand liberty.
But, what kind of liberty does a contemporary liberal defend? And, what does liberty mean anyway? Are we talking about our so-called basic freedoms like those in the Bill of Rights and other Constitutional rights? Or, by liberty, do liberals understand something deeper and more expansive? To put the question another way: are we simply talking about what Isaiah Berlin termed “negative” liberty or do liberals believe in “positive” liberty as well? That is, do liberals believe that freedom simply requires the removal external impediments to preference satisfaction, or do we believe that freedom requires having certain capacities and opportunities effectively developed and made available to us? The latter, positive view implies that state action can actually be something that empowers—i.e. liberates—as opposed to constraining. As I will argue, I think that the failure to distinguish between different understandings of liberty and to be clear about which ones we embrace is a critical source of confusion among contemporary liberals and Democrats. Ultimately, I believe that a liberal ideology, which successfully explains many contemporary Democratic instincts and policy stances, can be rooted in a more expansive conception of liberty. That is, a view of liberty, which appreciates that genuine freedom requires certain tools of thought and real opportunities. Additionally, it should be noted up front that espousing a more expansive conception of liberty does not necessarily undermine our commitment to basic negative rights.
In his 1932 book Ethics, the American philosopher John Dewey wrote, “The idea of freedom has been seriously affected in theoretical discussions by misconceptions about the nature of responsibility.” Simple notions of responsibility, he continues, usually stem from a belief in pure ‘freedom of the will’ where the will dictates action without environmental influence. In this sense, actions may be said to be “unmotivated” by natural or environmental causes. If we as human beings possess natural freedom, Dewey argues, the maintenance of liberty is fairly simple. The defense of freedom, as in Berlin’s negative conception of liberty, simply requires freedom from overt oppression or non-interference. Natural freedom may be guaranteed by securing the basic negative rights—the right to life, property, freedom of contract, freedom of speech and conscience, etc., so long as one’s words and actions do not tangibly infringe upon the rights of another.
Yet, if the notion of pure, natural free will is rejected in favor of a more nuanced theory of human agency, our notion of liberty consequently becomes more complicated. As most psychologists will tell you, pure free will is pure myth. Without venturing too far into the nature versus nurture debate, suffice it to say that we as human agents are in some significant respects conditioned by our surroundings. As the great 20th century political theorist Hannah Arendt writes, “Although everybody started his life by inserting himself into the human world through action and speech, nobody is the author or producer of his own life story.” Rather, she continues, the human agent is a “subject in the twofold sense of the word, namely, [an] actor and sufferer.” Developing a similar theory of human agency, Dewey writes, “Except as the outcome of arrested development, there is no such thing as a fixed, ready-made, finished self. Every living self causes acts and is itself caused in return by what it does.” To use Dewey’s term, the human actor is an “agent-patient,” both acting on and being acted on by his environment.
If this view of agency is adopted, our conception of freedom must change as well because, as Dewey writes, “It is empirically evident that the social world into which each of us is born exercises constant stimulative and inhibitory effects on desire and intent.” In other words, in our natural state we are in many ways dependent on our environment and therefore not genuinely free. Liberty is realized when the human agent comprehends his dependencies—the way in which the world is acting on him—and assumes the necessary understanding to effectively determine his own conduct. Thus, as Dewey argues, “Actual or positive freedom is not a native gift or endowment but is acquired.” Positive freedom is something the human agent has to strive for and grows into. Freedom is achieved when the agent can intelligently and purposively deliberate and act. And, of course, because of the agent’s continual reciprocal interaction with nature and social conditions—because of his continued dependency—the maintenance of liberty requires an ever-developing insight into the realities of social life. This means that the supports of liberty may be different today than they were a century ago in light of changing conditions.
So, what are the implications of this more expansive view of liberty for liberal social policy? It means that liberty is something which cannot be guaranteed solely through the extension of negative rights to the citizenry. Rather, there must be affirmative steps taken to help people to develop their capacities for insight and decision-making, which are the basis of effective liberty. As Dewey writes in a later work Liberalism and Social Action, “The problem of genuine democracy becomes the problem of that form of social organization… in which the powers of individuals shall not merely be released from mechanical external constraints but shall be fed, sustained and directed.” In Ethics, he makes a similar argument, pointing to a need to remake social conditions so as to “reduce those social habits which favor the free play of impulse unordered by thought.” In this view, the liberal state does more than defend the Bill of Rights. It acts as an enabler. It empowers those who are wanting in positive liberty to achieve a higher degree of intelligent and creative self-direction.
Several traditional liberal or Democratic policies naturally follow from this more involved conception of liberty. Most importantly, this understanding of liberty leads to a strong concern for education, as public education offers the most direct means of enabling and empowering (i.e. liberating) people from environmental dependency. Next, a concern with effective liberty suggests the importance of welfare and other public aid programs, especially those designed—as FDR believed they should be—to promote the development of individual capacities. On a more basic level, welfare programs also represent the affirmative guarantee of a right to life and a decent livelihood. A government geared towards the active extension of liberty will, of course, need sufficient revenues to support its various programs. Thus, a tax policy which aims to starve basic government services is inconsistent with a commitment to effective liberty. Further, a concern with effective liberty also explains liberal support of affirmative action policies, for there is a clear need to help those who contend with greater environmental adversity or are not exposed to the same sorts of liberating or empowering influences, such as a good schooling. With respect to foreign policy, this more involved liberalism may point to a stronger commitment (than currently exists among American liberals) to struggling peoples around the world—in ways that go beyond conventional humanitarian aid to include help in expanding educational opportunities. Yet, there is nothing in this theory that suggests the need for a unilateralist imposition of American power.
It is important to realize that in taking a more expansive view of liberty, liberals do not need to walk away from their commitment to basic negative rights like those enumerated in the Bill of Rights. American liberals need not adopt a sort of authoritarian conception of positive liberty like that advanced by Kant or Hegel. Rather, as Dewey shows, American liberals can expand the meaning of liberty without seriously undermining the classical liberal commitment to basic rights. Under this head, we can preserve our commitment to a woman’s right to choose and to a right to gay union so long as we can make compelling arguments that these should count as basic rights. We can do this by understanding liberty in a dynamic sense as the capacity for growth and more intelligent and creative self-direction, as opposed to thinking of it—as Kant or Catholic natural law advocates do—as living according to a fixed, absolute moral law.
The point in bringing up this debate and explaining different conceptions of liberty is to show that contemporary liberals can and should be more than civil libertarians. In fact, changing societal conditions and the realities of an advanced industrialist economy indicate the need for a conception of liberty that is adaptable to the exigencies of our historical moment, for there are many Americans living in a state of profound, albeit subtle, un-freedom. As liberals and Democrats alike, we must heed Dewey’s warning not to allow a static conception of freedom to inhibit the genuine work of liberation. Read, for example, Dewey’s description of the attitude of “New Deal” Democrats in the time he was living: “the majority who call themselves liberals today are committed to the principle that organized society must use its powers to establish the conditions under which the mass of individuals can possess actual freedom as distinct from merely legal liberty. They define their liberalism in the concrete in terms of a program of measures moving toward this end.” Have contemporary liberals lost sight of this great “end” in favor of the more narrow, negative freedoms? I think it is time that our politicians be reminded of this greater end.