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Andrew Levine Liberal Democracy: A Critique of its Theory (New York: Columbia University Press 1981). Pp. 216.
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Andrew Levine Liberal Democracy: A Critique of its Theory (New York: Columbia University Press 1981). Pp. 216.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2020
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1 The main source of Macpherson's views is his Democratic Theory: Essays in Retrieval (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1973); the historical ground for the views in this work is in his The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1962). Levine discusses Macpherson in chapter 10.
2 Evidence that Levine may favour a ‘smasch liberal democracy’ approach is to be found in his review article, ‘Balibar on the Dictatorship of the Proletariat,’ Politics and Society, 7 (1977) 69-84, referred to in connection with his call for a political theory drawing on Marx and Lenin (201). (See note 20 below.) In a recent paper read at the University of Toronto, however, Levine was advancing a more retrievalist line regarding socialism and Rawlsian values. It is likely that he will further treat this subject in a shortly to appear work, Arguing for Socialism (RKP). A pertinent debate over the retrievalist project of Macpherson is between Ellen Wood and Leo Panitch in The Socialist Register 1981, 144-89. This debate illustrates that ‘retrievalism’ is a matter of degree, Panitch expressing views in what might be called a critical pro-retrievalist direction, Wood in a qualified anti-retrievalist one.
3 Levine defines ‘social democracy’ in this, as he acknowledges, idiosyncratic sense on p. 2. On p. 199 he describes Macpherson as also expressing a socialdemocratic view ‘in the accepted historical sense, of a political movement, rooted in the working class, that began as an attempt to replace capitalism and has become, in country after country, an effort to reform and manage it.’ This is a misleading description of Macpherson's views in two respects. Macpherson does not think that transformation to a more democratic society, at least in North America, must or will be rooted in the working class; and while he does not often use traditional socialist terminology, it is fairly clear that Macpherson does not at all wish his views to be part of a reform or management of capitalism, as Levine acknowledges on p. 200. See the interview with Macpherson (conducted, as it happens, by myself) about these and related topics in Socialist Studies: 1983 (a publication of the Canadian Society for Socialist Studies, published in the Department of Economics, University of Manitoba), and Macpherson's replies to earlier criticims by Levine, (and by Alasdair Macintyre) in the Canadian Journal of Philosophy 6 (1976) 195–200.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
4 Gutmann, Amy Liberal Equality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1980)Google Scholar, see chapter 5 and passim; Eisenstein, Zillah The Radical Future of Liberal Feminism (New York: Longman 1981)Google Scholar, chapter 4; Cristi, Renato ‘Hegel on Possession and Property,’ Canadian Journal of Political and Social Theory, 2 (1978) 111-24Google Scholar, The conference was on ‘Liberalism in Crisis,’ held at the University of Guelph, January 20-2, 1983. Jan Narveson and Gordon Schochet were among those who argued, respectively, that Hobbes should and should not be classified in the liberal tradition.
Leo Strauss argued in his Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1953) that Hobbes was a liberal (180-2), and more recently, Frank Coleman has maintained that he was even a liberal democrat, in his Hobbes and America (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1977), especially chapter 4. For a criticism of these views see Terry Heinrichs, ‘Hobbes and the Coleman Thesis,’ forthcoming in Polity.
5 This is a main argument of Gutman, and it is defended by Dworkin, Ronald in Liberalism,’ in Hampshire, Stuart ed., Public and Private Morality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1978) 113-43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar In a later essay argues, Dworkin that equality should be thought of in terms of equality of ‘resources’ and not in terms of ‘welfare,’ What is Equality?,’ Philosophy and Public Affairs 10 (1980-81) 283–345.Google Scholar Contrary to Dworkin, I believe it can be argued that ‘equality of welfare,’ or what is called here of ‘benefits and burdens,’ is meaningful and useful. For a pertinent argument see Christopher Ake, 1ustice as Equality,’ Philosophy and Public Affairs, 5 (1975-76) 68–69.Google Scholar
6 A prima facie reason for supposing that liberal-democratic values do not require a market society for their realization is that liberal democrats are not in practice foes of government constraints on the market. It might be said that this is because they see the necessity for some market constraints as means to maintaining an overall market economy, and this may be the motivation of some or even all liberal democrats; however, what is at issue is the compatibility of the notions of values like freedom and equality with market or non-market arrangements, and it is noteworthy that liberal-democratic arguments in favour of market constraints are often by appeal to humanitarian grounds (i.e., they pit a free market against the realization of certain values) not by appeal to the needs of market economies. On the question of whether market socialism is impossible, there is a large body of literature, and, of course, the experiments in Yugoslavia. Some relevant texts are: Radoslav Selucky, Marxism, Socialism, Freedom (London: MacMillan 1979); Agnes Heller and Feher, Ferenc ‘Forms of Equality,’ in Kamenka, Eugene & Tay, Alice Erh-Soon eds., Justice (London 1979) 149-71Google Scholar; Horvat, Branko The Political Economy of Socialism (Armonk: M.E. Sharpe 1982)Google Scholar; and Schweickart, David ‘Should Rawls be a Socialist?,‘ Social Theory and Practice, 5 (1978) 1–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
7 One author who expresses a view approximating this one is Fisk, Milton ‘History and Reason in Rawls’ Moral Theory,’ in Daniels, Norman ed., Reading Rawls (Oxford: Basil Blackwell 1975) 53–80.Google Scholar Recent debates over what theory of justice, if any, Marx himself held involve as two contending positions that of Allen Wood, who sees Marx as harbouring a view something like this hypothesized one, and Husami, Ziyad who disagrees. See their contributions to the anthology, Marx, Justice and History, Cohen, Marshall et. al., eds., (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 1980).Google Scholar
8 One side of this debate (against contractarianism) is ably defended by Fisk, Milton and by Richard Miller, ‘Rawls and Marxism,’ in Daniels, ed., 206-30.Google Scholar Arguments for the other side may be found in Reiman, Jeffrey ‘The Possibility of a Marxian Theory of Justice,’ in Nielsen, Kai and Patten, Steven eds., Marx and Morality, Canadian Journal of Philosophy Supplementary Volume VII (1981), 307-22Google Scholar; and Sterba, James ‘A Marxist Dilemma for Social Contract Theory,’ American Philosophical Quarterly, 19 (1982) 51-7.Google Scholar
9 Daniels, Norman argues this convincingly against Rawls in ‘Equal Liberty- and Unequal Worth of Liberty,’ in Daniels, ed., 253-81.Google Scholar
10 See Eisenstein, 154-5, 191-2, 235.
11 Marx, Karl The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, in Karl Marx and Frederick Engels Collected Works (New York: International Publishers 1978)Google Scholar, Vol. 11
12 I am thinking in particular of Dewey, John; see his The Public and Its Problems (New York: Henry Holt 1927).Google Scholar
13 For an argument on this topic see Nielsen's, Kai criticism of Rawls, ‘Class and Justice,’ in Arthur, John and Shaw, William eds., Justice and Economic Distribution (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall 1978) 225-45.Google Scholar
14 This, I take it, is the objectionable characteristic of a theory of ‘positive liberty.’ The reason that I think Macpherson's view collapses into it is that in his putatively unobjectionable analogue of positive liberty, proposed in the essay in Democratic Theory criticizing Berlin, he identifies his positive liberty concept with his theory of ‘men's developmental powers’ (113), but in the discussion of this theory, he qualifies the concept with the phrases ‘essentially human’ or ‘fully human’ (see, e.g., 52, 55, 57), and at one point he contrasts those who ‘wish to be no more than consumers’ with those who ‘wish to be active exerters … of their human capacities’ (51). Thus he sanctions regarding the prohibition of some from doing what they wish to do as other than inhibiting their freedom. It is worth noting that Macpherson's excellent criticism in another essay of Democratic Theory of Friedman's views on capitalism and freedom does not depend on a theory of positive liberty (essay vii).
15 The distinction between freedom and the worth of freedom is adequately criticized in Daniels. The best-known proponent of the distinction between justice in distribution and in acquisition (or more generally, transfer and holdings) is Nozick, Robert in his Anarchy, State and Utopia (New York: Basic Books 1974)Google Scholar, especially chapter 7. As I understand it, maintaining this distinction requires maintaining the distinction argued for earlier by Nozick (chapter 3, especially pp. 28-32) between what he calls ‘goals’ and ‘side constraints.’ I take the argument to come to some such claim as that the exhortation, Whatever you aim to bring about, do not also bring it about that a person is used or sacrificed without their consent', does not commit one to holding, ‘Act so as to minimize the using or sacrificing of people.’ Now either a circumstance within which someone has no option but to acquiesce in being used except, e.g., to starve, is one where the person can properly be said to have given consent to being used, or not. If not, then surely one who believes the exhortation should act so as to prevent there being such circumstances, i.e., to minimize people being used or sacrificed. If so, then the exhortation is biased in favour of socio-economic-political arrangements where one can be thus forced to consent; ie., it is biased toward a certain ‘end state.’ For a related criticism see Cohen, G.A. ‘Robert Nozick and Wilt Chamberlain,’ Erkenntnis, 2 (1977) 5–23, reprinted in Arthur & Shaw, 246-62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
16 The importance of democratizing the ‘social production of desires’ has been a theme of many contemporary feminist theorists, e.g., Rich, Adrienne ‘Compulsory Hetrosexuality and Lesbian Experience’ Signs, 5 (1980) 631-60CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and MacKinnon, Catherine ‘Feminism, Marxism, Method, and the State’ Signs, 7 (1982) 515-44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Relevant to an argument for the compatibility of this project with a ‘negative’ view of freedom are Agnes Heller's criticims of such things as needs or objective interests. See her, The Theory of Need in Marx (London: Allison & Busby 1974)Google Scholar and, with Feher, Ferenc Marxisme et démocratie: Au-dela du ‘socialisme réel’ (Paris: Mapero 1981)Google Scholar, especially chapters 4 and 10.
17 Oppenheim, Felix ‘Democracy: Characteristics Included and Excluded,’ The Monist, 55 (1971) 29–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
18 It will noticed that these questions have a ‘Rousseauian’ ring about them, in connection with which it is worth looking at Levine's earlier book, which is on Rousseau, : The Politics of Autonomy (Boston: University of Massachusetts Press 1976).Google Scholar
19 I employ the qualification, ‘neo-’ since there are debates over whether Gramsci, himself, was a Leninist and over whether Lenin was a Gramscian. See, for instance, the essays of Bobbio, Norberto Paggi, Leonardo Salvadori, Massimo and Giovanni, Biagio de in Mouffe, Chantal ed., Gramsci and Marxist Theory (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul 1979)Google Scholar, and Valentino Gerratana, ‘Stalin, Lenin and “Leninism”,’ New Left Review, 103 (1977) 59-71.
Two of the most interesting advocates of the neo-Gramscian approach whose work is available in English are Emesto Laclau and Mouffe, Chantal. See Laclau's Politics and Ideology in Marxist Theory (London: Verso 1979)Google Scholar; Mouffe's ‘Hegemony and Ideology in Gramsci,’ in Mouffe, ed., 168-204; their co-authored book, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, forthcoming in New Left Books; and their summary article, ‘Socialist Strategy: Where Next?,’ Marxism Today, 25 (1981) 17-22.
The most consistent attempt actually to carry out socialist practice based on something like a retrievalist perspective, in my opinion, is that of Gramsci's own Communist Party of Italy. See On Gramsci and Other Writings by Palmiro Togliatti, edited by Donald Sassoon (London: Lawrence and Wishart 1979) and the review of this book by Laclau, Ernesto in Politics and Power: 2 (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul 1980) 251-8.Google Scholar Berlinquer's, Enrico ‘Reflections after the Events in Chile,’ in Marxism Today, 18 (1974) 39–50Google Scholar, is also of interest, as is a compilation of the PCI's views on the military coup in Poland, After Poland: Towards a New internationalism, Antonio Bronda and Stephen Bodington, eds. (Nottingham: Spokesman Press 1982). A treatment of the debated ‘historic compromise’ that bears on the general point here is of Carrieri, Mimmo and Radice, Lucio Lombardo ‘italy Today: A Crisis of a New Type of Democracy, Praxis International, 1 (1981) 258-71.Google Scholar
20 The debate between the two camps discussed above was carried out in Europe in the 1970's largely around the question of whether the French and Spanish Communist Parties were justified in dropping the concept, as well as the words, The Dictatorship of the Proletariat,’ from their programmes. See the articles in Espangnol, Les P.C. Français, Italien face au pouvoir (Paris: Christian Bourgois 1976)Google Scholar, especially that of Gruppi, Luciana ‘Bloc de Pouvoir et Dictature du Proletariat.’ Etienne Balibar's work, The Dictatorship of the Proletariat (London: New Left Books 1977)Google Scholar defended retaining the concept. The notion of the dictatorship of the proletariat can be interpreted in a sufficiently broad way to make the theoretical side of the debate vacuous. But on a more strict interpretation (to include in the notion such things as the direct rule of the working class unmediated by law) there is a real debate, part of which has bearing on the retrieval of liberal-democratic theory, namely, that concerning Lenin's class relativization of democracy. Levine does not explicitly discuss this in his review in support of Balibar, but he concludes Liberal Democracy with the observation that liberaldemocratic defenses of political liberties and human rights should be ‘paralleled, as it were, rather than incorporated’ in a new political theory and practice (206).
21 Thanks are due to Derek Allen and Terry Heinrichs for commenting on a draft of this review article.