Climate, technology and chaos Blog

Continued from: Neoliberal Liberty and the Small State

Summary

Liberty is political. Different social groups can well have different ideas of liberty. If liberty is real, then there will be an ongoing and open process of political and cultural struggle, and the allocation, or avoidence of responsibilities

All systems of liberty have restrictions and compulsions. The fundamental political question is something like: “Are these restrictions of liberty, restrictions on ordinary people that help the dominant categories of people to continue to be dominant and avoid responsibility for their actions, or are they restrictions on the liberties of people who are dominant which enable ordinary people to have some influence and some escape from domination?”

We may also ask whether people’s liberty is enabled or not, particularly if they are not of dominant groups? Do all people, or simply some, have the liberty to work with others to govern themselves, and co-operate in tasks which are useful to them as a group?

Liberty conceived as absence of constraints, simply benefits those who already have power over others, and who have more options to take.

Beneficial change can increase conflict. Social groups or social categories who have been dominant, are likely to feel that they are loosing liberty if the subordinate groups, or categories, start winning more liberty for themselves, or start becoming equal. These formerly dominant groups are likely to complain that liberty is decreasing, when it is actually increasing for others.

In neoliberal culture, the liberties of capitalists and wealthy people seem to be considered primary, and the liberties of ordinary people secondary or largely irrelevant. Indeed false ideas of liberty can be used to sell ordinary people more freedom to be dominated. If the liberty of the oppressed is increasing, then it is likely that the dominating groups will team-up to declare that this increase of lower class liberty is oppression.

Making liberty totally about the liberty of the capitalist and wealthy, is achieved by the reduction of liberty to ‘liberty in the market’. Liberty in a market, may be part of liberty, but it is not the whole of liberty. Liberty in the market favours powerful players in the market, and the idea that almost everything should be subservient to profit, or to employers etc. These restrictions on liberty seem normal because they are needed to maintain capitalist power and become promoted as normal, becoming an accepted part of culture, action and thought. Powerful people tend to be able to protect and extend their liberty and curtail the liberty of others.

Another marker of freedom is whether it is easier for dominant groups to team up to protect themselves and extend their power, than it is for lower status groups to do the same. If it is, then people are not free.

In the contemporary world, corporations often capture the State, team up to capture the State, or are more wealthy and powerful than the State. Most people depend on business for their survival, and are rendered subservient by this factor which impacts on their liberty, and which subservience and hope is encouraged by dominant corporations.

These issues are why liberty is a cultural and political process, rather than purely abstract. There is no liberty if people cannot, or do not, become enabled to participate in the process of governance or in the making of culture and ideas.

Liberty is not simply a blanket category, it needs to be defined in situations and in political terms of its effect, and the power imbalances that are in operation.

Solutions

In the US there is a large movement called the Convention of States. They argue

Our convention would only allow the states to discuss amendments that, “limit the power and jurisdiction of the federal government, impose fiscal restraints, and place term limits on federal officials.”

Making the state more responsive to ordinary people is a good idea. Can this be done simply by making the State smaller, or less powerful?

Probably not. Making the State smaller and less powerful, makes it more vulnerable to organisations which retain their spread and power. State capture, pro-corporate laws, buying of politicians is likely to increase. It also hinders the State’s capacity for enhancing people’s liberty, if powerful organisations find this liberty troubling – and, as we have suggested, most corporations do not enhance the liberty of their workers, customers or victims.

This proposition is also compulsory, it “only allows” the states to discuss certain things, rather than common problems which bother them and need common action. This limits liberty, and it is not clear that this limit on liberty boosts the liberties of ordinary people rather than simply increases the liberties of the corporate sector to act as it chooses.

We might also expect that limiting the terms of federal officials, which might be useful, would also increase the pressure for federal officials to sell out to corporations while they have the chance, so as to guarantee a life income. This would clearly increase the likelihood of undue corporate influence in the State.

As already suggested “fiscal responsibility” while possibly a good thing in general, in neoliberalism, again acts as a way of reinforcing the power of the ruling classes, taking away power from everyone else, and enforces harassment of people for being poor.

Consequently, the motion as currently phrased is likely to be a dead end as far as liberty is concerned. It is far more likely to increase the power of established corporations and plutocracy. The convention does not preserve any basis for power that is strong enough to be able to resist plutocracy, even as badly as the neoliberal State might do now.

Breaking the Corporate Sector as a step towards Liberty

All large organisations, with access to more than one form of power, have the capacity to be repressive. They also have the capacity to team-up to increase their power and the repression they bring. Corporations, like other organisations, can both compete against each other, and co-operate to preserve and extend their power.

If the solution to the problem of the State is to break it up, the same solution should be applied to the corporate sector and other large organisations. Applying the solution simply to the State seems to be the kind of neoliberal solution which increases the power and influence of corporations.

Increasing Participation

The best solution is to increase the participation of citizens in the State, and remind people that politics is not the provenance of a political class but everybody. Everybody, almost everyday, gets together with other people to decide and plan what they are going to do together, or how their own desires work out with other peoples’. This is normal. The State is simply this happening on a larger scale. However, the wealthy, usually have an interest in keeping people out of participation in the State as ordinary people are unpredictable, and may require money, or responsibility, from the wealthy. This is why Hayek and his like try to make it impossible for the State to interfere in the corporately defined market, or raise taxes, or to expect the wealthy to take responsibility for their actions. It is also probably why Libertarians repeatedly denounce the tyranny of the majority: the interests of the people are not necessarily the same as the interests of the corporate power elite. The point of this neoliberal action is to try and persuade people to leave power with the wealthy.

There are five possible steps to the process of increasing liberty. While all may not be practicable, all should at least be discussed.

1) Make the State more responsive to ordinary people, and isolate it from the power of wealth. Corporations are not individuals (especially not immortal individuals) and they should not have rights of free speech and donation with no responsibility, although their members should have (even if corporations often seem to be allowed to sack people for voicing opinions the corporation does not like). Contributing to campaigns over a small limit should be forbidden as this decreases the participation, influence and liberty of poorer people. The standard process of politicians getting high level corporate jobs, or subsidies, after leaving politics should be forbidden to preserve other people’s liberty.

These constraints are amongst the constraints on liberty that prevent power from being accumulated and allow liberty to exist. They are not constraints on the liberty of ordinary people, simply on the wealthy sector’s ability to accumulate power.

One probably insolvable problem is that people’s main sources of information about what is happening in the State comes from corporately owned media, which is likely to be biased towards the preservation of corporate power and, possibly, to the production of fiction, as is normal for business. This will influence people’s participation, as it does now. This factor also needs to be considered; is it possible to avoid ‘fake’ pro-corporate news in neoliberal capitalism?

2) Use the State to break up the power of the wealthy corporate sector, so it has less chance of influencing the outcome of politics. Make sure the breakup is real, rather than simply apparent with hidden co-ordination.

Make sure that corporations and wealthy people do not pay less of their earnings in tax, than the median of the population, so that the State has an income. I’d be in favour of a high-level wealth tax to hinder class and elite family power developing, especially amongst non-talented individuals. Say death taxes on wealth and property of over $20m. This would affect very few people and still leave sizable inheritances, but it will not be popular precisely because it acts a little against the eternal preservation of the wealth elites. Remove laws that allow tax evasion for the wealthy so that the cost of the State and infrastructure does not primarily and proportionally fall on the middle and lower classes.

3) Make the State smaller, but not significantly smaller than the broken corporate sector, or else we are back to where we started.

Keep encouraging and enabling people to participate in local decision making, town hall meetings, easy participation in elections etc.

4) Set up institutions which are independent of wealth, and which have access to different bases of power, so that power is split amongst many institutions, and it becomes hard for a monopoly of power to assert itself.

5) More controversially perhaps in this neoliberal age… Make the State useful and helpful to people again, rather than hostile to them and friendly to the corporate sector. This probably also involves increasing the tax intake from powerful people, so everyone else can pay less and receive more services.

The more well disposed people are to the State, and the less alienated they are from it, then they more they are likely to participate in using it, running it, and holding other factions and interests in the State to account. The less alienated they are, the less likely they become to allow the State to be run for a particular social grouping and lose their liberty. If some ordinary people rip the State off, then that is the price for liberty, and it costs less than the continual rip off of taxpayers by the corporate sector.

Continued in: A note on social mobility.

This entry was posted on December 12, 2019 at 5:16 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.