おもしろい記事
In the context of political philosophy, liberalism refers to a school of thought that takes freedom, consent, and autonomy as foundational moral values. Liberals agree that it is generally wrong to coerce people, to seize control of their bodies or force them to act against their will (though they disagree among themselves on many, many whys and hows of the matter).
Given that people will always disagree about politics, liberalism’s core aim is to create a generally acceptable mechanism for settling political disputes without undue coercion — to give everyone a say in government through fair procedures, so that citizens consent to the state’s authority even when they disagree with its decisions.
Those on the left argue that liberalism’s failures were eminently predictable, the inevitable product of contradictions within liberalism long identified by critics in the Marxist tradition — that between the liberal commitment to egalitarian democracy and a vision of the market as a zone of individual freedom.
“Here is what we need to understand: a hell of a lot of people are in pain. Under neoliberal policies of deregulation, privatisation, austerity and corporate trade, their living standards have declined precipitously,” leftist author Naomi Klein writes in the Guardian.
Liberalism’s core error, in this view, comes from a mistake in its vision of democracy. Liberals support democracy as a matter of principle, believing that individuals have a right to shape decisions that affect their lives in deep and important ways. But liberals curiously excludes parts of economic life from this zone of collective self-determination, seeing the market as a place where people have individual but not collective rights. Liberalism sees nothing wrong with the heads of Amazon and Facebook making decisions that have implications for the entire economy.
So long as capitalists are free from democratic constraint, leftists argue, liberal democracy is on dangerous footing. The super-rich use the power their accumulated wealth provides to influence political life, rearranging policy to protect and expand their fortunes.
“In describing my own political trajectory, I often talk about my parents’ liberal politics, and my own journey of discovery, through which I concluded that their liberal ideals couldn’t be achieved by liberal means, but required something more radical, and more Marxist,” Frase writes. “That’s what I’d call socialism, or even communism, which for me is the ultimate horizon.”
Actual people are embedded inside social relations and identities — most notably, family, faith, and community — without which they lack meaning and purpose. Liberalism elevates the will of the individual at the expense of these pre-political bonds.
“For decades now our politics and culture have been dominated by a particular philosophy of freedom,” Hawley writes in an essay published by Christianity Today. “It is a philosophy of liberation from family and tradition, of escape from God and community, a philosophy of self-creation and unrestricted, unfettered free choice.”
The pursuit of profit erodes social ties, creating incentives for people to pursue their self-interest rather than build families or embed themselves in communities
“The political project of liberalism is shaping us into...increasingly separate, autonomous, non-relational selves replete with rights and defined by our liberty, but insecure, powerless, afraid, and alone,” Deneen, probably the sharpest of these conservative anti-liberals, writes in his book Why Liberalism Failed.
Liberalism can only truly tolerate belief systems that cohere with its vision of freedom, and will actively attempt to stamp out worldviews that it concludes are hostile to that ideal. In the right anti-liberal imaginary, liberal tolerance is fundamentally intolerant.
Hence attempts to force Hobby Lobby’s insurance to cover birth control and Christian bakers to make cakes for gay weddings
So if liberalism is a mortal threat to the West, what’s the right-wing alternative?
There are, broadly speaking, two schools of thought: localism and nationalism.
So if liberalism is a mortal threat to the West, what’s the right-wing alternative?
There are, broadly speaking, two schools of thought: localism and nationalism.
The first of these unsatisfying arguments, which I associate most closely with Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker, is that the narrative of a world in crisis is simply wrong. On every conceivable metric, the world is getting better — extreme poverty is declining, life expectancy is going up, deaths from war and violence are on the decline. If things are generally doing well, where’s the need for radical change?
But most fundamentally, liberalism’s defenders need to meet people where they are. And Pinker’s metrics notwithstanding, a lot of people really feel like the political status quo is failing them. The illiberals are explaining why that is; liberals are trying to talk them out of it. This won’t work, no matter how many statistics on infant mortality in sub-Saharan Africa liberals marshal.
The second unsatisfying liberal argument is that liberalism may not be perfect, but it has a long history of repairing itself.
But saying that liberalism can repair itself isn’t the same thing as explaining how it can do so right now. The victory of the suffragettes is cold comfort for women fighting for equal pay; claiming that liberalism abolished Jim Crow does nothing to tell us how it will fix the new Jim Crow.
The third and final unsatisfying liberal response, the one that frustrates me the most, is lashing out at the wrong enemies.
The obsessive focus on a handful of overeager college organizers and professors is a mistake; it obscures the undeniable fact that organization around group identity has helped create a number of vital political movements that are defending liberalism’s central component parts.
Think about the Movement for Black Lives, dedicated to liberal ideals of equal citizenship and non-coercion. Think about the fact that roughly 4 million Americans around the country turned out for the 2017 Women’s Marches, using a call for women’s equality as means of organizing against Trump’s threat to American democracy more broadly.
Think about the #MeToo movement’s role in fighting back against a pervasive source of unfreedom and inequality. Think about the backlash to Trump’s travel ban and family separations, how young people around the world are using their generational identity to mobilize around climate change, and how laws aimed at repressing minority voters have become a rallying cry for the defense of free and fair elections.
リベラリズムとは、自由、同意、自治に根本的価値をおく思想であって、強制したり、身体を拘束したり、自由意思に反して押し付けたりすることに反対する。もっとも、個人は様々な意見をもっており、全員一致ということはありえない。ありえないが、一部の人が同意しなくても、社会の決定事項に従わせる仕組みは必要である。そこで、リベラルは、論争のあることがらについて、公正な手続きを通じて平等に意見を言わせる仕組みを提供することで、自分が賛成しない決定事項にも従わせる仕組みを確立した。
現在そのリベラリズムが左右双方から攻撃を受けている、と。
左派からの批判
リベラルは平等な民主主義を目指すと同時に、市場における個人の自由も保障しているが、ここに問題の萌芽がある。
ネオリベは自由市場、自由貿易を通じて起業家たちに最大限の自由を提供すると同時に政府は緊縮財政、民営化してきた。そのことで、格差が拡大し、富裕層は富を駆使して政治を支配し、多くの人々は貧困に苦しむようになった。
自分たちに深く影響する重要事柄については自分たちもその政策決定に参加する権利があるというのが民主主義のはずである。ところが、市場という領域では、集団の意思よりも個人の自由のほうを重視して、アマゾンやフェイスブックの社長の意思決定についてはわれわれは何も言えないことなっている。これでは、経済的に取り残された人たちから文句がでないはずがない。
リベラルの理想はよかったのだが、しかし、それを実現する手段として社会主義のほうが優れている。
右派からの批判
我々は、家族、地域社会、国家、伝統のなかで機能しているのであって、社会あっての個人であり、社会なくして個人は意味も目的も喪失する。リベラルはこうした地域や伝統から個人を自由にしようとしたが、その結果、人は、利己的になり、さらに、無縁、無意味、不安定で孤独な無力感に苛まれている。
また、リベラルは異見に寛容にみえて、ゲイに反対するキリスト教徒のケーキやケーキづくりを強制したり、保険会社に避妊のための費用も適用するように強制しようしたりして、その実かなり不寛容である。伝統的宗教の信者や保守的な人々の生活を脅かしている。
リベラルの病から逃れるためには、地域社会を復活するか、宗教を背景とする伝統的な国家を建設すべきである、と。
こうした批判に対して、リベラルの対応は不十分だった、と。
リベラル主義でやってきて、社会は悪くなってしまったと左派、右派の人々はいうが、とんでもない。リベラルのおかげで、貧困は減少し、寿命は伸び、戦争も暴力も減った、世界はよくなってきたんだ、と反論する人がいる。たしかにそうした面も否定できないが、現実に先進国で貧困に喘いでいる人たちにとってそうした言葉は虚しい。
リベラリズムは過去にも困難に襲われてきたが、その都度修正してうまくやってきた、といって反論するひとがいる。しかし、過去そうであっても、現実に、賃金の不平等に苦しむ女性や差別に苦しむ黒人にとってはなんのたしにもならない。
特定の性別や人種に属する人の権利を強化しようというアイデンティティ政治や差別的な発言を抹殺しようというポリコレがリベラリズムを腐食しつつあると批判することによってリベラリズムを擁護しようとする人達もいる。
しかし、black lives matter 黒人の命は大切だ! #MeTo #私もやられた 運動などは、特定のアイデンティティーの人たち不遇の経験に基づいて、その権利強化のために、リベラルが理想としている自由や平等の実現に一役買っており、一概に批判されるべきものでもない。
ネオリベに対する左派からの批判、地域社会の重要性に対する右派からの提言は受け止めつつ、現実に対処していくリベラリズムの再構築が必要だ、・・・みたいない。
ーーー
ミアシャイマーのリベラルに対する批判にもありましけど、最近、リベラルは危機にあるんでしょうね。