What we accept when we accept individual freedom
Posted on Thursday 20 August, 2009
Filed Under Society
THERE is a natural tension between social conservatism and social liberalism, and not one that can be broken down on the usual left-right or Labour-Conservative axis.
Thus there are many socialists opposed to supercasinos, lap dancing clubs and 24 hour drinking, on the grounds that such activities are both detrimental to working class communities and carried on for private profit.
I happen think that attitude is wrong, and that the left should back the right of adults of all classes to engage in gambling, voyeurism and prodigious alcohol consumption if they elect so to do, irrespective of whether we approve personally.
At the same time, I acknowledge that the red puritan stance is a legitimate opinion with a traditional base in Britain’s ‘more Methodist than Marxist’ labour movement.
There is a similar cleavage on the political right. From the outside, it looks mostly an age thing. Thatcher’s children tend to be of the ‘let it rock’ school, extending the logic of the free market into the personal sphere. Yet at the same time, the Cameroons see no contradiction in harping on about ‘Broken Britain’.
Older commentators, and some rightwingers of religious motivation, still appeal to a morality that essentially disappeared in Britain decades ago. Some of them almost appear to be anti-fun on principle.
I have tried to explore such themes in a number of recent posts. I am well aware that my recent comparison between Tracey Connolly and Sir Fred Goodwin is not one of my better offerings, probably because the underlying thinking is slightly confused.
The thing is that we social liberals of both left and right demand social freedom, especially for ourselves, even though we can see the logical consequences of these freedoms when extended to society as a whole.
So we are agreed that it is bad when people are reduced to mugging or burglary to fund drug habits, especially when it is us they mug or burgle, but jolly agreeable when the middle classes break the charlie and the spliff out after a North London dinner party.
I have been in otherwise prosperous North American cities and seen block after block transformed into a wasteland as a result of the prevalance of crack cocaine. Yet still I am on balance in favour of the legalisation of Class A drugs.
Promiscuity among teenagers, especially those chav slags off the estates, sends the Daily Mail crazy. But student bedhopping at Oxbridge is only to be expected, and businessmen and politicians can get their leg over with the secretary and maybe a mistress or two, provided only they can afford the upkeep. Girls whose daddies buy them a loft apartment in Shoreditch are nice, girls who get knocked up to blag a council flat are nasty.
Tracey Connolly is slammed for watching porn, presumably of particularly low grade, on the interent all day. But there’s nothing wrong with arthouse flicks or young professionals popping into Anne Summers and picking up that Hoxton Honeys DVD by that supposedly tasteful young woman porno director.
Not working is disgraceful if one’s idleness is funded by benefits, but quite alright for trustafarians. Of course we want the ability to divorce, especially if it is our marriage that goes wrong, even while we recognise that the breakdown of the family has ineluctable social consequences.
The double standards are palpable, and the trouble is, neither side can have it both ways. If we buy into individual freedom – and I for one very much do – then we buy into what it entails.
So when we insist on our right to chainsmoke, get pissed and check out adult internet sites – because we can handle it, can’t we? – we logically insist on the right of Tracey Connolly to do just the same, even though she can’t.
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65 Responses to “What we accept when we accept individual freedom”
“Is it moral to be given housing without ‘earning’ it?
If so, that point applies to both council housing and parental gifts.”
Not so. Again, there’s the question of who pays.
Is it moral not to work? If it is, that goes for both ‘scroungers’ and rich kids.
Ditto. Although I would argue that those who work are right to despise those can work, but who do not. Pre-welfare-state socialists would have had no problem with this idea, when the only idle people were the ‘idle rich’. Alas the left seem to think the ‘idle poor’ should be immune from criticism.
By the way, if inherited wealth is a bad thing, what about the physical characteristics of attractiveness, just as unearned and unmerited as inherited wealth ? A case in point – Mr and Mrs Tommy Sheridan
There is no ‘e’ in ‘argument’[which appears twice, so not a typo, I fear]. Just a point: if you’re going to sound off ‘de haut en bas’, get it right.
> Eat, drink and be merry, I say – red hedonism
I agree. The problem is too many old-school socialists are shockinly socially conservative. And they wonder why young people are turned off left-wing politics.
If the left concentrated on pushing for economic equality and stopped getting all uptight and moralistic about gambling, drinking, cannabis, etc, they just might find more people listening and agreeing.
This division goes way back on the left. Hardie got the ILP to make teetotalarism obligatory – this rule lasted a year (I can’t imagine it going down well with my Scots ILP forefathers). Blatchford’s England for All defends drinking – in moderation. he had more in common with the good side of G.K.Chesterton-type Merrie England than with the dour prim descendants of Mrs Jellyby. Hyndman, generally less in this mould, still is reported lectured SDF members for drinking whisky while playing cards on a train coming back from a conference, (when he was known to tipple fine wine). Others (Bax, who witnessed that scene) in the SDF rejected puritanism en bloc. But (Bax) again had their own prejudices – such as opposing female suffrage…
Then you have Lafargue defending the Right to be Lazy.
There, nevertheless, is something worse than puritans who loathe people having a good time: it’s a certain type of leftist (usually Green) who has a life-style that she or he thinks everyone else should follow. I know more than a few – who if you mention horse racing, poor exploited horses. Sea-food: poor sea. Meat, poor beasts in the factory-farm. Chuck paper in the bin – should be recyled. Organic food: warm glow: I am saving the plant just by eating it.
This kind of puritanism is not anti-hedonistic in the conventional sense. It’s change yourself, be like me!
“At the same time, I acknowledge that the red puritan stance is a legitimate opinion with a traditional base in Britain’s ‘more Methodist than Marxist’ labour movement.”
This is wrong. while there may have been some who were more Methodist than Marxist there labels certainly didn’t apply to the Bolsheviks who robustly enforced prohibition after the Russian revolution. Lenin and Trotsky were among its most vociferous supporters.
Alcohol along with other vices were seen as being detrimental to the class interest and had to be dealt with severely. The new Russian worker was to be a conscious revolutionary, productive in the factory and collective farm, a brave soldier and a good family man. Capitalist vices such as drinking was contrary to the socialist ethic.
Crude liberterianism as many here seem to espouse has no place on the left, it is contrary to what we stand for. It is the ultimate manifestation of the degenerate rapacious free market gangster capitalism. It worships the sanctity of the individual as opposed to people pulling together for the collective good and revolutionary change. This is not socialist. Unfortunately it has poisoned the left discourse in this culture. This is excatly what the ruling class want, a nation of a wasted working class poisoned and corrupted by drugs, booze, porn, gambling, prostitution is not going to be in any condition to engage in the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism is it?
I remember quoting Connolly, Larkin, Keir Hardie’s views on alcohol and other vices here in the past, not going to repeat them. Whether they were inspired by religion I don’t know.
What I do know is that there is a proud history of what you call ref puritanism which has nothing whatsoever to do with religion. Examples being the Communist initiated prohibition in Sweden in 1922, with the prohibitionists and and non prohibitionists practically split on left/right lines. The capitalist parties being against prohibition as they depended on breweries and distillers for a lot of their funding.
Che Guevara was also teetotal and led a puritanical lifestyle, again nothing to do with religion.
US prohibition, even though the authorities powers of enforcement were a lot less than in the Soviet Union also had the support of some sections of the labour movement there, especially among African Americans. Again this was also combined with radical religious groups such as the Quakers.
A more recent example is the Zapatista liberated zones in Mexico where there is a total ban on drugs, booze, gambling and prostitution.
My point is that “puritanism” is very much in keeping with the revolutionary tradition and has a proud history on the left.
Liberterianism stems from the bourgouis liberal concept of individual “freedom to” as opposed to the socialist collective “freedom from”
And as as a socialist I ideologically oppose it as I oppose all manifestations of free market capitalism. I regard freedom from booze, drugs, gambling, porn, prostitution etc. as important as freedom from hunger, poverty, unemployment, sickness, homelessness and everything else that makes us socialists and very different to the capitalists and their ruling class.
The desire to regulate and control the behaviour of others is not a healthy one and is indicative of authoritarian tendencies.
You only need to see the actions of “religious police” to see where that leads, and it is not a pleasant place.
Whats this got to do with religion mod?
Going by your logic, you may as well let employers discriminate against workers on whatever grounds they wish. Abolish speed limits, compulsory seat belts and other sensible health and safety legislation because after all they are examples of authoritarian state control on peoples individual liberty to do as they please. This is where all this crude liberterianism inevitably ends up.
It’s not about crude libertarinaism but about accepting that somethings are certainly a case of putting the public interest over private freedom, and other’s are a subjective matter of taste.
Binge drinking regularly is certainly unhealthy and I would put forward the argument that it’s in large part because of an economic system that keeps people alienated from the products of their labour, that fetishizes commodities etc that people would choose to damage themselves, to deny their own agency in such a way. I would imagine that people wouldn’t binge drink in a socialist system.
But I can’t say the same about the appreciation of single malts, certainly in an equal society such things wouldn’t be the preserve of middle and upper classes, but I know I wouldn’t want a revolution without whisky.
And I can’t see anything inherently reactionary about dutch courage, are we to argue that after the revolution young adolescents won’t be a bit scared of each other?
And that’s just on the topic of alcohol, which certainly can be used to keep the poor poor etc, but isn’t of itself an evil thing.
Were we to look at prostitution, I think could argue that it’s hard to see an economic system in which selling one’s body isn’t demeaning, but is it not possible to imagine enlightened, progressive pornography which celebrates the human form rather than objectifies it?
I suppose I’m saying, yes, there are many individual liberties that’ll have to go in the name of greater liberties. Fine. But I don’t think the revolution has to eliminate fun.
Anyone who is teetotal and, in particular, doesn’t drink wine is a class traitor and should be expelled from the movement forthwith. Then they can be brought before the appropriate Revolutionary Tribunal.
Declaration des cooperatives – communistes – viticoles du Midi.
Volum Vivre al Pais.
The somewhat puritanical Victorian British insisted on the right of the Chinese to become addicted to opium. So much so, that they went to war twice over it. Making a profit from the opium trade was the last thing on their minds, of course.
Drug addicts tend not to be rebellious or revolutionary, especially if their master is also their supplier. Far from being an individual act of freedom, indulging yourself may actually cement others’ power over you.
Libertarian, you contend that capitalism is a fair and equal society, where ownership is widely distributed.
I was trying to show you that under capitalism wealth is concentrated in realtively few hands.
So how you can say this wasn’t the point of discussion god only knows.
Maybe you never went to scholl, yes that would explain it.
Libertarian,
You claimed that capitalism is a fair and equal society and that socialists were incorrect to claim ownership was concentrated under this system.
I provided stats to counter this claim, so how you can say this wasn’t the point of the discussion, god only knows.
Maybe you never went to school, yes that explains it.
Libertarian seems to have failed to realise that the point of capitalist ownership is that it commodifies products. The leases that he owns are assets, they are commodities, they can be traded, they do not prove that capitalism is dead. Under feudalism, there was a roll-call of obligations/contracts, known as insubfeudination, Mr Libetaraians possession of various leases is only another form of that. I would also like to point out that Marxism has always allowed for the skilled worker, or ‘labour aristocracy’ in the jargon. Yes, a lot of clever chappies have earned a lot of money through trades such as IT, where one’s capital is one’s brain, but at the end of the day they still need employment, unless they have wisely invested their earnings in property or shares or started up their own firm. As for the old, we all own shares in mega-corporations through our pensions argument. Didn’t it say on the news the other day that many people are worried about their pensions because the stock markets are declining? Anyway, such ownership does not carry voters’ rights, so in what meaningful way do we OWN such companies? Finally, as for the argument that ownership of an asset excludes other people from owning it, I would like to remark that years ago a Town Planner I was talking to told me that land is always more valuable before it is developed because anything could be build on it (ignoring complications such as planning laws). It seems to me that you owning an icecream factory, precludes me from owning the plant and labourforce and using them to produce chocolate bars, which is actually a diminuation of my freedom.
I also think that you have a rather Orwellian view of the proles, Dave. Do you remember the bit in ’1984′ where Winston goes to the prole part of town and is horrified to see the way that they behave: drinking, promiscously and vulgarly. He tells himself that if there is any hope for change it lies with the proles, that somehow the Great Unwashed will rise above their conditions. It seems to me that this is Eric Blair’s Eton schooldays showing itself, the middleclass distaste for the working class. I must admit I have been thinknig about this recently because I went to Bournemouth for my hols this year and the place was full of workingclass holidaymakers. The point I wanted to make was that MOST workingclass people do not drink to excess, do not vandalise public property, do not cheat on their benefits etc. In my experience, workingclass people are generally accepting of young ie unmarried people acting hedonistically, saying, ‘it’s only themselves they’re hurting’. It’s the newspaper editors and lower middleclass readers (petty bourgoise) who splutter indignantly at the thought that someone may be enjoying themselves in non-improving ways. Surely, that sort of excessive behaviour is a rite of passage anyway? I don’t drink or take drugs, one of the reasons (apart from health) is that it has been shown that it is funding organised crime and (dare I say it?)Islamic fundamentalism. So it is not an impactfree activity anyway. Returning to the theme of Tracey Connolly…what is upsetting people is not that she was looking at pornsites (although, have you seen them? They are nasty, short and brutal!) but, she was doing so to the NEGLECT of her child/ren. She was also shacked up with a cretinous Nazi and pervert, but would you say that that was important for her individual liberty?