On Mon, 31 Jan 2000 17:05:00 -0500 Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu>
writes:
> Justin:
>
> <<<Uh, because Rawls thinks that institutions are subject to
> historical
> choice--Yoshie makes fun of this fundamentally historical
> materialist
> point, when it is in Rawls' mouth, by calling it a consumerist point
> of
> view, as if Rawls thought you pick out just institutions off the
> supermarket shelf. Rawls thinks no such thing, as you may gather
> from his
> discussion of the abolitionitists or Dr. king in Political
> Liberalism. But
> he does think that that we don't have to accept whatever history has
> handed
> us and say "thank you." In fact he think it would be wrong to do
> that.>>>
>
> Institutions are transformed through the exercise of collective
> human
> agency (_we_ make history, though not under the circumstances of our
> own
> making), but the conception of history and historical change in the
> liberal
> tradition is not the same as historical materialism (and on this
> point you
> must agree with me, in fact). For instance, J. S. Mill argues in
> _Considerations of Representative Government_:
>
> ***** It was not by any change in the distribution of material
> interests,
> but by the spread of moral convictions, that negro slavery has been
> put an
> end to in the British Empire and elsewhere. The serfs in Russia owe
> their
> emancipation, if not to a sentiment of duty, at least to the growth
> of a
> more enlightened opinion respecting the true interest of the State.
> It is
> what men think, that determines how they act; and though the
> persuasions
> and convictions of average men are in a much greater degree
> determined by
> their personal position than by reason, no little power is exercised
> over
> them by the persuasions and convictions of those whose personal
> position is
> different, and the united authority of the instructed. When,
> therefore,
> the instructed in general can be brought to recognize one social
> arrangement, or political or other institution, as good, and another
> as
> bad, one as desirable, another as condemnable, very much has been
> done
> towards giving to the one, or withdrawing from the other, that
> preponderance of social force which enables it to subsist. And the
> maxim,
> that the government of a country is what the social forces in
> existence
> compel it to be, is true only in the sense in which it favors,
> instead of
> discouraging, the attempt to exercise, among all forms of government
> practicable in the existing conditions of society, a rational
> choice.
> *****
>
> There are the following assumptions concerning historical change in
> the
> dominant mode of thinking in liberalism:
>
> (1) Historical change is primarily caused by the spread of
> enlightened
> moral convictions, and hence the history of humankind is a history
> of
> Progress of Ideas.
>
> (2) Reason and "personal position" (the liberal substitute of
> status,
> conceived as an individual attribute, for class) are opposed to each
> other;
> reason is universal, while "personal position" is particular;
> government is
> universal, while citizens are particular. The dialectical twins of
> particular and universal, individual and society, personal opinion
> and
> Raison d'Etat, etc. are represented in such a fashion to occlude
> questions
> of class relations. Hence, there is no room for an idea that reason
> consists in the working class becoming aware of what we are.
>
> (3) In seeking to change institutions, one must appeal to the
> enlightened
> self-interest of the subject of "rational choice." And the subject
> of
> "rational choice" is a passive, consumerist individual, to whom a
> variety
> of historically possible institutions & "social arrangements" are
> presented
> as if they were making a choice of commodities to buy ("good" versus
> "bad,"
> "desirable" versus "condemnable," etc.).
>
> (3) The enlightened opinion trickles down to "average men" who are
> to be
> "instructed." Individuals change their minds primarily through
> rational
> persuasion, not through the course of political practice (in which
> rational
> persuasion plays only a limited part).
>
> When we think of historical change in a historical materialist
> fashion, we
> don't hold the above assumptions. Our conception of change and
> human
> agency is diffeent. Don't you agree?
While I think that most of us here can agree with Yoshie that Mill's conception of historical change will not pass muster from the standpoint of historical materialism she has yet to show that Rawls embraces a similar coneption of how progress works. And that is crucial if one wants to rebut for example Justin's friend Rodney Peffer who contends that Rawls' conception of justice is not only compatible with socialism but also with Marxism itself. Yoshie must I think show that Rawls requires a similar conception of historical change if one is going to make a case against him on historicist gounds. In fact Justin seems to be correct in arguing that Rawls takes it for granted that the realization of a just society is dependent upon the existing of certain material and cultural conditions including a sufficiently high level of development of the forces of production.
Jim F.
>
> BTW, Mill, in the same text, also holds that:
>
> ***** Nothing but foreign force would induce a tribe of North
> American
> Indians to submit to the restraints of a regular and civilized
> government....Again, a people must be considered unfit for more than
> a
> limited and qualified freedom, who will not cooperate actively with
> the law
> and the public authorities, in the repression of evil-doers. A
> people who
> are more disposed to shelter a criminal than to apprehend him; who,
> like
> the Hindoos, will perjure themselves to screen the man who has
> robbed them,
> rather than take trouble or expose themselves to vindictiveness by
> giving
> evidence against him;...a people who are revolted by an execution,
> but not
> shocked at an assassination -- require that the public authorities
> should
> be armed with much sterner powers of repression than elsewhere,
> since the
> first indispensable requisites of civilized life have nothing else
> to rest
> on. *****
>
> Evidently, for Mill, "rational choice" was not to be applied to the
> subjects of the British Empire. That is to be expected, but it is
> not a
> little interesting to hear him speak so clearly that "a people who
> are
> revolted by an execution, but not shocked at an assassination" are
> not fit
> for self-government. Crimial justice once again raises its head as
> one of
> the fundamental instruments of the production & distribution of
> wealth &
> power.
>
> Yoshie
>
>
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