I said:
The liberal rights I accept are the right to universal
> > suffrage, to vote and participate in representativbe govt, and extensive
> > civil and political liberties. Those say and imply nothing about what
>foirm
> > propert rights should take, and I think they should be socialist. ...
>
>Oh, okay. So "liberalism" is whatever you say it is at any
>given moment.
No, I've said this for more than 20 years. Political liberalism is a completely standard notion, I didn't invent it. My usage closely tracks that of John Rawls, whose views more or less define political liberalism in philosophy, and who is officially neutral, so far as pol lib goes, on the choice between market socialism and welfare state capitalism. There's nothing idionsncratic about it, nor ad hoc either.
Obviously liberalism is a contested term, but mine is a well-known sense of the term. Btw "liberal" in economics terms in America means "pro-welfare state" and in Europe and LAtin America means "anti-welfare state."
I note further that "anarchism" is contested too. To a lot of people it means something like advocacy of the destruction of all civilized values. Right wing anarchsits don't approve of common control of property. Old fashioned anarchists hate religion. Etc.
These terms are not univocal. Why don;t you engage my views instead of disputing my right to the labels? I gave up on Marxsim in part because I got tired of arguing with the Marxists about what Marxism was. I'll be goddamned if I'll let the anarchists dictate what a liberal is.
But
>let me know if you decide to let ol' "life, liberty and
>property" Locke and his friends back in the boat any time
>soon.
Not a chance. Not in MY boat. See my "From Libertarianism to Egalitarianism," Social Theory & Practice 1992 (Gad!).
>By the way, I reject the notion that practice precedes
>theory. Subjects that act always have some sort of theory
>about what they're doing --
But taht doesn't mean theory precedes practice!
One can
>certainly not talk about _democracy_ or _liberalism_ without
>having a theory about what these words mean, and if they
>point out merely some vague, ill-ordered collection of
>phenomena, then talk about them will also be vague and
>ill-ordered, and action subject to hijacking by clever
>rhetoricians.
They would anyway, no matter how fully articulated. And I certianly do have theories about what these words mean. I am, or was, a political philosopher, yes? ANd I still entertain myself by writing down these theories at bnsaeuting length and in great technical detail, and publisihing them in obscure academic journals.
In the universe as I observe it, theory and
>practice are two sides of willful activity which continually
>feed into one another.
Who denied this? This is theABC of pragmatism and Marxism too.
jks
_________________________________________________________________ MSN Photos is the easiest way to share and print your photos: http://photos.msn.com/support/worldwide.aspx