>
> I agree that we benefit from most of what is listed
> above. They have been
> gains from a long history of political struggles and
> we ignore those gains
> at our peril. At the same time, I think we can see
> the history of
> liberalism as an attempt to neutralize those
> struggles in a myriad of
> ways.
Liberalism has a lot of strands. The free speech movements, the civil rights movements, in fact the union movement itself -- deeply tied up with both and with the extension of suffrage -- are liberal to the core. Lockean "liberalism," as the Miseans and people in Other Countries where "liberal" means what we call "libertarian" -- stands for the unrestrained reign of capital against all comers. It is not the only kind of liberalism, though, any more than Stalinism is the only kind of socialism.
As for the question of markets, I think
> Braudel has an interesting
> a provocative perspective on the question arguing
> that the market and
> capitalism are actually antagonistic functions
> rather that synonomous...
> (linking capital and the state)
I simply mentioned my view of markets, I don't want to get into this again.
>
>
(This is what
> Rawls
> > calls "political liberalism" -- the idea that deep
> > metaphysical or theological disputes have no place
> in
> > politics.)
>
> I tend to broadly agree with this. On the other
> hand, I tend to agree
> with the thesis that secularization in Europe was an
> attempt to neutralize
> the radical elements in the wars of religion
And this is over since when? Last I checked the Christofascist fundamentalist freaks who control the US government were fighting an endless crusade against Islamism, never mind American semi-secularism, and the fundamentalist Islamists were blowing up US and British troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and stoning adultresses in Iran, while the Shia and the Sunna were massacring each other, and Islamists were occasionally pausing to murder Russian schoolchildren and theatergoers (with the help of the Russian security forces), and planting bombs in London and other places after recently using their CIA-taught skills to attack the WTC and the Pentagon. Never mind the Serbian Orthodox masscring the Bosnian and Kosicar Muslins and, after the NATO intervention, the Kosowards turning the tables on the Orthodox, while ultraorthodox Israelis from Brooklyn are combining with secular Jewish Sabriot to reclaim historic greater Israel, which God gave to Abraham, over the bones of the Canaanites, er, Palestinians. And the Hindus and the Muslims are having great fun demolishing each other's holy sites, with accompanying massacres, after having divided the subcontinent on religious lines after independence in 1949.
The pause in the wars of religion from the late 17th century to the mid 20th century seems to have been more in the nature of a hiatus. If you count the Cold Wars (1917?-91?) as wars of religion, and there is reason to, the hiatus was even shorter.
> the ways that liberals
> leave the possibility of a critique of capital off
> the table...
Lots of them do. That's not a reason to give up on liberalism. No one has proposed anything better than competitive elections, universal suffrage, extensive civil and political liberties, and democratic decisionmaking that is relatively neutral on deep values
-- and (more controversially here) in economics, no one has proposed a plausible alternative to a mixed economy, where that means one that combines large elements of markets and planning (whether or not it involves private property and wage labor), at least in the "interim"; like the next 300 years. (Long enough for me!) But please, let's not get derailed by that because I am not going to defend this proposition. I just note that it is one on which Yoshie, Doug, and I all agreed pretty recently.
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