--- Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>
> On Oct 23, 2007, at 3:29 PM, Wojtek Sokolowski
> wrote:
>
> > Now, what is wrong with Western liberalism?
>
> For me, at least two things: 1) its individualist
> basis and its
> limited conception of freedom (absence of constraint
> rather than
> providing the capabilities for development) and 2)
> its frequent
> suspension in colonial and neocolonial adventures,
> which are anything
> but liberal. I'm not against it, though, if I have
> to make the forced
> choice.
[WS:] I am not sure if these are valid criticisms. There are certainly many strands of Western liberalism and many do stress the enabling aspect of freedom (which goes back to Aristotle), as opposed to negative one (absence of constraint - cf. Holmes & Sunstein, _The Cost of Rights_).
But more importantly, Western development created unprecedented capablity in virtually any aspect of human life - so the problem is not insufficient capability but constraints to the full utilization of that capacity. To use an obvious example, the US has sufficient capacity to provide universal health care or effcient transit system - but it will not because of the constraints created by special interest groups.
If some people do not have access to that potential it is due largely to artifically created constrains, as noted above, as well as social factors (culture of poverty, etc.) rathr than insufficient potential for development, let alone Western liberalism and it semphais on individual freedom. From that perspective, liberalism's emphasis on the absence of constraint is well placed.
As to the second point, imperialism i.e. expansion of the power of one group over another group is universal since the beginning of human history. If it did not exist, we would still be living in small nomadic bands. Therefore, blaming liberalism for imperialism is like blaming it for infectious diseases - the two merely coexist rather one being the cause of the other.
If anything, Western liberalism put a brake on some of the nastier aspects of imperial expansion. The very fact that the USG is using "rendition" instead of simply torturing the captives as the Nazis or the Soviets did is the testimony to the fact that such practices are no longer acceptable in Westen liberal democracies. The thugs in USG cannot help that and they are forced to use proxies instead.
Another point, imperialism is not necessarily bad - it may lead to social progress. For example, Soviet domination of backward Eastern European states (e.g. Poland) brought a lot of progressive changes there. Th esame can probably be said about Chinese domination of Tibet. These are just two examples that come to mind, but i am pretty sure one can find more. Certainly, there were also costs if imeprial expansion - but as I said, such expansion is an inseparable part of human history. If anything, Western liberalism increased the benefit to cost balance of that expansion.
Besides, why should we cherish local nationalism, the anti-thesis of imperialism? National sovereignty has no value in itself other than giving a blank check to local power elites. Therefore, undermining it, as imprialism invariably does, by itself is not necessarily a bad thing, it can be a good thing if it brings progress - which I belive is the crux of Marx's argument about the British rule in India.
Wojtek
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