Posted on 10/12/2001 8:52:12 AM PDT by dead
In the wake of the terrorist atrocities in the United States, the crumbling of the Left consensus continues. Thus while the usual suspects, especially in the media, heaped blame upon the victim and claimed that fanaticism and poverty in the Third World were the fault of the US and of globalisation, there were sufficient voices from independent thinkers who consider themselves of the Left to show that the centre of the Left consensus cannot hold - things are falling apart.
One of the more absurd propositions advanced is that somehow world poverty is the fault of the Americans. It is clear that over the past 50 years a number of extremely poor countries have overcome their disadvantage by engaging in international trade and encouraging both domestic and foreign investment, while other countries which have received large inflows of aid and direct investment have failed miserably to overcome their poverty. The fault is that of their own regimes, not of any outsiders. Much of the huge inflow of aid and investment into the poorest countries has been siphoned off by rapacious rulers and elites, while much has been wasted on ridiculous prestige projects which usually end up rusting away. Attempts to create socialist regimes turn out to create neither wealth nor egalitarian income distributions (socialism always produces a privileged nomenklatura), while the occasional benefits are more than offset by the loss of liberties.
Thus when the sillier adherents of left-wing causes propose the forgiveness of outstanding debts of poor countries, they are not taking account of the fact that the indebtedness, which everybody knows will never be repaid in any case, at least provides some sanction for past irresponsibility. Moreover when it is asserted that with x billion dollars (the popular figure right now is $US45 billion) hunger, etc, could be abolished, they are right in principle, but blithely overlook the fact that we know that the money would not for the most part be spent on such good purposes. Closer to home, just look at what happens to the ATSIC budget.
As I pointed out in an earlier column, the crumbling of the Left consensus in intellectual terms (though not where the general intellectual level is low, as in the ABC) has been exemplified by the denunciation by Christopher Hitchens, a leading leftist journalist, of the disgraceful responses to terrorism in Left circles. It appears that Hitchens has moved even further on some issues. Interviewed recently in the American magazine Reason (Free Radical), he has even declared that he no longer considers himself a socialist, saying, "There is no longer a general socialist critique of capitalism - certainly not the sort of critique that proposes an alternative or a replacement. There just is not and one has to face the fact, and it seems to me further that it's very unlikely, though not impossible, that it will again be the case in the future. Though I don't think that the contradictions, as we used to say, of the system are by any means fully resolved."
What he describes is a fairly common trajectory, followed by many others before him who have a sympathy for libertarian views on the state and a respect for individual liberty and have realised that socialism and liberty cannot go together. This is not a dogmatic position (and is not necessarily a conservative or neo-conservative one) - it leaves plenty of room for difference of views about specific policies and analyses. He in turn quotes the leading Polish dissident and editor Adam Michnik as having remarked to him before the fall of communism that "the crucial distinction between systems ... was no longer ideological. The main political difference was between those who did, and those who did not, believe that the citizen could - or should - be the property of the state."
Hitchens would still consider himself definitely on the Left, and certainly espouses views which would be categorised as Left. But he is prepared to argue his views and does not show the kind of massive ignorance, dogmatism and disrespect for either evidence or rational argument which categorises most of the modern Left, in Australia and elsewhere.
Libertarianism is an attractive position to espouse, but has the problem that it is too easy - to simply denounce any state institutions and policies is to deny that there is any difference between good and bad government.
Political libertarianism must take account of the fact that clear limits to liberty are sometimes necessary, even if to be deplored. Thus while the individual must never be considered in any sense the property of the state, "civil liberties" as asserted by money-grubbing and posturing libertarian lawyers are all too often a means simply of making the apprehension of criminals virtually impossible, and the detection of potential crime and terrorism equally impossible.
While libertarianism and a free market are always to be preferred to any conceivable alternatives, they need to be modified in practical terms by a degree of regulation and well-designed welfare measures, but not taken so far as to destroy productive activity; equally civil liberties have to be exercised within a framework which will preserve the possibility of their practice rather than opening a society up to those who would destroy its freedom.
ppmcg@ozemail.com.au
You know what they say, "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em".
Of course. The main problem with socialism is that it requires a police state.
Bastiat clearly establishe this 150 years ago when he wrote "The Law" and Hayek put a questions to reat with his The Road to Serfdom in 1946 in which Hayek firmly establishes that "Socialism forms the roots of Naziism."
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