Beyond Right and Left
A few days ago I finished David McKnight’s Beyond Right and Left: New politics and the culture wars. I have been meaning to write a review ever since. My problem was that I was not sure what to say. I found parts of the book brilliant. Yet I thought much of the book was trite. Dare I say it: drivel!
Take the opening argument: that the established spectrum of left and right is inadequate to categorise the multiplicity of views and approaches to the family, the environment, the economy, cultural diversity or the meaning of life. No one ever claimed that this simple model – which had its roots in whether one supports the orthodoxy (right) or wants to reform it (left) – would ever prove a reliable universal system of classification. What is ‘orthodox’ has always been changing: yesterday’s radical ideas are today’s conservatism. Anyway, most people and political parties are reformist on some issues and conservative on others; few are left or right on every front. Furthermore, the notions of left and right have been constructed in many ways, and not just as McKnight presented them.
It was the first of many straw men. McKnight’s economic analysis was equally hackneyed.
The last twenty years have seen the triumph of a broad doctrine which goes by many names – economic rationalism, neo-liberalism, neo-classical economics, supply-side economics – and which argues that all kinds of economic and social issues can be successfully dealt with by a combination of individualism, competition and free markets.
Get me a bucket. We live in a mixed economy, and neither Labor nor Coalition governments particularly contest that orthodoxy. There are arguments at the margins, but no calls for wholesale reform. Neither party is seriously proposing the abolition of the post World War II welfare state or a return to laissez-faire, nineteenth century England. If anything, the state’s role in the economy has grown under both sides of politics. The big differences in Australian politics (at least between Liberal and Labor) are matters of social policy, not economic policy; and even there, there is much in common between the major parties.
By the time I got to chapter 6, I was close to chucking the book. While relatively easy to read, it seemed to be describing a fantasy Australia. Much of the analysis was little more than a cartoon world viewed from afar. I found the thesis that the Right had largely defeated the Left a little difficult to swallow. As I score it, the Left has had many successes over the last 35 years — including some important wins — family law reform, gay rights, anti-discrimination legislation, multiculturalism, equal pay for women, state funded childcare, universal health insurance, etc. These are all now part of the orthodoxy. While the right may have won more on the economic policy front, the left have won more on the social policy front.
However, I digress, chapter 6 was the point where the book picked up for me. In the second half of the book, McKnight drew on Noel Pearson’s analysis of Indigenous affairs and used it as a starting point for a framework to explore the broader possibility of a new politics for family values, feminism, national identity and multiculturalism. The lessons McKnight perceived in Pearson and which he sought to apply more generally to the achievement of a fairer society are as follows (pages 164-166). They are worth pondering.
The first lesson from Pearson is that any broader renewal must boldly acknowledge unpleasant facts rather than attempting to rationalise them. George Orwell called it ‘telling people what they don’t want to hear’. Acknowledging unpleasant facts should be combined with genuinely trying to rethink the intellectual foundations of a world view rather than just fiddling with policy settings.
A second lesson is that he implicitly challenges the assumption that reform comes about largely through government action and that, conversely, if failure exists, it must be the fault of government. This is the unspoken assumption of much political action which is oriented to occupying government benches and implementing an official policy. It is not that it is entirely wrong – just that it involves the major omission of individuals and civil society from the picture. Related to this is the third lesson about social change: that poverty is not matter of material goods…
A fourth lesson about social change derived from Pearson is that focussing on rights is not enough. Social change conceived of as the spreading and advancement of abstract ‘rights’ neglects the plain truth that, in real communities and societies, rights crucially involve obligations – such as the obligation to do something in exchange for support…
Next, there is Pearson’s overt moral stance. This is in contrast to many social reformers who have tended to explain what happens by looking for rational, scientific or quasi-scientific explanations. They are often sceptical of the moral language of good and evil, and of any ’solutions’ which include blaming individuals… In rejecting this today, social reformers sometimes go to the other extreme, endorsing what is called ’social constructionism’. This is the view … which denies there is a human nature, and therefore a human condition, which establishes the moral domain within which we all function.
There are some big problems with social constructionism when such an over-arching social theory is applied directly to specific social issues. The main one is that there is no space to understand where the domain of individual moral responsibility begins and where that of social responsibility ends. As well, social constructionism discounts the ability of people to learn from experience and change their behaviour. It discounts the actions and moral choices which individuals can make in given circumstances. It concedes little or no autonomy to individuals and families, since they are seen as mere products of the wider society.
In the wider world of global politics, social constructionism is often wheeled out to ‘explain’ issues which have a moral dimension – for example, when people try to explain Islamic terrorism purely in terms of world poverty, globalism, or the evil actions of the US government. Almost invariably, such ‘explanations’ soon begin to sound like excuses.
A final wider lesson: Pearson focuses on the family as the crucial institution of social wellbeing… He points out that a stable and functioning family is a crucial element of social order, and provides a moral core to a wider community.
Having got that off my chest, I thought I would see what others have said. Rafe Champion at Catallaxy has written extensively on this book. Having just written the above, I note he quotes much the same long section I did.
Lindsay Tanner has an interesting piece in the Australian.