Liberal - Utilitarian = Libertarian

I'm trying to resume my long-delayed short post series looking at John Stuart Mill's On Liberty. Ahead of that, recently I looked at a couple of nice articles on the irony of individualism - how too much concern for individual rights can damages the rights of the individuals, and the difficulties of how we want people to think independently but also act in support of the common good.

That post got me thinking. So as a sort-of prelude to the remaining JSM posts, let me tie up a few more loose thoughts.

In the first part of the JSM series, I looked at what Mill had to say about that recurring topic beloved mainly of lunatics : free speech. This has been all too successfully co-opted by right-wing hypocrites. They think nothing of loudly proclaiming how much they love free speech and then disowning anyone who takes a stand against racism. Free speech my foot ! They are not using it for some noble purpose of speaking truth to power, or ensuring a productive debate unhindered by untouchable rulers, which are essential parts of a sensible government - they are using it to get away with saying they don't like black people. It's as simple as that. 

(I, for one, do not buy the argument that if we want to hold the government to account we're just going to have to accept people being abusive towards each other, nor does the need to say unpopular things demand we also allow people to discriminate on grounds of skin colour. FFS, that's stupid.)

In the second JSM post I'll look at what Mill had to say about how we should act within society. Mill was fiercely individualistic, but he was also a utilitarianist. And while utilitarianism has its flaws, in the case of classical liberalism I believe it's a very powerful asset. In Mill's view, liberals are individuals but with a profound sort of egalitarianism. That is, they possess no intrinsic strengths or weaknesses relative to each other, no innate reason why the rights of one individual should take precedence over the rights of another, equally conscious, equally valuable individual. A classical liberal need not insist that racists be allowed to vent whatever they want in any circumstances, since that oppresses the rights of other individuals. The liberal need not defend the right to free expression as an absurd absolute - that's a libertarian, not a liberal, view.

Equality is only the default presumption, however. When differences can be demonstrated and justified (e.g. medical expertise has to be earned), this no longer holds - equality should be initially presumed, but not permanently insisted upon. Liberalism is thus designed around a functioning community of individuals, not individuals acting in independent isolation. It seeks the greatest freedom for the greatest number, at the expense only of the smallest restrictions for the smallest number. 

In contrast, libertarianism seems to me to be pure selfishness and barely a step from naked villainy. It says that the rights of individuals are all there are, and simply ignores any conflict between individuals. It is easily perverted into anarchy in the pejorative sense, or authoritarianism in which the strongest are allowed to do what they will to the weak. It's the "I'm alright Jack" mentality exemplified in the quote by Thatcher that "there's no such thing as society". If everyone is free to take what they wish, some people will take everything.

That's the sort of "freedom" espoused by some : total freedom to and no freedom from - hence such shameless hypocrisy as advocating free speech but throwing a hissy fit of censorship when someone says something they disagree with. "Dictators free themselves, but they enslave the people" as Charlie Chaplain put it. There is no concern for the well-being of the group. A dictator, ironically, could be seen as a kind of utility monster : there would be an awful lot of freedom in total, but only for a very small number.

I think, though, that classical liberalism doesn't have this problem. Indeed, it can't, precisely because of its utilitarianism of being explicitly concerned with the whole community. It seems to me that utility monsters are what happens when you do utilitarianism very, very badly, treating "happiness" or "freedom" as a linear sum : a big heap of happiness that you can add or detract from, with the only goal being to increase the size of the pile. This simply doesn't work.

A much better strategy would be to first and foremost simultaneously minimise the harm done to the smallest number of people in order to maximise the good done to the greatest number. If you don't do both simultaneously, you get monsters. That, among other reasons, is why you can't go around chopping people up to harvest their organs against their will : you'd cause the recipients more happiness but an enormous degree of suffering to the "donors". More subtly, you can't easily compare happiness and sadness, certainly not in a rigorously quantifiable way - any more than you could sum up the total amount of music in the world and subtract the total number of leopards.

I am not sure if there a good, simple mathematical analogy for this kind of summation. It may be that the unquantifiable nature of freedom and happiness just don't work well mathematically at all. One person being supremely happy or free clearly isn't the goal of liberalism, but rather everyone being as free and happy as possible. As with feminism, the goal is raising everyone up, not pushing some people up only because some others go down. There's no direct equivalence at work, no weighing scales to balance the happiness of one against the misery of another.

Nor should a liberal set out to pre-emptively decrease anyone's freedom. There must be some justification to do so, e.g., the criminal actions or intent of one threatens the liberty of many*. Even then, there should be the smallest possible punishment for the greatest possible gain. And crucially, it's more important to make everyone content than a few people ecstatic. For example, if we were to have a fairer wealth distribution, we'd have a small number of billionaires being a bit less happy because they couldn't buy any superyachts at the gain of a large number of people being very much happier indeed because they could afford both food and rent at the same time.

* EDIT :  Liberalism is not a complete moral philosophy by itself - the goal of maximising liberty does not inherently justify the means even of minimising restrictions for the smallest number, which could still be unjust.

Perhaps there's a more complex mathematical operator (or formula) that would better describe things than a simple sum, but I don't know what that would be. It would not be a linear or vector sum, and the order would matter - prioritising the minimisation of suffering rather than the maximisation of happiness. Suggestions welcome.

Even so, there still seems to be a paradox here. True freedom demands equality : if our economic positions are hugely unequal, we have no power of veto. If we are notionally free to quit an employer but no other jobs are available, this is clearly a sham freedom - we have no real choice except what those above us deign to provide. Yet, if we are to be truly free, to maximise our liberty, this also demands the possibility that we become unequal ! Freedom to rule over others, whether if through direct power structures or only de facto through economic realities, isn't necessarily all that great for the ruled (notwithstanding justifiable and consenting differences in expertise).

Perhaps this suggests that freedom and equality are independent, uncorrelated parameters that can't be easily compared. Or maybe there are different senses of the word "freedom" than the usual "freedom from" or "freedom to" (for example, Epictetus' notion that freedom is fundamentally impossible without accompanying responsibility). Equity may be more important than equality : we want people to be treated equally in some areas (i.e. never having so many economic resources that no-one else can compete with them) but differently in others (recognising the different strengths and weaknesses of each). "From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs" is not necessarily a mark of full-blown Communism.

This suggests to me that a useful definition of liberal socialism would be liberalism that also seeks to maximise equality. The greatest freedom for the greatest number also requires the greatest equality for the greatest number, at the cost of the smallest inequality for the smallest number. Both equality and freedom should be maximised for the highest number of people. This is arguably a natural extension of liberalism, given that true freedom requires a level playing field, though it is not, as far as I'm aware, to be found anywhere in Mill. More on what JSM himself thought next time.

EDIT : From discussions, it becomes clear why libertarianism allows racism while classical liberalism doesn't. Both are types of individualism, but of very different natures. If you truly treat other people as individuals, you can't possibly be a racist, by definition. Anyone who says they're an individualist but is actually a racist is a liar and a hypocrite, but it's they themselves who are at fault, not the liberal philosophy they falsely claim to hold. By contrast, the libertarian Tory party is manifestly racist - but this is because libertarianism is selfish. This is view is, "if it's better for me, then fine", with no concern for the effect on others. Libertarianism uses the individualism of liberalism to give itself a veneer of respectability, but it's only a disguise for its selfishness. Hence, libertarians can certainly be racists, but (genuine) classical liberals, with a concern for maximising the rights of all individuals, cannot be.