Category: Liberalism

Are classical liberals and libertarians the same?

~ Andrew Norton ~ 72 Comments

A few years ago I tried to explain why I felt more comfortable with the label ‘classical liberal’ than ‘libertarian’. The Australian political identity survey can help see if the distinctions I was trying to make hold up.

One of my claims was that libertarians tend towards a rights-based view of politics. Consistent with this, 59% of the 184 libertarians in the survey supported either a constitutional bill of rights or a statutory charter of rights. By contrast, 52% of the 256 classical liberals preferred leaving the protection of individual freedoms to the democratic system, which among other things allows broader considerations to be taken into account. (Charts containing classical liberal and libertarian views compared, and further analysis can be found here.) However, a large minority of classical liberals want freedoms to be protected by the courts, and a large minority of libertarians preferred the democratic system.

Across most issues, there was a pattern of classical liberals and libertarians being on the same side of a broad debate but with libertarians taking the more radical stance. For example, while 40% of classical liberals chose the most radical option of cutting tax as a proportion of GDP to 20% or less, 57% of libertarians chose that option. While 46% of classical liberals thought that minimum wage laws should be repealed, 59% of libertarians took that view. While 50% of classical liberals would legalise marijuana entirely, 65% of libertarians would do so. As I said in 2006, ‘if libertarianism and classical liberalism are not identical twins they are at least first cousins, which is why classical liberals can end up appearing like “moderate” libertarians.’
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Non-existent ‘neoliberals’ and ‘neoconservatives’?

~ Andrew Norton ~ 23 Comments

1,201 people answered the Australian political identity survey question on which political philosophy they identified with. Of these, the single largest group (a third) regarded themselves as social democrats. Just over 20% called themselves classical liberals, 15% described themselves as libertarians, 8% saw themselves as greens, and conservatives made up 14% of the sample, 8% describing themselves as social conservatives and economic liberals and 6% simply as conservatives.

Another 9%, 106 respondents, did not find their own beliefs in the political labels I chose. The single most popular response among these was ‘socialist’ or some variant on that, with 16 socialist respondents and 1 Marxist. ‘Social liberal’ or some variant on that was the next most popular from 14 people, with a couple of small-l liberal responses as well. We also had people who wanted to be simply a liberal, a liberal conservative, and a liberal democrat.

Though academics and commentators routinely discuss ‘neoliberals’ and ‘neoconservatives’, not a single person used those labels to describe themselves. In my question on which political intellectuals respondents had read, the ‘neoconservative’ thinkers – Irving Kristol and Leo Strauss – were the least read. Even among self-described conservatives and social conservatives, only 14% had read anything by Kristol and just 8% had read anything by Strauss.

It raises again the question of whether labels like ‘neoliberal’ and ‘neoconservative’ have descriptive or analytical value. My own reading of work by local academics (eg here or here) suggests that the main effect of the labels is to lead them down the wrong path, importing global academic concepts (neoliberalism) or distinctively American political ideologies (neoconservatism) rather than trying to understand the local variants of liberalism and conservatism.

In the next post, I will look at what classical liberalism and libertarianism mean in the Australian context.

Australian political identity survey – last chance

~ Andrew Norton ~ 1 Comment

I’ve had many more responses to my survey on Australian political identity than I was anticipating – 1,155 as of a few minutes ago. But the more the better, so if you have not yet taken it and you feel that a political label such as classical liberal, libertarian, conservative, social democrat or green describes you, please help what I think is the first-ever Australian research into this topic and do the survey here.

I’m going to start analysing the results on Good Friday, so you need to complete the survey by 8am Friday 10th April for your answers to count.

My original post and some discussion of the survey in comments can be found here.

Australian political identity survey

~ Andrew Norton ~ 40 Comments

As a classical liberal, I am the kind of person people like Kevin Rudd or the academic left are talking about when they use the term ‘neoliberal’. However, their descriptions of ‘neoliberalism’ often seem to be, if not totally inaccurate, crude caricatures of what people like me actually believe.

My impression from years of talking policy and politics with a wide variety of people, and editing a classical liberal magazine, is that even among those willing to identify with a particular political philosophy their actual views are (depending on how you look at it) more complex or less consistent than simply following the logic of their philosophy wherever it might take them.

To try to see to what people with different intellectual political identities believe, and on what they agree and disagree, I have devised an online survey of about 40 questions. There is a question on party support near the end, but the main point of the survey is to see what people willing to identify as classical liberals, libertarians, conservatives, and social democrats believe, regardless of their party affiliations. I’ll publish the results over Easter.

Click here to take the political identity survey

Liberty and Society, 1-3 May 2009

~ Andrew Norton ~ Leave a comment

For university students and recent graduates, applications are open for the next CIS Liberty and Society seminar. It starts with a dinner on Friday 1 May, with sessions over the next two days on liberal political philosophy, liberal economics, liberal law and a final policy-oriented session. If you are interested in classical liberal ideas, you’ll get lot from this weekend.

You don’t have to be a classical liberal to attend; we always select a few conservatives and social democrats to keep the debate lively. But everyone has to express their disagreements in a reasoned and polite way, so all who attend can participate in the discussion without being intimidated.

If you are selected, the CIS will cover all the costs of the weekend itself, and there are also air fare subsidies available for those who need help getting to Sydney.

Applications close on 3 April.

PJ O’Rourke finally coming to Australia

~ Andrew Norton ~ 9 Comments

I first came across PJ O’Rourke in 1987, via an hilarious review of a book by Jimmy Carter in the American Spectator (then a witty Tory magazine, not the Clinton-hating rag it became in the 1990s). Vindicating his harsh judgment, the Carter book now sells second-hand for $3.98. This review led me to his also-hilarious Republican Party Reptile and many other good books over more than 20 years.

He’s finally coming to Australia, a little later than originally planned via cancer treatment, to give the annual CIS John Bonython Lecture.

He’ll speak in Sydney on 21 April and in Perth on 28 April. I’m not sure if I have any New Zealand readers, but he will speak in Auckland on 30 April. (For east coast Australian readers with lots of frequent flyer points, note the arbitrage opportunity in the Auckland dinner.)

Am I a ‘moral conservative’?

~ Andrew Norton ~ 16 Comments

In the Culture Wars book, Norman Abjorensen describes me as a ‘moral conservative thinker’. Yet again the left’s labels for the right seem chosen according to mood rather than meaning. The footnote at the end of the sentence is to this 2002 Quadrant article on the right’s labels for the left, which apart from its place of publication provides no hint as to my views on moral issues.

So what is a ‘moral conservative’? According to the book’s introduction, the terminology is ‘imprecise’ (an understatement). But

…the conservative side [liberal progressives being the other] tends strongly to an Augustinian pessimism at the base of their thinking about human society, and the necessity therefore for traditional modes of authority, for simple moral codes to maintain order and provide direction for the masses and for a unified, patriotic approach to national identity.

I have hundreds of thousands of words on the public record; these do not strike me as major themes of my writing. Indeed, I have hardly mentioned them. Across the issues that are discussed in the context of conservative politics in this book I am for the most part either not very interested (eg history wars) or opposed to the conservative view (eg euthanasia, family payments, gay marriage, censorship). (Migration is a partial exception to this, but the confused account of this issue in the book, not written by Abjorensen, needs a separate post.)

This lack of support for conservative views is hardly surprising. I am, as my blog says, a classical liberal. I support classical liberal causes. I work for a classical liberal organisation. So why can’t Norman just call me a classical liberal?
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Labor and ‘neoliberal’ policy

~ Andrew Norton ~ 31 Comments

One of the most difficult problems Kevin Rudd faced in writing his Monthly essay was the extensive, and indeed dominant, role of the Hawke and Keating Labor governments in implementing ‘neoliberal’ policies.

When he says that the political home of neoliberalism in Australia is the Liberal Party he is giving the Howard government more credit (from a reformist perspective) than is warranted by the historical evidence. While the Coalition moved further ahead on labour market deregulation, waterfront reform and the privatisation of Telstra than was likely under Labor, most of the major reforms had already taken place by the time Howard took office in 1996, and what the Coalition did was incrementally advancing or fine-tuning reform processes initiated by the previous government.

Apparently when the Coalition introduces a market reform it is ‘economic fundamentalism’, but when Labor implements a market reform it is ‘economic modernisation’.

The differences between social democratic market reformers and ‘neoliberal’ reformers are larger in their underlying philosophical perspectives than in their substantive policies. In The Australian this morning, Dennis Glover put it this way:

Rudd does not believe the free market is an end in itself; it exists to serve society. For Rudd greater social equality is a moral good.

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How useful is ideology in political analysis?

~ Andrew Norton ~ 12 Comments

In his much discussed, though little praised, essay in The Monthly Kevin Rudd attributes the global financial crisis to what he calls ‘neo-liberalism’, aka ‘free-market fundamentalism’, ‘extreme capitalism’, ‘economic liberalism’, ‘economic fundamentalism’, ‘Thatcherism’, and the ‘Washington Consensus’ (the PM’s political thesaurus was getting a good workout).

But how useful are ideologies in anlaysing politics? There are certainly rival explanatory theories. In journalism, as commenter Alan C complains, the focus tends to be on personalities and personal ambitions, downplaying other forces that are not so easily reduced to an easy-to-understand story. Yet if the media overplays personality as a force, it surely cannot be discounted entirely. Particular individuals do make things turn out differently, holding all other factors constant.

On both right and left, we see theories that put interests at the core of politics. Public choice theory on the right models political actors as self-interested; on this account (for example) public school teachers are not defenders of better education, but are instead just an interest group seeking higher salaries and easier working conditions.

On the left, the the substance of and differences between right-wing beliefs are deemed entirely or largely irrelevant, because these groups are seen just as defenders of corporate or other private interests. This is why Naomi Klein, for instance, can blur together neoliberalism, neoconservatism and corporatism. Norman Abjorensen is aware that liberals and conservatives differ, but on his account only on the means to their common end of the ‘protection of property interests’. Ideology is just empty rhetoric designed to make interest politics respectable.
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Is the rise of private schooling due to ‘neoliberalism’?

~ Andrew Norton ~ 19 Comments

Three pages into School Choice: How Parents Negotiate the New School Market in Australia, its authors tells us that in developing their argument ‘we are responsive to two books by Michael Pusey’. This is not a good start. As usual in discussing ‘neoliberalism’, the views of those who might plausibly be described as ‘neoliberals’ are not discussed in any detail, with passing mentions of arguments from the CIS and the Menzies Research Centre, accompanied by a grudging concession that the Howard government never followed the logic of these organisations’ arguments to ‘the end’.

Pusey has long argued that ‘economic rationalism’/ neoliberalism was an essentially alien ideology imposed on unwilling citizens. And the authors of School Choice – Craig Campbell, Helen Proctor, and Geoffrey Sherington – pursue that logic to some extent in noting parents who felt that they had had to make a school choice, when really they would have preferred just to send their kids to a ‘quality’ local school.

But a much stronger case can be made that school choice has deep roots in Australian history and politics, and that while there is a distinctive ‘neoliberal’ set of arguments these are not what has given this issue political momentum.
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