Morality & the left

Emma Burnell says that politics has to be about morality. I’m not sure, for at least four reasons.

1. Morality is weak against power. If there is any moral truth at all, it is that the mass murder of innocent civilians is wrong. But when it happens, the “international community” does nothing to stop it. Stalin’s famous sneer - “The Pope! How many divisions has he got?” is true.

On a more prosaic level, a similar thing is true of bosses’ pay. A periodical fit of morality might stop one or two individuals from taking their bonuses. But a serious and systemic reduction in bosses’ pay requires a shift in the balance of class power.

2. Policies are often a mix of morals. Take for example the welfare cap. Is this moral, because it stops feckless scroungers fleecing the tax-payer? Or is it immoral because it threatens to make children homeless? Morality alone does not adjudicate. The issue is about the facts of the policy or about how the issue is framed.

3. Morality can distract us from structural explanations, and hence serve a conservative function. Take for example someone who doesn’t want to work. He might look like one of the undeserving poor. But is he? It could be that his “laziness” is an endogenous preference. Surrounded by mass unemployment - and perhaps brought up amidst it - he believes there’s no chance of work and so he adapts his wants to his circumstances. Is he undeserving or not? Again, morality does not adjudicate.

4. “Morality” just poses unresolved questions. Take high pay. Is this unfair because it betokens inequality, or is it fair because it represents (in the unsubsidized economy) a free and voluntary exchange between individuals? Adjudication is a matter of moral debate; those leftists who think it isn‘t miss the point.

But as Alasdair MacIntyre pointed out, we have lost the faculty for such debate with the result that our moral judgments are little more than emotivist spasms. 

There is, though, an alternative here. The left should appeal more to efficiency. For example, the problem with bosses’ pay and bonuses is not that they are unfair, but that they are economically inefficient and the product of power, not merit. And, I’d add, the structure of capitalism - at its current juncture - is inefficient, not (just) unfair.

In this sense, Emma is missing something. She’s right to want an alternative to a managerialism which tries, feebly and ineffectively, to work within the confines of capitalism. But the alternative is not a moralism which threatens to keep the left within a ghetto of impotent self-righteousness. There is a third possibility - Marxism.

Comments

[Chris Bertram]

"Morality is weak against power."

Joanna Lumley, Phil Woolas, Gurkhas

[rory]

More than 150 years since Marx and Engels thought about the pointless bleating of ethical socialists and described how capitalism needs to be challenged at root, it's depressing but not surprising to encounter the same hand-wringing horseshit.

[Anthony Zach]

@Chris: "...with the result that our moral judgments are little more than emotivist spasms." seems to sum it up.

[CharlieMcMenamin]

Interesting counterpoint: I had imagined you'd concluded that belief in the Marxian Labour Theory of Value was itself a ethical (or even emotivist) position, whilst still calling yourself a Marxist. Whilst this would be a coherent position - quite a lot of Marxists shift uncomfortably when the LTV is mentioned - it would also mean you accept that the Marxist tradition itself contains ethical elements, not withstanding Marx's and Engel's tendency to rubbish other people for 'ethical socialism'.

But perhaps I have assumed wrongly what your views on this matter might be?

[Mike Killingworth]

I think your #4 is probably the most potent.

Abe Lincoln famously said he was faced with the oldest problem in the world: two sons, three apples "and each wants two".

Economics starts with the notion of free and fair exchange, but is unable to explain what it is that makes any given act of exchange both free and fair. It merely supposes that both parties never subsequently have cause to rue the act of exchange, but why this should be supposed to typify real world behaviour I haven't the least idea.

[chris]

@ Charlie. I don't think the LTV is an essential feature of Marxism, despite its under-appreciated empirical validity:
http://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_and_mumbling/2011/07/value-a-paradox.html
Yes, there's an element of morality in Marxism, but its a form that we can agree on: "theft is wrong" (the argument is over empirics), rather than a more arguable form ("it's unfair")
Also, Marxism claims that (at a certain point, which is where we might be now or soon) capitalism just doesn't deliver the goods - of decent jobs, rising incomes, whatever. My beef is that the left underplays this point, or variants thereof.

[Account Deleted]

Morality is a double-edged sword. Banker-bashing reinforces the idea that we can make judgements about just deserts at all levels of society. While this appears attractively democratic, it legitimises judgements at the other end of the scale, which soon turn out to be fact-free prejudices about "spongers".

[Guy Aitchison]

Interesting post. I’m halfway in agreement with you. But only halfway. You’re right that political strategy and argument shouldn’t simply be about moral questions but must include facts about power, social division and conflict. One important feature of liberalism is the way it divests the public realm of social antagonism, presenting politics as a kind of applied morality. Under this sanitised view, political disagreement is about figuring out, according to certain abstract ethical notions, what “rights” individuals have in a given situation or what material goods are owed to them according to some idealised conception of “justice”. Politics is reduced to the clash of rival moral texts in a polite academic seminar.

Of course, as you say, this conveniently ignores the way in which various inequalities systematically distort the public sphere and determine not only which “morality” wins out in the “public debate” by excluding ideas that threaten dominant interests, but indeed shapes our very ideas and intuitions about morality itself (the point about “ideology” made by the Frankfurt School). So being hard-headed about power and avoiding liberal moralism is important. That said, I think you slip too easily from the idea that politics isn’t exclusively about morality to the idea it is not about morality at all but about power.

First, it’s true that moral principles, by themselves, do not tell us what is wrong in any given situation since facts inevitably come into play. But that doesn’t mean that any particular political issue is simply “about” the facts. As David Hume pointed out, you can’t get an “ought” from an “is” (some people think you can, but that’s because they think certain factual concepts contain moral stipulations within them – for example, “The boy is pain” entails that the boy should be relieved of pain - but I don’t think that’s what’s being argued here). The bare facts of a situation, by themselves, do not provide a reason for action. The fact that someone is homeless, by itself, does not guide political action unless accompanied by a moral principle, such as “People should be provided with housing”.

Nor do moral principles, by themselves, guide action in every circumstance. The principle that “People should be provided with housing” does not tell us how to act in every situation where provision of housing is at issue. For example, if it were the case that resources were extremely scarce, it would be necessary to prioritise some people receiving housing above others. Moral principles are not algorithmic -that is, they do provide a guide to action in every particular context. But that doesn’t make them useless. It just means they need to be combined with facts and other moral principles in a process of practical deliberation. That’s what political argument is about. It’s a complex and messy business that can’t be reduced to questions of either morality or facts.

The difficulty with making politics simply about power or interests (or some other morally neutral concept) is that these ideas tell us very little about what should be done. The interests of no social group are self-legitimating. Appeal to moral arguments is how the support of other social groups is won – it’s how you build power in the first place. The bare fact of power doesn’t tell us anything unless we know whose power, what will it be used for etc. This will inevitably involve moral questions. You could hold a principle such as “All power must be dismantled”, but that will inevitably provoke questions of which power and why, because it clearly isn’t self-evident to most people.

A conception of politics that was only about class power, with no ethical component, could only be sustained, in my view, according to a vulgar Marxist determinism that sees the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism by the proletariat as a historic inevitability. That may have seemed plausible when the proletariat was at its most powerful and revolution looked like it was around the corner, but it’s hardly plausible now. It also has quite sinister authoritarian implications in practice since its deterministic, scientific pretensions imply privileged access to some theoretical “truth” about the objective laws of historical motion; about how the clash of power will play itself out. It makes the quote from Stalin quite apposite.

So, yes, let’s not slide into liberal moralism but be mindful of how power distorts the terms of political argument. And let’s build into our strategy the understanding that the powerful will not be won over by the force of the better argument, but must be challenged and confronted. At the same time, let’s not succumb to Stalin’s view that politics is just about power either.

[Soundmigration]

Its like feminists have never uttered a word, ever.

[V]

You're not poor if you're being given 26K/pa tax free.

[Account Deleted]

@Guy A. Hume's point was that you cannot logically derive a moral prescription (ought) from a factual description (is). Consequently, any political argument that appeals to reason, as opposed to emotion, should eschew morality.

I take Chris's basic point to be that while morality is unhelpful as an approach to politics (because slippery, subjective etc), an approach based on power is viable because that has an objective reality. It can be identified and measured in a way that good or bad (or "happinesss") cannot.

[Account Deleted]

@V. Poverty is relative. If my rent is £400 per week, then providing for a family of 2+3 is difficult on £20 a head.

The DWP case for the benefits cap admits that the 67,000 families affected are characterised by 3+ kids and high-rent accomodation (54% are in London). See http://www.dwp.gov.uk/docs/household-benefit-cap-wr2011-ia.pdf, page 7.

Leaving aside the morality of procreation (the poor "ought" not to breed), the salient fact "is" that the last 30 years of housing policy (council sales + insufficient replenishment + tax breaks for buy-to-let) has led to high rents in the private sector (particularly in London) and an inadequate supply of social housing.

That's a systemic failure, which is why it makes perfect sense to go after those workshy, chav scum.

[Guy Aitchison]

"@Guy A. Hume's point was that you cannot logically derive a moral prescription (ought) from a factual description (is). Consequently, any political argument that appeals to reason, as opposed to emotion, should eschew morality."

I know what Hume's "is-ought" fallacy is. But I think you've misunderstood my point which is that political arguments are unavoidably about "oughts". I've no idea what you mean by a politics based on "reason". If you mean a politics based exclusively on empirical facts, you'd just end up with a description of the world as it is which provides no guidance for action.

[Account Deleted]

@Guy A. Going back to your original example:

The fact that someone is homeless, by itself, does not guide political action unless accompanied by a moral principle, such as “People should be provided with housing”.

We could develop a policy on the homeless based on the observation that the negative consequences of homelessness are a greater cost to society than providing free homes. That's a utilitarian argument that has no need of morality.

I'm not suggesting that morality is irrelevant, or that all of politics can be reduced to a mere calculation, but that morality and material reality are independent.

You don't necessarily need morality to determine a political course of action, but equally there is no reason why action should not be informed by moral considerations.

[Guy Aitchison]

Sorry, but that's wrong.

Utilitarianism IS a moral theory. It's based on a single foundational moral principle: the principle of general utility, which states that you should maximiise aggregate happiness.

So your example of a political course of action not informed by moral principles doesn't work.

[Account Deleted]

@Guy,
I was using the adjective utilitarian (note lower case) in its ordinary sense, not referring to the moral philosophy of Utilitarianism. I could (and for clarity should) have used the word pragmatic or practical.

[Keith]

Fromarsetoelbow.blogspot.com you have made a conceptual error. You could simply deal with the harm caused by Homelessness by murdering the home less. Utility as Bertrand Russell points out requires us to believe in the moral idea of promoting human happiness. In general not just our own personal happiness. If we accept that idea then we may conclude that murdering the homeless as a way of preventing harm to the community is an unacceptable idea. It would be perfectly practical or pragmatic to murder anyone on a basis such as this unless we do actually think we have duties toward others. We might murder street children in Brazil with a happy conscience unless we have an underlying moral belief system that requires a different solution. Such as replacing slums with houses and combating ignorance among those in extreme poverty by means of education. The housing benefit cuts or "cap" is a slightly less drastic version of killing street urchins in favellas. We will merely force their parents to live elsewhere without paying attention to their preferences about where they wish to live. Build council Houses!! Reject the idea of putting profits before people. Now that would be a change; but not one that is merely pragmatic as politics cannot be divorced from happiness. Assuming that is the end postulated.

[Account Deleted]

@Keith,
We could just kill the homeless, but it's likely this would provoke them to violence, which we might consider too great a cost for the rest of society to bear.

I'm not advocating this (any more than I would advocate eating the babies of the poor), merely pointing out that a sensible policy does not always have to depend on a specific moral position.

If you insist that homelessness is bad because we have duties to one another (I agree with you morally), you will find many of your fellow citizens reject the idea of such duty altogether (a competing and irreconcilable morality).

Chris's most recent post, on the difference between "thin" and "thick" morality, expands on this. http://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_and_mumbling/2012/02/talking-among-ourselves.html

[Keith]

Fromarsetoelbow.blogspot.com I would like to know how you can have any moral system without a conception of duties towards others? The implications of that for social organisation are more complex, but not impossible for most people to understand. The existence of Human society seems to contradict your assertion.

[Account Deleted]

@Keith,
The point is not that a moral system can be constructed that ignores duties to each other, but that another person's morality may treat such duties in a way that conflicts with your moral beliefs.

For example, some conservatives believe that you can help others best by leaving them alone, thus the cure for homelessness is hard work and thrift by the homeless.

You and I might regard that as callous, but the conservative convinces herself that this better fulfills her duty to others in aggregate.