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Pill Pod 30 - OWN the LIBS · PlasticPills Critical Theory & Philosophy

0:01
Yo, Eric, what's up? You know it really grinds my gears?
0:06
What's that? Pills? Reasonable free individuals who respect each other, finding common
0:13
cause and arranging a system of governance to bring the most good to as many
0:18
as possible. Nothing gets my goat more than rational discourse, you know,
0:23
the naive to of these folks. I mean personally, we got a question
0:26
whether political philosophy is even philosophy. Liberalism is more like like Thomas Kincaid painting
0:35
than anything that resembles reality. I'm an individual in a marketplace of ideas,
0:40
and I make rational decisions based on in value and personal preferences and egotistical self
0:47
interesting Go clean your room, you fucking SJW. Fox. Anyway, welcome
1:00
to pill Pod. It's called pill Pod thirty. It's actually more like our
1:03
sixtieth episode total. But I'm tired of getting in my d ms almost daily.
1:10
Why is your podcast so lib? Why do you even let these libs
1:14
on? Why can't you be more? Why can't you be more? Based?
1:18
Also, all the people asking that have anime abbs, so I don't
1:21
know that it's always a good sign. Yeah, that is a good sign.
1:25
Anyway, Today we're gonna find out, why are we so lib?
1:29
Do you actually get that question a lot? Uh? Maybe once, maybe
1:36
more hammlers and sickles. One of the things that I've realized is that no
1:40
matter how radical you think you can go, there's always layers of the onion
1:42
that go deeper. The other day I was in have a Marxist Facebook group
1:47
and somebody was talking about how Lenin was too liberal. Right, you know
1:51
that was the real reason the Soviet Union failed, Right, they weren't hard
1:55
enough. I love that this was in a Facebook group too. Like you
2:00
always say, or you said in that episode, you know, you can
2:02
always find a more and even more radical reading, ever more radical reading of
2:07
everything. Yeah. Yeah, Today we're not going to be following any of
2:10
the rules of formal debate because that's no fun, but try to respond to
2:15
each other's points as best we can. In one corner representing team liberalism is
2:21
good. Actually are Matt and Victor you know them as the politics guys,
2:27
And in the other corner representing team uh libs are not based? Actually okay,
2:36
is myself also acting as the referee, which is kind of illiberal.
2:40
But you're going to be a judge in your own case. That's not very
2:44
liberal in part he's a partial judge. That's going to be interesting. You're
2:47
gonna fucking this is not a liberal democratic system. And with me is Eric
2:55
Tait, whose political views are rather murky but something not lib Yeah, I
3:01
feel like you guys are just kind of like, like, you know,
3:04
angsty, what's the doomers? You guys are like angsty doomers. Doomers.
3:09
I'm dumer with respect to fantasy and facade, and that's it. We're all
3:14
doomed. Man, You're both would do that, you'd be coming up being
3:16
like we need an ever more radical response to the problems flosed by liberalism and
3:22
capitalism. I also think there's there's there's kind of an aesthetic I'm not accusing
3:29
you guys specifically, but broader of like you know, the Libs own the
3:31
Libs. That is, there's like a kind of, i don't know,
3:38
seemingly subversive aesthetic to being like fuck the Libs right now. That's popular and
3:44
for whatever reason that it's associated with anime Abby's on Twitter, I don't know
3:47
why, just seems to be the case to be there. I went through
3:52
my own fase like that. I remember back when I was like it's twenty
3:55
one the libs phase or the anime phase, fucking lips phase. Never huge
4:00
into anime, although I like some of it, but like I rather a
4:03
bit of haigger. And yeah, that was the whole thing. Was just
4:05
like, fucking liberal society is decaded and authentic, and nobody understands me because
4:12
you know, we live in a society of one dimensional people, fuck at
4:15
all. You know, I went through the phase of being like, yeah,
4:18
atomism is, it's causing atomism, you know, reading Charles Taylor,
4:23
and yeah, like, yeah, there's a real problem here with with liberalism.
4:26
And yeah, I do think there's some problems with it, but we
4:28
can get into that in more detail. There's a lot of difficulties when you
4:31
get into this stuff, because I mean, our real enemy a lot of
4:35
the time is going to be capitalism, neoliberalism, neo conservatism, which are
4:42
maybe like a smaller part of the broader liberal tradition. So when you have
4:46
critical theorists and Marxists talking about liberalism, usually they're actually referring to neoliberalism.
4:53
They're not attempting to make a nuanced analysis of liberalism and be like, well,
4:58
political liberalism this, but classical liberalism that they're not trying to do that.
5:00
They're like capitalism, neoliberalism. Whereas then when you read books written by
5:05
liberals, like people who are self proclaimed liberals, they barely ever talk about
5:10
neoliberalism. That's like the thing they have to sweep aside and be like,
5:13
well, that's not that doesn't define liberalism. I'm not even going to talk
5:15
about it. So you end up with people just completely talking to each other.
5:19
But you know, like boats ships passing in the night. My god,
5:24
I feel like we're a serious risk of having a reasonable conversation right now.
5:28
Yeah, you need to be a little more angry. Eric, that
5:30
was exactly the opposite of the purpose of this episode, because everything that you
5:35
said was just so fucking reasonable. Well, I think it's true, though.
5:40
I mean, it's hard, ever compressed to find a more overdetermined term
5:44
than liberalism, right, Oh yeah, totally. Liberalism has meant everything for
5:47
you know, think about it. It's become a basically a pejorative in American
5:53
political discourse. Oddly enough, I've even seen classical liberals self identified use it,
5:58
right, majority of which is really our right. Well, isn't that
6:00
guy Dave Ruben he's a classical liberal, right he will he's a story kind
6:06
of reactionary Augustinian. Basically, Dave Ruben is a little let's just say,
6:13
he's a little slower than most right. So what would normally take place over
6:16
the course of a year in a reasonably intelligent undergrad takes him a couple of
6:21
decades to get to. OK. So he started off as like, I'm
6:26
a leftist, then he went to like, I'm a leftist, but then
6:29
he went in a couple more years to I'm a classical liberal because I believe
6:32
in free speech, tolerant, and want all this multiculturalism bullshit. And then
6:39
after a little while he quinetly came around to realizing that this tradition where people
6:44
write books like letter concerning toleration and why we should you know, and have
6:48
all these tracks about why we should tolerate others sound a lot like s JW's.
6:53
So I'm going to become a fucking weird Christian, except when it comes
6:57
to certain things that impact my personal life. We're all. Some of the
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bullshit that he said made it pretty clear he had no idea what liberalism,
7:02
conservatism or leftism was right, since most of it just basically consist of Dick
7:08
jokes and him bitching about Ben Affleck right, but some of the stuff was
7:11
just baffling, right, Like you would sit there being like, there's nothing
7:14
inconsistent with liberalism and having a strong sense of community and enforcing certain moral values.
7:19
You know, this is a certain kind of freedom, and it's like,
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really, like, where does John Stuart Mill say that? All right,
7:27
so we can choose what kind of liberties you want people to have.
7:30
If you're a consistent class of liberal, that's the whole fucking point. You
7:32
know, you might believe something different than me and want to live differently than
7:35
me, and I'll disagree with you, but I will die for your right
7:39
to say it and do it. Right. Ref. We're rambling, ref.
7:42
There is nothing I would rather not talk about any more than Dave Rubin
7:46
and any views that he may or may not have. I hey, I
7:49
do a whole episode just on this. Do we start with a assertion or
7:54
a detraction? Do you think your team? I mean, I have some
8:00
like dimensions and concepts to talk about that. Well, I want to come
8:05
into liberal views. Well, I want to respond to it, to the
8:07
very reasonable statements that Eric made because like, I agree with him strongly about
8:13
the way that there's conflation of concepts and confusion over what the actual target is.
8:16
And I would say that he described pretty well like my frustration when I
8:20
see especially online leftists like talking about liberalism. There's a there's a tendency to
8:26
conflate like certain specific things, like certain forces of neoliberalism, certain really shitty
8:33
things about liberal democracy the way it is like right now in the Western world
8:37
with liberalism rit large, and like there's a slip out there. I don't
8:41
like this negotiation, this discursive back and forth. I want an assertion.
8:45
I know. That's always the thing with these It's always the thing with these
8:48
liberals. They're always willing to compromise, which is a problem. Sometimes you
8:52
are going to bring us to the gulag and we should renounce you, and
8:54
you should shut if they if they found a fucking oil spill in the lake,
8:58
they would try to make a compromise with it and say, Okay,
9:01
you have a right to your own freedom in this lake and just try not
9:05
to kill too many species. That sounds reasonable, Eric, give us a
9:11
dittraction, you guys, making it make some some really really cringey like dumor
9:16
like radical rebellious anarchist take contra my my reasonableness earlier, which was just a
9:24
rhetorical strategy actually to establish my authority to speak later on in trash liberalism generally,
9:31
I think liberalism is too focused on individualism. It's pluralism. It's kind
9:39
of a lie. It's abstract, it has no bearing on how people actually
9:45
live in the real world, and they focus on negative liberty. Instead of
9:50
talking about like what freedom is and how we can, you know, make
9:54
positive strides towards freedom, they just talk about negative liberty, freedom from constraint,
10:01
freedom from state intervention, freedom from It's negative, it's always negative.
10:05
Those are four initial statements. Eric actually prepared them. So response from the
10:13
first side, Okay, well, I think that there are two different ways
10:16
that we can conceive of liberalism. One is a bad way that I will
10:22
reject, and the other is a good way that I would endorse, and
10:24
I actually think it's compatible with all the things that Eric is talking about.
10:28
Okay. The bad way that we conceive of liberalism is exactly as Victor framed
10:31
it. It's basically a philosophy that focuses on what sometimes called possessive individualism,
10:37
right, And it's usually used and appealed to as a support for a very
10:41
exploitative system of property arrangements and a justification and as a justification for high degrees
10:48
of economic inequality and political stratification. Right. We could talk all about that,
10:54
and it's a perfectly legitimate way to understand liberalism. And there's a lot
10:58
of literature supporting it, a lot of individuals and the history of liberal thought
11:01
who back this up. And I think we should reject that for all kinds
11:05
of reasons, including the ones that Eric mentioned. Right. The other way
11:07
that we can understand on liberalism, though, is the way that I tend
11:11
to frame it, right, which is as a fundamentally modernist project that's focused
11:15
around securing two principles right that are inextricably intertwined with one another. Right.
11:20
The first is an argument that all human beings, and I think we could
11:24
also add all sentient beings if you really want to stretch it, like people
11:28
like Nospaman coresguard do right have a morally equal status. Right, And because
11:35
they're moral equals, that means people need to be free, because if you're
11:39
a moral equal, you're not entitled to kind of impose your vision of the
11:41
good life on anyone else using various course of mechanisms. Right, And in
11:46
this respect, as a project focused on securing the moral equality of all and
11:52
liberty for all, I would actually say that most of the progressive movements that
11:56
have emerged through the twentieth century, which focus on things like emancipation in real
12:01
material equality, aren't really antiliberal movements. If anything, I think Roberto Unger
12:05
is right in saying that they're actually super liberal movements. Right. The argument
12:09
is that we are a liberal enough in trying to secure these kinds of principles,
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or if you want to put it in another way, liberalism isn't safe
12:16
with the classical liberals, right, we need to be progressive in order to
12:20
really secure the project. Okay, And I think there are absolute ways that
12:24
you can extend this kind of conception of liberalism as about equality and freedom to
12:28
things like the natural world. And many liberals are doing that. Right.
12:31
So, for instance, Martha Nosbamb and Course Guardborough talk a lot about animal
12:33
rights. So just Peter Singer, right, this notion that well, they're
12:37
sentient beings, so they're moral equals. We can't just treat them as means
12:41
to an end, because that's wrong, right, And I think that you
12:45
also see it attempts to kind of expand this vision of moral quality, sometimes
12:48
to the notion of future generations with all the kind of associated at ecological implications
12:54
of this. Right, it's not our place to use up all the material
12:56
resources on the planet. If that's going to damage people living one hundred years
13:01
from now, I'll prevent them from having a good life. And I can
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go on about that, But as it stands, as that stands a disconception,
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I think that there's a lot that's really attractive about liberalism. Yeah,
13:11
so the liberals are coming out with the typical strategy of name dropping, lulling
13:18
the audience to sleep without answering any of the opponents claim citing their achievements civil
13:22
rights, women's rights voting, banishing the Jim Crow laws a liberal achievements,
13:28
and then at the end of it, pretending to take a reasonable middle ground
13:31
through two positions that they've just laid out for us. And so we're off
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to a good start. Finally, you know what, when I get my
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fucking think tak money, I'm going to bury all of you okay, well,
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okay, so like so to put to put it like sort of sit
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like in like sort of simply for me, I think I'm often just suspicious
13:52
of people off from the left to a critical of liberalism because I think,
13:54
like just all the things Matt said, I think most people who are left
13:58
wing agree with that, but I think there is often a hunger for something
14:03
like a deeper a deeper sense of connection to other people, or like a
14:07
deeper sense of meaning in the world. And I think leftists are often critical
14:11
of of liberalism seeming emphasis on individualism and freedom from something because it's like,
14:16
well, what's the what's the positive part that you're supposed to have? Right,
14:20
It's it's all negative, as Eric was saying. And I guess I
14:22
think that that's a puzzle that I'm I will concede, I'm not. I'm
14:26
still not sure what the answer is. But what I don't want and what
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I kind of don't see the alternative to, is like, what is the
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alternative of making sure that we treat ether people as formal equals with like all
14:37
their net because if we prescribe And I think this is sort of the puzzle
14:41
that John Rawls has in political liberalism is you know that we do live in
14:46
a society that's going to have differences, there's going to be pluralism of people's
14:50
views. And I know, Eric, you were saying that liberalism is securing
14:52
meaningful pluralism, and I'd be curious. I wanted to ask you what you
14:56
mean by that, because the the puzzle is how do we live together where
15:01
everybody's going to have their own, as Rawls would say, comprehensive doctrine.
15:07
And I guess you know this hunger. I worry when when people appeal,
15:11
you write to a hunger for something more meaningful, thicker meaning structures, something
15:16
that's going to create more community. I like worry that the other thing that's
15:18
going to come along with that is something coercive that's going to be like,
15:22
yeah, well you actually have to live by this meaning structure. So like
15:26
like, and I don't see how you have both. I guess is my
15:28
questions like, how do you have both the meaning structure that you want and
15:33
securing that pluralism and freedom for people? So I guess I just like wanted
15:37
to set up like that's course kind of how I see the puzzle is like
15:39
I think that like securing all these things that pretty much anyone who's reasonable and
15:43
has left wing commitments cares about. But it's like, how do you get
15:46
that meaning structure without also taking away people's like freedom. It seems like a
15:52
real puzzle to me. Mm hm. As I'm on one side of this
15:56
debate, and I'm also the rap we're not going to just accept the premises
16:00
because that's the puzzle that you're having with this. So let's go point by
16:03
point, Eric, you mentioned four points. Can we start with your first
16:07
and elaborate it a little bit? Followed by a fifty response from the other
16:12
side, not a drawn out like okay, fine, fine, fine,
16:15
but I don't have and I want to remind you Eric about the the like,
16:18
Yeah, so I'm curious what you meant by meaningful pluralism. It's because
16:22
you two don't appeal to reason. What you're appealing to is affect and sentiment.
16:27
Right, If you're just reasonable and capable of understanding the other side like
16:32
we are, we'd all be better off. I'm lined up. I got
16:34
a couple, I got a response, and then I can clarify those points
16:38
that I brought up. Okay, so now I'll clarify second, So my
16:45
response to the things you say is, yes, like lately liberalism has,
16:52
you know, within the last sixty years or so, with newer people like
16:56
I don't know, Isaiah Berlin and Rawls nust Bomb, like they have been
17:03
verging towards social liberalism and political liberalism and a more egalitarian liberalism. Yes,
17:10
I grant you that, of course, but you know, liberalism has been
17:12
around for about four hundred years, so better late than fucking never a because
17:17
it and long before that, liberalism became the status quo. And so liberalism
17:22
gave birth to this status quo that's defined by capitalism, by free markets,
17:27
and by self interest. And that's really the situation that we exist in today
17:33
is all of those sorts of bonuses or progressive moments that you mentioned have also
17:40
been held back by the liberal status quo. Right, we get, we
17:42
get the civil rights movement, but we don't get everything we want because the
17:47
state status quo, liberalism doesn't allow it. And so, yeah, okay,
17:52
that's great. Within the last sixty years seventy years, liberalism has been
17:56
opening up to more progressive ideas, but that doesn't change the fact that it's
18:00
also given birth to this horrible hegemony of multinational corporate capitalism, which is also
18:07
so liberalism is also the enabling condition for that part of the reason I hate
18:11
it. And then onto the four points, which is pluralism one at a
18:15
time. It is one of them. Yeah, pluralism which you want,
18:18
which every response is damn. Whichever one single point you want to push on,
18:23
Eric, you can choose that one or choose another one will finish one
18:26
point and probably in a full hour, will finish one point. So pick
18:32
the one that you think there's like meat too. You can remember it and
18:36
then and then respond later. But yeah, the I mean, these these
18:40
four things I brought up are kind of interconnected because like, on the one
18:44
hand, pluralism is kind of the opposite of objectivity objectivism, right, Pluralism
18:49
means there are many sorts of conceptions of the good, and that the states,
18:55
this is maybe the classical liberal, that the state should remain neutral towards
18:57
them and not in any specific notion of the good. It remains neutral so
19:03
that a pluralistic society can be you know, fostered. But when you talk
19:07
to economic liberals and classic liberals and free market liberals, they're pretty damn fucking
19:11
sure about their objective facts. They don't give a shit about pluralism, relativism,
19:17
identity, anything like that. Anything that has a whiff of a kind
19:21
of relational quality to it, they don't like it. It's objectivism from top
19:25
to bottom for them. So it's the pluralism in liberal in the liberal tradition
19:30
is still probably a minority tradition at best in terms of the wider liberal tradition.
19:37
So there's a pluralism within liberalism broadly. Okay, you can admit that,
19:41
but within particular points of view from within liberalism, a lot of them
19:45
are not very pluralistic at all. That's the pluralism point. Could I respond
19:51
to this without No, I'm moderating and I'm not taking sides at this moment,
19:56
but we know what. I'll remember the other ones if you want to
19:57
respond to that. The object the initial objection to liberalism is that the pluralism
20:03
is put on and it's not a genuine liberalism. Response. Please from the
20:08
list. They'll put it on too, quell the progressivist liberals, and then
20:11
they'll go back to state sanctioned capitalism. So I, okay, Matt,
20:15
you go ahead. First, I want to take on these two questions,
20:18
these two points, and I guess an interest of fairness and also to save
20:22
time, Victor, do you want to take on the other two points that
20:25
he's going to make, Well, I wanted to. We just want to
20:27
do one at a time. We might not even get done pluralism, But
20:30
I just have one quick thing, is or is liberal pluralism put on?
20:36
Or is it genuine? So I just want to make one point that we
20:40
shouldn't conflate, which, as I said at the beginning, the shitty institutions
20:45
that exist in liberal democracies today, which I think are responsible for the status
20:48
quo, like the stagnant I agree with you, Eric, like that,
20:51
like the inability to change, a lot of it is in trench capitalism.
20:53
I actually argue in my in my essay that I'm writing that I'm writing from
20:56
at right now, that like that elector politics are the way they're designed right
21:02
now, create these perverse incentives that basically prevent change from happening. But I
21:06
think that that has nothing to do with liberalism. That has to do with
21:08
just electoral politics and the way that those things are designed in our currently existing
21:11
liberal democratic institutions. So just don't conflate that with philosophical liberalism, which is,
21:18
I think the kind of liberalism that Matt and I are defending and that
21:21
he outlined in his earlier statements. Matt, go ahead, Okay, good,
21:25
well, this is what I want to say, right. I think
21:26
that a lot of what Eric said is absolutely right. But what I think
21:30
that's interesting about it is that actually you seem to accept the broad contours of
21:33
the liberal project while at the same time denying that it actually lives up to
21:37
its kind of lofty principles, right. I mean, one of the things
21:40
that you pointed out is that, yeah, you know, it's gradually been
21:42
able to achieve some corrosion of substantial hierarchies over many centuries, but there are
21:48
still many hierarchies that exist in our society right now, and many kind of
21:52
liberals support them, okay, and we need to be emancipated from these still,
21:56
right. The second thing you point out is that, yeah, liberalism
21:59
talks a big game about pluralism and acceptance and share. There are things like
22:02
the civil rights movement that we can kind of grant it, but at the
22:04
same time, it's not particularly accepting pluralism in many respects in particularly what you
22:11
call economic liberals are just called them right wing liberals, right, who aren't
22:15
particularly respectful at difference. And I think this is where again my distinction between
22:18
the two ways that we can understand liberalism is important, because I actually see
22:22
so called classical liberalism, or the type of spouse by Dave Rubin once upon
22:26
a time, or more sophisticated variants by somebody like Jordan Peason, as not
22:32
really liberalism at all. Right, I mean, in the truest sense of
22:34
the word, what they're essentially doing is defending a fundamentally reactionary view of the
22:38
world, using some of the language, or piggybacking on some of the language
22:42
developed by liberalism, right, because what you see in this kind of reactionary
22:45
world view is fundamentally a hierarchical sense of human kind. Right when you know
22:51
this is probably best expressed by people like Evan Burgh, right, where there's
22:53
this idea that the problem with old aristocracies was they weren't mobile enough. Right.
23:00
We have this idea that the king should be put here, and the
23:02
queen should be here, and the peasants should be below. And this would
23:04
sometimes lead to a nept people being in charge and who weren't qualified to exercise
23:08
power. And the nice thing that these economic are right wing liberals see in
23:14
contemporary capitalism is that you can have a mobile hierarchy where the people who really
23:18
deserve to be at the top can get there because they fight for one between
23:22
one another in the market, which means that the best amongst us rise to
23:26
the top, accumulate the most wealth, and people like jaff Bezos and so
23:30
on wind up with a lot more political power. Okay, you can see
23:33
how the piggybacks and some of the language of liberalism when it comes to things
23:36
like property rights, etc. But it's really antithetical to the spirit of liberalism
23:41
as I understand, and focusing on moral quality and individual liberty for all right.
23:45
And this is why I think when push comes to shelve, a lot
23:48
of these right wing liberals will very quickly abandon respect for liberal rights if it
23:53
becomes antithetical to the kind of hierarchical worldview that they That's really what they share.
24:00
And probably the best example I can think of as somebody like in Rand
24:03
Right Iran talked a big game about the importance of individual liberties for capitalists.
24:08
But when the civil rights movement came around, she was extremely critical of it.
24:12
Right, Iran, You'll talk a big game about property rights, but
24:15
she had no problem with Europeans coming in and wiping out the indigenous peoples right
24:19
because she's not a real liberal right, she's a believer in capitalist hierarchies.
24:23
Okay, And so what I would say is that again, the project of
24:27
liberalism seems, from a properly dialectical perspective, is incomplete. What we need
24:33
to do is recognize that it's progressive ethos isn't really safe in the hands of
24:40
right wing liberals who are never really that committed to the liberal project anyway.
24:42
It can only be secured through a left wing interpretation that's faithful to the radical
24:48
spirit of liberalism at its best. That's the way you're getting. You're going
24:52
to have to keep your points shorter because I think the original argument was lost.
24:57
Well, I wanted to take a shit on Inran because I hate it.
25:00
You have to be able to grant me these things every now and then,
25:03
Eric, do you want to respond to the claim that you're appealing to
25:07
plurality as a good but denying that it's materially or just because it hasn't happened
25:15
yet doesn't mean that liberalism doesn't believe it could happen. Yeah, No,
25:19
I mean, I guess I made the sort of the same argument people make
25:23
about Marxist right, as they talk a big game about the working class,
25:27
but in the end they don't really care about the working class. Now,
25:30
that's not really what I wanted to say in a way, like, Yeah,
25:34
it's a pluralistic tradition broadly, And I agree we shouldn't conflate different forms
25:40
of liberalism with one another, but I also don't think we should hold them
25:42
so far apart that it gives the illusion that there's no relationships between the different
25:48
strands whatsoever. Like, you're gonna have a hard time convincing me that people
25:52
like Milton Freeman and Hayek and Nozick and all those guys are not also liberals.
25:56
They're just a very different kind of liberal. Yeah. They took the
26:00
collapse of the Keynesian state and that classic liberal consensus very seriously. They wanted
26:07
no state intervention, so they opened things like the Chicago School and they did.
26:11
They were funded by government groups, and that turned out really well for
26:15
Chile. In nineteen seventy two. Go look at the role of these liberal
26:18
economists who played a role in designing the economy that would follow the iend government
26:26
in Chile under Pinochet, for example. That would be my response to that
26:30
idea. So, yeah, there's pluralism within the tradition broadly, but then
26:33
you have these individual people that claimed it, even Anne Rand as an objectivist.
26:38
And just because somebody's a liberal and holds a self contradictory view doesn't mean
26:41
they're not a liberal. Still, all liberals are self contradictory. What are
26:45
you freaking talking about. I have a different term for iin ran, but
26:48
we can't say it in polite company. She's a see you next Tuesday,
26:53
everybody. She's an objectivist. And that's part of the liberal tradition. Even
27:00
if they use the language, it's still in there. So the Libs are
27:03
trying to deny other Libs from being Libs because they look bad. I mean,
27:07
of course, I'm just kidding. That was that was made and that
27:11
was mad, and but I think they're literally right. I think they're ramling
27:15
liberals who are apathetic at best and wary at worst the most radical dimensions of
27:22
the liberal project right and you saw this from the very beginning. People like
27:26
Burke are willing to grant a few things liberalism here and there in order to
27:30
piggyback on some of its rhetoric to defend things like property rights. Okay,
27:33
but they're not wholesy a committed to the project in the way that somebody like
27:37
say John storre at Mill would be committed to it, let alone somebody like
27:41
Rawls or nose Bomber. Even I would say, Carl Marx, you know
27:44
what I mean, and a certain respect. We can get into that later
27:45
if you want. Well, my other points are a little more abstract.
27:49
If we're going to have a proper debate here, you have to actually answer
27:52
what the other person says instead of saying something about Hayek and how Hyak is
27:57
or is not a liberal. I don't think that's us up for us to
28:02
ascertain when we're trying to deal with the others argument. So so do we
28:06
want to deal with pluralism? Still, does anyone else have like an extended
28:10
point to make about whether or not liberalism is truly pluralistic or yes, it
28:15
displays you can say that liberalism, philosophical liberalism is the only truly pluralistic political
28:22
philosophy. I mean, like like these other ones. I mean the I
28:29
don't, I don't. I can't think of an alternative that is that like
28:32
that that is so central too, it's it's philosophical underpinnings committed to pluralism.
28:37
Then liberalism, I mean it's the only option. Yeah, I mean,
28:41
I would say, actually, just repeating my earlier point that I agreed that
28:45
there are a lot of constraints on individual and social liberty in liberal societies to
28:49
this point, right, and that we're still not inclusive enough of real difference,
28:53
right, like the difference between human beings and animals, for instance,
28:57
that's still really stressed by some mobal thinkers, or the difference between and I
29:02
think this is a really radical form of difference, you know, president future
29:04
generations. Right. Where what I just think is that it's not impossible.
29:08
In fact, I think it's quite likely that these groups are inevitably going to
29:11
be included within the liberal moral universe, and indeed they are increasingly being included
29:17
in the liberal more universe. And where I would defend liberalism is by saying,
29:21
it's, in Victor's line, the only doctrine I can think of that
29:25
had the capacity to gradually start including these kind of figures in its moral universe
29:29
in a truly inclusive way. Most other doctrines that you can see, certainly
29:32
in European thought, have been originally hierarchical, focused on stratification, and denied
29:40
dignity to many human beings, let alone non human animals. All right,
29:45
I object, pills, acknowledges pills right to object, Thank you pills.
29:52
Okay, so you're saying it's non hierarchical, but the basis of liberal the
29:56
liberal individual, and yes, it's taken along time for the savages, then
30:03
women, then potentially animals. If you're going to take liberalism that far,
30:07
I would I have very rarely seen it go that far. But the definition
30:11
of something that is worthy of having rights must be rational and must be free,
30:18
and that ensconces a hierarchy from the very start. That Yeah, you
30:22
could say that it's progressed by saying eventually, okay, women are rational or
30:27
capable of being rational, but it does ensconce a hierarchy specifically and still with
30:33
respect to nature, by admitting only rights to rational, free, and particularly
30:40
individual agents, as if that's what a human being at base is well,
30:45
I would say it doesn't have to be located just in rational beings. And
30:49
I think just to Eric's point, you know, you already started to see
30:52
the shift occurring, not recently, but actually in the eighteenth century in the
30:56
work of people like Jeremy Bentham. Right. People often make to beent them
31:00
and there's a ton of stuff you can make fun of them before, but
31:03
they forget that he was an early pioneer for animal rights, women's rights,
31:06
you name it. And one of the reasons for this is you said,
31:08
look, you know, we have to drop a lot of the speciest prejudice
31:12
against non human animals and recognize that if they are safetient beings that feel pleasure
31:18
of pain, they fall within our moral universe. Right, And a lot
31:22
of people push back on him for that, and you know, we can
31:23
have a debate about it if you want. But what I think you're seeing
31:26
now is really the recognition that there was something really to this argument, and
31:32
it's gradually became more of a headway in liberal democratic societies. Right. So
31:37
I wouldn't say it's even really all that novel. I think it has deep
31:40
roots. It flows pretty consistently from liberal arguments about the moral equality of all
31:45
sentient beings. And again I think that that I should be carried out and
31:52
ratified. Even further, I do want to touch on Pills's point about individualism,
31:56
though, I mean, I think that that's I think that's starting with
31:59
the individual. Like I mean, first of all, your description of it,
32:01
I don't think is that's an oversimplification of where like current like you know,
32:07
philosophical liberalism is is situated. Like you know, I don't think that
32:10
it's merely a rational individual. But I think it has to start with the
32:14
individual. I mean, and maybe this is just in my mind because lately
32:17
to my students I've been teaching Hegel, and you know, for Hegel,
32:22
there's like the starting with the individual, but it's a dialectical process where you
32:24
realize, like that you can only realize your own individuality and freedom through others.
32:29
And I think, like liberalism still starts with the individual. But you
32:32
know, current current trends and versions of philosophical liberalism definitely don't only rely on
32:39
this kind of naive appeal to absolute rational individual. And I guess, I
32:45
mean, you know, if the objection is an emphasis on the individual,
32:52
then I guess I'm kind of curious, like, what's an alternative starting point?
32:54
You know? Yes, I will expand on that because we are going
32:58
towards Matt brought up animal rights, so we got to talk about what it
33:02
means to have a rights based approach, which I hope to reveal is a
33:08
dog shit based approach. And individualism and how what different ways we can conceive
33:15
of individualism. Even the most communitarian, collectivist Marxist critics do believe in an
33:22
individual, but they believe in it in a different way than the classical liberal
33:28
tradition has bequeathed us. Okay, Like I said, I'm still going to
33:31
argue that some of the more progressive aspects of liberalism have really emerged since the
33:37
nineteen sixties and are not part of the longer tradition. So individualism is normally
33:43
considered you look at an individual as a preformed entity who is fixed, who
33:50
enters into a social world right, And that's the part that is wrong.
33:53
The part that is right, in my opinion, is what you were saying
33:57
about Hegel that in a way we are pre individuals, and we negotiate our
34:02
individuality through our relationships with others, through our relationships with things through the contexts
34:08
we're born into and the cultural values that we pick up in a way that
34:14
you cannot abstract the individual from that context. And this is what I meant
34:19
when it's too abstract, it abstracts. Classical liberalism abstracts the individual from context
34:24
and looks at it as a self contained entity. And then that self contained
34:29
entity can now be assigned rights, and those rights are valid no matter when
34:35
and where you are, because it has to be now universal. And then
34:42
negative liberty is built into that right. So when the individual is born and
34:45
enters into a society, we must do our best not to constrain their freedom,
34:51
not to put up external impediments to their freedom. Rather than thinking of
34:55
government intervention, regulations, rules as things that's gaffled us towards a more full
35:00
self realization of ourselves. The classical liberal wants to say that all of these
35:06
external impediments are actually inhibiting our ability to express ourselves. And I think that
35:12
is patently false because the individual is not an abstract entity that is born into
35:16
a context. It's the context that determines what the individual's aspirations beliefs. And
35:23
again, like I know that the more modern liberal critics have moved on this,
35:29
but I'm going to say for the last three four hundred years that was
35:31
the standard view. And then after the pragmatists started harping on saying we need
35:37
to be more pluralistic, we need to be less reifying when it comes to
35:42
the individual. We can't be at atomistic. How do you say atomistic individualists
35:47
as if individuals are the atoms and society is just a sort of epiphenomenon based
35:53
on the collection of everybody's daily actions. That's the wrong way to look at
35:59
it. The point about individualism, we I agree with that, all right,
36:01
I'd like to focus then, just this is point of order. I'm
36:05
not making a point. Oh wait, I'm making a point of order,
36:07
not a point for my team. So we're going to focus then, because
36:12
you, as Victor said, and as Eric just said, we've moved on
36:16
from the definition of rights as being given to only rational that means that's something
36:22
that knows what is good for them. And you seem to both agree,
36:27
Victor and the positive and Eric in the negative that the issue of freedom and
36:31
where freedom comes from is the individual. The locus of freedom becomes the point
36:36
of contention here. So, if Matt, you're going to make the next
36:38
point, what do you say about the contention that the individual is not actually
36:45
free and that that part is the abstraction that's been bestowed on it from a
36:50
theoretical heaven. Yeah. No, I completely agree with Eric's characterization of the
36:53
classical liberal tradition. Right. I think that it's very true that if you
36:58
read anybody like Locke or Can't to a lesser extent, can't you get this
37:02
sense that the individual, as it's kind of atomically fixed point, is at
37:07
the basis of everything that's of value. And one of the biggest problems with
37:13
this point of view is, of course that it's alienating and it is highly
37:15
abstract. Right. And I can't really add anything to that because I completely
37:20
agree. But what I would say is that I don't think that that is
37:23
a point against liberalism as a broader historical movement. I would say it's a
37:29
point against a historically circumscrised conception of what liberalism is about that we've all seen
37:37
to have acknowledged. We've moved on from right, And I agree with Victor
37:40
that I think Hegel was a great innovator here, right, because Hegel in
37:44
many ways takes up the liberal project. That's by saying, yes, you
37:46
know, what we need to do is talk about freedom and emancipation as being
37:51
central to the human quest right. And I think he actually innovates a lot
37:55
on this by making more clear how this is connected to a certain kind of
37:59
egalitarianess, by saying, wow, but you also need to recognize that freedom
38:01
can't just come from you, It's also dependent upon other people, right,
38:06
and Marx will radicalize this further by saying, your free development is dependent upon
38:10
the free development of all. Right. But where you know, I push
38:15
back on the idea that this is somehow anti liberal, is that the moral
38:19
impetus behind the Sigellian project and this Marxist projects are is the same right,
38:24
securing freedom for everybody, trying to make sure that they can do so now
38:29
in a communal context. And where I think people like Hegel and Marx really
38:35
innovate and provide a lot of important theoretical resources for the liberal tradition is by
38:39
focusing our attention on the importance of what's sometimes called social freedom right, the
38:45
fact that you can't just be free if you're this liberal atomic point pursuing your
38:50
desires in a market society, also certain kind of resources and capabilities in order
38:54
to lead a rich and flourishing life. And I think most importantly, you
38:58
need to be able to have a substantial say in the institutions that govern you.
39:02
Right, Yeah, it's a democratic factor. I agree with your points
39:05
and what you're saying about Hegel and Marx. But then you have to turn
39:08
and look at the sort of academic liberal giants out there, like Ronald Beiner
39:15
who calls someone like Marx an illiberal, which to me is incomprehensible. Marx
39:20
is all about democracy, right, He's trying to get there for us.
39:23
He's just getting there by through a deep analysis of capitalism three volumes. But
39:30
calling mars an illiberal, which liberals you do on the reg as far as
39:35
I can tell, seems a complete misrepresentation. And it comes from a place
39:40
that values I think the individual as this atomic unit, as this abstract entity
39:46
that then provides the basis for a rights based approach, and then the right
39:51
space approach forgets about the duty we have towards other people. That's the other
39:54
problem. We have rights, what do I get? What do I get?
39:59
But we don't think about how those rights are actually in relation to duties
40:05
that we have. I have a right to use the resources around us,
40:07
but I don't think I have a duty to replenish those resources and make sure
40:12
that future generations aren't living in some kind of ten percent world where there's species
40:17
collapse, climate change, and all these other problems that we're dealing with today.
40:22
Clearly, if people thought like you guys are saying, liberals think like
40:25
fifty years ago, then we wouldn't be in this fucking situation with things like
40:29
that. I know it's kind of like a trump card to play climate change,
40:32
but still, I mean, like, I think it's a valid point,
40:36
even if you take the climate r First of all, the question is
40:39
if Eric, if what's Eric saying's true, that means that you aren't actually
40:44
liberals. So can we answer a more progressive edgy band of liberals? For
40:50
sure? But I don't consider you guys the norm in terms of the way
40:53
common sense kind of liberalism tends to work. And even again some of these
40:58
big intellectual academics who the way they portray liberalism does That was why my team
41:02
live. Can you first answer that are you libs? Despite the fact that
41:07
other libs hate yes, Mars, Yes, and then can you argue against
41:13
his point that was buried in there, which is actually the central crux of
41:15
this disagreement, the rights based approach to politics. Yeah, I'll let go
41:21
first, and yeah, yeah, maybe I'll leave the rights based defense more
41:24
to you. But I just want to say, like, this is the
41:27
problem I'm having. I'm feeling like a little bit dizzy because there's a lot
41:30
of conflation of like, Okay, what is like currently existing people who call
41:36
themselves liberals who are common sense? Like there's a shitty common sense that exists
41:39
in our world. No one here would disagree with that. Like people out
41:42
there are regular, like you know, living their lives, have a really
41:45
stupid common sense, like people who work in business. But like, is
41:46
that liberalism? I feel like you can't conflate and be like just because there's
41:51
like shitty Wall Street people who are like looking out for themselves. He named
41:53
in that academic in his defense. Okay, I mean at the end,
41:57
but like, I don't know, I don't know like that many academic liberals
42:00
who I mean, I've met fascists who call themselves classical liberals, right,
42:02
Yeah, And I would also say that, you know, there's not there's
42:07
not you know, just because there's a lot of people who misread marks,
42:09
Like I actually think the really to me, like the central issue is that
42:14
like the moral kernel of liberalism as like like a quest for freedom, emancipating
42:19
ourselves from kind of like arbitrary traditions, right, Like the movement of history
42:22
is about like moving humanity beyond things that we discover through investigation, through the
42:29
enlightenment, rationalism, that were arbitrary things that were being imposed on us to
42:34
live a certain way. Liberalism is part of the broader project to move beyond
42:37
that, to find the conditions for a better human life. And ultimately,
42:43
that to me is what liberalism is. That's the project of liberalism. I
42:45
think, you know, all these kind of like you know, dumer like
42:49
online leftists who think that they're going beyond liberalism, they're liberals, they just
42:52
don't know it, like like they are committed to that same moral project and
42:57
they just don't know it. And that is ultimately what I'm defending here.
43:00
I do always think it's funny when people say I'm a lib I hate liberalism
43:04
because I want to be free, right, I'm like Wow, you know,
43:07
yeah, that's why. That's why when you read the literature, it's
43:09
you're either a liberal or you're critical of liberalism. You're not like something else.
43:15
Most of people who are critical of liberalism on the left, they're critical
43:19
based on a certain kind of moral commitment, which I argue they don't even
43:22
know is liberal. But anyway, Matt, do you want to address the
43:24
rights bace part? You do, though, victor have a very liberal interpretation
43:29
of liberal Yeah, and of not of critical liberals. You can't really just
43:34
like draw a circle around people who are critical of liberal and say, well,
43:37
they're just moral grand stand just in my in my, in my experience.
43:40
Actually, maybe they have a philosophical point to make, like, hey,
43:44
the individual is actually formed and not fixed. It's a process and not
43:47
a predetermined condition. That's not intrinsic to the liberal project. What I described
43:53
as this historical project of like trying to free human humanity from arbitrary rule.
43:59
That is, to me, the intrinsic aspect of liberalism. And you know
44:02
that is not that that does not commit itself to some you know, atomistic
44:08
like sort of ontology of the human being like that, like that's that's that
44:13
was one way I think at the time. I mean, Hegel, I
44:15
think is really useful here with like the dialectical project of the movement of history
44:20
of thought. It's like that was a move that needed to be makee made
44:22
to free humanity from this idea that they're like part of some arbitrary community,
44:28
hierarchical community where they're like under their serfs in this like set order and they're
44:32
all one holistic unit and somebody needs to come along and be like, no,
44:36
we're actually individuals, and like fuck you, Like that's like a necessary
44:39
step in the dialectical project towards freedom. Yeah, we're not just extensions of
44:45
our sovereign leaders exactly exactly. That was just a necessary step. But like
44:49
that's not intrinsic to like the the moral intuition that liberalism is based on,
44:53
which is, you know, I think, freeing ourselves from arbitrary like rules.
44:59
Matt Well I thought, yeah, no, I was going to say
45:02
that. I think, you know, first off, I'd like to say
45:06
that I'm a liberal socialist right or roles in liberal democratic socialist if you want
45:09
the really long term. So I'm just as critical of classical liberalism in some
45:14
sense as you would be. In some ways, I'm more critical of it,
45:16
precisely because I think it's a bastardization of a lot of the principles that
45:20
I hold the right. It's kind of like, you know, I would
45:22
never be part of any kind of club that would have them as a member,
45:24
right, No, true scotsman, there you go. But you know,
45:28
on the question of you know, is liberalism compatible with this kind of
45:34
more robust, holistic, non atimistic conception of the human being, I think
45:38
it absolutely is compatible with that. And again I think that you can see
45:42
starting in the eighteenth century culminating with Hegel, but they are certainly precedents.
45:45
There's a recognition of this on the part of major figures in the tradition,
45:49
right Bentham is one example. And people point out that there's a certain individualism
45:54
to utilitarianism, but it's also a very egalitarian doctrine, right in the sense
45:59
that you're we're not supposed to feel that your own happiness over the happiness of
46:02
other beings, other sension beings, right, And this can have very radical
46:07
implications in some ways if you think about the dangers of things like speciism or
46:10
whatever it happens to be right. And then you know, starting in the
46:14
nineteenth century, you start to see people become very concerned with things like future
46:16
generations, which Eric brought up right, because you'll start to see people asking
46:22
the question, while is it really okay for me to be so concerned with
46:24
my own happiness that I ignore the problems that I'm passing on to people will
46:30
be living one hundred to one hundred and fifty years from now, right.
46:34
And I also want to point out that I think that this is a real
46:36
accomplishment in some sense historically, right, because if you think about, you
46:39
know, the way human beings typically are, where we're monomoniatically determined by ideology,
46:45
we tend to think in highly self interested terms, as the kind of
46:49
caricature of liberalism itself kind of points out right, getting people to think in
46:54
this impartial way about the moral equality and the equal worth of all people is
47:00
quite an accomplishment, right. And I also want to say that I think
47:02
liberalism's critics have understood this sometimes better than people on the left right, as
47:07
Victor was pointing out, because if you think about somebody like Nietzsche and Heidegger,
47:13
right, one of the things that they consistently point out is that they
47:15
see a strong elective affinity between things like socialism and liberalism, since you know,
47:21
in Nietzsche's case, he sees them as both fundamentally Christian projects focused on
47:24
achieving a certain kind of universal human brotherhood or fraternity right, and in Higher's
47:30
case and the introduction of metaphysics, he says, they're both like liberalism and
47:34
socialism are both metaphysically the same right. And they're complicated reasons for this that
47:37
we can get into. But I think that we should actually take the critics
47:42
seriously on this, if nothing else, by recognizing that they're detecting something that
47:45
a lot of progressives don't, which is that there's a strong affinity between these
47:49
two doctrines. Because liberalism is fundamentally a progressive idea. It's just not safe
47:54
for the classical liberals, which is why we need to boot them out of
47:57
the liberal camp. Get them a law in law side the conservatives where they
48:00
belong, and take possessions of our tradition and it's radical core. Get them
48:06
to see what Dave Rubin saw, Yeah, exactly, push them in the
48:08
Rubens direction. If we could all be more like Rubin, I think the
48:12
world would be a much better place personally. Yeah, I agree, I
48:17
agree with you. Why don't we get to the actual distinction because we're brushing
48:22
skirting around it, the actual distinction between possibly what you're calling liberal if it
48:28
includes Hegelien freedom versus Marxist. The Marxist take which would be which subject is
48:35
it that you are universalizing? And that, fundamentally, for in the distinction
48:40
between the two has to do with class. Are you universalizing sort of a
48:46
bourgeoisie, middle class person who tends to be like us, having time to
48:52
read and write and learn what freedom is, learn learn the definitions of freedom
48:58
and rationality, learn about or is the individual that is universalized necessarily a member
49:04
of a class, specifically the proletariat that is responsible for power in a society
49:12
and the way that society moves. And they're exploited, but they're too ignorant
49:16
to know that they are. And just a point. The reason that Marxism
49:21
has been very contested and very controversial over the twentieth century is because liberal individualism
49:29
has had an uneasy relationship with the Marxist kind of idea of collectivism and the
49:37
idea that we're part of a group, right, Because when like liberalism really
49:42
comes into its own and you determine what kind of liberally you are when you
49:45
can articulate what you think the ultimate locus of value is whether it's the individual
49:52
or whether it's the group. And I think for a long time liberals have
49:54
chosen the individual and Marxists have chosen the group, and content continued today in
50:00
identity politics and more relational thinking about identity that it's the groups and the collectives
50:06
that's the ultimate value, of ultimate locus of value. And then the other
50:10
thing is the proper relationship of the state to the market. So the more
50:14
conservative view tends to have a more minimalist government and more power to the market,
50:19
whereas maybe newer strains in liberalism and Marxism all along has always said,
50:24
like the state needs to have the ultimate place in relationship to the market,
50:30
introduce rules and regulations and things like that to help people have better lives.
50:36
So I think I think those two points, the group and the individual and
50:38
the relationship of the state to the market has always been kinds of cruxes.
50:44
Just adding to what Pills is saying, well, let's focus, let's try
50:46
to focus. Make it clear which subject is being universalized. Is it the
50:52
subject of a class or is it the free individual autonomous? Yes, same
50:55
sort of thing, I think. So I just want to I want to
50:59
start. I'm going to answer that specific but I also want to start,
51:01
you know, because Pills and One in your Marx video, I think you
51:04
very correctly and usefully emphasized several times that the Marx theory that people are mistaken
51:12
if they think that Marx has like a moral theory, Like he's not a
51:15
normative theorist. He was like a he's like a almost offering a description and
51:20
explanation of what's going to happen because of the forces and the tensions that exists
51:23
that are inherent in the system. So I think people today will be like,
51:27
oh, like Marx's moral evaluation is you know, the collective. But
51:30
I don't think that Marx had, you know, a moral theory. But
51:35
I think liberalism that's a difference. Liberalism very much is a standard for moral
51:38
judgment as valuing the individual. And I will say, you know, to
51:43
answer the question directly, I do think that you know, judging things based
51:47
on like the moral core being the individual it. You know, I don't
51:52
love it to some extent. But I but I think that, you know,
51:54
judging things on the collective seem much more problematic to me because where do
51:58
you measure the collective? Like what what gives a collective its essence? Where
52:01
does one collective start another one end? It's just like the for me,
52:05
the individual is just a much more useful starting point. That's not to say
52:09
you can't you don't bring in like a Hegelian dialectical approach where you you show
52:14
how the individual is only possible as developing within a context. It's but it's
52:17
the starting point. So this is the razor's edge where you get to and
52:22
then this is where you decide, I, Victor am a liberal because I
52:24
fall on this side of the razor. That is one of the reasons.
52:29
There are many other reasons, I think, but that, but that is
52:30
ultimately the reason that you have to start with the individual. And also I
52:35
think the like the drawing of lines. So another place where I distinguish myself
52:38
from maybe more modern leftist theorists on like the question of the collective of collective
52:45
self rule, is that I do think that institutions, which has always been
52:49
a part of liberalism, like institutions of rights going back to the previous topic,
52:52
are necessary and also, I would say consistent to some extent with UH
52:58
with the Hegelian dialectic right, because for each step right in the philosophy of
53:01
right, it's each step is further making our freedom objective by putting it into
53:07
something that we can that is objective. In some ways. The way I
53:09
was explaining to my students at least is I think that what institutions are doing,
53:14
and what the dialectic in general is doing, is making something more objective
53:17
but also making it more reliable. Right, So we make our freedom more
53:21
reliable by moving to the next step because and I think institutions like laws and
53:24
rights formal rights make our freedom more objective and more reliable. To a certain
53:31
extent. It almost creates a space for our freedom to be expressed, and
53:37
it's a space for our recognition with other beings that is expressed through that freedom
53:40
that has secured through institutions. And I think liberalism has for a long time
53:45
in the tradition been associated with that, and I think that's in contrast I
53:50
want to emphasize to some contemporary more left wing radical theorists who want to get
53:55
rid of institutions, right, kind of the anti institutional collective theorists you know,
54:00
have in mind, like the radical democratic theory tradition some people in the
54:06
in the tradition of participatory democracy. But yeah, yeah, I wanted to
54:10
say something about the way that we approach groups from a liberal perspective, because
54:15
I think there's two different ways that we can look at this, right.
54:19
One is that I think that groups are important from a moral standpoint, to
54:22
use Victor's you know language, But they're important from a moral standpoint because they're
54:27
important to individuals. Right. If individuals are actually existent right now, don't
54:31
choose to value groups or associate with groups, and particularly if they're coerced into
54:36
groups, that they don't have any kind of normative worth. Right. But
54:39
if the individuals do choose to enter into groups and to form communiforms of self
54:44
organization, then that's something that's valuable, and it's something that a liberal,
54:47
a good liberal society, including a liberal socialist society, has every reason to
54:52
chair us and try to preserve. Right. So I don't think that there's
54:54
a problem with that, right. I think that what Marx was critical of
54:58
actually is the way that certain people can be interpolated, to use the alpha
55:02
Zarian term, into groups through a process of what the Frankrent school called real
55:07
abstraction. Right. And the interesting thing about real abstraction, of course,
55:10
is that you're interpolated into a kind of identity that isn't real in a material
55:16
sense, but it has real consequences because, of course, structures of oppression
55:22
treat you as if you're a part of this group and if it is real,
55:23
and as if it is real. Right, And in these kinds of
55:27
circumstances, I actually say that we should regret, reject this process of interpolation
55:32
and try to unmancipage our solved from these kind of false identities that are often
55:37
just put in place of real like projects that are aimed at real emancipation.
55:45
And I ought to collude a lot of the ways reaction areas think about groups,
55:50
for instance, in terms of national ethnic identity, or in terms of
55:52
patriarchy, into this category of real abstractions that are used to justify systems of
55:58
oppression. Right. And now, on the question of you know, how
56:01
Marx would approach groups and whether he's a collectivist or an individualist, I think
56:05
that ultimately Marx is an individualist, right, it is more humanist phase if
56:09
you want to the moral core of Marxism, and I understand for Victor's reasons
56:14
that it's also problesome. He makes it pretty clear that what he's really concerned
56:17
about is human freedom, right, not a quality between groups, and certainly
56:22
not a quality between the ruling class and the working class, you know,
56:24
through their liquidation. It's just that he says that if you really want to
56:28
achieve emancipation for individuals, it needs to be in non alienating conditions, right,
56:34
where again the free development of each becomes dependent or as recognized as dependent
56:37
upon the free development of all. Okay, And what I think is problematic
56:42
about a lot of the twentieth century Marxist movements is they lost track of this
56:45
kind of humanist insight that's at the moral epicenter of Marxism. And I think
56:51
that speaks to Victor's point as well, because what you saw people become concerned
56:53
with is just what I see online now, just concerned with smashing, because
56:59
I sometimes see it that the goal of being a good Marxist is to smash
57:01
the system, right, or smash capitalism, or smash you know, the
57:06
bourgeois society or whatever. And what I always say is no, you know,
57:08
the point of being a Marxist isn't to smash, right. The point
57:12
of being a Marxist to try to get a better society to emerge after we
57:15
radically transform this one, right. And if you don't keep that in mind
57:20
constantly, you're going to lose sight of what we're doing this all for,
57:24
right, because if our only objective is to smash for smashing stakes, then
57:28
there's really no reason why we should get behind such a projects. Well,
57:31
Hiak is far more I want to defend this poisoning the well that's happening here
57:36
because Hyak is far more a liberal than Twitter people are Marxists. But you
57:40
answer the question. You answer the question that you asked yourself, which I
57:45
think is totally the wrong question. Is Marx an individualist or a collectivist?
57:49
He's an individualist not at all. The individual is universalized by being a member
57:54
of a class. You can't say it's an either or. And I totally
57:58
disagree that Marx is a liberal. Based on that definition, I would say
58:01
he's a liberal. I think in the Hungarian sense he's kind of a super
58:05
liberal. Right. He recognizes that there are fundamental limitations to the potential for
58:09
human emancipation in a capitalist society. It's the best what we've done so far,
58:15
and classical liberalism is consequently the most amangamatory ideology that's existed up to this
58:21
time. But we can do a lot better, which is why we ultimately
58:23
need to see the society superseded and a place by something that's considerably more equal
58:29
and considerably more free. But not just as an individual as opposed to collective,
58:34
because that would be wrong to say about even though I have like the
58:37
point about this the whole, it's wrong headed to oppose the individual to the
58:43
collective in the first place. Yeah, because one this goes back to my
58:45
point again that I was saying earlier. You were always already part of a
58:50
group before you become an individual, right, So there's no sense in opposing
58:54
them and abstracting some kind of individuality out of the situation. It's always in
59:00
motion and in development. You're not an individual first, and then you get
59:06
to choose what part of group, which group you join. Ask any feminist
59:09
or any person of color about this, and they will say, yeah,
59:13
of course I'd love to be an individual. But the problem is everybody fucking
59:15
else telling me that I'm part of this group, I'm part of that group.
59:20
I have these characteristics, I have those characteristics. You're always part of
59:23
a group first, and then you get to become an individual if you're lucky
59:28
even And then the other point is that, yes, Marx is not an
59:31
individualist. I use this quote lately. Only in community with others has each
59:37
individual the means of cultivating his gifts in all directions. Only in the community,
59:43
therefore is personal freedom possible. No, Marx is not an individualist.
59:47
And that quote from the German ideology would probably back up my point. And
59:52
the third thing is you're bringing up the idea that yeah, okay, Marx
59:57
is a liberal, but a big thing that's always just English. The liberal
1:00:00
tradition, from the Marxist tradition is the liberals take a reformist approach, a
1:00:05
gradualist approach. We can't change things too quickly, we can't radically deterritorialize,
1:00:10
we will go nuts. Whereas the revolutionary approach they waged two revolutions, radically
1:00:15
change society, three revolutions. If you had the Haitian Revolution, right,
1:00:20
okay, good point, Yeah, French Revolution, Yeah, but I mean,
1:00:22
did that that that energy kind of wavered once the sort of bourgeois class
1:00:29
develops and the status quo developed, and that revolutionary energy got really put aside
1:00:36
until Marx and Marxism sort of revived the idea that perhaps we need a revolution
1:00:43
and other liberals saying, well, maybe reformist, gradualist approach is better.
1:00:47
And that's that's historically been one of the main turning points between Marxism, liberalism,
1:00:52
revolutionary reformist. Okay, three responses. There's two things that I want
1:00:58
to say response to that, right, what is I agree with you that
1:01:00
Marx is not a methodological individualist in the sense they say kant is. I
1:01:05
do think he is a humanist concerned with individual emancipation. But again he sees
1:01:08
that and he understands that it can only be achieved if you aren't just concerned
1:01:13
with your personal emancipation, but the anancipation of everyone in society. Right on
1:01:17
the more important point I think about the relationship between Marxism and groups. I
1:01:22
think that you're absolutely right, and I think that this idea of real abstraction
1:01:25
captures it nicely. Right. Women are a kind of real abstraction as a
1:01:31
group, because we live in a patriarchal society where being a woman typically means
1:01:36
that you're designated to be inferior. Right, And until we eliminate the kind
1:01:39
of patriarchal strictures that I am associated with this, it'll be very difficult for
1:01:43
many women to achieve a same kind of individuality because they're denying the opportunities at
1:01:47
self an individual expression and to form non coercive forms of social organization through patriarchal
1:01:54
mechanism. Right. So, I think that there's every reason to kind of
1:01:58
look at things in the group ways when it comes to criticizing interpolation into real
1:02:04
abstractions for the purposes of domination. Right. The one thing that I want
1:02:07
to be critical of, though, and I want to be really critical at
1:02:09
this point, is if you start to say things like this, the group
1:02:13
pre exists the individual. This can very quickly start to take on extremely conservative
1:02:17
connotations, right, because it's exactly the argument that Burke makes. Right.
1:02:22
Burke goes up to the French revolutionary. So I presume you like, since
1:02:24
your FA, can you please not say that the group pre existing the That's
1:02:30
not a conservative argument at all. That's just like can make You can also
1:02:35
make it a linguistic argument. You can make it a politics. This is
1:02:43
exactly what he makes. Right. Argument against the Frati revolutionaries is society pre
1:02:49
existed you. There is a social contract. It's a social contract between those
1:02:52
who came before you and the dead. So how dare you have the gall
1:02:57
to think that you can just unilaterally decide to break this contract and engage in
1:03:00
revolutionary agitation? Right? The group in society pre existed you. They wanted
1:03:05
things to be this way, they built them to be in this fashion.
1:03:07
And it's not for you to decide to shift things unless you do so in
1:03:10
a very gradual fashion. Right. And this is why I'm really resistant to
1:03:15
the argument that the group pre exists the individual and we should be granted this
1:03:20
a certain kind of moral status, because that can very quickly be turned as
1:03:22
a justification for all kinds of conservative traditions. Right, And you can think
1:03:27
about it. I hate so much when debate lords use logical fallacies, But
1:03:32
this is just the worst example of a slippery slope that I've heard today.
1:03:37
No, I mean, I don't think it's a slippery slip at all.
1:03:38
I mean, if you appeal to a group, then you're going to be
1:03:40
a conservative. No, no, I don't think so. I think that,
1:03:44
to be fair, you are implying that my argument was that the group
1:03:47
precedes the individual, and that was not my argument at all. You know,
1:03:52
I'm saying that, I think I think that you should be very careful
1:03:54
about and point that kind of rhetoric though, And I mean, if you
1:03:57
think about it, there are all kinds of conservative ways that you can hash
1:04:00
out this communitarian conception, right, that the group has a kind of ontological
1:04:04
priority over the individual, or formative status that pre exists the individual. Right.
1:04:11
A lot of the arguments for criminalizing homosexuality in the nineteen fifties were based
1:04:15
on precisely this kind of concept. Right that you privately might want to live
1:04:18
out your perverse sexuality, right, but we as a society have always felt
1:04:24
that you shouldn't be allowed to do that, and this is just not what
1:04:28
we think respectable people should do, so we can deny your individual right to
1:04:31
pursue this kind of activity. I'm sure you would agree that we should not
1:04:38
not make an argument because we're afraid of what conservatives will appropriate. From the
1:04:42
way we're talking, that seems like again a negative sort of freedom to me,
1:04:45
is not a positive argument. I think this actually has very negative connotations.
1:04:48
They're not going to be listening to this anyway. But you're not born
1:04:51
privately. You're born into a language of society, mores. This is not
1:04:57
just a this is not like you're going to be conservative appeal to it.
1:05:00
It's not just a group cultural values. You're You're born into a physical environment.
1:05:05
If you're born up north versus in a hot place, you're going to
1:05:09
be a different person. But I completely agree with that. But the problem
1:05:12
is the kind of way that you cast this out. Right, there are
1:05:15
ways that you can cast us out that are a lot more emancipatory than others.
1:05:17
Right, you can cast us out as an argument for in a Marxist
1:05:21
sense that we are not private, atomized individuals. We live with others,
1:05:27
so our emancipation depends upon the emancipation of all. Right, that's one way
1:05:30
you can cash us out, and I think that's the right way to cash
1:05:32
it out. That's the only one that that Eric has appealed to so far.
1:05:39
I'm not criticizing Eric directly. I'm saying that you need to be careful
1:05:42
who else is having a debate here from it according to their ability and so
1:05:45
on. But what I'm saying is this other kind of argument associated with the
1:05:48
kind of rhetoric you gave, which is that you know, society pre exists,
1:05:51
the individual can be operationalized for very different purposes. And one of the
1:05:56
reasons I bring this up is I think that we need to be very cautious
1:05:59
about invoke precisely because it can be mobilized and has been mobilized by generations of
1:06:03
conservatives for far less than a manceratory person. I feel like I can clear
1:06:08
up the confusion that's going on here, because I think there's been I think
1:06:10
there's a bit of a talking past each other, and like I think the
1:06:13
problem is and I noticed it much earlier that like it seemed like Eric was
1:06:16
making a point that all of us agree with, which is like an philosophically
1:06:20
anthropological point about like how the human being is developed, which is like in
1:06:25
the context of other people and like language and community and like that that is
1:06:29
prior. That is like philosophically prior. But really what Matt is talking about
1:06:32
is what are we going to morally prioritize? So it's not a point about
1:06:36
like what is the anthropological basis of the human animal, of the human being,
1:06:41
of human subjectivity. It's the point about what are we going to morally
1:06:44
prioritize? And I agree with that if you morally prioritize the group, that
1:06:48
opens the door to a lot of that is very consistent with conservative groups.
1:06:51
And like, I don't think that Eric was even saying that he's morally prioritizing.
1:06:55
I heard Eric is saying liberalism, which I disagree with him on.
1:06:59
This is based on this philosophical anthropology of just like the individual is some isolated
1:07:03
thing, like, no self respecting liberal theorists thinks that anymore, since like
1:07:06
Locke and like, of course the anthropological point, as I said, we
1:07:10
all agree with the human beings are in a subse So that is how I
1:07:13
see this confusion. All Right, I'm losing my objectivity because I'm becoming invested
1:07:17
in the argument. But can we accept I just want to say I agree
1:07:20
with Eric, Okay, I wasn't attacking Eric as being a clause conservative or
1:07:24
something. Well, then you're shadow boxing people who aren't even existing in this
1:07:28
conversation. Don't worry about hurting my feelings. Many the reason that I'm bringing
1:07:31
this up is just because I want people to be cognizant of how this rhetoric
1:07:35
can, as Victor said, it be morally mobilized to like non emanspiratory purposes
1:07:43
and has been mobilized many times before. Right, Well, because you morally
1:07:46
value the essence of some group of some collective, which was kind of my
1:07:49
earlier point about like how do you draw the lines around what collective? But
1:07:53
I don't even think Eric was defending the moral prioritization of the group, unless
1:07:58
I don't know, you could correct me if I'm wrong here, But like
1:08:00
that's I wasn't hearing you as actually you were making more of a philosophical anthropological
1:08:02
point. Well, I mean, there's all these extremes we have to avoid,
1:08:06
and I think Hegel brings them all up, you know, the tyranny
1:08:09
of the individual, autocratic rulership, the tyranny of the masses, more like
1:08:13
what happened in Stalin's Russia. I mean, there's all these extremes we have
1:08:16
to If you prioritize the group before the individual, then you've got the tyranny
1:08:20
of the masses. If you privilege the individual before the group, which I
1:08:26
argue that many in the classical liberal tradition. But yes, I agree,
1:08:30
not so much anymore. They did do that, they did think because how
1:08:33
else could you argue that you're a rational individual in a marketplace with self interest
1:08:39
if you also admit the point that your self interest is actually like constructed by
1:08:45
your time in this world and you're the process of incorporating other people's values into
1:08:50
your own worldview, You couldn't really make that argument. You have to say,
1:08:55
well, no, you're an atomic individual with rational capabilities, able to
1:09:00
put aside moral arguments based on feeling, and able to just make moral arguments
1:09:03
based on reason and choose the valuable option for you, Philadelphia, Right,
1:09:11
reason will prevail, pickles will prevail. We've both gotten our chances to say
1:09:17
our points on this issue, which I think is the third point, and
1:09:23
we can transition into the fourth point. I wanted to bring it up because
1:09:27
I was interested. I'm genuinely interested in your point of view on this,
1:09:30
and you can bring up the previous discussion because this is more a more a
1:09:34
general point. I wanted to recall Diogenes because Diogenies thought that human social life
1:09:42
was inferior to a dog's life because they're they're both miserable, but the human
1:09:48
life is just steeped in hypocrisy. So so he decided to sit in the
1:09:55
market and jack himself off, live in a barrel. But my question,
1:09:59
yeah, jack off of a barrel in the middle of the market. So
1:10:01
we have this system. We have this system based on a lot of florid
1:10:06
language. And I want to address the issue. I think it was Eric's
1:10:12
fourth point from the very beginning, that it's anti realist. It uses a
1:10:15
lot of florid language. We've been saying freedom and mutual respect often over and
1:10:21
over again, liberation, so on. So what happens to those points of
1:10:27
view that disagree with this, that don't want to participate? How do you
1:10:30
get self our mutual respect among among your governed electorate without coercing mutual respect once?
1:10:39
How do you maintain neutrality towards the good? Yeah? Where does where?
1:10:43
Where does the state kick in in terms of establishing this system? Not
1:10:47
in something that you all want to believe is true or you want to interpret
1:10:51
it as true. But how do you get to dealing with the way that
1:10:56
this functions when people don't want to listen to it? Well, I mean,
1:11:00
and so I would say that it's it's it kind of This is kind
1:11:03
of speaking to like the puzzle I mentioned like at the beginning, that that
1:11:06
there's you know, people, if people don't want to feel this kind of
1:11:10
mutual respect, I mean, I think you do have to prioritize like like
1:11:17
rights for individuals. And if people don't like that, I guess, like
1:11:21
you know, they can go and try to start a commune or something like
1:11:26
that. But that's going to be permissible in in a context, in a
1:11:30
liberal context, there's nothing that's stopping that from being permissible. But I guess
1:11:33
I don't know, Like, so is your is your question basically like what
1:11:36
do you do with people who don't want to who don't want to be liberals,
1:11:40
who don't want to respect others? Like crime? Like how do you
1:11:42
deal with crime? How does a liberal who believes in this whole system of
1:11:46
oh, this is the best that we can do then deal with those who
1:11:50
don't want to do it the discontents as Freud would say, So, first
1:11:55
of all, I don't I don't think that we've done anywhere close to the
1:11:58
best that we can do. I do not think that any any point wh
1:12:00
in which like liberalism has reached its you know, optimal, I mean even
1:12:04
in your in your philosophical giving the benefit of the doubt. Yet okay,
1:12:09
so in my mind, so so I do think that I do think that
1:12:12
these discontents, a lot of these discontents, I think can be rooted.
1:12:15
There is social science research, and there is you know, some political science
1:12:18
research showing that you know, having economic freedom and like having some some like
1:12:24
material conditions being taken care of will go a long way. I do think
1:12:28
that a lot of these kind of like like movements of resentment are often going
1:12:32
to be related to people who who are somehow economically disenfranchised. Not always,
1:12:38
but sometimes. But I do agree with some critics of liberalism on both the
1:12:42
left and the right, that there is like a little bit of a problem,
1:12:44
which was the puzzle that I was getting to at the beginning, that
1:12:46
you know, ultimately, because of liberalism's emphasis on you know, formal rights
1:12:50
and uh you know, uh like to some extent like nominally like priority morally
1:12:57
prioritizing the individual like that, Like there's there's a trade off, right,
1:13:01
Like I think that there's ultimately a trade off between having like the moral priority
1:13:05
of the individual, but also like those like there must have been something nice,
1:13:11
right, like living in a in some like feudalistic society where you feel
1:13:15
like you know what your place is and there is some majesty from above that
1:13:18
is like that you are a cog in a machine and you know what your
1:13:21
role is, you know what your meaning is in it. I mean,
1:13:24
that's like an extreme example, but I do think that there is something that
1:13:29
is lost when you went and like something kind of disorienting about being in a
1:13:32
world where you actually have to kind of decide for yourself. But ultimately,
1:13:38
like you can't reconcile those two things. I don't think that you can reconcile
1:13:41
some need for feeling like some meaning from above is given to you and you
1:13:44
don't have to feel disoriented in a liberal society. I would rather feel disoriented
1:13:49
and and and be in a liberal society than have than have like some arbitrary
1:13:55
rule from above. But I think that specially conservative critics, you know,
1:13:58
and I have this book here in front of me, Why Liberalism failed from
1:14:00
Patrick Denin right, when critiques like there that this is something that people worry
1:14:06
about, and I don't know, I don't have an answer for that,
1:14:10
but I just I guess I would just say, like, let's take care
1:14:12
of the economic material conditions, make sure everybody can have as much freedom as
1:14:15
they can with basic incomes and whatever kind of institutional support, and hopefully that'll
1:14:20
that'll give people time to feel more affectively connected to other people, because ultimately
1:14:25
we do need other like some form of community, and I think part of
1:14:28
it is, like, you know, shitty material conditions that don't allow that
1:14:31
to flourish properly. But yeah, there's always going to be some people who
1:14:35
are who align and miss that feeling where there is some overarching rule that is
1:14:41
telling you what to live, and like, I'm sorry for those people,
1:14:44
but like tough, No, it's not tough. You have to coerce them.
1:14:47
Then that's the if you're going to have a liberal state, then there
1:14:50
must be coercion and power. No no, no, no, no,
1:14:54
there doesn't have to be coercion because they can start their commune and they can
1:14:57
all go and worship whatever they want. Well, there it is. Yeah,
1:15:00
I want to say I think that there's three things I want to point
1:15:02
out here, and then I can see Eric was jumping on, so I'll
1:15:04
try to keep it really quick Okay, First off, I think that when
1:15:08
it comes to groups that hold fundamentally illiberal views, is sometimes put, we
1:15:14
should tolerate them to the absolute utmost end possible. But in instances where they
1:15:18
become violent or militant, then yeah, there are going to be have to
1:15:23
be instances where the liberal states going to step in to try to at least
1:15:27
quell the kind of radical edge to what they're doing. Right. I think
1:15:30
this is true of fascist groups for example, and say that this is a
1:15:33
kind of compromise that liberal theory makes with reality. And I don't think there's
1:15:38
really any a priori way to answer when it should do this. I think
1:15:41
that in a lot of circumstances, it has to be determined empirically and historically
1:15:45
right. And you can see this with a lot of the jurisprudence and debates
1:15:47
about that go on through the liberal tradition, where people will ask things like
1:15:50
can we tolerate Neil Nazis? Can we tolerate the clan? Can we tolerate
1:15:56
you know, like radical right wing terrorists? You know, And we try
1:16:00
our best, and sometimes we just realize that we can't anymore. Okay,
1:16:04
Yeah, I just went to sorry you can finish your next two points.
1:16:06
I just want to put the point down. I think we're all talking about
1:16:11
the same thing. But if you're going to base a political theory on individual
1:16:15
rights, then how do you reconcile that with power and the exercise of power?
1:16:18
So anyway, sorry, next question, and I think that there are
1:16:21
circumstances where we just have to do this right. On the second point,
1:16:25
I agree one hundred percent with Victor that a lot of the kind of alienation
1:16:29
and hyperpartisanship that emerges right now is a consequence of equal, stratified, hyper
1:16:35
competitive neoliberal material conditions. Right, So, if we were to achieve something
1:16:40
like a liberal socialist society where resources were distributed in a much more galitarian manner,
1:16:45
where workers were able to actually have some say over how their companies are
1:16:48
directed, so on and so forth, would be a lot better. And
1:16:51
Victor said it really nicely, so I don't think we want to elaborate on
1:16:54
this too much. The one point that I'll add is that I think one
1:16:57
of the reasons why people feel a profound sense of alien that's connected to neoliberal
1:17:01
material conditions is that they rightly assume that economic elits wild a lot more power
1:17:05
than they do, and that the kind of representative democracy we live in is
1:17:10
really just formalistic and kind of a sham, right, And I think this
1:17:14
goes to show you why we need a renewal of democratic life, not just
1:17:16
to legitimate political institutions, but also so that people can create a deeper sense
1:17:21
of voluntary community with others, which kind of speaks to the communitarian ethos that
1:17:27
some communic conservatives raise without the coercive mechanisms that are associated with that. And
1:17:31
I think we can expread this idea of democracy to a lot of areas of
1:17:34
life, you know, whether we're talking about the workplace, the family,
1:17:36
and gender relations whatever. On the last point about realism, I like to
1:17:42
say, actually that one of the things that's great about liberalism, and it's
1:17:45
precisely that it's a nominalistic philosophy predicated on the scientific method that says we can't
1:17:51
know reality in and of itself. Okay, And there are a lot of
1:17:55
reasons for this, and we can have a law philosophical discussion about it,
1:17:58
but the reason is that in this kind of speaks to what Victor was saying
1:18:00
as well about this longing for meaning. One of the things that's characteristic of
1:18:05
many streams of reaction. I thought, is they all claim to be realists.
1:18:09
Right. Everything in the universe has its place. It simply is what
1:18:12
it is because it has essential qualities to it. And because everything in the
1:18:16
universe has its place, everything should stay there, right. And this extends
1:18:21
all the way down to the social hierarchies we see in the human kind.
1:18:25
Right. And my argument is that we should take a dornal seriously and reject
1:18:30
the tyranny of positivism and say, actually, what we don't want is reality
1:18:35
in this conservative sense of realism. What we want is to change reality and
1:18:40
make it better. Right. And that's what I see as being at the
1:18:44
epicenter of the liberal project at its best, and it's stressed at its best.
1:18:47
Since says Eric said, there's tons of works that you can find in
1:18:51
the tradition, including plenty that I thin could jump on pretty regularly. Yeah,
1:18:56
yeah, well I had I had a respond respond to both of you.
1:19:00
Actually, I'll just lead him by saying what Victor was saying actually put
1:19:05
me in mind when when you were talking about the sort of feudalistic worldview versus
1:19:11
I don't know what the post French revolutionary social world. For what I was
1:19:15
talking about. I think what you were saying actually put me in mind of
1:19:18
Cavell's version of skepticism, saying that like no, like skepticism any long isn't
1:19:25
any longer about, you know, despair over the fact that we can never
1:19:29
be certain about anything. Now, skepticism has to be about coming to terms
1:19:32
with living in an ungrounded world. That's skepticism for Cavell. And I think
1:19:36
you expressed that very beautifully, or at least what you said put me in
1:19:42
mind of that. I think the problem with saying within a liberal society,
1:19:49
however, we can just allow people to go off and form commune communes and
1:19:55
break off and stuff. I think that would present a problem to certain liberal
1:19:58
perspectives. For since I would bring up like what is when Rawls is struggling
1:20:02
with the idea of positive freedom. You know, in the wake of Isaiah
1:20:08
Berlin's essay two concepts of freedom, there's a negative and a positive. Isaiah
1:20:12
ultimately comes down on the side of the negative freedom. But I think Rawls
1:20:15
thinks about this little more, and he makes a distinction between civic humanism and
1:20:18
civic republicanism, and he says civic humanism is wrong because that permits people to
1:20:25
go off and seal themselves up in a private sphere. But he comes down
1:20:29
on the side of civic republicanism. We need to encourage people to become educated
1:20:33
and participate in politics, become active political actors. That's what So Rawls would
1:20:40
have a big problem with that, the sort of liberal liberalism that you were
1:20:45
maybe just hinted at, with the idea that like, if you're not happy
1:20:48
with it, go off and form a commune. It's like, well,
1:20:50
Rawls would say, no, actually get educated and go into politics and change
1:20:55
it. You can't. We can't live in liberal societies and have a long
1:20:59
lasting to democracy for just also allowing people to seal themselves up in some sphere
1:21:04
away from everyone else. It depends on the nature of the sphere. Like,
1:21:08
but I agree. I mean I was vague and what I meant,
1:21:10
But I do think that Rawles would find it permissible to have free associations with
1:21:13
whatever you want. They would just have to be reasonable and they would have
1:21:15
to remain non violent. Right. I don't know, Matt, unless you
1:21:18
disagree with the most militant I've ever seen you, Victor like you actually got
1:21:21
kind of fucking angry there. You're like, you know, they could go
1:21:24
join a fucking commune and if not, tough man, dude, do you
1:21:30
agree though, Like, don't you think that Roles would allow some communes?
1:21:32
This is also the most political I've seen, Eric, So I think this
1:21:36
just brings out the worst in all of us. I like this. This
1:21:40
guy just despices you as you were dreaming of pills. Yeah, I thought
1:21:44
this would really well. If anything. The weird thing is I think Eric
1:21:47
display the most liberal virtues personally. All Yes, I have to say that.
1:21:51
I think I agree. You just take anything you like and then call
1:21:55
it liberal. I'm more liberal than the liberals. Man, he's a more
1:21:58
radical. I I'm engaging in the self critique. Eric, you didn't finish
1:22:03
your list, Go ahead, Eric finished. My last point was really just
1:22:08
to what Matt was saying about, you know, the idea that the state
1:22:13
can come in and you know, make things run a little more smoothly by
1:22:18
ensuring that people's I don't know if this is the way you put it.
1:22:21
It was a little while ago now, but like the state is allowed to
1:22:25
come in and make regulations and make sure that people's individual freedom is not being
1:22:30
trampled on and that sort of thing. And I agree with that to the
1:22:35
extent that Yeah, of course, liberalism is always about compromise and if you
1:22:40
can, if you can live in a liberal state, and socialists want one
1:22:44
thing and neo conservatives want another thing, and you can give it both to
1:22:46
them, and that's what they'll do. But the problem with liberalism is when
1:22:49
it comes to those decision points that I was talking about earlier, when the
1:22:54
decision you can only prioritize the individual or the group. You can only prioritize
1:22:59
the free market or state regulation. When those decisions come around, and I'm
1:23:03
going to give another example, and it has to do with climate change again,
1:23:06
is when the way that stop climate change is being dealt with in terms
1:23:12
of the liberal status quo. When you go to things like un COP conferences,
1:23:17
they are talking about how to financialize nature and make it visible to economic
1:23:21
calculation, right, and they come down on the side of the free market.
1:23:27
They will never like, Okay, if the compromise is there, they're
1:23:30
gonna find it and they're gonna make it, because liberals are all about compromise.
1:23:33
But if the compromise cannot happen. If a decision needs to be made,
1:23:39
then they will come down on the side of the free market and say,
1:23:42
okay, well we can't like look at how COVID rolled out originally.
1:23:45
Of course we had a more right wing conservative kind of liberalism and power at
1:23:50
the time. But the point there was that we cannot stop the market forces.
1:23:56
We can't just stop the economy because everything will collapse. Sacrifice the people
1:24:00
to the economy because it's our god, right, speaking of higher things coming
1:24:04
down below. The economy is like a religion in liberalism, and of course
1:24:10
not so much in the more progressive strands. But this is gijs point all
1:24:14
the time, right capitalism, he quotes Benamine, capitalism is like a religion.
1:24:18
An that's besides the point. And now you're shadow boxing, so I
1:24:21
have to call you out too if you have to come to one of those
1:24:25
decisions and you have to prioritize something either the group or the individual, the
1:24:30
state of the market, the economy, or the environment. You know,
1:24:32
the way that the status quo works right now is they will always come down
1:24:36
on the side of the individual, the market, and the economy, possibly
1:24:42
to the detriment of the group, to the state, to the environment,
1:24:46
and that's what that's just what happens. Okay, so your compromises are awesome,
1:24:50
but when you can't compromise, what the liberal lore tells us is going
1:24:56
to be what decides the ultimate outcome. And to many, of course,
1:25:00
if there were more good liberals like you, maybe in positions of power,
1:25:04
then maybe this wouldn't happen. But as it does happen. You know,
1:25:09
we go for the market, we go for the individual, we go for
1:25:14
the economy, fuck the environment, fucked the state, and fuck the group.
1:25:17
Right, And that's just how things unroll, and we should change that.
1:25:20
And like I said, good liberals like you maybe disagree with that,
1:25:25
and I hope you do well. And this is why I say we need
1:25:28
to smash neoliberalism. Right, Yeah, those are all problems. Yeah,
1:25:32
these are all problems of the currently existing liberal democratics setup that we have right
1:25:36
now, which I think Matt did a good job of explaining, like enhancing
1:25:39
you know, more democracy in the workplace, like reinvigorating our democratic institutions,
1:25:44
which, like Matt mentioned, that's actually the topic of the book of the
1:25:46
of the article I'm reading for his edited volume, right like that, Like
1:25:49
just I mean, I'm arguing for completely getting rid of electoral politics as they
1:25:54
exist. Just by way of reference, Eric is also contributing to this volume
1:25:58
as well. It's kind of oh, yeah, that's true, that's true.
1:26:00
Yeah, you have you have one which I think is is related to
1:26:02
the environmental topic. But but in any case, it's just the point is,
1:26:05
like, I think that you can be a liberal like that, those
1:26:09
those critiques you have are the same critiques that I have. But I just
1:26:12
still think that what what I believe in morally and politically is still part of
1:26:15
the liberal project, where maybe maybe what you do you don't consider it to
1:26:18
be part of the liberal project. I don't know. I mean, I
1:26:20
guess I'll play Devil's advocate and say that's just still liberalism, whatever flavor you
1:26:27
choose. I don't like liberalism because I don't want to choose a flavor of
1:26:30
oppression. Okay, well, guys, I think I think this was certainly
1:26:34
gonna be fun for everybody else. I feel kind of stressed out. I
1:26:38
don't like the I don't like the conflict. You wanted the contract, what
1:26:42
you wanted, I wouldn't want it for myself. I wanted it for the
1:26:47
listeners. I am a martyr. I'm a martyr. On the we're handing
1:26:50
out red pills. They're handing out blue pills. By the way, this
1:26:55
is our thirtieth episode. Christ began his ministry at thirty, so we have
1:27:00
at least three left, but he was dead by thirty three. I would
1:27:05
I would I have like a concluding remarks for which I kind of think.
1:27:11
To me, my observation is that you know as so much more often than
1:27:15
I would like it to be the case in like sort of academic discourse with
1:27:18
you know, sit with a bunch of academics seeing around arguing about something.
1:27:23
Is like I ultimately think that most of us agree about almost every single concrete
1:27:27
issue, Like we probably are very close on most issues, and really like
1:27:30
the biggest disagreement was like I want to call this thing that we all agree
1:27:34
with liberalism, and you're like, I want to say that those things aren't
1:27:36
really part of liberalism. Like to me, it just seemed like there were
1:27:39
a lot of things that it's an argument more about like what counts as liberalism,
1:27:44
what's intrinsic to liberalism? But like when we brought up examples of like
1:27:47
what specific things we don't like or criticize, or what specific things we do
1:27:51
like. It seemed like we pretty much all agreed. I think we fundamentally
1:27:55
disagree about the constitution of the individual, and it's along those polar axis,
1:28:00
and I think we still disagree. I don't think so. I think we
1:28:03
agree on the anthropology of it. It was the disagreement was really about like
1:28:08
where the moral where the moral like justification for things is located. Yeah,
1:28:14
but like I mean, I think my point was also that, I mean,
1:28:17
I'm playing devil's advocate, but I also believe it a little bit.
1:28:20
Is that you can't say these things aren't liberalism. You can't say that the
1:28:26
Chicago School of Economics, led by Milton Freeman is not a liberal institution that
1:28:31
is producing liberal subjects. Of course, I don't believe if you go into
1:28:35
a society that has liberal democratic institutions, that every person you're going to run
1:28:41
into is going to be a liberal subject. I don't have that sort of
1:28:45
broad scope view of liberalism. But I do think that if you want to
1:28:49
be a liberal, and you want to say that you're a liberal, you
1:28:54
should own the fact that liberalism has also produced some pretty shitty idea, and
1:29:00
if I want to be a communist, I have to do the same thing.
1:29:02
I have to say, Well, communism has been pretty fucked up in
1:29:06
its actual manifestations in history, but I'm gonna own that. I'm not gonna
1:29:11
say Stalin wasn't really a communist, right, you're you're right, You're right.
1:29:15
And I didn't I didn't mean. I didn't mean to sound like like
1:29:16
like I was saying, you know, really, I think what I mean
1:29:19
is the argument was not so much like, oh, this isn't liberalism,
1:29:23
but like what's intrinsic to the to like what I say is the moral core
1:29:28
of liberalism, and like, yeah, it's been instantiated in a bunch of
1:29:30
ways, but I still think. And actually, interestingly, when you were
1:29:32
talking there, like it made me think that there may be is like also
1:29:35
a divide on like where we think about these things philosophically, like between Matt
1:29:39
and I versus like you two is I think that you two have more of
1:29:42
a tendency from at least based on my observation that to start with like a
1:29:47
more like philosophical like ontological metaphysical question about like where the human being, like
1:29:51
how do we understand the human being its relation to reality, which I think
1:29:56
both Matt and I are interested in too, But I think we have a
1:29:58
tendency to slip into right away. Not that question, which I think we
1:30:01
agree with you on, but what is where do you fought, like locate
1:30:04
the moral justification for things? So like, yeah, starting, I think
1:30:08
we look at things from a more moral philosophy perspective than you guys do,
1:30:12
which I think maybe led to some of our discorsile we never got to the
1:30:15
Hume guillotine, which is there is no aught from and I think Eric and
1:30:19
I both say, oh, you're talking about at questions. Bye, Yeah,
1:30:24
exactly, we have to do a whole episode on moral motivations for people
1:30:29
and what the basis for moral assertions. To end our episode on Libs,
1:30:34
it is going to be King of the Libs making half a point because his
1:30:39
points are so long, mamocmannus take us home. Yeah, No, I
1:30:44
just want to say, I think that's actually a really interesting question because fundamentally,
1:30:47
I think the person who raised the best objection to liberalism was actually Nietzsche,
1:30:53
right, And one of the reasons is because Nietzsche really pushes the question
1:30:57
to exactly the point that Victor was talking about and Pills was referencing, which
1:31:01
is, you have this axiomatic assumption that we're all moral equals, that people
1:31:05
should be free, that human life is worth a dam. Why should we
1:31:10
presume any of that? Why should I grant you that all this is just
1:31:14
a vulgarized iteration of the Judaeo Christian tradition that we better off rejecting and you
1:31:18
know all the stuff that comes from that. And I think it's a really
1:31:21
good objection, right, I mean, and I don't know a lot of
1:31:24
liberal thinkers who actually have a very sustained answer to it, and partly because
1:31:28
meta ethics is difficult, and also because I think most of us rely on
1:31:31
kind of axiomatic reasoning when it comes to a lot of our moral values.
1:31:34
In fact, I'm not really sure we could do away with it. But
1:31:38
I mean, I think there are a lot of objections you can make this
1:31:40
that are really strong. Hopefully we can get to explore them in the future.
1:31:43
Good point. I'd also like to plug that Pills and I are doing
1:31:46
a series on semiotics, and there's going to be some parallels to what we
1:31:51
were talking about today. That you might not expect it. For instance,
1:31:55
the way that we construct the individual and invest them with rights and then try
1:31:59
to extend those rights to non human beings. I find that to be completely
1:32:01
analogical to the way that people construct a vision of meaning based on linguistics and
1:32:08
language and then try to extend that to non humans, and I think it's
1:32:12
a I think it's an error to do in that way. So check out
1:32:15
our semiotics series for that. And as you heard, a few references to
1:32:21
everyone in here but me apparently is coming out with a book, so look
1:32:28
for debate. Anyway, Guys, we've gone long, but I think it
1:32:32
was a great discussion, good episode, some conflicts, some stress. My
1:32:36
heart rate went out. I hope you guys enjoyed it. I hope you
1:32:41
got off on the spicy disagreements. Yeah, so it makes us such effective
1:32:45
podcasters though, as our chemistry and our I hope so the electricity that flows
1:32:51
between oiled hatred for each other, but right below the surface, fucking libs.
1:33:00
Okay, you stopped recording, but he says it went really well.
1:33:02
So just for the listeners over there, all right, I'll see the end
1:33:08
is nigh. You'll hear from us later for episode thirty one. Thank you
1:33:12
all for listening. So bye Victor, Thank you listeners. Bye bye Eric.
1:33:18
Eric stopped his recording too, So bye from Eric and Matt. This
1:33:23
is pills. Talk to you later.