Other-centered Individualism
the heart of a New Liberalism
The concept of individualism has always been at the core of Liberalism (the meta-ideology within which liberalism is one of several political ideologies). It follows from the observation that we humans exist as separate and independent beings with respect to one another. That observation has informed all aspects of the governance of Liberal society, from making maximizing liberty the goal of society to ‘one person, one vote’ as the core concept of the political process.
Individualism underlies the whole notion of rights — as well as Rights — in Liberalism. The former are recognized as being associated with the just governance of society. The latter, such as “Natural Rights,” accrue directly to individuals by virtue of being humans, irrespective of society.
That is, people have those Rights whether they live together in groups or if they did not. The latter describes the “State of Nature” of, most famously, Thomas Hobbes or John Locke, where people are regarded as existing as separate and independent beings most literally, not living together in any kind group. That construct gave rise to individualism as Liberalism’s core concept. [Hobbes: Leviathan (1651); Locke: Two Treatises of Government (1689)]
So Hobbes and Locke were writing in the 1600’s. Back then, the idea that people might have ever actually lived as separate and independent individuals was not an unreasonable supposition (though both of them were less than explicit concerning its historicity). Today we know it to be false. We now know that for as long as Homo sapiens have trod this Earth we have lived together in groups. (Both Hobbes and Locke had a hard time keeping in mind that such a thing as a society could exist without civilization — in the literal sense, i.e., the existence of cities — though both do clearly recognize that distinction, at least in places.)
It is important that those groups that have actually existed have not been limited to a family unit. That was something both Hobbes and Locke ignored in their musings concerning a “State of Nature.” If the idea of family got introduced into the mix, that would lead inexorably to the notion of tribes, at the least — a concept known to Hobbes and Locke — thereby rendering null and void the idea of people living without society in some form. Actually, even an immediate family must curb a person’s enthusiasm for that notion, though you could squint hard enough and reasonably see a single family unit as being equivalent to a single individual.
The point is that the whole idea of individualism as it has existed within Liberalism started from a false premise. It is that false premise that gave rise to the notion of Rights existing in such circumstances, which informed in turn the idea of rights for governing society, the purpose of which is to preserve as much as possible the ‘flavor’ of life lived by human beings as separate and independent beings with respect to one another sans society in any form. So in a liberal society people have political and legal rights that are pertinent to particular situations and circumstances, in our day-to day lives people have one right: the right to do anything that is not against the law.
Yet, people do exist as separate and independent beings with respect to one another. That is an undeniable material fact. Even within the most closely- knit family, its constituent members are physically, emotionally, psychologically separate and independent (if interdependent) beings with respect to one another.
The problem is that the individualism of Liberalism to date has perpetrated a grotesquely self-centered idea of human existence. It is an uninterrupted focus on ‘my’: ‘my Rights’, ‘my rights’, ‘my’ wants’.
Then, on the back of that grossly distorted notion of human being, Modern capitalism — and an economic system formed to further it — came into the world, with unlimited (over time) supplies of money and property/wealth (in the form of corporate stocks). Much material good has accompanied that development, but so have outcomes that can well be described as ‘ghastly’ — with vastly worse to come if the looming environmental crisis it has engendered proceeds to destroy civilization. A this point, society — by now, Earth — has been reduced to being nothing but a host for an economy that is the ultimate parasite, an inhuman mechanism mindlessly sucking every last bit of sustenance from this world, to include any humans from which any productive capacity whatsoever can be wrung, existing for the sole purpose of seeing how rich an individual can possibly become. That is what self-centered individualism has gotten us.
Yet, the solution cannot be denying the existence of humans as separate and independent beings. That is every bit as false as the notion of humans beings living without society is.
[The rest of this essay is copied directly from “A New Liberalism” here in Medium, with but a dab of editing for the sake of textual coherence.]
The solution to that apparent paradox could not be simpler: a turn to an other-centered individualism. Instead of the focus being on one’s own ‘right’ to do and say anything that is not against the law, the focus would be on refraining from acting unjustly towards any other person(s).
That has nothing to do with altruism. It is not ‘sacrificing’ anything of one’s own to benefit other people. It is self-constraint — self-governance — for the sake of justice.
All of that takes us back to John Locke, the original Liberal. He famously defined injustice as “being subject to the arbitrary will of” any other person(s). Since the opposite of injustice is justice and the opposite of being subject to anyone’s arbitrary will is liberty, justice must be liberty. [Thomas Jefferson basically plagiarized Locke in the most famous words in the Declaration of Independence of which he was the primary author, even to the point of including “separate and independent” in referring to “all Men” in his original draft of that document — as I learned in reading Liberalism Proper and Proper Liberalism, by Gottfried Dietze (1998), a book I do highly recommend.]
That ‘old, white man’ Locke failed to see back in 1689 that if injustice is “being subject to the arbitrary will . . .” (and it most assuredly is), then what justice requires most immediately of us humans is to refrain from subjecting any other persons(s) to our own “arbitrary wills.” That is, justice requires all people to respect all others in that basic, fundamental way. [Though I, too, am now an old white man (72 next month) I started on this quest to update justice when I had just turned thirty.]
Instead of ‘justice is liberty’, it would be, ‘justice is mutual respect’: justice is present when people are respecting one another that way — not acting arbitrarily where other people are concerned, but taking one another into account as we live our separate lives together in society. Mutual respect in that form would maximize the liberty in our personal relations that co-existing individuals can share simultaneously .
Yet, while that is an ethically satisfying concept, it is also too vague to be of much practical value. What we need — what Liberalism needs — is a way to locate ‘respect’ in some more specific and less abstract concept and still be broad enough to cover all pertinent interactions among people.
The goal must be a rule that will not just prohibit violating the “person and property” of other people, but will extend into all aspects of their being. People should be free from any unwarranted intrusion into their lives. That is as close to a land of perfect liberty as co-existing human beings can hope to attain in our personal relations.
“Unwarranted” differs from ‘unwanted’ in that the latter can be a legitimate aspect of an experience one has undertaken. Consider ‘pop-up’ ads. We might hate those ads, but we engage with the internet having accepted that that (unless we have taken action to prevent them) they are going to be part of that experience. So they are unwanted but not unwarranted (as they exist, for creators, as a means of remuneration for producing it).
The distinction between those two words gets us to the crux of the matter at hand. In that context “unwarranted” means ‘arbitrarily imposed without permission’ and “unwanted” means ‘unwelcome but voluntarily accepted’. It comes down to a matter of choosing or not (in that case, to be subjected to ads). Concerning justice, the heart of the matter is the given capacity we all have as human beings to choose for ourselves.
In fact, the only way any person can affect in any way the life of any other person is if one is effecting some choice (i.e., choosing among perceived alternatives and take action to bring that choice to fruition). The choice might or might not be intended to affect any other person(s), but whether intended or not, affecting other people — for that matter, involving other people in any way when anyone is effecting any choice — is the issue. Conflict of the kind described above arises when people do things that involve other people who don’t want to be involved, at least not in the way they are being involved or to the extent to which they are being involved. That suggests that the rule we seek is that everyone must respect the capacity to choose of all other people whenever anyone is effecting any choice. [Warren J. Samuels discussed “effecting choices” in his scholarly contribution to Perspectives of Property, edited by Gene Wunderlich and W. L. Gibson (1972).]
It is a material fact that we humans have no choice but to effect choices. That makes choosing integral to being human. That gives a rule to respect the capacity of other people to choose an impelling ethical force: to act otherwise is to deny in some way or to some extent the very humanness of those other beings.
That takes us to a different place than ‘equality’. We Liberals don’t like it, but the fact is that anyone can legitimately deny ‘equality’, since it is only a belief we Liberals happen to hold. Lots of people insist that their are ‘natural’ hierarchies based on gender, ‘race’, and even nationality, and most religions have a place in them for hierarchies among people.
While we Liberals abhor such beliefs, no one can prove that any belief is more/less true than any other. That is just the nature of beliefs. We must also note that tolerating divergent beliefs has been one of the core tenets of Liberalism. Moreover, a claim to hold any belief sincerely, whether equality or any other (secular/ideological or sacral/theological), and not merely as a means to some other end — such as, say, in the pursuit of some political goal — is a claim that cannot be verified. So an appeal to a belief in equality weakens Liberalism.
Justice requires universality/commonality. For belief-based approaches to justice — as part of a broader morality — they are held to be universal because of their claim to ‘truth’ — or Truth. The approach to justice in this New Liberalism locates universality in a commonly shared experience of (what we perceive as, to be philosophically technical) material existence.
With a rule to govern personal relations that follows from the undeniably valid observation that we humans have no choice but to effect choices, we can strengthen Liberalism by going away from belief, to the simple reality of human being. While anyone can legitimately deny ‘equality’ by simply rejecting the truth of it, for anyone even to try to deny humanness is another matter. Knowledge that all of us human beings can know to be true as a matter of our experience of life on Earth can legitimately overrule — indeed, must overrule — any claim to any personal, immaterial truth (however many people might claim it) when it comes to the governance of society.
Unlike any immaterial truth, a universal experience of life as all humans necessarily live it provides the commonality that justice requires. Without such commonality the only option is for some people to be imposing some ‘truth’ on all others in determining how the governance of society will be governed. That brings arbitrariness, i.e., injustice, into the very core of society, no matter what immaterial truth(s) — belief(s) — might be involved.
To be more specific, then, what we must respect is other people’s capacity to choose — beginning with their capacity to choose whether/how/to what extent to be involved whenever any choice is being effected. So the rule governing people’s personal relations must be something like, ‘no co-opting or otherwise preempting the capacity to choose of any other person(s) in effecting any choice’. That is, in effecting any choice, any other person’s involvement must be sufficiently informed and voluntary. Again, we see how that would only further liberty in our personal relations.
More specifically yet, that boils down to a handful of absolute prohibitions: no killing, harming, coercing, stealing, or manipulating (which includes lying, cheating, etc.) in effecting any choice. Anyone who is refraining from any such actions in effecting any choice is being just enough. In the end, that is all justice requires of us in our personal relations as we live together in society — keeping in mind, though, that those prohibitions are only the enumeration of the absolute minimum of acting justly, taking one another into account, respecting one another’s capacity to choose.
[In one way or another all of those prohibitions relate to “harming.” Sorting out issues related to harm is the (legitimate) purpose of any community’s laws and their system of enforcement/adjudication. So one can see how a rule prohibiting harm while specifying certain forms of harm would enhance the governance of personal relations in society while reducing the need for specific laws.]
Finally, we must note that those prohibitions apply to any choice anyone is effecting. They not only apply to choices anyone is effecting for oneself, but apply as well to any choice anyone is effecting on behalf of any other person, or organization, or cause. In short, there is never a valid excuse, other than oneself acting as the victim of some injustice (such as coercion), for violating any of those prohibitions.
Admittedly, it would take generations for that change in Liberalism to work itself into the culture enough to change the nature of society. Still, as it is said, ‘a journey of a thousand miles begins with one step’. One big step would be to recognize formally, as in a nation’s constitution, that respect for the capacity to choose of all other people is the ethic of justice.
That brings us to The Political Process.
The topic of this segment of this essay is the political process. A democratic version of that process has been associated historically with Liberalism. Democracy has been taken by Liberals to be ‘just’ because it is associated with ‘equality’. We have seen, in the first part of this essay, the weakness of any position dependent on that belief.
The Life and Death of Democracy, by John Keane (2009) is a history of democracy with the central theme that it is an approach to governance that has evolved in stages over time, with each successive stage representing a distinct understanding of what democracy ‘really is’. One thing that book makes clear — if unintentionally — is how nebulous the case for democracy has always been. This update of Liberalism can fix that, too, giving the argument for democracy a rigor it has never had.
Given the familiarity of political democracy and its historical connection with Liberalism, for present purposes it will be sufficient to note the two conditions that govern the just structure of a democratic political process, freedom of political speech and a ‘democratic’ distribution of the rights pursuant to other forms of participation in the process, and their connection to justice. That will leave its functioning for further discussion.
First and foremost, democracy is a just political process because in it all members of society are taken into account. ‘Taking one another into account’ is one way of expressing the basic idea of this reformed approach to justice. That is necessary to avoid arbitrariness, the locus of injustice in relations among people.
More practically, all members of any society are affected by choices that are effected for the community as a whole. Justice therefore requires that all members of the community have the opportunity to participate in that process.
So a democratic political process is the only just form that a political process can take.
Freedom of political speech allows all members of the community to participate in the political process. That means that all are, at least formally, taken into account in that process.
Political speech transcends the political system. The political system is the set of institutions via which the rest of the political process proceeds. The offices of government form its functional core.
The political system includes as ‘institutions’ formally recognized political rights. Those rights are the formal recognition of powers — capacities to act — other than political speech that individuals possess that are relevant to participation in the political process: assembling, petitioning, running for office, voting. Political rights are necessary for participating in the political system, as opposed to acting politically outside it.
In a democratic political process those rights are recognized to accrue to all members of the community, except for legitimate restrictions. To be legitimate, a restriction on any political right must be universally applicable and universally applied (to avoid being arbitrary). A distribution of those rights with only such restrictions can be called a ‘democratic’ distribution. Liberal societies have already learned that the only indisputably valid restriction on political rights is age, as a proxy for sufficient knowledge and maturity; gender, ‘race’, national origin, creed, and property have all been correctly rejected as discriminators.
A democratic political process is a form of procedural justice: any outcome of a just process is legitimate. In the New Liberalism our ethic of justice provides a barrier to unjust outcomes. The only illegitimate outcome would be one that violated the conditions of justice that ethic generates for either personal relations (anywhere in society) or the the political process.
So all Liberal nations, whatever the form of any one’s political system, have a political process that is democratic in its structure. In all of those nations there is more or less discussion of how the make the process more democratic is its functioning. That means in some way or other making ‘regular’ people’s participation in the process more meaningful, significant — impactful. All such proposals go to the renovation of Liberal society, but specifics regarding any of them are beyond the scope of this effort. [I do have a suggestion in that area: “A Proposal for Improving Democracy” (also herein Medium, with, as ever, nothing I publish here behind the paywall).]
Determining the structure and sanctioned functioning of the economy is also a choice to be effected in the political process. That is the subject of the third and final segment of this essay.
[For more: “Why I Love Democracy” (a “5 min read”); “Democracy: So Much More Than Majority Rule” (a “13 min read”) both here in Medium (with nothing I publish here behind the paywall).]
The Economy
[For the record, I do have an M.A. in economics (Atlanta University — now Clark Atlanta University: 1988). My Thesis (in political economy, where philosophy and economics intersect) focused on money and distributive justice.]
The economy is where the most visible changes to society from this upgrade of the Liberal society would result. It is also easily the most difficult aspect of a society to which to apply governance. There is a legitimate danger that there can be too much governance, such that innovation and material improvement in the lives of all people can be stifled. The old Soviet Union stands as a constant reminder of that fact. On the other hand, the economy is nothing but choices being effected, and the minimum of justice in effecting choices (from the first segment of the essay) must apply throughout the economy as much as any other part of society. If laws are needed to ensure that justice will be upheld, so be it. At the same time, within Liberalism economic outcomes must be the result of a just process; like the political process, any outcome resulting from a just economic process must be accepted as legitimate (as long as unjust actions on the part of individuals acting within it did not determine the outcome) [see — far — below].
So I have developed an alternative monetary paradigm that would make the existing economy more just, via a (‘livable’) “democratically distributed income” (DDI), i.e., one for which any (adult) citizen could become eligible. That would not involve taxes/public debt in any way — for reasons of justice, political feasibility, and Occam-esque simplicity. It could be adopted by any nation (though I do use the U.S., where I have always lived, for illustrative purposes). Many more positive material benefits follow from that idea, including no unemployment or poverty for any adult citizen of the nation, no taxes/public debt needed to fund government at any level (as long as spending did not exceed anywhere the allotted amount — which would be determined by current per capita total government spending), and a systemic increase in sustainability.
What follows will be rather dense in places, but I did want to convey in as few as possible (11), brief as possible paragraphs how fully developed this proposal is. Please: trying to pigeonhole this paradigm ideologically would be a waste of time that could only hamper ‘getting it’. For instance, one part of the paradigm that is off-putting to many people is that an absence of ‘trade-offs’ and ‘burdens’ in it would extend to even the richest people and the largest corporations: there would be no redistribution of anything nor any cost imposed on any employer; yet, there would be no unemployment or poverty for any (adult) citizen at any level of total output and the level of total output would be governed, passively but effectively, by demographics — and only that.
The paradigm is somewhat similar to Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) — its normative aspect — but it does not involve debt in any way or using taxes to withdraw money from the economy. Public debt/taxation would in fact be eliminated (see below). No person, committee, or organization would have any means, much less the authority to determine how much money (as currency) would be created or how much money (including currency and money created by banks in issuing loans) would be withdrawn from the economy: the supply of money (in total) would be fully self-regulating.
Creating money (as currency) will be addressed below. As for withdrawing money from the economy, by design a sufficient amount of money would be collected from the profits of corporations. They would be paying no taxes and no limit would be imposed on revenue, investment in the business itself (plant and equipment), or the compensation of any/all employees (sans bonuses), but a limit (based on profits) would be imposed on the accumulation of cash and extraneous assets. Other outlays would be restricted to legitimate business expenses. As now, the profits of proprietorships/partnerships would be the income of the owners of those enterprises. Individuals, however rich or not, would have to be indifferent to have any money collected. (Hopefully that would become a ‘badge of honor’ in the culture — though, unlike corporations, individuals could also contribute to not-for-profit entities.)
The DDI would be a guaranteed — bulletproof, actually — minimum income. Money (as currency) would be created as needed to fund it. The total amount of the income would simply be the amount of it multiplied by the number of people eligible for it. To avoid inflation, the income would have to start at something close to the current minimum and be increased gradually, but it could eventually equal the current median income, if not the average, or even more than that. Whatever its final amount, it would replace existing incomes as it increased over time. Universality of eligibility would be achieved by paying the DDI to three groups of people.
Less shockingly, it would be paid to retirees and to adults too incapacitated to work. It would replace, in the U.S., Social Security. [The Social Security Administration (and its equivalent in any other nation) could be extracted from government to become the Administrator of the Currency — and thus be independent of both government and the banking system (though a nation’s central bank or its central government could also administer it).]
The third group being paid the DDI would be — brace yourself — people employed in ‘minimum pay positions’. That is to say, for people employed in such positions their pay would not come from their employers (a business or government, not-for-profits being another matter), but would be the DDI. Whatever the amount of that income might be at any time, employers could designate any position to be a ‘minimum pay position’. However, an individual could choose to remain in/accept such a position or not based on (negotiated) total compensation: in the labor market employers would find themselves using benefits (as well as general working conditions) to compete for people to fill those positions. So for those positions the ‘arrow of competition’ (who’s in competition for what) — a neglected but hugely significant aspect of a market-based economy — would be reversed. All benefits of all employees, whether being paid the DDI or not, would have to be ‘in-kind’: goods/services, not monetary/financial, with the money going directly from the employer to the providers of the goods/services. (At the transition to this paradigm people would have sufficient knowledge of the total compensation for positions of interest to them, which knowledge would be passed along into the future.)
To ensure that there would be no unemployment or poverty, government would be an ‘employer of last resort’, offering jobs paying the DDI without benefits. That would make such jobs essentially free to government (while giving anyone employed in one that incentive to seek a job that included benefits of any kind). The DDI could also be paid as easily as not to one legally responsible adult in a household with at least one legally recognized dependent living there (the same income regardless of the number of dependents) — which in the immediate term would greatly affect the labor market, but opportunities for employment are supposedly going to be shrinking drastically in the near future.
To ensure that demographics would govern output (for the sake of sustainability), money (as currency) would also be created as needed to fund government — all government, from local to national — forevermore at the current per capita rate of total government spending: that rate multiplied by the population of the nation each year (including non-citizens who were residents). [I have devised one approach to apportioning that money.] That would put an end to using taxes/public debt for that purpose — unless spending exceeded somewhere the allotted amount, due to a public emergency or whatever. Taxation would at least be reset at zero. That would immediately provide a significant increase in disposable income for everyone. Given how regressive the total tax bill is in many nations (including the U.S.), in a relative way the poorest people in such nations would benefit the most from ending taxation.
The economy (the process of producing/acquiring goods/services) would become fully self-regulating, with total output governed by demographics. (Regulation within the economy, i.e., relating to the environment, workers, and consumers, would still be a matter of concern in the political process).
The paradigm is eminently actionable: though there are plenty of details that would have to be worked out, it could be implemented with a single legislative Act. Even if working it all out took an ‘economic convention’ (composed of elected or designated persons or a combination of both) a whole year, that would be as nothing. As noted, it could be adopted by any nation (though a nation’s financial infrastructure could make it more of a challenge) or a group of nations agreeing to share a common currency (without compromising the sovereignty of any nation). It could even one day, perhaps, form a single currency shared by every nation on the planet — with all peoples enjoying the material well-being of the most materially well-off.
Now, the two most important Liberal philosophers since the utilitarians of the late 1700's/early 1800’s were John Rawls and Robert Nozick. The former made the case for a politically liberal interpretation of Liberalism [in A Theory of Justice (1971)]. The latter answered Rawls with a right-of-center interpretation [in Anarchy, Sate, and Utopia (1974)], largely echoing John Locke himself (whom I referred to above as “the original Liberal”).
Both Rawls and Nozick made it clear, if within different approaches, that within Liberalism justice is located in process, not by identifying specific, material outcomes and making their realization ‘what justice is’. That invites ‘the end justifies the means’. Emphasizing process does not guarantee justice, but any kind of, to use Nozick’s term, “end-state” approach to the governance of society — or any part of it — assures that the injustice in arbitrariness will result. To reiterate, only a just process can produce just outcomes; any outcome of a just process must be accepted as legitimate (as long as . . .). [To be clear, to undertake unjust actions to get a just political process or a just economy implemented is still to act unjustly; even if they are successful, such actions render that outcome illegitimate.]
We have seen (in the second segment of the essay) that a democratic political process is a just process because in it all members of a community are taken into account. Since the political process is the process of effecting choices for the community as a whole, all of its members will be affected by choices effected in the political process. Justice therefore requires that all of them must have the opportunity to participate in that process. The ‘conditions of justice’ for the process thus become freedom of political speech for all and a just — democratic — distribution of the rights pertaining to all other forms of participation in that process.
What are the conditions of justice for a just economy, the process of producing/acquiring goods/services? As in the political process, the requirement to respect the capacity of all people to choose for themselves applies directly to all interactions among people in the economy — recall, from the first segment of the essay, whether someone is acting to effect a choice for oneself or on behalf of any other person, organization, or cause: any business is an “organization” (just as political parties — and governments — are organizations). Again, respecting one another’s capacity to choose maximizes liberty among co-existing people. Also, just as there must be a democratic distribution of political rights, there must be a democratically distributed income, i.e., an income for which any (adult) citizen can become eligible.
That’s because money is to the economy as political rights are to the political process: necessary to be able to participate in it. [It is the case that people can act politically even if certain rights pertinent to that participation are denied, such as people denied the right to assemble gathering in public anyway to demonstrate their opposition to the actions of the people holding the offices of government (though the consequences for the demonstrators can be dire — but we have learned that enough people demonstrating long enough for any outcome in any nation can achieve their goal: in the end all nations are direct democracies, if enough of ‘the people’ have sufficient determination and courage).] Regarding the (existing) economy, it is simply not possible to participate in it without money. Even homeless people must get their hands on a certain amount of money just to survive. The amount of money a democratically distributed income must be is therefore at a minimum enough for a person receiving it to survive. Other than perhaps some practical limit for the sake of the functioning of an economy itself, which is necessary for society itself to exist, there is no necessary maximum that places a limit on it.
[For more about the proposal, “A Most Beneficial Economic Change” is a “2 min read” here in Medium with links to more articles, each from a slightly different angle within the field of economics — with nothing that I publish here behind the paywall. Note: the above is copied from “De-growth with Only Positive Effects,” with a few minor changes due to context.]