This talk is a plea for a revision of the received libertarian attitude to
meliorism. By meliorism I understand attempts to remedy or reform specific grievances or defects in a democratic society. Some of what I have to say arose out of reflecting on a book of essays by
Paul Goodman[1] However this is not a paper on Goodman. I’ll refer to his views at the outset and also make exemplary use of his work in some places. But my main interest is in possible libertarian reactions to him, and beyond that, in the standard libertarian attitude to meliorism.
Goodman calls himself a “utopian sociologist”, meaning of course to be ironical. He is a self-confessed pragmatist, strongly interested in practical goals and in getting things done. Although at heart he is a social critic, his avowed intention is to combine destructive criticism with positive proposals whose acceptance would improve the object of criticism or even replace it altogether with something better.
“I seem to be able to write only practically, inventing expedients. … My way of writing a book of social theory has been to invent community plans. My psychology is a manual of therapeutic exercises. A literary study is a manual of practical criticism. A discussion of human nature is a program of pedagogical and political reforms. This present book is no exception. It is social criticism, but almost invariably (except in moments of indignation) I find that I know what I don’t like only by contrast with some concrete proposal that makes more sense.”
Goodman is not in the tradition of 18th and 19th century reformerso were obsessed with the idea of a Grand Plan to cure all ills of mankind at one stroke and forever. His thought is therefore not to be compared to classical anarchism for he seems interested solely in piecemeal reforms and changes. In modern American society thinking men are faced with a moral dilemma:
“It is only by the usual technological and organisational procedures
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that anything can be accomplished. But with these procedures, and the motives and personalities that belong to them, fresh initiative is discouraged and fundamental change is prevented.”
Goodman rejects the general validity of the premises from which this pessimistic conclusion is drawn. He believes that the shortcomings and defects of the society in which he lives are in part due not to the absence of better alternatives but to an unwillingness seriously to consider and accept certain policies—the policies to which he gives the friendly-ironic label “utopian”. This unwillingness is itself not an altogether unchangeable, rock-hard social fact on Goodman’s view. Resistance to novelty or to proposals which are or seem radical and disturbing, can itself be studied and understood, and sometimes overcome. Goodman, conscious that all is not for the best in the best of all possible worlds, believes that “something can be done about it”. He thinks that there exist means which, without being self-defeating, are apt to further modest but consequential ends. He calls them “expedients”, and reminds us of Goethe’s objective: “just to live on a little”. The contrast with Marxist-historicist beliefs in the impossibility of reform within capitalism could hardly be more complete.
How do libertarians react to all this? Differences of interest between Goodman and libertarians are obvious enough. He is much more catholic in his interests that we are. He is concerned with town and community planning, with the aesthetic quality of life and the surrounds of activities; he is interested in the technology and administration of education; in vocational guidance; in psychotherapy; in youth camps; and in many other things which to the libertarian-in-the-street are either so many unknowns or else hobbies to be pursued unofficially. Some of his preoccupations are then ab initio quite unlikely to arouse much enthusiasm in our quarters. Nevertheless we should not overstress the differences. For Goodman is among other things an anti-militarist, a critic of superstitious ideologies, an advocate of sexual freedom and of freedom of expression. We do have a lot in common with what animates the man. In any case if this were less true, libertarians, in view of their social theory, would still have to accept and meet the challenge of defining their attitude to a reformer of the Goodman mould. We can hardly ignore him just because his interests differ from ours on so many points.
I envisage the standard libertarian response to Goodman as an application to a particular case of our general doctrine of anti-
reformism. Thus I expect most libertarians would be critical of Goodman’s style of thinking, his pragmatism. And I do not mean here criticism of his excesses, his occasional blunders and over-
all superficiality. I meen a deep-
seated aversion. The reasons for this aversion fall into three rough categories. (1) There is the thought that meliorism is ineffective: it regularly or characteristically fails of its
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intended effects, especially when the intended effects are genuinely liberal. (2) In addition to ineffectiveness and perhaps more important than it, meliorism regularly generates unintended and unwanted effects which blight the hope of reformers to have achieved a net improvement in the world by their efforts. (3) Finally, the result of meliorism will be confusion in the mind and behaviour of the reformer: his ends, being in conflict, will fall into disarray, and it is predictable that in such an eventuality he will let go of his liberal intentions before letting go of his practical strivings.
Let me consider these points in turn (and not just with special reference to Goodman). My general line will be to suggest that these criticisms are severally overstated and exaggerated, and that the anti-meliorism to which they add up is therefore too indiscriminate.
In considering the charge of ineffectiveness (utopianism in the unfriendly sense) we should distinguish the technical impossibility of proposed policies from their unsuitability to the audience. By technical impossibility I mean that there are, at the time and place in question, no physical, technological, or economic means to the ends envisaged, nor are there any means to the means. Defects under the second heading include the following:
There is no (effective) audience, e.g. Domain oratory.
It is the wrong (irrelevant, impotent) audience. Goodman himself provides the example: there is something distinctly odd about propaganda for civic and political proposals being disseminated in literary journals.
There are reasons to believe that the Policy is not acceptable to the (right) audience.
It would be patently absurd to argue that all proposals for reform are technically impossible. Most of them, at any rate most of those nowadays put forward by radicals, dissenters, liberals and democratic socialists in our times are not in this class. In any case there is no rational way of judging the matter a priori. The possibility or impossibility of proposals must be assessed as they came up, in the light of the situation to which they are meant to apply. Somewhat more guardedly the same can be said about the unacceptability of meliorist proposals. Whether a policy is or is not acceptable is sometimes a more or less open question which can be settled conclusively only by putting the policy forward and seeing hte public reaction. (Goodman implies this when he calls his utopian proposals “hypotheses”.) Prescinding from questions of uncertainty, there is a second point to be made here. Suppose a proposal passes all reasonable tests, other than acceptability to the appropriate audience. Is advocacy of such a policy unrealistic simply because it is not immeidately acceptable to those concerned? The answer is not always yes. If the policy in question is not of the now-or-never type, if, that is, immediate acceptance and implementation is not of its essence, then even if it is now unacceptable there may be some point to advocating the policy despite opposition or indifference.
Through advocating the policy at a certain time, some analogy
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to it, or some part of it, may become more probable than otherwise, especially at some subsequent time. We know that many piecemeal changes are the result of the cumulative impact of advocacy (and other things) spread over a period. Nor is it necessary that these effects of one’s advocacy should be exactly calculable.
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