[In this new book, writes reviewer Clemens, author Walzer "muses
on the evolution of the word liberal, from indicating a fixed ideology
to signifying a ‘universal’ set of values that can be attached to
a diverse array of political projects." ]
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PORTSIDE CULTURE

THE STRUGGLE FOR A DECENT POLITICS: ON “LIBERAL” AS AN ADJECTIVE
 
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Mario Clemens
May 30, 2023
LSE Review of Books
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_ In this new book, writes reviewer Clemens, author Walzer "muses on
the evolution of the word liberal, from indicating a fixed ideology to
signifying a ‘universal’ set of values that can be attached to a
diverse array of political projects." _

,

 

_The Struggle for a Decent Politics
On "Liberal" as an Adjective_
Michael Walzer
Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300267235

Michael Walzer has been engaged in politics for decades; early on as
an activist, later as a political theorist and public intellectual.
The vision behind his lifelong efforts is well captured by the title
of his latest book: _The Struggle for a Decent Politics_
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While it is not a memoir, it surely is his most personal book, and as
Walzer, now in his late 80s, writes, it may well be his last.

For a little over 150 pages, Walzer revisits nearly all the topics he
has been engaged with as a political theorist and public intellectual.
For instance, his examination of just and unjust wars is reflected in
a chapter devoted to ‘Liberal Nationalists and Internationalists’.
In a chapter titled ‘Liberal Communitarians’, he once more claims
a middle ground in the academic liberalism vs communitarianism debate.
And in ‘Liberal Professors and Intellectuals’, Walzer takes up the
theme of social criticism.

A new idea holds those reflections together: being a liberal today no
longer means championing liberalism (as a political ideology among
other ideologies, such as socialism or conservatism). Instead, those
that see themselves and are identified by others as liberals today
share a set of moral convictions and sensibilities that lets them
approach politics in a particular way. What Walzer sets out to explore
is how this liberal ethos may shape political projects that run under
nouns such as nationalism, feminism, or democracy. His decoupling of
liberal as a verb from liberalism as a noun allows him to make a
series of internal differentiations:

‘Like all adjectives, ‘liberal’ modifies and complicates the
nouns it precedes; it has an effect that is sometimes constraining,
sometimes enlivening, sometimes transforming. It determines not who we
are but how we are who we are – how we enact our political
commitments’ (5).

How exactly does ‘liberal’ affect the nouns it precedes? While
Walzer’s point is that ‘liberal’ nowadays refers to a set of
moral values and sensibilities that have become universal (‘They
must be, since they are visibly under assault these days around the
world’ (5)), those values nonetheless clearly derive from currents
within the liberal tradition. Thus:

‘For all the nouns to which the adjective applies, it brings its
various liberal qualifications: the constraint of political power; the
defence of individual rights; the pluralism of parties, religions, and
nations; the openness of civil society; the right of opposition and
disagreement; the accommodation of difference; the welcome of
strangers. It brings generosity of spirit together with scepticism and
irony’ (150).

What Walzer seems to say is that liberalism has come to an end as a
fixed political ideology but that, in the process, a set of its
elements have been released and turned into universal norms and
sentiments, which can now be combined with all sorts of politically
more substantial projects. Liberal as an ‘adjective can’t stand by
itself as it is commonly made to do (by adding the ‘ism’)’;
Liberalism as a political ideology no longer has the power to inspire
political movements, ‘but the nouns […] will never be what they
should be without the adjective liberal’ (5). Interesting in this
context is the fact, not mentioned by Walzer, that before
‘liberalism’ as a noun came into use around 1810, people already
used the adjective ‘liberal’ in a non-political sense, meaning,
roughly, ‘generous.’

The idea that liberalism cannot stand alone is not new. One version of
this argument is made by Eli Zaretsky, who argues in _Why America
Needs a Left_
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that ‘Without a left, liberalism becomes spineless and vapid’.
Zaretsky goes on to write that ‘without liberalism, the left becomes
sectarian, authoritarian, and marginal.’ This second quote seems to
imply an argument quite close to Walzer’s. But as the title of the
book suggests, Zaretsky’s main point is that liberalism needs a left
to constantly correct it, whereas Walzer sees liberalism in the role
of restricting and bending politically more substantial ideologies,
such as socialism.

Walzer’s argument also relates to and deviates from the often-made
observation that liberalism has become the dominant paradigm in fields
where professional reasoning about politics takes place, such as
political theory or International Relations. The dominance of
liberalism in those fields is regularly interpreted as liberalism’s
unique ability to incorporate critique. One can ask, though, what is
left of liberalism after it has incorporated, for instance, socialist,
feminist, and communitarian arguments? Walzer provides an original
answer by simply turning things around. The question is not what has
remained of liberalism after taking in, for instance, feminist
arguments; it is how liberal socialism, liberal nationalism, or
liberal feminism differ from the doctrines missing the adjective.

Liberal socialists, for instance, (like all socialists) are committed
to a struggle for equality, and, compared to their liberal-democratic
comrades, they put a stronger emphasis on the need for structural
change. Yet, liberal socialists believe that the progress they
envision has to be achieved by democratic means, by building a broad
societal consensus, rather than (as some other socialists have it) by
using a ‘knowing vanguard’ to push through what is
‘objectively’ in people’s interest. Because, as Walzer puts it
in the elegant and lively prose he is known for, ‘Two steps forward,
one step back is better than three steps forward over the bodies of
our opponents’ (39).

Walzer’s positions have remained exceptionally stable over the
years. While he has changed his mind here and there a little and
slightly revised this or that argument, he is not among those whose
oeuvres are characterised by fundamental revisions. There are no
separate phases, no ‘late Walzer’ to be distinguished from an
‘early’ one.

One reason for this is that Walzer is no system builder; there is no
grand theory that needs constant reconstruction in reaction to
criticism or new empirical evidence. With concerned amazement, Walzer
has noted that many who contribute to Just War Theory today are
primarily concerned with other theorists’ arguments rather than with
the actual phenomena: concrete wars, just or otherwise. In contrast,
his writings are characterised by the engagement with concrete
phenomena; in each case, he develops specific normative arguments for
how ‘we’ (fellow citizens, for instance) should think about or
address the problems we face.

Another reason for the overall coherence of Walzer’s positions can
be sought in his personality. He is a progressive through
socialisation but a moderate by nature. His demons, whoever they are,
do not manage to push him back and forth between extreme positions.
Walzer’s writings and talks show that he is constantly weighing the
arguments, always warning against putting one value, one idea, above
all others. Thus, he holds that a ‘single-minded demand for American
disengagement everywhere can’t be the right answer’ (43). This
qualifying approach is also reflected in his style, especially in his
beloved insertions in brackets, such as ‘everyone (almost everyone)
…’ (55).

Given his many excellent books, _The Struggle for a Decent Politics_
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may not be Walzer’s best. However, no other book contains more of
Walzer as a person, with many points illustrated using first-hand
stories, while simultaneously revealing his positions towards almost
all of the many political (theory) problems he has been concerned
with. It, therefore, provides a superb testimony to a lifelong
struggle for a decent politics.

 

Mario Clemens is currently conducting a PhD in Political Theory at
Erfurt University, Germany.

_Note: This review gives the views of the author, and not the position
of the LSE Review of Books blog, or of the London School of Economics
and Political Science. The LSE RB blog may receive a small commission
if you choose to make a purchase through the above Amazon affiliate
link. This is entirely independent of the coverage of the book on LSE
Review of Books._

 

 

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