Liberalism, Leftism and the Ethics of Listening

Clarifying some ideas that are often confused.

I am very critical of what I see as liberal culture’s abandonment of leftist politics. Because I have identified as a leftist since I was in college, I am deeply motivated by a hope that we can recover what has been lost. In order to do that, we have to look in the mirror.

At the same time that we organize against the authoritarian tendencies of a politics that has lost its mind, we have to think critically about our own political assumptions. It is not enough to blame the “other side” for everything that is wrong with our politics. Just as it takes a deeply un-self-aware, narcissistic person to think that the reason all their relationships fail is because of some fault in their partner, it is a toxic symptom of collective narcissism to see the ugliness of the ‘other side’ and not pause to consider what circumstances gave rise to that ugliness. To see ugliness of character and infer that this ugliness exists because such people are intrinsically ugly is an ugly idea that emerges from our own ugliness. To be a mature adult is to set aside adolescent self-righteousness and own our own shit.

And so it is in the spirit of ‘owning our own shit’ that I attempt to trace some of the foundational ideas of ‘liberalism’ and ‘leftism,’ while suggesting that the current political paradigm requires more intellectual and practical resources than what has come before — precisely because what once worked is no longer working.

Leftism vs. Liberalism

I identify as a ‘leftist,’ which for many will just read as ‘liberal,’ but there is an important distinction to be made between ‘leftism’ and ‘liberalism’ — although of course on certain issues they overlap.

A ‘leftist’ is someone who sees capitalism itself as the root of systemic inequality and alienation, while a ‘liberal’ generally accepts capitalism as the basic structure of society. Both liberals and leftists may recognize the need for governmental reforms that ameliorate the negative impacts produced by unrestrained capitalism (inequality, wage stagnation, dismantling of worker protections), but a leftist will often go further than simply ‘softening the edges’ of capitalism. The degree to which a ‘leftist’ will advocate for systemic change varies — with some calling for the abolition of capitalism, while others opt to ‘socialize’ certain industries necessary to human flourishing (i.e. healthcare, housing, transportation, education, energy). A ‘non-abolitionist’ leftist may still want to leave some industries to operate within the structures of capitalism, while removing from profit-centered systems those industries that provide for uniquely human needs. (A modern example of such a leftist is the Vermont senator, Bernie Sanders.)

When it comes to the role of state governments, there is another important general difference between liberals and leftists. Liberals are institutionalists. They believe in the gradual progress through a refinement of institutions (education, courts, elections, and policy reforms). Leftists, by contrast, often argue that institutions are structurally-biased toward the powerful and the wealthy, and thus to implement any substantial change requires forms of mass movement, direct action, labor organizing, and sometimes revolutionary struggle.

However, not all leftists are revolutionaries in the traditional sense; instead, they advocate for a cumulative reform from within existing institutions that may in time be seen as a kind of ‘soft revolution’ — which some may prefer, because it can avoid the sorts of violence often characteristic of extra-governmental revolutionary movements.

Similarly, not all ‘liberals’ are of the Left. Liberalism, by contrast with its contemporary association with people on the Left is actually a pervasive cultural and ideological narrative that extends across the political spectrum and is variably represented in both the modern-day Democratic and Republican parties. The difference between these two parties is therefore not always whether or not they are ‘liberal’ or ‘conservative’ — because even those who identify as conservative are often libertarians and free-speech advocates. Libertarianism (‘live and let live’) and free speech are typically considered principles that emerged from the tradition of liberal political theory.

To understand these distinctions, let’s take a moment to address these theoretical origins.

The Theoretical Origins of Liberalism

Liberalism was initially a theoretical movement advocated by philosophers like John Stuart Mill and John Locke. Two important emphases of classical liberalism are ‘natural rights’ — life, liberty, and property (Locke) — and ‘liberty’ — freedom from coercion (Mill).

Locke’s reasoning for establishing ‘inalienable rights’ was a fundamentally theological one interested in responding to a specific question: How can we explain legitimate political authority if humans are naturally free, equal, and created by God? Because our right to life, liberty, and agency belongs to God (and we, as humans, also ‘belong’ to God), according to Locke, it cannot be ‘alienated’ or ‘given away.’ How can something that belongs to God be given away, if it doesn’t belong to us in the first place? Locke’s reasoning, therefore, was actually religious in character — not secular. Through a purely secular understanding, rights can be seen as fundamentally arbitrary. If there is no ‘ground of being’ or ‘divine source’ of our rights, how do we have a foundation by means of which to justify their continuation? Cultural and philosophical relativism (the idea that there is no objective or universal ground to anything), from this perspective, actually deflates the ethical commitment to human rights.

Mill’s reasoning for liberty stemmed from a distrust of the majority. No authority — be it governmental, societal, or religious — wields a monopoly on truth. All such authorities are inherently partial and therefore biased, which justifies the need to protect minority opinions and belief structures from the tyranny of the majority. The only justification for limiting someone’s liberty, Mill thought, was when it prevents harm to others. This is the so-called ‘harm principle’: your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins. As this paraphrase suggests, the concept of ‘harm’ for these early theorists of liberalism was primarily a physical one; thus, the more recent broadening of harm to include various forms of verbal harm, ‘hate speech,’ etc. would arguably have been considered by Mill as a stretch — or perhaps even a distortion — of the harm principle that would exceed its original intent.

The Theoretical Origins of Leftism

In addition to the emphasis on rights and liberties, Western culture — since its transformation during the period somewhat ironically referred to as the “Enlightenment” — has been animated by a commitment to egalitarianism. If all human beings are created equal, so the thinking goes, then society and political structures should reflect the inherent equality of human beings. Equality doesn’t mean that everybody looks, acts, or feels the same. It doesn’t flatten difference. However, it does suggest that certain inequalities perpetuated by political structures are unjust — because they reflect not the inherent differences of human beings, but the effects of individuals and groups who wield disproportionate power in a given political circumstance.

The egalitarian left, therefore, opposed monarchy, supported ‘republicanism’ (a political structure founded on egalitarian ideals), and championed the poor and working classes. Their ideological foundations were committed to equality before the law, secularism, citizenship, and wealth redistribution — not just in the spirit of ‘giving handouts to the poor’ but in the spirit of maintaining the collective health and justice of a society.

Egalitarianism found its most ardent theorist in the figure of Karl Marx. While ‘socialists’ existed before Marx wrote his famous works, Marx was the most significant philosopher of a political system that was founded upon ideals of equality. Marx’s early philosophical manuscripts are effectively spiritual in nature; they emphasize the ‘species-being’ of which we are all a part. Importantly, for Marx, socialism and communism were not just political ideals — they were considered by him to be the inevitable culmination of a society aimed toward justice. On this assumption, he was fundamentally Hegelian. Hegel believed that there was a natural logic to the unfolding of history. History was the ever-moving trajectory of a foundational ‘synthesis.’ For Hegel, the spirit of history was always bending toward resolving a ‘thesis’ and ‘antithesis’ into a more inclusive synthesis — which is why some consider Hegel’s philosophy to be a spiritual one. He is, after all, the most famous philosopher of that tradition known as ‘idealism.’

Marx believed that the capitalist system is fundamentally exploitative — and therefore ‘class consciousness’ and forms of class struggle are the collective engine of ameliorating disproportionate power dynamics that perpetuate structures of inequality. Political movements are therefore necessarily liberative and emancipatory. They are aimed at continuously resolving the class inequalities that are produced by unfettered capitalism. The emphasis on labor movements is grounded in the principle that workers must ‘seize the means of production’ in order to avoid a social and political circumstance in which the means of production serve the interests of only the few — i.e. the wealthiest segments of society (hello, billionaires and trillionaires).

The Individual and the Collective

An important distinction between the ‘liberal’ and the ‘leftist’ is therefore a relative emphasis on either the individual or the collective.

Liberalism is largely an individualistic theoretical system. The individual is the sacred locus of society, and liberal policies are focused primarily on codifying rights in founding documents like the U.S. constitution. The ongoing ‘liberal project’ proceeded from these documents by working to extend certain rights to groups who may have been previously excluded from them — the right to vote for women, the right to education through a ‘public school’ system, and the civil rights movement are some recent examples.

Leftism is, traditionally, more focused on the collective. As we just discussed, it has therefore historically been focused on organized labor. Whether through the work of organizers or through the organic solidarity that emerges through workers’ shared experience, workers may unionize or create worker cooperatives to challenge decisions made by business owners, capitalists, and corporate elites whose eyes are focused on the prize of profit and not on the material interests of workers themselves.

Therefore, while a ‘leftist’ is one who is focused on the ‘collective,’ this need not be read as the entire collective of a nation — although of course it may be, in the case of mass movements for a living wage. Instead, the ‘leftist’ understands the importance of grassroots organizing and of cultivating solidarity between individuals who share a particular experience and who seek the same ends within an important arena of their lives. The Leftist, therefore, doesn’t necessary start ‘at the top’ but rather at the grassroots, asking ‘how can this group of individuals experiencing a particular injustice be organized in such a way so as to protect against the an injustice produced by the decisions of ruling person or class — whether it be a business owner or property developer?”

The Tension between Liberalism and Leftism

It is not difficult to conceive of liberalism and leftism as complimentary projects.

The struggle for the extension of rights and the autonomy of the individual can be compatible with collective organizing and the coordinated influence of grassroots power. However, there is nevertheless a tension between liberal values and leftist values — what Chantal Mouffe has referred to as the “democratic paradox.”

In Mouffe’s analysis, liberalism tends toward consensus, rational-deliberation, and individualism, but neglects the role of conflict, power, and collective identity in the formation and evolution of a polity. At the same time, she criticizes a version of the leftist view that seeks to overthrow liberalism and its institutions. Instead of a ‘consensus politics’ (liberalism) or a purely ‘conflict politics’ (some extreme forms of leftism/anarchism), she advocates for a broadening of what we conceive of as ‘the political’ and highlights the necessary role of ‘agonism’ in the political process. The basic observation is that consensus alone is not sufficient as a political criterion. Sometimes consensus will bear certain fruits, but it is not enough to implement more substantive changes that are seen to be necessary.

Because politics is always about power (and how that power is distributed and codified in various political structures and institutions), a purely consensus-based, process-driven politics will always presuppose an existing set of power structures — and therefore not wield the tools necessary to challenge or subvert them. In other words, no deliberative process is ‘strong enough’ to alter sedimented structures of power, because it is through collective action and the development of another ‘power center' that we become capable of exerting sufficient pressure on dominant structures so as to effectively change them.

In short, Mouffe’s insight is that conflict is inevitable in politics. To imagine that politics will or should always be genial, polite, and well-mannered, and that through the right deliberative engagement with our opponents we will ‘get there in the end’ is, from this perspective, a liberal fantasy. Mouffe names the intrinsic conflict of politics ‘agonism’ — useful because of its close linguistic cousin, ‘antagonism.’ In antagonistic relationships, we see our opponents as ‘enemies’ and in turn destroy the bonds of our commonality. In ‘agonistic’ relationships, by contrast, we see our opponents as ‘adversaries.’ An adversary is someone whose legitimacy we recognize. We respect their equal right to pursue or support the political project that animates them — no matter how ‘incorrect’ or ‘ill-informed’ we may perceive their political ideas to be.

Mouffe formulated her theory of political agonism many years before our current political context emerged. It is therefore a fruitful theoretical framework to work with, because few would likely dispute the observation that U.S. politics has become almost entirely antagonistic — flirting with ideas of ‘civil war’ and fantasizing (as well as actually achieving) the removal of perceived enemies from the political community. In this phantasmagoria of antagonism, the other side has become the ‘enemy,’ and not only are they supporting the ‘wrong side’ — by doing so, they reveal themselves to be ‘evil.’ And when people are seen as evil, what logically follows is that this evil cannot be persuaded out of someone or rehabilitated. Seeing someone as evil entails seeing them as intrinsically corrupt, lacking any goodness, and morally depraved — a stain on the individual that can never be removed.

So considered, there can be only one response to evil: eradication.

The Pervasive Moral Absolutism of the Political Field

A certain kind of moral absolutism has emerged alongside (or perhaps as a result of) this growing antagonism. What follows is my own speculative characterization of how each side has morally ‘absolutized’ itself, however I don’t pretend that this is the only way to consider the matter. It is a simplification that suggests a certain truth-value in way of pointing out how our politics has become strangled by moralized projections that will continue unabated unless we step off the wheel of this ‘karmic’ cycle.

For many on the Right, the Left is seen as having corrupted the long-standing ‘order of things’ and embraced relativistic, nihilistic, and decadent-narcissist, self-involved lifestyles that destabilize traditions, boundaries, and hierarchies that helped give meaning to social and cultural life. They perceive the Left as encouraging a cultural entropy and an ideology of ‘deconstruction’ that fractures the bonds of society. To put it crudely, one version of the Right’s position is that what falls under the Left’s banner of ‘progress’ amounts to an ongoing dismantling of anything that has come before, an approach to history that sees only an incessant parade of the ‘problematic’ and imperalistic, and a sanctimonious contempt for anyone who lives in ways that the Left sees as ‘conservative.’ The Right sees the Left as having radically changed culture over a short period of time without their consent, and when they express frustrations about this change that they experience as deriving from ‘power centers’ that don’t include them, the response from the Left is to ‘get in line with progress’ or you’re a bigot, racist, or the king of all political insults — a white supremacist.

For the Left, the Right is seen as defending systems of exploitation: capitalism, patriarchy, racism, and imperialism. By privileging ‘tradition,’ they are endorsing ways of living that have historically excluded many groups of people. When challenged, their ‘moral righteousness’ takes the form of prejudice, fear-mongering, and the scapegoating of marginalized groups for society’s ills (LGBTQ, immigrants, non-white citizens, the poor). The Left sees the Right as abandoning the spirit of America as a nation built on ideas, and seeking to replace it with an authoritarian, un-American ‘blood and soil’ nationalism that requires hatred and exclusion of minority groups to perpetuate itself. The more recent explosion of anti-semitism, overt racism, transphobia and a virtue placed on vice is seen as evidence of the complete corruption of the Right’s moral authority, and a terrifying abandonment of anything that feels expressive of the good of humanity — compassion, empathy, and tolerance for others who think, live, and feel differently. Because the Left sees itself as being rooted in these human values, the hyper-vocal, online Right’s apparent collapse into trolling, hate-mongering, and appropriation of ‘free speech’ as freedom to say the ugliest, most offensive thing (while calling this freedom to be ugly a ‘beauty’ of America) marks a development of character that not only feels unjust — it feels inhuman.

Shifting Affect: Starting from another Paradigm

If one of the shared features of both Left and Right at this moment is a slip into antagonism and the negative, divisive effects it engenders, then the million-dollar question is: how do we shift our political affect from antagonism to agonism?

The goal of pursuing an agonistic democracy is importantly not to get everyone to think the same way, or to have the ‘right’ opinions on everything — as if such a circumstance were ever possible. It is to pursue a different cultural affect or emotional starting place that would hopefully allow us to meet each other with empathy, sincerity, and a commitment not to converting the other side to every political position, but to understanding each other enough to see the humanity behind whatever bullshit may arise at the surface.

Here, I think, we require different tools and a revivified political theoretical framework that can address our shared emotional disposition of distress. Hate emerges from distress. When hate clouds our perception and becomes projected on others, it becomes a corrupting influence that obscures our imagination and obstructs the political process. We cannot get anywhere if we allow ourselves to be indoctrinated with a ‘good and evil’ binary. The only way to see through the evil we project on others is through a willingness to momentarily set aside our assumptions and beliefs and to truly listen.

Listening is a practice that requires imagination and a willingness to reside in the ‘I don’t yet know’ — rather than in the assumption that we already know everything, and that there is therefore nothing new to learn. For someone on the Right, this may be the willingness to learn that not all democrats hate America or are actively trying to change their way of life. For someone on the Left, this willingness may require someone to set aside their assumption that everyone on the Right is overtly or secretly bigoted — even if a seemingly bigoted statement comes out of their mouth.

Listening in this way presupposes a condition of one’s nervous system that allows one to ‘respond’ rather than ‘react.’ Reactivity breeds more reactivity; but, conversely, responsiveness breeds more responsiveness. Sometimes it is only because of one individual’s cultivated capacity to inhabit a more responsive space that a volatile conversation can transform into a fruitful one. The ability to be responsive in conversation can be an innate gift of certain individuals, but in a capitalist society that is animated by speed, stress, and agitation, many of us have to cultivate responsiveness through other means. The cultivation of responsiveness is therefore a necessary virtue and value for a healthy political life.

One such mode of cultivating responsiveness is through contemplative practices. Meditation, yoga, and other somatic modalities refine and subtlize the nervous system. The effects of these practices over a sustained period of time inevitably affect our habits of communication. We soften and become gradually more tender, as the hard edges of our insecurities melt into a spacious and more open sense of clarity and creativity. The effects of contemplative practice are therefore political, insofar as the way that we feel in our bodies influences and affects our communication, our sense of what’s possible, and as a result our perception of everything around us.

A byproduct of contemplative practice can also be the relinquishing of dogmatic assumptions; because as we become more spacious, creative, and resilient, we begin to subtly perceive that we have perhaps not been seeing the whole picture. Reality is not always what it seems to be, and the identities we define ourselves through can begin to reveal themselves as straightjackets we’ve unconsciously imposed upon ourselves. As a result of taking contemplative practice seriously as a form of political activism, we become subtly liberated from the assumptions, biases, and prejudices that have shaped the lens through which we perceive the world. We become more open to the possibility that the world is not a closed system, and the knowledges we’ve adopted are always only partial views within the kaleidescopic complexity of embodied life.

To shift our political affect therefore requires more techniques and intellectual resources than what currently reign as the ‘established forms of political action.’ While the resources and insights that emerge from the depths of cultivated wisdom and intuition produce an expanded sense of agency, without a theoretical framework that re-invigorates the leftist paradigm, even the meditation-born insights and energetic resources can be misdirected and depleted.

The values of liberalism and leftism are necessary starting points, but they are perhaps insufficient to meet this moment. We have to tell new stories of human interconnectedness. We have to reconnect with what it is that spiritually unites us. We have to revivify an engagement with political theory for a world that is different than the one Locke, Mill, and Marx were embedded in. And perhaps most importantly, we have to recognize how significantly the evolution of modern technology has created unforeseen forms of psychic and social oppression; the struggle against the forces of ignorance and ideological conformity they engender is not just personal. It is profoundly political.