The moral difference between liberals, conservatives, socialists, etc.

There's a good talk by Jonathan Haidt examining the differences in moral thinking between liberals and conservatives. This is American usage of course, but particularly focussing on social rather than economic issues, so it is not too inaccurate.

Haidt identifies what he calls the 5 foundations of morality by which he means 5 traits in evolutionary psychology (touched on here), connected with questions of moral behaviour. These are:

1. Harm/Care. We are disposed to bond with others and care for them, and have strong feelings about those who cause harm.

2. Fairness/reciprocity. This is associated with the golden rule ("Do unto others as you would be done by.") Also, I dare say, there is a fairness/reciprocity basis to both support for a social safety net, and for free trade. Both are reciprocal, but are often associated with opposing ideologies.

3. Ingroup/loyalty. We have a powerful instinct for forming tribes, mostly to oppose other tribes. More on this shortly.

4. Authority/respect. The anarchists' lament. Stop taking orders, they might say. Just listen to me and stop taking orders!

5. Purity/sanctity. Not just sex, but also attitudes to food for example.

So while we have the brain wiring to be guided by all of these consideration, there are differences of opinion as to which are moral. According to the video, conservatives tend to recognise all 5 as moral, and liberals just the first 2. In contrast to ingroup/loyalty we celebrate diversity; in contrast to deference to authority, we question it; in contrast to purity, we celebrate the freedom to be impure. 

Haidt makes some sweet bipartisan point about the conservatives having a point, using all the tools in the toolbox to maintain order (yuk! stability, perhaps, please?) and that libs and cons therefore exist in some wonderful symbiotic dynamic harmony like yin and yang. But I will move swiftly on from there by looking more closely at the 5 foundations and British politics.

Harm/Care

Disagreements here a generally over what constitutes harm, and the extent of our duty to care for our neighbour. Mill, in On Liberty, argues, for example, that there are duties of care - to throw a line to somebody drowning for example. I see little disagreement on this except from libertarians. Am I right?

But while I disagree with libertarians who say that the state should not seek to do good, I agree that it should not try to (and can't) make us good. Socialists on the other hand don't seem to see a problem with that. (Do other liberals agree with me?) Conservatives can be found in both camps, I guess.

Greens generally apply harm/care thinking to the natural world, which, it can be argued, means a failure to apply it properly to human beings.

Fairness/reciprocity

Socialists believe that the poor deserve more, conservatives that the rich deserve more. Greens believe that everybody deserves less. I, frankly, don't know who deserves what, but I bet it isn't a function of class identity. Fairness in the sense of equal rights is still opposed by many Conservatives, but otherwise is largely agreed.

Both free trade/freedom of contract, and the social safety net and public services can be seen in terms of reciprocity. Socialists and greens are against half, and conservatives and libertarians against the other half; liberals support both halves.

Ingroup/loyalty

I agree that liberals are not greatly moved by this (except obviously as political partisans, like everybody else). Socialists and conservatives represent ingroups based on social class.

Socialists have struggled politically from the numerical decline of the unionised working class. Labour, therefore has had to expand its ingroup suffering much pain in the process. 

This has left the working class feeling justifiably aggrieved that nobody represents them, creating opportunities for the BNP. The BNP being of course the epitome of the evil of ingroup/outgroup thinking.

Having your ingroup taken away, or being betrayed by it, can be an utterly crushing experience. Politics would perhaps be much healthier if there were an old-fashioned working-class socialist party. As long as it never won any power. We may have the best policies for millions of poor people, but we don't represent their interests against those of the middle classes.

Authority/respect

Clearly this issue separates liberals and libertarians from conservatives and fascists. Socialists appear in both camps and in the middle ground. 

I think Greens have a complex relationship with this one. I know many would post them firmly in the authoritarian camp, but they also have a strong anarchist influence. In any case this is not so much about whether strong authority is necessary, or even helpful, in saving the planet - a question we will all have to face; but whether an attitude of deference to authority is a good thing, on which point I think they are largely with liberals.

Purity/sanctity

This is not so clear as in the US with its big religious right, although the same trend is apparent.

However I think the biggest on purity/sanctity are the Greens. Organics, GM, alt meds, being close to nature. Support for such "natural" things, often out of proportion to the benefits (if any), seems to be a purity thing. 

In Haidt's surveys everybody recognised Harm/Care and Fairness/Reciprocity as moral instincts, but conservatives did tend to rate them lower than liberals. Understandable: these different factors must be weighed against each other. And yet libertarians also seek to diminish the scope of considerations of harm/care and fairness, reducing them to "no initiation of force" and free trade. I think this explains why they are seen as right wing, with some justice, even though they don't agree with conservatives on foundations 3 to 5.

So this just illustrates yet again the error of lumping any of these ideologies with any other. A five dimensional compass would not sort these babies out. It is no good lumping greens with fascists or communists, or lumping libertarians with conservatives, as if this could end the debate. Both must be opposed for what they actually say, unless, of course, on occasion, they are right.

Greens would condemn billions to poverty

I posted on a liberal view of Sheffield a letter I sent to the Sheffield Telegraph in which I suggested that Green Party hostility to business and trade threatened to condemn millions to poverty - billions worldwide. The Greens have replied to a similar letter to the Sheffield Star, and this is what they say:

As for Lib Dem Joe Otten's claim that our policies would be bad for business, we
are the only party to recognise fully the damage often done to the local economy
by inappropriate developments. This is why we vigorously opposed Sheffield's
Supercasino bid, and the current proposals for the New Retail Quarter and a new
market near the Moor.

The theme here is that according to the greens, there are two kinds of business. Local/small business which is good, and global/big business which is bad. The local economy must be protected from the global economy. So far so familiar.

Of course real life is not so simple. I am a one man business, which is good, but I sell all over the world, which, presumably, is bad. Although my product is transmitted electronically rather than by air freight, which is good. But it is software, so perhaps charging for it at all is bad.

Is the problem with the supercasino that it will damage all our small local casinos? I wonder.

Does this rebuttal deal with my unqualified claim that greens are hostile to business? Well no it doesn't. Big and small businesses each have their different strengths and weaknesses. Big business can pour resources into a problem. Small business can adapt rapidly, and know its customers. Each is successful where its relative strengths are decisive. Hostility to business in this case might mean refusing to recognise the benefits of this diversity and trying to impose a single model.

The bizarre thing about this belief in the moral superiority of small and local business is that it has very little to do with environmental sustainability - or - for that matter other social goods like wages and employment conditions. Why is it that greens are fascinated by what size a business is even more, seemingly, than how much pollution it generates?

Of course there are examples of good small business, contributing to civil society over and above what might be strictly necessary. And there are examples of bad big business. But the reverse examples can be found too. These examples mean very little - if you have a policy to deal with problem behaviour, shouldn't it apply equally to businesses of all sizes?

Now we do have some excellent local shops in Sheffield. One of the things that makes them excellent is that they must compete for trade. If everybody went only to their nearest shops, we wouldn't be rewarding competitiveness, we would be rewarding price gougers. Maybe you think your local shopkeeper is just too decent to gouge, and maybe they are. If so, that would be because gougers don't tend to run that sort of shop. If we rewarded them to, they would.

Wronger than the idea of protecting local business, however, is this idea of the local economy as the antithesis of the global economy. Almost all high value innovations demand a great deal of specialisation. Medicine, technology, art, you name it, to justify doing one particular thing very well indeed we need to be able to sell it worldwide. Cut off from trade it would be quite impossible to have much medicine, quality goods, never mind good renewable energy and so on. The way to build your local economy, then, is to provide goods and services in high demand and sell them as widely as possible. And with your earnings buy from elsewhere rather than trying to make do, or you will forego all the benefits of your earnings.

These are practical considerations which must trump a baseless prejudice for the small and local. Where this lesson has been learned - in much of Asia-Pacific for example - prosperity has followed. Yes, there is an environmental footprint to this - but imagine the alternative - of making do with cobbled together home grown versions of everything. If it were possible, wouldn't the environmental footprint be even higher? But it isn't possible, without specialisation and trade, to achieve anything like the standard of living people worldwide rightly demand. To try would condemn billions to poverty for no environmental benefit.

Denialism dot com

On cue, following my discussion of science and politics, which noted the similarity between global warming deniers, creationists, anti-vaccine and anti-animal testing movements and so on, I find the blog denialism.com, dealing, in some detail with much the same issues, with a couple of differences.

In particular denialism.com deals with the methods of denialists: conspiracy theories, selective use of evidence, fake experts, impossible expectations and faulty logic.

Denialism.com doesn't mention, as I did, alternative medicine, anti-GM food and perpetual motion. It is explained here that there isn't the same kind of organised denialism going on for alternative medicine. I guess largely this is correct, alternative medicine is interested in asserting its own efficacy, and not so much attacking the efficacy of conventional medicine. But it may be a close call.

GM food seems to be off the agenda now, and perpetual motion I suppose is just too silly to spend any time on.

Denialism.com's subjects that I didn't mention are these:

1. Anti-regulatory/Industry Apologists/Fake Consumer groups/Astroturf
2. HIV/AIDS Denialism
3. Stem Cell Denialism/Adult Stem Cell Hype/Fake Bioethicists/Cloning, Eugenics and Euthanasia Paranoids

It wouldn't have occurred to me to include group 1 in this sort of exercise. Arguments over regulation are intensely political on both sides and are rarely made with scientific rigour on either side. One or two commenters have pointed out that there are probably equivalent pro-regulatory deniers around. Still, if people are using the denialist tactics described in political debates then this should be exposed.

Group 2, good point.

Group 3, again surprising. I'm not sure how one might qualify as a fake ethicist - I tend to take the view that we're all ethicists, in the sense that we're all entitled to express our views on ethics, and that all these views matter - the idea of believing what is right or wrong on the authority of an ethicist seems bizarre. Glancing at the sites listed, I would agree that there are some terribly bad arguments being used out there to oppose stem cell research. But I do think - as I said here - it is reasonable for people to argue a position that they have only religious and not scientific reasons for believing. But on the face of it, this does seem to be denialism of a similar quality to the others, so perhaps I am being too generous. Please comment.


Anyway, while we are drifting into the denialisms of politics and ethics as well as those of science, what else could we add to the list? How about denialism of the benefits of free trade?

Remember this is about methods. 1. Conspiracy theories: Anti-traders assert that free trade is just a consipiracy by the rich and powerful to drive down wages and environmental standards. 2. Selectivity: The huge gains in prosperity in Asia-Pacific are ignored. 3. Fake Experts: The New Economics Foundation? 4. Impossible Expectations: Economists all disagree anyway, Economics doesn't work. 5. Bad logic: What ever it is, we're smart enough to make it here. (Being able to make anything doesn't mean we are able to make everything we currently consume, when giving up economies of scale.)

So far, so good, I suppose. But might this work for denying theories that should be denied because they are bunk? Like Marxism:

1. Conspiracy Theories: Anti-marxists assert that Marxists are trying to take over the world. 2. Selectivity: Er, the soviet economic boom from agrarian backwater to superpower in 50 years? 3. Fake Experts: Tories 4. Unrealistic Expectations: Worldwide revolution hasn't happened yet, so Marxism is bunk. 5. Bad logic: Trying to make the world better will only make it worse. (This is an argument you occasionally hear from some on the right who can't be arsed trying to make the world any better. Panglossian rubbish.)


So, while I very much like what denialism.com is doing, I am also a little underwhelmed. The point to keep aware of is that dealing with the poor arguments in favour of a proposition does not deal with the proposition. Denialism.com is all about identifying and disposing with common poor and deceptive arguments for certain propositions. It is the fact that most perpetrators of these poor arguments don't have any good arguments that deals with their propositions. Why make the weak argument if you have a strong one?

But the arguments that are found in politics, economics and ethics generally are weaker than those found in science, and this makes the denialism.com approach rather less biting in these fields.

Make Smugness History

A blog by Edward Lucas Make Gravity History has caught my eye. His argument seems to be, broadly, that a) more and freer trade will help spread prosperity around the world, and so is a good thing (so far so good); and b) that therefore charity is a waste of time (huh?).

The choice of title 'make gravity history' suggests not a better strategy for ending poverty, but resignation to its inevitability. And this is the problem. Lucas shows all the smugness of the fat aristo telling the starving peasant that he won't give him any food 'for his own good'.

Lucas says 'fair trade' would be more accurately called fraud trade. I disagree. It would be more accurately called charity trade, and charity, remember, is a good thing. While it doesn't of course bring prosperity to the recipient, it can keep them alive long enough to enjoy prosperity when it comes.

Lucas is opposing Christian Aid's apparent position of 'trade bad, charity good', with 'trade good, charity bad'. This is worthy of the psycopathically right-wing Ayn Rand. Rand famously claimed that charity is immoral, and that only looking after number one is moral. A hero of right-wing nuts everywhere.

In fact, trade is good, and charity is good. By all means damn a charity for failing to support trade. But don't damn it for doing charity.

Tag: Fair Trade