Socialists frequently argue that liberals in emphasising the autonomy of the individual neglect the values of community, fraternity and social solidarity.
In this Occasional Paper, Dr Chandran Kukathas defends the liberal conception of civil association, in which individuals bound by rules of just conduct can peacefully coexist and pursue their private individual or group ends. He claims that socialists have fallen victim to ‘the fraternal conceit’: ‘the fanciful notion that community and social solidarity can be secured in extended societies by developing the bonds of political association’. Multicultural policies are a prime example of the fraternal conceit in modern Australia, since, against the intentions of their supporters, they have actually led to social divisiveness and resentment.
Liberalism does not reject fraternity and community but puts these values in their place. ‘Society is composed of individuals who belong to many different communities… But if the extended order of society is to allow many such communities to coexist, it cannot be conceived as one large community”
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In the modern world countless minorities press separate claims for recognition by their fellow countrymen, by their states and, in some cases, by the world. Many of these groups, such as the Australian Aborigines and New Zealand Maoris, describe themselves as indigenous peoples, while others identify themselves simply as ethnic or cultural minorities with legitimate grievances. The various demands made by such groups leave us in no doubt that there is a political problem. But there is also an important philosophical question to be addressed: a question about the terms of civil association.
The modern world has seen two great answers to the question of how civil association is to be conceived, although only rarely have they been offered in pure form. The answers go by the names ‘liberalism’ and ‘socialism’.’ The general thesis I wish to advance is that it is the liberal conception of human association that we should embrace.
Many sorts of arguments might be advanced to defend such a thesis. It can be argued that liberal market societies are superior to socialist planned ones because their mechanisms for economic coordination are superior and so more likely to produce growth and to eliminate poverty. F. A. Hayek and Milton Friedman are among the liberal heroes in this argument. It can be argued that the social and political institutions of a liberal society are less likely to foster the growth of tyranny since the right to hold private property works to disperse economic power and so supply the basis for opposition to any potential tyrant. Finally, it can be argued that only in a liberal society can the individual be reasonably assured that important liberties — of speech, religious worship, and association, for example — will be respected and defended against those who would violate them.
My concern, however, is with none of these arguments. I wish to concentrate instead o n another, more fundamental, difference between these two ideologies: a difference that explains why we distinguish between liberalism and socialism as individualist and collectivist creeds respectively. These two political theories differ in their accounts of the nature of a political society. Liberalism conceives of it as an association of individuals bound by rules of just conduct which, by specifying the terms of cooperation, regulate their behaviour and ensure peace: civil association has no purpose other than to preserve order so that the individual might pursue his own (private) ends, together with others or alone. Socialism, on the other hand, sees political society as a form of association that has value only insofar as it serves to unite men in a community in which the bonds of social solidarity are strong: human freedom will be attained only when civil association ensures that individuals act collectively in pursuit of their common ends. It has long been a complaint of socialist thinkers (among others) that liberalism, in placing s o much store by the autonomy of the individual, neglects the values of fraternity, community and social solidarity (see, for example, Wolff, 1968; Barber, 1984).
My contention is that liberalism has put these values in their proper place. Socialism, however, has sought to elevate them and to accord them an importance that is both unwarranted and dangerous. And we can see this, I want to suggest, in the problems we are creating for ourselves through much of government social policy that takes as its concern the character and composition of society. In dealing with the facts of ethnic and cultural diversity and the grievances of disinherited native peoples, governments have attempted to alter the terms of civil association in ways that will neither resolve the problems they perceive nor bring about the social harmony they desire. In this regard they have fallen victim to the ‘fraternal conceit’: the fanciful notion that community and social solidarity can be secured in extended societies by developing the bonds of polltical association. Yet this is not to say that fraternity and community are unimportant values, or that there is not something noble in the ideal of the brotherhood of man. They are and there is. But these values are best secured and promoted not by political means but rather through private forms of association.
It may, of course, be objected that I am operating with a very crude distinction between ‘liberalism the good’ and ‘socialism the bad’: after all, both ideologies are complex affairs, with complex histories, which cannot be reduced to one or two slogans. There is a good deal of truth in all this. Indeed, it is not at all difficult to find people who think elements of both doctrines attractive, and put forward philosophical arguments defending positions variously described as social democratic or market socialist or even ‘liberalism with a human face’. Yet while I d o not wish to deny that the views people hold are seldom identifiable as pure versions of some particular ideology, I am concerned to draw out into the open a certain philosophical perspective on the values of fraternity and community. For I wish to show that the implications of this perspective are unacceptable both in principle and in practice.
