Beyond Left & Right: freedom and security

Abstract

The idea that politics in the liberal and social democracies of the West has moved beyond the traditional opposition between the Conservative Right and the Welfarist Left, and that this is 'a good thing', has been a feature of much intellectual commentary and various styles of self-congratulatory political rhetoric. Often the claim is a political guillotine – it is used to silence those on the Right who might object to what they see as an attack on traditional values and social structures, and those on the Left who might object to what they see as an attack on the most vulnerable in our communities, or in the failure to provide for, or to protect, equality of opportunity. Used this way it serves to rule out politics as a sphere in which we might express our concern for others - for their traditional values and communities, or for their capacity to satisfy their vital needs and to live flourishing lives. Such concerns are said, in a derisory tone, to be 'out of date', to reflect a 'fear of the new', to manifest an 'hostility to change', to embody a sentimental ('bleeding heart') insistence on 'looking backwards', even – in the most egregious of caricatures – just what you would expect from 'elites' still hopelessly opposed to the radical transformation of our lives by the real elites. In this sense it might seem that the topic is hardly worth talking about because it has no other tone but the exercise, deployment and enjoyment of power, but this would be a mistake for power has its own dynamism and its own logic. Indeed, in contemporary politics this can hardly be otherwise; for today (and in part, though I suspect only a very small part, because there are political theorists about) any serious aspirant for, or wielder of, political power has to spend some effort on rationalizing their efforts. All modern forms of political power must be reflexively articulated, however inadequately we might think that articulation captures, or legitimates, what is going on.