liberalism, choice and autonomy

Liberalism used to be (or used to claim to be) an ideology based on the ideas of freedom and choice. That is clearly no longer the case. To understand how this came about we have to understand how human nature works and how key human institutions work.

Hunter-gatherers and nomads don’t need government. The first agricultural settlements needed little or nothing in the form of government. Once cities and states (or proto-states) started to emerge things changed. Some kind of government was required. Government of course was (as it always has been and always will be) in the hands of those who had the most wealth and power. More specifically, government was (as it always has been and always will be) in the hands of those who enjoyed exercising power and had a talent for it. The sorts of people who enjoy telling other people what to do.

The purpose of government was to ensure that wealth and power remained in the hands of the ruling elite. Some form of social control was therefore required. In pre-Christian times social control was purely about maintaining the ruling elite in power and governments had only a minor interest in the day-to-day behaviour (including the sexual behaviour) of those they ruled. Sexual morality was mostly a matter of having a system in place that would allow a smooth transfer of wealth and power from one generation of the ruling class to the next. Adultery was therefore a problem since it raised doubts about the paternity of the offspring of the ruling class.

As civilisation developed religion developed too. In pre-Christian pagan times religion was however mostly about performing the correct rituals in the correct way in order to appease the gods. That’s what the gods wanted. The gods didn’t care if you were sleeping with your neighbour’s wife and half the girls in the village. If the rituals were carried out correctly the gods were happy.

That changed with Christianity. Christianity was a religion obsessed not with rituals but with morality. The Christian God didn’t much care about having rituals carried out correctly but he was obsessively interested in whether you were sleeping with your neighbour’s wife. To some extent this is inherent in monotheism. If you believe that your god is the One True God then you have a duty to impose your religious practices and prejudices on everybody else.

By the 18th century ideology was starting to replace religion in the West. It was now ideology rather than religion that was used to justify government. In a monotheistic society it’s hardly surprising that the new substitute religion had many of the characteristics of the old Christian religion – a belief that there is One True Ideology which must be imposed on everybody.

Liberalism appeared to be a break with the past. Liberals had the idea that social control was only necessary in order to ensure that wealth and power remained in the hands of the ruling class. Morality, including sexual morality, was to be a matter of individual choice.

Liberals continued to proclaim the virtues of freedom, choice and autonomy until the 1970s. By the 90s they had largely abandoned such beliefs. Liberalism was now the official state ideology and was starting to function more and more as the de facto official state religion. And liberals started to discover the exquisite joys of telling other people how to live their lives (something that Christians had always immensely enjoyed). Liberals now had the power to do that, and since their ideology was in their view the only possible correct one they proceeded to do so.

The new version of liberalism believed that everybody should have the freedom to make the choices of which liberals approved. People who made the wrong choices (the choices of which liberals disapproved) clearly had to be punished. Modern liberals do not believe in personal autonomy. They believe that personal autonomy is wrong and dangerous because people might make the wrong choices. Liberals had metamorphosed into Neo-Puritans.