Sidney Hook, from “A Response to Conservatism” (1978):
In politics and economics today, we are experiencing a reversion from government conceived as an instrument of social progress and justice to government conceived merely as a watchman upholding social order. Recent political developments are being widely interpreted as a repudiation of the philosophy of the welfare state, of the role and rule of Big Government, bureaucratic intervention into the economy, over-regulation, and over-centralization.
The attack on the welfare state is being conducted under the rallying cry of ‘freedom’. Freedom has become the shibboleth of the libertarian movement and all the prophets of the market-enterprise system. We need not defend the whole complex of government supports and subsidies, many of which have been adopted at the bidding of special-interest groups. An intelligent approach requires a case-by-case cost-benefit analysis and decision. The so-called libertarian ideology rejects this, however, because it assumes that the only alternative to existing bad regulation is no regulation at all. The real target of the conservative and libertarian revival is not this or that particular government program or regulation. It is rather the whole policy of government intervention itself they wish to reverse. To the opponents of regulation, the measure and content of freedom is determined not by specific consequences but by the degree to which the economy is free from any kind of direction or control. This in effect is to make a fetish of the free market, whereas for us the economy is a means by which a whole cluster of human freedoms are furthered.
One of the major functions of government, even the major function, is to protect freedom. Unlimited government is evil because it countenances no checks on its power to restrict freedom. These are undeniable truths. But no less undeniable is the truth that the complete absence of government would be even more oppressive because it would produce anarchy—the rule of a thousand despots. Those who speak of government, the agency of organized society, as if it were an inherent foe of human freedom seem to me guilty of a fundamental error. They assume that freedom exists in a state of nature, that it is a natural good that comes with the natural environment, and that it is surrendered when human beings are organized under laws which necessarily limit some freedom of action. This view of freedom is a myth. Freedom is an outcome of a free society; government and society are not artificial accretions to the human estate. A human being, as distinct from a biological organism, could not exist outside of society; in such a situation, he would have to be either something more than man (divine) or less than man (animal).
To be sure, governments can be restrictive and oppressive; but it is just as true to say that governments sometimes can protect and even expand freedoms rather than restrict them. Whatever freedoms or rights we deem desirable, governments and laws are necessary to secure them in a world where others are intent upon violating them. Since there can be no government without law, what is true for government is analytically true for law. In a sense, every law, no matter how wise and enlightened, restricts someone’s freedom; as Bentham put it, ‘every law is contrary to someone’s liberty’. The government or law can only protect our liberty by depriving others of their freedom to act as they please. So long as human beings have conflicting desires, laws and regulations are inescapable. Legislation is or should be the process by which we determine what kind of trade-offs we wish to make in the conflict of freedoms, and which are to be given priority.
We share with conservatives a fear of concentrated government power, but we are also fearful of large concentrations of private property that can also have oppressive effects. Like conservatives, we seek the dispersion of power, but unlike them we seek to avoid those gross inequalities of wealth and power that unduly influence the political process. Even Thomas Jefferson deplored extremes of wealth as subversive of the democratic spirit of a self-governing nation. Some concentrations of economic power can be countered only by the power of government. The only way such extremes can be prevented today is through tax policy, through wiser and better government, not absence of government.
The concept of the public good is a complex and difficult one, hard to define except in terms of a reflective process in which we balance good against good and right against right. But without the existence and power of government, we cannot peacefully determine or enforce the public good. Even on the premises of the ‘watchman’ theory of government, the public good requires some concern for public welfare. Over and above formal legal equality, the just law must concern itself with the effects of law on human weal and woe. What modern-day conservatism fails to recognize is that the pursuit of justice can be distinguished from, but not ultimately separated from, the pursuit of happiness and human welfare.
No one in the world is really a self-made man or woman. When we consider what we owe to the community—our language, without which there could be no thought; our skills that are dependent upon the cumulative traditions forged by generations of early pioneers; our knowledge, most of which we have inherited; our safety, health, and even our goods possessed not only in virtue of our own efforts but because of the activities and forbearances of others—we become conscious of a debt that cannot be discharged if we are indifferent to the fate of our fellows. Concern for the public welfare does not require self-sacrifice but the wisdom of common sense that recognizes the obligation of unpaid debts and the dictates of enlightened self-interest.
We yield to none in the cause of freedom, whether moral or political; and we repudiate as unfounded, indeed untrue, the conservative view that we need the unconscious help of an Invisible Hand (a pure market economy or a Supreme Being) to realize that freedom in our institutions. It is true that we cannot properly plan for an entire society, nor can we rebuild any aspects of it without regard for human history and the limitations of human nature and power. It is true that human nature is neither all-powerful nor infallible. But these truths are no excuse to forego the use of intelligence and the self-corrective methods of experience in trying to cope with the problems of our society.
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For biographical information: Sidney Hook - Wikipedia
Selected writings at: ETOL Writers: Sidney Hook (marxists.org) or Internet Archive Search: sidney hook
“A Response to Conservatism” appeared in a pamphlet published by Social Democrats, USA. It was accompanied by an essay by Leszek Kolakowski, “The Social Democratic Challenge”.
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