Monthly Archives: December 2012

libertarians, violence, and unions

Whenever unions are in the news–as recently, in Michigan–the concept of “union violence” draws enormous attention. Google News finds 137,000 recent mentions of that phrase, mostly under headlines like “When Thuggery is OK,” and “Union Violence in the Age of Obama.”

I am not going to be able to shed any light on the empirical questions: how much violence is committed by unions–or against them? Nor do I want to address the question of motivations: Why do conservative and libertarian commentators give so much attention to allegations of union violence? But I think a philosophical argument is being made against unions as intrinsically coercive organizations. If that argument is mistaken–as I believe it is–we should be able to rebut it, and doing so is valuable.

(The following discussion draws on an article of mine entitled “The Libertarian Critique of Labor Unions,” Philosophy & Public Policy Quarterly, vol. 21, no. 4 [Fall 2001]. I cannot find it online, so this is a PDF of the preprint.)

In 1959, the great libertarian Friedrich Hayek asserted that unions “are the one institution where government has signally failed in its first task, that of preventing coercion of men by other men–and by coercion I do not mean primarily the coercion of employers but the coercion of workers by their fellow workers.” This is the argument that circulates among libertarians, although it is by no means a consensus libertarian position.

To spell it out more fully, we might say: Except when a few firms monopolize the available jobs (a situation called “monopsony”), individuals are free to contract with employers on terms they mutually accept. This is what the Republicans of Abe Lincoln’s day called “free labor.” If a group of workers decide to contract jointly, that is their right. But if any workers or prospective workers do not want to join this group (which we’ll call a union), they must be free to remain independent–otherwise, they will suffer from majority tyranny. If the union chooses to strike, it may not block any dissenters from working.

To be sure, majority tyranny is also a serious drawback of democratic states, which have armies, police, and jails behind them. But that is not a fair debating point against libertarians, who spend most of their time worrying about coercive states. If, following Hayek, they also criticize unions, they are being consistent. Even if a union is very popular, their concern is for the individual who does not endorse its positions.

This is the argument that deserves rebuttal, and it is a philosophical rather than an empirical position. In other words, we cannot rebut it by asserting that coercion by unions is rare, or that violence against unions is more common. I think those claims are true, but the libertarian is–appropriately–concerned about principles. By analogy, we have found that the number of eligible citizens who were blocked from voting by photo ID laws was almost undetectably small in 2012. But that doesn’t make it OK to block any eligible citizens from voting.

How should one rebut the libertarian argument? I would suggest several paths:

1. Libertarians should tolerate the legal forms of pressure used by unions. It is illegal for a union forcibly to block individuals from working or to threaten force or physical violence. The state must (and does) enforce laws against such violence. What a union can do is to establish a picket line and yell at individuals who cross it. Some people might call such verbal abuse “violence.” But libertarians should be the last to do so. Whether in the context of campus speech codes, protests at abortion clinics, the pornography industry, or a strike, libertarians should insist on a strict distinction between physical violence, threats, and coercion (on one hand), and verbal expressions (on the other). A picket line is an expression of both free speech and assembly, and to label such speech “violence” is to threaten the civil liberties of the union members.

2. Unions enhance rather than restrict individual rights. Within a union, members have legally enforceable rights to express their views, to advocate, to form caucuses and associations, and to vote. These are individual rights that are meaningless without the union. They are closer to what Benjamin Constant called the liberty of the ancients rather than the liberty of the moderns. They are rights to “deliberate, in a public space …, to vote laws, pronounce decisions, examine the accounts, actions, and management of officials, to compel them to appear before the whole people, to accuse them, to condemn or acquit them.”

3. Unions promote political pluralism and countervailing force. We can debate whether a libertarian utopia is feasible and desirable, but we don’t live in one. We live under a powerful and pervasive state that not only influences corporations and markets, but is constantly used by them. So the employer with whom an individual laborer contracts is not a free individual; it is a corporation that has likely been regulated, subsidized, and protected by the state. One could imagine stripping the state of most of its powers, but that is not happening. As long as the state remains influential, liberty is best served by pluralism: by setting many different interests in peaceful conflict. Killing unions, the main countervailing force to industry, will reduce pluralism–and thus liberty.

Of course, states and companies are not the only powers that threaten liberty. Still arguing within the classical liberal tradition, Mill and Tocqueville emphasized that public opinion, conformity, and cultural assumptions are powerful and problematic influences. Unions counter the prevailing ethos of our post-industrial corporate culture. In my article, I quote labor lawyer Thomas Geoghegan on union meetings: “paunchy, middle-aged men, slugging down cans of beer, come to hold hands, touch each other, and sing ‘Solidarity Forever.’ O.K., that hardly ever happens, but most people in this business, somewhere, at some point, see it once, and it is the damnedest un-American thing you will ever see.” I don’t expect libertarians to like the “un-American” ethos of unions, and Tom Geoghegan was joking about that. What libertarians should like is the mind-opening alternative that unions create.

Individual liberties are important, but they are not the only principles we should honor. I want the right to contract my own labor. But it is not the only good, for me or for anyone else. Dignity, social bonds and solidarities, and welfare and security are also fundamental human needs. Unions–when properly accountable to their own members and policed by the state–enhance those goods even if they constrain individual rights to contract. (This last point, of course, is not compatible with libertarianism or classical liberalism but marks a point of disagreement about fundamental principles.)

how morality came into the world

In the beginning, there was matter, arrayed in space and time and subject to forces. Morality was irrelevant. If a star blew itself to bits or a whole galaxy vanished, that was neither good nor bad. Whether the universe even existed was a matter of moral indifference, except that it was the basis of what developed thereafter.

One tendency was toward entropy, but that was not the only trend, because complex systems developed and overcame their own fragility by beginning to replicate themselves. On our own little planet, organic chemicals, organisms, organizations composed of organisms (ant hills, cities), and whole ecosystems replicate.

A replicating carbon molecule still has no moral significance. But some organisms—and perhaps some larger systems of organisms—also developed the capacity to sense their environment and react. Plants do that, turning toward light. So do machines, and it is not clear that this capacity creates moral significance. Even a great tree is arguably just a configuration of matter, like a rock but more complicated. What animals developed was an internal sensation of pleasure in response to beneficial aspects of their environment and pain or fear at bad aspects. They developed this capacity because of random mutations, and it only persisted as one factor that might encourage survival and replication. To this day, insentient grasses are more prevalent than sentient mammals. But the sentient animals persisted because of their sensitivity, their suffering.

To us, another creature’s subjective or internal feelings of happiness, pain, and fear are not matters of indifference. A distant star’s collapse is of no direct consequence, but a dying sparrow counts. David Hume said that our compassion was an “arbitrary and original instinct implanted in our nature.” He lacked a Darwinian explanation for why it would be implanted, but he already saw that we care about “the happiness or misery of others” just because we do care—we are designed that way. (Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, sec. vii., “Of Compassion.”)

One can easily imagine a powerful and intelligent being that did not care at all. We would call that being amoral or even evil. These are our terms, rooted perhaps in our biology. And yet we have choices. We can care more or less. We can also change our societies so that they care more or less. Ashoka assembled a great empire by ruthlessly killing people and then repented, deciding that it was wrong to have caused or countenanced suffering. He constructed a regime that depended as little as possible upon force and fear. The turning point supposedly came when he toured the battlefield after his own victory, crying, “What have I done? If this is a victory, what’s a defeat? Is it valor to kill innocent children and women?”

H.G. Wells wrote,

In the history of the world there have been thousands of kings and emperors who called themselves “Their Highnesses”, “Their Majesties” and “Their Exalted Majesties” and so on. They shone for a brief moment, and as quickly disappeared. But Ashoka shines and shines brightly like a bright star, even unto this day.

Wells may have been right or wrong about Ashoka, but we understand the nature of his assertion. It is better to be Ashoka after his conversion than before.

The problem, of course, is that all sentient beings–and collectivities of sentient beings –suffer and then die. Knowing this, and caring about ourselves and others, we cannot be happy in a simple or straightforward way. The late theologian and philosopher Leszek Kolakowski wrote (in an essay recently translated and published in The New York Review):

Since being truly human involves the ability to feel compassion, to participate in the pain and joy of others, the young Siddhartha could have been happy, or rather could have enjoyed his illusion of happiness, only as a result of his ignorance. In our world that kind of happiness is possible only for children, and then only for some children: for a child under five, say, in a loving family, with no experience of great pain or death among those close to him. Perhaps such a child can be happy in the sense that I am considering here. Above the age of five we are probably too old for happiness.. …. Happiness is something we can imagine but not experience.

Kolakowski even argued that the God and the other denizens of heaven must be unhappy because they remember the world—or else they are free from unhappiness in some way that we cannot grasp.

The philosophical traditions that originated in Greece and in India offer several responses. Live as much as possible in the present, because the past and the future contain unhappiness. Reduce one’s own will or attachment to oneself in order to be less a hostage to fortune. Care as much as possible about doing the right thing, because that is under your control.

Leading philosophers of ancient India and the Hellenistic world insisted that death and suffering are inevitable. Consider, for example, the elaborate health-care system of an advanced nation, served by physicians and nurses, scientists, administrators, technicians and cleaners, and many more. This system does not ultimately prevent the death or suffering of any human being. To pour one’s will into it is to court disappointment and defeat. But there is a different reason to devote oneself to collaboration in the service of a common good or to help maintain an elaborate system that supports life. It is not the ultimate end of this system that counts but the absorbing activity of sustaining and improving it.

See also: Three Truths and a Question about Happiness; The Tree and the Rock; and Must You be Good to be Happy?

what is the definition of civic engagement?

There is no single answer to this question, which is deeply contested. The definition of “civic engagement” should be contested because it relates to basic questions about what constitutes a good society and a good human life.

To illustrate the debate, I post some definitions below. Some of the ways in which they differ include: the centrality of reflection or knowledge versus action; whether engagement is understood as relationships between the citizenry and formal institutions or as horizontal relationships among citizens (or both); whether the local, the national, or the global scale is emphasized; the balance of civil rights versus civic responsibilities; the importance of morality and ethics; the degree to which good citizens are thought of as deliberating, advocating, monitoring, caring, and/or working; whether civic engagement is tied to democracy or can also occur in other contexts; and whether to specify social outcomes as the objectives of civic engagement or rather to define it as a pluralistic debate about what social outcomes ought to be pursued.

“Civic engagement is the participation of private actors in the public sphere, conducted through direct and indirect interactions of civil society organizations and citizens-at-large with government, multilateral institutions and business establishments to influence decision making or pursue common goals.” —The World Bank

“Being sensitive to and understanding the world’s problems as well as addressing them through collaboration and commitment.” Duke University (via http://civic.duke.edu/)

“Civic Participation:  Individual and collective actions designed to address public issues through the institutions of civil society.” “Political Awareness:  Cognitive, attitudinal and affective involvement in the polity.” “Civic Engagement:  The combination of Civic Awareness and Civic Participation.” — Michael Delli Carpini, Dean of the Annenberg School for Communication

“Our mission is to educate and empower people to engage in hands-on democracy in order to individually and collectively take strategic actions to identify and address the root causes of local, state, federal, and global issues of social and economic injustice and concerns.” — Occupy Los Angeles, “Civic Engagement” website

“Engagement, then, is not merely a matter of being active, of deploying the rhetorical and cognitive skills necessary to make your case and press your point.  To engage with others requires that we hear what they have to say, that we make space in our interaction for them to respond fully and genuinely, and that we are fully responsive to their responses and proposals.” — Anthony Simon Laden, “Taking the engagement in civic engagement seriously” (manuscript paper)

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political reform on a base of civic renewal

I have not seen any news reports yet, but today the Sierra Club, Greenpeace, the Communications Workers of America, and the NAACP had planned to announce a common agenda on democratic reform.

This is a welcome development, because they contribute grassroots constituencies, but they are likely to focus exclusively on formal political reforms, such as the filibuster, campaign finance, and the voting process. I could not agree more that these reforms are needed–I began my career working full-time for Common Cause and have written a whole book about campaign reform and related measures. But I think civic renewal is essential to political reform, and the two must be pursued together. That is true because …

  1. A broad base of active citizens is no longer available to demand beneficial political reform. When John Gardner announced Common Cause in 1970, 100,000 people immediately joined and began funding the new organization. They had habits of reading newspapers, joining and leading associations, and trusting the government enough to try to reform it. That base is now much smaller and more fragmented.
  2. Many of the proposed reforms would require active, skillful, committed, and organized citizens. For instance, disclosing campaign finance data will do no good unless independent citizens are ready to use it for constructive purposes.
  3. Even reformed governments cannot solve our most serious problems alone. Solutions require active and organized citizens. For example, in his magisterial new book, Robert Sampson finds that neighborhoods with more civic engagement have dramatically better educational outcomes, even though they are part of the same school system. Sampson, Great American City: Chicago and the Enduring Neighborhood Effect (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012)
  4. As James Madison argued, the people are capable of selecting representatives who will deliberate about the common good—but only if the people themselves have some experience deliberating and governing. Otherwise, they will not know what good government looks like. Madison cited “good roads, domestic commerce, a free press, and particularly a circulation of newspapers through the entire body of the people” as means of enlightening the public. To those means, we should explicitly add experiences in governing voluntary associations and local communities.

The traditional structure of American civil society has eroded badly, as marked by serious declines in the proportion of people who attend meetings, work with neighbors on common problems, belong to voluntary associations, participate in the governance of religious congregations, follow the news, trust other people, and trust institutions.

But a new civil society is being invented. It is composed of groups that organize local deliberations; community development corporations and land trusts that govern public assets; broad-based community organizing groups; the national and community service programs (insofar as they allow their volunteers to influence their agendas); innovative civic education programs, from kindergarten through graduate school; universities that serve as community anchors; citizen-generated news sources; municipal governments that employ collaborative governance or participatory budgeting; watershed councils, restorative justice, and many other streams of civic practice.

This work needs to be in closer dialogue with advocacy for political reform. That is a goal of the Campaign for Stronger Democracy, a particularly important node in the overall network for democratic reform. The Sierra Club, Greenpeace, CWA, and NAACP are bolstering one wing of the reform movement. It is important, however, to retain the overall balance.

WaterFire and the aesthetic dimension of civic renewal

(Providence, RI) At an Everyday Democracy board meeting here today, we met Barnaby Evans, the charismatic founder and leader of WaterFire Providence. Every couple of weeks, the downtown of this old city is transformed by the lighting of fires that float above the river. Boats bearing fires, flowers, and people also pass by, and the crowds are entertained and challenged by performances–music, dance, real funerals, libations, and other displays that evoke the myriad cultures of the state. Literally millions of people have observed and participated, and thousands help as volunteers.

I draw a few general lessons:

    1. The success of WaterFire depends on a fruitful interaction between a visionary individual with a non-profit corporation, on one hand, and all the performers and active audience members who use his framework to express and exchange their own ideas. Without either the centralized control or the open space for public creativity, the whole would not work.
    2. Important civic ideas (in this case, diversity and unity) can be communicated without words. WaterFire generally discourages narration and explanation in favor of movement, music, and symbol.
    3. It is effective to draw people into a public space with a glamorous, marquee event and then expose them to much more challenging and interactive events and activities.
    4. Attractive public spaces strengthen public life. The general degradation of American public buildings undermines civil society. But a beautiful public space can be created at relatively low cost through regular events. To be sure, downtown Providence had assets before Barnaby Evans founded WaterFire: 18th-century steeples and roofs on the skyline, and a tidal river in the heart of town. But downtown was generally considered ugly and deserted. Lighting the fires transformed the space immediately, and since then, the millions of visitors who have come to watch have encouraged private and public construction. Thus the durable infrastructure of downtown Providence is better because of the ephemeral fires.

Like the anti-fascist movement of the 1930s and the Civil Rights Movement of 1950-1965, a 21st century movement for democracy would need its own aesthetic and symbolic language. It would need more than programs and policies–also images, stories, and sounds. WaterFire is by no means the only example, but in its openness to mass public engagement, its commitment to volunteer labor (even if paid workers would be more efficient), its enthusiasm for cultural diversity, and its effort to create one common public space, it is exemplary.